History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume I Part 49

Of course, the aid of the secular arm was invoked, in view of "the great number and power of the said heretics."[923]

[Sidenote: Theodore Beza invited to Nerac.]

[Sidenote: Jeanne d'Albret.]

On the twentieth of July, at the urgent request of the King and Queen of Navarre, the "Venerable Company of the Pastors of Geneva" had sent the eloquent Theodore Beza to Gascony "to instruct" the royal family in the word of G.o.d.[924] In the dress of a n.o.bleman he had traversed France and reached Nerac in safety. Here he at once exercised a powerful influence upon the king. The fickle mind of Antoine was susceptible of no deep impressions; but it was very easily affected for the time. His queen, Jeanne d'Albret, was his very opposite in mental and moral const.i.tution.

Whereas the very first blast threw him into a fervor of enthusiastic devotion to the purer faith, the heart of the queen--a woman not made to be led, but to lead--yielded slowly to the melting influences of the Gospel. But it never lost its glow. Jeanne came very reluctantly to the determination to cast in her lot with the Reformation. She hesitated to risk the loss of her possessions, and regretted to abandon the attractions of the world. When, however, the decision was once made, the question was never reopened for fresh deliberation.[925]

[Sidenote: Antoine's short-lived zeal.]

[Sidenote: New pressure upon Navarre and Conde.]

[Sidenote: Navarre's concessions.]

At this time, Antoine, we are told, renounced the ma.s.s, and was supposed to think, as he certainly spoke, of nothing but the means of advancing the cause in which he had embarked. Beza preached before him in one of the churches, and all signs pointed to the rapid establishment of the Reformation on a firm basis. The eloquent orator added his persuasion to the entreaties of the representatives of the Protestant churches of France and the exhortations of Constable Montmorency. All had urged Antoine to make his appearance at Fontainebleau with a powerful escort.

We have seen the ill-success with which the joint effort was attended.

The spies whom the Guises kept in pay around the King of Navarre, in the persons of his most intimate advisers, deterred him from a movement which they portrayed as fraught with peril. A few days after the conclusion of the a.s.sembly came the king's summons. To this Antoine at first replied that, if the accusers of his brother, of whose innocence he was fully persuaded, would declare themselves, and if he were a.s.sured that impartial justice would be shown, he would come to the court in company with few attendants. Conde wrote, at the same time, and expressed perfect confidence in his ability to disprove all the allegations against him, provided a safe access to the court was afforded him. On this point the suspicions of the Bourbon princes were soon set at rest by new letters from the king and his mother, a.s.suring them that they would find not only security, but an opportunity to refute charges which Francis and Catharine professed themselves unwilling to credit.[926] To these rea.s.suring words were joined the solicitations of their own brother, the shallow Cardinal of Bourbon,[927] and of the Cardinal of Armagnac. The princes, already discouraged by tidings of the failure of the projects of Montbrun, Mouvans and Maligny in the east, lent too ready an ear to these suggestions. The first open manifestation of weakness was when the King and Queen of Navarre, with their son, young Prince Henry of Bearn, consented to hear ma.s.s in the presence of many of their courtiers. But the extent of Antoine's concessions was, for a time, kept concealed from his followers. At the very moment when Beza was diligently visiting the well affected n.o.bles, and urging them to lend prompt a.s.sistance, the Guises were exulting, with joy mingled with fear, over the promise given by Antoine to the Count of Crussol, that he would come, with an insignificant escort to Orleans, whither Francis had advanced. The tidings appeared too good to be true.[928] For, although the French king had received a.s.surances of a.s.sistance from Philip--who was reported by the French envoy at Toledo to be favorable to the exercise of any severity against the Bourbon princes,[929] so great was his personal enmity toward them--yet the same amba.s.sador had not failed to inform Charles that the troops ostensibly prepared for a French campaign were really intended for Italy and to make good the Spanish monarch's losses in Africa. On the other hand, unless Philip could send six hundred thousand or seven hundred thousand crowns to Flanders to pay arrearages and debts, he could not move a soldier across the lines from that quarter.[930]

[Sidenote: The Huguenot gentry offer him aid.]

[Sidenote: He dismisses his escort.]

The strictest orders had been given to the commandants of important points, such as Bordeaux and Poitiers, through which Antoine might intend pa.s.sing, to guard them against him, in case of his showing any inclination to come otherwise than peaceably.[931] These precautions, however, proved unnecessary. Antoine intended to abide by his engagement. When by slow stages he had at length reached Limoges, he found a number of friendly n.o.blemen awaiting him. In a few days more seven or eight hundred gentlemen had come in, well equipped and armed.

They begged him at once to declare for the liberation of France, according to his previous promises. The n.o.bility, they said, were only waiting for the word of command. Meanwhile Gascony, Poitou, and the coasts offered six or seven thousand foot soldiers, already enrolled under captains, and prepared to defend him against present attack.

Provence and Languedoc would march to his a.s.sistance with three or four thousand horse and foot. Normandy would raise as many more. He would at once become so formidable that, without a blow, he could a.s.sume the guardians.h.i.+p of the king. Bourges and Orleans would fall into his hands, and the States General be held free of constraint. The very forces of the enemy would desert the sinking cause of the hated Guises. As for the necessary funds, with the best filled purses in France at his command, he could scarcely feel any lack. The suggestions of the Huguenot lords, backed by the entreaties of Beza, were, however, overborne by the secret insinuations of his treacherous counsellors. At Verteuil--a few leagues beyond--Navarre clearly announced his intentions, and dismissed his numerous friends with hearty thanks for their kind attentions. He would ask the king's pardon for those who had accompanied him thus far in arms. "Pardon!" replied one of the gentlemen, "think only of very humbly asking it for yourself, who are going to give yourself up as a prisoner with the halter around your neck. So far as I can see, you have more need of it than we have, who have determined not to sell our lives at so cheap a rate, but to die fighting rather than submit to the mercy of those detested enemies of the king. And since we are miserably forsaken by our leaders, we hope that G.o.d will raise up others to free us from the oppression of these tyrants."[932] This retort proving futile, as did also the warning of the Princess of Conde, who wrote and sent a messenger to her husband to escape from the toils of his enemies while it was still possible, the Huguenot gentry retired in disgust; and Beza seized the first opportunity (on the seventeenth of October) to steal away from the King of Navarre, and undertake his perilous return to Geneva, which he succeeded in reaching after a series of hair-breadth escapes.[933]

[Sidenote: Infatuation of the Bourbons.]

The King of Navarre had disregarded the counsels of Calvin and other prudent advisers, who believed that, if he presented himself with a powerful escort at the gates of Orleans, the Guises would yield without a blow.[934] Antoine felt confident that his enemies would never venture to lay hands on a prince of the royal blood. His blind infatuation seemed to infect Conde also. Their presumption was somewhat shaken when the royal governor of Poitiers forbade their entrance into that city.

But the depth of the ruin into which they had plunged was more clearly revealed to their eyes as they began to approach Orleans. Friendly voices whispered the existence of a plan for their destruction; friendly hands offered to effect their escape to Angers, and thence into Normandy.[935] But the die was cast. Hostile troops enveloped them, and they resolved to continue their journey.

[Sidenote: They reach Orleans.]

[Sidenote: Conde arrested.]

Navarre had figured upon the journey much as a provost-marshal leading his brother to prison.[936] Now the imaginary resemblance was turned into a sad reality. On Thursday, the thirty-first of October, the Bourbons reached Orleans.[937] Their reception soon convinced them that they had placed their heads in the jaws of the lion. None of the courtiers save the cardinal, their brother, and La Roche-sur-Yon, their cousin, deigned to do them honor. That very day, after a few angry accusations from Francis, and a courageous vindication of his conduct by the chivalrous prince, Conde was arrested in the king's presence and by his order.[938] The King of Navarre also was, indeed, little better than a prisoner, so closely did he find himself watched.[939] In vain did Navarre remonstrate and plead the royal promise of security, offering himself to become a surety for his brother; the king denied redress.

Then it was that Conde turned to the Cardinal of Bourbon, one of the few that had come to do him honor and said: "Sir, by your a.s.surances you have delivered up your own brother to death."[940] Others shared in Conde's misfortune. Madame de Roye, his mother-in-law and a sister of Admiral Coligny, was brought a prisoner to St. Germain, and a careful search was made among her papers and elsewhere for the purpose of obtaining proofs of Conde's guilt.[941]

[Sidenote: Return of Renee of Ferrara.]

It was at this inauspicious moment that a distinguished princess reached Orleans, after an absence of thirty-two years from her native land, and was received with marked honors by the king and all the court, who went out to meet her and escort her to the city.[942] This was the celebrated Renee, younger daughter of Louis the Twelfth, and widow of Ercole, Duke of Ferrara, now returning, after the death of her husband, to spend her declining years at her retreat of Montargis on the Loing. The scene which she beheld awakened in her breast regret and indignation which she was not slow in expressing. To the Duke of Guise, who had married her daughter, Anne d'Este, she administered a severe rebuke. "Had I been present," she said, "I would have prevented this ill-advised step. It is no trifling matter to treat a prince of the blood in such a manner. The wound is one that will long bleed; for no man has ever yet attacked the blood of France but he has had reason to regret it."[943]

[Sidenote: Conde's courage.]

[Sidenote: His wife repulsed.]

The courage of the imprisoned prince rose with his misfortunes. The house in which he was incarcerated was flanked by a tower whose embrasures commanded the approach, the windows were newly barred, and the door was half-walled up to preclude the possibility of escape.[944]

But Prince Louis stoutly maintained that it was not _he_ that was a captive, since, though his body was confined, his spirit was free and his conscience clean and guiltless; but rather _they_ were prisoners, who, with the freedom of their body, felt their conscience to be enslaved and hara.s.sed by a ceaseless recollection of their crimes.[945]

His wife, the virtuous eleonore de Roye, fruitlessly applied for admission in order to minister to his wants. She was rudely repulsed by the king, at whose feet she had thrown herself in a flood of tears, with the bitter remark that her husband was his mortal enemy, who had conspired not only to obtain his crown, but his life also, and that he could do no less than avenge himself upon him.[946] It was only by special effort that the few who dared avow themselves friends of the disgraced Bourbons, succeeded in obtaining for Conde legal counsel, and that these were allowed to hold brief interviews with the prince in the presence of two officers of the crown.[947] No others were admitted, save a pretended friend, to sound his disposition toward the Guises.

Comprehending the motive of his visit, Conde begged him to inform those who had sent him, "that he had received so many outrages at their hands that there remained no path of reconciliation, save at the point of the sword; and that, although he seemed to be at their mercy, he still had confidence that G.o.d would avenge the injury done by them to a prince who had come at the command and relying on the word of his king, but had been shamefully imprisoned at their suggestion, in order to make in him a beginning of the destruction of the royal blood."[948]

[Sidenote: Conde tried by a commission.]

[Sidenote: He is found guilty and sentenced to be beheaded.]

A commission, consisting of Chancellor L'Hospital, President De Thou, Counsellors Faye and Viole, and a few others, was appointed, on the thirteenth of November, to conduct the trial. Conde refused to plead before them, taking refuge in his privilege, as a prince, to be tried only before the king and by his peers.[949] His appeals, however, were rejected by the privy council, and he was commanded, in the king's name, to answer, under pain of being held a traitor. In view of the known desire and intention of the king and his chief advisers, the trial was likely to be expeditious and not over-scrupulous.[950] The most innocent expressions of disapproval of the violent executions at Amboise were perverted into open approval of a plot against the king. The prosecution sought to establish the heresy of the prince, in order to furnish some ground for finding him guilty of treason against Divine as well as royal authority. Nor was this difficult. A priest, in full officiating vestments, was introduced, as by royal command, to say ma.s.s in Conde's presence. But the young Bourbon drove him out with rough words, declaring "that he had come to his Majesty with no intention of holding any communion with the impieties and defilements of the Roman Antichrist, but solely to relieve himself of the false accusations that had been made against him."[951] Before so partial a court the trial could have but one issue. Conde was found guilty, and condemned to be beheaded on a scaffold erected before the king's temporary residence, at the opening of the States General.[952] The sentence was signed not only by the judges to whom the investigation had been entrusted, but by members of the privy council, by the members of the Order of St.

Michael, and by a large number of less important dignitaries, without even a formal examination into the merits of the case--so anxious were the Guises to involve as many influential persons as possible in the same responsibility with themselves. Of the privy councillors, Du Mortier and Chancellor de l'Hospital alone refused to append their signatures without a longer term for reflection, and endeavored to ward off the blow by procrastination.[953]

[Sidenote: Danger of the King of Navarre.]

Navarre was himself in almost equal danger. An attempt to poison him was frustrated by its timely revelation; a plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate him on leaving the king's residence, by the strength of his body-guard. A still more atrocious scheme was concocted. Francis was to stab his cousin of Navarre with his dagger, leaving his attendants to despatch him with their swords. Such murderous projects can rarely be kept secret. Even Catharine de' Medici is said to have attempted to dissuade Antoine from going to the palace by warning him of the danger he would incur. At the door of the king's chamber a friendly hand interposed, and a friendly voice asked: "Sire, whither are you going to your ruin?" But the prince, with a resolution which it had been well had he manifested at an earlier period, paused only a moment to say to his faithful Renty: "I am going to the spot where a conspiracy has been entered into to take my life....

If it please G.o.d, He will save me; but, if I die, I entreat you, by the fidelity I have ever known in you, ... to carry the s.h.i.+rt I wear, all covered with blood, to my wife and son, and to conjure my wife, by the great love she has always borne me, and by her duty (since my son is not yet old enough to avenge my death), to send it, torn by the dagger, and b.l.o.o.d.y, to the foreign princes of Christendom, that they may avenge my death, so cruel and treacherous."[954] These gloomy forebodings were not destined to be realized. Francis's anger evaporated in words, or was restrained by his mother's secret injunctions,[955] and Antoine of Navarre was suffered to go away unharmed. The duke and cardinal, who witnessed the scene from the recess of a window, are said to have muttered half audibly as they left the room, "That is the most cowardly heart that ever was!"[956]

[Sidenote: A plot for the utter destruction of the Huguenots.]

The a.s.sa.s.sination of the King of Navarre was, however, but a part of a larger plot for the utter destruction of the Huguenots and of Protestantism in France, the details of which are but imperfectly known.[957] It is alleged that preliminary lists of those infected by heresy had been obtained from all parts of France, and that a more exact knowledge was to be obtained by compelling all cla.s.ses--from the n.o.bility and members of the Order of St. Michael down to the simple citizen--to subscribe to the articles of faith drawn up eighteen years before by the Sorbonne.[958] At the close of the sessions of the States General, the full forces at the command of the court were to be set on foot, and four armies, under the Duke of Aumale and Marshals St. Andre, Brissac, and Termes, were to serve as the instruments of destruction.

Termes was to effect a junction with a Spanish force entering France through Bearn; and the Governor of Bayonne was instructed to surrender that important city into the hands of Philip. The expenses of the crusade were to be defrayed by the clergy, who, from cardinal down to chaplain, were to retain of their income only the amount necessary for their bare subsistence.[959] The recent publication of the Pope's bull, renewing the Council of Trent, meanwhile served as a good excuse for forbidding the discussion of religious questions by the States General, then about to meet, by the king's direction, at Orleans instead of Meaux.[960]

[Sidenote: Illness of the king.]

The moment for the execution of this widespread plan of destruction was approaching, when its devisers were startled by the sudden discovery that the health of their nephew, the king, was fast failing. Francis's const.i.tution, always frail, and now still further undermined, was giving way in connection with a gathering in the ear, which resisted the efforts of the most skilful physicians.[961] "This King," wrote the English amba.s.sador, on the twenty-first of November, giving to his fellow-envoy at Madrid the first intimation of Francis's illness, "thought to have removed hence for a fortnight, but the day before his intended journey he felt himself somewhat evil disposed of his body, with a pain in his head and one of his ears, which hath stayed his removing from hence."[962] But the rapid progress of the disease soon made it clear that the trip to Chenonceau, "the queen's house," whence the king "was not to return hither until the Estates are a.s.sembled,"

would never be taken by Francis. The sceptre must pa.s.s into other hands even more feeble than his.

[Sidenote: The queen mother rejects the advances of the Guises,]

[Sidenote: and makes terms with Navarre.]

The Guises in consternation proposed to Catharine to hasten the death of Navarre and Conde,[963] and perhaps to put into immediate execution their ulterior projects. But Catharine de' Medici little relished an increased dependence[964] upon a family she had good reason to distrust.

Instead of accepting the advances of the Guises, she hastened to make terms with the King of Navarre. In an interview with that weak prince, a compact was made which proved the source of untold evils. He had been forewarned by ladies in Catharine's interest, as he valued his life, to oppose none of her demands; but the wily Florentine scarcely expected so easy a triumph as she obtained. To the amazement of friend and foe, Antoine de Bourbon ceded his right to the regency, without a struggle, to the queen mother, a foreigner and not of royal blood. For himself he merely retained the first place under her, as lieutenant-general of the kingdom. He even consented to be reconciled to his cousins of Guise, and, after publicly embracing them, promised to forget all past grounds of quarrel.[965]

[Sidenote: Death of Francis II., Dec. 5, 1560.]

The vows which Francis made "to G.o.d and to all the saints of paradise, male and female, and particularly to Notre-Dame-de-Clery, that, if they should grant him restoration of health, he would never cease until he had wholly purged the kingdom of those wicked heretics,"[966] proved unavailing. On the fifth of December, 1560, he died in the eighteenth year of his age and the seventeenth month of his reign. "G.o.d, who pierced the eye of the father, had now stricken the ear of the son."[967]

[Sidenote: "Epitre au Tigre de la Prance."]

The most annoying of the anonymous pamphlets against the Guises was a letter bearing the significant direction: _Au Tigre de la France_. Under this bloodthirsty designation every one knew that the Cardinal of Lorraine alone could be meant, and the style of the production showed that a master-hand in literature had been concerned in the composition. The Guises were furious, but it was impossible to discover the author or publisher of the libel. Both succeeded admirably in preserving their incognito. Yet, as victims were wanted to appease the anger of the ruling family, two unhappy men expiated by their death a crime of which they were confessedly innocent. The incident, which comes down to us attested not only by the best of contemporary historians, but by the records of the courts, recently brought to light, may serve to ill.u.s.trate the prevalent corruption of the judges and the occasional whimsical application of the so-called justice wherein they were given to indulging. Diligent search on the part of the friends of the Guises led to the detection of only a single copy of the "Tigre," and this was found in the house of one Martin Lhomme, or Lhommet, a printer by trade, and miserably poor. There was no evidence at all that he had had any part in printing or publis.h.i.+ng it. None the less did the judges of parliament, and particularly M. Du Lyon, to whom the case was specially confided, prosecute the trial with relentless ardor. On the 15th of July, the unfortunate Lhomme, after having been subjected to torture to extract information respecting his supposed accomplices, was publicly hung on a gibbet on the Place Maubert, in Paris. The well-informed Regnier de La Planche (p. 313) is our authority for the statement that Du Lyon having, at a supper, a few days later, been called to account for the iniquity of his decision, made no attempt to defend it, but exclaimed: "Que voulez-vous? We had to satisfy Monsieur le Cardinal with something, since we had failed to catch the author; for otherwise he would never have given us any peace (il ne nous eust jamais donne relasche)." Still more unreasonable was the infliction of the death-penalty upon Robert Dehors, a merchant of Rouen, who had chanced to ride into Paris just as Lhomme was being led to execution. Booted as he still was, he became a witness of the brutality with which the crowd followed the poor printer, and seemed disposed to s.n.a.t.c.h him from the executioner's hands in order to tear him in pieces. Indignant at this violation of decency, Dehors had the imprudence to remonstrate with those about him, dissuading them from imbruing their hands in the blood of a wretched man, when their desire was so soon to be accomplished by the minister of the law. The Rouen merchant little understood the ferocity of the Parisian populace. The mob instantly turned their fury upon him, and but for the intervention of the royal archers he would have met on the spot the fate from which he had sought to rescue another to whose person and offence he was an utter stranger. As it was, he escaped instant death only to become a victim to the perverse ingenuity of the same judges, and be hung on the same Place Maubert, "for the sedition and popular commotion caused by him, at the time of the execution of Martin Lhomme, by means of scandalous expressions and blasphemies uttered and p.r.o.nounced by the said Dehors against the honor of G.o.d and of the glorious Virgin Mary, wherewith the said prisoner induced the people to sedition and public scandals." (See Registres du parlement, July 13, 15, and 19, 1560, reprinted by Read in "Le Tigre.")

It is not, perhaps, very much to be wondered at that a pamphlet so dangerous to have in one's possession should have so thoroughly disappeared that a few years since not a copy was known to be in existence. It doubtless fared with the "Tigre" much as it did with another outspoken libel--"Taxe des parties casuelles de la boutique du Pape"--published a few years later, of which Lestoile (Read, p.

21) tells us that he was for a long time unsuccessful in the search for a copy, to replace that which, to use his own words, "I burned at the St. Bartholomew, _fearing that it might burn me_!"

By a happy accident, M. Louis Paris, in 1834, discovered a solitary copy that had apparently been saved from destruction by being buried in some provincial library. The discovery, however, was of little avail to the literary world, as the pamphlet was eagerly bought by the famous collector Brunet, only to find a place in his jealously guarded cases, where, after a fas.h.i.+on only too common in these days, a few privileged persons were permitted to inspect it under gla.s.s, but not a soul was allowed to copy it. Fortunately, after M. Brunet's death, the city of Paris succeeded in purchasing the _seven printed leaves_, of which the precious book was composed, for 1,400 francs! Even then the singular fortunes of the book did not end. Placed in the Hotel-de-Ville, this insignificant pamphlet, almost alone of all the untold wealth of antiquarian lore in the library, escaped the flames kindled by the insane Commune.

M. Charles Read, the librarian, had taken it to his own house for the purpose of copying it and giving it to the world. This design has now been happily executed, in an exquisite edition (Paris, 1875), containing not only the text, ill.u.s.trated by copious notes, but a photographic fac-simile. M. Read has also appended a poem ent.i.tled "Le Tigre, Satire sur les Gestes Memorables des Guisards (1561), "for the recovery of which we are indebted to M. Charles Nodier. Although some have imagined this to be the original "Tigre"

which cost the lives of Lhomme and Dehors, it needs only a very superficial comparison of the two to convince us that the poem is only an elaboration, not indeed without merit, of the more nervous prose epistle. The author of the latter was without doubt the distinguished _Francois Hotman_. This point has now been established beyond controversy. As early as in 1562 the Guises had discovered this; for a treatise published that year in Paris (Religionis et Regis adversus exitiosas Calvini, Bezae, et Ottomani conjuratorum factiones defensio) uses the expressions: "Hic te, Ottomane, excutere incipio. Scis enim ex cujus officina _Tigris_ prodiit, liber certe tigride parente, id est homine barbaro, impuro, impio, ingrato, malevolo, maledico dignissimus. Tu te istius libelli auctorem ... audes venditare?" While an expression in a letter written by John Sturm, Rector of the University of Strasbourg, July, 1562, to Hotman himself (Tygris, immanis illa bellua quam tu _hic_ contra Cardinalis existimationem divulgari curasti), not only confirms the statement of the hostile Parisian pamphleteer, but indicates Strasbourg as the place of publication (Read, pp. 132-139).

The "Epistre envoyee au Tigre de la France" betrays a writer well versed in cla.s.sical oratory. Some of the best of modern French critics accord to it the first rank among works of the kind belonging to the sixteenth century. They contrast its sprightliness, its terse, telling phrases with the heavy, dragging constructions that disfigure the prose of contemporary works.

Without copying in a servile fas.h.i.+on the Catilinarian speeches of Cicero, the "Tigre" breathes their spirit and lacks none of their force. Take, for example, the introductory sentences: "Tigre enrage! Vipere venimeuse! Sepulcre d'abomination! Spectacle de malheur! Jusques a quand sera-ce que tu abuseras de la jeunesse de nostre Roy? Ne mettras-tu jamais fin a ton ambition demesuree, a tes impostures, a tes larcins? Ne vois-tu pas que tout le monde les scait, les entend, les cognoist? Qui penses-tu qui ignore ton detestable desseing et qui ne lise en ton visage le malheur de tous tes [nos] jours, la ruine de ce Royaume, et la mort de nostre Roy?"