History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume II Part 7

[35] Same to Cecil, of same date. State Paper Office.

[36] Discours entier de la persecution et cruaute exercee en la ville de Va.s.sy, par le duc de Guise, le 1. de mars, 1562; reprinted in Memoires de Conde, iii. 124-149, and Cimber et Danjou, iv. 123-156. This lengthy Huguenot narrative enters into greater details respecting the early history of the church of Va.s.sy than any of the other contemporary relations. The account bears every mark of candor and accurate information.

[37] "Que son cas estoit bien sale s'il eust este ministre."

[38] The "Destruction du Saccagement" has preserved the names of forty-five persons who died by Tuesday, March 3d; the "Discours entier"

has a complete list of forty-eight that died within a month, and refers to others besides. A contemporary engraving is extant depicting in quaint but lively style the murderous affair. Montfaucon reproduces it. So does also M. Horace Gourjon in a pamphlet ent.i.tled "Le Ma.s.sacre de Va.s.sy" (Paris, 1844). He gives, in addition, an exterior view of the barn in which the Huguenots were wors.h.i.+pping.

[39] Besides a brief Latin memoir of minor importance, there were published two detailed accounts of the ma.s.sacre written by Huguenots. The one is ent.i.tled "Destruction du Saccagement, exerce cruellement par le Duc de Guise et sa cohorte, en la ville de Va.s.sy, le premier jour de Mars, 1561. a Caens. M.D.LXII.," and having for its epigraph the second verse of the 79th psalm in Marot's poetical version, "The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth." (The year 1562, it will be remembered, did not commence in France until Easter Sunday, March 29th.) The account seems to have been composed on the spot and within a very few days of the occurrence. This may be inferred from the list of those who died being given only up to Tuesday, March 3d. The other narrative: "Discours entier de la persecution et cruaute exercee en la ville de Va.s.sy," etc., enters into much greater detail, and is preceded by a full account of the early history of the Church. It was written and published a little later in the spring of 1562. Both memoirs are reprinted in the invaluable Archives curieuses of Messrs. Cimber et Danjou, iv.

103-110, and 123-156, as well as in the Memoires de Conde, iii. 111-115, 124-149 (the former doc.u.ment with the t.i.tle "Relation de l'occasion"), etc. Another contemporary account was written in Guise's interest, and contains a long extract of a letter of his to the Duke of Wurtemberg: "Discours au vray et en abbrege de ce qui est dernierement aduenu a Va.s.si, y pa.s.sant Monseigneur le Duc de Guise. A Paris. M.D.LXII.... Par priuilege expres dudict Seigneur." (Cimber, iv. 111-122; Mem. de Conde, iii.

115-122). To these authorities must be added Guise's vindication in parliament (Cimber, iv. 157, etc., from Reg. of Parl.; Mem. de Guise, 488, etc.), and his letter and that of the Cardinal of Lorraine to Christopher of Wurtemberg, March 22 (Ib. 491, 492). Compare J. de Serres, De statu rel. et reip. (1571), ii. 13-17; De Thou, iii. 129, etc.; Jehan de la Fosse, 45. Davila, bk. iii. in init., is more accurate than Castelnau, iii., c. 7. Claude Haton's account (Memoires, i. 204-206) may be cla.s.sed with the curiosities of literature. This veracious chronicler would have it that a crowd of Huguenots, with stones in their hands, and singing at the top of their voices, attempted to prevent the pa.s.sage of the duke and his company through the outskirts of Va.s.sy, where they were apparently wors.h.i.+pping in the open air! Of course they were the aggressors.

[40] And yet there is great force in M. Sismondi's observation (Hist. des Francais, xviii. 264): "Malgre leur a.s.sertion, il est difficile de ne pas croire qu'au moment ou ils se reunissoient en armes pour disputer aux protestans l'exercise public de leur culte que leur accordoit l'edit de janvier, c'etoit un coup premedite que l'attaque du duc de Guise contre une congregation de huguenots, composee, a ce qu'il a.s.sure, en partie de ses va.s.saux, et qui se trouvoit la premiere sur son pa.s.sage a peu de distance de ses terres."

[41] It is extremely unfortunate that Mr. Froude should have based his account of French affairs at this important point upon so inaccurate and prejudiced a writer as Varillas. To be correct in his delineation of these transactions was almost as important for his object, as to be correct in the narration of purely English occurrences. If he desired to avoid the labor, from which he might well wish to be excused, of mastering the great acc.u.mulation of contemporary and original French authorities, he might have resorted with propriety, as he has done in the case of the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, to Henri Martin's n.o.ble history, or to the history of Sismondi, not to speak of Soldan, Von Polenz, and a host of others. Varillas wrote, about a century after the events he described, a number of works of slender literary, and still slighter historical value.

His "Histoire de Charles IX." (Cologne, 1686)--the work which Mr. Froude has but too often followed--begins with an adulatory dedication to Louis XIV., the first sentence of which sufficiently reveals the author's prepossessions: "Sire, it is impossible to write the history of Charles IX. without beginning the panegyric of your Majesty." No wonder that Mr.

Froude's account of the ma.s.sacre of Va.s.sy (History of England, vii. 401, 402), derived solely from this source (Hist. de Charles IX., i. 126, etc.), is as favorable to Guise as his most devoted partisan could have desired. But where in the world--even in Varillas--did the English historian ever find authority for the statement (vii. 402) that, in consequence of the necessity felt by Guise for temporizing, a little later "_the affair at Va.s.sy was censured in a public decree_"? To have allowed _that_ would have been for Guise to admit that he was guilty of murder, and that his enemies had not slandered him when they styled him a "butcher of the human race." The duke _never did_ make such an acknowledgment; on the contrary, he a.s.severated his innocence in his last breath. What was really done on the occasion referred to was to try to s.h.i.+ft the responsibility of the war from the shoulders of the papists to those of the Huguenots, by pretending to re-enact the edict of January with restrictions as to the capital.

[42] Jean de Serres, ii. 17, 18; De Thou, iii. 132, 133.

[43] "Sire, c'est a la verite a l'eglise de Dieu, au nom de laquelle je parle, d'endurer les coups, et non pas d'en donner. Mais aussi vous plaira-t-il vous souvenir que _c'est une enclume qui a use beaucoup de marteaux_." Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 1, 2; Pierre de Lestoile, Journal de Henri III. (ed. Pet.i.tot), i. 55; De Thou, iii. 132, 133.

[44] Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 45, 46; Santa Croce to Borromeo, Aymon, i. 96, 97; Jean de Serres, ii. 18; Chantonnay, _ubi supra_, ii. 27; Hist, eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 2, 3; Throkmorton to the Queen, March 20th, State Paper Office; De Thou, iii. 133; etc. The date was the 15th of March, according to La Fosse; the 16th, according to Languet (ii. 212) and Throkmorton; the 18th, according to Santa Croce; the 20th, according to J.

de Serres. I prefer to all the authority of a letter of one Chastaigner, written from Paris to a friend in Poitou on the very day of Guise's entry.

It is dated March 17th. "Quant aux nouvelles de Monsieur de Guyse, il est arrive ce soir en ceste ville, Monsieur le connestable et Monsieur le marechal de Saint-Andre avec luy, et en tout avoient bien deux mil chevaulx, les ungs disent plus." (Archives of Poitiers, and printed in Bulletin, xiii. (1864), 15, 16.)

[45] This was not by accident. It had been planned by Conde, to show that the Huguenots were brave and determined, and it succeeded so well that it not only made an impression on the party of Guise, but also largely augmented the courage of his own men. Letter of Beza to Calvin, March 22, 1562, _apud_ Baum, ii., App., 171. Conde had returned to Paris by the urgent request of the Protestants. Jean de Serres, ii. 19.

[46] Letter of Chastaigner, _ubi supra_.

[47] Throkmorton to the queen, March 6th, State Paper Office.

[48] "The King of Navarre was never so earnest on the Protestant side as he is now furious on the papists' part, insomuch as men suspect he will become a persecutor." Throkmorton to Cecil, March 9th, State Paper Office.

Summary in Calendar.

[49] Throkmorton to the queen, March 6, 1562, State Paper Office.

[50] The same to Cecil, same date, State Paper Office.

[51] "Whilst these a.s.semblies were in the town, the queen mother conceived great jealousy (the King of Navarre being allied to the said duke [Guise]), lest she should be put from the government and the king taken from her hands, to prevent which she left Monceaux, her own house, _for Orleans_, thinking they were secure there, because the Prince of Rochesurion (being governor of the king's person and also of Orleans) was not conjoined with the King of Navarre, the Duke of Guise, and the constable, in their purposes. The King of Navarre, perceiving this, would not consent to the king going to Orleans, and, after great disputes betwixt the queen mother and him, she, with the king, were constrained to reside all this Easter at Fontainebleau." Throkmorton to the queen, March, 20, 1562, State Paper Office, Summary in Calendar.

[52] "Combien que le Chancelier luy dict, qu'il n'y esperoit plus rien, qu'elle n'avoit point de resolution, qu'il la congnoissoit bien." Memoires de la vie de Jehan l'Archevesque, Sieur de Soubise, printed from the hitherto unknown MS. in the Bulletin, xxiii. (1874), 458, 459.

[53] Four of the seven letters that const.i.tuted the whole correspondence are printed in the Mem. de Conde, iii. 213-215. Jean de Serres gives two of them in his Comment. de statu rel. et reip., ii. 38, 39. They were laid by Conde's envoy before the princes of Germany, as evidence that he had not taken up arms without the best warrant, and that he could not in any way be regarded as a rebel. They contain no allusion to any promise to lay down his arms so soon as she sent him word--the pretext with which she strove at a later time to palliate, in the eyes of the papal party at home and abroad, a rather awkward step. The cure of Meriot, while admitting the genuineness of the letters, observes: "La cautelle et malice de la dame estoit si grande, qu'elle se delectoit de mettre les princes en division et hayne les ungs contre les aultres, affin qu'elle regnast et qu'elle demeurast gouvernante seulle de son filz et du royaume." Mem. de Cl.

Haton, i. 269. The queen mother's exculpatory statements may be examined in Le Laboureur, Add. aux Mem. de Castelnau, i. 763, 764.

[54] Bruslart, in Mem. de Conde, i. 75, 76; J. de Serres, ii. 20; La Fosse, 46; De Thou, iii. 134. The date is variously given--March 17th or 18th.

[55] J. de Serres, ii. 21; De Thou, _ubi supra_; the Prince of Conde's declaration of the causes which have constrained him to undertake the defence of the royal authority, etc., _ap._ Mem. de Conde, iii. 222, etc.; same in Latin in J. de Serres, ii. 46.

[56] Throkmorton to the queen, March 20, State Paper Office.

[57] March 23d. "Ce meme jour (lundi xxiii.) le Prince de Conde s'en part.i.t de Paris pour s'en aller a une sienne maison, combien qu'il avoit dict qu'il ne bougeroit de Paris que M. de Guise ne s'en fut parti."

Journal anonyme de l'an 1562, _ap._ Baum, iii. App., 175, note.

[58] Letter of March 28th, Baum, ii., App., 175, 176.

[59] Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., ii. 3.

[60] Letter to Fonssomme, OEuvres choisies, ii. 248.

[61] One of the latest exploits of the populace was the disinterring of a Huguenot buried in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, and throwing his body into a public sewer! March 15th, Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 45.

[62] "Je cuide que si les novices des couvens et les chambrieres des prestres seulement se fussent presentez a l'impourveue avec des bastons de cotterets (cotrets) es mains, que cela leur eust fait tenir bride." Mem.

de la Noue, c. ii.

[63] Circular letter dated Paris, March 25th, _apud_ Baum, ii., App., 172.

[64] Agrippa d'Aubigne, i. 132, 133 (liv. iii., c. 2). This striking incident rests on the sole authority of Agrippa d'Aubigne, who claims to have learned it "de ceux qui estoient de la partie." Hotman, who wrote his _Gasparis Colinii Vita_ (1575) at the earnest request of the admiral's _second_ wife, makes no allusion to a story throwing so much l.u.s.tre upon the _first_.

[65] Throkmorton to the queen, April 10, 1562, State Paper Office.

[66] "Ou il faut que venez avec nous, ou nous emmenerons le Roy sans vous." Letter of Conde to the Emperor Ferdinand, April 20th, Mem. de Conde, iii. 305, etc.

[67] "Alors Leurs Majestez, ne pouvant mieux, eurent recours a quelques larmes." Mem. de Castelnau, liv. iii., c. 8.

[68] "Le Roy enfant de bonne nature et grande esperance, tesmoignoit non seulement par paroles, mais aussi avec abondance de larmes, extreme dueil et tristesse; et souventefois s'escriant, deploroit sa condition par telles paroles: 'Pourquoy ne me laissez-vous? Pour quelle raison me voy-je circuy et environne de gens armez? Pourquoy contre ma volonte me tirez-vous du lieu ou je prenoye mon plaisir? Pourquoy deschirez-vous ainsi mon estat en ce mien aage?'" Letter of Conde, _ubi supra_, iii. 306.

[69] Charles the Ninth's entry into Paris was a sorry pageant compared with that of Guise only a few weeks earlier. "Only the merchants and a few counsellors of the city were present," says Jehan de la Fosse (p. 47). The king rode between the queen mother and the King of Navarre. According to Chamberlain, it was a _sober_, but not a _solemn_ entry (C. to Chaloner, April 7, 1562, State Paper Office). Either when Guise returned to Paris from Fontainebleau, or on his previous entry into the city--it is difficult from Claude Haton's confused narrative to determine which was intended--the people sang: "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." Memoires, i. 245.

[70] The singular name of this building is explained by the sign that hung before it. "Apvril. En ung samedy. M. Anne de Montmorenssy, connetable de France, fut devant brasque _en la maison ou pendoit pour enseigne la ville de Jerusalem_, ou preschoient les huguenots, et fist mettre le feu dedans la maison." Journal de J. de la Fosse, 46.

[71] La Fosse, _ubi supra_; J. de Serres, ii. 27; Hist. eccles. des egl.

ref., ii. 8; De Thou, iii. 136, 137; Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 80; Santa Croce to Borromeo, April 5 (Aymon, i. 125); Throkmorton to the queen, _ubi supra_.

[72] Santa Croce to Borromeo, April 5th, Aymon, i. 126, and Cimber et Danjou, vi. 74.

[73] Chantonnay, _ubi supra_, ii. 32.

[74] Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 46. The "Porte St. Honore," before which the Huguenots, after pa.s.sing north of the city, presented themselves (Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 78), was in Francis I.'s time near the present "Palais Royal," in the time of Louis XIII. near the "Madeleine."

See the map in Dulaure, Histoire de Paris.

[75] Mem de la Noue, c. i. The letter of Beza to Calvin from Meaux, March 28, 1562, shows, however, that even before the prince left that city it was known that the triumvirs had set out for Fontainebleau. Beza, not apparently without good reason, blamed the improvidence of Conde in not forestalling the enemy. "Hostes, relicto in urbe non magno praesidio, in aulam abierunt quod difficile non erat et prospicere et impedire. Sed aliter visum est certis de causis, quas tamen nec satis intelligo nec probo." Baum, ii., App., 176.

[76] Yet, if we may credit the unambiguous testimony of Jean de Tavannes, Catharine did not cease to endeavor to favor the Huguenots. He a.s.sures us that, a few months later, during the summer, his father, Gaspard de Tavannes, intercepted at Chalons a messenger whom Catharine had despatched to her daughter the d.u.c.h.ess of Savoy ("qui agreoit ces nouvelles opinions") ostensibly as a lute-player. Among his effects the prying governor of Burgundy found letters signed by the queen mother, containing some rather surprising suggestions. "La Royne luy escrivoit qu'elle estoit resolue de favoriser les Huguenots, d'ou elle esperoit son salut contre le gouvernement du triumvirat ... qu'elle soupconnoit vouloir oster la couronne a ses enfans; et prioit madame de Savoye d'aider lesdits Huguenots de Lyon, Dauphine et Provence, et qu'elle persuadast son mary d'empescher les Suisses et levee d'Italie des Catholiques." Mem. de Tavannes (Pet.i.tot ed.), ii. 341, 342. Tavannes did not dare to detain the messenger, nor to take away his letters; and if, as his son a.s.serts, the enmity of Catharine, which the discovery of her secret gained for him, delayed his acquisition of the marshal's baton for ten years, he certainly had some reason to remember and regret his ill-timed curiosity.

[77] Mem. de la Noue, c. iii.; De Thou, iii. 138; Letter of Beza, of April 5th, Baum, ii., App., 177; Jean de Serres, ii. 24, 25; Bruslart, Mem. de Conde, i. 79. Chamberlain (to Chaloner, April 7, 1562), who on his way from Orleans met the first detachment within a mile of that city--"a thousand handsome gentlemen, well mounted, each having two or three daggs, galloping towards him." State Paper Office.