CHAPTER IV.

THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE.[161]

§ 1. _Marguerite d'Angoulême and the "group of Meaux."_

Perhaps no one so thoroughly represents the sentiments which inspired the beginnings of the movement for Reformation in France as Marguerite d'Angoulême,[162] the sister of King Francis I. A study of her letters and of her writings--the latter being for the most part in verse--is almost essential for a true knowledge of the aspirations of the noblest minds of her generation. Not that she possessed creative energy or was herself a thinker of any originality, but her soul, like some clear sensitive mirror, received and reflected the most tremulous throb of the intellectual and religious movements around her. She had, like many ladies of that age, devoted herself to the New Learning. She had mastered Latin, Italian, and Spanish in her girlhood, and later she acquired Greek and even Hebrew, in order to study the Scriptures in their original tongues. In her the French Renaissance of the end of the fifteenth was prolonged throughout the first half of the sixteenth century. She was all sentiment and affection, full of that gentle courage which soft feminine enthusiasm gives, and to her brother and more masculine mother (Louise of Savoy)[163] she was a being to be protected against the consequences of her own tender daring. Contemporary writers of all parties, save the more bitter defenders of the prevalent Scholastic Theology, have something good to say about the pure, bright, ecstatic Queen of Navarre. One calls her the "violet in the royal garden," and says that she unconsciously gathered around her all the better spirits in France, as the wild thyme attracts the bees.

Marsiglio Ficino had taught her to drink from the well of Christian Platonism;[164] and this mysticism, which had little to do with dogma, which allied itself naturally with the poetical sides of philosophy and morals which suggested great if indefinite thoughts about God,--_le Tout_, _le Seul Nécessaire_, _la Seule Bonté_,--the human soul and the intimate union between the two, was perhaps the abiding part of her ever-enlarging religious experience. Nicholas of Cusa, who tried to combine the old Scholastic with the new thoughts of the Renaissance, taught her much which she never unlearnt. She studied the Holy Scriptures carefully for herself, and was never weary of discussing with others the meaning of passages which seemed to be difficult. She listened eagerly to the preaching of Lefèvre and Roussel, and carried on a long private correspondence with Briçonnet, being passionately desirous, she said, to learn "the way of salvation."[165] Both Luther and Calvin made a strong impression upon her, but their schemes of theology never attracted nor subjugated her intelligence. Her sympathies were drawn forth by their disdain of Scholastic Theology, by their denial of the supernatural powers of the priesthood, by their proclamation of the power and of the love of God, and by their conception that faith unites man with God--by all in their teaching which would assimilate with the Christian mysticism to which she had given herself with all her soul. When her religious poems are studied, it will be found that she dwells on the infinite power of God, the mystical absorption of the human life within the divine, and praises passionately self-sacrifice and disdain of all earthly pleasures. She extols the Lord as the one and only Saviour and Intercessor. She contrasts, as Luther was accustomed to do, the Law which searches, tries, and punishes, with the Gospel which pardons the sinner for the sake of Christ and of the work which He finished on the Cross. She looks forward with eager hope to a world redeemed and regenerated through the Evangel of Jesus Christ. She insists on justification by faith, on the impossibility of salvation by works, on predestination in the sense of absolute dependence on God in the last resort. Works are good, but no one is saved by works; salvation comes by grace, and "is the gift of the Most High God." She calls the Virgin the most blessed among women, because she had been chosen to be the mother of the "Sovereign Saviour," but refused her any higher place; and in her devotions she introduced an invocation of Our Lord instead of the _Salve Regina_. This way of thinking about the Blessed Virgin, combined with her indifference to the Saints and to the Mass, and her undisguised contempt for the more superstitious ecclesiastical ceremonies, were the chief reasons for the strong attacks made on Marguerite by the Faculty of Theology (the Sorbonne) of Paris. She cannot be called a Protestant, but she had broken completely with mediæval modes of religious life and thought.

Marguerite's letters contain such graphic glimpses, that it is possible to see her daily life, whether at Bourges, where she held her Court as the Duchess of Alençon, or at Nérac, where she dwelt as the Queen of Navarre. Every hour was occupied, and was lived in the midst of company. Her _Contes_ and her poetry were for the most part written in her litter when she was travelling from one place to another. Her "Household" was large even for the times. No less than one hundred and two persons--ladies, secretaries, almoners, physicians, etc.--made her Court; and frequently many visitors also were present. The whole "Household," with the visitors, met together every forenoon in one of the halls of the Palace, a room "well-paved and hung with tapestry," and there the Princess commonly proposed some text of Scripture for discussion. It was generally a passage which seemed obscure to Marguerite; for example, "The meek shall inherit the earth." All were invited to make suggestions about its meaning. The hostess was learned, and no one scrupled to quote the Scriptures in their original languages, or to adduce the opinions of such earlier Fathers as Augustine, Jerome, Chrysostom, or the Gregories. If it surprises us to find one or other of the twenty _valets de chambre_, who were not menials and were privileged to be present, familiar with theology, and able to quote Greek and even Hebrew, it must not be forgotten that Marguerite's _valets de chambre_ included distinguished Humanists and Reformers, to whom she extended the protective privilege of being enrolled in her "Household." When the weather permitted, the whole company went for a stroll in the park after the discussion, and then seated themselves near a "pleasant fountain" on the turf, "so soft and delicate that they needed neither carpet nor cushions."[166] There one of the ladies-in-waiting (thirty _dames_ or _demoiselles_ belonged to the "Household") read aloud a tale from the _Heptameron_, not forgetting the improving conversation which concludes each story. This gave rise to an animated talk, after which they returned to the Palace. In the evening the "Household" assembled again in a hall, fitted as a simple theatre, to witness one of the Comedies or Pastorals which the Queen delighted to write, and in which, through a medium as strange as the _Contes_, she inculcated her mystical Christianity, and gave expression to her longings for a reformation in the Church and society. Her Court was the precursor of the _salons_ which in a later age exercised such a powerful influence on French political, literary, and social life.

Marguerite is chiefly remembered as the author of the _Heptameron_, which modern sentiment cannot help regarding as a collection of scandalous, not to say licentious, tales. The incongruity, as it appears to us, of making such tales the vehicle of moral and even of evangelical instruction, causes us frequently to forget the conversations which follow the stories--conversations which generally inculcate moral truths, and sometimes wander round the evangelical thought that man's salvation and all the fruits of holy living rest on the finished work of Christ, the only Saviour. "_Voilà, Mesdames, comme la foy du bon Comte ne fut vaincue par signes ne par miracles extérieurs, sachant très bien que nous n'avons qu'un Sauveur, lequel en disant Consummatum est, a monstré qu'il ne laissoit point à un autre successeur pour faire notre salut._"[167] So different was the sentiment of the sixteenth from that of the twentieth century, that Jeanne d'Albret, puritan as she undoubtedly was, took pains that a scrupulously exact edition of her mother's _Contes_ should be printed and published, for all to read and profit by.

The Reformers with whom Marguerite was chiefly associated were called the "group of Meaux." Guillaume Briçonnet,[168] Bishop of Meaux, who earnestly desired reform but dreaded revolution, had gathered round him a band of scholars whose idea was a reformation of the Church by the Church, in the Church, and with the Church. They were the heirs of the aspirations of the great conciliar leaders of the fifteenth century, such as Gerson, deeply religious men, who longed for a genuine revival of faith and love. They hoped to reconcile the great truths of Christian dogma with the New Learning, and at once to enlarge the sphere of Christian intelligence, and to impregnate Humanism with Christian morality.

The man who inspired the movement and defined its aims--"to preach Christ from the sources"--was Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (Stapulensis).[169] He had been a distinguished Humanist, and in 1507 had resolved to consecrate his learning to a study of the Holy Scriptures. The first fruit of this resolve was a new Latin translation of the Epistles of St. Paul (1512), in which a revised version of the Vulgate was published along with the traditional text. In his notes he anticipated two of Luther's ideas--that works have no merit apart from the grace of God, and that while there is a Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Supper, there is no transubstantiation. The Reformers of Meaux believed that the Holy Scriptures should be in the hands of the Christian people, and Lefèvre took Jean de Rély's version of the Bible,--itself a revision of an old thirteenth century French translation,--revised it, published the Gospels in June 1523, and the whole of the New Testament before the end of the year. The Old Testament followed in 1525. The book was eagerly welcomed by Marguerite, and became widely known and read throughout France. The Princess was able to write to Briçonnet that her brother and mother were interested in the spread of the Holy Scriptures, and in the hope of a reform of the Church.[170]

Neither Lefèvre nor Briçonnet was the man to lead a Reformation. The Bishop was timid, and feared the "tumult"; and Lefèvre, like Marguerite, was a Christian mystic,[171] with all the mystic's dislike to change in outward and fixed institutions. More radical ideas were entering France from without. The name of Luther was known as early as 1518, and by 1520, contemporary letters tell us that his books were selling by the hundred, and that all thinking men were studying his opinions.[172] The ideas of Zwingli were also known, and appeared more acceptable to the advanced thinkers in France. Some members of the group of Meaux began to reconsider their position. The Pope's Bull excommunicating Luther in 1520, the result of the Diet of Worms in 1521, and the declaration of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris (the Sorbonne) against the opinions of Luther, and their vindication of the authority of Aristotle and Scholastic Theology made it apparent that even modest reforms would not be tolerated by the Church as it then existed. The _Parlement_ of Paris (August 1521) ordered Luther's books to be given up.[173]

Lefèvre did not falter. He remained what he had been--a man on the threshold of a new era who refused to enter it. One of his fellow-preachers retracted his opinions, and began to write against his leader. The young and fiery Guillaume Farel boldly adopted the views of the Swiss Reformers. Briçonnet temporised. He forbade the preaching of Lutheran doctrine within his diocese, and the circulation of the Reformer's writings; but he continued to protect Lefèvre, and remained true to his teaching.[174]

The energetic action of the Sorbonne and of the _Parlement_ of Paris showed the obstacles which lay in the path of a peaceful Reformation. The library of Louis de Berquin was seized and condemned (June 16th, 1523), and several of his books burnt in front of Notre Dame by the order of _Parlement_ (August 8th). Berquin himself was saved by the interposition of the King.[175] In March 1525, Jean Leclerc, a wool-carder, was whipt and branded in Paris; and six months later was burnt at Metz for alleged outrages on objects of reverence. The Government had to come to some decision about the religious question.

Marguerite could write that her mother and her brother were "more than ever well disposed towards the reformation of the Church";[176] but neither of them had her strong religious sentiment, and policy rather than conviction invariably swayed their action. The Reformation promoted by Lefèvre and believed in by Marguerite was at once too moderate and too exacting for Francis I. It could never be a basis for an alliance with the growing Protestantism of Germany, and it demanded a purity of individual life ill-suited either with the personal habits of the King or with the manners of the French Court. It is therefore not to be wondered that the policy of the Government of Francis I. wavered between a negligent protection and a stern repression of the French Reformers.

§ 2. _Attempts to repress the Movement for Reform._

The years 1523-26 were full of troubles for France. The Italian war had been unsuccessful. Provence had been invaded. Francis I. had been totally defeated and taken prisoner at Pavia. Dangers of various kinds within France had also confronted the Government. Bands of marauders--_les aventuriers_[177]--had pillaged numerous districts; and so many conflagrations had taken place that people believed they were caused by emissaries of the public enemies of France. Louise of Savoy, the Queen-Mother, and Regent during her son's captivity in Madrid, had found it necessary to conciliate the formidable powers of the _Parlement_ of Paris and of the Sorbonne. Measures were taken to suppress the printing of Lutheran and heretical books, and the _Parlement_ appointed a commission to discover, try, and punish heretics. The result was a somewhat ineffective persecution.[178] The preachers of Meaux had to take refuge in Strassburg, and Lefèvre's translation of the Scriptures was publicly burnt.

When the King returned from his imprisonment at Madrid (March 1525), he seemed to take the side of the Reformers. The Meaux preachers came back to France, and Lefèvre himself was made the tutor to the King's youngest son. In 1528-29 the great French Council of Sens met to consider the state of the Church. It reaffirmed most of the mediæval positions, and, in opposition to the teachings of Protestants, declared the unity, infallibility, and visibility of the Church, the authority of Councils, the right of the Church to make canonical regulations, fasts, the celibacy of priests, the seven sacraments, the Mass, purgatory, the veneration of saints, the worship of images, and the Scholastic doctrines of free will and faith and works. It called on civil rulers to execute the censures of the Church on heretics and schismatics. It also published a series of reforms necessary--most of which were already contained in the canon law.

While the Council was sitting, the Romanists of France were startled with the news that a statue of the Blessed Virgin had been beheaded and otherwise mutilated. It was the first manifestation of the revolutionary spirit of the Reformation in France. The King was furious. He caused a new statue to be made in silver, and gave his sanction to the renewal of the persecutions (May 31st, 1528). Four years later his policy altered. He desired alliances with the English and German Protestants; one of the Reformers of Meaux preached in the Louvre during Lent (1533), and some doctors of the Sorbonne, who accused the King and Queen of Navarre of heresy, were banished from Paris. In spite of the ferment caused by the Evangelical address of Nicolas Cop, and the flight of Cop and of Calvin, the real author of the address, the King still seemed to favour reform. Evangelical sermons were again preached in the Louvre, and the King spoke of a conference on the state of religion within France.

The affair of the _Placards_ caused another storm. On the morning of Oct. 18th, 1534, the citizens of Paris found that broadsides or _placards_, attacking in very strong language the ceremony of the Mass, had been affixed to the walls of the principal streets. These _placards_ affirmed that the sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross was perfect and unique, and therefore could never be repeated; that it was sheer idolatry to say that the corporeal presence of Christ was enclosed within the wafer, "a man of twenty or thirty years in a morsel of paste"; that transubstantiation was a gross error; that the Mass had been perverted from its true meaning, which is to be a memorial of the sacrifice and death of our Lord; and that the solemn ceremony had become a time "of bell-ringings, shoutings, singing, waving of lamps and swinging of incense pots, after the fashion of sorcerers." The violence of language was extreme. "The Pope and all his vermin of cardinals, of bishops, of priests, of monks and other hypocrites, sayers of the Mass, and all those who consent thereto," were liars and blasphemers. The author of this broadside was a certain Antoine Marcourt, who had fled from France and taken refuge in Neuchâtel. The audacity of the men who had posted the _placards_ in Paris and in other towns,--Orléans, Blois, Amboise,--and had even fixed one on the door of the King's bedchamber, helped to rouse the Romanists to frenzy. The _Parlement_ and the University demanded loudly that extreme measures should be taken to crush the heretics;[179] and everywhere expiatory processions were formed to protest against the sacrilege. The King himself and the great nobles of the Court took part in one in January,[180] and during that month more than thirty-five Lutherans were arrested, tried, and burnt. Several well-known Frenchmen (seventy-three at least), among them Clement Marot and Mathurin Cordier, fled the country, and their possessions were confiscated.

After this outburst of persecution the King's policy again changed. He was once more anxious for an alliance with the Protestants of Germany. An amnesty was proclaimed for all save the "Sacramentarians," _i.e._ the followers of Zwingli. A few of the exiled Frenchmen returned, among them Clement Marot. The Chancellor of France, Antoine du Bourg, went the length of inviting the German theologians to come to France for the purpose of sharing in a religious conference, and adhered to his proposal in spite of the protests of the Sorbonne. But nothing came of it. The German Protestant theologians refused to risk themselves on French soil; and the exiled Frenchmen mistrusted the King and his Chancellor. The amnesty, however, deserves remark, because it called forth the letter of Calvin to Francis I. which forms the "dedication" or preface to his _Christian Institution_.

The work of repression was resumed with increased severity. Royal edicts and mandates urging the extirpation of heresy followed each other in rapid succession--Edict to the _Parlement_ of Toulouse (Dec. 16th, 1538), to the _Parlements_ of Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Rouen (June 24th, 1539); a general edict issued from Fontainebleau (June 1st, 1540); an edict to the _Parlement_ of Toulouse (Aug. 29th, 1542); _mandats_ to the _Parlements_ of Paris, Bordeaux, Dijon, Grenoble, and Rouen (Aug. 30th, 1542). The general Edict of Fontainebleau was one of exceptional severity. It was intended to introduce a more summary procedure in heresy trials, and enjoined officials to proceed against all persons tainted with heresy, even against ecclesiastics or those who had the "benefit of clergy"; the right of appeal was denied to those suspected; negligent judges were threatened with the King's displeasure; and the ecclesiastical courts were urged to show greater zeal, and to take advantage of the powers given to the civil courts. "Every loyal subject," the edict said, "must denounce heretics, and employ all means to root them out, just as all men are bound to run to help to extinguish a public conflagration." This edict, slightly modified by the _Parlement_ of Paris (July 1543) by enlarging the powers of the ecclesiastical courts, remained in force in France for the nine following years. Yet in spite of its thoroughness, succeeding edicts and _mandats_ declare that heresy was making rapid progress in France.

The Sorbonne and the _Parlements_ (especially those of Paris and Aix) urged on the persecution of the "Lutherans." The former drafted a series of twenty-five articles (a refutation of the 1541 edition of Calvin's _Institution_), which were meant to assert concisely the dogma of the Church, and to deny whatever the Reformers taught prejudicial to the doctrines and practices of the mediæval Church. These articles were approved by the King and his Privy Council, who ordered them to be published throughout the whole kingdom, and gave instructions to deal with all who preached or taught anything contrary or repugnant to them. This ordinance was at once registered by the _Parlement_ of Paris. Thus all the powers of the realm committed themselves to a struggle to extirpate the Reformed teaching, and were armed with a test which was at once clear and comprehensive. Not content with this, the Sorbonne began a list of prohibited books (1542-43)--a list containing the works of Calvin, Luther, Melanchthon, Clement Marot, and the translations of scripture edited by Robert Estienne, and the _Parlement_ issued a severe ordinance against all Protestant propaganda by means of printing or the selling of books (July 1542).

These various ordinances for the extirpation of heresy were applied promptly and rigorously, and the fires of persecution were soon kindled all over France. The _place_ Maubert was the scene of the martyrdoms in Paris. There were no great _auto-da-fés_, but continual mention is made of burning two or three martyrs at once. Two acts of persecution cast a dark stain on the last years of Francis I.--the slaughter of the Waldenses of the Durance in 1545, and the martyrdom of the "fourteen of Meaux."

A portion of Provence, skirting the Durance where that river is about to flow into the Rhone, had been almost depopulated in the fourteenth century, and the landowners had invited peasants from the Alps to settle within their territories. The incomers were Waldenses; their religion was guaranteed protection, and their industry and thrift soon covered the desolate region with fertile farms. When the Reformation movement had established itself in Germany and Switzerland, these villagers were greatly interested. They drew up a brief statement of what they believed, and sent it to the leading Reformers, accompanied by a number of questions on matters of religion. They received long answers from Bucer and from Oecolampadius, and, having met in conference (Sept. 1532) at Angrogne in Piedmont, they drafted a simple confession of faith based on the replies of the Reformers to their questions. It was natural that they should view the progress of the Reformation within France with interest, and that they should contribute 500 crowns to defray the expense of printing a new translation of the Scriptures into French by Robert Olivétan. Freedom to practise their religion had been granted for two centuries to the inhabitants of the thirty Waldensian villages, and they conceived that in exhibiting their sympathy with French Protestantism they were acting within their ancient rights. Jean de Roma, Inquisitor for Provence, thought otherwise. In 1532 he began to exhort the villagers to abjure their opinions; and, finding his entreaties without effect, he set on foot a severe persecution. The Waldenses appealed to the King, who sent a commission to inquire into the matter, with the result that Jean de Roma was compelled to flee the country.

The persecution was renewed in 1535 by the Archbishop and _Parlement_ of Aix, who cited seventeen of the people of Merindol, one of the villages, before them on a charge of heresy. When they failed to appear, the _Parlement_ published (Nov. 18th, 1540) the celebrated _Arrêt de Merindol_, which sentenced the seventeen to be burnt at the stake. The Waldenses again appealed to the King, who pardoned the seventeen on the condition that they should abjure their heresy within three months (Feb. 8th, 1541). There was a second appeal to the King, who again protected the Waldenses; but during the later months of 1541 the _Parlement_ of Aix sent to His Majesty the false information that the people of Merindol were in open insurrection, and were threatening to sack the town of Marseilles. Upon this, Francis, urged thereto by Cardinal de Tournon, recalled his protection, and ordered all the Waldenses to be exterminated (Jan. 1st, 1545). An army was stealthily organised, and during seven weeks of slaughter, amid all the accompaniments of treachery and brutality, twenty-two of the thirty Waldensian villages were utterly destroyed, between three and four thousand men and women were slain, and seven hundred men sent to the galleys. Those who escaped took refuge in Switzerland.[181]

The persecution at Meaux (1546) was more limited in extent, but was accompanied by such tortures that it formed a fitting introduction to the severities of the reign of Henri II.

The Reformed at Meaux had organised themselves into a congregation modelled on that of the French refugees in Strassburg. They had chosen Pierre Leclerc to be their pastor, and one of their number, Étienne Mangin, gave his house for the meetings of the congregation. The authorities heard of the meetings, and on Sept 8th, 1546, a sudden visit was made to the house, and sixty-one persons were arrested and brought before the _Parlement_ of Paris. Their special crime was that they had engaged in the celebration of the Lord's Supper. The sentence of the Court declared that the Bishop of Meaux had shown culpable negligence in permitting such meetings; that the evidence indicated that there were numbers of "Lutherans" and heretics in Meaux besides those brought before it, and that all such were to be sought out; that all books in the town which concerned the Christian religion were to be deposited in the record-office within eight days; that special sermons were to be delivered and expiatory processions organised; and that the house of Étienne Mangin was to be razed to the ground, and a chapel in honour of the Holy Sacrament erected on the site. It condemned fourteen of the accused to be burnt alive, after having suffered the severest tortures which the law permitted; five to be hung up by the armpits to witness the execution, and then to be scourged and imprisoned; others to witness the execution with cords round their necks and with their heads bare, to ask pardon for their crime, to take part in an expiatory procession, and to listen to a sermon on the adoration due to the Body of Christ present in the Holy Sacrament. A few, mostly women, were acquitted.[182]

Francis I. died in March 1547. The persistent persecution which had marked the later years of his reign had done little or nothing to quench the growing Protestantism of France. It had only succeeded in driving it beneath the surface.

Henry II. never indulged in the vacillating policy of his father. From the beginning of his reign he set himself resolutely to combat the Reformation. His favourite councillors--his all-powerful mistress, Diane of Poitiers; his chief Minister, the Constable Montmorency, in high repute for his skill in the arts of war and of government; the Guises, a great family, originally belonging to Lorraine, who had risen to power in France--were all strong supporters of the Roman Catholic religion, and resolute to destroy the growing Protestantism of France. The declared policy of the King was to slay the Reformation by attacking it through every form of legal suppression that could be devised.

§ 3. _Change in the Character of the Movement for Reform._

The task was harder than it had been during the reign of Francis. In spite of the persecutions, the adherents of the new faith had gone on increasing in a wonderful way. Many of the priests and monks had been converted to Evangelical doctrines. They taught them secretly and openly; and they could expose in a telling way the corruptions of the Church, having known them from the inside. Schoolmasters, if one may judge from the _arréts_ of the _Parlements_, were continually blamed for dissuading their pupils from going to Mass, and for corrupting the youth by instructing them in the "false and pernicious doctrines of Geneva." Many Colleges were named as seed-beds of the Reformation--Angers, Bourges, Fontenay, La Rochelle, Loudun, Niort, Nimes, and Poitiers. The theatre itself became an agent for reform when the corruptions of the Church and the morals of the clergy were attacked in popular plays. The refugees in Strassburg, Geneva, and Lausanne spared no pains to send the Evangelical doctrines to their countrymen. Ardent young Frenchmen, trained abroad, took their lives in their hand, and crept quietly through the length and breadth of France. They met converts and inquirers in solitary suburbs, in cellars of houses, on highways, and by the rivers. The records of the ecclesiastical police enable us to trace the spread of the Reformation along the great roads and waterways of France. The missioners changed their names frequently to elude observation. Some, with a daring beyond their fellows, did not hesitate to visit the towns and preach almost openly to the people. The propaganda carried on by colporteurs was scarcely less successful. These were usually young men trained at Geneva or Strassburg. They carried their books in a pack on their backs, and hawked them in village and town, describing their contents, and making little sermons for the listeners. Among the notices of seizures we find such titles as the following:--_Les Colloques_ of Erasmus, _La Fontaine de Vie_ (a selection of scriptural passages translated into French), the _Livre de vraye et parfaicte oraison_ (a translation of extracts from Luther's writings), the _Cinquante-deux psaumes_, the _Catéchisme de Genève, Prières ecclésiastiques avec la manière d'administrer les sacrements_, an _Alphabet chrétien_ and an _Instruction chrétienne pour les petits enfants_. No edicts against printing books which had not been submitted to the ecclesiastical authorities were able to put an end to this secret colportage.

In these several ways the Evangelical faith was spread abroad, and before the death of Francis there was not a district in France with the single exception of Brittany which had not its secret Protestants, while many parts of the country swarmed with them.

§ 4. _Calvin and his Influence in France._

The Reformation in France had been rapidly changing its character since 1536, the year in which Lefèvre died, and in which Calvin's _Christian Institution_ was published. It was no longer a Christian mysticism supplemented by a careful study of the Scriptures; it had advanced beyond the stage of individual followers of Luther or Zwingli; it had become united, presenting a solid phalanx to its foes; it had rallied round a manifesto which was at once a completed scheme of doctrine, a prescribed mode of worship, and a code of morals; it had found a leader who was both a master and a commander-in-chief. The publication of the _Christian Institution_ had effected this. The young man whom the Town Council of Geneva could speak of as "a certain Frenchman" (_Gallus quidam_) soon took a foremost place among the leaders of the whole Reformation movement, and moulded in his plastic hands the Reformation in France.

Calvin's early life and his work in Geneva have already been described; but his special influence on France must not pass unnoticed.[183] He had an extraordinary power over his co-religionists in his native land.[184] He was a Frenchman--one of themselves; no foreigner speaking an unfamiliar tongue; no enemy of the Fatherland to follow whom might seem to be unpatriotic. It is true that his fixed abode lay beyond the confines of France; but distance, which gave him freedom of action, made him the more esteemed. He was the apostle who wrote "to all that be in France, beloved of God, called to be saints."

While still a student, Calvin had shown that he possessed, besides a marvellous memory, an acute and penetrating intellect, with a great faculty for assimilating ideas and modes of thought; but he lacked what may be called artistic imagination,[185] and neither poetry nor art seemed to strike any responsive chord in his soul. His conduct was always straightforward, irreproachable, and dignified; he was by education and breeding, if not by descent, the polished French gentleman, and was most at home with men and women of noble birth. His character was serious, with little playfulness, little vivacity, but with a wonderful power of sympathy. He was reserved, somewhat shy, slow to make intimate friends, but once made the friendships lasted for life. At all periods of age, boy, student, man of letters, leader of a great party, he seems to have been a centre of attraction and of deferential trust. The effect of this mysterious charm was felt by others besides those of his own age. His professor, Mathurin Cordier, became his devoted disciple. Melanchthon wished that he might die with his head on Calvin's breast. Luther, in spite of his suspicion of everything that came from Switzerland, was won to love and trust him. And Knox, the most rugged and independent of men, acknowledged Calvin as his master, consulted him in every doubt and difficulty, and on all occasions save one meekly followed his counsels. He loved children, and had them at his house for Christmas trees; but (and this is characteristically French) always addressed them with ceremonious politeness, as if they were grown men and women deserving as much consideration as himself. It was this trait that captivated de Bèze when he was a boy of twelve.

Calvin was a democrat intellectually and by silent principle. This appears almost everywhere in his private writings, and was noted by such a keen observer as Tavannes. It was never more unconsciously displayed than in the preface or dedication of the _Christian Institution_.

"This preface, instead of pleading with the King on behalf of the Reformation, places the movement right before him, and makes him see it. Its tone throughout firm and dignified, calm and stately when Calvin addresses Francis I. directly, more bitter and sarcastic when he is speaking of theologians, _la pensée et la forme du style toutes vibrantes du ton biblique_, the very simplicity and perfect frankness of the address, give the impression of one who is speaking on equal terms with his peer. All suggest the Christian democrat without a trace of the revolutionary."[186]

The source of his power--logic impregnated by the passion of conviction--is so peculiarly French that perhaps only his countrymen can fully understand and appreciate it, and they have not been slow to do so.

All these characteristic traits appealed to them. His passion for equality, as strong as the Apostle Paul's, compelled him to take his followers into his confidence, to make them apprehend what he knew to the innermost thoughts of his heart. It forced him to exhibit the reasons for his faith to all who cared to know them, to arrange them in a logical order which would appeal to their understanding, and his passion of conviction assured him and them that what he taught was the very truth of God. Then he was a very great writer,[187] one of the founders of modern French prose, the most exquisite literary medium that exists, a man made to arrest the attention of the people. He wrote all his important works in French for his countrymen, as well as in Latin for the learned world. His language and style were fresh, clear, and simple; without affected elegance or pedantic display of erudition; full of vigour and verve; here, caustic wit which attracted; there, eloquence which spoke to the hearts of his readers because it throbbed with burning passion and strong emotion.

It is unlikely that all his disciples in France appreciated his doctrinal system in its details. The _Christian Institution_ appealed to them as the strongest protest yet made against the abuses and scandals of the Roman Church, as containing a code of duties owed to God and man, as exhibiting an ideal of life pure and lofty, as promising everlasting blessedness for the called and chosen and faithful. "It satisfied at one and the same time the intellects which demanded logical proof and the souls which had need of enthusiasm."

It has been remarked that Calvin's theology was less original and effective than his legislation or policy.[188] The statement seems to overlook the peculiar service which was rendered to the Reformation movement by the _Institution_. The Reformation was a rebellion against the external authority of the mediæval Church; but every revolt, even that against the most flagrant abuses and the most corrupt rule, carries in it seeds of evil which must be slain if any real progress is to be made. For it instinctively tends to sweep away all restraints--those that are good and necessary as well as those that are bad and harmful. The leaders of every movement for reform have a harder battle to fight against the revolutionaries in their following than against their avowed opponents. At the root of the Reformation of the sixteenth century lay an appeal from man to God--from the priest, granting or withholding absolution in the confessional, to God making the sinner, who turns from his sins and has faith in the person and work of Christ, know in his heart that he is pardoned; from the decision of Popes and Councils to the decrees of God revealed in His Holy Word. This appeal was in the nature of the case from the seen to the unseen, and therein lay the difficulty; for unless this unseen could be made visible to the eye of the intelligence to such a degree that the restraining authority which it possessed could impress itself on the will, there was risk of its proving to be no restraining authority whatsoever, and of men fancying that they had been left to be a law unto themselves. What the _Christian Institution_ did for the sixteenth century was to make the unseen government and authority of God, to which all must bow, as visible to the intellectual eye of faith as the mechanism of the mediæval Church had been to the eye of sense. It proclaimed that the basis of all Christian faith was the Word of God revealed in the Holy Scriptures; it taught the absolute dependence of all things on God Himself immediately and directly; it declared that the sin of man was such that, apart from the working of the free grace of God, there could be neither pardon nor amendment, nor salvation; and it wove all these thoughts into a logical unity which revealed to the intellectual eye of its generation the "House of God not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Men as they gazed saw that they were in the immediate presence of the authority of God Himself, directly responsible to Him; that they could test "the Pope's House" by this divine archetype; that it was their duty to reform all human institutions, ecclesiastical or political, in order to bring them into harmony with the divine vision. It made men know that to separate themselves from the visible mediæval Church was neither to step outside the sphere of the purpose of God making for their redemption, nor to free themselves from the duties which God requires of man.

The work which Calvin did for his co-religionists in France was immense. He carried on a constant correspondence with them; he sustained their courage; he gave their faith a sublime exaltation. When he heard of a French Romanist who had begun to hesitate, he wrote to him combining persuasion with instruction. He pleaded the cause of the Reformation with its nominal supporters. He encouraged the weak. He sent letters to the persecuted. He forwarded short theological treatises to assist those who had got into controversies concerning their faith. He advised the organisation of congregations. He recommended energetic pastors. He warned slothful ministers.

"We must not think," he says, "that our work is confined within such narrow limits that our task is ended when we have preached sermons ... it is our part to maintain a vigilant oversight of those committed to our care, and take the greatest pains to guard from evil those whose blood will one day be demanded from us if they are lost through our negligence."[189]

He answered question after question about the difficulty of reconciling the demands of the Christian life with what was required by the world around--a matter which pressed hard on the consciences of men and women who belonged to a religious minority in a great Roman Catholic kingdom. He was no casuist. He wrote to Madame de Cany, the sister of the Duchess d'Étampes, that "no one, great or small, ought to believe themselves exempt from suffering for the sake of our sovereign King." He was listened to with reverence; for he was not a counsellor who advised others to do what he was not prepared to do himself. He could say, "Be ye followers of me, as I am of the Lord Jesus Christ." Frenchmen and Frenchwomen knew that the master whom they obeyed, the director they consulted, to whom they whispered the secrets of their souls, lived the hardest and most ascetic life of any man in Europe,--scarcely eating, drinking, or sleeping; that his frail body was kept alive by the energy of his indomitable soul.

Frenchmen of varying schools of thought have not been slow to recognise the secret of the power of their great countryman. Jules Michelet says:

"Among the martyrs, with whom Calvin constantly conversed in spirit, he became a martyr himself; he lived and felt like a man before whom the whole earth disappears, and who tunes his last Psalm his whole eye fixed upon the eye of God, because he knows that on the following morning he may have to ascend the pyre."

Ernest Renan is no less emphatic:

"It is surprising that a man who appears to us in his life and writings so unsympathetic should have been the centre of an immense movement in his generation, and that this harsh and severe tone should have exercised so great an influence on the minds of his contemporaries. How was it, for example, that one of the most distinguished women of her time, Renée of France, in her Court at Ferrara, surrounded by the flower of European wits, was captivated by that stern master, and by him drawn into a course that must have been so thickly strewn with thorns? This kind of austere seduction is exercised only by those who work with real conviction. Lacking that vivid, deep, sympathetic ardour which was one of the secrets of Luther's success, lacking the charm, the perilous, languishing tenderness of Francis de Sales, Calvin succeeded, in an age and in a country which called for a reaction towards Christianity, simply because _he was the most Christian man of his generation_."

Thus it was that all those in France who felt the need of intimate fellowship with God, all to whom a religion, which was at once inflexible in matters of moral living and which appealed to their reasoning faculties, was a necessity, hailed the _Christian Institution_ as the clearest manifesto of their faith, and grouped themselves round the young author (Calvin was barely twenty-six when he wrote it) as their leader. Those also who suffered under the pressure of a despotic government, and felt the evils of a society constituted to uphold the privileges of an aristocracy, learnt that in a neighbouring country there was a city which had placed itself under the rule of the Word of God; where everyone joined in a common worship attractive from its severe simplicity; where the morals, public and private, were pure; where the believers selected their pastors and the people their rulers; where there were neither masters nor subjects; where the ministers of religion lived the lives of simple laymen, and were distinguished from them only by the exercise of their sacred service. They indulged in the dream that all France might be fashioned after the model of Geneva.

Many a Frenchman who was dissatisfied with the condition of things in France, but had come to no personal decision to leave the mediæval Church, could not help contrasting what he saw around him with the life and aspiration of those "of the religion,"[190] as the French Protestants began to be called. They saw themselves confronted by a religion full of mysteries inaccessible to reason, expressing itself even in public worship in a language unintelligible to most of the worshippers, full of pomp, of luxury, of ceremonies whose symbolical meaning had been forgotten. They saw a clergy commonplace and ignorant, or aristocratic and indifferent; a nobility greedy and restless; a Court whose luxurious display and scandals were notorious; royal mistresses and faithless husbands and wives. Almost everywhere we find a growing tendency to contrast the purity of Protestantism and the corruption of Roman Catholicism. It found outcome in the famous scene in the _Parlement_ of Paris (1559), when Antoine de Bourg, son of a former Chancellor, advocated the total suspension of the persecution against those "who were called heretics," and enforced his opinion by contrasting the blasphemies and scandals of the Court with the morality and the purity of the lives of those who were being sent to the stake,--a speech for which he afterwards lost his life.[191]

It was this growing united Protestantism which Henry II. and his advisers had determined to crush by the action of the legislative authority.

§ 5. _Persecution under Henry II._[192]

The repressive legal measures introduced by Francis I. were retained, and a new law against blasphemy (prepared, no doubt, during the last days of Francis) was published five days after the King's death (April 5th, 1547). But more was believed to be necessary. So a series of edicts, culminating in the Edict of Chateaubriand, were published, which aimed at uniting all the forces of the kingdom to extirpate the Reformed faith.

On October 8th, 1547, a second criminal court was added to the _Parlement_ of Paris, to deal solely with cases of heresy. This was the famous _Chambre Ardente_. It was ordered to sit continuously, even during the ordinary Parliamentary vacancies in August and September; and its first session lasted from Dec. 1547 to Jan. 1550, during which time it must have passed more than five hundred judgments. The clergy felt that this special court took from them one of their privileges, the right of trying all cases of heresy. They petitioned against it. A compromise was arranged (Edict of Nov. 19th, 1549), by which all cases of simple heresy (_cas communes_) were to be sent to the ecclesiastical courts, while cases of heresy accompanied by public scandal (_cas privilégiés_) were to be judged in the civil courts. In practice it usually happened that all cases of heresy went first before the ecclesiastical courts and, after judgment there, those which were believed to be attended by public scandal (the largest number) were sent on to the civil courts. These measures were not thought sufficient, and the Edict of Chateaubriand (June 27th, 1551) codified and extended all the various legal measures taken for the defence of the Roman Catholic faith.

The edict was lengthy, and began with a long preamble, which declared that in spite of all measures of repression, heresy was increasing; that it was a pestilence "so contagious that it had infected most of the inhabitants, men, women, and even little children, in many of the towns and districts of the kingdom," and asked every loyal subject to aid the Government in extirpating the plague. It provided that, as before, all cases of simple heresy should be judged in the ecclesiastical courts, and that heresy accompanied with public scandal should be sent to the civil courts of the _Parlements_. It issued stringent regulations about the publication and sale of books; forbidding the introduction into France of volumes from Protestant countries; forbidding the printing of books which had not passed the censor of the Faculty of Theology, and all books published anonymously; and ordering an examination of all printing houses and bookshops twice in the year. Private persons who did not inform against heretics were liable to be considered heretics themselves, and punished as such; and when they did denounce them they were to receive one-third of the possessions of the persons condemned. Parents were charged "by the pity, love, and charity which they owed to their children," not to engage any teachers who might be "suspect"; no one was permitted to teach in school or college who was not certified to be orthodox; and masters were made responsible for their servants. Intercourse with those who had taken refuge in Geneva was prohibited, and the goods of the refugees were confiscated. All Catholics, and more especially persons of rank and in authority, were required to give the earnest example of attending carefully to outward observances of religion, and in particular to kneel in adoration of the Host.

The edict was registered on Sept. 3rd, 1551, and immediately put in force. Six years later, the King had to confess that its stringent provisions had failed to arrest the spread of the Protestant faith. He proposed to establish the Inquisition in France, moved thereto by the Cardinal of Lorraine and Pope Paul IV.; and was prevented only by the strenuous opposition of his _Parlement_.[193] He had to content himself with issuing the Edict of Compiègne (1557), which, while nominally leaving trials for heresy in the hands of the ecclesiastical courts, practically handed them over to the civil courts, where the judges were not allowed to inflict any lesser punishment than death. They were permitted to increase the penalty by inflicting torture, or to mitigate it by strangling the victims before burning them.

Armed with this legislation, the work of hunting out the Reformed was strenuously carried on. Certain prisons were specially reserved for the Protestant martyrs--the Conciergerie, which was part of the building of the Palace, and the Grand Châtelet, which faced it on the opposite bank of the Seine. They soon overflowed, and suspects were confined in the Bastille, in the Petit Châtelet, and in episcopal prisons. The cells of the Conciergerie were below the level of the river, and water oozed from the walls; the Grand Châtelet was noted for its terrible dungeons, so small that the prisoner could neither stand upright nor lie at full length on the floor. Diseases decimated the victims; the plague slew sixty who were waiting for trial in the Grand Châtelet in 1547. Few were acquitted; almost all, once arrested, suffered death and torture.[194]

§ 6. _The Organisation of the French Protestant Church._

It was during these years of terrible persecution that the Protestant Church of France organised itself--feeling the need for unity the better to sustain the conflict in which it was engaged, and to assist its weaker members. Calvin was unwearied in urging on this work of organisation. With the fire of a prophet and the foresight of a statesman he insisted on the necessity of unity during the storm and strain of a time of persecution. He had already shown what form the ecclesiastical organisation ought to take.[195] He proposed to revive the simple threefold ministry of the Church of the early centuries--a congregation ruled by a bishop or pastor, a session of elders, and a body of deacons. This was adopted by the French Protestants. A group of believers, a minister, a "consistory" of elders and deacons, regular preaching, and the sacraments duly administered, made a Church properly constituted. The minister was the chief; he preached; he administered the sacraments; he presided at the "consistory." The "consistory" was composed of elders charged with the spiritual oversight of the community, and of deacons who looked after the poor and the sick. The elders and the deacons were chosen by the members of the congregation; and the minister by the elders and the deacons. An organised Church did not come into existence all at once as a rule, and a distinction was drawn between an _église plantée_, and an _église dressée_. The former was in an embryonic state, with a pastor, it might be, but no consistory; or it might be only a group of people who welcomed the occasional services of a wandering missioner, or held simple services without any definite leader.

The year 1555 may be taken as the date when French Protestantism began to organise Churches. It is true that a few had been established earlier--at Meaux in 1546 and at Nimes in 1547, but the congregations had been dispersed by persecution. Before 1555 the Protestants of France had been for the most part solitary Bible students, or little companies meeting together for common worship without any organisation.

Paris set the example. A small company of believers had been accustomed to meet in the lodging of the Sieur de la Ferriere, near the Pré-aux-Clercs. The birth of a child hastened matters. The father explained that he could not go outside France to seek a pure baptism, and that his conscience would not permit his child to be baptized according to the rites of the Roman Church. After prayer the company resolved to constitute themselves into a Church. Jean le Maçon was called to be the minister or pastor; elders and deacons were chosen; and the organisation was complete.[196] It seemed as if all Protestant France had been waiting for the signal, and organised Churches sprang up everywhere.

Crespin names thirteen Churches, completely organised in the manner of the Church of Paris, founded between 1555 and 1557--Meaux, Poitiers, Angers, les Iles de Saintonge, Agen, Bourges, Issoudun, Aubigny, Blois, Tours, Lyon, Orléans, and Rouen. He adds that there were others. Documentary evidence now available enables us to give thirty-six more, all _dressées_, or completely organised, with a consistory or kirk-session, before 1560. One hundred and twenty pastors were sent to France from Geneva before 1567. The history of these congregations during the reign of Henry II. was full of tragic and dramatic incidents.[197] They existed in the midst of a population which was for the most part fanatically Romanist, easily excited by priests and monks, who poured forth violent addresses from the pulpits of neighbouring churches. Law-courts, whether in the capital or in the provinces, the public officials, all loyal subjects of the King, were invited, commanded by the Edict of Chateaubriand, to ferret out and hunt down those suspected of Protestant sympathies. To fail to make a reverence when passing a crucifix, to speak unguardedly against an ecclesiastical ceremony, to exhibit the slightest sympathy for a Protestant martyr, to be found in possession of a book printed in Geneva, was sufficient to provoke a denunciation, an arrest, a trial which must end in torture and death. Protestants were compelled to worship in cellars, to creep stealthily to their united devotions; like the early Christians during the persecutions under Decius or Diocletian, they had to meet at midnight; and these midnight assemblies gave rise to the same infamous reports about their character which the Jews spread abroad regarding the secret meetings of the Christians of the first three centuries.[198] Every now and then they were discovered, as in the incident of the Rue Saint Jacques in Paris, and wholesale arrests and martyrdoms followed.

The organisation of the faithful into Churches had done much for French Protestantism in bestowing upon them the power which association gives; but more was needed to weld them into one. In 1558, doctrinal differences arose in the congregation at Poitiers. The Church in Paris was appealed to, and its minister, Antoine de Chandieu, went to Poitiers to assist at the celebration of the Holy Supper, and to heal the dispute. There, it is said, the idea of a Confession of Faith for the whole Church was suggested. Calvin was consulted, but did not approve. Notwithstanding, on May 25th, 1559, a number of ministers and elders, coming from all parts of France, and representing, according to a contemporary document whose authority is somewhat doubtful, sixty-six Churches,[199] met in Paris for conference. Three days were spent in deliberations, under the presidency of Morel, one of the Parisian ministers. This was the _First National Synod_ of the French Protestant Church. It compiled a Confession of Faith and a Book of Discipline.

The Confession of Faith[200] (_Confession de Foi faite d'un commun accord par les François, qui desirent vivre selon la pureté de l'évangile de notre Seigneur Jésus Christ_) consists of forty articles. It was revised more than once by subsequent Synods, but may still be called the Confession of the French Protestant Church. It was based on a short Confession drafted by Calvin in 1557, and embodied in a letter to the King on behalf of his persecuted subjects. "It seemed useful," one of the members of the Synod wrote to Calvin, "to add some articles to your Confession, and to modify it slightly on some points." Probably out of deference to Calvin's objection to a creed for the whole Church, it was resolved to keep it secret for some time. The resolution was in vain. The Confession was in print, and known before the end of 1559.

The Book of Discipline (_Discipline ecclésiastique des églises réformées de France_) regulated the organisation and the discipline of the Churches. It was that kind of ecclesiastical polity which has become known as Presbyterian, but which might be better called Conciliar. A council called the _Consistory_, consisting of the minister or ministers, elders, and deacons, ruled the congregation. Congregations were formed into groups, over which was the _Colloquy_, composed of representatives from the Consistories; over the _Colloquies_ were the _Provincial Synods_; and over all the _General_ or _National Synod_. Rules were laid down about how discipline was to be exercised. It was stated clearly that no Church could claim a primacy over the others. All ministers were required to sign the Confession of Faith, and to acknowledge and submit to the ecclesiastical discipline.[201]

It is interesting to see how in a country whose civil rule was becoming gradually more absolutist, this "Church under the Cross" framed for itself a government which reconciled, more thoroughly perhaps than has ever been done since, the two principles of popular rights and supreme central control. Its constitution has spread to Holland, Scotland, and to the great American Churches. Their ecclesiastical polity came much more from Paris than from Geneva.

§ 7. _Reaction against Persecution._

An attentive study of the sources of the history of the period shows that the excessive severity of King and Court towards Protestants had excited a fairly widespread reaction in favour of the persecuted, and had also impelled the King to action which was felt by many to be unconstitutional. This sympathy with the persecuted and repugnance to the arbitrary exercise of kingship did much to mould the Huguenot movement which lay in the immediate future.

The protests against the institution of the _Chambre Ardente_, the refusal of the _Parlement_ of Paris to register the edict establishing the Inquisition in France, and the hesitancy to put in execution extraordinary powers bestowed on French Cardinals for the punishing of heretics by the Bull of Pope Paul IV. (Feb. 26th, 1557), may all be ascribed to the jealousy with which the Courts, ecclesiastical and civil, viewed any interference with their privileged jurisdiction. But the Edict of Chateaubriand (1551), with its articles declaring the unwillingness or negligence shown by public officials in finding out and punishing heretics, making provisions against this, and ordaining that none but persons of well-known orthodoxy were to be appointed magistrates (Arts. 23, 28, 24), confessed that there were many even among those in office who disliked the policy of persecution. Contemporary official documents confirm this unwillingness. We hear of municipal magistrates intervening to protect their Protestant fellow-citizens from punishment in the ecclesiastical courts; of town's police conniving at the escape of heretics; of a procurator at law who was suspended from office for a year for such connivance;[202] and of civil courts who could not be persuaded to pass sentences except merely nominal ones.

The growing discontent at the severe treatment of the persecuted Protestants made itself manifest, even within the _Parlement_ of Paris, so long notorious for its persecuting zeal. This became evident when the criminal court of the _Parlement_ (la Tournelle, 1559) commuted a sentence of death passed on three Protestants into one of banishment. The violent Romanists protested against this, and demanded a meeting of the whole _Parlement_ to fix its mode of judicial action. At this meeting some of the members--Antoine Fumée, du Faur, Viole, and Antoine du Bourg (the son of a Chancellor in the days of Francis I.)--spoke strongly on behalf of the Protestants. They pleaded that a space of six months after trial should be given to the accused to reconsider their position, and that, if they resolve to stand fast in the faith, they should be allowed to withdraw from the kingdom. Their boldness encouraged others. The Cardinal Lorraine and the Constable Montmorency dreaded the consequences of prolonged discussion, and communicated their fears to the King. Henry, accompanied by the Cardinals of Lorraine and of Guise, the Constable, and Francis, Duke de Guise, entered the hall where _Parlement_ sat, and ordered the discussion to be continued in his presence. The minority were not intimidated. Du Faur and Viole demanded a total cessation of the persecution pending the summoning of a Council. Du Bourg went further. He contrasted the pure lives and earnest piety of the persecuted with the scandals which disgraced the Roman Church and the Court. "It is no light matter," he said, "to condemn to the stake men who invoke the name of Jesus in the midst of the flames." The King was furious. He ordered the arrest of du Bourg and du Faur on the spot, and shortly afterwards Fumée and La Porte were also sent to the Bastille. This arbitrary seizure of members of the _Parlement_ of Paris may be said to mark the time when the Protestants of France began to assume the form of a political as well as of a religious party. At this anxious juncture Henry II. met his death, on June 30th, by the accidental thrust of a lance at a tournament held in honour of the approaching marriage of his daughter Elizabeth with Philip of Spain. He lingered till July 10th, 1559.

§ 8. _The higher Aristocracy won for the Reformation._

When the lists of Protestants who suffered for their faith in France or who were compelled to take refuge in Geneva and other Protestant towns are examined and analysed, as they have been by French archæologists, it is found that the great number of martyrs and refugees were artisans, tradesmen, farmers, and the like.[203] A few names of "notables"--a general, a member of the _Parlement_ of Toulouse, a "gentleman" of Limousin--are found among the martyrs, and a much larger proportion among the fugitives. The names of members of noble houses of France are conspicuous by their absence. This does not necessarily mean that the new teaching had not found acceptance among men and women in the upper classes of French society. The noble of the sixteenth century, so long as he remained within his own territory and in his château, was almost independent. He was not subject to the provincial tribunals. Protestantism had been spreading among such. We hear of several high-born ladies present in the congregation of three or four hundred Protestants who were surrounded in a large house in the Rue St. Jacques (Sept. 4th, 1558), and who were released. Renée, daughter of Louis XII., Duchess of Ferrara, had declared herself a Protestant, and had been visited by Calvin as early as 1535.[204] Francis d'Andelot, the youngest of the three Chatillons, became a convert during his imprisonment at Melun (1551-56). His more celebrated brother, Gaspard de Coligny, the Admiral of France, became a Protestant during his imprisonment after the fall of St. Quentin (1558).[205] De Bèze (Beza) tells us that as early as 1555, Antoine de Bourbon, titular King of Navarre in right of his wife Jeanne d'Albret, and next in succession to King Henri II. and his sons, had the new faith preached in the chapel at Nérac, and that he asked a minister to be sent to him from Geneva. His brother Louis, Prince of Condé, also declared himself on the Protestant side. The wives of the brothers Bourbon, Jeanne d'Albret and Eléanor de Roye, were more determined and consistent Protestants than their husbands. The two brothers were among those present at the assemblies in the Pré-aux-Clercs, where for five successive evenings (May 13-17) more than five thousand persons met to sing Clement Marot's Psalms.[206] Calvin wrote energetically to all these great nobles, urging them to declare openly on the side of the Gospel, and protect their brethren in the faith less able to defend themselves.

§ 9. _France ruled by the Guises._[207]

The successor of Henry II. was his son Francis II., who was fifteen years of age, and therefore entitled by French law to rule in his own name. He was a youth feeble in mind and in body, and devotedly attached to his young and accomplished wife, Mary Queen of Scots. She believed naturally that her husband could not do better than entrust the government of the kingdom to her uncles, Charles the Cardinal of Lorraine, and Francis the Duke de Guise. The Cardinal had been Henry II.'s most trusted Minister; and his brother was esteemed to be the best soldier in France. When the _Parlement_ of Paris, according to ancient custom, came to congratulate the King on his succession, and to ask to whom they were to apply in affairs of State, they were told by the King that they were to obey the Cardinal and the Duke "as himself." The Constable de Montmorency and the favourite, Diane de Poitiers, were sent from the Court, and the Queen-Mother, Catherine de' Medici, that "shopkeeper's daughter," as the young Queen called her, found herself as devoid of influence as she had been during the lifetime of her husband.

The Cardinal of Lorraine had been the chief adviser of that policy of extirpating the Protestants to which the late King had devoted himself, and it was soon apparent that it would be continued by the new government. The process against Antoine du Bourg and his fellow-members of the _Parlement_ of Paris who had dared to remonstrate against the persecution, was pushed forward with all speed. They were condemned to the stake, and the only mitigation of sentence was that Du Bourg was to be strangled before he was burnt. His fate provoked much sympathy. As he was led to the place of execution the crowd pleaded with him to recant. His resolute, dignified bearing made a great impression; and his dying speech, according to one eye-witness, "did more harm to the Roman Church than a hundred ministers could have done," and, according to another, "made more converts among the French students than all the books of Calvin." The persecutions of Protestants of lower rank increased rather than diminished. Police made descents on the houses in the Rue de Marais-Saint-Germain and neighbouring streets.[208] Spies were hired to insinuate themselves into the confidence of the suspected for the purpose of denouncing them. The _Parlement_ of Paris instituted four separate criminal courts for the sole purpose of trying heretics brought before them. The prisons were no sooner filled than they were emptied by sentences which sent the condemned to the galleys or to death. The government incited to persecution by new declarations and edicts. It declared that houses in which conventicles were held were to be razed to the ground (Sept. 4th, 1559); that all who organised unlawful assemblies were to be punished by death (Nov. 9th, 1559); that nobles who had justiciary courts were to act according to law in the matter of heresy, or to be deprived of their justiciary rights (Feb. 1560). In spite of all this stern repression, the numbers of the Protestants increased, and Calvin could declare that there were at least 300,000 in France.

The character of Protestantism in France had been changing. In the earlier years of the persecution they had submitted meekly without thought of revolt, resigned to their fate, rejoicing to suffer in the cause of Christ. But under this rule of the Guises the question of resistance was discussed. It could be said that revolt did not mean revenge for injuries done to themselves. A foreign family had overawed their King and imposed themselves on France. The Princes of the Blood, Antoine de Bourbon and his brother Louis de Condé, in whose veins ran the blood of Saint Louis, who were the natural leaders of the people, were flouted by the Guises. The inviolability of _Parlement_ had been attacked in the execution of Antoine du Bourg, and the justiciary rights of great nobles were threatened simply in order to extirpate "those of the religion." They believed that France was full of men who had no good will to the tyranny of the "foreigners." They consulted their brethren in exile, and Calvin himself, on the lawfulness and expediency of an armed insurrection. The refugees favoured the plan. Calvin denounced it. "If one drop of blood is shed in such a revolt, rivers will flow; it is better that we all perish than cause such a scandal to the cause of Christ and His Evangel." Some of the Protestants were not to be convinced. They only needed a leader. Their natural head was the King of Navarre; but Antoine de Bourbon was too unstable. Louis de Condé, his brother, was sounded.[209] It is said that he promised to come forward if the enterprise was confined to the seizure of the Guises, and if it was successful in effecting this. A Protestant gentleman, Godefroy de Barry, Seigneur de la Renaudie, became temporary leader. He had wrongs to avenge. He had been condemned by the _Parlement_ of Dijon (Burgundy), had escaped to Geneva, and had been converted there; his brother-in-law, Gaspard de Heu, of Metz, had been strangled by the Guises in the castle of Vincennes without form of trial. A number of gentlemen and nobles promised their assistance. The conspirators swore to undertake nothing against the King; the enterprise was limited to the arrest of the Guises. News of the project began to leak out. Every information went to show that the Guises were the objects of attack. The Court was moved from Blois to Amboise, which was a fortified city. More precise information filtered to headquarters. The Duke of Guise captured some small bands of conspirators, and de la Renaudie himself was slain in a skirmish. The Guises took summary vengeance. Their prisoners were often slaughtered when caught; or were tied hand and foot and thrown into the Loire. Others were hurried through a form of trial. So many gallows were needed that there was not wood enough, and the prisoners were hung from the doors and battlements of the castle of Amboise. The young King and Queen, with their ladies, walked out after dinner to feast their eyes on the dead bodies.

Even before the Conspiracy of Amboise had run its length, members of the Court had begun to protest against the religious policy of the Guises. Catherine de' Medici had talked the matter over with the Admiral Coligny, had been told by him that the religious persecutions were at the bottom of the troubles in the kingdom, and had listened to his proposal that all such should be suspended until the meeting of a Council. The result was that government decided to pardon those accused of heresy if they would promise for the future to live as good Catholics. The brutalities of the methods by which the sharers in the foolishly planned and feebly executed Conspiracy of Amboise were punished increased the state of disorder in the kingdom, and the hatred against the Guises found vent in an _Epistle sent to the Tiger of France_, in which the Duke is addressed as a "mad tiger, a venomous viper, a sepulchre of abominations."

Catherine de' Medici deemed the opportunity favourable for exercising her influence. She contrived to get Michel de l'Hôpital appointed as Chancellor, knowing that he was opposed to the sanguinary policy pursued. He was able to inspire the Edict of Romorantin (May 18th, 1560), which made the Bishops judges of the crime of heresy, imposed penalties on false accusers, and left the punishment to be bestowed on attendance at conventicles in the hands of the presidents of the tribunals. Then, with the help of the Chancellor, Catherine managed to get an _Assembly of the Notables_ summoned to meet at Fontainebleau. There, many of the members advocated a cessation of the religious persecution. One Archbishop, Marillac of Vienne, and the Bishops of Orléans and Valence, asserted boldly that the religious disorders were really caused by the scandals in the Church; spoke against severe repression until a Council, national or general, had been held; and hinted that the services of the Guises were not indispensable. At the beginning of the second session Coligny spoke. He had the courage to make himself the representative of the Huguenots, as the Protestants now began to be nicknamed. He attacked boldly the religious policy of the Guises, charged them with standing between the King and loyal subjects, and declared that the persecuted were Christians who asked for nothing but to be allowed to worship God as the Gospel taught them. He presented a petition to the King from the Protestants asserting their loyalty, begging that the persecution should cease, and asking that "temples" might be assigned for their worship. The petition was unsigned, but Coligny declared that fifty thousand names could be obtained in Normandy alone. The Duke of Guise spoke with great violence, but the more politic Cardinal induced him to agree with the other members to call a meeting of the States General of France, to be held on the 10th of December 1560.

Shortly after the Notables had dispersed, word came of another conspiracy, in which not only the Bourbon Princes, but also the Constable Montmorency were said to be implicated. Disturbances broke out in Provence and Dauphiné. The Guises went back to their old policy of violence. The King of Navarre and the Prince of Condé were summoned by the King to appear before him to justify themselves. Although well warned of what might happen, they obeyed the summons, and presented themselves unattended by armed men. Condé was seized and imprisoned. He was condemned to death, and his execution was fixed for the 10th of December. The King of Navarre was left at liberty, but was closely watched; and more than one attempt was made to assassinate him. It was vaguely believed that the Cardinal of Lorraine had resolved to get rid of all the leaders of the Huguenots by death or imprisonment.

While these terrifying suggestions were being whispered, the young King fell ill, and died suddenly. This ended the rule of the Guises, and the French Protestants breathed freely again.

"Did you ever read or hear," said Calvin in a letter to Sturm, "of anything more opportune than the death of the King? The evils had reached an extremity for which there was no remedy, when suddenly God shows Himself from heaven. He who pierced the eye of the father has now stricken the ear of the son."

§ 10. _Catherine de' Medici becomes Regent._

In the confusion which resulted, Catherine recognised that at last the time had come when she could gratify the one strong passion which possessed her--the passion to govern. Charles IX. was a boy of ten. A Regent was essential. Antoine de Bourbon, as the first Prince of the Blood, might have claimed the position; but Catherine first terrified him with what might be the fate of Condé, and then proposed that the Constable Montmorency and himself should be her principal advisers. The facile Antoine accepted the situation: the Constable was recalled to the Court; Louis de Condé was released from prison. His imprisonment had made a deep impression all over France. The Protestants believed that he had suffered for their sakes. Hymns of prayer had been sung during his captivity, and songs of thanksgiving greeted his release.[210]

"Le pauvre Chrestien, qui endure Prison, pour verité; Le Prince, en captivité dure Sans l'avoir mérité? An plus fort de leurs peines entendent Tes oeuvres tons parfaits, Et gloire et louange te rendent De tes merveilleux faits."

This was sung all over France during Condé's imprisonment; after his release the tone varied:

"Resjonissez vons en Dieu Fidéles de chacun lieu; Car Dieu pour nous a mandé (envoyé) Le bon prince de Condé;

Et vous nobles protestans Princes, seigneurs attestans; Car Dieu pour nous a maudé Le bon prince de Condé."

Catherine de' Medici was forty-one years of age when she became the Regent of France.[211] Her life had been hard. Born in 1519, the niece of Pope Clement VII, she was married to Henry of France in 1534. She had been a neglected wife all the days of her married life. For ten years she had been childless,[212] and her sonnets breathe the prayer of Rachel--Give me children, or else I die. During Henry's absence with the army in 1552, he had grudgingly appointed her Regent, and she had shown both ability and patience in acquiring a knowledge of all the details of government. After the defeat of Saint-Quentin she for once earned her husband's gratitude and praise by the way in which she had promptly persuaded the Parliament to grant a subsidy of 300,000 livres. These incidents were her sole apprenticeship in the art of ruling. She had always been a great eater, walker, and rider.[213] Her protruding eyes and her bulging forehead recalled the features of her grand-uncle, Pope Leo X. She had the taste of her family for art and display. Her strongest intellectual force was a robust, hard, and narrow common sense which was responsible both for her success and for her failures. She can scarcely be called immoral; it seemed rather that she was utterly destitute of any moral sense whatsoever.

The difficulties which confronted the Regent were great, both at home and abroad. The question of questions was the treatment to be given to her Protestant subjects. She seems from the first to have been in favour of a measure of toleration; but the fanatically Roman Catholic party was vigorous in France, especially in Paris, and was ably led by the Guises; and Philip of Spain had made the suppression of the Reformation a matter of international policy.

Meanwhile Catherine had to face the States General, summoned by the late King in August 1560. While the Guises were still in power, strict orders had been given to see that none but ardent Romanists should be elected; but the excitement of the times could not be restrained by any management. It was nearly half a century since a King of France had invited a declaration of the opinions of his subjects; the last meeting of the States General had been in 1484.[214] Catherine watched the elections, and the expression of sentiments which they called forth. She saw that the Protestants were active. Calvinist ministers traversed the West and the South almost unhindered, encouraging the people to assert their liberties. They were even permitted to address some of the assemblies met to elect representatives. A minister, Charles Dalbiac, expounded the Confession of Faith to the meeting of the nobles at Angers, and showed how the Roman Church had enslaved and changed the whole of the Christian faith and practice. In other places it was said that Antoine de Bourbon had no right to allow Catherine to assume the Regency, and that he ought to be forced to take his proper place. The air seemed full of menaces against the Regent and in favour of the Princes of the Blood. Catherine hastened to place the King of Navarre in a position of greater dignity. She shared the Regency nominally with the premier Prince of the Blood, who was Lieutenant-General of France. If Antoine had been a man of resolution, he might have insisted on a large share in the government of the country, but his easy, careless disposition made him plastic in the hands of Catherine, and she could write to her daughter that he was very obedient, and issued no order without her permission.

The Estates met at Orléans on the 13th of December. The opening speech by the Chancellor, Michel de l'Hôpital, showed that the Regent and her councillors were at least inclined to a policy of tolerance. The three orders (Clergy, Nobles, and Third Estate), he said, had been summoned to find remedies for the divisions which existed within the kingdom; and these, he believed, were due to religion. He could not help recognising that religious beliefs, good or bad, tended to excite burning passions. He could not avoid seeing that a common religion was a stricter bond of unity than belonging to the same race or living under the same laws. Might they not all wait for the decision of a General Council? Might they not cease to use the irritating epithets of _Lutherans_, _Huguenots_, _Papists_, and remember that they were all good Christians. The spokesmen of the three orders were heard at the second sitting. Dr. Quintin, one of the Regents of the University of Paris, voiced the Clergy. He enlarged against the proposals which were to be brought forward by the other two orders to despoil the revenues of the Church, to attempt its reform by the civil power, and to grant toleration and even liberty of worship to heretics. Coligny begged the Regent to note that Quintin had called subjects of the King heretics, and the spokesman of the Clergy apologised. Jacques de Silly, Baron de Rochefort, and Jean Lange, an advocate of Bordeaux, who spoke for the Nobles and for the Third Estate, declaimed against the abuses of ecclesiastical courts, and the avarice and ignorance of the clergy.

At the sitting on Jan. 1st, 1561, each of the three Estates presented a written list of grievances (_cahiers_). That of the Third Estate was a memorable and important document in three hundred and fifty-four articles, and reveals, as no other paper of the time does, the evils resulting from absolutist and aristocratic government in France. It asked for complete toleration in matters of religion, for a Reformation of the Church in the sense of giving a large extension of power to the laity, for uniformity in judicial procedure, for the abolition or curtailment of powers in signorial courts, for quinquennial meetings of the Estates General, and demanded that the day and place of the next meeting should be fixed before the end of the present sitting. The Nobles were divided on the question of toleration, and presented three separate papers. In the first, which came from central Prance, stern repression of the Protestant faith was demanded; in the second, coming from the nobles of the Western provinces, complete toleration was claimed; in the third it was asked that both parties should be made to keep the peace, and that only preachers and pastors be punished. The list presented by the Clergy, like those of the other two orders, insisted upon the reform of the Church; but it took the line of urging the abolition of the Concordat, and a return to the provisions of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.

The Government answered these lists of grievances presented by an edict and an ordinance. In the edict (Jan. 28th, 1561) the King ordered that all prosecutions for religion should cease, and that all prisoners should be released, with an admonition "to live in a catholic manner" for the future. The ordinance (dated Jan. 31st, but not completed till the following August), known as the _Ordinance of Orléans_, was a very elaborate document. It touched upon almost all questions brought forward in the lists of grievances, and enacted various reforms, both civil and ecclesiastic--all of which were for the most part evaded in practice. The Estates were adjourned until the 1st of May.

The Huguenots had gained a suspension of persecution, if not toleration, by the edict of Jan. 28th, and the disposition of the Government made them hope for still further assistance. Refugees came back in great numbers from Switzerland, Germany, England, and even from Italy. The number of Protestant congregations increased, and Geneva provided the pastors. The edict did not give liberty of worship, but the Protestants acted as if it did. This roused the wrath of the more fanatically disposed portion of the Roman Catholic population. Priests and monks fanned the flames of sectarian bitterness. The Government was denounced, and anti-Protestant riots disturbed the country. When the Huguenots of Paris attempted to revive the psalm-singings in the Pré-aux-Clercs, they were mobbed, and beaten with sticks by the populace. This led to reprisals in those parts of the country where the Huguenots were in a majority. In some towns the churches were invaded, the images torn down, and the relics burnt. The leaders strove to restrain their followers.[215] Calvin wrote energetically from Geneva against the lawlessness:

"God has never enjoined on any one to destroy idols, save on every man in his own house or on those placed in authority in public places.... Obedience is better than sacrifice; we must look to what it is lawful for us to do, and must keep ourselves within bounds."

At the Court at Fontainebleau, Renée, Duchess of Ferrara, and the Princess of Condé were permitted by the Regent to have worship in their rooms after the Reformed rite; and Coligny had in his household a minister from Geneva, Jean Raymond Merlin, to whose sermons outsiders were not only admitted but invited. These things gave great offence to the Constable Montmorency, who was a strong Romanist. He was still more displeased when Monluc, Bishop of Valence, preached in the State apartments before the boy King and the Queen Mother. He thought it was undignified for a Bishop to preach, and he believed that Monluc's sermons contained something very like Lutheran theology. He invited the Duke of Guise and Saint-André, both old enemies, to supper (April 16th, 1561), and the three pleged themselves to save the Romanism of France. This union was afterwards known as the Triumvirate.

Meanwhile religious disturbances were increasing. The Huguenots demanded the right to have "temples" granted to them or built at their own expense; and in many places they openly gathered for public worship and for the celebration of the Lord's Supper. They frequently met armed to protect themselves from attack. The Government at length interfered, and by an edict (July 1561) prohibited, under penalty of confiscation of property, all conventicles, public or private, whether the worshippers were armed or unarmed, where sermons were made and the sacraments celebrated in any other fashion than that of the Catholic Church. The edict declared, on the other hand, that magistrates were not to be too zealous; persons who laid false information were to be severely punished; and all attacks on houses were forbidden. It was evidently meant to conciliate both parties. Coligny did not discontinue the services in his apartments, and wrote to his co-religionists that they had nothing to fear so long as they worshipped in private houses. Jeanne d'Albret declared herself openly a Protestant; and as she travelled from Nérac to Fontainebleau she restored to the Huguenots churches which the magistrates had taken from them in obedience to the edict of July.

The prorogued meeting of the States General did not assemble until the 1st of August, and even then representatives of two orders only were present. An ecclesiastical synod was sitting at Poissy (opened July 28th), and the clerical representatives were there. It was the 27th of August before the three orders met together in presence of the King and the members of his Council at Saint-Germain. The meeting had been called for the purpose of discussing the question of national finance; but it was impossible to ignore the religious question.

In their _cahiers_, both the Nobles and the Third Estate advocated complete toleration and the summoning a National Council. The financial proposals of the Third Estate were thoroughgoing. After a statement of the national indebtedness, and a representation that taxation had reached its utmost limits, they proposed that money should be obtained from the superfluity of ecclesiastical wealth. In their _cahier_ of Jan. 1st, the Third Estate had sketched a civil constitution for the French Church; they now went further, and proposed that all ecclesiastical revenues should be nationalised, and that the clergy should be paid by the State. They calculated that a surplus of seventy-two million livres would result, and proposed that forty-two millions should be set aside to liquidate the national debt.

This bold proposal was impracticable in the condition of the kingdom. The _Parlement_ of Paris regarded it as a revolutionary attack on the rights of property, and it alienated them for ever from the Reformation movement; but it enabled the Government to wring from the alarmed Churchmen a subsidy of sixteen million livres, to be paid in six annual instalments.

§ 11. _The Conference at Poissy._

It was scarcely possible, in view of the Pope and Philip of Spain, to assemble a National Council, but the Government had already conceived the idea of a meeting of theologians, which would be such an assembly in all but the name. They had invited representatives of the Protestant ministers (July 25th) to attend the synod of the clergy sitting at Poissy. The invitation had been accepted, and the Government intended to give an air of unusual solemnity to the meeting. The King, surrounded by his mother, his brothers, and the Princes of the Blood, presided as at a sitting of the States General. The Chancellor, in the King's name, opened the session with a remarkable speech, in which he set forth the advantages to be gained from religious union. He addressed the assembled bishops and Roman Catholic theologians, assuring them that they ought to have no scruples in meeting the Protestant divines. The latter were not heretics like the old Manicheans or Arians. They accepted the Scriptures as the Rule of Faith, the Apostles' Creed, the four principal Councils and _their_ Creeds (the symbols of Nicea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon). The main difference between them was that the Protestants wished the Church to be reformed according to the primitive pattern. They had given proof of their sincerity by being content to die for their faith.

The Reformers were represented by twelve ministers, among whom were Morel of Paris; Nicolas des Gallars, minister of the French Protestant Church in London, and by twenty laymen. Their leader was Théodore de Bèze (Beza), a man of noble birth, celebrated as a Humanist, a brilliant writer and controversialist, whom Calvin, at the request of Antoine de Bourbon, Catherine de' Medici, and Coligny, had commissioned to represent him. De Bèze was privately presented to the King and the Regent by the King of Navarre and by the Prince de Condé, and his learning, presence, and stately courtesy made a great impression upon the Court. He had been born in the same year as the Regent (1519), and had thrown away very brilliant prospects to become a minister of the Reformed Church.

The meeting was held in the refectory of the nuns of Poissy.[216] The King and his suite were placed at one end of the hall, and the Romanist bishops and theologians were arranged by the walls on the two sides. After the Chancellor had finished his speech, the representatives of the Protestants were introduced by the Duke of Guise, in command of an escort of the King's archers. They were placed in front of a barrier which separated them from the Romanist divines. "There come the dogs of Geneva," said the Cardinal of Tournon as they entered the hall.

The speech of de Bèze, delivered on the first day (Sept. 7th) of the Colloquy, as it came to be called, made a great impression. He expounded with clearness of thought and precision of language the creed of his Church, showing where it agreed and where it differed from that of the Roman Catholic. The gravity and the charm of his eloquence compelled attention, and it was not until he began to criticise with frank severity the doctrine of transubstantiation that he provoked murmurs of dissent. The speech must have disappointed Catherine. It had made no attempt to attenuate the differences between the two confessions, and held out no hopes of a reunion of the Churches.

The Cardinal of Lorraine was charged to reply on behalf of the Roman Catholic party (Sept. 16th). His speech was that of a strong partisan, and dealt principally with the two points of the authority of the Church in matters of faith and usage, and the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Holy Supper. There was no attempt at conciliation.

Three days after (Sept. 19th), Cardinal Ippolito d'Este arrived at Saint-Germain, accompanied by a numerous suite, among whom was Laynez, the General of the Society of Jesus. He had been sent by the Pope, legate _a latere_, to end, if possible, the conference at Poissy, and to secure the goodwill of the French Government for the promulgation of the decrees of the Council of Trent. He so far prevailed that the last two sittings of the conference (Sept. 24th, 26th) were with closed doors, and were scenes of perpetual recriminations. Laynez distinguished himself by his vituperative violence. The Protestant ministers were "wolves," "foxes," "serpents," "assassins." Catherine persevered. She arranged a conference between five of the more liberal Roman Catholic clergy and five Protestant ministers. It met (Sept. 30th, Oct. 1st), and managed to draft a formula about the Holy Supper which was at once rejected by the Bishops of the French Church (Oct. 9th).

Out of this Colloquy of Poissy came the edict of January 17th, 1562, which provided that Protestants were to surrender all the churches and ecclesiastical buildings they had seized, and prohibited them from meeting for public worship, whether within a building or not, inside the walls of any town. On the other hand, they were to have the right to assemble for public worship anywhere outside walled towns, and meetings in private houses within the walls were not prohibited. Thus the Protestants of France secured legal recognition for the first time, and enjoyed the right to worship according to their conscience. They were not satisfied--they could scarcely be, so long as they were kept outside the walls; but their leaders insisted on their accepting the edict as a reasonable compromise. "If the liberty promised us in the edict lasts," Calvin wrote, "the Papacy will fall to the ground of itself." Within one year the Huguenots of France found themselves freed from persecution, and in the enjoyment of a measured liberty of public worship. It can scarcely be doubted that they owed this to Catherine de' Medici. She was a child of the Renaissance, and was naturally on the side of free thought; and she was, besides, at this time persuaded that the Huguenots had the future on their side. In the coming struggle they regarded this edict as their charter, and frequently demanded its restitution and enforcement.

Catherine de' Medici had shown both courage and constancy in her attempts at conciliation. To the remonstrances of Philip of Spain she had replied that she meant to be master in her own house; and when the Constable de Montmorency had threatened to leave the Court, he had been told that he might do as he pleased. But she was soon to be convinced that she had overestimated the strength of the Protestants, and that she could never count on the consistent support of their nominal leader, the vain and vacillating Antoine de Bourbon. Had Jeanne d'Albret been in her husband's place, things might have been different.

The edict of January 17th, 1562, had exasperated the Romanists without satisfying the mass of the Protestants. The marked increase in the numbers of Protestant congregations, and their not very strict observance of the limitations of the edict, had given rise to disturbances in many parts of the country. Everything seemed to tend towards civil war. The spark which kindled the conflagration was the Massacre of Vassy.[217]

§ 12. _The Massacre of Vassy._

The Duke of Guise, travelling from Joinville to Paris, accompanied by his brother, the Cardinal of Guise, his children and his wife, and escorted by a large armed retinue, halted at Vassy (March 1st, 1562). It was a Sunday, and the Duke wished to hear Mass. Scarcely a gunshot from the church was a barn where the Protestants (in defiance of the edict, for Vassy was a walled town) were holding a service. The congregation, barely a year old, was numerous and zealous. It was an eyesore to Antoinette de Bourbon, the mother of the Guises, who lived in the neighbouring château of Joinville, and saw her dependants attracted by the preaching at Vassy. The Duke was exasperated at seeing men whom he counted his subjects defying him in his presence. He sent some of his retainers to order the worshippers to quit the place. They were received by cries of "Papists! idolaters!" When they attempted to force an entrance, stones began to fly, and the Duke was struck. The barn was rushed, the worshippers fusilladed, and before the Duke gave orders to cease firing, sixty-three of the six or seven hundred Protestants were slain, and over a hundred wounded.

The news of the massacre spread fast; and while it exasperated the Huguenots, the Romanists hailed it as a victory. The Constable de Montmorency and the Marshal Saint André went out to meet the Duke, and the Guises entered Paris in triumph, escorted by more than three thousand armed men. The Protestants began arming themselves, and crowded to Paris to place themselves under the orders of the Prince of Condé. It was feared that the two factions would fight in the streets.

The Regent with the King retired to Fontainebleau. She was afraid of the Triumvirs (Montmorency, the Duke of Guise, and Marshal Saint-André), and she invited the Prince de Condé to protect her and her children. Condé lost this opportunity of placing himself and his co-religionists in the position of being the support of the throne. The Triumvirate, with Antoine de Bourbon, who now seemed to be their obedient servant, marched on Fontainebleau, and compelled the King and the Queen Mother to return to Paris. Catherine believed that the Protestants had abandoned her, and turned to the Romanists.

The example of massacre given at Vassy was followed in many places where the Romanists were in a majority. In Paris, Sens, Rouen, and elsewhere, the Protestant places of worship were attacked, and many of the worshippers slain. At Toulouse, the Protestants shut themselves up in the Capitol, and were besieged by the Romanists. They at last surrendered, trusting to a promise that they would be allowed to leave the town in safety. The promise was not kept, and three thousand men, women, and children were slain in cold blood. This slaughter, in violation of oath, was celebrated by the Roman Catholics of Toulouse in centenary festivals, which were held in 1662, in 1762, and would have been celebrated in 1862 had the Government of Napoleon III. not interfered to forbid it.

These massacres provoked reprisals. The Huguenots broke into the Romanist churches, tore down the images, defaced the altars, and destroyed the relics.

§ 13. _The Beginning of the Wars of Religion._

Gradually the parties faced each other with the Duke of Guise and the Constable Montmorency at the head of the Romanists, and the Prince of Condé and Admiral Coligny at the head of the Huguenots. France became the scene of a civil conflict, where religious fanaticism added its cruelties to the ordinary barbarities of warfare.

The Venetian Ambassador, writing home to the chiefs of his State, was of opinion that this first war of religion prevented France from becoming Protestant. The cruelties of the Romanists had disgusted a large number of Frenchmen, who, though they had no great sympathy for the Protestant faith, would have gladly allied themselves with a policy of toleration. The Huguenot chiefs themselves saw that the desecration of churches did not serve the cause they had at heart. Calvin and de Bèze wrote, energetically urging their followers to refrain from attacks on churches, images, and relics. But it was all to no purpose. At Orléans, Coligny and Condé heard that their men were assaulting the Church of the Holy Spirit. They hastened there, and Condé saw a Huguenot soldier on the roof of the church about to cast an image to the ground. Seizing an arquebus, he pointed it at the man, and ordered him to desist and come down. The soldier did not stop his work for an instant. "Sire," he said, "have patience with me until I destroy this idol, and then let me die if it be your pleasure." When men were content to die rather than refrain from iconoclasm, it was in vain to expect to check it. Somehow the slaughter of men made less impression than the sack of churches, and moderate men came to the opinion that if the Huguenots prevailed, they would be as intolerant as the Romanists had been. The rising tide of sympathy for the persecuted Protestants was checked by these deeds of violence.

The progress of the war was upon the whole unfavourable to the Huguenots, and in the beginning of 1553 both parties were exhausted. The Constable Montmorency had been captured by the Huguenots, and the Prince de Condé by the Romanists. The Duke of Guise was shot from behind by a Huguenot, and died six days later (Feb. 24th, 1563). The Marshal Saint-André and Antoine de Bourbon had both died during the course of the war. Catherine de' Medici was everywhere recognised as the head of the Romanist party. She no longer needed the Protestants to counterbalance the Guises and the Constable. She could now pursue her own policy.

From this time forward she was decidedly hostile to the Huguenots. She had learned the resources and popularity of the Romanists. But she disliked fighting, and the religious war was ruining France. Her idea was that it would be necessary to tolerate the Protestants, but impossible to grant them common rights with the Romanists. She applied herself to win over the Prince de Condé, who was tired of his captivity. Negotiations were opened. Catherine, the Constable, Condé, and d'Andelot met at Orléans; and, after discussion, terms were agreed upon (March 7th), and the Edict of Amboise incorporating them was published (March 18th, 1563).

Condé had asked for the restitution of the edict of Jan. 17th, 1561, and the strict enforcement of its terms. This was refused. The terms of the new edict were as favourable for men of good birth, but not for others. Condé had to undergo the reproaches of Coligny, that he had secured rights for himself but had betrayed his poorer brethren in the faith; and that he had destroyed by his signature more churches than the united forces of Romanism had done in ten years. Calvin spoke of him as a poor Prince who had betrayed God for his own vanity.

The truce, for it was no more than a truce, concluded by the Edict of Amboise lasted nearly five years. It was broken by the Huguenots, who were suspicious that Catherine was plotting with the Duke of Alva against them. Alva was engaged in a merciless attempt to exterminate the Protestants of the Low Countries, and Catherine had been at pains to provide provisions for his troops. The Protestant leaders came to the desperate conclusion to imitate the Triumvirate in 1561, and seize upon the King's person. They failed, and their attempt began the Second War of Religion. The indecisive battle of Saint Denis was fought on Nov. 10th, 1567, and the Constable Montmorency fell in the fight. Both parties were almost exhausted, and the terms of peace were the same as those in the Edict of Amboise.

The close of this Second War of Religion saw a determined attempt, mainly directed by the Jesuits, to inspire the masses of France with enthusiasm for the Roman Catholic Church. Eloquent preachers traversed the land, who insisted on the antiquity of the Roman and the novelty of the Protestant faith. Brotherhoods were formed, and enrolled men of all sorts and conditions of life sworn to bear arms against every kind of heresy. Outrages and assassinations of Protestants were common; and the Government appeared indifferent. It was, however, the events in the Low Countries which again alarmed the Protestants. The Duke of Alva, who had begun his rule there with an appearance of gentleness, had suddenly seized and executed the Counts Egmont and Horn. He had appointed a commission to judge the leaders and accomplices in the earlier rising--a commission which from its deeds gained for itself the name of the Tribunal of Blood. Huguenot soldiers hastened to enrol themselves in the levies which the Prince of Orange was raising for the deliverance of his countrymen. But the Huguenot leaders had other thoughts. Was Catherine meaning to treat them as Alva had treated Egmont and Horn? They found that they were watched. The suspicion and suspense became intolerable. Coligny and Condé resolved to take refuge in La Rochelle. As they passed through the country they were joined by numbers of Huguenots, and soon became a small army. Their followers were eager to avenge the murders committed on those of their faith, and pillage and worse marked the track of the army. Condé and the Admiral punished some of their marauding followers by death; and this, says the chronicler, "made the violence of the soldier more secret if not more rare."

D'Andelot had collected his Normans and Bretons. Jeanne d'Albret had roused her Gascons and the Provençals, and appeared with her son, Henry of Navarre, a boy of fifteen, at the head of her troops. She published a manifesto to justify her in taking up arms. In the camp at La Rochelle she was the soul of the party, fired their passions, and sustained their courage.[218]

In the war which followed, the Huguenots were unfortunate. At the battle of Jarnac, Condé's cavalry was broken by a charge on their flank made by the German mercenaries under Tavannes. He fought till he was surrounded and dismounted. After he had surrendered he was brutally shot in cold blood. The Huguenots soon rallied at Cognac, where the Queen of Navarre joined them. She presented her son and her nephew, young Henry of Condé, to the troops, and was received with acclamations. Young Henry of Navarre was proclaimed head of the party, and his cousin, Henry of Condé, a boy of the same age, was associated with him. The war went on. The Battle of Moncontour ended in the most disastrous defeat the Huguenots had ever sustained. Catherine de' Medici thought that she had them at her mercy, and proposed terms of submission which would have left them liberty of conscience but denied the right to worship. The heroic Queen of Navarre declared that the names of Jeanne and Henry would never appear on a treaty containing these conditions; and Coligny, like his contemporary, William the Silent, was never more dangerous than after a defeat. The Huguenots announced themselves ready to fight to the last; and Catherine, to her astonishment, saw them stronger than ever. An armistice was arranged, and the Edict of Saint-Germain (Aug. 8th, 1570) published the terms of peace. It was more favourable to the Huguenots than any earlier one. They were guaranteed freedom of conscience throughout the whole kingdom. They had the liberty of public worship in all places where it had been practised before the war, in the suburbs of at least two towns in every government, and in the residences of the great nobles. Four strongly fortified towns--La Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charité--were to be held by them as pledges for at least two years. The King withdrew himself from the Spanish alliance and the international policy of the suppression of the Protestants. William of Orange and Ludovic of Nassau were declared to be his friends, in spite of the fact that they were the rebel subjects of Philip of Spain and had assisted the Huguenots in the late war.

After the peace of Saint-Germain, Coligny, now the only great leader left to the Huguenots, lived far from the Court at La Rochelle, acting as the guardian of the two young Bourbon Princes, Henry of Navarre and Henry of Condé. He occupied himself in securing for the Reformed the advantages they had won in the recent treaty of peace.

Catherine de' Medici had begun to think of strengthening herself at home and abroad by matrimonial alliances. She wished one of her sons, whether the Duke of Anjou or the Duke of Alençon it mattered little to her, to marry Elizabeth of England, and her daughter Marguerite to espouse the young King of Navarre. Both designs meant that the Huguenots must be conciliated. They were in no hurry to respond to her advances. Both Coligny and Jeanne d'Albret kept themselves at a distance from the Court. Suddenly the young King, Charles IX., seemed to awaken to his royal position. He had been hitherto entirely submissive to his mother, expending his energies now in hunting, now in lock-making; but, if one can judge from what awakened him, cherishing a sullen grudge against Philip of Spain and his pretensions to guide the policy of Roman Catholic Europe.

Pope Pius V. had made Cosmo de' Medici, the ruler of Florence, a Grand Duke, and Philip of Spain and Maximilian of Austria had protested. Cosmo sent an agent to win the German Protestants to side with him against Maximilian, and to engage the Dutch Protestants to make trouble in the Netherlands. Charles saw the opportunity of gratifying his grudge, and entered eagerly into the scheme. His wishes did not for the time interfere with his mother's plans. If her marriage ideas were to succeed, she must break with Spain. Coligny saw the advantages which might come to his fellow-believers in the Netherlands--help in money from Italy and with troops from France. He resolved to make his peace with Catherine, respond to her advances, and betake himself to Court. He was graciously received, for Catherine wished to make use of him; was made a member of the Council, received a gift of one hundred and fifty thousand livres, and, although a heretic, was put into possession of an Abbey whose revenues amounted to twenty thousand livres a year. The Protestant chiefs were respectfully listened to when they stated grievances, and these were promptly put right, even at the risk of exasperating the Romanists. The somewhat unwilling consent of Jeanne d'Albret was won to the marriage of her son with Marguerite, and she herself came to Paris to settle the terms of contract. There she was seized with pleurisy, and died--an irreparable loss to the Protestant cause. Catherine's home policy had been successful.

But Elizabeth of England was not to be enticed either into a French marriage or a stable French alliance, and Catherine de' Medici saw that her son's scheme might lead to France being left to confront Spain alone; and the Spain of the sixteenth century played the part of Russia in the end of the nineteenth--fascinating the statesmen of the day with its gloomy, mysterious, incalculable power. She felt that she must detach Charles at whatever cost from his scheme of flouting Philip by giving assistance to the Protestants of the Low Countries. Coligny was in her way--recognised to be the greatest statesman in France, enthusiastically bent on sending French help to his struggling co-religionists, and encouraging Charles IX. Coligny must be removed. The Guises were at deadly feud with him, and would be useful in putting him out of the way. The Ambassador of Florence reported significantly conferences between Catherine and the Duchess de Nemours, the mother of the Guises (July 23rd, 1572). The Queen had secret interviews with Maureval, a professional bravo, who drew a pension as "tueur du Roy."

Nothing could be done until Henry, now King of Navarre by his mother's death, was safely married to Marguerite. The wedding took place on August 18th, 1572. On Friday (Aug. 22nd), between ten and eleven o'clock, Coligny left the Louvre to return to his lodging. The assassin was stationed in a house belonging to a retainer of the Guises, at a grated window concealed by a curtain. The Admiral was walking slowly, reading a letter. Suddenly a shot carried away the index finger of his right hand and wounded his left arm. He calmly pointed to the window from whence the shot had come; and some of his suite rushed to the house, but found nothing but a smoking arquebus. The news reached the King when he was playing tennis. He became pallid, threw down his racquet, and went to his rooms.

Catherine closeted herself with the Duke of Anjou to discuss a situation which was fraught with terror.[219]

§ 14. _The Massacre of St. Bartholomew._

Paris was full of Huguenot gentlemen, drawn from all parts of the country for the wedding of their young chief with the Princess Marguerite. They rushed to the house in which Coligny lay. The young King of Navarre and his cousin, Henry de Condé, went to the King to demand justice, which Charles promised would be promptly rendered. Coligny asked to see the King, who proposed to go at once. Catherine feared to leave the two alone, and accompanied him, attended by a number of her most trusty adherents. Even the Duke of Guise was there. The King by Coligny's bedside swore again with a great oath that he would avenge the outrage in a way that it would never be forgotten. A commission was appointed to inquire into the affair, and they promptly discovered that retainers of the Guises were implicated. If the investigations were pursued in the King's temper, Guise would probably seek to save himself by revealing Catherine's share in the attempted assassination. She became more and more a prey to terror. The Huguenots grew more and more violent. At last Catherine, whether on her own initiative or prompted by others will never be known, believed that she could only save herself by a prompt and thorough massacre of the Huguenots, gathered in unusual numbers in Paris.[220]

She summoned a council (Aug. 23rd), at which were present, so far as is known, the Duke of Anjou, her favourite son, afterwards Henry III., Marshal Tavannes, Nevers, Nemours (the stepfather of the Guises), Birago (Chancellor), the Count de Retz, and the Chevalier d'Angoulême--four of them Italians. They were unanimous in advising an instant massacre. Tavannes and Nevers, it is said, pled for and obtained the lives of the two young Bourbons, the King of Navarre and the Prince de Condé. The Count de Retz, who was a favourite with Charles, was engaged to win the King's consent by appealing to his fears, and by telling him that his mother and brother were as deeply implicated as Guise.

Night had come down before the final resolution was taken; but the fanatical and bloodthirsty mob of Paris might be depended upon. At the last moment, Tavannes (the son) tells us in his Memoirs, Catherine wished to draw back, but the others kept her firm. The Duke of Guise undertook to slay Coligny. The Admiral was run through with a pike, and the body tossed out of the window into the courtyard where Guise was waiting. At the Louvre the young Bourbon Princes were arrested, taken to the King, and given their choice between death and the Mass. The other Huguenot gentlemen who were in the Louvre were slain. In the morning the staircases, balls, and anti-chambers of the Palace were deeply stained with blood. When the murders had been done in the Louvre, the troops divided into parties and went to seek other victims. Almost all the Huguenot gentlemen on the north side of the river were slain, and all in the Quartier Latin. But some who lodged on the south side (among them Montgomery, and Jean de Ferrières, the Vidame de Chartres) escaped.

Orders were sent to complete the massacre in the provinces. At Orléans the slaughter lasted five days, and Protestants were slain in numbers at Meaux, Troyes, Rouen, Lyons, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and in many other places. The total number of victims has been variously estimated. Sully, the Prime Minister of Henry IV., who had good means of knowing, says that seventy thousand perished. Several thousands were slain in Paris alone.

The news was variously received by Roman Catholic Europe. The German Romanists, including the Emperor, were not slow to express their disapprobation. But Rome was illuminated in honour of the event, a medal was struck to commemorate the _Hugonotorum Strages_,[221] and Cardinal Orsini was sent to convey to the King and Queen Mother the congratulations of the Pope and the College of Cardinals. Philip of Spain was delighted, and is said to have laughed outright for the first and last time in his life. He congratulated the son on having such a mother, and the mother on having such a son.

Catherine herself believed that the massacre had ended all her troubles. The Huguenots had been annihilated, she thought; and it is reported that when she saw Henry of Navarre bowing to the altar she burst out into a shrill laugh.

§ 15. _The Huguenot resistance after the Massacre._

Catherine's difficulties were not ended. It was not so easy to exterminate the Huguenots. Most of the leaders had perished, but the people remained, cowed for a time undoubtedly, but soon to regain their courage. The Protestants held the strongholds of La Rochelle and Sancerre, the one on the coast and the other in central France. The artisans and the small shopkeepers insisted that there should be no surrender. The sailors of La Rochelle fraternised with the Sea-Beggars of Brill, and waged an implacable sea-war against the ships of Spain. Nimes and Montauban closed their gates against the soldiers of the King. Milhaud, Aubenas, Privas, Mirabel, Anduze, Sommières, and other towns of the Viverais and of the Cevennes became cities of refuge. All over France, the Huguenots, although they had lost their leaders, kept together, armed themselves, communicated with each other, maintained their religious services--though compelled generally to meet at night.

The attempt to capture these Protestant strongholds made the Fourth Religious War. La Rochelle was invested, beat back many assaults, was blockaded and endured famine, and in the end compelled its enemies to retire from its walls. Sancerre was less fortunate. After the failure of an attempt to take it by assault, La Châtre, the general of the besieging army, blockaded the town in the closest fashion. The citizens endured all the utmost horrors of famine. Five hundred adults and all the children under twelve years of age died of hunger. "Why weep," said a boy of ten, "to see me die of hunger? I do not ask bread, mother: I know that you have none. Since God wills that I die, thus we must accept it cheerfully. Was not that good man Lazarus hungry? Have I not so read in the Bible?" The survivors surrendered: their lives were spared; and on payment of a ransom of forty thousand livres the town was not pillaged.

The war ended with the peace of Rochelle (July 1573), when liberty of conscience was accorded to all, but the right of public worship was permitted only to Rochelle, Nimes, Montauban, and in the houses of some of the principal Protestant nobles. These terms were hard in comparison with the rights which had been won before the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew; but the Huguenots had reason for rejoicing. Their cause was still alive. Neither war, nor massacre, nor frauds innumerable had made any impression on the great mass of the French Protestants.

The peace declared by the treaty of La Rochelle did not last long, and indeed was never universal. The Protestants of the South used it to prepare for a renewal of conflict. They remained under arms, perfecting their military organisation. They divided the districts which they controlled into regular governments, presided over by councils whose members were elected and were the military leaders of a Protestant nation for the time being separate from the kingdom of France. They imposed taxes on Romanists and Protestants, and confiscated the ecclesiastical revenues. They were able to stock their strongholds with provisions and munitions of war, and maintain a force of twenty thousand men ready for offensive action.

Their councils at Nimes and Montauban formulated the conditions under which they would submit to the French Government. Nimes sent a deputation to the King furnished with a series of written articles, in which they demanded the free exercise of their religion in every part of France, the maintenance at royal expense of Huguenot garrisons in all the strongholds held by them, and the cession of two strong posts to be cities of refuge in each of the provinces of France. The demands of the council of Montauban went further. They added that the King must condemn the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, execute justice on those who had perpetrated it, reverse the sentences passed on all the victims, approve of the Huguenot resistance, and declare that he praised _la singulière et admirable bonté de Dieu_ who had still preserved his Protestant subjects. They required also that the rights of the Protestant minority in France should be guaranteed by the Protestant States of Europe--by the German Protestant Princes, by Switzerland, England, and Scotland. They dated their document significantly August 24th--the anniversary of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. The deputies refused to discuss these terms; they simply presented them. The King might accept them; he might refuse them. They were not to be modified.

Catherine was both furious and confounded at the audacity of these "rascals" (_ces misérables_), as she called them. She declared that Condé, if he had been at the head of twenty thousand cavalry and fifty thousand infantry, would never have asked for the half of what these articles demanded. The Queen Mother found herself face to face with men on whom she might practise all her arts in vain, very different from the _debonnaire_ Huguenot princes whom she had been able to cajole with feminine graces and enervate with her "Flying Squadron." These farmers, citizens, artisans knew her and her Court, and called things by rude names. She herself was a "murderess," and her "Flying Squadron" were "fallen women." She had cleared away the Huguenot aristocracy to find herself in presence of the Protestant democracy.

The worst of it was that she dared not allow the King to give them a decided answer. A new force had been rising in France since Saint Bartholomew's Day--the _Politiques_,[222] as they were called. They put France above religious parties, and were weary of the perpetual bloodshed; they said that "a man does not cease to be a citizen because he is excommunicated"; they declared that "with the men they had lost in the religious wars they could have driven Spain out of the Low Countries." They chafed under the rule of "foreigners," of the Queen Mother and her Italians, of the Guises and their Jesuits. They were prepared to unite with the Huguenots in order to give France peace. They only required leaders who could represent the two sides of the coalition. If the Duke of Alençon, the youngest brother of the King, and Henry of Navarre could escape from the Court and raise their standards together, they were prepared to join them.

Charles IX. died on Whitsunday 1574 of a disease which the tainted blood of the Valois and the Médicis induced. The memories of Saint Bartholomew also hastened his death. Private memoirs of courtiers tell us that in his last weeks of fever he had frightful dreams by day and by night. He saw himself surrounded by dead bodies; hideous faces covered with blood thrust themselves forward towards his. The crime had not been so much his as his mother's, but _he_ had something of a conscience, and felt its burden. "Et ma Mère" was his last word--an appeal to his mother, whom he feared more than his God.

On Charles' death, Henry, Duke of Anjou, succeeded as Henry III.[223] He was in Poland--king of that distracted country. He abandoned his crown, evaded his subjects, and reached France in September 1574. His advent did not change matters much. Catherine still ruled in reality. The war went on with varying success in different parts of France. But the Duke of Anjou (the Duke of Alençon took this title on his brother's accession) succeeded in escaping from Court (Sept. 15th, 1575), and the King of Navarre also managed to elude his guardians (Feb. 3rd, 1576). Anjou joined the Prince of Condé, who was at the head of a mixed force of Huguenots and Politiques. Henry of Navarre went into Poitou and remained there. His first act was to attend the Protestant worship, and immediately afterwards he renounced his forced adhesion to Romanism. He did not join any of the parties in the field, but sent on his own demands to be forwarded to the King along with those of the confederates, adding to them the request that the King should aid him to recover the Spanish part of Navarre which had been forcibly annexed to Spain by Ferdinand of Aragon.

The escape of the two Princes led in the end to the "Peace of Monsieur," the terms of which were published in the Edict of Beaulieu (May 6th, 1576). The right of public worship was given to Protestants in all towns and places within the kingdom of France, Paris only and towns where the Court was residing being excepted. Protestants received eight strongholds, partly as cities of refuge and partly as guarantees. Chambers of Justice "mi-parties" (composed of both Protestants and Roman Catholics) were established in each Parliament. The King actually apologised for the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, and declared that it had happened to his great regret; and all sentences pronounced on the victims were reversed. This edict was much more favourable to the Protestants than any that had gone before. Almost all the Huguenots' demands had been granted.

§ 16. _The beginnings of the League._

Neither the King, who felt himself humiliated, nor the Romanists, who were indignant, were inclined to submit long to the terms of peace. Some of the Romanist leaders had long seen that the Huguenot enthusiasm and their organisation were enabling an actual minority to combat, on more than equal terms, a Romanist majority. Some of the provincial leaders had been able to inspire their followers with zeal, and to bind them together in an organisation by means of leagues. These provincial leagues suggested a universal organisation, which was fostered by Henry, Duke of Guise, and by Catherine de' Medici. This was the first form of that celebrated League which gave twenty years' life to the civil war in France. The Duke of Guise published a declaration in which he appealed to all France to associate together in defence of the Holy Church, Catholic and Roman, and of their King Henry III., whose authority and rights were being taken from him by rebels. All good Catholics were required to join the association, and to furnish arms for the accomplishment of its designs. Those who refused were to be accounted enemies. Neutrals were to be harassed with "toutes sortes d'offences et molestes"; open foes were to be fought strenuously. Paris was easily won to the League, and agents were sent abroad throughout France to enrol recruits. Henry III. himself was enrolled, and led the movement.

The King had summoned the States General to meet at Blois and hold their first session there on Dec. 6th, 1576. The League had attended to the elections, and the Estates declared unanimously for unity of religion. Upon this the King announced that the Edict of Beaulieu had been extracted from him by force, and that he did not intend to keep it. Two of the Estates, the Clergy and the Nobles, were prepared to compel unity at any cost. The Third Estate was divided. A minority wished the unity brought about "by gentle and pacific ways"; the majority asked for the immediate and complete suppression of the public worship of the Protestants, and for the banishment of all ministers, elders, and deacons.

These decisions of the States General were taken by the Huguenots as a declaration of war, and they promptly began to arm themselves. It was the first war of the League, and the sixth of Religion. It ended with the Peace of Bergerac (Sept. 15th, 1578), in which the terms granted to the Huguenots were rather worse than those of the Edict of Beaulieu. A seventh war ensued, terminated by the Peace of Fleix (Nov. 1580).

The Duke of Anjou died (June 10th, 1584), and the King had no son. The heir to the throne, according to the Salic Law, which excluded females, was Henry of Navarre, a Protestant. On the death of Anjou, Henry III. found himself face to face with this fact. He knew and felt that he was the guardian of the dynastic rights of the French throne, and that his duty was to acknowledge Henry of Navarre as his successor. He accordingly sent one of his favourites, Éperon, to prevail upon Henry of Navarre to become a Roman Catholic and come to Court. Henry refused to do either.

§ 17. _The League becomes disloyal._[224]

Meanwhile the Romanist nobles were taking their measures. Some of them met at Nancy towards the close of 1584 to reconstruct the League. They resolved to exclude the Protestant Bourbons from the throne, and proclaim the Cardinal Bourbon as the successor of Henry III. They hoped to obtain a Bull from the Pope authorising this selection; and they received the support of Philip of Spain in the Treaty of Joinville (Dec. 31st, 1584).

Paris did not wait for the sanction or recommendation of the nobles. A contemporary anonymous pamphlet, which is the principal source of our information, describes how four men, three of them ecclesiastics, met together to found the League of Paris. They discussed the names of suitable members, and, having selected a nucleus of trustworthy associates, they proceeded to elect a secret council of eight or nine who were to direct and control everything. The active work of recruiting was superintended by six associates, of whom one, the Sieur de la Rocheblond, was a member of the secret council. Soon all the most fanatical elements of the population of Paris belonged to this secret society, sworn to obey blindly the orders of the mysterious council who from a concealed background directed everything. The corporations of the various trades were won to the League; the butchers of Paris, for example, furnished a band of fifteen hundred resolute and dangerous men. Trusty emissaries were sent to the large towns of France, and secret societies on the plan of the one in Paris were formed and affiliated with the mother-society in Paris, all bound to execute the orders of the secret council of the capital. The Sieur de la Rocheblond, whose brain had planned the whole organisation, was the medium of communication with the Romanist Princes; and through him Henry, Duke of Guise, le Balafré as he was called from a scar on his face, was placed in command of this new and formidable instrument, to be wielded as he thought best for the extirpation of the Protestantism of France.

The King had published an edict forbidding all armed assemblies, and this furnished the Leaguers with a pretext for sending forth their manifesto: _Déclaration des causes qui ont meu Monseigneur le Cardinal de Bourbon et les Pairs, Princes, Seigneurs, villes et communautez catholiques de ce royaume de France: De s'opposer à ceux qui par tous moyens s'efforcent de subvertir la religion catholique et l'Estat (30 Mars 1585)._ It was a skilfully drafted document, setting forth the danger to religion in the foreground, but touching on all the evils and jealousies which had arisen from the favouritism of Henry III. Guise at once began to enrol troops and commence open hostilities; and almost all the great towns of France and most of the provinces in the North and in the Centre declared for the League.

Henry III. was greatly alarmed. With the help of his mother he negotiated a treaty with the Leaguers, in which he promised to revoke all the earlier Edicts of Toleration, to prohibit the exercise of Protestant public worship throughout the kingdom, to banish the ministers, and to give all Protestants the choice between becoming Roman Catholics or leaving the realm within six months (Treaty of Nemours, July 7th, 1585). These terms were embodied in an edict dated July 18th, 1585. The Pope, Sixtus V., thereupon published a Bull, which declared that the King of Navarre and the Prince of Condé, being heretics, were incapable of succeeding to the throne of France, deprived them of their estates, and absolved all their vassals from allegiance. The King of Navarre replied to "Monsieur Sixtus, self-styled Pope, saving His Holiness," and promised to avenge the insult done to himself and to the _Parlements_ of France.

"The war of the three Henrys," from Henry III., Henry of Guise, and Henry of Navarre, began in the later months of 1585. It was in some respects a triangular fight; for although the King and the Guises were both ostensibly combating the Huguenots, the Leaguers, headed by Guises, and the Loyalists, were by no means whole-hearted allies. It began unfavourably for the Protestants, but as it progressed the skilful generalship of the King of Navarre became more and more apparent--at Coutras (Oct. 20th, 1587) he almost annihilated the royalist army. The King made several ineffectual attempts to win the Protestant leader to his side. Navarre would never consent to abjure his faith, and Henry III. made that an absolute condition.

While the war was going on in the west and centre of France, the League was strengthening its organisation and perfecting its plans. It had become more and more hostile to Henry III., and had become a secret revolutionary society. It drafted a complete programme for the immediate future. The cities and districts of France which felt themselves specially threatened by the Huguenots were to beseech the King to raise levies for their protection. If he refused or procrastinated, they were to raise the troops themselves, to be commanded by officers in whom the League had confidence. They could then compel the King to place himself at the head of this army of the Leaguers, or show himself to be their open enemy by refusing. If the King died childless, the partisans of the League were to gather at Orléans and Paris, and were there to elect the Cardinal de Bourbon as the King of France. The Pope and the King of Spain were to be at once informed, when it had been arranged that His Holiness would send his benediction, and that His Majesty would assist them with troops and supplies. A new form of oath was imposed on all the associates of the League. They were to swear allegiance to the King so long as he should show himself to be a good Catholic and refrained from favouring heretics. These instructions were sent down from the mother-society in Paris to the provinces, and the affiliated societies were recommended to keep in constant communication with Paris. Madame de Montpensier, sister to the Guises, at the same time directed the work of a band of preachers whose business it was to inflame the minds of the people in the capital and the provinces against the King and the Huguenots. She boasted that she did more work for the cause than her brothers were doing by the sword.

The Guises, with this force behind them, tried to force the King to make new concessions--to publish the decisions of the Council of Trent in France (a thing that had not been done); to establish the Inquisition in France; to order the execution of all Huguenot prisoners who would not promise to abjure their religion; and to remove from the armies all officers of whom the League did not approve. The mother-society in Paris prepared for his refusal by organising a secret revolutionary government for the city. It was called "The Sixteen," being one for each of the sixteen sections of Paris. This government was under the orders of Guise, who communicated with them through an agent of his called Mayneville. Plot after plot was made to get possession of the King's person; and but for the activity and information of Nicholas Poulain, an officer of police who managed to secure private information, they would have been successful.

§ 18. _The Day of Barricades._[225]

The King redoubled his guards, and ordered four thousand Swiss troops which he had stationed at Lagny into the suburbs of Paris. The Parisian Leaguers in alarm sent for the Duke of Guise; and Guise, in spite of a prohibitive order from the King, entered the city. When he was recognised he was received with acclamations by the Parisian crowd. The Queen-Mother induced the King to receive him, which he did rather ungraciously. Officers and men devoted to the League crowded into Paris. The King, having tried in vain to prevent the entry of all suspected persons, at last ordered the Swiss into Paris (May 12th, 1588). The citizens flew to arms, and converted Paris into a stronghold. It was "the day of Barricades." Chains were stretched across the streets, and behind them were piled beams, benches, carts, great barrels filled with stones or gravel. Houses were loop-holed and windows protected. Behind these defences men were stationed with arquebuses; and the women and children were provided with heaps of stones. Guise had remained in his house, but his officers were to be seen moving through the crowds and directing the defence. The Swiss troops found themselves caught in a trap, and helpless. Henry III. was compelled to ask Guise to interfere in order to save his soldiers. The King had to undergo further humiliation. The citizens proposed to attack the Louvre and seize the King's person. Guise had to be appealed to again. He had an interview with the King on the 13th, at which Henry III. was forced to agree to all the demands of the League, and to leave the conduct of the war against the Huguenots in the hands of the leader of the League. After the interview the King was able to escape secretly from Paris.

The day of the "Barricades" had proved to Henry III. that the League was master in his capital. The meeting of the States General at Blois (Oct. 1588) was to show him that the country had also turned against him.

The elections had been looked after by the Guises, and had taken place while the impression produced by the revolt of Paris was at its height. The League commanded an immense majority in all the three Estates. The business before them was grave. The finances of the kingdom were in disorder; favouritism had not been got rid of; and no one could trust the King's word. Above all, the religious question was embittering every mind. The Estates met under the influence of a religious exaltation fanned by the priests. On the 9th of Oct. representatives of the three Estates went to Mass together. During the communion the assistant clergy chanted the well-known hymns,--_Pange lingua gloriosi, O salutaris Hostia, Ave verum Corpus natum_,--and the excitement was immense. The members of the Estates had never been so united.

Yet the King had a moment of unwonted courage. He had resolved to denounce the League as the source of the disorders in the kingdom. He declared that he would not allow a League to exist within the realm. He only succeeded in making the leaders furious. His bravado soon ceased. The Cardinal de Bourbon compelled him to omit from the published version of his speech the objectionable expressions. The Estates forced him to swear that he would not permit any religion within the kingdom but the Roman. This done, he was received with cries of _Vive le Roi_, and was accompanied to his house with acclamations. But he was compelled to see the Duke of Guise receive the office of Lieutenant-General, which placed the army under his command; and he felt that he would never be "master in his own house" until that man had been removed from his path.

The news of the completeness of the destruction of the Armada had been filtering through France; the fear of Spain was to some extent removed, and England might help the King if he persisted in a policy of tolerating his Protestant subjects. It is probable that he confided his project of getting rid of Guise to some of his more intimate councillors, and that they assured him that it would be impossible to remove such a powerful subject by legal means. The Duke and his brother the Cardinal of Guise were summoned to a meeting of the Council. They had scarcely taken their seats when they were asked to see the King in his private apartments. There Guise was assassinated, and the Cardinal arrested, and slain the next day.[226] The Cardinal de Bourbon and the young Prince de Joinville (now Duke of Guise by his father's death) were arrested and imprisoned. Orders were given to arrest the Duchess of Nemours (Guise's mother), the Duke and Duchess of Elboeuf, the Count de Brissac, and other prominent Leaguers. The King's guards invaded the sittings of the States General to carry out these orders. The bodies of the two Guises were burnt, and the ashes thrown into the Loire.

The news of the assassination raised the wildest rage in Paris. The League proclaimed itself a revolutionary society. The city organised itself in its sections. A council was appointed for each section to strengthen the hands of the "Sixteen." Preachers caused their audiences to swear that they would spend the last farthing in their purses and the last drop of blood in their bodies to avenge the slaughtered princes. The Sorbonne in solemn conclave declared that the actions of Henry III. had absolved his subjects from their allegiance. The "Sixteen" drove from _Parlement_ all suspected persons; and, thus purged, the _Parlement_ of Paris ranged itself on the side of the revolution. The Duke of Mayenne, the sole surviving brother of Henry of Guise, was summoned to Paris. An assembly of the citizens of the capital elected a _Council General of the Union of Catholics_ to manage the affairs of the State and to confer with all the Catholic towns and provinces of France. Deputies sent by these towns and provinces were to be members of the Council. The Duke of Mayenne was appointed by the Council the _Lieutenant-General of the State and Crown of France_. The new Government had its seal--_the Seal of the Kingdom of France_. The larger number of the great towns of France adhered to this provisional and revolutionary Government.

In the midst of these tumults Catherine de' Medici died (Jan. 5th, 1589).

§ 19. _The King takes refuge with the Huguenots._

The miserable King had no resource left but to throw himself upon the protection of the Protestants. He hesitated at first, fearing threatened papal excommunication. Henry of Navarre's bearing during these months of anxiety had been admirable. After the meeting of the States General at Blois, he had issued a stirring appeal to the nation, pleading for peace--the one thing needed for the distracted and fevered country. He now assured the King of his loyalty, and promised that he would never deny to Roman Catholics that liberty of conscience and worship which he claimed. A treaty was arranged, and the King of Navarre went to meet Henry III. at Tours. He arrived just in time. Mayenne at the head of an avenging army of Leaguers had started as soon as the provisional government had been established in Paris. He had taken by assault a suburb of the town, and was about to attack the city of Tours itself, when he found the Protestant vanguard guarding the bridge over the Loire, and had to retreat. He was slowly forced back towards Paris. The battle of Senlis, in which a much smaller force of Huguenots routed the Duke d'Aumale, who had been reinforced by the Parisian militia, opened the way to Paris. The King of Navarre pressed on. Town after town was taken, and the forces of the two kings, increased by fourteen thousand Swiss and Germans, were soon able to seize the bridge of St. Cloud and invest the capital on the south and west (July 29th, 1589). An assault was fixed for Aug. 2nd.

Since the murder of the Guises, Paris had been a caldron of seething excitement. The whole population, "_avec douleur et gemissements bien grands_," had assisted at the funeral service for "the Martyrs," and the baptism of the posthumous son of the slaughtered Duke had been a civic ceremony. The Bull "monitory" of Pope Sixtus V., posted up in Rome on May 24th, which directed Henry III. on pain of excommunication to release the imprisoned prelates within ten days, and to appear either personally or by proxy within sixty days before the Curia to answer for the murder of a Prince of the Church, had fanned the excitement. Almost every day the Parisians saw processions of students, of women, of children, defiling through their streets. They marched from shrine to shrine, with naked feet, clad only in their shirts, defying the cold of winter. Parishioners dragged their priests out of bed to head nocturnal processions. The hatred of Henry III. became almost a madness. The Cordeliers decapitated his portraits. Parish priests made images of the King in wax, placed them on their altars, and practised on them magical incantations, in the hope of doing deadly harm to the living man. Bands of children carried lighted candles, which they extinguished to cries of, "_God extinguish thus the race of the Valois._"

Among the most excited members of this fevered throng was a young Jacobin monk, Jacques Clément, by birth a peasant, of scanty intelligence, and rough, violent manners. His excitement grew with the perils of the city. He consulted a theologian in whom he had confidence, and got from him a guarded answer that it might be lawful to slay a tyrant. He prayed, fasted, went through a course of maceration of the body. He saw visions. He believed that he heard voices, and that he received definite orders to give his life in order to slay the King. He confided his purpose to friends, who approved of it and helped his preparations. He was able to leave the city, to pass through the beleaguering lines, and to get private audience of the King. He presented a letter, and while Henry was reading it stabbed him in the lower part of the body. The deed done, the monk raised himself to his full height, extended his arms to form himself into a crucifix, and received without flinching his deathblow from La Guesle and other attendants (Aug. 1st, 1589).[227]

The King lingered until the following morning, and then expired, commending Henry of Navarre to his companions as his legitimate successor.

The news of the assassination was received in Paris with wild delight. The Duchess de Nemours, the mother of the Guises, and the Duchess de Montpensier, their sister, went everywhere in the streets describing "the heroic act of Jacques Clément." The former mounted the steps of the High Altar in the church of the Cordeliers to proclaim the news to the people. The citizens, high and low, brought out their tables into the streets, and they drank, sang, shouted and danced in honour of the news. They swore that they would never accept a Protestant king[228] and the Cardinal de Bourbon, still a prisoner, was proclaimed as Charles x.

At Tours, on the other hand, the fact that the heir to the throne was a Protestant, threw the Roman Catholic nobles into a state of perplexity. They had no sympathy with the League, but many felt that they could not serve a Protestant king. They pressed round the new King, beseeching him to abjure his faith at once. Henry refused to do what would humiliate himself, and could not be accepted as an act of sincerity. On the other hand, the nobles of Champagne, Picardy, and the Isle of France sent assurances of allegiance; the Duke of Montpensier, the husband of the Leaguer Duchess, promised his support; and the Swiss mercenaries declared that they would serve for two months without pay.

§ 20. _The Declaration of Henry IV._[229]

Thus encouraged, Henry published his famous declaration (Aug. 4th, 1589). He promised that the Roman Catholic would remain the religion of the realm, and that he would attempt no innovations. He declared that he was willing to be instructed in its tenets, and that within six months, if it were possible, he would summon a National Council. The Roman Catholics would be retained in their governments and charges; the Protestants would keep the strongholds which were at present in their hands; but all fortified places when reduced would be entrusted to Roman Catholics and none other. This declaration was signed by two Princes of the Blood, the Prince of Conti and the Duke of Montpensier; by three Dukes and Peers, Longueville, Luxembourg-Piney, and Rohan-Montbazon; by two Marshals of France, Biron and d'Aumont; and by several great officers. Notwithstanding, the defections were serious; all the _Parlements_ save that of Bordeaux thundered against the heretic King; all the great towns save Tours, Bordeaux, Châlons, Langres, Compiègne, and Clermont declared for the League. The greater part of the kingdom was in revolt. The royalist troops dwindled away. It was hopeless to think of attacking Paris, and Henry IV. marched for Normandy with scarcely seven thousand men. He wished to be on the sea coast in hope of succour from England.

The Duke of Mayenne followed him with an army of thirty thousand men. He had promised to the Parisians to throw the "Bearnese" into the sea, or to bring him in chains to Paris, But it was not so easy to catch the "Bearnese." In the series of marches, countermarches, and skirmishes which is known as the battle of Arques, the advantage was on the side of the King; and when Mayenne attempted to take Dieppe by assault, he was badly defeated (Sept. 24th, 1589). Then followed marches and countermarches; the King now threatening Paris and then retreating, until at last the royalist troops and the Leaguers met at Ivry. The King had two thousand cavalry and eight thousand infantry to meet eight thousand cavalry and twelve thousand infantry (including seventeen hundred Spanish troops sent by the Duke of Parma) under the command of Mayenne. The battle resulted in a surprising and decisive victory for the King. Mayenne and his cousin d'Aumale escaped only by the swiftness of their horses (March 14th, 1590).

It is needless to say much about the war or about the schemes of parties. Henry invested Paris, and had almost starved it into surrender, when it was revictualled by an army led from the Low Countries by the Duke of Parma. Henry took town after town, and gradually isolated the capital. In 1590 (May 10th) the old Cardinal Bourbon (Charles X.) died, and the Leaguers lost even the semblance of a legitimate king. The more fanatical members of the party, represented by the "Sixteen" of Paris, would have been content to place France under the dominion of Spain rather than see a heretic king. The Duke of Mayenne had long cherished dreams that the crown might come to him. But the great mass of the influential people of France who had not yet professed allegiance to Henry IV. (and many who had) had an almost equal dread of Spanish domination and of a heretic ruler.

§ 21. _Henry IV. becomes a Roman Catholic._

Henry at last resolved to conform to the Roman Catholic religion as the only means of giving peace to his distracted kingdom. He informed the loyalist Archbishop of Bourges of his intention to be instructed in the Roman Catholic religion with a view to conversion. The Archbishop was able to announce this at the conference of Suresnes, and the news spread instantly over France. With his usual tact, Henry wrote with his own hand to several of the parish priests of Paris announcing his intention, and invited them to meet him at Mantes to give him instruction. At least one of them had been a furious Leaguer, and was won to be an enthusiastic loyalist.

The ceremony of the reception of Henry IV. into the Roman Catholic Church took place at Saint Denis, about four and a half miles to the north of Paris. The scene had all the appearance of some popular festival. The ancient church in which the Kings of France had for generations been buried, in which Jeanne d'Arc had hung up her arms, was decked with splendid tapestries, and the streets leading to it festooned with flowers. Multitudes of citizens had come from rebel Paris to swell the throng and to shout _Vive le Roi!_ as Henry, escorted by a brilliant procession of nobles and guards, passed slowly to the church. The clergy, headed by the Archbishop of Bourges, met him at the door. The King dismounted, knelt, swore to live and die in the catholic apostolic and Roman religion, and renounced all the heresies which it condemned. The Archbishop gave him absolution, took him by the hand and led him into the church. There, kneeling before the High Altar, the King repeated his oath, confessed, and communicated. France had now a Roman Catholic as well as a legitimate King. Even if it be admitted that Henry IV. was not a man of any depth of religious feeling, the act of abjuration must have been a humiliation for the son of Jeanne d'Albret. He never was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, and his well-known saying, that "Paris was well worth a Mass," had as much bitterness in it as gaiety. He had paled with suppressed passion at Tours (1589) when the Roman Catholic nobles had urged him to become a Romanist. Had the success which followed his arms up to the battle of Ivry continued unbroken, it is probable that the ceremony at Saint Denis would never have taken place. But Parma's invasion of France, which compelled the King to raise the siege of Paris, was the beginning of difficulties which seemed insurmountable. The dissensions of parties within the realm, and the presence of foreigners on the soil of France (Walloon, Spanish, Neapolitan, and Savoyard), were bringing France to the verge of dissolution. Henry believed that there was only one way to end the strife, and he sacrificed his convictions to his patriotism.

With Henry's change of religion the condition of things changed as if by magic. The League seemed to dissolve. Tenders of allegiance poured in from all sides, from nobles, provinces, and towns. Rheims was still in possession of the Guises, and the anointing and crowning took place at Chartres (Feb. 27th, 1594). The manifestations of loyalty increased.

On the evening of the day on which Henry had been received into the Roman Catholic Church at Saint Denis, he had recklessly ridden up to the crest of the height of Montmartre and looked down on Paris, which was still in the hands of the League. The feelings of the Parisians were also changing. The League was seamed with dissensions; Mayenne had quarrelled with the "Sixteen," and the partisans of these fanatics of the League had street brawls with the citizens of more moderate opinions. _Parlement_ took courage and denounced the presence of Spanish soldiers within the capital. The loyalists opened the way for the royal troops, Henry entered Paris (March 22nd), and marched to Notre Dame, where the clergy chanted the _Te Deum_. From the cathedral he rode to the Louvre through streets thronged with people, who pressed up to his very stirrups to see their King, and made the tall houses re-echo with their loyalist shoutings. Such a royal entry had not been seen for generations, and took everyone by surprise. Next day the foreign troops left the city. The King watched their departure from an open window in the Louvre, and as their chiefs passed he called out gaily, "My compliments to your Master. You need not come back."

With the return of Paris to fealty, almost all signs of disaffection departed; and the King's proclamation of amnesty for all past rebellions completed the conquest of his people. France was again united after thirty years of civil war.

§ 22. _The Edict of Nantes._

The union of all Frenchmen to accept Henry IV. as their King had not changed the legal position of the Protestants. The laws against them were still in force; they had nothing but the King's word promising protection to trust to. The war with Spain delayed matters, but when peace was made the time came for Henry to fulfil his pledges to his former companions. They had been chafing under the delay. At a General Assembly held at Mantes (October 1593-January 1594), the members had renewed their oath to live and to die true to their confession of faith, and year by year a General Assembly met to discuss their political disabilities as well as to conduct their ecclesiastical business. They had divided France into nine divisions under provincial synods, and had the appearance to men of that century of a kingdom within a kingdom. They demanded equal civic rights with their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, and guarantees for their protection. At length, in 1597, four delegates were appointed with full powers to confer with the King. Out of these negotiations came the Edict of Nantes, the Charter of French Protestantism.

This celebrated edict was drawn up in ninety-five more general articles, which were signed on April 13th, and in fifty-six more particular articles which were signed on May 2nd (1598). Two _Brevets_, dated 13th and 30th of April, were added, dealing with the treatment of Protestant ministers, and with the strongholds given to the Protestants. The Articles were verified and registered by _Parlements_; the _Brevets_ were guaranteed simply by the King's word.

The Edict of Nantes codified and enlarged the rights given to the Protestants of France by the Edict of Poitiers (1577), the Convention of Nérac (1578), the treaty of Fleix (1580), the Declaration of Saint-Cloud (1589), the Edict of Mantes (1591), the Articles of Mantes (1593), and the Edict of Saint-Germain (1594).

It secured complete liberty of conscience everywhere within the realm, to the extent that no one was to be persecuted or molested in any way because of his religion, nor be compelled to do anything contrary to its tenets; and this carried with it the right of private or secret worship. The full and free right of public worship was granted in all places in which it existed during the years 1596 and 1597, or where it had been granted by the Edict of Poitiers interpreted by the Convention of Nérac and the treaty of Fleix (some two hundred towns); and, in addition, in two places within every _bailliage_ and _sénéchaussée_ in the realm. It was also permitted in the principal castles of Protestant _seigneurs hauts justiciers_ (some three thousand), whether the proprietor was in residence or not, and in their other castles, the proprietor being in residence; to nobles who were not _hauts justiciers_, provided the audience did not consist of more than thirty persons over and above relations of the family. Even at the Court the high officers of the Crown, the great nobles, all governors and lieutenants-general, and captains of the guards, had the liberty of worship in their apartments provided the doors were kept shut and there was no loud singing of psalms, noise, or open scandal.

Protestants were granted full civil rights and protection, entry into all universities, schools, and hospitals, and admission to all public offices. The _Parlement_ of Paris admitted six Protestant councillors. And Protestant ministers were granted the exemptions from military service and such charges as the Romanist clergy enjoyed. Special Chambers (_Chambres d'Édit_) were established in the _Parlements_ to try cases in which Protestants were interested. In the _Parlement_ of Paris this Chamber consisted of six specially chosen Roman Catholics and one Protestant; in other _Parlements_, the Chambers were composed of equal numbers of Romanists and Protestants (_mi-parties_). The Protestants were permitted to hold their ecclesiastical assemblies--consistories, colloquies, and synods, national and provincial; they were even allowed to meet to discuss political questions, provided they first secured the permission of the King.

They remained in complete control of two hundred towns, including La Rochelle, Montauban, and Montpellier, strongholds of exceptional strength. They were to retain these places until 1607, but the right was prolonged for five years more. The State paid the expenses of the troops which garrisoned these Protestant fortified places; it paid the governors, who were always Protestants. When it is remembered that the royal army in time of peace did not exceed ten thousand men, and that the Huguenots could raise twenty-five thousand troops, it will be seen that Henry IV. did his utmost to provide guarantees against a return to a reign of intolerance.

Protected in this way, the Huguenot Church of France speedily took a foremost place among the Protestant Churches of Europe. Theological colleges were established at Sedan, Montauban, and Saumur. Learning and piety flourished, and French theology was always a counterpoise to the narrow Reformed Scholastic of Switzerland and of Holland.