The Wars of Religion in France 1559-1576 The Huguenots, Catherine de Medici and Philip II

The attention of Europe was fixed upon France by these events. What was going to happen in the absence of the heir to the throne? Would a frightful wave of retaliatory vengeance...

[906] A printed copy of this important dispatch, entitled “Coppie d’une lettre du sieur d’Aumale au sieur marquis d’Elbœuf son frère, sur l’association qu’ils delibèrent faire c...

long document consisting of a great number of articles proposed by the queen of Navarre, the princes of Navarre and Condé, and the other chiefs of the Huguenot party, for the pa...

“I am always _en voyage_,” wrote the Venetian ambassador to the senate. “Since the beginning of my embassy the King has not staid more than fifteen days in any one place. He goe...

By the death of Condé the Admiral Coligny became the actual leader of the Protestant cause in France,[1324] the more so when his brother d’Andelot died on May 7,[1325] although...

From the field of Philip II’s empty victory the court resumed its pilgrimage, crossing the Loire and traversing Guyenne which was “in good repose,” visiting Angoulême, Cognac, S...

The progress of events had developed so rapidly as to bely the Edict of January almost as soon as it was passed. The continued absence of the Guises from the court made them ope...

France_, January 1876, and Dareste, _Mém. de l’Acad. des sc. moral. et polit._, CIV (1877), 605. Hotman’s authorship of it remained undiscovered for years. A counselor named Du...

The last day of June, 1559, was a gala day in Paris. The marriages of Philip II of Spain with Elizabeth of France, daughter of King Henry II and Catherine de Medici, and that of...

The dominant politics of France in the years 1570-72 were foreign, not domestic, and had to do with Spain. The clouds hung heavy over Spain’s dominions in spite of the suppressi...

But whatever the ratio may have been, the decline in the purchasing power of money was great. Between 1492 and 1544 Europe imported 279 millions worth (in francs) of gold and si...

The peace of Longjumeau, more than any treaty of the civil wars, was a tentative settlement, an armistice merely. It was chiefly compelled by the lack of funds of both parties a...

The insurrection of Amboise was not wholly displeasing to many even in the court. Huguenot dissidence and the discontent of many persons with the government gave the cardinal an...

Thanks to her own enterprise in pushing the war which had culminated with so much honor to France, and partly also to her skilful handling of the factions at court, Catherine de...

In the summer of 1561, France saw two separate assemblies convene: the adjourned session of the States-General at Pontoise and the conference of the leaders of the two religions...

After the fall of Rouen, the chief military design of the Guises seems to have been to protract the war, without giving battle, until the Germans with D’Andelot and Condé either...

[473] _Lettres de Pasquier_, II, 96. Mignet characterizes the provisions of the Edict of January as “généréuses, simples, et sages.” Mignet, “Les lettres de Calvin” (_Journal de...

The prosecution of the prince of Condé and the vidame of Chartres was pushed during the month of November in order to overcome any Huguenot activity in the coming States-General...

In this wise, after a respite of four years, the second civil war was precipitated. There was an exodus of Huguenots at once from Paris, some repairing to the prince of Condé, s...

[35] Tavannes, 244. In Spain it was the prevailing belief that France had been compelled to make the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis more through the troubles caused by the affairs of...

[593] In Provins, on their own initiative, the townspeople taxed their town, bailiwick, and _réssort_ (_sénéchausée_) to the amount of 7,000 livres _tournois_, the sum being imp...

[747] The estates of Burgundy declared in a memorial that it was impossible to maintain double worship in France and petitioned that Protestant worship might be abolished in tha...

The war in the south, during the months of these negotiations, had gone on in its own course almost unhindered by the government. Many of the men of service had gone with Anjou...

The massacre of St. Bartholomew, like a bolt out of a clear sky, precipitated a new storm—the fourth civil war. La Rochelle was the storm center, though Sancerre and Montauban w...

The factional rivalry which had been engendered during the course of the session of the States-General at Orleans was so great that this discord, combined with the agitation pre...

[1306] _C. S. P. Ven._, No. 439, November 9, 1568 and No. 448, January 6, 1569. The distress of commerce and the legal complications arising from the semi-piratical acts were ve...

French Protestants infringed both the letter and the spirit of the Edict of Amboise. The fact that Damville, who had succeeded his father the constable as governor of Languedoc...

The cardinal of Lorraine, while agreeing with Philip II, as to religion and heresy, looked with resentment upon the King’s attempt to appropriate the political destiny of Mary S...

The closure of the civil war was a necessary condition precedent to the war France now planned to wage with her “adversary of England” for the recovery of Havre-de-Grace. Cather...

[672] Barbaro gives details of the havoc wrought by this explosion (_C. S. P. Ven._, January 28, 1563); cf. _C. S. P. For._, No. 239, § 3, No. 323, § 18, February 17, 1563.

The duke of Guise and his brother were in such fear that they wore shirts of chain mail underneath their vestments, and at night were guarded by pistoleers and men-at-arms. On t...

franç._, II (1854), 230; _C. S. P. For._, 837 and 415, §12 (1562). I have purposely built this account upon Montluc’s narration in Book V of his _Commentaires_. An additional so...

_Ample discourse de ce qui s’est fait au siège de Poitiers_, 1569, new ed., 1846, by Beauchet-Felleau; _Mém., de Jean d’Antras_, ed. Cansalade and Tamizey de Larroque, 1880; see...

opposition in the Parlement, which twice rejected it by a plurality vote (_C. S. P. For._, No. 849, January 28, 1562; Claude Haton, I, 185, 186). Benoist, _Histoire de l’Edit de...