Srom t^e &i6rari? of qprofe06or ^antuef (ttliffer in (tttemorp of 3wbge ^amuef (giifPer (grecftinribge ^reeenfe^ fig ^amuef (tttiffer (grecfttnribge feon^ to f^ feiBratg of (Princeton Cfeofogtcdf ^eminarj? BX 4843 .S52 1834 v. 2 Smedley, Edward, 1788-1836, History of the reformed religion in France HISTORY OF THE REFORMED RELIGION IN FRANCE. BY TKK' REV. EDWARD SMEDLEY, M.A., LATE FELLOW OF SIONUV SUSSEX COLLEGE, CAMBUIDQE. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. II. NEW-YORK : pudlisiii::d by harper & brothers, NO. 82 CLIKF-STREET. 18 3 4. CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME. CHAPTER XI. Preparations for the Massacre — Mnrder of the Admiral — Gen eral Slaughter — Murder at the Louvre — Of Teligny and of La Rochefoucault — Escape of the Huguenots from the Faux- bourg St. Germain — The King's first Declaration — Renewal of the Massacre — The Miraculous Thorn — The King avows the Massacre — False Assertion of a Huguenot Conspiracy — Brutal Treatment of the Admiral's remains — The King's secret Orders to his Provincial Governors — Massacres in Lyons and other Cities — Joy at Rome — Evidences of Preconcert- ment— Capilupi — Abjuration of the Bourbon Princes— Irjter- view between Catherine and Walsingham— Posthumous Con- demnation of the Admiral — Execution of Cavagnes and Bri- quemaut — Contemporary Opinions in England .... 7 CHAPTER XII. Dispersion of the Huguenots — Siege of La Rochelle — La None employed to negotiate — He accepts the Command of the Gar- rison — His Motives — He endeavours to promote Peace — The Rochellois Ministers oppose him — He resigns his Command and withdraws — Fruitless Assaults — Heroism of the be- sieged Women — Ineffectual Attempt at Rehef by Mont- gomery — Disaffection in the Royalist Camp — The Duke of Anjou elected King of Poland — He raises the Siege — Peace — Siege of Sancerre — Famine — Lery's Narrative — Capitulation — Reluctant Departure of the King of Poland to his Domin- ions—His Reception by the Elector Palatine .... 5.3 CHAPTER XIII. Demands of the Huguenots rejected — Proposed Union with the Politiques — The Huguenots arm — Failure of an Attempt to carry off the Duke of Alencon— Policy of Catherine— Hasty 4 CONTENTS. flight of the Court from St. Germain's — Execution of La Molle and Coconnas — Attempt to implicate the Bourbon Princes — Escape of Conde — Capture of Montgomery — Death of Charles IX. — Regency of Catherine — Execution of Mont- gomery — Truce — Conferences at Milhaud — Return of Henry III. from Poland — Union between the Huguenots and Poli- tiques — Effeminacy and Superstition of the King — Death of the Cardinal of Lorraine — War renewed — Capture and Exe- cution of Montbrun — The Duke of Alencon treats with both the Huguenots and the Pope — Truce — Disorder of the Fi- nances — Bold Remonstrance of the Parliament of Paris — Es- cape of the King of Navarre — Formidable Army of the Insur- gents-T-Peace of Valery — Dissatisfaction occasioned by it 84 CHAPTER XIV. Ambitious Projects of the Duke of Guise — Origin and Progress of the League — Memoir of Nicolas David — First States-Gen- eral at Blois — The King declares himself Chief of the League — The King of Navarre appointed Protector of the Hu- guenots — Frivolity of Henry III. — Disadvantageous Circum- stances of the Huguenots — Beza and the Ministers oppose Negotiation — Peace of Bergerac — Ninth National Synod — Corruption of the Court — The Minions — Second Flight of the Duke of Anjou — Treaty of Nerac — Tenth National Synod — War rashly renewed by the Huguenots — Peace of Fleix 122 CHAPTER XV. Troubled State of France during the Peace — Du Plessis-Mor- nay's Correspondence — His Sketch of the Huguenot Re- sources — His Project for a general Union of the Reformed — Its Failure — His Letter to the Cardinal of Vendome — His bold Declarations to Henry III. — Eleventh and Twelfth Na- tional Synods— Death of the Duke of Anjou — The King of Navarre Presumptive Heir to the Crown — The Cardinal of Bourbon opposed to him by the Guises— Indecision of Henry III. — Manifesto of the League from Peronne— The King of Navarre challenges the Duke of Guise — Violent Edict of Ne- mours — Sixtus V. disapproves the League, but excommuni- cates the Bourbons— Their Reclamation — War of the three Henries — The Huguenots negotiate successfully with Eng- land and with Germany — Conference at Montbelliard— Imbe- cility of Henry III. — Conferences at St. Brie — Disposition of the Royal Forces — The Duke of Joyeuse defeated and killed in the Battle of Coutras— Bravery and Moderation of the King of Navarre 154 CONTENTS. O CHAPTER XVI. Causes of Inaction after the Battle of Coutras — Disastrous Re- treat of the Auxiliaries — Increased Power of the League — Death of Conde — Origin and Character of the Seize — Guise enters Paris notwithstanding the King's Prohibition — The Barricades — Flight of the King — Firmness of Sir Edward Stafford — Edict of Reunion — Guise Lieutenant-general — Sec- ond States-General at Blois — Assassination of the Guises — Death of Catherine de Medicis — Fury of the Parisians — The Sorbonne renounces Allegiance — Absurd Charges of Sorcery against Henry III. — Progress of Rebellion — The Duke of Mayenne nominated Lieutenant-general of the State and Crown of France — Conduct of the Huguenots — Treaty be- tween the two Kings — Their Interview at Plessis-lez-Tours 193 CHAPTER XVIL Attack on Tours — Battle of Senlis — Siege of Paris — Excommu- nication of Henry III. — Fanaticism of Jaques Clement — En- couraged by the Leaguers — He assassinates Henry III. — First Steps of Henry IV. on his Accession — The Siege of Paris raised — The Cardinal of Bourbon proclaimed Charles X. — Battle of Arques — Capture of the Fauxbourgs of Paris — Views of the King of Spain — Conduct of the Legate — Violent Decree of the Sorbonne — Battle of Yvry — Blockade of Paris — Death of the Cardinal of Bourbon — Famine in Paris — Military Pro- cession of the Clergy — The Prince of Parma relieves Paris — His subsequent Retreat — Rise of the Tiers-Parti — Council at Mantes — Death of La Noue — Escape of the Duke of Guise — Intrigues of the Seize — Murder of the President Brisson and two Counsellors avenged by the Duke of Mayenne — Siege of Rouen — Negotiation of Du Plessis with Queen Elizabeth 230 CHAPTER XVIIL Fresh Advance of the Prince of Parma — Skirmish at Aumale — Henry is wounded— Brilliant Retreat of the Prince of Parma — Death of Mar^chal Biron, and of the Prince of Parma — State of Henry's Religious Opinions — Meeting of the States- General in Paris — The Satyre Menipp^e- Conferences at Surenne — Excitement in Paris, occasioned by the Clergy — Henry summons the Prelates to his Instruction — Proposition by the King of Spain opposed by the Parhament — Capture ol Dreux — The Spaniards propose the Duke of Guise as King — Mayenne temporizes — State of Feeling among the Huguenots — Instruction and Abjuration of Henry IV 271 HISTORY OF THE REFORMED RELIGION IN FRANCE. CHAPTER XI. Preparations for the Massacre — Murder of the Admiral — General Slaughter— Murders at the Louvre— Of Teligny and of La Rochefou- cault— Escape of ttie Huguenots from the Fauxbourg St. Germain — The King's first Declaration — Renewal of ttie Massacre— The Mirac- ulous Thorn — The King avows the Massacre— False Assertion of a Huguenot Conspiracy — Brutal Treatment of the Admiral's remains — The King's secret Orders to his Provincial Governors— Massacres in Lyons and other Cities— Joy at Rome — Evidences of Prcconcertment — Capilupi — Abjuration of the Bourbon Princes — Interview between Catherine and Walsingham— Posthumous Condemnation of the Ad- miral — Execution of CavagnesandBriquemaut — Contemporary Opin- ions in England. The short interval of summer night which sepa- rated the eve of St. Bartholomew from its fearful dawn was employed in the disposition of troops at the most opportune posts of the capital : and it seems highly probable that during those few hours of guilty preparation various and perhaps contradictory orders were issued from the Louvre. It is little our intention however to renew the obscure and unsatisfactory inquiry which has so frecquently been agitated, as to the secret councils which immediately foreran the impending Mas- sacre. To what extent the king vacillated as 8 PREPARATIONS FOR THE [cH. XI. the appointed moment drew near ; whether he ac- tively gave instructions, or yielded no more than passive assent ; how far the great crime, which it cannot reasonably be doubted had long occupied his thoughts, awakened terror and remorse as he approached its brink : whether he now repented him of the evil, and would have turned aside from it, had he not been goaded on by the threats, the persua- sions, or the deceits of Catherine and his brother of Anjou ; are questions, for the complete solution of which history must be searched in vain. The facts of the enormous wickedness which was committed are distinctly in view ; but a thick darkness enve- lopes the proportions of infamy duly assignable to its separate contrivers. In like manner, we shall turn from the sickening episode of horror upon which we are reluctantly compelled to enter, as soon as its intimate and necessary connexion with our main story will per- mit us to escape. Its details have been often and amply given in many other narratives ; the contem- plation of them is eminently painful to any but a diseased appetite, thirsting for powerful excitement, and careless of the source, however foul, from which it may be derived. Nor should it be forgotten that too elaborate a portraiture of crime and suffer- ing, while it evinces somewhat of moral distortion in the mind of the artist, betrays also an ignorance of the just rules of his art. If it be his object to create vivid interest, and keenly to arouse imagina- tion, he may direct his fullest powers of execu- tion to some prominent group ; but he must sedu- lously refrain from weakening and perplexing his design by a confused multitude of detached figures. Day had not yet broken, when all Paris was awakened by the clang of the tocsin of St. Ger- main de I'Auxerrois, the signal at which it had been preconcerted that the troops should be on the alert. Many of the Huguenots who lodged in the neigh- A. D. 1572. j MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 9 bourhood sprang from their beds : and hastening to the palace, inquired the cause of this unexpected and untimely sound ; and to what purpose the throng of armed men was directed, whom they saw moving rapidly and tumultuously, in many directions, by torch-light. They were at first carelessly answered that a court spectacle was in preparation, and their further questions were rebutted with insolence, which led to blows. Meantime the Duke of Guise, accompanied by his uncle D'Aumale,* and the Bas- tard of Angouleme, advanced towards the Hotel of Coligny, where Cosseins, warned of their approach, had made fit dispositions for attack. The wounded admiral had been roused from a feverish sleep by the din of the alarm bell ; but confident in the re- cent friendly professions of the king, and in the fidelity of the royal guard by which he deemed himself to be protected,! he at first thought that some partial tumult had been raised by the Guisards, which would speedily be suppressed. As the noise increased and drew nearer, and as the report of firearms was heard in his own court-yard, he tardily and reluctantly admitted a suspicion of the truth ; and rising from his bed, notwithstanding the weak- ness which compelled him to lean for support against the wall of his chamber, he addressed himself to prayer, in company with his chaplain Merlin, and his few other attendants. | One of his servants, * riaude de Lorraine Duke of Aum&le, third son of Claude Duke of Guise, grandfather of Henry. t Jussit cubictilarium iectinn, (Eilivm cnnscendere, ad inclamandos mihtespriEsiitiarios a llegedatos, iithil vnnvs scilicet cogitans quam ab illi-i vim sibi fieri. Hn^iniot.is et Lullieranis Gnlliir. qum acciderint, p. 50, a Lalin Dialogue published at Orange in 1573, five months after the Massacre; and reprinted afterward as the first of the two Dia- logues in Itie Revtil-ilalni mix Fraticnis, piihljshrd in 1571, hoih in Latin and Trench, under the assiinicd name of Euschius I'hiladolphus ; and variously attributed to Bc7,a, to Doneau, and to Itarnaud. I.e Longi who notices both these Works (the Rfvcil-malin at considerable length, I8I52), does not appear lo have been aware of their identity. 1 Lecto consurgil, et, veslenoclvrnd svmptd, in pedes ad preces fact- endas erigilur, parieti innixus. Dc Thou, lii. 7. 10 THE ADMIRAL COLIGNY ATTACKED [CH. XI. Labonne, summoned by a loud knocking at the outer gates, had already descended with the keys ; and when Cosseins demanded entrance in the king's name, he opened them unhesitatingly and without apprehension. The daggers of the assassins, as they rushed in, prostrated him lifeless at the thresh- old ; and the five Swiss, warned by his fate, ran into the house, closed the door, and raised a hasty barricade with such furniture as they found at hand ; one of their number, however, fell beneath the shot which had excited the admiral's alarm, and the frail barrier which the others had constructed soon gave way under the blows of the assailants. As their steps were heard ascending the stair- case, Coligny, no longer doubtful of the event, turned, with an unaltered countenance, to his friends, and urgently warned them to consult their own safety. " For myself," he added, " escape is impos- sible ; and, happily, I am well prepared for the death which 1 have long anticipated. Human aid can no longer extricate me : but you need not be involved in my calamity, neither must your wives hereafter curse me as the author of their widowhood." The roof afforded them hope of secure retreat ; and over this they dispersed themselves, after having broken through the tiling.* The assassins, five in number, armed in shirts of mail, had now gained the door of the apartment. The first who entered was a Ger- man named Besme, nurtured from his childhood in the family of the Duke of Guise. Coligny, in his night-dress, calmly awaited their onset ; and when asked by Besme, in a stern and threatening voice, whether he were the admiral, replied at once in the affirmative ; pointed to his gray hairs as demanding * The escape of Ihe Chaplain Merlin was attended with very extra- onliimry circumstancos ; " ho Icaiit out of a window an, and Oe Serres, Co7n- metilaircs iv. 33. Uut a yet more jiarticular aicount has been given by Mr. .Sharon Turner, in one of his Txlracls Ooni a German Narrative of the Massacre, by an oye-wilncss, recenlly found in the episcopal Ar- <:hives at Wiener Neusiadt in Austria. Tt is there stated, that the four Swiss who endeavoured to tlirow Coligny out of a window, cut him sev- eral limes in the legs with their halberds during the struggle; that a French soldier discharged an aniucbuse into his inoulh, nevertheless, that " he still moved when he was tossed out." Reign of Elizabeth, ch. XXX. p. 320. The continuator of Sir James Mackintosh's Hist, nf Eng- land inistaUenly says, that BAiiies (Besme) " threw his (Coligny's) Jiead from Iho window." Vol. iii. p. £24. t De'l'liou, lii.7. This ferocious act is .attributed by others to the Duke of Guise. iUm. del'cstat, i. 28'J. De Serres, nt sup. i Eia. cnmmililnnes, feliciter inchoata perseqxiamxir '. ita Rexjubet. Do Thou, III sup. A. D. 1572.J Tin; MARKCHAL UE TAVANNES. 13 the provost of the mercJmnts, were assembled at tlie Hotel de Ville ; and, lest in the yet uncertain twi- light, any fatal mistake might array the assassins against each other, every man destined for the bloody service wrapped a white scarf round his left arm, and placed a cross of the same colour in his hat, as badges which might ensure recognition from his comrades.* In order that there might not be any want of sufRcient instruments, pains were taken to inflame the fury of the populace, by dark whispers of a conspiracy among the Reformed ; by using the king's name as authority for their extermination ; by offering pillage as a lure to the mercenary ; and by exciting a belief among the timid, that a struggle had arisen in which the safety of every Roman Cath- olic would be compromised, if he suffered a single Huguenot to escape. Many of the leading courtiers were employed in disseminating these false rumours, and, anjong them, few were more active than the Marechal de Tavannes. Of the equivocal fidelity of that officer, in an earUer stage of these religious contests, we have already had occasion to speak :t but he had now become a fiery zealot in the cause which he no longer doubted would predominate ; and mucli, both of guilt in advising the massacre, and of unmeasured barbarity during its execution, are too credibly ascribed to him by contemporaries. " On that morning," says Brant6me, " he showed great cruelty ; riding through the streets and calling to the rabble, ' Bleed ! bleed ! the doctors tell us that blood-letting is not less healthy in August than in May.' " One Huguenot, a gentleman of birth and valour, whose pen as well as his sword had been useful to the Duke of Anjou, after receiving six or seven wounds, clasped the knees of Tavannes and implored mercy. " He was the only one of the poor - PeTliou, lii. 9. Daviln, C. torn. i. p. 294. t Vol. i. J). 273. Vol,. II.— B 14 MASSACRE IN THE LOUVRE. [CH. XI. wretches whom he spared," continues the narrator ; and he leaves it in doubt, whether the motive which produced this solitary act of mercy were genuine compassion, or a feeling that it would derogate from his honour to kill a disabled gentleman prostrate at his feet.* The Louvre itself was among the earliest scenes of carnage ; and many of those attendants whom the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde had been treacherously advised to assemble about their per- sons, as a security against any evil project of the Guises, having been surprised and disarmed in their chambers, were led, one by one,f into the palace- court, and put to death in cold blood under the very eye of the king.J Even the apartment of the royal bride was polluted with blood. The fears of Mar- garet, according to her own most vivid relation, had been excited, although not directed to any definite object, by tlie unusual emotion which her sister of Lorraine betrayed in parting from her on the prece- ding evening ; and by the anxiety with which Cathe- rine suppressed some attempted communication. The night was afterward passed without repose ; for, according to the coarse and uncouth fashion of the times, her bed was surrounded by a large retinue of Huguenot gentlemen, thirty or forty in number, who were concerting with her husband an appeal against the Duke of Guise, which they resolved to offer to the throne on the following morning. — When Henry arose, at an early hour, to divert him- self in the tennis-court till the king should be ready to give audience, his bride, overcome by fatigue and ■watching, fell into a short slumber, from which she * Brantdme, Discours Ixxii. 5. torn. vi. p. 477. t Ad n>to, ad vno. Davila v. torn. i. p. 295. " They were comprHed to go out one after another by a little door, before which they found a great number of satellitpis, armed with halberts, who assassinated the Navarrcse as they came out." German Narrative, cited by Mr. Sharon Turner. Reign nf Elitabct/i, th x.xx. p. 319. t De Sorres, iv. 31. Mem. de Veatal, i. 290. Dialogus, p. 61. A. D. 1572.] MURDER OF TELIGNT. 15 was awakened by loud cries of " Navarre ! Na- varre !" and a hurried knocking at the chamber-door. Her attendant, thinking that the king was returned, undrew the bolt ; when a ghastly figure, bleeding from recent wounds, and closely pursued by four ar- chers of the Royal Guard, rushed in and sought a hiding-place. Not knowing whether her own life or that of the stranger were in jeopardy, the Princess jumped from bed, and found herself immediately clasped in the arms of the terrified suppliant. Her shrieks summoned the Captain of the Guard, who, reeking as he was from the continued slaughter of other victims below, nevertheless found a brutal amusement in the alnrm and embarrassment of the Drincess ; and broke into a rude laugh, while he re- juked the archers for their intrusion. Margaret, laving first clianged her night-dress, besmeared ■with blood in the past struggle, entreated that she might be conveyed to her sister's apartment ; and as she passed through the short corridor which sepa- rated their chambers, a second Huguenot, attempt- ing flight in vain, was pierced close to her side by a halberd ; while she fell almost senseless with terror into the arms of her escort.* As the tumult rolled onward to more distant quar- ters of the city, scarcely a chance of escape re- mained to any of the devoted sect ; and several of the persons most distinguished in our former narra- tive fell early sacrifices. The gallant and youthful Teligny, for awhile might indulge some hope of safety ; he had gained the house-top, and although seen and recognised by many of the assassins ruth- lessly engaged in the pursuit of others, so much was he beloved that no man's hand appeared raised for his destruction, till he was found and despatched by one unacquainted with his person.f The fate of * M/tnoircs de la Reine Marguerilt. Liv. i. 75. t De Thou. lii. 7. Dialosus, p. 63. 16 MU.1DF.R OF LA ROCIIEFOUCAULT. [cH. XF. La Roehefoucault, another, and not less illustrious nobleman, was attended with circumstances pecu- liarly affecting; and his was the sole instance in which Charles appears to have mar.ifested any touch of compassion, any inclination to relent. One other life, indeed, he took special pains to preserve, but in so doing he was chiefly actuated by selfishness ; and when he enjoined Ambrose Pare, his body-surgeon, not to quit the garde-robe, to which he had been summoned, till he received express permission, he well knew that his own health required the period- ical assistance of that attendant's unrivalled skill.* — In the gay and brilliant society of La Roehefoucault, the King professed to find extraordinary attraction ; and he granted him, although a Huguenot, unre- served access to his privacy. It was near midnight,f on the eve of the massacre, that this seeming fa- vourite prepared to retire from the palace, after many hours spent in careless hilarity. More than once did the King urge his stay, that they might trifle, as he said, through the remainder of the night ; or to obviate all difficulty, the count, if he so pleased, might be lodged, even in the royal chamber. But La Roehefoucault pleaded weariness and v/ant of sleep ; and, in spite of all opposition, took leave of his perfidious friend and sovereign in sportive words, which implied the freedom and familiarity of their intercourse. Even when he was afterward roused from sleep by the morning tumult at his door, no n)isgiving crossed his mind ; he imagined that the king had followed him to inflict one of those prac- tical jokes which suited the boisterous taste both of the times and of the individual ; and hastily throw- ing on his clothes, he assured the masked band, winch he did not scruple to admit, and among whom ♦ BrantOine. Discours. Ixxxviii. torn vii. p. 204, and the note. t In multam noctern, nempe undecimam, et co serius. Dialogus, p. 62. A. D. 1572.] ATTACK ON ST. GERMAIN. 17 he supposed Charles to be included, that he was not taken at advantage, that they could not now feel privileged to flog him, for he was already up and dressed. The reply was a thrust of the sword by one of the disguised company, wliich prostrated the unsuspicious victim at the feet of his murderers.* A considerable number of the Reformed, among whom were the Vidame de Chartres, and Gabriel, Count of Montgonierj^ more fortunate or more provident than their brethren, had taken up their abode southward from the river, in the Fauxbourg St. Germain ; some from inability to procure lodgings nearer the court, others from discreet reluctance to trust themselves within its boundary. A thou- sand armed men had been allotted for the attack on this remoter body ; and, but for the negligence and tardiness of the officers employed on the service, its destruction must have been certain. The de- tachment did not move till many hours after the appointed time ; and, in the interval, an unknown person, who we are told was never afterward seen or recognised! (so perilous at that season was a work of mercy), crossing the river, warned Mont- gomery and his friends of the enormities which had already been perpetrated williin the city. The first impulse of those brave and loyal gentlemen, when they received the intelligence, was to hasten to the • The catastrophe ofLa Rochefoucault is related at considerable length, and with much interest in the Mcmoires of the Sieur de Mergey, a gen- tleiriaii attached to his service, who overheard the king's last conversa- tion, an. 204. A. D. 1572.] THE HUGUENOTS. 19 of the Royal Guard who had loaded the king's car- bine.* The Duke of Guise returned from his useless pur- suit to the city, where the Royal Guards, continuing to select as their own peculiar quarry all Huguenots of mark and nobility, abandoned others of less note as a prey to the rabble. f Tiie first blood had been shed before dawn, and evening began to fallj before any restraint was imposed even -upon the furious passions which had been unbridled among the popu- lace. Proclamation was then made by sound of trumpet, that all the citizens on pain of death should with- draw into their houses, and that no one should dare to appear in the streets except the militai-y and the police. Murder and pillage became more regularlj'^ organized, but were by no means discontinued after the withdrawal of the mob.^ About two thousand Huguenots are believed to have been slain in Paris during the first day of massacre, || and their bodies, after having been stripped, were left as they fell. The king, with his whole court, including Catherine and the ladies of her train, walked round the neigh- bourhood of the palace to glut their eyes with a close and minute view of the appalling spectacle; and among the many abominations of the time, which it is the painful task of the historian to re- cord, none is more odious, more loathsome, and more disgusting, than the frontless immodesty, and stony hardness of heart, which degraded women * Note h. h. Uenriadf, Phant. II. VoHairc, in his Flistorical Writings, forthe most part sacrificod liiut to antithesis ; and none of his works of that class more abounds in petty inaccuracies than the Kssai sut les Guerres Civiles de France, appended to the Henriade, in which he gives an account of the St. Bartholomew. t Peculiari hncvebui pe-nso illis aftributn. De Thou lii. 7. i Sub vespcrnm. Do Tliou lii. 9. Circiter quintam jiomeridianum Dialo^u.i, p. fi8. ^ Mezerav, torn. iii. p. 1295. Ed. fol. 1685. II De Tho'u, lii. 0. 20 THE king's [cH. XI. of the loftiest birth and station during this most ex- ecrable promenade.* At the close of this day's carnage, the spirit of Charles recoiled from the obloquy which he foresaw must accompany his unparalleled crime ; and not less cunning than he had been cruel, he sought es- cape at the expense of his agents. He had already announced the attempt upon the admiral's life, in a circular despatch to his Provincial governors ; and as he was probably innocent of participation in that foul act, he had represented its attendant circum- stances with truth. t On the very night of the mas- sacre, he again forwarded couriers to the chief towns throughout the kingdom, but the letters which he then issued were designed to propagate false- hood. The king declared to his lieutenants, that the members of the house of Guise and their ad- herents, having received confident assurance that the friends of the admiral designed to inflict severe reprisals for the outrage which he had suffered, rose during the past night, and between one party and the other there ensued a great and lamentable se- dition. The Guisards overpowered the sentinels who had been provided for the security of the ad- miral's per.>on, put him and many of his retinue to the sword ; and massacred others in different parts of the city. So furious was this tumult, continued the king, that it was beyond his ability to restrain it as he desired, for all his guards and otlier disposable forces found enough employment at the time in maintaining the Louvre. He thanked God that it had subsided at the moment at which he was writ- ing; and he believed that it had originated solely in the private feud so long subsisting between the two powerful houses which he named. Having always foreseen that some great evil would result from that * T)i' Thou, lii. 7. Dinlnnvs, p. T.l. t Monumeiis inidtis de I' Hist, itc fYaticc Correspondance de Cliarki IX. et de Mandelot, Gouverntur de Lyon. XIII. dated Aug. 82. A. D. If) 72.] FIRST DECLARATION. 21 quarrel, he had done all in his power, he said, as every one must acknowledge, to terminate it amica- bly. He more particularly wished it to be under- stood, that his late Edict of Pacification had not in any way been infringed, and he still hoped to main- tain it as inviolably as heretofore. In order, there- fore, to prevent any risings and massacres which might occur in other parts of the kingdom, in con- sequence of the movement at Paris, he commis- sioned his governors to assemble all the forces at their command, and to take especial measures for the preservation of peace. A short postcript, an- nexed to many of these despatches, enjoined the officer to whom it was addressed to place implicit confidence in the verbal communication which the bearer was instructed to deliver.* To the nature of that mysterious communication, we shall find some key afforded by subsequent events. On the following morning, the enormities of the preceding day were renewed ; and although the har- vest of slaughter had been plentifully gathered already, care was taken to glean whatever few scat- tered ears might remain behindif The priests heightened tlve popular frenzy by the announcenient of a pseudo miracle ; and, in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents, a whitethorn was exhibited, which had put forth unseasonable blossoms, either produced by a caprice of nature, or purposely stinuilated by some chemical preparation.! Whether fraud or * The Despatch to Mnndelot, the contents of which we have abridged above {''nrresp. xiv.), is iiccompanicd by this Postcript. Ur. I.ingard has pointed to the Mem. de feslat, i. 405. to show that it was not an- nexed to all I he Circular Letters. t Quasi me.ise affiUim rt picnis manipuUs jactd, postridie spicas qtiai remanseranl sparxim cnllis^ebant. I)iiflos;7is. p. 70. % Sive sponle. qii'id aUqitando contini'it cum naivrd deficiente in eo planta est ut pniiiiis exaresr.at : siiv aqua t.epidu ali iiii;>n-loribus infu- sa. De Thnii, lii. 10. In the abusive notes on De Tbon piiblisheil by the Jesuit Michailt, under the assumed name of Job. Uiiptista Gallus, this passage h;is cilled down especial vituperation. Tlie latter conjec- ture ic riismisspil sumniarily, as aliogethor malicious; and ibe former is Mid 10 proceed from a spirit so entirely engrossed by secondary causes, 22 MIRACLE OF THE WHITE THORN. [cHAP. XI. accident occasioned the extraordinary appearance it was one among other phenomena which the per- secutors adroitly turned to advantage. The un- usual serenity of the weather was adduced by some fanatics as a sure token of the approbation of Hea- ven.* " This month," exclaimed another preacher, " is truly named August, how nu^rust moreover was yesterday !"t But the thorn was on all hands ac- knowledged to be an incontestible evidence of Divine favour. The citizens were invited by beat of drum to come and behold the prodigy, which was ex- pounded to be symbolical of the revival of the glorj' of France and of the resurrection of her former greatness, in consequence of the downfall of Pro- testantism. | It is worthy of remark, that although the Hugue- nots rejected the miracle, they nevertheless thought it worth while to propose an opposite allegorical in- terpretation of the fact. The blossoms, thej^ said, so unusual at that time of year, betokened that the true Church, stricken as she now might be, should hereafter be renovated and flourish : a position which they confirmed by applying the precedent of the Burning Bush ; the connection of which, how- ever, with their reasoning, is by no means obvious. It was added also, in an egregious spirit of trifling, that the very place in which the wonder had oc- as to be unable to recognise the immediate opemion of the Great First Cause. Thuani Opera, vii. 47. The nialoscus, however, shows De Thou's suspicion to have been well foiiiided ; quod a vetitlo quodam Fran- ciscano excngitatiim postea compertum est. p. 70. ♦ I)e Thou, lii 10. t Jacobus Carpr II fan's illam Ivcem, ad mensem alludens, Augi/stam scriptn edito dejincdicarit. Id. ibid. On this passage Michault remarks, that the writer, Muliitssel.sat .svio, et iiefastam did et nigerrimonotari, quod ea ViKTis Cathoticorlm rfe HtPreticurum perfidintrinmphavit. Ut. sup. 'I'hese notes were first printed at Ingolslad.in 1614 : two-and- thirty years, therefore, had elapsed since the Massacre, when a .lesuit promul,^ated this eulogy, as the calm result of meditation upon it in the silence of his study. i Oapilupi notices it, crime miracohdi T>lo,e scgnndelP irasuapiacatu epromessa difelicUi a quel Regno. Ln Strntasema, p. 81, A. D. 1572.] THE KING AVOWS THE MASSACRE. 23 curred proved that it was intended much more to support Innocence than to sanction an act of butchery.* Hitherto, Charles had persisted in his original dec- laration, that the Massacre had been projected by the Guises vv^ithout his knowledge, and perpetrated by them against his will. It is not possible to as- certain the secret causes which occasioned his sud- den change ; but it may be conjectured that the Princes of Lorraine were not less reluctant than himself to bear the whole weight of criminality, and that they were far too powerful to remonstrate with- out success. An argument also, not unlikely to in- fluence a king jealous of his authority, has been at- tributed to Catherine de Medicis and to the Duke of Anjou ; and they are said to have urged upon Charles, that he must be degraded in the estima- tion of foreign courts, if he continued to allow that he had been impotent to restrain any of his subjects, however exalted might be their rank, from enga- ging in an enterprise which he disapproved ; and that there was much less peril in at once avowing that he himself was the author of an act which, bloody as it might be, sufficiently implied the pos- session of great power, than in confessing that he was too weak to prevent its commission by others. The king, says De Thou, dreading contempt far more than hatred, yielded to these representations, and consented to declare that the massacre had been perpetrated by his command. f On the Tuesday morning, therefore, after cele- brating mass with great solemnity, the king held a bed of justice, and recounted to his assembled Par- liament the numberless injuries which he had suf- fered, during his minority, from Coligny and the self-styled Reformed; all of which, out of regard to the public weal, he had overlooked at the last peace. • De Thou, 111. 10. tH. lii. 11. 24 FALSE ASSERTION OF [CH. XI. Nevertheless, that the admiral, in order that nothing might be wanting to complete his wickedness, had plotted the death of himself, of the queen his mother, and of the princes his brothers ; nay, even of the King of Navarre, who professed the Huguenot Re- ligion. The object of these atrocious crimes was, in the first instance, to place the Prince of Conde on the throne; and afterward by his removal- also, which would dry up the entire fountain of the royal blood, to make way for the usurpation of the crown by Coligny himself. This great evil, the king af- firmed, was to be counteracted only by the admis- sion of another and an opposite evil ; and, notwith- standing his reluctance to shed blood, he had felt jus- tified in hazarding an extreme remedy to cure an extreme danger. He now therefore wished all men to know, that whatever punishments had been in- flicted were fully authorized by his royal command. If the proceedings which ensued had not ema- nated from a grave, deliberative body, they might be received as a bitter satire upon this conduct of the king. The first President, in a time-serving reply,* praised the wisdom which Charles had manifested in thus suppressing a most dangerous conspiracy ; and congratulated him upon his intimate practical acquaintance with that sound maxim of Louis XI., qui nescil dissinmlare nescii regnare. The assembly demanded permission to register the king's declara- tion " as a memorial of the transaction ;"t and it was agreed that heralds should proclaim through the streets of the capital, that murder and pillage were henceforward prohibited. Notwithstanding this proclamation, as the royal procession returned to the Louvre, a noble Huguenot was massacred close to the king's person ; and Charles, on learning the cause of the sudden tumult, turned round and * Tempori accommodate oratinni. Id. ibid. ^ Ad conaervandam rei memoriam. Id. ibid. A. D. 1572.] A HUGUENOT CONSPIRACY. 25 exclaimed, " Would to heaven that he were the last of them remaining- !" His wish was indeed not far from gratification. " There Avere few Huguenots killed in Paris on that and the following days," says the writer from whom we derive the above anecdote, " because there were few who survived."* How little credit was attached by contemporaries to this pretext of a conspiracy on the part of the admiral, may be readily determined by comparing the language employed by two only out of many writers of those times ; men who, however widely differing in character, were alike strongly attached to the interests of the court. The measured cau- tion with which Davila expresses himself, perhaps speaks his conviction of Charles's falsehood yet more loudly than the garrulous reserve (if we may so term it) of Montluc. " The king," says the for- mer, " most earnestly pressed a belief] upon the Par- liament, that the accident was unforeseen and not premeditated ; occasioned by chance and produced by- necessity, not matured by long and sagacious fore thought." If the Parliament had not adopted a different opinion, whence arose tlie need for this very earnest persuasion '\ If Davila, an eleve of Catherine, had believed the king's statement, is it likely that he would have forborne from giving his testimony to its veracity? Montluc, with whom our readers are already well acquainted,! is far more open. The queen, he says, wrote to tell him of the discovery of a great conspiracy, which had occa- sioned all Ijiat afterward happened ;i^ but, for his part, he believed that Charles had never forgotten * Eli die tt rceteris sequcnt'bxis jiaiici Hug^mioti Luletim inter/ecti sutit. nempe i/wa pauci supereranl. Dialngiis, p. "0. t Stiidosavieiite si aforzo a persuadere. Davila, 1. v. torn. i. p. 298. J Vol.i. p. 237, &c. ■ ^ Je srnij bien r'eque fen creus. Ufait manva's offender son maistre. Jje Roy n'oukl.a jamais i/vand M. l' Admiral linj fit fnire lai traitle de Meaux a Paris plus v-xle que la pas. Nous- pcrnnns Ventendemeiil n^i boil ilu coup, et ne songronsque lex Roys onl encor plus de cwur out Vol. II.— C 26 BRUTAL TREATMENT OF [CH. XI. the admiral's .concern in the affair at Meaux ; for princes have a far better memory for offences than for services. " I know what I beUeve ; it is but bad policy to offend one's master." The first President of the Parliament who thus bowed himself to circumstances, was the father of the intrepid, upright, and uncompromising historian De Thou ; and no small proof of the scrupulous ve- racity of that great writer's narrative may be de- rived from his having thus honestly recorded a weak- ness which he must have condemned, and must have wished should be unremembered. Had it not been for his statement, it would indeed have been altogether forgotten ; for every document connected with the St. Bartholomew massacre, even the very registra- tion of which De Thou speaks above, has been care- fully withdrawn from the archives of the Parliament of Paris.* These efforts, however, to obliterate the records of crime, and to escape the execrations of posterity, have been altogether fruitless. Parch- ments may have disappeared and muniments may have been destroyed, but an ever-during memorial of the main features of the transaction must, alas ! continue to exist while any faculty of remembrance belongs to mankind. Three days had now elapsed since the murder of the admiral, and during the whole of that period, his body had been subjected to the vilest insults of the infuriated rabble. It was at first tossed rudely into a stable ; then, after having been disfigured by sav- age and unseemly mutilation, the head severed from the trunk and the extremities torn from the limbs, it was dragged through the streets to the banks of the Seine. f But so early a repose beneath the nojts ; et qu'ils oublient plustost les services tjjte Ics offences. Montlac'. Commcntaires liv. vii. torn. ii. p. 558. EJ. 1661. * Allen's Replij to Lingard's Yindicnt'on, p. 76. t Per vicos ad Sequana: ripam tractum, quod oUum otninosd voce, qncnno's nihil tale ogitans, prcpsni;ieraf. He Thou, lii. 7. For the evil omen see vol. i. p. 376, and De Tbou, Oe vita sua, lib. i. torn. vii. p. A. IK 1572.] THE admiral's remains. 27 waters would have disappointed the fierce cravings of a malice which pursued its victim even beyond death. Till the morning of which we are now speaking-, the corpse continued to be trailed through the city ; and when the shapeless mass was at length suspended in chains by one leg from the gib- bet of Montfaucon, a slow fire at the same time was kindled beneath ; in order (to use the forcible lan- guage of De Thou) that every element in turn might contribute some share to its destruction.* De Thou himself witnessed this most ignominious exposure ; and he called to mind, with bitter reflections on hu- man instability, the scene of pomp and splendour in which he had recently beheld the veteran warrior engaged, and the triumphant anticipations which he had then heard him express respecting the imagined war in Belgium. f The king also visited these mangled remains ; and Brantome has attributed to him on that occasion, a speech originating with Vi- tellius. When some attendant turned aside to es- cape the offensive smell, Charles observed that " the body of a dead enemy always savours sweetly. "J The anecdote may not be authentic ; but even if it is not so, it sufficiently evinces the contemporary estimate of Charles'^s cold-blooded ferocity. 10. Even these cowardly outrages on the (lend have found grace in the eyes of Michault. Nam qtwd aliud man upretium dehcbatur liomm i sac- rorum, si qu'squam al'iis, osort .' is his comment on the above passage from De Thou, ib d. p. 47. * Ut per omnia elementa veluti torqueretur, nam in terrd occisus, aquis merstis, i^ni snhjectus, postremo in atrepepriidif. Ibid. t Vol. i. p. 3S0. DeThou, i>i: v^td .s-nd, lib.i. torn. vii. p. II. DeThou, while going to mass on the day of St. Banholomew, had seen the bodies of two Huguenots with whom he was acnuainted, dragged to the river; and shocked and terrified by the spectacle, he kept within doors during the remainder of the massacre. Afterward, on visiting his brother near the Gate of Montiiiartre, lie was taken to some rising ground, from which he had a view of tiie gibbet at Montfaucon. t Di.ir.nurs Ixxviii. tom. vii. p. 200. Similar words are recorded of one of the tyrants of ,\rihian History. When the Khalif Almamom ^bn AM, in the beginning of the lllh century had usurped the disputei} 28 THE admiral's head sent to home. [ch. XI. It is stated that Coligny's head was carried in the first instance to the Louvre ; and a doubt appears to have existed at the time whether it was conveyed afterward to Madrid or to Ronie.* The recently pubhshed correspondence between Charles and the Governor of Lyons decides the question : " I have received the letter which your majesty has been pleased to write," are the words of a despatch from Mandelot, dated the 5th of September, " in which your majesty informs me that you have been advised of the departure of a messenger conveying the head of the late admiral to Rome ; and in which also your majesty enjoins me to note the arrival of the messenger, to arrest him, and to take from him the head. I have accordingly adopted due precautions, that in case any such person should come, your majesty's order shall be executed. No person has lately passed through this city on his way to Rome, excepting a gentleman named Paul, belonging to the Duke of Guise, who quitted Lyons only four hours before the arrival of your majesty's de- spatch."! Who can doubt that this "gentleman belonging to the Duke of Guise," was the bearer of the most welcome offering which could be tendered to the Cardinal of Lorraine, who was at that time in Rome^ The pious care of Francis Montmo- rency, whom either his superior good-fortune or sa- crovvn of Morocco, he suspended the heads ofhis enemies whom he had put to death, round the walls of his capiial ; and answered the remark concerning their evil odour, by a speech which Conde has given as fol- lows. Los espinht.t lie esas cnhazas guardan esta cndnd. y el olor de ellas es aromalico ij soave jiara los que me aman y son leaks, y pestilente y mortal para tos qiir me ahorrecen ; asi qtte no as de cuidadn, qve yon se bieu lo qur conviene a la sahid piiblca. H-ist. de la Doin:nacion de los Arabes en Espana, torn. ii. cap. 57. p. 438. * Branl6ine, Discours. l.xxix. lorn. vi. p. 301. t Cnrrespnndanre, .wiii. p. 57. De Thou positively states capUe am- putate) quod Roma77t iisqitr portotnm est. lil. 7. The Editor of Mandclot's Corres|U)nil(MU-e niisial^enly represents De Thou as hiving spoken with doubt on the subject. Preface xii. Tavannes has mentioned the fact in Equally positive terms. Sa Ute envoyie A Rome. Mim. p. il9. Ed. Fol. sine loco aut anno. A. D. 1572.] SECRET ORDERS OF THE KING. 29 gacity had preserved amid the general destruction of his friends,* at length stealthily detached from the^ gallows what remained of the admiral's body. For a while he dared not commit it to consecrated ground ; and it was deposited in a leaden coffin, and kept in a secret chamber at Chantilly, till the ar- rival of less disturbed times permitted its transfer to Chastillon, and its interment with fitting solemnity in the ancestral vault of the Colignys.f While the steam of innocent blood yet mounted to Heaven from almost every dwelling in Paris, the hands by which it had been so profusely shed were raised in mockery of devotion ; and on the Thurs- dayj of this week of horrors, the king attended a solemn thanksgiving for the suppression of the fabricated conspiracy. At the same time he issued fresh circulars to the provinces, testifying in the outset his determination to observe the conditions of the last peace, and yet in direct contradiction ta that edict, enjoining the Huguenots to abstain from all public or private assemblies ; in failure whereof the governors were instructed " to fall upon them and to cut them in pieces as enemies of the crown."} * Vol. i. p. 329. t De Thou, De Vildsitu,l\b. i. torn. vii. p. 11. Davila, lib. v. torn. i. p. 296. t Cflpilupi is mistaken as to the day of thanksgiving, which both De Tliou, lii. 10, and the writer of the I) alni;us, fix on TJiursday the 28lh. But the Italian writer gives the reasons which occasioned ttiis celebra- tion with a simplicity which, except for the horrible recollections awak- ened by it, would be altogolhor ludicrous. // Ri m Purgi vcs;:; ndo tutta la cttd sntt.oxnprn, et tbita ili mftffve. et piena d'hombili spettacoU di morti, estnln sia la mas;gi<)r partede gH huomhii di magsiore auto- rita apprrsxn di lorn, il Mmtidi matl'ua. due giorni dnpn prmcipiatn la slToge, aitt 26 d' Agost ■, ando alia Chesa a render ledel/ite graliea Dio di tnnfa priisperila. Lo Strntagema, p. 42. ^.lulremeitt Id ou ilz ne se rtmldrneiit retirer apris le diet advertisse- nient que voiis leuren aurez fa'Ct, vmis leur conrrez et feiez courir sus, et les taillrrez rn pieces comme eiinemiisde ma Couronne. Corr^spoiul- ance, xvii. p. 53. VVordi) to a similar effect are cmploved in a larger draft of Instructions to the Duke of" Guise, as Governor ofCtiarnpagno, for his coniluct to the Huguenots in that province. For a transcript of the original of that very interesting document, dated Aug. 30, 1572, and bearing the sign manual of Charles IX., now preserved in the Library of C 2 30 SECRET ORDERS OF THE KING, [cH. XI. " Moreover/' continues this despatch, "^ whatever verbal instructions I may have given to those mes- sengers whom I have heretofore forwarded to you, or to my other governors or lieutenants, when I had just cause to apprehend and fear certain sinis- ter events, well knowing the conspiracy which the said admiral had formed against me, all those in- structions I have revoked, and do now revoke, will- ing that neither by you nor by any others should any part of them be executed." But the blast laden with destruction, which had before gone forth, was not thus easily to be recalled, and the fearful scenes enacted at Paris were imi- tated in many other parts of the kingdom.* When Mandelot acknowledged this second despatch,! he at the same time referred the king to an account already transmitted to him of occurrences which had taken place before the revocation of the for- mer verbal orders had arrived, and which clearly evinces their atrocious nature. That their ten- dency indeed should ever have been doubted is not a little surprising. The written despatches con- tained soothing expressions to the Huguenots, whom it was necessary to deceive till the provincial garri- sons were strengthened ; but what could be the ne- cessity for any verbal orders, unless they contained matter contradictory to that which had been writ- ten ? Unless they enjoined deeds of which it was not deemed convenient that written evidence should the British Mu.scum, (Bibl. Egerton 9.) we are indebted to the great kini ness and urbanity of .lolui Jlolmes, Esq. one of the assistant curators of MS.S, in that Cnllertion. * In the arcliives of Nantes is still preserved a I.etler from the Duke of Bourbon to IMoutpcnsier, govoriior of that city, who had distinguished himself in Paris, on the St, Bartholomew, bearing date Aug. 26lh, and enjoining the magistrates to imitate the exairiple which had been set by the capital. " Par Id fintention de sa Majestr est assfz conmie pmir le traitement qui se doit f aire aux Huguenots des autres vilUs." Daru, Hist, de Bretagne, torn. iii. liv. ix. p. 288. t Sept. 5. A. D. 1572. J RAPACITY OF MANDELOT. 31 exist? Or why should the same prince, who did not scruple to avow that the great massacre at Paris had been executed by his commands, be thought too merciful to have authorized the slaugh- ter which ensued in the provinces ! Is it forgotten that Sully tells us he had in his hands documents, by which it appeared that the king extended his fury even beyond the bounds of France, by instigating foreign courts either to follow his example, or at least to refuse asylum to the Huguenots]* From the day, indeed, on which the first messen- ger had arrived, the streets of Lyons ran with blood. In obedience to the king's written orders, and to that luhich the Sieur de Perat\ told him on the part of his Majesty, Mandelot immediately took such mea- sures " that the lives and property of the Re- formers were at his disposal without any tumult or scandal. "J For the remainder, whether we follow his own jejune official representation, the detailed narrative given by De Thou, or the rapid sketch by Capilupi, the " disposal" of those unhappy wretches was most pitiable. Each of the above-named ac- counts agrees in relating that the Huguenots were distributed in various places of confinement, that some of the prisons were forced by the populace, and that their inmates were massacred. The chief difference regards numbers. Mandelot himself allowed that about two hundred were killed in the archbishop's palace, but he expressed conviction that the others would be secure in the retirements which he had selected for them. But on the even- ing after he had thus written, those asylums, as he wished them to be considered, were sacked, and * Memoircs, lib. torn. i. p. 4-1. Ed. I.ondres, 1778. 1 This must be the Uuperaciis whom De Thou mentions as bearing orders, vellr ar. jiibrre. Regemut Lugdunenses Parisiensium exemplum sequerentur. lii. 12. \ Que et les cars el les b'liis de ceulx de la Relliffion aurnient esle saisiz et m/s soubs voire main sans aucun tumulte ny scandalc. Cor- 'expondnvre, xvi. p. 45. 32 RAPACITY OF MANDELOT. [CH. XT. the prisoners torn ni pieces. No specimen of more shameless avidity for g-ain exists than is displayed in the remainder of this letter. The king is in- formed in it that all the property, goods, merchan- dise, and papers of the Huguenots have been se- cured ; and he is counselled not to make any dona- tion from them till their full value has been ascer- tained : " and I," concludes this most disinterested of governors, " will not be the first to make any demand upon your majesty's bounty ; feeling well assured, that if you once begin with any others, 1 shall be so far honoured as not to be forgotten."* Not many days afterward, we find him pleading with the king against a charge which seems to have been Avhispered in the royal ear, that several rich Hugue- nots had been suffered to escape. " Sire," are the remarkable words sufficiently evincing the charac- ters both of the writer and of the sovereign to whom they were addressed,— " Sire, I most humbly entreat you to believe that 1 most deeply regret that any one individual has been saved ; and that not a single one has been so through my means. "f Yet, Mandelot, before these damning testimonies of ava- rice and blood-thirstiness had been produced against him, was numbered by more than one modern writer among the few generous spirits who shrank from the execution of their king's sanguinary decrees. We shall perceive that some of his contemporaries formed a juster estimate of his merits. J De Thou attributes the carnage at Lyons, not to the direct orders, but to the connivance of Mandelot ; who purposely absented himself at the time of its committal, and gave only an implied permission * Correapo-nthmce. xri. p. 49. t Id. xxi p. TO. } The Kditor of llie Corrrsjwvdancc has riled some passages from mo- dern pens, in whieh Mandelot is enlo^'ized for having revised obedience to the knig's orders. A truer account will be found in the extract from Capilupl, which we give a little onward in the text : and in the narrative, De FuTorhus Gallic. s. written ininiedialely after the massacre, under the name of Varamund. Ixxxi. A. D. 1572.] MASSACRE AT LYONS. 33 beforehand. Turning to the second mcs.sen2:er, who confirmed the statement of De Perat, one Peter of Auxerre, a king's advocate, notorious for former crimes, he addressed him with a blasphemous perver- sion of Scripture, " That which Christ once said to Peter, now, Peter, say I to thee, Whatsoever thou shalt bind or loose shall be loosened or shall be bound :"' and the utterance of this parody on the words of the Prince of Peace, was the signal for almost immediate rapine and massacre.* The num- ber killed at the archbishop's palace, according to De Thou, was three hundred ; the number which perished in the city altogether thirteen hundred, of both sexes and all ages. Among them was the musician Guardimel, whom we have already men- tioned as the composer of the tunes to the Psalms of ISIarot and Beza.f Burial was refused to the mur- dered heretics. The Rhone, through its whole downward course, was choked by their floating corpses ; its waters and fish were for a long time ren- dered unfit for use ; and the astonished inhabitants of distant villages on its banks imagined that some great battle had been fought, and trembled with the apprehension of an invading enemy. J. In the narra- tive of Capilupi, the " matchless order and consum- mate prudence" with which Mandelot executed his instructions, awaken a rapturous eulogy. " The heretics," he says, " were taken calmly and quietly one by one, like so many cattle ; and fearful and wonderful was the spectacle to see the greater part of them, without the slightest tumult,^ lying with their throats cut in the Piazza, naked as the beasts. *DeThnu, lii. 12. t Vol. i. p. 50, note. t One circumstance is too horrible for more than a passing notice; opim orihiis radaverbui ad ad pern cnnfici-yidam.pharmacnplis id de po.irenlibiis concessit. DeThoij, ihid. It is corroborated by Varamund. $ Scn.iai'eders alcunliimulto (the very words employed by Mande- lot in his despatch to the king) ; la maggior parte di loro scannati su la Piazza, ig-nudi cnme bestic. 34 NUMBERS OF THE MASSACRED. [cH. XI. Another division, in order that less alarm might be created among the populace,* was thrown into the river ; so that, in less than two days, not a soul re- mained ahve, not a single individual could save him- self !"t The pages of contemporary authors abound in nar- ratives of similar enormities committed in many other parts of France. One thousand Huguenots perished at Orleans, five hundred at Rouen. J A writer, who professes his inability to relate more than a very small portion of the sufferings of the Reformed, enumerates eleven principal towns in which they were massacred by wholesale, and dwells, with a particularity sufficiently avouching the correct- ness of his information, upon many specific instances of atrocious cruelty. t^i If other evidence of the great extent of this persecution were wanting, ample proof is afforded by the king's own proclamation for its suppression. II The general thirst for blood which Charles had inflamed was not indeed to be allayed without copious draughts. Two months elapsed before the persecutors, wearied with carnage, dropped their blunted swords ; and De Thou, per- haps, falls short rather than exceeds in his computa- tion, when he fixes the whole number of Huguenots who perished at little below thirty thousand ; of that number at least one-third may be allotted to Paris-l * Per mm spaventare il popolo. t Lo Stratagema, p. 41. JDeThon, iii. 12. ^ iUm. de r etat, torn. i. |] In a letler to the Dukeot Gui.se, dated so early as Sept. 18, Charles speaks of heaucmip de sacnni^emen.t et pdlenes de maisons de civx dr la dite Relligion, tant aiix champs qii' mix villcs. .Mrm. de I'estat. torn. i. p. 416. And in a later circular, on tlie 28lh October, he admits the com- mission of ni finis meiirtrn;. pilkries, ft ravssiniens. Id. p. 577. ir f'apilupr(i). 4 n says 25.000; !«iilly (liv. i. torn i. p. 54), 70.000. Pere- fixe, a Uoinan t:alliolic and Arctihishop of I'aris, has ral.'ied the nuiiilier tonearly 100,000. It would lie unpisi to that most excellent and exem- plary prelate, when mentioning his name in connexion with the St. bar- iholomcw, If we onjitted to hciicc Uie indignation with. which bed;;- A. D. 1572.] EXULTATION AT ROME. 86 When intelligence of the massacre was first an nounced at Rome, the Vatican gave loose to un- bounded joy. The Pope* and Cardinals proceeded at once from the conclave in which the king's despatches had been read, to offer thanks, before the altar, for the great blessing which Heaven had vouchsafed to the Romish See and to all Christendom. Salvoes of artillery thundered at nightfall from the ramparts of St.Angelo ; the streets were illuminated ; and no victory ever achieved by the arms of the Pontificate elicited more tokens of festivity. The Pope also, as if resolved that an indestructible evi- dence of the perversion of moral feeling which fa- naticism necessarily generates should be transmitted to posterity, gave orders for the execution of a com- memorative medal. He had already been antici- pated in Paris; and the effigies of Gregory XHI. and of Charles IX. may still be seen, in numismatic cabinets, connected with triumphant legends and symbolical devices, illustrative of the massacre. f nounced it. Action execrable, qui n'avo t jamais eti, et qui n'anra, s'it plastd Dieu, jamais de pareillc. Hist. f!e ffenri le Grand, p. 29. Laval's simplicily on this point, as well as on a good many others, is not a little atnusiiig. He rejects the coinpuialion of Ue Thou. "Really he cannot be credited in this; for since the waters of the Seine, Loire, Marne, and Rhone, tvere artualhj turned into blood for general days, there mast ba certainly a greater quantity spilt than what can be alTorded by the slaugh- ter of 30,0(10 men, good part whereof were slain in places not lying upon the banks of those rivers." Hist, of the Ref. in France, vol. iii. Part L Book \ . p. -137. Historians should be cautious in their use of figurative language, for there is no knowing by what sort of commenta- tors they may happen to be illustrated. * How little reliance can be placed on the testimony of the lively and entertaining Hrantftiiie, when unsupported, is plain, from his account of the tears shed by Ptus V. on receiving the news of ihe St. Bartholo- mew. Dtscoitrs l.xxi.x torn. vi. p 303. It is almost needless to add, that Pius died on the 1st of May preceding the massacre. t A vignette o( the Papal Medal is given as a headpiece to the Epitome of the xlixth Book of DeThou, in the Mid volume of the London edition. The obverse bears the Pope's head ; the reverse an Angel, carrying a sword in his right hand, a crucifix in his left, employed in Ihe slaughter of a group of both sexes. The legend is Hi'GnNOTORtM Strages, 1572. And see Bonanni yiimismata Pontif. Rnmnn. !. p. 336 (tig. 27), where the crucifix in the hand of the Angel is said to bear relerence to the white cross marked on the doors oi the Huguenots, and borne in the 36 JOY OF THE CARDIXAL. [cH. XI. The Cardinal of Lorraine presented tlie messen- ger with H thousand pieces of gold, and unable to restrain the extravagance of his delight, exclaimed, that he believed the king's heart to have been filled by a sudden inspiration from God, when he gave orders for the slaughter of the heretics.* Two days afterward, he celebrated a solemn sersice in the Church of St. Louis, with extraordinary magnifi- cence ; on which occasion, the Pope, the whole ec- clesiastical body, and many resident ambassadors assisted. An elaborate inscription was then affixed to the portals of the Church, congratulating God, the Pope, the college of Cardinals, and the Senate and People of Rome, on the stupendous results and the almost incredible effects of the advice, the aid, and the prayers which had been offered during a pe- riod of twelve years. t hats of the assassins. " Those medals," says Missoii, in his Voyage to Italy, " are become very scarce, yet I obtained some of them by the assist'ince of my friends." lie irieniions also three picinres, psinled by order of Gresnry, ill the Hall of Itie Ambassadors in the Vatican. One represented Ihe Admiral shot by Maurevel ; another his murder : and the third bearing, as an inscription. Rex Caro/iis necevi prnlm/. The delivering: of (he news of his assassination lo the Kins. l)e Thou de- scribes both gold and silver medals struck at Tans. The legend round the king's head in one was Vihtis in Rkbki.i.ks ; the device on the reverse two columns (the ordinary device of Charles), the legend Pii tas KXiiTAViT JisrrriAM. In the other, the legend on the obverse was Caholi s IX. Rkbki.lum Dumitor ; the device on the reverse, Hercules ■with his club and a lighted torch destroying the hydra, liii. 1. See also M 7)1. de I'etat, loin. i. p .386. * Quant ail Cardinal de Lnrrahie, qui enjit ce bel Arch Trivmphal a Rome, il ne fait njcllc mention de ceste Conjvrntion, mn s attribite ta toute (I vne SDudanc insp raion de Den an roeiir dii Kny. .••}:ert s- sement an Lecttur \)rvt\\i'<\ to the Krench tianshiiion of IjO Stralaiiuna, p 8. We do not remeiiiher to \r\vv seen the 'f riuniph-il Arch mriitioiied elsewhere. The reader cannot fad lo notice the iinidied disbelief of the Cardinal of Lorraine in any Huguenot conspiracy. Walsingham. writing home to IJiirkigh a lew months afterward, gives a striking impression of the ill repute in which the Cardinal of Lorraine was held. " All men look for some mischievous issue of their goveninient. It lacketh but the Cardinal of Lorraine's presence to has- ten the same In its full ripeness." Nov. 1, 1572. Digges, Complete Am- bassador, p. 281. t Duodecennatiwn precutn et votorum. Ue Thou, liii. 4. A. D. 1572.] THE STRATAGEM OF CAPILUPI. 37 Wlien the Cardinal of Lorraine indulged in this unchristian exultation over his fallen enemies, he might plead the excuse, slight and inadequate as it is, of having been engaged in a long personal and political collision ; during which angry passions were necessarily excited, and perhaps could not fail to establish dominion over a heart unaccustomed to self-discipline. But what shall be said of a man of letters and a foreigner, one removed from the scene of contest, and unconnected with these demctralizing strifes, who from the calm retirement of his study could eulogize a deed smelUng so rankly to Heaven ! Perhaps no more remarkable monument exists of the extent to which the hardening influence of big- otry can pervert the human mind, than is afforded by the little volume, the Stratagema of Capilupi, to which we have more than once had occasidn to allude. It was composed within a month after the commission of the foul act which it panegyrizes ; and it was inspected and patronised by the Cardinal of Lorraine. The writer, therefore, was well schooled in his subject : he evinces no mean powers of narration ; and he particularizes and dwells with undissembled pleasure, upon the various circum- stances of horror with which he had become familiar. His main object Avas to build up that hypothesis which some later Romanists have sought to destroy ; and with all the advantages afforded by living at the very time, and by possessing intimate access to one best acquainted with the secret policy of the French Court, and who himself had often touched the springs by which it was directed, he blazoned abroad the massacre as the result of a long and deeply medi- tated design. Of his general style and mode of rea- soning some judgment may be formed from the following specimen. " And here I must not pass by the greatness of this action, nor omit to consider and to weigh the virtue of the king and queen, and Vol. H.— D 38 CAPiLUpr. [chap. xi. of their counsellors, in adopting this noble and gene- rous project ; their dexterity in handling it ; their art in dissembling, their prudence in concealing it; their ardour in pursuing, and their great happiness in finally executing it. To say the truth, if we diligently examine all these things, not only are the enactors worthy of everlasting glory, but no one can doubt that they were elected and set apart bj'^ the all-powerful Redeemer to minister His eternal will. Through their means, He brought to perfection a work which must be aflirmed to proceed from His infinite sovereignty. Every man moreover must be forced to confess and to acknowledge that this action was premeditated, conceived, and put in train many months beforehand, and did not spring from accident ; neither was it eventually provoked by the insolence of the Huguenots after the wound of tlie admiral. Some persons,^! know, profess that opinion, and are anxious to make others also believe it ; averring that the assassination of the admiral might be premedi- tated, but that the general massacre happened casu- ally, and resulted from the necessity of circum- stances. The falsehood of this notion vvill plainly ap- pear, if we pxamine all the passages of the affair, and the many tokens of forethought and design which the king and queen for a long time had manifested, at various seasons and to different persons."* If it were not for the indisputable certainty of the pub- lication of this tract two hundred aiid sixty years ago, Capilupi might be thought to address himself in these words to the rakers up of the dead ashes of former incredulity, who have endeavoured in our own * Lo Sfrafagcma,j) 67. In other places Capilujii rails the massacre un gloriosofatfo—qtiestofelicissimn tmtfaio; and again he says more fuWy, ronsiUerandnsi poi la felecita cotlaqvalt un tawonegotio s>a per- venuto a buonfmc incnsi breiie tempo, nnn si pud reilar senza stvpore, e di non ritnrnor sempre n qiiesto pii.tso di conchnidff '. nectssariamcnte eke il lutto sia slata npcra e vnlonta di Dia, qui A tericoniid motua v'oluit visUaie jaieliem suam, p. 77. A. D. I572.] EXULTATION AT MADUID, 39 lime to kindle them into new flame by the breath of partisanship.* In Madrid, \h<^ news, it is said, was received with scarcely less ecstasy than at Rome. So great was the expedition of the courier by whom it was con- veyed, tliat he travelled th'-ee days and tliree nights without repose ; and the King of Spain at first scarcely credited that intelligence so joyous could be true. The letter of Charles at length convinced him that he might indulge the gratifying belief; and without a moment's loss of time, he sent the. cou- rier on to the Admiral of Castile. That minister was at table when he was interrupted by a loud cry from one entering the banqueting-room, " News, news, good news ! AH the Lutherans, and especially the chiefs, were put to the sword in Paris three days since ; only three of them," continued the bearer of these glad tidings, *• have survived. Vandomillo" (the little Vendome, as the Spaniards affected to call the King of Navarre), " because he had married the king's sister : the Prince of Conde, who is but a boy ; and the Count of Montgomery, who has saved himself by a miracle, not of God but of the devil, having ridden seventy leagues on horseback without stopping." The Duke D'Infantado (who, in excuse for his simplicity, we are informed, was a very young prince, and as yet unexperienced in courtsf ) happened to be among the company ; and he put a natural question, whether Coligny and his partisans were Christians 1 When answered in the affirmative, he added an equally natural expression * When the library of the Vatican was at Paris, M.de Chateaubriand discoverer! in it some despatches written in ciphi^r from Ihnt city, by Salviali, Itie papal nuncio, between July 5 ai;i| Nov. 27, 1572. M. de ChateaubrjaiMi inferred from those lioumenls that the massacre was not premeditated. Sir .lames Macl«intosh, to whom they were commu- nicated, remained unshaken in his former opinion !o the contrary. The evidence is examined al l?n!jth by the continuator of Sir .lames Mack- intosh's Ws/. of E'u;larid(vn]. iii. p.2S3), and it plainly resolves itself into the single and unsupported assertion of Salviali. t Fort jeune Prince et peu encor pmtic. 40 THE KING OF NAVARRK [cH. XI. of astonishment, that being both Frenchmen and Christians they should have been slaughtered like so many beasts !* The youth of the two Bourbon princes, the royal blood of which they partook, the alliance which Henry in particular had contracted, but six days before, with Margaret, may have presented them- selves to the king, her brother, as strong arguments for permitting them to live. Neither would it have been easy for him to fulfil his original intention of imputing the massacre to the Guises, if he had allowed his own kinsmen to be assassinated under the roof of his own palace. On the morning of the 24th, the two princes were arrested and rudely carried to the king's presence-chamber ; where Charles, after announcing the death of Coligny and the existing state of his capital, upbraided them with the many wrongs which he had suffered from themselves and from their adherents : at the same time professing his willingness to believe that they had erred from the misguidance of others, provided they would now renounce their false creed, and adopt the ancient religion.! The King of Navarre evinced little firmness, and readily temporized ; but Conde long hesitated. Even the threat of the Bastile,J and the final terrific alternative proposed to his choice, La * BrantOme, Discouts Ixxix. torn. vi. p. 301, 308, where he professes to relate the anecdote on the authority of a gentleman iiresent at the time. He makes a similar assertion however, respecting the grief of Pius V. , which we have noticed before. j Davila's choice of words is remarkable— /n tanto il Ri et la Reina confortavono ;/ Rf di Navarra. lib. v. torn. i. p. 295. i " They prepare the Hastile for some persons of quality. It is thought that it is for the Prince ofCond^and his brethren." — Walsingham to Sir Thomas Smith, Sept. 13, 1572. Diggcs, p. 240. The estimation in which the Bastile was held may be learned from another despatch a few days later, in which Walsinghum attributes the abjuration, to which the Prince of Conde had then consented, to a ilread of impri-'on- ment. " On Sunday last, the young Princess of Cnnd6 was constrained to go to mass, being threatened otherwise to go to jirison. and so r.onxe- quently to be made away. The Prince of Conljit aliitmer dcsjlamltein.uc, el les Icnir pris de la potence pour les voir mieitx mourir, et cuntpmphr U-urs visages et contenaaces. Brant6me, Discours Ixxviii. torn. vii. p. 206. } Vet the inhumanity is heightened by an odious fact, which the re- search of the master of Dulwich College has drawn from a contempo- rary authority. ^Vo/i sans fure des rii s de la contcnance de I'un et de Cautre. MS. Bib. du Roi, 324, St. Germ, f, 146. 52 HORROR EXCITKD IN ENGLAND. [cH. XI. extinct, dragged the bodies from the gallows, and savagely tore them in pieces. Who can be surprised that Walsingham expressed earnest desire to come out from among a people like this ! and that he long and eagerly solicited recall from his most painful embassy ! We cannot take our leave of an authority to which we have been so largely indebted, without subjoining a burst of rude but powerful eloquence which the scenes the envoy had described called forth from his friend and cor- respondent Sir Thomas Smith, Queen Elizabeth's secretary. No words can more strongly evince the detestation in which the crime of the French court was held in England, notwithstanding pohtical inter- ests forbade an open quarrel. " What warrant can the French make, now seals and words of princes being traps to catch innocents and bring them to butchery 1 If the admiral and all those murdered on that bloody Bartholomew day were guilty, why were the}^ not apprehended, imprisoned, interrogated, and judged 1 But so much made of as might be, within two hours of the assassination !* Is that the manner to handle men either culpable or suspected 1 So is the journeyer slain by the robber ; so is the hen of the fox ; so the hind of the lion ; so Abel of Cain ; so the innocent of the wicked ; so Abner of Joab! But grant they were guilty, they dreamed treason that night in their sleep ; what did the inno- cent men, women, and children do at Lyons ] What did the sucking children and their mothers at Rouen deserve? at Caen? at Rochelle 1 What is done yet we have not heard, but I think shortly we shall hear. Will God, think you, still sleep? Will not their blood ask vengeance ? Shall not the earth be accursed that hath sucked up the innocent blood poured out like water upon it ?"t * Sic orig. t D>esss> P- 262. A. D. ir)72.] DISPERSION OF THE HUGUENOTS. 53 CHAPTER XII. Dispersion of the Huguenots— Siege of I,a Rochelle— La Noufi em- ployed to iiegntiaie— lie accepts the Conimand of the Garrison — His Motives — He endeavours to promote Peace— The Uoctieilois Ministers oppose him — He resigns his Corrmian'l and withdraws — Fruitless As- saults — Heroism of the besieged Women— IiielTectual Attempt at lielief by Monigomcry— l>i'*iiffet(ion in the Royalist Camp— The Duke of Anjou elected King of I'olanil— He raises the Siege— Peace — Siege of Saiiceire— Famiii!^ — Lory's Narrative — Capitulation— Reluctant De- parture of the ICing of Poland to his Dominions— His Reception by the Elector Palatine. In the general dispersion of the Huguenots which succeeded the recent massacres, those who had ex- patriated found refuge in England, in the Palatinate, and in parts of Swisserland. Geneva, Basle, and Berne successively offered asylums to the children of the admiral, to those of his brother D'Andelot, and to the widow of Teligny ; and by the active lib- erality of Beza and liis colleagues sufficient funds were contributed for tlie support of numerous other and wholly destitute refugees.* Many upon whom the abandonment of home and its deeply rooted chari- ties pressed with insufferable burden threw them- selves upon the current of the times and subscribed an abjuration prepared by the Sorbonne ; while their brethren, more firm of purpose, or less entangled by domestic bonds, fled to the strong-holds in the Cevennes, to Sancerre, INIontauban, Nismes, and La Rochelle. determined upon the maintenance of their faith at all hazards and under every extremity.f The king, meanwhile, established four armies in the field. Chastres, Governor of Berri, received or- ders to attack Sancerre, and after some bloody and * Spon. Hist, de Geneve, torn. J. p. 320, nolo, t De Tbou, lui. 2. E 2 54 DESIGNS ON LA ROCHELLE. [CH. XII. fruitless assaults* he converted the siege into a blockade. The Marechal de Villars, who had suc- ceeded Coligny as admiral, ravaged Guyenne and pressed upon Montauban ; and Nisnies was com- mitted to the observation of the Duke de .loyeuse. But La Rochelle was on many accounts the city which excited most powerful interest, and upon its possession appeared to depend the fortunes of the contending parties. Its extent, which rendered it capable of admitting a very large and powerful force, the strength of its fortifications, and the facility of intercourse which its maritime site afforded with FJng- land (a state always regarded with jealousy, and more especially to be suspected at the present mo- ment), were so many reasons which prompted the court to wish for its speedy reduction : and while a sufficient armament was gathering in order to com- pel obedience, no stratagem of diplomacy was omitted by which it might be obtained through per- suasion. Long before the massacre of St. Bartholo- mew, the neighbouring port of Brouage had been occupied by a fleet under the conmiand of Filippo Strozzi (a brave member of a distinguished Italian family engaged in the naval service of France from the time of Henry II.) and of the Baron de la Garde, than whom no more skilful mariner, nor more deadly enemy of the Huguenots, existed. f It was upon this * The failure of an assault upon whii-h great hope of success had been rested is mentioned by the king in a despatch to La Motte Fene- lon, his arrjbasMad(jr in England, dated Marcli 21,1573. 'I he corres- pondence with tliat minister, primed by La Laliorcnr, in the iii. vol. of the Jl/«»7). rfe rastcinau.an'ords invaluable materials for the two years and a half which it embrac.s, Iroin 1572 to Oct. 1575. The despatch noticed .iliove will be found at p. '.i\\. t Anioine Escaliri, Haron do la (;arde, was originally known as Le (,'apilaine Poliii, under which name lie had been concerned in an early persecution. .S'estant uii peu tropcmport"- rigoreuserncnt en Provence, conlre les ll<''r«/iiiincs de Meriiidul cl Cabricrcs (car 11 liayssoit morlclle- mcnt ces pens Id) il encourtit la male grace de son Roy, dont il en garda la prison long leinps. Hraiilfliiif, Dismura Ixxv. loiii. vi. p. 158. What must have been the enormities of one thought worthy of dis- plca<»ure for transactions in which the merciless D'Opi)eda escaped A.D. 1572.] DECLARATION OF THE ROCHELLOIS. 65 force that the king', in the first instance, relied for success, wlien he coninianded the Rochellois to ad- mit within their walls Biron his *Tovernor of Sain- tonge, and to close tlieir gates against the fugitive rebels ; promising them, as a reward for obedience, the privilege of assembling for pubhc worship, which was denied elsewhere throughout his dominions. Undeceived by this hollow assurance, the Rochel- lois at first thought it their interest to temporize ; and without absolutely rejecting these ofiVrs, they demanded, as a preliminary, the withdrawal of the fleet from Brouage, and of the troops who were assembling in their neighbourhood. Tiieir ordinary population was already increased by nearly fifty per- sonages of noble birth, by about an equal number of ministers, and by 1.^)00 soldiers, resolutely prepared to defend the asylum in whicli they had found re- fuge ;* and in case of open hostilities tiiey had good reason to expect an auxiliary force from England, under the command of Montgomery. After a few days therefore had passed, they ventured upon a mucii less reserved declaration, in ^^'"' ^^' which they stigmatized the massacre as an unheard- of cruelty, refused credence to tlie king's avowal of himself as its author, and charged the crime alto- gether upon the Guises. No argument, they said, could ever persuade them that the best and most merciful of kings could have perpetrated so foul an enormity. For, to couple infamy with his name by athrming that which he had at first denied ; to pro- claim that he would keep the last peace unbroken, and yet by the same edict to prohibit the celebration of public worship on pain of death ; during the cele- bration of his sister's nuptials to violate the sa- unliarmcil 1 Neverlholess, L:i l.aboreur has spoken of De la Onrde in high terms of praiw and witlioiu altemiHlng to exientiate the airoci- tie8 0l' Cabrieres anil Moniidol, he altritiutes the haron's share in them 10 the blindness ol" proressioual obotlieiice. AUdit. aux Mem. de Ca»- lelnau, toin. ii. p. 5. * De Tbou, lili. 10. 66 DECLARATION OF THE ROCHELLOIS. [cH. XII. credness both of the hearth and of the altar, of hospitality and of religion, by the carnage of so many of his noblest and bravest subjects, of women and children, of both sexes and of all ages ; what was that but to blow hot and cold with the same breath !* If any one should dare to affirm that their most ex- cellent king had thus deeply plunged himself in wickedness, every man among them was prepared to throw the impudent falsehood in the asserter's teeth, and to maintain the royal dignity and inno- cence by his sword. In fine, ready as they were at all times to manifest obedience to their sovereign, they felt it their duty to be especially cautious, in the present disturbed state of their country, when the Guises not only hunted down guiltless men, but offered violence even to the throne itself; and they should consider it the act of madmen, if, after the recent great calamity, they tamely off'ered their throats, to be butchered like sheep by foreigners thirsting for French blood, and enemies both to the king and to his kingdom. f Notwithstanding the boldness of this declaration, it is not improbable that the Rochellois might have consented to treat with Biron, whose inclination to their faith was well known ; and who, it was indeed believed, would have been numbered among the vic- tims of the massacre at Paris, had it not been for the wise precaution with which he had fortified himself beforehand in the arsenal. { But some unseasonable menaces to themselves from the Baron de la Garde, and intelligence of numerous savage outrages com- mitted in other parts of France, even in towns which had received assurance of the royal protec- tion, renewed those suspicions which the character * This " lame and impotent conclusion" is cliargeable upon De Tliou from whom we are translating, lie enunicrales the atrocitie.s noticed in the text, and then adds, " quid aliiid esse quam calidum el rrigidum eo- dem ore ac spiritusimul efllarc. liii. 10. t Id. ibid. j Bramftme, Discowa Ixxxiii. torn. vii. p. 8. A. D. 1572.] COMMENCEMENT OF WAR. 67 of Biron had tended to allay. Two days accordingly were set apart for solemn fasts ; and the favour of Heaven having been implored, they disregarded the conciliating edicts which the king published from time to time, in the hope of lulling their jealousy to sleep, and they refused more than one offer on the part of Biron to continue his negotiation.* War therefore was now for the fourth j^^^ g time openly declared against the Hugue- nots, and Biron was instructed to besiege La Ro- chelle.f Pasquier, whose sagacity we have so fre- quently mentioned, perceived all the difficulties which were to be encountered in a siege thus begun in the depth of winter, against a city covered on one side by the sea and on almost all the others by marshes ; he anticipated evil also from the national temperament of his countrymen ; impetuous in the outset, inconstant as women if their wishes are long delayed.! Biron's first movements, however, were tardy, for a hope of accommodation was still cher- ished ; and it is not the least remarkable occurrence of these singular times, that a step taken by the king for the express purpose of winning the Rochellois into submission furnished them with their most powerful instrument of resistance.^ Whether Charles at any time entertained a serious design of curbing the Spanish ascendency in the Netherlands, or whether, in the few demonstrations which he made to that effect, his sole object was to encourage the late admiral's delusion, it is now im- possible to decide ; but he had intrusted a small de- * Davila ascribes the obstinate rejection of the king's offers by the Rorh'Ilois to the secret and treacherous instigation of Biron. lib. v. torn. i. p. 303. t Pius vmts scavez quelle est la nature cTiin FYancoin. qui veut dis son entr c cst/e .leivy iCune gorrre cliaude, nutrement a la tongue il se ralentit ainsi qu'une /'■mme. Pasqnier, Lf/?rp,«, lib. v. torn. i. p. 31". t Con Vinvinre M'ynsign.or delta Nua si provide loro di Capitano del quale piu che iTogni altra cosa erano bisognosi. Davila, lib. v. torn. i. p. 305. 58 LA NOliE. [CH. XII. tachment to a Huguenot officer, Francis Seigneur de la Noue, of whom we have before had occasion to make lionourable mention, to assist Louis of Nassau in his operations against the Dutch frontier towns. Chiefly through the skill and courage of La Noue, Mons yielded to the combined arms ; but the inade- quacy of the force with which he was left to garri- son his conquest obliged him, after a short occupa- tion, once more to surrender it to the Duke D'Alva. Three days after this capitulation had been signed occurred the massacre of Paris ; in which, had it not been for his seasonable employment elsewhere, there is little doubt that La Noue also would have perished among the great mass of his friends. All hope of rendering effectual service in the Nether- lands being terminated by the conditions under which he had surrendered at Mons, to remain longer in that country was useless ; to return to France was pregnant with danger. After a short period of doubt, however, relying on the honour and the approved friendship of the Duke de Longueville, Governor of Picardy, he ventured into that province, where he was kindly and generously received. When La Rochelle declined the king's proposals, Longueville well knowing the weighty influence which La Noue possessed in that city, of which he had been gov- ernor during the last war, and feeling assured also of his moderate and pacific views, was convinced that no more efficacious mediator could be employed. With this hope, he entreated him to repair to Paris, where, on his introduction to the king, he was re- ceived courteously and confidentially.* Charles, as * It was on this occasion that the DuUc de T,onguevi!!e cautioned La NouS respecting llie great change which had been cflTecled in the de- meanour of Charles since the massacre. IJraniiime repeats the words fVom La None's own lips. "jV. de In None, odmsis hicn, quand vnus sins dcranl le liny, d'estiesage it parler sagtment ; car vims ne paries plus it ce Roy doitx, benin et gracievT. que vmis aves vni cydevant. II est tout change : il a plus de seviriti a cette heure an visage, quUl ii'a jamais eu de douceur."— Discours Uxxviii, torn, vii. p. 207. A. D. 1572. J LA NOUE. 69 an earnest of future grace and favour, restored their confiscated estates to the family of Teligiiy, whose sister La None had married ; and then proposed to him a commission of extraordinary delicacy ; no less than that he would undertake to persuade the Rochellois into obedience. To the just, temperate, and disinterested spirit of La None, war, unless as a means by which peace might ultimately be secured, was wholly without at- traction ; and notwithstanding his great military tal- ents, and the glory which he had acquired in arms, no man was more unwilling to have recourse to the harsh reasoning of the sword. He believed, more- over, that the recent fatal blow had so far crushed the power of the Huguenots, that the Rochellois would be unable to sustain the danger which they seemed about to provoke. Somewhat also of natu- ral and instinctive regard for self-preser\'ation, with- out impugnment either of his courage or of his honour, may have contributed to influence his final resolution. The tone with which the king ad- dressed him was that of gentleness and solicitation; but who that had ever approached the presence of Charles was ignorant of his ungovernable ferocity 1 What Huguenot, without well-grounded apprehen- sion of the result, could venture to oppose the wish of a prince whose garments were so deeply died in the blood of martyrs ? On the other hand, the arti- fices which had been employed to entrap Coligny were lively warnings to one so sagacious as La None, that they might be repeated to a similar pur- pose ; and he preferred dying a thousand deaths, to being made the unwitting tool by which his friends might be again cajoled and betrayed. Perceiving, then, that all efforts to decline a charge to the due execution of which he modestly but firmly professed himself to be unequal, were unavailing, and that his reluctance served but to increase the urgency of the 60 LA NOUE NEGOTIATES [cH. XII. king, he at once, regardless of all hazard, delivered himself in the plainest language; and demanded a solemn pledge, that he should neither be made the bearer of terms wiiich might compromise his honour, nor be used as the instrument of any meditated treachery. Charles was lavish in protestations; when indeed was he otherwise 1 and La Noue, as- sisted by one Guadagni, a Florentine, and a creature of the queen-mother, engaged in the mission. Unable either to comprehend or to appreciate tlie unspotted integrity of his pure and single-minded agent, the king annexed to him this spy, under the title of col- league ; and La Noue, whose penetration fully de- veloped the true character of his associate, rejoiced at bearing with him a witness of the sincerity of his conduct. The first impression on the minds of the Rochel- lois, when they received advice of the mission of La Noue, was unbounded astonishment ; the second was suspicion of treachery. Nor can it be wondered at, that men whose ears yet painfully retained the yell of the bloodhounds whom the)' had escaped, and under whose eyes the chase seemed at that moment preparing for renewal, should be jealous even of a friend, when he bore the message of a perfidious foe. Still they accepted a conference which he proposed, and their deputies, after cold salutations, ^"^^ ^' listened to the king's offers ; which were, in brief, the admission of Biron within their city, under a guarantee that they should retain all their former liberties. When the envoy had concluded by recommending, as his own advice, that these conditions should be accepted, he was answered with grave expressions of well-feigned surprise. " We came hither," replied the deputies, " in the expec- tation of seeing La None ; one who, a few years back, performed many great and honourable services for the truth of the Gospel. As for the person whom A. D. 1572.] WITH THE ROCHELLOIS. 6l we now meet, he has indeed some portion of the air, of the figure, and of the visage of our friend, but we seek in vain for those salutary words of counsel which we have so often heard from his lips. The real La Noue never could have been so far corrupted by court promises as to advise submission to the persecutor of our faith and the murderer of our brethren."* However deeply he might be touched by the bit- terness of these sarcasms. La Noue betrayed no out- ward signs of emotion, and on one point he was in- deed sensibly gratified ; that if the negotiation should now fail, the evidence of Guadagni must acquit him of causing the miscarriage. Meantime, within the city, after a long and probably a turbulent debate, a conviction of the unimpeaclied integrity of La Noue prevailed with the majority of the council ; they re- cognised him as their former friend and protector ; and earnestly exhorting him not to abandon, in this her desolation, a church which under God he had so often before assisted, they offered three conditions to his choice. 1st, That he would undertake the command of their garrison ; 2dly, that he would live among them as a private citizen, in such a house and on such revenues as the means of their com- munity could supply ; 3dly, that he would embark for England in a vessel which they would immedi- ately equip for his transport. These unlooked-for propositions increased his for- mer perplexity. In what manner was he now to preserve the fidelity which he had so recently en- gaged to the king, and at the same time to answer that call which he believed to be from God 1 How should he reconcile himself to the disloyalty of takingarms against a sovereign to whom he had just vowed allegiance, and from whom he had accepted * De Thou, liii. 12. AmirQult, Viede la Noue, p. 76. Vol. IL— F 6s LA NOUE ACCEPTS THE [cH. XII. a commission 1 How should he satisfy that voice of conscience which denounced him as an apostate from his church, if he refused to aid her in the hour of calamity 1 Nay, more, if, as seemed too probable, he continued to be the chief instrument of her ap- proaching ruin 1 Agitated by these and similar doubts, he asked permission to confer with some ministers, whom he named ; and then taking further time for private meditation and prayer, he adopted a course most remarkable, whether it be regarded in itself or in its consequences. After communicating with Guadagni, by whom it does not seem that he was in any way opposed, he accepted the proffered command ; and, paradoxical as it doubtless must appear, he transferred himself to the hostile ranks in order more effectively to for- ward the wishes of his employer, and unsheathed the sword that he might become a readier minister of peace. To curb the impetuosity of the Rochellois, and to take prompt advantage of any opening which might afford hope of reconciliation, was his undis- sembled object in becoming their leader; and, how- ever ambiguous and equivocal in many points was the condition to which this great and sudden change inevitably reduced him, he emerged from it, as we are assured by the general voice of his contempo- raries, not only without tarnish to his honour, but even with an increase of the confidence reposed in him by each of the opposite parties whom he had served. It is not after the lapse of two centuries and a half, that any attempt must be hazarded to rescind this favourable judgment ; but without a more distinct explanation of facts than we possess, to us the conduct of La Noue must always appear questionable. The path of duty, inmost cases, is plainly defined ; and we have at least our choice be- tween right and wrong. If our position be so en- tangled that to whatever quarter we resolve to turn our course must be dubious, the fault is most prob- A. D. ir)72.] COMMAND OF LA ROCHELLE. 63 ably in ourselves ; and somewhere, before, we have missed our way. It was the acceptance of the king's first charge which afterward exposed La Noue to this perilous collision of duties. La Rochelle, according to the state of military art at the period of which we are treating, was among the strongest fortified places in France. At the head of a noble bay protected from every wind, and so ca- pacious that all the navies in the world might ride within it at once, its own smaller harbour had draught enough to admit ships of the heaviest bur- then. Two forts and a chain protected its entrance ; a wall of extraordinary massiveness, flanked with lofty towers at frequent intervals and surrounded with a deep fosse, in some parts double, enclosed the whole city in a circuit of about 3000 paces. The surrounding country offered no height from which the works might be commanded ; and the numerous tide-creeks which occur everywhere, except on the north, prevented attack by mining. The tide filled the ditches twice a day, and, on its ebb, the water was retained by flood-gates. The garrison, at the time at which La Noue undertook the command, consisted of 3000 choice and veteran soldiers ; 2000 city militia, well equipped, and not unseasoned : and a numerous band of noble and gallant oflicers, among whom the most distinguished appears to have been " Le Capitaine Normand," of Rouen. The maga- zines contained a profuse store of wine, biscuits, and munitions of war ; and some estimate of the general means of defence may be formed from the account which De Thou has given of the park of ar- tillery. There were on the walls, he says, fifteen brass cannons, sixty field-pieces, and 100 of smaller caliber, most of which latter were of iron. 160,000 lbs. of powder had been already prepared for their supply, and more was daily manufactured.* The * Iv. 16. Davila varies a Utile fVom this stdtement. After noticing the abundant provision of gunpowder, and the great number or muskets, 64 TEMPER OF THE ROCHELLOIS. [cH. XII. populace, a rough and hardy race employed in mari- time occupations, proud of their long independence, conscious of power from the events of the former war, and at once indignant and alarmed by the oc- currence of the recent massacre, were prepared for the most desperate resistance. Their hopes were keenly excited by a knowledge of the strength of their city, and b5'^an expectation of speedy succours from England. Whenever the first sail under Mont- gomery should ajjpear oif the coast, they felt as- sured that at least a thousand of the noblesse from Poitou and Saintonge would gather to his standard. By that aid, by their own exertions, and, above all, by the favour of Heaven to a just cause and a suf- fering people, they doubted not of ultimate victory ; and not one man breathed in their ranks who would have hesitated to sacrifice life for its attainment. Every pulpit daily resounded with the exhortations of ministers expelled from their own peculiar cures ; whose zeal was doubly kindled by sorrow for their afflicted church, and by a lively sense of personal wrong. It was no easy task for La None to direct to thoughts of peace the temper of a population thus eagerly inflamed and not unreasonably confident. The Duke of Anjou was to assume the command of the royalist army on the approach of spring ; and Biron, willmg to leave to the young prince the whole glory of active siege, consumed the intermediate time in a languid occupation of the surrounding country, and in cutting oflf supplies from the garri- son. During these operations, numerous mills ad- joining the city were destroyed, till one alone re- mained, which the Captain Normand was anxious, on some account, to preserve for a few hours longer, an object in which he succeeded by a whimsical arquebuses, and pikes which the mipazines contained, he adds that there were " nove colulirine di siiiisurata grandez/.a, otto camioni, dodici eacri, trenia otto pezzi da campagna, e piii di seitanta falcoiiettie moa- Bhetioni." lib. v. torn. i. p. 302. A. D. 1573.] WHIMSICAL STRATAGEM. C5 stratagem. Towards nightfall, he admitted the miller within the city walls, and placed a single sol- dier of determined courage in the abandoned tene- ment, instructing him to deceive the enemy by making loud noises and counterfeiting the tones of different voices. To assist the delusion, Normand himself called from the ramparts, urging the garri- son to steadiness, and assuring it of speedy relief. Misled by these appearances, and thinking that an assault would be hazardous, the royalists beat a parley, after a few discharges of artillery ; and whf^n the soldier presented himself, they granted an honourable capitulation, in which the adroit knave, continuing his artifice to the last, with humorous gravity, expressly stipulated that his comrades should share the terms which he secured for him- self. On taking possession of the surrendered post, the victors discovered to their astonishment that the parleyer had been its sole occupant ; and irri- tated at the cheat, they summarily declared him guilty of a breach of the laws of war, and adjudged him to be hanged. Through the interposition of Biron, the sentence was commuted to the galleys, from which the prisoner soon afterward found means to escape.* It was not till the 9th of February that the Duke of Anjou arrived in the camp ; and '^ " rarely has a more brilliant company been assembled than that which followed in his train. Of the royal blood appeared the Duke of Alen^on, the King of Navarre, the Prince of Conde, the young Montpen- sier, and the Bastard of Angoulenie ; and among other distinguished names familiar to our narrative, may be noticed the Dukesof Guise, Aumale, Longue- ville, Nevers, Bouillon, and Uzez ; the IMarechals de Cosse, Montluc, and De Retz. One, indeed, was wanting who had long been used to breathe ven- * De Thou, Iv. la. La Popoliniere, torn. ii. liv. xxxii, p. 127. ¥2 66 DEATH OF TAVANNES. [cH. XU. geance against the Reformed, and who had vaunt- ingly anticipated the speedy conquest of La Ro- chelle. When the king ordered the Marechal de Tavannes to take a high command in the besieging army, and not to stop till the Huguenot race was ex- terminated,* he was assured in return that the mat- ter might be considered as already finished. " Give yourself no trouble, sire," replied Tavannes, " I have served during six years in that country ; and long as it is since I have seen La Rochelle, I reckon upon its capture within a month. Thence I will clear my way to Montauban, which will scarcely cost more time ; and afterward, in Nismes and Sommi- eres, the heretics shall look well to their con- sciences, and either recant or die to a man. In a word, leave me alone and I will answer for all these places."! — " Even such," says the light-hearted Brantome, " were the discourses of King Picrocole in Rabelais, or the fond imaginations which the waking milkmaid dreamed over that pail which was to form the commencement of her immeasurable wealth." Tavannes died at Chartres, on his route to join the army ; and there is good reason to be- lieve that his last moments exhibited a fearful spec- tacle of rage and despair. Brant6me affects some doubt, because the fact was communicated to him by " an illustrious Huguenot prince, who had no great regard for the deceased ;" but he concludes that, after all, matters might be as they were repre- sented, since " God often sends such afflictions to the bloody-minded. ''''X Glittering as was the composition of the Duke of * Nous ne sommespas encore au b^ut de toiis les Huguenots, btm qve nova en ayons fori esclaircy la race. JJranidine, i>ji'co«rs Ixxxii. 5. torn vi ad Tin. t Id. ibid. And no also in his sou's Memoires, Tavannes is made to aSKure Ihe king Hint if he does but give La Rochelle dix millcs cnvps de canon avant que Vhyvcr vienne, n'uyani que les gens de la i^ille Id dedans, it ist a yresumer qiCUs parleroient un autre langage. p. 442. % Vt supra. A.D.I 573.] DEATH OF AUMALE. 67 Anjou's army, the very splendour of its materials contributed to render it unfit for success ; and want of discipline and of subordination led to desultory and uncombined attacks, in which, after numerous displays of individual gallantry, the general strength iaseubibly wasted away, without any advance of the main enterprise. Among the earliest heavy losses which the royalists sustained was that of the Duke of Auniale, killed by a cannon-ball at *'*'''''' ^■ the close of a long sortie.* His death afforded an interminable theme to the preachers in La Rochelle, who saw in it nothing less than tbe visible hand of Providence, and proclaimed it as an undoubted judg- ment inflicted imniediatcdy by God, upoi one who had taken so large a personal share in the murder of Coligny.f This delusion is not without frequent parallels in history ; for man is ever too forward to cry " God with us," and to identify his own quarrel with that of Heaven. There have been seasons, indeed, in which special Providences have been appropriated with as little regard to truth and reason, as the scoflFer, the skeptic, and tlie infidel exhibit in the denial of any Providential interference at all. But it may be feared in the mstance before us, that the fierce passions which had been engendered or en- couraged by a long continuance of civil discord, now exercised scarcely less evil influence over the persecuted than over the persecutors themselves ; ♦ De Thou, Ivi. 4. t Walsingham writes to England much to the same effect. " In the wliich skirmish Duke d' Auin&le and Scavigurvvcro slain, two of tiie chiefesi excc'iors of ihi: miinhers here. God, of his good hles.sing, doth Rive us some hope thai the blood of (he innooent shall not be un re- venged.'- — Oiggos, p. 332. Even Hraiitome connects the fate of D'Au- niiile with his Ibriner cruelty. At I,a Rochelle, he says, the duke fre- quently expressed a presentiment of his approaching death. " Voicy le lieu ou je mourray '" Snn Li'inon po.tsibl' le lay faisoit dire.ou qii'il senlil rn xa ronscitnre it ni- scay quay, pmtr aviir est.' un pen cruel (rtisoit on) au Massacre (te Paris sur lea Huguenots qu'il espargna peu Discmtrs Ixxviil. torn. vi. p. 383. 68 LA NOTJE's arguments for peace. [cH. XII. that acuteness of suffering had produced a callous- ness of heart in the sufferers, which resisted all the mild droppings of the dews of charity; and that the voice of mercy which the gospel gently breathed was overpowered by the hoarse clang and disso- nance of arms. The ministers in La Rochelle openly preached, not only that it would be sinful to make any peace with the Romanists, but even that quarter should be denied to prisoners ;* and that they should be hewn in pieces as Samuel hewed the Amalekites. The task which La None had assigned to himself became, therefore, more hopeless every hour ; and chagrined at his failure, perhaps not without some secret misgiving of the propriety of the course which he had chosen,f he was foremost in every sortie, and combated as one eager to shake off a life which pressed upon him as a wearisome burden. The arguments with which he enforced the ne- cesity of peace upon the civic council, and the answers which he received from the Huguenot divines, evince his own coolness and foresight, in marked contrast with the blindness and the heat of his opponents. Military experience had taught him that no fortress could eventually maintain itself against a siege pressed obstinately by a powerful enemy, unless it were relieved by an army sufficiently strong either to create a diversion or to fight a battle. He perceived that no hope existed of such an army being collected by the Huguenots themselves ; that the policy of England was mani- festly pacific ; that Germany would not move unless allured by subsidies, which the Reformed had not means of paying; and that even if she were to take the field, without the hope of gold, no army could traverse the whole of France, from the borders of * Meurisse, liv. ii. p. 384. DeThou,lvi.5. t Neutri parti susjtectii^, ailn mirnis satis/acieru. De Tbou, Ivl. i. A. D. 1573.] OPPOSED BY THE MINISTERS. 69 the Rhine to the sea, pass all the intervening rivers, and avoid or gain all the battles which would be oflfered, in sufficient time to deliver a city, on the counterscarp of which the enemy had already effected a lodgment. The ultimate storm or sur- render of La Rochelle appeared, therefore, to be cer- tain; and her downfall, he added, would prelude the destruction of every other Reformed Church in the kingdom ; for little mercy could be expected from a victorious enemy irritated by a resistance which would be called obstinate rebellion. On the other hand, far gentler treatment mifjht be secured by ne- gotiation, both for themselves and for their brethren. The rejoinder of the ministers commenced with a somewhat tedious exposition of the unity of the Church of Christ, which peremptorily forbade the acceptance of any advantage for their own city from which others of the same communion should be excluded. This position was fortified by refer- ence to the conduct of the Rcubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. Located beyond Jordan, those settlers had not any personal interest in the struggle which the other tribes were main- taining against the native Canaanites ; nevertheless, they passed over armed before the children of Israel, all that were meet for war,* neither did they return to their tents and to the land of their possession till the Lord had given rest to their brethren.^ So also Uriah, touched with like attachment for those of the same blood and faith with himself, refused to go into his house, and rather slept at the door of the king's palace, because the Ark, and Israel, and Judah abode in tents, and the servants of the Lord were en- camped in open Jiclds.X If the ties of brotherhood were thus powerful to knit together the Jews, how much more binding, it was said, ought they to be between Christians ! The necessity of keeping the • DculfTonomy iii. 18. t Joshua xxii. 4, I 3 Samuel xi, 11. 70 PERSONAL VIOLENCE OFFERED [(;H. XIF. oath by which they were pledged to the citizens of Nisnies and of Montauban, a necessity which no one was hkely to dispute, was estabhshed on the Scriptural precedent of Joshua's fidelity to the Gibeonites, because he had sworn with them, notwithstanding they had beguiled hitn into the league.* And it was argued that even if La Rochelle were in fact reduced to so great straits as had been too hastily imagined, it should be re- membered that God delights to perform miracles in favour of those who put their whole trust in him ; that although women did eat .their children during the siege of Samaria, nevertheless that city was de- livered from its enemies ; and, if they might ven- ture to draw an authority from the Apochryphal books, that Judith spake wisely when she rebuked the Governor of Bethulia, for binding the counsels of God, and promising to surrender unless help should come in five days.f The last and the only rational argument which they oflfered was drawn from their actual means of defence, which were de- clared to be amply sufficient to maintain the siege for three months longer. Little hope could be entertained of producing conviction in zealots who thus persisted in apply- ing, without modification, to the political affairs of the XVIth century, those maxims by which the theocracy had been regulated. One particular only appeared to merit answer. " I do confide in God," replied La Noue, " with my whole heart ; but I am unable to obtain other demonstrations of His will than those which he vouchsafes to afford by outward occurrences. .He has given us reason as our guide in these matters, and it is utterly presumptuous to expect that He will work miracles in our behalf, when we are without any promise that they shall be * Joshua ix. t Judith yiii. A. D. 1573,] TO LA NOUE. 71 performed."* This sober argument was ill adapted to the fanaticism of his auditors ; and one of the ministers, La Place, pursued him from the council' chamber to his lodging with opprobrious epithets ; and when he had exhausted all the strongest terms which language aifords in accusing him of treache- rous correspondence, he consummated the outrage by a blow. The scene which ensued reminds us of a similar well-known anecdote recorded of Themisto- cles ;t and it might be thought that the example of that great Athenian had not been forgotten by La Nouij, if the many Christian graces by which his character is distinguished did not convince us that his lesson of forbearance had been derived from a far higlier source. He first calmly interposed, to pre- vent the anger of the by-standers from inflicting sum- mary punishment upon the offender; and he then sent him home, safely guarded, to his wife, with a sug- gestion, that if her husband were allowed in future to go abroad, he should be observed by a keeper. La Place was of honourable birth and advanced in years ; and it seems probable that this violence was indeed a symptom of incipient derangement ; for the commission of other furious acts, which rendered his insanity unquestionable, ere long occasioned his deposition from the ministry. J Despairing of success in the object which he had proposed to himself when he assumed the command of La Rochelle, La Noue now anxiously sought an opening by which he might escape his onerous and unprofitable charge. Such an opportunity was afforded by the receipt of despatches from England, in which Montgomery notified his speedy approach with a very considerable armament. Little cordi- ality subsisted between these two leaders ; and La * Amirault, p. 91. t With Eurybiades, the S|inr(an, wlio threatened him with his stafT, and received for answer, " Strike, hut hear '" It is to be wished that Herodotus had corroborated Plutarch in this fine anecdote. { Amirault, p. 92, 93. De Thou, Ivi. 5. 72 DISASTERS OF THE BESIEGERS. [cH. XII, Noue, apprehensive that the spirit of faction by which the city was already torn asunder might de- rive increase from their probable collision, and sat- isfied that a fit successor being at hand, he could not be accused of abandoning the helm without the guidance of any pilot, determined to with- 14. 2raw : and demanding a safe-conduct from the Duke of Anjou, was received within his lines.* The long protraction of the siege had been se- verely felt in the royal camp, and the troops began to murmur at arrears of pay, at scantiness of sup- plies, and at the ravages of disease. To divert their minds from these just causes of discontent, an assault was ordered at the first moment at which . a breach became practicable. The im- ■^^"^ ■ petuosity of the young nobles by whom the camp Avas thronged occasioned some disorder in the leading column ; and after a bloody conflict, in which the women of the garrison displayed a mas- culine courage, the assailants Avere repulsed with fearful loss. Two subsequent attempts Avere equally unsuccessful ; and, in both of them, these heroines were not less distinguished than before. Some rolled huge stones from the ramparts ; others scattered grenades upon the assailants ; part fought hand to hand with lances ; a few even descended * De Thou, ibid. Davila has described the rctirennetit of La NouS very much as if he wished it to be considered an act of desertion, lib. T. torn. i. p. 307 ; and there are some expressions in Walsinghain's des- patches which give it an smbignons ajipearance. He writes, that he has heard "La NoiiS escaped very hardly out of the town, with the safety of his life."— Digses, p. 344. And again, that the Rochellois " as ■ yet continue still resolute never to yield, notwithsianding I,a Noun's abandoning of them I am very sorry to condenm that gentleman, though he be very generally condemned by others, until I hear what he can say for himself If he be not well able to excuse this his doing in this behalf, 1 will learn thereby the less to build upon any man, who I perceive, when Ood wIMidrawelh His slaying hand, are more weak than weakness itself This example, therefore, and others, are lo teach us to build upon God and to weigh man as he is." — p. 345. The kins, in a despatch to La Moile Fenelon, expresses great sails- fliction at the step which La NouO had taken, Oarroainndenee in ^tiL ill. df Afdm, de Owtelnau, {(. 310. A. D. 1573.] DEATH OF COSSEINS. 73 into the ditch, to terminate the sufferings of the wounded or to spoil the dead ; and in every inter- val during which a brief pause in the thunder of the artillery permitted any other sound to be distin- guished, their voices were heard loudly and bitterly inveighing against the combatants with whom they were engaged.* Brilliant as were these successes, they pei'haps occasioned less joy in the garrison than the death of one individual who fell soon after them. " Cosseins," says Brantome (whom on this occasion we may implicitly trust, for he was pres- ent during the whole siege, and was intimately acquainted with the person of whom he is speak- ing), " was grievously depressed after the massacre of Paris. His conduct at La Rochelle evinced that he was bowed down with melancholy and remorse ; and more than once he avowed to his friends a pre- sentiment of his approaching end. On the night which proved fatal to him, he had been ordered to make a reconnoissance of an obscure spot, from which the enemy seldom fired ; and, indeed, during that whole night not more than two arquebuses were discharged, the contents of one of which he received. When the shot struck him, he cursed the remembrance of the St. Bartholomew, and died within two days afterward. The king, notwith- standing the great services which he had formerly rendered, received the intelligence of his loss un- concernedly, and spoke before the whole court coarsely and contemptuouslyf of the want of spirit which he had shown, and of the difficulties which he had constantly suggested when any project of attack was offered by the Duke of Anjou. Those difficulties," adds Brantome, " most probably arose from superior military knowledge, and from a per- * DeThou.lvi.S, 7, 9. t " U rVy a mcinsirr plusde eacur qu'une putain''''—%isant de cesmott — Discours Ixxxix. 11, torn. vii. p. 423. Vol. II.— G 74 APPEARANCE OF MONTGOMERY. [cH. XII. ception of the gross faults which were hourly com- mitted."* "1 2" ^^^ ^^^^ under Montgomery, amounting ^" " to fifty-three sail, at length appeared in the bay ; their numbers, indeed, were greater than those of the royalists, but the vessels were much inferior in equipment and sea-worthiness, and the crews in discipline. Twelve hundred armed men were on board ; a motley gathering of French, Belgians, and English ; the last of whom were declared by Eliza- beth, when the ambassador of Charles remonstrated upon her having permitted their embarkation, to be no other than thieves and outlaws, whom she should gladly see executed for piracy.f It is probable that her declaration was not very remote from truth ; for Montgomery, influenced no doubt by want of confi- dence in his followers, notwithstanding he possessed the advantage both of wind and tide, declined any attempt to enter the harbour of La Rochelle, avoided an engagement, and contented himself with landing and throwing up intrenchments at Belle Isle, at the mouth of the Loire. It was from disaffection in his own ranks, rather than from any increase of strength in those of his enemy, that the Duke of Anjou's chief difficulty now arose. His younger brother, the Duke of Alengon, either jealous of a superior, or sincere in the deep regret which he had ever expressed for the murder of Coligny, who liad been his friend, was actively em- ployed in the formation of a dangerous party. There were many of high rank in the camp who, having long ill-brooked the ascendency of Catherine and the Guises, regarded the late massacre with horror ; and a union of these PoJiiiqucs, as they were termed, with the Bourbon princes and the Huguenots, was negotiated by Henry de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vi- * Id. ibid. t De Thou, M. 6. A. D. 1573.] WISE ADVICE OF LA NOUE. 75 comte de Turenne:* a youth who at seventeen years of age appears to have been a marvel both of enter- prise and of sagacity. The projects, nevertheless, suggested from time to time by Alen^on and his fac- tion, were rash and perilous ; and but for the sound discretion of La Noue, to whom they were commu- nicated, might have led to their speedy destruction. At one moment it was resolved to attack the royal fleet ; after which Alen§on was to declare himself protector of the Religion. A yet wilder scheme was to throw themselves into Montgomery's ships, and to seek an asylum in England. When this pro- posal was first opened at a council of the leaders assembled on horseback near the camp, it was strongly and peremptorily rejected by La Noue. How, he inquired, could they first ascertain the feel- ings of the English sailors ? — or how, supposing they should be cordially received by them, could they answer for the intentions of Elizabeth herself T Was it likely that she, who had always cultivated peace, would embarrass herself in war to gratify their dis- content, more especially at a moment in which she had just renewed her ancient alliance with France 1 Would it not derogate from their illustrious birth and quality] — might it not hazard both their lives and their honour, if they wandered into foreign states as fugitives and suppliants ? Doubtless no princess in the world exceeded the Queen of England in cour- tesy, but might not political relations compel her either to refuse them admission to her presence, or, if she did admit them, to offer some reprimand which it would ill become them to endure 1 Even granting that she might afford succour, it must be given scantily and by stealth ; and it must be such as would in the end rather mar than assist both their reputation and their designs. His advice, therefore, was, that being assured of each other's fidelity, they * Father of the great Mar^chal de Turenne, and himself afterward one of the most disiinguiahed generals in the service of Henry IV. 76 PEACE OF LA ROCHELLE. [CH. XIL should await a more favourable season before they openly declared themselves. These arguments of the peace-maker were unanswerable, and for awhile his gray-haired wisdom was listened to and obeyed. In a ninth and final assault, the royalists, "^^ ■ having been led five times to the breach, were as often driven back, after piling it with their dead; and the Uuke of Anjou, thenceforward aban- doning every hope of winning the city, looked only for some excuse which might allow him to raise the siege -without dishonour. The seasonable announce- ment of his election to the throne of Poland permit- ted a negotiation, in which it was not necessary that defeat should be confessed ; and after a brief show of further hostility, he opened conferences with the governor. The treaty approached the close which he desired, when one of the unforeseen chances of war nearly terminated his career. While, accompa- nied by the King of Navarre and the Duke of Alen- 9on, he was going round the trenches, two small pieces of ordnance were discharged from the ram- parts. The contents of one of them struck him in the neck, the left hand, and the thigh ; but the bullets, being small, were spent, and he escaped uninjured. La Garde, one of his favourite attendants, perceived the flash of the second cannon in time to throw himself before his master ; and he received a se- vere wound, which, but for the rare skill of the sur- geon, and, as was also believed, for the employment of charms,* would have proved mortal. On the 10th of July, Biron was admitted into La Rochelle, and proclaimed the terms of peace. They declared a general amnesty for the past ; a free permission for the exercise of the Reformed worship within the cities of Nismes, Montauban, and La Rochelle ; an * Posni letkaliter in prcecordiis ichis est, quo ex vulnere raro medico- rvm studio et incantamaitis, ut creditur, curatus, convaluit. De Tbou, Ivi. 10. A. D. 1573.] PEACE OF LA ROCHELLE. 77 annulment of all compulsory recantations, and of all judicial sentences passed against the Huguenots during the late war ; and a restoration of any dignities and offices of which they might have been deprived. The three cities, in return, consented, without any impeachment of their former immunities, to receive governors appointed by the king, provided they were free from suspicion ; and for the next two years to send four of the chief inhabitants of each, selected at the royal pleasure, to reside as hostages at the court. Thus, after nine months' investment by a mighty host, composed of the best troops and the chief no- bility of France ; the loss of 40,000 men by disease and casualty, among whom were numbered sixty officers of distinction ; and a ruinous expenditure both of stores and money,* the king was forced to compromise with La Rochelle. The gallantry of the defence cannot be too highly appreciated ; and yet, but for w^ant of union and of military skill among the besiegers, it is not to be doubted that a ■widely different result would have verified the prog- nostic and fully justified the advice of La Noue.f * De Thou, Ivi. 10. Davila reduces tlie loss to one-half De Thou'.s num. ber, lib. V. lorn. i. )). 309. Respecting the officers, Pasquier expresses him- self in terms which perhap.s bear a covert allusion to the share of the Duke d'Aumile and of Cosseins in the St. Barlholotncw. Nos principaux Utnurs Old esti tuez. — Lett. liv. v. torn. i. p. 318. Very copious details of this siege of La Rochelle may be found in La Popeiiniere, liv. xx.xi. ii. iii. IV. and v. t De Thou, who is very far from being an injudicious recorder of in- discriminate marvels, notices a remarkable fact, which we can little be surprised that the Huguenots interpreted as a special providence exer- cised in their behalf. During the whole course of the siege, an unusual quantity of shellfish (surdnnes, ostreorum sen pectjinctilorian id utnus est) supplied the poorer inhabitants with abundant food ; and at the very moment alter the peace they disappeared. Ivi. 10. The naturalists of the day explained tins singular occurrence, by slating that the shellfish ■were driven into the harbour by the shock of the caimunade. La Pope- iiniere, toin. ii. liv. XXXV. p. 173. But it was employed by one of our own divines as a good " tesllHcation that the Lord of hosts would leave a remnant, even a seed of His faithful in that land." — Lectuie xv. de- livered at Oxford by (Archbishopi Abbot, cited by Strype, Annals