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A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times
Francis II., July 10, 1559 - December 5, 1560.
by Guizot, M.
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During the course, and especially at the close of Henry II.'s reign, two
rival matters, on the one hand the numbers, the quality, and the zeal of
the Reformers, and on the other, the anxiety, prejudice, and power of the
Catholics, had been simultaneously advancing in development and growth.
Between the 16th of May, 1558, and the 10th of July, 1559, fifteen
capital sentences had been executed in Dauphiny, in Normandy, in Poitou,
and at Paris. Two royal edicts, one dated July 24, 1558, and the other
June 14, 1559, had renewed and aggravated the severity of penal
legislation against heretics. To secure the registration of the latter,
Henry II., together with the princes and the officers of the crown, had
repaired in person to Parliament; some disagreement had already appeared
in the midst of that great body, which was then composed of a hundred and
thirty magistrates; the seniors who sat in the great chamber had in
general shown themselves to be more inclined to severity, and the juniors
who formed the chamber called La Tournelle more inclined to indulgence
towards accusations of heresy. The disagreement reached its climax in
the very presence of the king. Two councillors, Dubourg and Dufaure,
spoke so warmly of reforms which were, according to them, necessary and
legitimate, that their adversaries did not hesitate to tax them with
being Reformers themselves. The king had them arrested, and three of
their colleagues with them. Special commissioners were charged with the
preparation of the case against them. It has already been mentioned that
one of the most considerable amongst the officers of the army, Francis
d'Andelot, brother of Admiral Coligny, had, for the same cause, been
subjected to a burst of anger on the part of the king. He was in prison
at Meaux when Henry II. died. Such were the personal feelings and the
relative positions of the two parties when Francis II., a boy of sixteen,
a poor creature both in mind and body, ascended the throne.
Deputies from Parliament went, according to custom, to offer their
felicitations to the new king, and to ask him "to whom it was his
pleasure that they should, thenceforward, apply for to learn his will and
receive his commands." Francis II. replied, "With the approbation of the
queen my mother, I have chosen the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of
Lorraine, my uncles, to have the direction of the state; the former will
take charge of the department of war, the latter the administration of
finance and justice." Such had, in fact, been his choice, and it was no
doubt with his mother's approbation that he had made it. Equally
attentive to observe the proprieties and to secure her own power,
Catherine de' Medici, when going out to drive with her son and her
daughter-in-law Mary Stuart, on the very day of Henry II.'s death, said
to Mary, "Step in, madame; it is now your turn to go first."
During the first days of mourning she kept herself in a room entirely
hung with black; and there was no light beyond two wax-candles burning on
an altar covered with black cloth. She had upon her head a black veil,
which shrouded her entirely, and hid her face; and, when any one of the
household went to speak to her, she replied in so agitated and so weak
a tone of voice that it was impossible to catch her words, whatever
attention might be paid to them. But her presence of mind and her
energy, so far as the government was concerned, were by no means affected
by it; he who had been the principal personage at the court under Henry
II., the Constable de Montmorency, perfectly understood, at his first
interview with the queen-mother, that he was dismissed, and all he asked
of her was, that he might go and enjoy his repose in freedom at his
residence of Chantilly, begging her at the same time to take under her
protection the heirs of his house. Henry II.'s favorite, Diana de
Poitiers, was dismissed more harshly. "The king sent to tell Madame de
Valentinois," writes the Venetian ambassador, "that for her evil
influence (mali officii) over the king his father she would deserve
heavy chastisement; but, in his royal clemency, he did not wish to
disquiet her any further; she must, nevertheless, restore to him all the
jewels given her by the king his father." "To bend Catherine de' Medici,
Diana was also obliged," says De Thou, "to give up her beautiful house at
Chenonceaux on the Cher, and she received in exchange the castle of
Chaumont on the Loire." The Guises obtained all the favors of the court
at the same time that they were invested with all the powers of the
state.
In order to give a good notion of Duke Francis of Guise and his brother
the Cardinal of Lorraine, the two heads of the house, we will borrow the
very words of those two men of their age who had the best means of seeing
them close and judging them correctly, the French historian De Thou and
the Venetian ambassador John Micheli. "The Cardinal of Lorraine," says
De Thou, "was of an impetuous and violent character; the Duke of Guise,
on the contrary, was of a gentle and moderate disposition. But as
ambition soon overleaps the confines of restraint and equity, he was
carried away by the violent counsels of the cardinal, or else surrendered
himself to them of his own accord, executing with admirable prudence and
address the plans which were always chalked out by his brother." The
Venetian ambassador enters into more precise and full details. "The
cardinal," he says, "who is the leading man of the house, would be, by
common consent, if it were not for the defects of which I shall speak,
the greatest political power in this kingdom. He has not yet completed
his thirty-seventh year; he is endowed with a marvellous intellect, which
apprehends from half a word the meaning of those who converse with him;
he has an astonishing memory, a fine and noble face, and a rare eloquence
which shows itself freely on any subject, but especially in matters of
politics. He is very well versed in letters: he knows Greek, Latin, and
Italian. He is very strong in the sciences, chiefly in theology. The
externals of his life are very proper and very suitable to his dignity,
which could not be said of the other cardinals and prelates, whose habits
are too scandalously irregular. But his great defect is shameful
cupidity, which would employ, to attain its ends, even criminal means,
and likewise great duplicity, whence comes his habit of scarcely ever
saying that which is. There is worse behind. He is considered to be
very ready to take offence, vindictive, envious, and far too slow in
benefaction. He excited universal hatred by hurting all the world as
long as it was in his power to. As for Mgr. de Guise, who is the eldest
of the six brothers, he cannot be spoken of save as a man of war, a good
officer. None in this realm has delivered more battles and confronted
more dangers. Everybody lauds his courage, his vigilance, his steadiness
in war, and his coolness, a quality wonderfully rare in a Frenchman. His
peculiar defects are, first of all, stinginess towards soldiers; then he
makes large promises, and even when he means to keep his promise he is
infinitely slow about it."
To the sketch of the Cardinal of Lorraine Brantome adds that he was,
"as indeed he said, a coward by nature." a strange defect in a Guise.
It was a great deal, towards securing the supremacy of a great family
and its leading members, to thus possess the favor of the court and the
functions of government; but the power of the Guises had a still higher
origin and a still deeper foundation. "It was then," said Michael de
Castelnau, one of the most intelligent and most impartial amongst the
chroniclers of the sixteenth century, "that schism and divisions in
religious matters began to be mixed up with affairs of state. Well, all
the clergy of France, and nearly all the noblesse and the people who
belonged to the Roman religion, considered that the Cardinal of Lorraine
and the Duke of Guise were, as it were, called of God to preserve the
Catholic religion established in France for the last twelve hundred
years. And it seemed to them not only an act of impiety to change or
alter it in any way whatever, but also an impossibility to do so without
ruin to the state. The late king, Henry, had made a decree in the month
of June, 1559, being then at Ecouen, by which the judges were bound to
sentence all Lutherans to death, and which was published and confirmed by
all the Parliaments, without any limitation or modification whatever, and
with a warning to the judges not to mitigate the penalty, as they had
done for some years previously. Different judgments were pronounced upon
the decree: those who took the most political and most zealous view of
religion considered that it was necessary, as well to preserve and
maintain the Catholic religion as to keep down the seditious, who, under
the cloak of religion, were doing all they could to upset the political
condition of the kingdom. Others, who cared nothing for religion, or for
the state, or for order in the body politic, also thought the decree
necessary, not at all for the purpose of exterminating the Protestants,
—for they held that it would tend to multiply them,—but because it
would offer a means of enriching themselves by the confiscations ensuing
upon condemnation, and because the king would thus be able to pay off
forty-two millions of livres which he owed, and have money in hand, and,
besides that, satisfy those who were demanding recompense for the
services they had rendered the crown, wherein many placed their hopes."
[Memoires de Michael de Castelnau, in the Petitot collection, Series
I., t. xxxiii. pp. 24-27.]
The Guises were, in the sixteenth century, the representatives and the
champions of these different cliques and interests, religious or
political, sincere in their belief or shameless in their avidity, and
all united under the flag of the Catholic church. And so, when they came
into power, "there was nothing," says a Protestant chronicler, "but fear
and trembling at their name." Their acts of government soon confirmed
the fears as well as the hopes they had inspired. During the last six
months of 1559 the edict issued by Henry II. from Ecouen was not only
strictly enforced, but aggravated by fresh edicts; a special chamber was
appointed and chosen amongst the Parliament of Paris, which was to have
sole cognizance of crimes and offences against the Catholic religion. A
proclamation of the new king, Francis II., ordained that houses in which
assemblies of Reformers took place should be razed and demolished. It
was death to the promoters of "unlawful assemblies for purposes of
religion or for any other cause." Another royal act provided that all
persons, even relatives, who received amongst them any one condemned for
heresy should seize him and bring him to justice, in default whereof they
would suffer the same penalty as he. Individual condemnations and
executions abounded after these general measures; between the 2d of
August and the 31st of December, 1559, eighteen persons were burned alive
for open heresy, or for having refused to communicate according to the
rites of the Catholic church, or go to mass, or for having hawked about
forbidden books. Finally, in December, the five councillors of the
Parliament of Paris, whom, six months previously, Henry II. had ordered
to be arrested and shut up in the Bastille, were dragged from prison and
brought to trial. The chief of them, Anne Dubourg, nephew of Anthony
Dubourg, Chancellor of France under Francis I., defended himself with
pious and patriotic persistency, being determined to exhaust all points
of law and all the chances of justice he could hope for without betraying
his faith. Everything shows that he had nothing to hope for from his
judges; one of them, the President Minard, as he was returning from the
palace on the evening of December 12, 1559, was killed by a pistol-shot;
the assassin could not be discovered; but the crime, naturally ascribed
to some friend of Dubourg, served only to make certain and to hasten the
death of the prisoner on trial. Dubourg was condemned on the 22d of
December, and heard unmoved the reading of his sentence. "I forgive my
judges," said he; "they have judged according to their own lights, not
according to the light that comes from on high. Put out your fires, ye
senators; be converted, and live happily. Think without ceasing of God
and on God." After these words, which were taken down by the clerk of
the court, "and which I have here copied," says De Thou, Dubourg was
taken on the 23d of December, in a tumbrel to the Place de Greve. As he
mounted the ladder he was heard repeating several times, "Forsake me not,
my God, for fear lest I forsake thee." He was strangled before he was
cast into the flames (De Thou, t. iii. pp. 399-402), the sole favor his
friends could obtain for him.
But extreme severity on the part of the powers that be is effectual only
when it falls upon a country or upon parties that are effete with age, or
already vanquished and worn out by long struggles; when, on the contrary,
it is brought to bear upon parties in the flush of youth, eager to
proclaim and propagate themselves, so far from intimidating them, it
animates them, and thrusts them into the arena into which they were of
themselves quite eager to enter. As soon as the rule of the Catholic,
in the persons and by the actions of the Guises, became sovereign and
aggressive, the threatened Reformers put themselves into the attitude of
defence. They too had got for themselves great leaders, some valiant and
ardent, others prudent or even timid, but forced to declare themselves
when the common cause was greatly imperilled. The house of Bourbon,
issuing from St. Louis, had for its representatives in the sixteenth
century Anthony de Bourbon, King of Navarre and husband of Jeanne
d'Albret, and his brother Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Conde. The King of
Navarre, weak and irresolute though brave enough, wavered between
Catholicism and the Reformation, inclining rather in his heart to the
cause of the Reformation, to which the queen his wife, who at first
showed indifference, had before long become Passionately attached. His
brother, the Prince of Conde, young, fiery, and often flighty and rash,
put himself openly at the head of the Reformed party. The house of
Bourbon held itself to be the rival perforce of the house of Lorraine.
It had amongst the high noblesse of France two allies, more fitted than
any others for fighting and for command, Admiral de Coligny and his
brother, Francis d'Andelot, both of them nephews of the Constable Anne de
Montmorency, both of them already experienced and famous warriors, and
both of them devoted, heart and soul, to the cause of the Reformation.
Thus, at the accession of Francis II., whilst the Catholic party, by
means of the Guises, and with the support of the majority of the country,
took in hand the government of France, the reforming party ranged
themselves round the King of Navarre, the Prince of Conde, and Admiral de
Coligny, and became, under their direction, though in a minority, a
powerful opposition, able and ready, on the one hand, to narrowly watch
and criticise the actions of those who were in power, and on the other to
claim for their own people, not by any means freedom as a general
principle in the constitution of the state, but free manifestation of
their faith, and free exercise of their own form of worship.
Apart from—we do not mean to say above-these two great parties, which
were arrayed in the might and appeared as the representatives of the
national ideas and feelings, the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, was
quietly laboring to form another, more independent of the public, and
more docile to herself, and, above all, faithful to the crown and to the
interests of the kingly house and its servants; a party strictly
Catholic, but regarding as a necessity the task of humoring the Reformers
and granting them such concessions as might prevent explosions fraught
with peril to the state; a third party (tiers part), as we should say
nowadays, politic and prudent, somewhat lavish of promises without being
sure of the power to keep them, not much embarrassed at having to change
attitude and language according to the shifting phases of the moment, and
anxious above everything to maintain public peace and to put off
questions which it could not solve pacifically. In the sixteenth
century, as at every other time, worthy folks of moderate views and
nervous temperaments, ambitious persons combining greed with suppleness,
old servants of the crown, and officials full of scruples and far from
bold in the practical part of government, were the essential elements of
this party. The Constable de Montmorency sometimes issued forth from
Chantilly to go and aid the queen-mother, in whom he had no confidence,
but whom he preferred to the Guises. A former councillor of the
Parliament, for a long while chancellor under Francis I. and Henry II.,
and again summoned, under Francis II., by Catherine de' Medici to the
same post, Francis Olivier, was an honorable executant of the party's
indecisive but moderate policy. He died on the 15th of March, 1560;
and Catherine, in concert with the Cardinal of Lorraine, had the
chancellorship thus vacated conferred upon Michael de l'Hospital, a
magistrate already celebrated, and destined to become still more so. As
soon as he entered upon this great office he made himself remarkable by
the marvellous ability he showed in restraining within bounds "the
Lorraines themselves, whose servant he was," says the Protestant
chronicler Regnier de la Planche; "to those who had the public weal at
heart he gave hope that all would at last turn out well, provided that he
were let alone; and, to tell the truth, it would be impossible to
adequately describe the prudence he displayed; for, assuredly, although
if he had taken a shorter road towards manfully opposing the mischief he
would have deserved more praise, and God would perhaps have blessed his
constancy, yet, so far as one can judge, he alone, by his moderate
behavior, was the instrument made use of by God for keeping back many an
impetuous flood under which every Frenchman would have been submerged.
External appearances, however, seemed to the contrary. In short, when
any one represented to him some trouble that was coming, he always had
these words on his lips: 'Patience, patience; all will go well.'" This
philosophical and patriotic confidence on the part of Chancellor de
l'Hospital was fated to receive some cruel falsifications.
A few months, and hardly so much, after the accession of Francis II.,
a serious matter brought into violent collision the three parties whose
characteristics and dispositions have just been described. The supremacy
of the Guises was insupportable to the Reformers, and irksome to many
lukewarm or wavering members of the Catholic nobility. An edict of the
king's had revoked all the graces and alienations of domains granted by
his father. The crown refused to pay its most lawful debts, and duns
were flocking to the court. To get rid of them, the Cardinal of Lorraine
had a proclamation issued by the king, warning all persons, of whatever
condition, who had come to dun for payment of debts, for compensations,
or for graces, to take themselves off within twenty-four hours on pain of
being hanged; and, that it might appear how seriously meant the threat
was, a very conspicuous gibbet was erected at Fontainebleau close to the
palace. It was a shocking affront. The malcontents at once made up to
the Reformers. Independently of the general oppression and perils under
which these latter labored, they were liable to meet everywhere, at the
corners of the streets, men posted on the lookout, who insulted them and
denounced them to the magistrates if they did not uncover themselves
before the madonnas set up in their way, or if they did not join in the
litanies chanted before them. A repetition of petty requisitions soon
becomes an odious tyranny. An understanding was established between very
different sorts of malcontents; they all said and spread abroad that the
Guises were the authors of these oppressive and unjustifiable acts. They
made common cause in seeking for means of delivering themselves, at the
same time drawing an open distinction between the Guises and the king,
the latter of whom there was no idea of attacking. The inviolability of
kings and the responsibility of ministers, those two fundamental maxims
of a free monarchy, had already become fixed ideas; but how were they to
be taken advantage of and put in practice when the institutions whereby
political liberty exerts its powers and keeps itself secure were not in
force? The malcontents, whether Reformers or Catholics, all cried out
for the states-general. Those of Tours, in 1484, under Charles VIII.,
had left behind them a momentous and an honored memory. But the Guises
and their partisans energetically rejected this cry. "They told the king
that whoever spoke of convoking the states-general was his personal enemy
and guilty of high treason; for his people would fain impose law upon him
from whom they ought to take it, in such sort that there would be left to
him nothing of a king but the bare title. The queen-mother, though all
the while giving fair words to the malcontents, whether Reformers or
others, was also disquieted at their demands, and she wrote to her
son-in-law, Philip II., King of Spain, 'that they wanted, by means of the
said states, to reduce her to the condition of a maid-of-all-work.'
Whereupon Philip replied 'that he would willingly employ all his forces
to uphold the authority of the king his brother-in-law and of his
ministers, and that he had forty thousand men all ready in case anybody
should be bold enough to attempt to violate it.'"
In their perplexity, the malcontents, amongst whom the Reformers were
becoming day by day the most numerous and the most urgent, determined to
take the advice of the greatest lawyers and most celebrated theologians
of France and Germany. They asked whether it would be permissible, with
a good conscience and without falling into the crime of high treason, to
take up arms for the purpose of securing the persons of the Duke of Guise
and the Cardinal of Lorraine, and forcing them to render an account of
their administration. The doctors, on being consulted, answered that it
would be allowable to oppose by force the far from legitimate supremacy
of the Guises, provided that it were done under the authority of princes
of the blood, born administrators of the realm in such cases, and with
the consent of the orders composing the state, or the greatest and
soundest portion of those orders. A meeting of the princes who were
hostile to the Guises were held at Vendome to deliberate as to the
conduct to be adopted in this condition of opinions and parties;
the King of Navarre and his brother the Prince of Conde, Coligny,
D'Andelot, and some of their most intimate friends took part in it;
and D'Ardres, confidential secretary to the Constable de Montmorency, was
present. The Prince of Conde was for taking up arms at once and swoop
down upon the Guises, taking them by surprise. Coligny formally opposed
this plan; the king, at his majority, had a right, he said, to choose his
own advisers; no doubt it was a deplorable thing to see foreigners at the
head of affairs, but the country must not, for the sake of removing them,
be rashly exposed to the scourge of civil war; perhaps it would be enough
if the queen-mother were made acquainted with the general discontent.
The constable's secretary coincided with Coligny, whose opinion was
carried. It was agreed that the Prince of Conde should restrain his
ardor, and let himself be vaguely regarded as the possible leader of the
enterprise if it were to take place, but without giving it, until further
notice, his name and co-operation. He was called the mute captain.
There was need of a less conspicuous and more pronounced leader for that
which was becoming a conspiracy. And one soon presented himself in the
person of Godfrey de Barri, Lord of La Renaudie, a nobleman of an ancient
family of Perigord, well known to Duke Francis of Guise, under whose
orders he had served valiantly at Metz in 1552, and who had for some time
protected him against the consequences of a troublesome trial, at which
La Renaudie had been found guilty by the Parliament of Paris of forging
and uttering false titles. Being forced to leave France, he retired into
Switzerland, to Lausanne and Geneva, where it was not long before he
showed the most passionate devotion for the Reformation. "He was a man,"
says De Thou, "of quick and insinuating wits, ready to undertake
anything, and burning with desire to avenge himself, and wipe out,
by some brilliant deed, the infamy of a sentence which he had incurred
rather through another's than his own crime. He, then, readily offered
his services to those who were looking out for a second leader, and he
undertook to scour the kingdom in order to win over the men whose names
had been given him. He got from them all a promise to meet him at Nantes
in February, 1560, and he there made them a long and able speech against
the Guises, ending by saying, 'God bids us to obey kings even when they
ordain unjust things, and there is no doubt but that they who resist the
powers that God has set up do resist His will. We have this advantage,
that we, ever full of submission to the prince, are set against none but
traitors hostile to their king and their country, and so much the more
dangerous in that they nestle in the very bosom of the state, and, in the
name and clothed with the authority of a king who is a mere child, are
attacking the kingdom and the king himself. Now, in order that you may
not suppose that you will be acting herein against your consciences, I am
quite willing to be the first to protest and take God to witness that I
will not think, or say, or do anything against the king, against the
queen his mother, against the princes his brothers, or against those of
his blood; and that, on the contrary, I will defend their majesty and
their dignity, and, at the same time, the authority of the laws and the
liberty of the country against the tyranny of a few foreigners.'" [De
Thou, t. iii. pp. 467-480.]
"Out of so large an assemblage," adds the historian, "there was not found
to be one whom so delicate an enterprise caused to recoil, or who asked
for time to deliberate. It was agreed that, before anything else, a
large number of persons, without arms and free from suspicion, should
repair to court and there present a petition to the king, beseeching him
not to put pressure upon consciences any more, and to permit the free
exercise of religion; that at almost the same time a chosen body of
horsemen should repair to Blois, where the king was, that their
accomplices should admit them into the town and present a new petition
to the king against the Guises, and that, if these princes would not
withdraw and give an account of their administration, they should be
attacked sword in hand; and, lastly, that the Prince of Conde, who had
wished his name to be kept secret up to that time, should put himself at
the head of the conspirators. The 15th of June was the day fixed for the
execution of it all."
But the Guises were warned; one of La Renaudie's friends had revealed the
conspiracy to the Cardinal of Lorraine's secretary; and from Spain,
Germany, and Italy they received information as to the conspiracy hatched
against them. The cardinal, impetuous and pusillanimous too, was for
calling out the troops at once; but his brother the duke, "who was not
easily startled," was opposed to anything demonstrative. They removed
the king to the castle of Amboise, a safer place than the town of Blois;
and they concerted measures with the queen-mother, to whom the
conspirators were, both in their plans and their persons, almost as
objectionable as to them. She wrote, in a style of affectionate
confidence, to Coligny, begging him to come to Amboise and give her his
advice. He arrived in company with his brother D'Andelot, and urged the
queen-mother to grant the Reformers liberty of conscience and of worship,
the only way to checkmate all the mischievous designs and to restore
peace to the kingdom. Something of what he advised was done: a royal
decree was published and carried up to the Parliament on the 15th of
March, ordaining the abolition of every prosecution on account of
religion, in respect of the past only, and under reservations which
rendered the grace almost inappreciable. The Guises, on their side,
wrote to the Constable de Montmorency to inform him of the conspiracy,
"of which you will feel as great horror as we do," and they signed, Your
thoroughly best friends. The Prince of Conde himself, though informed
about the discovery of the plot, repaired to Amboise without showing any
signs of being disconcerted at the cold reception offered him by the
Lorraine princes. The Duke of Guise, always bold, even in his
precautions, "found an honorable means of making sure of him," says
Castelnau, "by giving him the guard at a gate of the town of Amboise,"
where he had him under watch and ward himself. The lords and gentlemen
attached to the court made sallies all around Amboise to prevent any
unexpected attack. "They caught a great many troops badly led and badly
equipped. Many poor folks, in utter despair and without a leader, asked
pardon as they threw down upon the ground some wretched arms they bore,
and declared that they knew no more about the enterprise than that there
had been a time appointed them to see a petition presented to the king
which concerned the welfare of his service and that of the kingdom."
[Memoires de Castelnau, pp. 49, 50.] On the 18th of March, La Renaudie,
who was scouring the country, seeking to rally his men, encountered a
body of royal horse who were equally hotly in quest of the conspirators;
the two detachments attacked one another furiously; La Renaudie was
killed, and his body, which was carried to Amboise, was strung up to a
gallows on the bridge over the Loire with this scroll: "This is La
Renaudie, called La Forest, captain of the rebels, leader and author of
the sedition." Disorder continued for several days in the surrounding
country; but the surprise attempted against the Guises was a failure, and
the important result of the riot of Amboise (tumulte d'Amboise), as it
was called, was an ordinance of Francis II., who, on the 17th of March,
1560, appointed Duke Francis of Guise "his lieutenant-general,
representing him in person absent and present in this good town of
Amboise and other places of the realm, with full power, authority,
commission, and special mandate to assemble all the princes, lords, and
gentlemen, and generally to command, order, provide, and dispose of all
things requisite and necessary."
The young king was, nevertheless, according to what appears, somewhat
troubled at all this uproar and at the language of the conspirators.
"I don't know how it is," said he sometimes to the Guises, "but I hear it
said that people are against you only. I wish you could be away from
here for a time, that we might see whether it is you or I that they are
against." But the Guises set about removing this idea by telling the
king that neither he nor his brothers would live one hour after their
departure, and "that the house of Bourbon were only seeking how to
exterminate the king's house." The caresses of the young queen Mary
Stuart were enlisted in support of these assertions of her uncles. They
made a cruel use of their easy victory "for a whole month," according to
contemporary chronicles, "there was nothing but hanging or drowning
folks. The Loire was covered with corpses strung, six, eight, ten, and
fifteen, to long poles. . . ." "What was strange to see," says
Regnier de la Planche, "and had never been wont under any form of
government, they were led out to execution without having any sentence
pronounced against them publicly, or having the cause of their death
declared, or having their names mentioned. They of the Guises reserved
the chief of them, after dinner, to make sport for the ladies; the two
sexes were ranged at the windows of the castle, as if it were a question
of seeing some mummery played. And what is worse, the king and his young
brothers were present at these spectacles, as if the desire were to
'blood' them; the sufferers were pointed out to them by the Cardinal of
Lorraine with all the signs of a man greatly rejoiced, and when the poor
wretches died with more than usual firmness, he would say, 'See, sir,
what brazenness and madness; the fear of death cannot abate their pride
and felonry. What would they do, then, if they had you in their
clutches?'"
It was too much vengeance to take and too much punishment to inflict for
a danger so short-lived and so strictly personal. So hideous was the
spectacle that the Duchess of Guise, Anne d'Este, daughter of Renee of
France, Duchess of Ferrara, took her departure one day, saying, as she
did so, to Catherine de' Medici, "Ah! madame, what a whirlwind of hatred
is gathering about the heads of my poor children!" There was, throughout
a considerable portion of the country, a profound feeling of indignation
against the Guises. One of their victims, Villemongey, just as it came
to his turn to die, plunged his hands into his comrades' blood, saying,
"Heavenly Father, this is the blood of Thy children: Thou wilt avenge
it!" John d'Aubigne, a nobleman of Saintonge, as he passed through
Amboise one market-day with his son, a little boy eight years old,
stopped before the heads fixed upon the posts, and said to the child,
"My boy, spare not thy head, after mine, to avenge these brave chiefs; if
thou spare thyself, thou shalt have my curse upon thee." The Chancellor
Olivier himself, for a long while devoted to the Guises, but now
seriously ill and disquieted about the future of his soul, said to
himself, quite low, as he saw the Cardinal of Lorraine, from whom he had
just received a visit, going out, "Ah! cardinal, you are getting us all
damned!"
The mysterious chieftain, the mute captain of the conspiracy of Amboise,
Prince Louis of Conde, remained unattainted, and he remained at Amboise
itself. People were astounded at his security. He had orders not to
move away; his papers were seized by the grand prelate; but his coolness
and his pride did not desert him for an instant. We will borrow from the
Histoire des Princes de Conde (t. i. pp. 68-71), by the Duke of
Aumale, the present heir, and a worthy one, of that line, the account of
his appearance before Francis II., "in full council, in presence of the
two queens, the knights of the order, and the great officers of the
crown. 'As I am certified,' said he, 'that I have near the king's person
enemies who are seeking the ruin of me and mine, I have begged him to do
me so much favor as to hear my answer in this company here present. Now,
I declare that, save his own person and the persons of his brothers, of
the queen his mother and of the queen regnant, those who have reported
that I was chief and leader of certain sedition-mongers, who are said to
have conspired against his person and state, have falsely and miserably
lied. And renouncing, for the nonce, my quality as prince of the blood,
which I hold, however, of God alone, I am ready to make them confess, at
the sword's point, that they are cowards and rascals, themselves seeking
the subversion of the state and the crown, whereof I am bound to promote
the maintenance by a better title than my accusers. If there be, amongst
those present, any one who has made such a report and will maintain it,
let him declare as much this moment.' The Duke of Guise, rising to his
feet, protested that he could not bear to have so great a prince any
longer calumniated, and offered to be his second. Conde, profiting by
the effect produced by his proud language, demanded and obtained leave
to retire from the court, which he quitted at once."
All seemed to be over; but the whole of France had been strongly moved by
what had just taken place; and, though the institutions which invite a
people to interfere in its own destinies were not at the date of the
sixteenth century in regular and effective working order, there was
everywhere felt, even at court, the necessity of ascertaining the feeling
of the country. On all sides there was a demand for the convocation of
the states-general. The Guises and the queen-mother, who dreaded this
great and independent national power, attempted to satisfy public opinion
by calling an assembly of notables, not at all numerous, and chosen by
themselves. It was summoned to meet on August 21, 1560, at
Fontainebleau, in the apartments of the queen-mother. Some great lords,
certain bishops, the Constable de Montmorency, two marshals of France,
the privy councillors, the knights of the order, the secretaries of state
and finance, Chancellor de l'Hospital and Coligny, took part in it; the
King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde did not respond to the summons
they received; the constable rode up with a following of six hundred
horse. The first day was fully taken up by a statement, presented to the
assembly by L'Hospital, of the evils that had fallen upon France, and by
a declaration on the part of the Guises that they were ready to render an
account of their administration and of their actions. Next day, just as
the Bishop of Valence was about to speak, Coligny went up to the king,
made two genuflections, stigmatized in energetic terms the Amboise
conspiracy and every similar enterprise, and presented two petitions,
one intended for the king himself and the other for the queen-mother.
"They were forwarded to me in Normandy," said he, "by faithful
Christians, who make their prayers to God in accordance with the true
rules of piety. They ask for nothing but the liberty of holding their
own creed, and that of having temples and celebrating their worship in
certain fixed places. If necessary, this petition would be signed by
fifty thousand persons." "And I," said the Duke of Guise brusquely,
"would find a million to sign a contrary petition." This incident went
no further between the two speakers. A great discussion began as to the
reforms desirable in the church, and as to the convocation of a general
council, or, in default thereof, a national council. The Cardinal of
Lorraine spoke last, and vehemently attacked the petitions presented by
Admiral de Coligny. "Though couched in moderate and respectful terms,"
said he, "this document is, at bottom, insolent and seditious; it is as
much as to say that those gentry would be obedient and submissive if the
king would be pleased to authorize their mischievous sentiments. For the
rest," he added, "as it is merely a question of improving morals and
putting in force strict discipline, the meeting of a council, whether
general or national, appears to me quite unnecessary. I consent to the
holding of the states-general."
The opinion of the Cardinal of Lorraine was adopted by the king, the
queen-mother, and the assemblage. An edict dated August 26 convoked a
meeting of the states-general at Meaux on the 10th of December following.
As to the question of a council, general or national, it was referred to
the decision of the pope and the bishops of France. Meanwhile, it was
announced that the punishment of sectaries would, for the present, be
suspended, but that the king reserved to himself and his judges the right
of severely chastising those who had armed the populace and kindled
sedition. "Thus it was," adds De Thou, "that the Protestant religion,
hitherto so hated, began to be tolerated, and in a manner authorized, by
consent of its enemies themselves." [Histoire Universelle, t. iii.
p. 535.]
The elections to the states-general were very stormy; all parties
displayed the same ardor; the Guises by identifying themselves more and
more with the Catholic cause, and employing, to further its triumph, all
the resources of the government; the Reformers by appealing to the rights
of liberty and to the passions bred of sect and of local independence.
A royal decree was addressed to all the bailiffs of the kingdom.
"Ye shall not fail," said the king to them, "to keep your eyes open,
and give orders that such mischievous spirits as may be composed of the
remnants of the Amboise rebellion or other gentry, studious of innovation
and alteration in the state, be so discovered and restrained that they be
not able to corrupt by their machinations, under whatsoever pretexts they
may hide them, simple folks led on by confidence in the clemency whereof
we have heretofore made use." The bailiffs followed, for the most part
successfully, but in some cases vainly, the instructions they had
received. One morning in December, 1560, the Duke of Guise was visited
by a courier from the Count de Villars, governor of Languedoc; he
informed the duke that the deputies of that province had just been
appointed, and that they all belonged to the new religion, and were
amongst the most devoted to the sect; there was not a moment to lose,
"for they were men of wits, great reputation, and circumspection. The
governor was very vexed at not having been able to prevent their election
and departure; but plurality of votes had carried the day against him."
This despatch was "no sooner received than some men were got ready to go
and meet those deputies, in order to put them in a place where they would
never have been able to do good or harm." The deputies of Languedoc
escaped this ambuscade, and arrived safe and sound at Orleans; but they
"were kept under strict watch, and their papers were confiscated up to
the moment when the death of the king occurred to deliver them from all
fear." [Histoire des Etats generaux, by G. Picot, t. ii. pp. 25-29.]
In Provence, in Dauphiny, in the countship of Avignon, at Lyons, on
occasion and in the midst of the electoral struggle, several local
risings, seizures of arms, and surprisals of towns took place and
disturbed the public peace. There was not yet religious civil war, but
there were the preparatory note and symptoms of it.
At the same time that they were thus laboring to keep out of the
approaching states-general adversaries of obscure rank and belonging to
the people, the Guises had very much at heart a desire that the great
leaders of the Reformers and of the Catholic malcontents, especially the
two princes of the house of Bourbon, the King of Navarre and the Prince
of Conde, should come to this assembly, and there find themselves under
the thumb of their enemies. They had not gone to the assemblage of
notables at Fontainebleau, and their hostility to the Guises had been
openly shown during and since that absence. Nothing was left untried to
attract them, not to Meaux any longer, but to Orleans, whither the
meeting of the states-general had been transferred. King Francis II.,
a docile instrument in the hands of his uncles and his young queen their
niece, wrote letter after letter to the King of Navarre, urging him to
bring with him his brother the Prince of Conde to clear himself of the
accusations brought against him "by these miserable heretics, who made
marvellous charges against him. . . . Conde would easily prove the
falsity of the assertions made by these rascals." The King of Navarre
still hesitated; the king insisted haughtily. "I should be sorry," he
wrote on the 30th of August, 1560, "that into the heart of a person of
such good family, and one that touches me so nearly, so miserable an
inclination should have entered; being able to assure you that
whereinsoever he refuses to obey me I shall know perfectly well how to
make it felt that I am king." The Prince of Conde's mother-in-law, the
Countess of Roye, wrote to the queen-mother that the prince would appear
at court if the king commanded it; but she begged her beforehand not to
think it strange if, on going to a place where his most cruel enemies had
every power, he went attended by his friends. Whether she really were,
or only pretended to be, shocked at what looked like a threat, Catherine
replied that no person in France had a right to approach the king in any
other wise than with his ordinary following, and that, if the Prince of
Conde went to court with a numerous escort, he would find the king still
better attended. At last the King of Navarre and his brother made up
their minds. How could they elude formal orders? Armed resistance had
become the only possible resource, and the Prince of Conde lacked means
to maintain it; his scarcity of money was such that, in order to procure
him a thousand gold crowns, his mother-in-law had been obliged to pledge
her castle of Germany to the Constable de Montmorency. In spite of fears
and remonstrances on the part of their most sincere friends, the two
chiefs of the house of Bourbon left their homes and set out for Orleans.
On their arrival before Poitiers, great was their surprise: the governor,
Montpezat, shut the gates against them as public enemies. They were on
the point of abruptly retracing their steps; but Montpezat had ill
understood his instructions; he ought to have kept an eye upon the
Bourbons without displaying any bad disposition towards them, so long as
they prosecuted their journey peacefully; the object was, on the
contrary, to heap upon them marks of respect, and neglect nothing to give
them confidence. Marshal de Termes, despatched in hot haste, went to
open the gates of Poitiers to the princes, and receive them there with
the honors due to them. They resumed their route, and arrived on the
30th of October at Orleans.
The reception they there met with cannot be better described than it has
been by the Duke of Aumale: "Not one of the crown's officers came to
receive the princes; no honor was paid them; the streets were deserted,
silent, and occupied by a military guard. In conformity with usage, the
King of Navarre presented himself on horseback at the great gate of the
royal abode; it remained closed. He had to pocket the insult, and pass
on foot through the wicket, between a double row of gentlemen wearing an
air of insolence. The king awaited the princes in his chamber; behind
him were ranged the Guises and the principal lords; not a word, not a
salutation on their part. After this freezing reception, Francis II.
conducted the two brothers to his mother, who received them, according to
Regnier de la Planche's expression, 'with crocodile's tears.' The Guises
did not follow them thither, in order to escape any personal dispute, and
so as not to be hearers of the severe words which they had themselves
dictated to the young monarch. The king questioned Conde sharply; but
the latter, 'who was endowed with great courage, and spoke as well as
ever any prince or gentleman in the world, was not at all startled, and
defended his cause with many good and strong reasons,' protesting his
own innocence and accusing the Guises of calumniation. When he haughtily
alluded to the word of honor which had been given him, the king,
interrupting him, made a sign; and the two captains of the guard, Breze
and Chavigny, entered and took the prince's sword. He was conducted to a
house in the city, near the Jacobins', which was immediately barred,
crenelated, surrounded by soldiers, and converted into a veritable
bastile. Whilst they were removing him thither, Conde exclaimed loudly
against this brazen violation of all the promises of safety by which he
had been lured on when urged to go to Orleans. The only answer he
received was his committal to absolutely solitary confinement and the
withdrawal of his servants. The King of Navarre vainly asked to have his
brother's custody confided to him; he obtained nothing but a coarse
refusal; and he himself, separated from his escort, was kept under ocular
supervision in his apartment."
The trial of the Prince of Conde commenced immediately. He was brought
before the privy council. He claimed, as a prince of the blood and
knight of the order of St. Michael, his right to be tried only by the
court of Parliament furnished with the proper complement of peers and
knights of the order. This latter safeguard was worth nothing in his
case, for there had been created, just lately, eighteen new knights, all
friends and creatures of the Guises. His claim, however, was rejected;
and he repeated it, at the same time refusing to reply to any
interrogation, and appealing "from the king ill advised to the king
better advised." A priest was sent to celebrate mass in his chamber: but
"I came," said he, "to clear myself from the calumnies alleged against
me, which is of more consequence to me than hearing mass." He did not
attempt to conceal his antipathy towards the Guises, and the part he had
taken in the hostilities directed against them. An officer, to whom
permission had been given to converse with him in presence of his
custodians, told him "that an appointment (accommodation) with the Duke
of Guise would not be an impossibility for him." "Appointment between
him and me!" answered Conde: "it can only be at the point of the lance."
The Duchess Renee of Ferrara, daughter of Louis XII., having come to
France at this time, went to Orleans to pay her respects to the king.
The Duke of Guise was her son-in-law, and she reproached him bitterly
with Conde's trial. "You have just opened," said she, "a wound which
will bleed a long while; they who have dared to attack persons of the
blood royal have always found it a bad job." The prince asked to see, in
the presence of such persons as the king might appoint, his wife, Eleanor
of Roye, who, from the commencement of the trial, "solicited this favor
night and day, often throwing herself on her knees before the king with
tears incredible; but the Cardinal of Lorraine, fearing lest his Majesty
should be moved with compassion, drove away the princess most rudely,
saying that, if she had her due, she would herself be placed in the
lowest dungeon." For them of Guise the princess was a thorn in the
flesh, for she lacked not wits, or language, or courage, insomuch that
they had some discussion about making away with her. [Memoires de
Castelnau, p. 119; Histoire de l'Etat de France, Cant de la Republique
que de la Religion, sous Francois II., by L. Regnier, Sieur de la
Planche.] She demanded that at any rate able lawyers might act as
counsel for her husband. Peter Robert and Francis de Marillac, advocates
of renown in the Parliament of Paris, were appointed by the king for that
purpose, but their assistance proved perfectly useless; on the 26th of
November, 1560, the Prince of Conde was sentenced to death; and the
sentence was to be carried out on the 10th of December, the very day of
the opening of the states-general. Most of the historians say that, when
it came to the question of signing it, three judges only, Chancellor de
l'Hospital, the councillor of state, Duportail, and the aged Count of
Sancerre, Louis de Bueil, refused to put their names to it. "For my
part," says the scrupulous De Thou, "I can see nothing quite certain as
to all that. I believe that the sentence of death was drawn up and not
signed. I remember to have heard it so said a long while afterwards by
my father, a truthful and straightforward man, to whom this form of
sentence had always been distasteful."
Many contemporaries report, and De Thou accords credence to the report,
that, in order to have nothing more to fear from the house of Bourbon,
the Guises had resolved to make away with King Anthony of Navarre as well
as his brother the Prince of Conde, but by another process. Feeling
persuaded that it would be impossible to obtain against the elder brother
a sentence ever so little in accordance with justice, for his conduct had
been very reserved, they had, it is said, agreed that King Francis II.
should send for the King of Navarre into his closet and reproach him
severely for his secret complicity with his brother Conde, and that if
the King of Navarre defended himself stubbornly, he should be put to
death on the spot by men posted there for the purpose. It is even added
that Francis II. was to strike the first blow. Catherine de' Medici, who
was beginning to be disquieted at the arrogance and successes of the
Lorraine princes, sent warning of this peril to the King of Navarre by
Jacqueline de Longwy, Duchess of Montpensier; and, just as he was
proceeding to the royal audience from which he was not sure to return,
Anthony de Bourbon, who was wanting in head rather than in heart, said to
Renty, one of his gentlemen, "If I die yonder, carry my blood-stained
shirt to my wife and my son, and tell my wife to send it round to the
foreign princes of Christendom, that they may avenge my death, as my son
is not yet of sufficient age." We may remark that the wife was Jeanne
d'Albret, and the son was to be Henry IV. According to the chroniclers,
when Francis II. looked in the eyes of the man he was to strike, his
fierce resolve died away: the King of Navarre retired, safe and sound,
from the interview, and the Duke of Guise, irritated at the weakness of
the king his master, muttered between his teeth, "'Tis the very whitest
liver that ever was."
In spite of De Thou's indorsement of this story, it is doubtful whether
its authenticity can be admitted; if the interview between the two kings
took place, prudence on the part of the King of Navarre seems to be quite
as likely an explanation of the result as hesitation to become a murderer
on the part of Francis II.
One day Conde was playing cards with some officers on guard over him,
when a servant of his who had been permitted to resume attendance on his
master, pretending to approach him for the purpose of picking up a card,
whispered in his ear, "Our gentleman is croqued." The prince,
mastering his emotion, finished his game. He then found means of being
for a moment alone with his servant, and learned from him that Francis
II. was dead. [Histoire des Princes de Conde, by the Duke d'Aumale,
t. i. p. 94.] On the 17th of November, 1560, as he was mounting his
horse to go hunting, he fainted suddenly. He appeared to have recovered,
and was even able to be present when the final sentence was pronounced
against Conde; but on the 29th of November there was a fresh
fainting-fit. It appears that Ambrose Pare, at that time the first
surgeon of his day, and a faithful Reformer, informed his patron, Admiral
Coligny, that there would not be long to wait, and that it was all over
with the king. Up to the very last moment, either by themselves or
through their niece Mary Stuart, the Guises preserved their influence
over him: Francis II. sent for the King of Navarre, to assure him that it
was quite of his own accord, and not by advice of the Guises, that he had
brought Conde to trial. He died on the 5th of December, 1560, of an
effusion on the brain, resulting from a fistula and an abscess in the
ear.
Through a fog of brief or doubtful evidence we can see at the bedside of
this dying king his wife Mary Stuart, who gave him to the last her tender
ministrations, and Admiral de Coligny, who, when the king had heaved his
last sigh, rose up, and, with his air of pious gravity, said aloud before
the Cardinal of Lorraine and the others who were present, "Gentlemen, the
king is dead. A lesson to us to live." At the same moment the Constable
de Montmorency, who had been ordered some time ago to Orleans, but had,
according to his practice, travelled but slowly, arrived suddenly at the
city gate, threatened to hang the ill-informed keepers of it, who
hesitated to let him enter, and hastened to fold in his arms his niece,
the Princess of Conde, whom the death of Francis II. restored to hope.
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