V.
The treaty of 1622 was, like many of its predecessors, nothing else than a dead letter; and to explain fully the new recourse to arms, which terminated by the Edict of Grace in 1629, we must state at some length the false position into which the maxims of intolerance, put in force from the death of Henry IV., had placed both sides.
The Calvinists, continually disturbed in the exercise of their religion, forced to carry arms to the very doors of their churches, and threatened with the loss of all the rights they had obtained by the Edict of Nantes, had become embittered against royalty. They suspected it of concealed thoughts and perfidious projects. They accused it of encouraging, at least by its inertness, the Jesuits, the monks, the bishops, the violent magistrates, and the populace, who not only heaped upon them numberless vexations, but loudly announced the approaching extirpation of heresy.
It necessarily resulted from this, that from being a simple religious communion, the French Reformation became every day more and more a political party, and thus from the very nature of things, as the struggle was prolonged, the ideas and passions of the Reformers were led into increased hostility against the crown. The spirit of independence had grown among the Huguenots with the persecutions, with which they were stricken, and with the menaces of destruction that were held over their heads, and many fostered the thought of a republican establishment.
They therefore constituted a considerable party in the first years of the reign of Louis XIII., relying for support, within the kingdom, upon the malcontents of all kinds;—without, upon Protestant Europe. They communicated by La Rochelle with England, by Sédan with Germany, by Geneva with the Swiss cantons, and seemed ever ready to divide the strength of the state.
Such an organization was intolerable to the crown, and was so much the more the object of its dislike, as the principle of national unity gradually succeeded in freeing itself from the ruins of the old feudality. The lower the great families were reduced before the royal authority, the more would the political establishment of the Huguenots be regarded as a singular and dangerous anomaly; and the council was right in desiring enfranchisement from it at any price.
But through the unhappy confusion, which universally existed, at this epoch, in temporal and spiritual matters, royalty, while announcing that it fought only against the political privileges of the Calvinists, put many, very many more in peril, and compromised all their religious rights. People knew that there were impassioned spirits behind the statesmen, and even amongst themselves, who, after having reduced the Calvinists to become a simple sect, would constrain them to re-enter the (Roman) Catholic church, or to quit the kingdom.
It is true that the genius of the Cardinal de Richelieu, his diplomatic alliances, and the European interests of France, during half the reign of Louis XIV., retarded the complete realization of these fears. Nevertheless the plan for the extirpation of heresy was prosecuted in detail, without cessation and without pity, over the whole face of France, from the moment the Calvinist party was reduced. The capture of La Rochelle was the first act of this cruel and merciless drama, of which the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was the dénouement.
Such then was the situation of affairs in 1622.—the Calvinists drew the sword in behalf of their political immunities in the name of their religious rights, which were unceasingly compromised and menaced; and the crown attacked these immunities in the name of the royal sovereignty and of the unity of the country, in order afterwards to arrive at the destruction of religion itself.
As for the respective forces of the two parties, they had become strengthened on one side and weakened on the other, since the wars of the sixteenth century. In spite of the enterprises of some powerful noblemen, the authority of the prince was more generally recognised, respected, and obeyed. The lesser nobility, the Tiers-état or commons, the magistrates and the army, had, under the reign of Henry IV., abandoned feudal traditions to obey royalty alone, and this new spirit had naturally modified the sentiments of many Reformers, who went, unwittingly perhaps, with the great national stream. On the other side, the Calvinist leaders and towns, who clung to their privileges, had no longer the same faith, or the same enthusiasm. There were disunions, mistrust, depression below, and defections above, in the French Reformation. It could still make itself feared in the interior or exterior complications of the kingdom; but it could not form a coalition between province and province, or dictate conditions of peace.
The dukes de Rohan and de Soubise, attacked in their personal liberty after the treaty of 1622, took up arms in Languedoc and Saintonge. The war was one of partisans only; nothing more than sieges of villages or strong castles, and devastations took place. The royal troops committed great ravages round Montauban and Castres. “At night,” say the memoirs of the time, “one might behold a thousand fires along the plain. Crops, orchards, vines, and houses were the aliments of the flames.... The destruction was so well executed that there was not left a tree or a house standing, a blade of corn, or the shoot of a vine.”
The majority of the Huguenots remained at their hearths, and the Duke de Rohan complained of this with sorrow. “It was more difficult,” he says, “to combat the cowardice, the irreligion, and infidelity of the Reformers, than the hatred of their enemies.”
In the beginning of the new troubles, a national synod had been convoked at Charenton. It was opened on the 1st of September, 1623. The place was convenient for the court, as the proximity of Paris guaranteed to it the docility of the assembly. An order was given to the synod to admit a royal officer to its meetings. Although this commissioner, named Galland, was of the Reformed religion, his mandate caused him to be suspected. The deputies of the churches, relying upon the letter of the treaties, and refusing to the crown the right of establishing so important a novelty by a simple ordinance, made many objections; but they were forced to obey, and to content themselves with inscribing on the minutes of their proceedings the following declaration: “This synod, desirous of marking clearly and unmistakably its dutifulness and fidelity to the king, admitted the said Seigneur Galland among the deputies ... under the assurance that his majesty would in his royal goodness re-establish us in our ancient privileges and liberties.”
A second article, less explicable than the foregoing, was that the king expressed his displeasure on the subject of the oath that the national synod of Alais had caused to be taken, three years before, to the doctrine of Dordrecht. The deputies were again obliged to temporize; they answered, that this doctrine was only conformable to that of their confession of faith, and that the synod of Alais had no other design than to establish the perfect union of the Reformers of France with those of the Netherlands.
A third injunction concerned the foreign pastors, who had been admitted to exercise their office in the kingdom. The king wrote, that he would permit this no longer, and required the immediate return of Primrose and Cameron, both natives of Scotland, and ministers at Bordeaux; “not so much because they are foreigners,” said Louis XIII., “but particularly for reasons regarding our service.”
The principal of these reasons was that they had displeased the Jesuits, especially Primrose. Wherefore he did not obtain, as Cameron did, permission to reside in the kingdom, on renouncing his pastoral charge.
One day Father Arnoux, the king’s confessor, preaching before the court, solemnly affirmed that the casuists of his society did not authorize regicide, and Louis XIII. thereupon expressed great pleasure. Primrose, who was there, asked the Jesuit if Jacques Clément had killed his king, or even a king, by striking a prince excommunicated by the pope; moreover, if, in case the Holy See should excommunicate the reigning sovereign, whether the Jesuits would still recognise Louis XIII. as their king; finally, if they were disposed to condemn their disciples Jean Châtel and Ravaillac as guilty of the crime of lese-majesty. These questions were embarrassing; Arnoux’s answer was a sentence of banishment.
At the national synod of Castres, convoked in 1626, the king’s officer Galland again took his seat, notwithstanding the protestations of the meeting. He was the bearer of an order to nominate six persons, from whom the king would choose the two general deputies. This election had up to this period been made by the political assemblies, and the synod alleged the text of the last edict, which prescribed to it to occupy itself solely with affairs of doctrine and discipline. But the court, without having expressly stated it in the last treaties, did not intend to permit the holding of any more political assemblies, and compelled the synod to exceed its powers, while it restricted it with inflexible rigour upon other questions. Thus the council supported or overturned the letter of the laws according to the object of the moment—the universal and perpetual practice of the strong.
The synod of Castres made deep complaints concerning the unhappy condition of the churches. It said to Louis XIII. “that his subjects of the Reformed religion were molested in many parts of the kingdom, obstructed in the exercise of their religion, and deprived of their places of worship; that even their cemeteries had been taken away from them, and the corpses disinterred with the extremest indignity; that their ministers had been cruelly treated, beaten, wounded, and driven out of their churches, although they were quite innocent, wronging neither the public in general, nor any person in particular.”
While the court gave the Reformers satisfaction upon a few secondary points, it prepared a formidable expedition against their last stronghold. The Cardinal de Richelieu, who became a member of the council in the year 1624, planned the establishment of the absolute authority of the king upon the ruins of La Rochelle. The design was no longer concealed. Louis XIII. announced it to the pope, who had exhibited great vexation at the news of the new treaty with the Huguenots. The priests published the near triumph of the (Roman) Catholic faith, and the archbishop of Lyons wrote to Richelieu, “We must lay siege to La Rochelle, and chastise, or to speak plainly, exterminate the Huguenots, whatever else be left undone.”
The commune of La Rochelle enjoyed privileges far anterior to the period of the Reformation. Eléonore d’Aquitaine had in the twelfth century conferred important liberties upon it. The burgesses governed themselves. They named a town council, consisting of the mayor, twenty-four aldermen, and seventy-five peers. These hundred magistrates, or prud’hommes, had troops, a navy, a treasury of their own, and very extensive rights of jurisdiction. La Rochelle was rather annexed than united to France, and its position resembled that of the free towns of Germany.
To justify its pretensions, it declared that it had given itself freely to Charles V., with the express reservation of all its franchises and immunities, and the people of La Rochelle remembered with pride, that they had exacted from Louis XI. the solemn sanction of their rights. “Louis XI.,” says the historian of that city, “made his entry into La Rochelle the 24th of May (1472). He swore to preserve the privileges of the town; he took the oath on bended knees, with one hand upon the cross and the other upon the Holy Gospel, which the mayor held before him.”[78]
A governor resided at La Rochelle in the name of the king, but the burghers did not allow him to introduce a strong garrison, nor to build a citadel. Its real chief was the mayor, who was chosen every year. The inhabitants were rich, industrious, intelligent, and excellent seamen; they numbered from twenty-five to thirty thousand souls.
The Reformation was certain of finding an easy entrance into their town; for wherever there were intelligence and freedom, the gates were opened to them beforehand. From the year 1557, it was known at La Rochelle. “This first beginning was so favoured of God,” says Theodore de Bèze, “that in a short time a great part of the town abandoned the superstitions of the Romish church, the Lord preparing thenceforth this place whereby to sustain on a future day the direst efforts of His adversaries.”[79]
La Rochelle was several times besieged during the religious wars, without having been ever taken. Condé, Coligny, Jeanne d’Albret, and Henry of Béarn, found within its walls a secure refuge. The political assemblies were held there in the most troublous times. It was, in a word, the firmest rampart and the great stronghold of the French Reformation, since the north and the centre of the kingdom could afford it a rallying-point no longer.
The independence of La Rochelle was even important for the noblemen of the (Roman) Catholic party, because it offered them a means of driving the crown to buy of them more dearly the succour they lent it, and of keeping the last remains of their feudal prerogatives safe. “We shall not be so foolish,” said one of them, “as to take La Rochelle;” and the Cardinal de Richelieu made this remark: “The greatest difficulty that I see in the design, is that most of them will labour by way of acquittal and with little affection.”
After the peace of 1622, the court had ordered the construction of a fort near La Rochelle, notwithstanding the petitions of the inhabitants, and the promise which had been given them, that their privileges should be respected. Out of this, continual collisions by sea and land had arisen, which produced no decisive result until the year 1627.
Richelieu at length sought to strike a great blow, by employing all the power of his genius and all the resources of the crown. He staked his political fortune upon the capture of La Rochelle, persuaded that if he succeeded in this expedition, he should break up the Huguenot party, reduce the first houses of the kingdom, and leave in France one dominant power alone—royalty.