XIII.
In joining hands with the convocation of the States-General, the Lorraines entertained more than one secret thought. They flattered themselves that they should come to a conclusion with the Bourbons, envelop the Huguenots in the ruin of their chiefs, and win the majority in the States by seduction or intimidation.
Antoine de Bourbon and the Prince de Condé were invited to take their seats as princes of the blood royal. They were aware that great dangers awaited them, but a refusal would have been represented as an open rupture with the regal authority. The opposite characters of the two princes also concurred in inducing them to accept the invitation. The king of Navarre was too weak to brave the crown in so evident a manner; Louis de Condé was of too bold a nature to expose himself to the imputation of fear. The one started on the journey because he was not daring enough, the other, because his daring was too great.
Hardly had Condé entered Orleans, before he was arrested on a charge of high treason, and commissioners were appointed to try him. He refused to answer, on the plea that a prince of the blood royal could be tried only by the king and his peers, with all the assembled houses of Parliament. The Lorraines showed him an ordinance, by which he was declared guilty of lese-majesty, if he, persisted in his refusal. “We must not tolerate,” said the Duke de Guise, “the bravadoes of this young gallant, prince though he be; we must crush the head of heresy and rebellion at one blow.”
The chief of the house of Bourbon humbled himself before the duke and the cardinal, to solicit the pardon of his brother. They received him with lofty coldness, and had a strict watch kept over him. All historians relate that they conceived the project of assassinating him. As they dared not bring him to trial, it was resolved to summon him before Francis II., and so to induce a quarrel, by which the king should be led to draw his sword upon him. At this signal the courtiers were to throw themselves upon Antoine de Bourbon, and poniard him.
When informed of the plan, the extent of the danger inspired him with a degree, of courage, and he said to the Captain Rente: “I am going to a place where my death has been sworn. If I perish, take the shirt I now wear; carry it to my wife, since my son is not yet old enough to take vengeance for my death; and let her send it to the Christian princes, who will avenge me.” He then entered the king’s chamber, and the Cardinal de Lorraine shut the door behind him. The king made some insulting observations to him; but either from the timidity of youth, or from pity, he was afraid to give the signal. “The coward! the poltroon!” murmured Francis de Guise, who was hidden behind the door. A king of seventeen commissioned to assassinate his uncle! What manners! What a reign! What a court![35]
The Cardinal de Lorraine had also conceived a plan for the extermination of heretics, resembling those executed against the Albigeois of Languedoc, or the Moors of Spain. Would that for the honour of the human race, it were possible to deny such detestable designs; but they are attested by (Roman) Catholic writers, and even by the Jesuit Maimbourg.
The Cardinal had therefore resolved to make all Frenchmen sign a formula of faith drawn up by the Sorbonne in 1542; a formula which, says Jean de Serres, “no man of the religion would for a thousand livres have approved or signed.”
The king was to present this document on Christmas-day to all the princes, officers, and chevaliers of the court; the queen was to present it to all the ladies of the palace; the Chancellor to the deputies of the States-General and to the maîtres des requêtes; the chiefs of the Parliaments and of the bailiwicks to their subordinates; the governors of the provinces to the gentry; the curates to all the inhabitants of their parishes; the heads of houses to their servants. Whosoever should refuse to sign, or who should even request time, was to be put to death on the following day; or, according to the milder version of Maimbourg, to be despoiled of all his goods and banished from the kingdom. Four marshals were to scour the provinces with their troops, to assist by force of arms in carrying out this law of extermination. The Cardinal adding burlesque to atrocity, called this formula of faith the rat-trap of the Huguenots.
Never before had those of the reformed faith in France been reduced to such a terrible extremity: when suddenly Francis II. was taken dangerously ill. The Cardinal de Lorraine had public processions made in Paris for his recovery. The young prince called upon the Virgin and the saints, saying, with the imbecile fanaticism in which he had been tutored, that if it pleased God to restore him to health, he would spare neither wife, nor mother, nor sisters, nor brothers, if they were ever so little suspected of heresy. These vows were fruitless. Francis II. died in his seventeenth year, after a reign of seventeen months, on the 5th December, 1560.
No one cared for his burial, so much were the queen-mother, the Bourbons, the Guises, the cardinals, and the courtiers engrossed by their own affairs. Francis II. was escorted to Saint Denis by an old blind bishop and two ancient servitors of his house.
Before he had given up his last breath, the Lorraines had barricaded themselves in their dwelling; and there they remained for thirty-six hours, until they were reassured as to the intentions of the queen-mother and of the king of Navarre. Their governments and dignities were preserved to them, but they were no longer masters of the state. Charles IX, ten years and a half old, was proclaimed king, Catherine de Medicis regent, and Anthony de Bourbon lieutenant-general of the kingdom. He might, as first prince of the blood, have claimed the regency; but he lost his opportunity for want of vigour. The prince of Condé came out of prison; the Constable Anne of Montmorency resumed his office of grand master near the new king; and Admiral Coligny, asking nothing for himself, endeavoured to secure the free exercise of religion. The whole aspect of affairs was changed. The faithful (once more) breathed.
The States-General opened at Orleans on the 13th December. The Chancellor Michel de l’Hospital, the first to speak in the name of the infant king and the regent, declared that the disorder of the Church had given birth to heresy, and that a good reformation alone could extinguish it. He advised the (Roman) Catholics to adorn themselves with virtues and a good life, and to attack their adversaries with the arms of charity, of prayer, and of persuasion. “The knife” he said, “avails but little against the mind; gentleness will do more than severity. Give up those fiendish names—the symbols of parties, factions, and seditions—Lutherans, Huguenots, Papists. Let us not change the name of Christian.” He ended by proposing the reunion of a national council for the settlement of all religious differences.
The orator of the Third Estate, Jean Lange, advocate of the Parliament of Bordeaux, keenly attacked three vices of the (Roman) Catholic clergy—ignorance, avarice, and luxury—intimating that troubles would cease when these abuses should be corrected.
Jacques de Silly, lord of Rochefort, spoke for the nobility, and did not spare the priests any more than did the orator of the Third Estate. He complained of their meddling in the administration of justice, of their enormous possessions, of the non-residence of the bishops, of their want of zeal for the instruction of their flocks, and finished by asking for churches for the gentlemen of the reformed religion.
Some months later, at the meeting of the States at Saint Germain, another orator of the Third Estate, the first magistrate of Autun, went so far as to propose the alienation of the goods of the Church, which he estimated at one hundred and twenty millions of livres; that the king should sell these possessions, and reserve forty-eight millions, which at an interest of one in twelve, would yield a yearly revenue of four millions, sufficient for the support of the priests; that then seventy-two millions would remain, of which forty-two millions might be employed in paying off the debts of the crown, and the remainder might be spent in the encouragement of agriculture and commerce. As to religious differences, the same orator proposed to discuss them in a national council, legalized and free, to and from which, safe access and return should be guaranteed.
We are astonished at finding, in 1560, thoughts which were not fulfilled till 1789. It was the great voice of the people which was (then) heard. Civil wars had not yet fanaticised their minds and rendered their hearts inaccessible to pity. It was one of those short moments when the Reformation might have obtained the ascendant in France. Three-fourths of the nobility was gained over; the bourgeoisie was prepared; the magistracy was waiting; and would not the lower orders, already favourable to the new ideas in one part of the kingdom, have communicated an impulse to the other? What then was it that arrested this vast movement, whence a new France, a new Europe, might have sprung? First let us look to the Almighty, whose ways are wrapt in mystery. But in looking to men, what do we find? Among many, no doubt, sincere convictions, the weight of ancient traditions, respect for old recollections and customs. Let us not attribute to selfish motives the great events of mankind; but we must not omit to point out the tortuous policy of Catherine de Medicis, the ambition of the Guises, the intrigues of the king of Spain, the designs and the cupidity of the clergy.
The position of the priests at the States-General of Orleans was a difficult one, and the more they felt their weakness, the greater was the violence they displayed. The orator they had chosen, Jean Quintin, professor of Canon Law, began by regretting that the nobility and the Third Estate had thought proper to speak on their own behalf, when the States-General formed a body, of which the king was the head, and of which the Church was the mouth. He accused the heretics of having no other Gospel than that of destroying altars, of evading ecclesiastical obedience, and of overthrowing the civil laws. Upon the strength of this, he invited his majesty to persecute them to the uttermost, as the sword was in his hand for no other purpose. He added, that since they were excommunicated, it was unlawful to dwell with them, to converse with them, to deal with them; but it was lawful to beat them, and to put them to death, for fear of sharing in their sin.
“Sire,” said he, in conclusion, “all the clergy of your kingdom, on their bended knees, body and heart, humbly prostrate before your majesty, beseech you to be their protector and defender. They pray that if any excavator of dead and buried heresies should take upon him to revive a sect already condemned, and should to this end present a request, and demand churches and leave to inhabit the kingdom (here all eyes were turned upon Coligny, who sat opposite to the orator), we supplicate that he be held and declared a heretic, and proceeded against with all the rigour of the law, canon and civil, in order that the wicked wretch be driven from amongst us.”
Although not unaccustomed to the declamations and invectives of the priests, this harangue, prompted by a savage fanaticism, astonished the States-General. The admiral demanded satisfaction from the queen-mother for the insult to himself, and Jean Quintin was compelled to offer him an apology. “A few days after,” says Jean de Serres, “he died of mortification, on finding himself exposed by several published replies to his harangue, in which his calumnies and falsehoods were clearly refuted.”[36]