XIV.
The States-General had served the cause of the Reformation. The Cardinal de Lorraine, annoyed at having played only a secondary part, withdrew to his archbishopric at Rheims. The Duke de Guise retired from the court; and the queen-mother, seeing that the two orders of the laity disapproved of religious persecutions, manifested, in concert with the Chancellor L’Hospital, a favourable disposition towards the Calvinists.
Coligny caused the reformed faith to be preached in his apartments, and Catherine de Medicis opened the pulpit of the palace of Fontainebleau to the bishop Montluc, the same who had so forcibly exclaimed against the abuses of the Roman church in the assembly of Notables. The courtiers, ever ready to range themselves on the side of fortune and power, flocked around the new preachers, and left a Jacobin monk to preach the Lent sermon to himself.
“It seems to me,” said the Jesuit Maimbourg bitterly of the queen-mother, “that, on the most favourable construction, it may be fearlessly said, that if all she did upon this occasion was but a pretence, she did ill to feign so well as to give ground to believe that she belonged to the new sect. For she not only allowed the ministers to preach in the apartments of the prince, where all the world crowded to hear him, whilst a poor Jacobin, who preached the Lent sermon at Fontainebleau, was deserted; but she went so far as to take part herself with all her ladies at the sermons of the bishop of Valence, who preached openly, in one of the rooms of the château, the new dogmas he had drawn from the heresies of Luther and Calvin. So sudden and so strange a change took place at court, that one would have said she was quite a Calvinist. Although it was Lent, meat was publicly sold, and spread upon every table. They talked no more of attending Mass, and the young king, who was still taken there to keep up appearances, went almost alone. They scoffed at the authority of the Popes, at the worship of the saints and of images, at indulgences, and at the ceremonies of the Church, which they treated as superstitions.”[37]
If the Jesuit was right in saying that the queen-mother’s going to the sermon was only a feint, he might have added, that it was also a feint on her part when she went to Mass. Sceptical, as for the most part were the upper classes of Italy in her time, Catherine de Medicis still perhaps believed in magic and sorcery, although not in Christian truth. Instead of serving God, she turned God to her service.
At any rate, the impulse spread to the provinces. How was it possible to interdict the public gatherings of the religious, when they could point to the example of the court? The timid grew bold, temporizers made up their minds. The enthusiasm was general. Controversial writings inundated the land. We possess an ample collection, under the titles of “Apologetic Complaint of the Churches,” “Christian Exhortation to the King of France,” “Remonstrances to the Queen and to the King of Navarre,” and many others of a similar kind.
In these days of fervour and of hope, the faithful believed that the triumph of the Reformation was completely in the hands of the leaders of the state. “It rests with you alone,” they wrote to Catherine de Medicis and Antoine de Bourbon, “that Jesus Christ be known and worshipped throughout the kingdom, in all truth, righteousness, and holiness. For if you ordain that all superstitions and idolatries be extirpated, it will be done without let or hindrance. A single word from your lips will banish all those, who have been guilty of malversation in the Church. This single word will deprive them of strength, virtue, and power.”
There were now not pastors enough. Switzerland was written to for more. Geneva, the Pays de Vaud, the canton of Neufchâtel, supplied as many as they could. They even deprived themselves of those, whose services were most useful to them, in order to satisfy wants more pressing than their own. Many young men, instructed under the eye of Calvin, and others of mature age, of different professions, were consecrated to the ministry of the Gospel. All saw, in the ardour of their faith, a great nation to be conquered.
On their side, the priests, it may easily be believed, were not asleep; and as they found no support at court, they turned their attention to the people. Disturbances arose at several towns,—at Pontoise, at Amiens, and particularly at Beauvais. The Cardinal Odet de Châtillon, who was accused of having celebrated the communion of the Lord’s Supper, on Easter-day, 1561, after the fashion of Geneva, was assailed by the populace, and Marshal de Montmorency had to come from Paris, with a numerous escort, to quell the sedition.
L’Hospital sent to the bailiffs and seneschals letters patent commanding them to liberate all prisoners on account of religion, and not again to visit the interiors of houses under the pretext of illicit meetings. But the Parliament of Paris, angry that the letters had been despatched before they had been registered, and ill disposed to the Reformation, since, by a stroke of authority, Anne Dubourg and six or seven other counsellors had been removed, demanded that the preexisting statutes should be rigidly observed.
But this opposition would have been impotent, had not another arisen out of it, under the name of the triumvirate. This was composed of the Duke de Guise, of the Constable de Montmorency, and of the Marshal de Saint André. Behind this association was the Cardinal de Lorraine with the mass of the clergy; above them, the pope and Philip II.; beneath them the people, especially those of the north and west. The triumvirate, which succeeded in winning over even the king of Navarre, was the most serious obstacle to the progress of the Reformation in France: it is essential, therefore, to explain its origin and character.
The Duke de Guise, kept at a distance by Catherine de Medicis, and hated by the princes of the blood, could not by himself recover the authority, of which the death of Francis II. had deprived him. He, therefore, sought assistance abroad, and formed a close alliance with the Spanish ambassador, who had received from Philip II. instructions to keep up troubles in the kingdom, in order to weaken it, and hand it over to his mercy. This ambassador, as is correctly observed by the Abbé d’Anquetil, acted the part of a French minister of state; he gave his advice in all matters of business, praised, blamed, and corrected; whilst the Guises in all things were with him.
The support of Spain, however, would not have sufficed for the Lorraines. An abandoned woman, the former favourite of Henry II., Diana of Poitiers, who feared lest the spoils of the Huguenots should be demanded back from her, undertook to reconcile the old constable with the Duke de Guise.
Anne de Montmorency was at that time sixty-four years old. This companion in arms of Francis I., who had made him constable in 1538, was a brave cavalier, a loyal servant of the crown, and able to bear disgrace with courage; but of a narrow mind, rough in character, mistaking obstinacy for strength, and rudeness for dignity. In religion he only knew that he was the first Christian baron, and that the kings, his masters, were (Roman) Catholics. He concluded that he was bound to give no quarter to heresy.
Brantôme tells us what was the singular piety of Anne de Montmorency. He fasted with punctilious regularity on Friday, and failed not to repeat his pater-noster morning and evening; but sometimes he broke off, saying, “Go and hang me such a one; hang up this one to a tree; set fire to everything for a mile round.” And then he would continue his devotions, as if nothing were the matter.
His hands were not quite clean in his conduct of the financial affairs under Henry II., and when he learned that the States-General were going to call upon him for his accounts, he conceived that it was an intrigue of the Bourbons, who had a design against his honour, as well as his purse. From that moment he kept aloof from them.
In vain did his eldest son, the Marshal de Montmorency, esteemed, says Mézeray, as one of the wisest nobles of the kingdom, represent to him that he could not, and ought not to separate himself from the princes of the blood, and from his nephews the Châtillons, to become the tool of the house of Lorraine; the obstinate constable always replied: “I am a good servant of the king and of my little masters (so he called the young brothers of Charles IX.), and for the honour of his majesty, I will not suffer the actions of the dead king to be impeached.”
The wife of the constable, Madeline of Savoy, who was usually surrounded by priests and monks, according to the history of Jean de Serres, inflamed him by her outcries. She pandered to his vanity as first Christian baron. “As the first officer of the crown,” she said to him, “and descended not only from the first baron, but from the first Christian of France, you are bound not to suffer the diminution of the Roman church: the ancient device of the house of De Montmorency is, ‘Dieu aide au premier Chrétien!’”
Diana of Poitiers, Madeline of Savoy, the Lorraines, the priests, and the ambassador of Philip II., managed so well, that the Duke de Guise and Anne de Montmorency took counsel together on Easter-day. The skilful contrivers of the affair took care to forget the conscience of the old man.
The third member of the triumvirate was Jacques d’Albon, Marshal de Saint André. Notwithstanding his great military command, he had no strength by himself, and sought for allies to acquire a position. He was an epicurean, who had wasted the goods confiscated from the Huguenots. Brantôme, so indulgent towards the vices of courtiers, says of him: “He was always given to consult his ease, to pleasures, and to excessive luxuries of the table. He was the first to introduce them at court, and truly they surpassed all bounds. He was a very Lucullus in ostentation and magnificence.”[38]
These were the authors of the triumvirate, and the pretended friends of the (Roman) Catholic religion. Worldly motives united them; religion was only their pretext.
The Guises had gathered confidence and courage. This clearly appeared in the language held by the Cardinal de Lorraine after the consecration of Charles IX., in the month of May, 1561. He uttered grave complaints of the meetings of the Huguenots, which went on growing, and he demanded that a new edict should be discussed and drawn up in full Parliament, before the princes, the lords, and all the members of the privy council.
The sittings lasted twenty days. An order resulted, which, while giving an amnesty for the faults committed on either side, and inviting the priests no longer to excite the people, forbade the public meetings of the religion until the reunion of a national council, under pain of confiscation and banishment. This order, which was only adopted by a majority of three voices, bore the name of the Edict of July.
The (Roman) Catholic party congratulated itself upon having obtained a great victory, and the Duke de Guise said, on coming out of the court of the Parliament: “To maintain this edict, my sword shall never be sheathed.” But was it not madness to hope that men, who for forty years had braved the scaffold and the stake, would hesitate before the pain of banishment? What followed will show; France had yet to go through many terrible catastrophes before the two parties were disposed to make peace on more equitable conditions.