XVIII.
Religion was but a secondary matter in the war between Henry IV. and the League, and in the other events of this epoch. We need not relate them, since they belong to the general history of the country, and not to our special subject.
Thirty years earlier, the advent of a Calvinist prince to the throne of France would perhaps have made the Reformed the dominant religion; but in 1589 all was changed. Far from deriving advantage, the affairs of the Reformed were compromised by the event. Henry of Navarre, as lieutenant of Henry III., could dictate his own conditions; it was necessary that as king, he should accept those of the (Roman) Catholics. He had their desertion to dread, whilst he did not fear that he should be abandoned by his co-religionists. He therefore did little for his own party, but much for that of his adversaries, according to that old court maxim, that “enemies should be gratified at the expense of those friends whose support may be depended upon.”
Before taking an oath of fidelity, the (Roman) Catholic nobles demanded that he should again enter the communion of the Romish church. It was the Marquis d’O, superintendent of the finances, who conveyed to him this message—a singular choice for a religious mission! This former creature of Henry III., one of the most contemptible and despised of men, had disgusted the courtiers themselves by the barefaced double-dealing of his language and conduct. He, however, protested in the name of the nobility, that he would rather throw himself upon his sword than allow (Roman) Catholicism to be ruined in France.
Henry IV. refused to change his religion all at once. “Would it be more agreeable to you,” said he to the (Roman) Catholic nobles, “to have a king without a God? Could you place confidence in the faith of an atheist? And in the day of battle would you follow the banner of a perjurer and an apostate with alacrity?” After long discussions he only promised that he would seek instruction during the next six months.
These words were regarded in two very different ways. The promise of seeking instruction seemed to the (Roman) Catholics equivalent to his re-entering the pale of the church of Rome; to the Reformed, on the contrary, it appeared that they only related to the duty of examining anew the points of controversy and the sincere adoption of the side of truth. As to Henry IV. it appears that he had already determined to become instructed, not by the doctors, but by the course of events.
At the end of some weeks, his army was almost dissolved. Of forty thousand men he only retained from six to seven thousand, and was compelled to fall back upon Normandy. The Duke d’Epernon and other (Roman) Catholic chiefs, retired with their troops, on the ground that they could not serve under a Huguenot chief. Those who remained, demanded that their aid should be paid for by great personal favours. The Calvinist chiefs were more faithful and less exacting. Among them were the Duke de Bouillon, sovereign of the principality of Sédan; François de Châtillon, son of the Admiral Coligny; the Duke Claude de la Trémoille, Jacques Caumont de la Force, Agrippa d’Aubigné, Lanoue, Rosny, and Mornay. The last held a high position in the confidence of his master.
Philippe de Mornay, lord of Plessis, was born at the castle of Buhi, in the old French Vexin, in 1549, and was brought up by his mother in the doctrines of the Reformation. He had not attained the age of twelve years, when he replied to a priest who cautioned him against Lutheran opinions: “I am determined to remain firm in what I have learned in the service of God, and when I shall have doubts upon any point, I will diligently read the Evangelists and the Acts of the Apostles.”
His uncle, the bishop of Nantes, and afterwards archbishop of Rheims, advised him to study the Fathers of the Church, and offered him, with the revenue of a rich abbey, the prospect of becoming his successor. Mornay read the Fathers, who, far from estranging him from his faith, confirmed him in it; and he said to his uncle on refusing the abbey: “I trust in God for what I shall want.”
In after-life he did not belie the disinterestedness of his youth. Animated by strong and firm convictions, modest in prosperity, patient in adversity, always ready to risk his property and his life in the service of his faith, Duplessis-Mornay has displayed to the world one of the greatest and most upright characters that ever honoured the Christian church. He has been called the pope of the Huguenots; it would have been better to have said that he was their model.
His talents equalled his piety. A warrior, a doctor of theology, a counsellor, diplomatist, orator and author, a skilful writer, working fourteen hours a day, and displaying an equal superiority in the most opposite pursuits, it would be difficult to indicate one order of merit, in which he did not excel, if we except the talent of advancing his own fortunes.
Escaped as by a miracle from the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, Mornay took refuge in England, where he met with a gracious reception from Queen Elizabeth. The Duke d’Anjou, on becoming king of Poland, wishing to give a proof of his tolerant intentions towards the Polish Protestants, offered Mornay a place in his council; but he answered: “I will never enter the service of those, who have shed the blood of my brethren.”
The invitation of the Béarnese king was better responded to. Mornay joined this prince, who was then poor and weak, at his small court at Agen; and these two men, so different in character, habit, and conduct, contracted a friendship, which was on more than one occasion interrupted, but never entirely destroyed. Henry stood in need of Mornay, of his prudence, his devotion, and even of his severity; and Mornay, notwithstanding his reproaches, saw in his master a man who had been raised by Heaven to defend the cause of the Reformation.
His functions at the court of Agen and Nérac were as multifarious as his genius was versatile. During the less important wars, which were continually springing up between Henry III. and the Béarnese king, he acted at different times as captain, engineer, camp-master, and chief financier of the army; and instead of gaining by these employments, he more frequently contributed to the cause. When in the tent, he would take his pen and draw up diplomatic notes, memorials, manifestoes, replies to the (Roman) Catholics, and remonstrances to the Reformed, with admirable promptitude. In council he prepared the speeches of the king of Navarre, and furnished him with suitable arguments to satisfy men of jealous or suspicious temperament.
He visited the court of France in order to defend the interests of his co-religionists. Henry III. asked him one day, how a man of his science and capacity could be a Huguenot; “Have you never read,” he asked, “the Catholic doctors?” “I have not only read the Catholic doctors,” was Mornay’s reply, “but I have read them with earnestness; for I am flesh and blood, like another man, and was not born without ambition. I should have been very glad to have discovered what would have quieted my conscience, in order that I might have participated in the wealth and honours which you distribute, and from the enjoyment of which my religion excludes me. But everywhere I have found arguments to fortify my belief; and worldly considerations should always yield to those of conscience.” Noble words, and passing strange to have been spoken at the court of the Valois, and of Catherine de Medicis!
After the death of Henry III. Mornay was, near Henry IV., as the organ of those whose faith was the most decided, and whose intentions were the purest of the Consistorial Reformed.
The Baron de Rosny, afterwards Duke de Sully, represented the political Calvinistic party, or those who advocated measures of compromise. A great minister of state, an able and upright financier, he repaired, more than any other person, the unhappy consequences of the civil wars under the reign of Henry IV.; and if the people measured glory by benefits, his should be immense. He would also display a manly courage when it became necessary, to hinder the king from compromising the dignity of his crown by his weaknesses. But in matters of religion his convictions were not strong, and without leaving the Reformed church himself, he powerfully contributed to its being abandoned by his king. “He was,” says a French historian, “one of those strong-minded men, who place themselves above all prejudices where the service of God is concerned; so that his religion consisted only of superficial forms.”[74]
The old Huguenot chiefs were assembled round Henry IV. at the battle of Ivry in large numbers, and he remembered in the hour of danger the lessons of his pious mother. Lifting up his eyes to heaven, he called God to witness his right: “But, O Lord,” said he, “if it has pleased Thee to order otherwise, or if I should be one of those kings whom Thou givest in Thy wrath, take my life with my crown, and may my blood be the last shed in this quarrel.”
The battle was gained. The Calvinists, nevertheless, remained in an unsettled and critical position. With no legal security, they maintained, in fact, simple possession of those places where they were strong enough to defend themselves, but they held nothing by law. No edict, given in regular form, had abolished the decrees of extermination pronounced against them. The Parliaments could, by the terms of these ordinances, decree that the Calvinists could be taken, judged, and condemned to banishment or capital punishment. The king celebrated the Reformed worship in his camp; at two leagues’ distance it was punished as a crime. Duplessis summed up their position in two words: “They had the halter always round their necks.”
Many complained of this; and seeing that their requests were received with disdain, they proposed, at a meeting convened at Saint Jean d’Angély, to choose another protector for the Church. Henry IV. was much distressed at this course; but the faithful Mornay replied to him by energetic representations: “What! is it not intended to revoke the edicts of proscription, and yet do they counsel the Reformed to be patient? Have they not been patient during fifty years? and does the service of the king require that they should be patient in things of this nature? Ought not children to be baptized? shall not marriages be consecrated? Each hour’s delay brings troubles and sufferings. If three families pray together for the prosperity of the king, if an artisan sings a psalm in his shop, or should a bookseller sell a French Bible, here are grounds for persecuting decrees. Our judges answer that such is the law. Well! let the law be changed. To such evils prompt remedies should be applied.”
The king knew that it would be doubly perilous for him to persist in his denial of justice; from within, because the Reformed at length sought other protection than his own; from without, because the Protestant powers would refuse him their aid. He therefore caused an edict of toleration to be adopted at his council, in the month of July, 1591, known as that of Nantes, which reinstated the Reformed in the same position which they held in 1577; a very meagre concession, since no more was granted than had been given by Henry III. Moreover, this ordinance did not pass without difficulty, and was never well observed, especially in those matters which related to admission to public employment.
We may judge from the following occurrence what was the amount of fanaticism which reigned in the camp even of Henry IV. Several Calvinists having been killed at the siege of Rouen, had been buried indiscriminately with the bodies of (Roman) Catholics, but the priests caused the bodies to be disinterred, and ordered that they should be thrown as food to the beasts of the field. Thus, men who had fought under the same banner were not permitted to sleep together in the same dust.