The second cardinal of this branch, Charles of Lorraine, was brother of the second duke. He was the greatest man of his family, and the most powerful of his age. His ambition was to administer the finances of France, and he did so during three reigns, with an annual excess of expenditure over income, of two millions and a half. He was rather dishonest than incapable. His enemies threatened to make him account; he silenced them with the sound of the tocsin of St. Bartholomew, and when the slaughter was over he merrily asked for the presence of the accusers who had intended to make him refund.
He was an accomplished hypocrite, and at heart a religious reformer. At last he acknowledged to the leaders of the reformatory movement, whom he admitted to his familiarity, that the Reformation was necessary and warrantable; and yet policy made of him the most savage enemy that Protestantism ever had in France. He urged on the king to burn noble heretics rather than the common people; and when Henri was touched with compassion, in his dying moments, for some Protestant prisoners capitally condemned, the cardinal told him that the feeling came of the devil, and that it was better they should perish. And they perished.
He introduced the Inquisition into France, and was made Grand Inquisitor at the moment the country was rejoicing for the recovery of Calais from the English. And this was the man who, at the Council of Trent, advocated the celebration of divine worship in the vernacular tongue. He was the friend of liberty to the Gallican church, but he took the other side on finding that liberal advocacy periled his chances of being pope. The living pope used and abused him. “I am scandalized,” said his holiness, “at finding you still in the enjoyment of the revenues of so many sees.” “I would resign them all,” said the cardinal, “for a single bishopric.” “Which bishopric?” asked the pope. “Marry!” exclaimed Cardinal Charles, “the bishopric of Rome.”
He was as haughty as he was aspiring. The Guise had induced the weak Anthony of Navarre to turn Romanist; but the cardinal did not treat that king with more courtesy on that account. One frosty morning, not only did the princely priest keep the mountain king tarrying at his garden gate for an audience, but when he went down to his majesty, he listened, all befurred as he was, to the shivering monarch who humbly preferred his suit, cap in hand.
He was covetous and haughty, but he sometimes found his match. His niece, Mary Stuart, had quarreled with Catherine de Medicis, whose especial wrath had been excited by Mary’s phrase applied to Catherine, of “The Florentine tradeswoman.” The Scottish Queen resolved, after this quarrel, to repair to the North. The cardinal was at her side when she was examining her jewels, previously to their being packed up. He tenderly remarked that the sea was dangerous, the jewels costly, and that his niece could not do better than leave them in his keeping. “Good uncle,” said the vivacious Mary, “I and my jewels travel together. If I trust one to the sea, I may the other; and therewith, adieu!” The cardinal bit his lips and blessed her.
Ranke is puzzled where to find the principal author of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. There is no difficulty in the matter. The Guises had appealed to the chances of battle to overcome their chief adversaries in the kingdom. But for every Huguenot father slain, there arose as many filial avengers as he had sons. The causes of quarrel were individual as well as general. A Huguenot had slain the second Duke, and his widow was determined to be avenged. The Cardinal was wroth with the King for retaining Protestant archers in his body-guard. The archers took an unclean vengeance, and defiled the pulpit in the Chapel Royal, wherefrom the Cardinal was accustomed to denounce the doctrine of their teachers. His Eminence formed the confederacy by which it was resolved to destroy the enemy at a blow. To the general causes, I need not allude. The plot itself was formed in Oliver Clisson’s house, in Paris, known as “the Hotel of Mercy.” But the representatives of Rome and Spain, united with those of France, met upon the frontier, and there made the final arrangements which were followed by such terrible consequences. When the stupendous deed was being done, the Cardinal was absent from France; but he fairly took upon himself the guilt, when he conferred the hand of his illegitimate daughter Anne d’Arne on the officer Besme whose dagger had given the first mortal stab to Coligny, the chief of the immolated victims of that dreadful day—and Rome approved.
As a public controversialist he shone in his dispute with Beza. Of his pride, we have an illustration in what is recorded of him in the Council of Trent. The Spanish embassador had taken a place, at mass, above that of the embassador from France. Thereupon, the reverend Cardinal raised such a commotion in the cathedral, and dwelt so loudly and strongly in expletives, that divine worship was suspended, and the congregation broke up in most admired disorder.
So at the coronation, in the Abbey of St. Dennis, of the Queen of Charles IX. The poor, frail, Austrian Princess Elizabeth, after being for hours on her knees, declared her incapacity for remaining any longer without some material support from food or wine. The Cardinal declared that such an irreligious innovation was not to be thought of. He stoutly opposed, well-fed man that he was, the supplying of any refreshment to the sinking Queen; and it was only when he reflected that her life might be imperiled that he consented to “the smallest quantity of something very light,” being administered to her.
He was the only man of his family who was not possessed of the knightly virtue of bravery. He was greatly afraid of being assassinated. In council, he was uncourteous. Thus, he once accused the famous Chancellor le Hospital of wishing to be “the cock of the assembly,” and when the grave chancellor protested against such language, the Cardinal qualified him as “an old ram.” It may be added that, if he feared the dagger directed by private vengeance, he believed himself protected by the guardianship of Heaven, which more than once, as he averred, carried him off in clouds and thunder, when assassins were seeking him. He was wily enough to have said this, in order to deter all attempts at violence directed against himself.
He died edifyingly, kissed Catherine de Medicis, and was believed by the latter, to mysteriously haunt her, long after his death. The real footing on which these two personages stood has yet to be discovered by curious inquiries.