Scarcely four years had rolled away since the St. Bartholomew. In vain had been the massacre of ten thousand Protestants, according to the lowest, and of one hundred thousand, according to the highest estimates, besides nearly all the renowned chiefs of the party. Charles IX.‘s earnest prayer, “That none remain to reproach me!” was so far from accomplishment that the war between Catholicism and Protestantism recommenced in almost every part of France with redoubled passion, with a new importance of character, and with symptoms of much longer duration than at its first outbreak. Both parties had found leaders made, both from their position and their capacity, to command them. Admiral Coligny was succeeded by the King of Navarre, who was destined to become Henry IV.; and Duke Francis of Guise by his son Henry, if not as able, at any rate as brave a soldier, and a more determined Catholic than he. Amongst the Protestants, Sully and Da Plessis-Mornay were assuming shape and importance by the side of the King of Navarre. Catherine de’ Medici placed at her son’s service her Italian adroitness, her maternal devotion, and an energy rare for a woman between sixty and seventy years of age, for forty-three years a queen, and worn out by intrigue, and business, and pleasure. Finally, to the question of religion, the primary cause of the struggle, was added a question of kingship, kept in the background, but ever present in thought and deed: which of the three houses of Valois, Bourbon, and Lorraine should remain in or enter upon possession of the throne of France. The interests and the ambition of families and of individuals were playing their part simultaneously with the controversies and the passions of creed.
This state of things continued for twelve years, from 1576 to 1588, with constant alternations of war, truce, and precarious peace, and in the midst of constant hesitation, on the part of Henry III., between alliance with the League, commanded by the Duke of Guise, and adjustment with the Protestants, of whom the King of Navarre was every day becoming the more and more avowed leader. Between 1576 and 1580, four treaties of peace were concluded; in 1576, the peace called Monsieur’s, signed at Chastenay in Orleanness; in 1577, the peace of Bergerac or of Poitiers; in 1579, the peace of Nerac; in 1580, the peace of Fleix in Perigord. In November, 1576, the states-general were convoked and assembled at Blois, where they sat and deliberated up to March, 1577, without any important result. Neither these diplomatic conventions nor these national assemblies had force enough to establish a real and lasting peace between the two parties, for the parties themselves would not have it; in vain did Henry III. make concessions and promises of liberty to the Protestants; he was not in a condition to guarantee their execution and make it respected by their adversaries. At heart neither Protestants nor Catholics were for accepting mutual liberty; not only did they both consider themselves in possession of all religious truth, but they also considered themselves entitled to impose it by force upon their adversaries. The discovery (and the term is used advisedly, so slow to come and so long awaited has been the fact which it expresses), the discovery of the legitimate separation between the intellectual world and the political world, and of the necessity, also, of having the intellectual world free in order that it may not make upon the political world a war which, in the inevitable contact between them, the latter could not support for long, this grand and salutary discovery, be it repeated, and its practical influence in the government of people cannot be realized save in communities already highly enlightened and politically well ordered. Good order, politically, is indispensable if liberty, intellectually, is to develop itself regularly and do the community more good than it causes of trouble and embarrassment. They only who have confidence in human intelligence sincerely admit its right to freedom; and confidence in human intelligence is possible only in the midst of a political regimen which likewise gives the human community the guarantees whereof its interests and its lasting security have absolute need. The sixteenth century was a long way from these conditions of harmony between the intellectual world and the political world, the necessity of which is beginning to be understood and admitted by only the most civilized and best governed amongst modern communities. It is one of the most tardy and difficult advances that people have to accomplish in their life of labor. The sixteenth century helped France to make considerable strides in civilization and intellectual development; but the eighteenth and nineteenth have taught her how great still, in the art of governing and being governed as a free people, are her children’s want of foresight and inexperience, and, to what extent they require a strong and sound organization of political freedom in order that they may without danger enjoy intellectual freedom, its pleasures and its glories.
From 1576 to 1588, Henry III. had seen the difficulties of his government continuing and increasing. His attempt to maintain his own independence and the mastery of the situation between Catholics and Protestants, by making concessions and promises at one time to the former and at another to the latter, had not succeeded; and in 1584 it became still more difficult to practise. On the 10th of June in that year Henry III.‘s brother, the Duke of Anjou, died at Chateau-Thierry. By this death the leader of the Protestants, Henry, King of Navarre, became lawful heir to the throne of France. The Leaguers could not stomach that prospect. The Guises turned it to formidable account. They did not hesitate to make the future of France a subject of negotiation with Philip II. of Spain, at that time her most dangerous enemy in Europe. By a secret convention concluded at Joinville on the 31st of December, 1584, between Philip and the Guises, it was stipulated that at the death of Henry III. the crown should pass to Charles, Cardinal of Bourbon, sixty-four years of age, the King of Navarre’s uncle, who, in order to make himself king, undertook to set aside his nephew’s hereditary right, and forbid, absolutely, heretical worship in France. He published on the 31st of March, 1585, a declaration wherein he styled himself premier prince of the blood, and conferred upon the Duke of Guise the title of lieutenant-general of the League. By a bull of September 10, 1585, Sixtus V., but lately elected pope, excommunicated the King of Navarre as a heretic and relapsed, denying him any right of succession to the crown of France, and releasing his Narvarrese subjects from their oath of fidelity. Sixtus V. did not yet know what manner of man he was thus attacking. The King of Navarre did not confine himself to protesting in France, on the 10th of June, 1585, against this act of the pope’s: he had his protest placarded at Rome itself upon the statues of Pasquin and Marforio, and at the very doors of the Vatican, referring the pope, as to the question of heresy, to a council which he claimed at an early date, and at the same time appealing against this alleged abuse of power to the court of peers of France, “of whom,” said he, “I have the honor to be the premier.” The whole of Italy, including Sixtus V. himself, a pope of independent mind and proud heart, was struck with this energetic resistance on the part of a petty king. “It would be a good thing,” said the pope to Marquis Pasani, Henry III.‘s ambassador, “if the king your master showed as much resolution against his enemies as the King of Navarre shows against those who attack him.” At the first moment Henry III. had appeared to unravel the intentions of the League and to be disposed to resist it; by an edict of March 28, 1585, he had ordered that its adherents should be prosecuted; but Catherine de’ Medici frightened him with the war which would infallibly be kindled, and in which he would have for enemies all the Catholics, more irritated than ever. And Henry III. very easily took fright. Catherine undertook to manage the recoil for him. “I care not who likes it and who doesn’t,” she was wont to say in such cases. She asked the Duke of Guise for an interview, which took place, first of all at Epernay, and afterwards at Rheims. The hard demands of the Lorrainers did not deter the queen-mother, and, on the 7th of July, 1585, a treaty was concluded at Nemours between Henry III. and the League, to the effect “that by an irrevocable edict the practice of the new religion should be forbidden, and that there should henceforth be no other practice of religion, throughout the realm of France, save that of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman; that all the ministers should depart from the kingdom within a month; that all the subjects of his Majesty should be bound to live according to the Catholic religion and make profession thereof within six months, on pain of confiscation both of person and goods; that heretics, of whatsoever quality they might be, should be declared incapable of holding benefices, public offices, positions, and dignities; that the places which had been given in guardianship to them for their security should be taken back again forthwith; and, lastly, that the princes designated in the treaty, amongst whom were all the Guises at the top, should receive as guarantee certain places to be held by them for five years.”
This treaty was signed by all the negotiators, and specially by the queen-mother, the Cardinals of Bourbon and Guise, and the Dukes of Guise and Mayenne. It was the decisive act which made the war a war of religion.
On the 18th of July following, Henry III., on his way to the Palace of Justice to be present at the publication of the edict he had just issued in virtue of this treaty with the League, said to the Cardinal of Bourbon, “My dear uncle, against my conscience, but very willingly, I published the edicts of pacification, because they were successful in giving relief to my people; and now I am going to publish the revocation of those edicts in accordance with my conscience, but very unwillingly, because on its publication hangs the ruin of my kingdom and of my people.” When he issued from the palace, cries of “Long live the king!” were heard; “at which astonishment was expressed,” says Peter de l’Estoile (t. i. p. 294), “because for a long time past no such favor had been shown him. But it was discovered that these acclamations were the doing of persons posted about by the Leaguers, and that, for doing it, money had been given to idlers and sweetmeats to children.” Some days afterwards, the King of Navarre received news of the treaty of Nemours. He was staying near Bergerac, at the castle of the Lord of La Force, with whom he was so intimate that he took with him none of his household, as he preferred to be waited upon by M. de la Force’s own staff. “I was so grievously affected by it,” said he himself at a later period to M. de la Force, “that, as I pondered deeply upon it and held my head supported upon my hand, my apprehensions of the woes I foresaw for my country were such as to whiten one half of my mustache.” [Memoires du Due de la Force, t. i. p. 50.] Henry III., for his part, was but little touched by the shouts of Long live the king! that he heard as he left the palace; he was too much disquieted to be rejoiced at them. He did not return the greeting of the municipal functionaries or of the mob that blocked his way. “You see how reluctant he is to embroil himself with the Huguenots,” said the partisans of the Guises to the people.
It was the recommencement of religious civil war, with more deadliness than ever. The King of Navarre left no stone unturned to convince everybody, friends and enemies, great lords and commonalty, Frenchmen and foreigners, that this recurrence of war was not his doing, and that the Leaguers forced it upon him against his wish and despite of the justice of his cause. He wrote to Henry III., “Monseigneur, as soon as the originators of these fresh disturbances had let the effects appear of their ill-will towards your Majesty and your kingdom, you were pleased to write to me the opinion you had formed, with very good title, of their intentions; you told me that you knew, no matter what pretext they assumed, that they had designs against your person and your crown, and that they desired their own augmentation and aggrandizement at your expense and to your detriment. Such were the words of your letters, Mon seigneur, and you did me the honor, whilst recognizing the connection between my fortunes and those of your Majesty, to add expressly that they were compassing my ruin together with your own. . . . And now, Monseigneur, when I hear it suddenly reported that your Majesty has made a treaty of peace with those who have risen up against your service, providing that your edict be broken, your loyal subjects banished, and the conspirators armed, and armed with your power and your authority against me, who have the honor of belonging to you, I leave your Majesty to judge in what a labyrinth I find myself. . . . If it is I whom they seek, or if under my shadow (on my account) they trouble this realm, I have begged that, without henceforth causing the orders and estates of this realm to suffer for it, and without the intervention of any army, home or foreign, this quarrel be decided in the Duke of Guise’s person and my own, one to one, two to two, ten to ten, twenty to twenty, in any number that the said Lord of Guise shall think proper, with the arms customary amongst gentlemen of honor. ... It will be a happiness for us, my cousin [Henry de Conde] and myself, to deliver, at the price of our blood, the king our sovereign lord from the travails and trials that are a-brewing for him, his kingdom from trouble and confusion, his noblesse from ruin, and all his people from extreme misery and calamity.”
The Duke of Guise respectfully declined, at the same time that he thanked the King of Navarre for the honor done him, saying that he could not accept the offer, as he was maintaining the cause of religion, and not a private quarrel. On his refusal, war appeared to everybody, and in fact became, inevitable. At his re-engagement in it, the King of Navarre lost no time about informing his friends at home and his allies abroad, the noblesse, the clergy, and the third estate of France, the city of Paris, the Queen of England. the Protestant princes of Germany, and the Swiss cantons, of all he had done to avoid it; he evidently laid great store upon making his conduct public and his motives understood. He had for his close confidant and his mouth-piece Philip du Plessis-Mornay, at that time thirty-six years of age, one of the most learned and most hard-working as well as most zealous and most sterling amongst the royalist Protestants of France. It was his duty to draw up the documents, manifestoes, and letters published by the King of Navarre, when Henry did not himself stamp upon them the seal of his own language, vivid, eloquent, and captivating in its brevity.
Henry III. and the queen-mother were very much struck with this intelligent energy on the part of the King of Navarre, and with the influence he acquired over all that portion of the French noblesse and burgesses which had not fanatically enlisted beneath the banner of the League. Catherine, accustomed to count upon her skill in the art of seductive conversation, was for putting it to fresh proof in the case of the King of Navarre. Louis di Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers, an Italian, like herself, and one of her confidants, was sent in advance to sound Henry of Navarre. He wrote to Henry III., “Such, sir, as you have known this prince, such is he even now; nor years nor difficulties change him; he is still agreeable, still merry, still devoted, as he has sworn to me a hundred times, to peace and your Majesty’s service.” Catherine proposed to him an interview. Henry hesitated to comply. From Jarnac, where he was, he sent Viscount de Turenne to Catherine to make an agreement with her for a few days’ truce. “Catherine gave Turenne to understand that, in order to have peace, the King of Navarre must turn Catholic, and put a stop to the exercise of the Reformed religion in the towns he held.” When this was reported by his envoy, Henry, who had set out for the interview, was on the point of retracing his steps; he went on, however, as he was curious to see Catherine, to satisfy his mind upon the point and to answer her.” They met on the 14th of December, 1586, at the castle of St. Brice, near Cognac, both of them with gloomy looks. Catherine asked Henry whether Turenne had spoken to him about what, she said, was her son’s most express desire.
“I am astounded,” said Henry, “that your Majesty should have taken so much pains to tell me what my ears are split with hearing; and likewise that you, whose judgment is so sound, should delude yourself with the idea of solving the difficulty by means of the difficulty itself. You propose to me a thing that I cannot do without forfeiture of conscience and honor, and without injury to the king’s service. I should not carry with me all those of the religion; and they of the League would be so much the more irritated in that they would lose their hope of depriving me of the right which I have to the throne. They do not want me with you, madame, for they would then be in sorry plight, you better served, and all your good subjects more happy.” The queen-mother did not dispute the point. She dwelt “upon the inconveniences Henry suffered during the war.” “I bear them patiently, madame,” said Henry, “since you burden me with them in order to unburden yourself of them.” She reproached him with not doing as he pleased in Rochelle. “Pardon me, madame,” said he, “I please only as I ought.” The Duke of Nevers, who was present at the interview, was bold enough to tell him that he could not impose a tax upon Rochelle. “That is true,” said Henry: “and so we have no Italian amongst us.” He took leave of the queen-mother, who repeated what she had said to Viscount de Turenne, “charging him to make it known to the noblesse who were of his following.” “It is just eighteen months, madame,” said he, “since I ceased to obey the king. He has made war upon me like a wolf, you like a lioness.” “The king and I seek nothing but your welfare.” “Excuse me, madame; I think it would be the contrary.” “My son, would you have the pains I have taken for the last six months remain without fruit?” “Madame, it is not I who prevent you from resting in your bed; it is you who prevent me from lying down in mine.” “Shall I be always at pains, I who ask for nothing but rest?” “Madame, the pains please you and agree with you; if you were at rest you could not live long.” Catherine had brought with her what was called her flying squadron of fair creatures of her court: but, “Madame,” said Henry, as he withdrew, “there is nothing here for me.”
Before taking part in the war which was day by day becoming more and more clearly and explicitly a war of religion, the Protestant princes of Germany and the four great free cities of Strasbourg, Ulm, Nuremberg, and Frankfort resolved to make, as the King of Navarre had made, a striking move on behalf of peace and religious liberty. They sent to Henry III. ambassadors, who, on the 11th of October, 1586, treated him to some frank and bold speaking. “Our princes and masters,” they said to him, “have been moved with surprise and Christian compassion towards you, as faithful friends and good neighbors of yours, on hearing that you, not being pleased to suffer in your kingdom any person not of the Roman religion, have broken the edict of peace which was so solemnly done and based upon your Majesty’s faith and promise, and which is the firm prop of the tranquillity of your Majesty and your dominions; the which changes have appeared to them strange, seeing that your royal person, your dominions, your conscience, your honor, your reputation and good fame happened to be very much concerned therewith.” Shocked at so rude an admonition, Henry III. answered, “It is God who made me king; and as I bear the title of Most Christian King, I have ever been very zealous for the preservation of the Catholic religion. . . . It appertains to me alone to decide, according to my discernment, what may contribute to the public weal, to make laws for to procure it, to interpret those laws, to change them, and to abolish them, just as I find it expedient. I have done so hitherto, and I shall still do so for the future;” and he dismissed the ambassadors. That very evening, on reflecting upon his words, and considering that his answer had not met the requirements of the case, he wrote with his own hand on a small piece of paper, “that whoever said that in revoking the edict of pacification he had violated his faith or put a blot upon his honor, had lied;” and he ordered one of his officers, though the night was far advanced, to carry that paper to the ambassadors, and read it to them textually. They asked for a copy; but Henry III., always careful not to have to answer for his words, had bidden his officer to suppress the document after having read it; and the Germans departed, determined upon war as well as quite convinced of the king’s arrogant pusillanimity.