Four or five years elapsed without war being declared, but they passed neither with security nor repose. Upon different occasions, the Reformed sent whole volumes of grievances and remonstrances to the court. Promises of reparation were made, but the next day the council troubled themselves no more about them.
Another means was invented of weakening the Calvinist party, and it had better success than all its predecessors. This was to remove or leave out the Huguenots from public appointments. Although the Edict of Pacification accorded to them an equal right of admission to all public offices, a thousand pretexts were made use of to elude this article. It was an indirect and underhand persecution, but it was both systematic and constant.
Mézeray pretends that these proceedings converted more of the Reformed in four years than either the executioner or war had done in forty. This is saying too much. It is certain, however, that many nobles yielded to the temptation of holding offices or court favours. Some, according to the historian Elie Benoît, ashamed of abandoning their religion themselves, made their children renounce it on the score of affection and paternal foresight. Others, on the contrary, declared themselves (Roman) Catholics, that they might enter upon offices, and caused their children to be brought up in the Reformed communion, in order, as they said, to tranquillize their conscience. Has the human heart ever been found deficient in sophisms when desirous of gratifying its passions?
But the more ardent (Roman) Catholics again complained, and also accused the leniency of Henry III. and Queen Catherine. Their spirit of opposition was increased by the death of the duke of Alençon or Anjou, which took place in 1584. Henry III. had no children, and his physicians feared that he would not survive the year. The race of Valois then would become extinct. Who would succeed him? Henry of Bourbon, according to the ancient laws of the kingdom. He was the nearest heir male, and no one could contest with him the title of first prince of the blood. But a heretic, an apostate, one who had relapsed (for they affected to look in a serious light at the abjuration, which had been imposed upon him at the massacre of Saint Bartholomew), one, in short, excommunicated by the Holy See, should he mount the throne of the most Christian kings? This single thought shocked three-fourths of the nation, and the League experienced an immense augmentation.
The League or Holy Union had existed since the year 1576. It even dated further back, and extended beyond the French frontier. The Cardinal de Lorraine formed the plan at the Council of Trent; the Jesuits had adopted and enlarged it; Philip II., the popes, and Duke Henry of Guise, had successively put their hand to it, and by degrees the association became developed to such an extent as to aspire to rouse (Roman) Catholic Europe in order that it might crush Protestantism. It was in France that the first blow was struck.
After having exterminated the Huguenots, the new crusaders would have overthrown the rebels of Holland, then they would unitedly have invaded England, and afterwards Germany and the north, never stopping until they had either brought back the last of the disciples of Luther and Calvin to the Church of Rome, or drowned them in their own blood.
Philip II. was the principal leader of this vast conspiracy. In his retreat of San-Lorenzo he incessantly revolved, as the published correspondence of our times attests, these great and dark thoughts. He understood but two things in the world,—the sovereign power of the prince in political matters, and the popes infallibility in questions of religion. The right of resistance to the temporal power, and the privilege of search on points of faith, were in his eyes the most detestable of crimes. All authority, in his idea, was concentrated in the hands of a few chiefs, and there was no liberty beyond or beneath them. The two swords were to strike together, to keep the people enslaved and trembling; and he added the axe of the executioner, with the fire of the inquisitor, and even the poniard of the assassin; for this (Roman) Catholic king descended to such a depth of infamy as to confer letters of nobility on the relations of Balthazar Gérard, the murderer of the prince of Orange. Philip II. had conceived this execrable system of terrorism, that it might redound to the profit of royalty and the pontificate. But it only resulted in the downfall of Spain and the execration of posterity.
The Holy See entertained implacable resentment at the sight of heresy raising itself up so pertinaciously, and was desirous of establishing at any cost, the one faith, under one single spiritual chief. Cardinals, bishops, priests, Jesuits, and monks of all orders, went about spreading these maxims of extermination, at the courts and in the bosom of the people, from the pulpits and in the confessional.
In France, Henry of Guise, le Balafré, was the soul of the League. Keeping himself at first in obscurity, he at length came more prominently forward, and made himself esteemed by the masses, in proportion to the contempt which Henry III. inspired. He endeavoured to be affable to wards the lower orders, was a sure friend, an inexorable enemy, generous towards those who were serviceable to him, prodigal of gold to the covetous, and never wanting in promises to the ambitious; he also showed attentions to the citizens and artisans of Paris, which were very flattering to their vanity. Capable of profound dissimulation, he yet assumed the frank and open air of a soldier. As a great captain he understood still better the art of gaining victories at the proper time, than that of merely achieving them. He evinced much zeal for the church of Rome, but without falling into the abject devotions of Henry III.; and, always watchful of his fortunes, he thought nothing more of religion than as a means of improving them.
One of the dependants of his house, Jacques d’Humières, was employed in 1576 to recruit in the cities of Picardy for adherents to the League, and that association soon spread through all the provinces. There was some difference in the articles which were presented for them to swear to, and to sign, but their ultimate object was the same—a mutual understanding between the members of the union; absolute obedience to the secret chief of the League; and an engagement to sacrifice everything, body and goods, in order to exterminate heretics and to re-establish the unity of religion.