History of the Protestants of France, from the commencement of the Reformation to the present time

by G. de Félice

XX.

The act of abjuration did not immediately bring back the Leaguers to submission. The Spanish ambassador distributed gold with lavish hands. The legate pretended that to the pope alone belonged the right of reconciling one, who had been excommunicated by the Church, and the States-General of the League swore to obey the decrees of the Holy See. Boucher delivered nine sermons against the simulated conversion of the Béarnese, saying that the bishops of St. Denis were traitors, their prayers anathemas, and the mass sung before the heretics a miserable farce. All the preachers of the faction of the Sixteen (de la faction des seize) declared openly for regicide; and the fruit of their provocation was soon apparent. Jean Banière in 1593, and the year following Jean Châtel, attempted to assassinate the king. A decree of the Parliament drove the society of Loyola from the kingdom; it returned to give birth to Ravaillac.

But the mass of the nation accepted the abjuration of Henry IV. as real and sincere, because it thirsted for repose. The chiefs of the League, having lost all hope of vanquishing, now only thought of selling themselves as dearly as possible. It cost the king enormous sums, and the Reformed were nearly everywhere sacrificed in the capitulations. Rouen, Meaux, Poitiers, Agen, Beauvais, Amiens, Saint Malo, and many other cities, both large and small, stipulated, in making submission, that the preaching of the Huguenots should be banished from within their walls and their suburbs. Paris claimed an extension of the interdict to ten leagues from its gates. The king opposed some resistance to these demands, but he finished by granting all of them.

The least mark of attachment which the Béarnese might show towards his old co-religionists, was watched with an eye of jealousy, and he was unable openly to press the hand of those faithful servants, who had defended his crown at the expense of their blood.

A new protector was again begun to be spoken of, notwithstanding the energetic expressions of Henry IV., who called himself the natural and legitimate protector of his subjects. Duplessis loyally supported the remonstrances of the king; however, he, in his turn, preferred to him heavy complaints: “See, sire,” he wrote to him, “by what steps you have been conducted to the mass. Those, who do not believe in God, have made you swear by images and relics, purgatory and indulgences. Your poor subjects see you go further still, by this same road. They see you send to make your submission to Rome. They know that there cannot be absolution without penance. The pope, on the first opportunity, will send you the sacred sword, and will impose upon you the law of making war against heretics; and under this name will be comprehended the most Christian and the most loyal of the French.”

Clement VIII., in truth, demanded as the price of absolution, the abrogation of the edicts of toleration, the exclusion of heretics from all offices, and the promise of exterminating them, so soon as peace should be concluded with the League and with Spain. On this occasion Henry IV. rebelled. He caused a reply to be returned by D’Ossat and Duperron, to the effect that he should be accused of indecency and ingratitude, if, after having experienced so many services from those of the (Reformed) religion, he reduced them to extremity, and forced them to take arms against his person.

The pope and the king, by the aid of equivocation, finished with a mutual understanding, and on the 16th September, 1595, the two ambassadors of Henry IV. were kneeling under the portico of Saint Peter. They sang the Miserere, and at each verse they received for their master blows from a rod or switch, on the shoulders. The Spaniards ridiculed them, and the more estimable of the French papists were indignant at this humiliation.

The king continued to give the Reformed nothing but fair words. He told them privately that he trusted in them more than in the others, and he endeavoured even to justify the privileges which he had granted to the (Roman) Catholics, by the parable of the prodigal son, for whom the father caused the fatted calf to be killed: “It is well,” replied the deputies of the churches, “but treat us also as the son who has always been faithful, and to whom the father said, ‘All my goods are thine.’ To despoil the obedient son of his legitimate rights, in order to give them to him who has trodden underfoot the paternal authority, is not the spirit of Christ’s parable.”