The town of Montauban was the last to submit. It remembered with pride the heroic resistance it had opposed to the royal troops, and its inhabitants, accustomed to self-government from the commencement of the religious wars, felt a great repugnance to “return to their duty,” as the phrase then was. Two deputies came from Nismes with an envoy of Richelieu, to exhort them to submission. The people wished to preserve their ramparts: they obtained nothing, and the most determined at length perceived that to continue the struggle had become impossible.
Montauban opened its gates; and on the 21st August, 1629, its inhabitants witnessed the entry of Marshal de Bassompierre, with a part of the army, the pope’s nuncio, the first president of the Parliament of Toulouse, and lastly, Cardinal de Richelieu, who presented himself as one who had gained a triumph. When the ministers of the religion came to pay their respects to him, he consented to receive them, “not as forming a church body,” he told them, “but as a people following the profession of letters.” This was indeed carrying fiction a little too far.
He celebrated mass in one of the churches of Montauban, instituted convents for the Jesuits and Capuchins, and ordered the demolition of the walls. Then he resumed his journey to Paris, surrounded with more homage than Louis XIII. himself ever received from his people.
The Duke de Rohan was the object of the attack of his co-religionists, who, becoming unjust by reason of their misfortune, accused him of being the author of all their calamities. He wrote his apology with the satisfaction of a good conscience, and concluded it in these terms: “These are my crimes, for which I have been condemned at Toulouse to be dragged to pieces by four horses, whereof I take glory to myself.... I wish those who come after me may have the same affection, fidelity, and patience that I have had; that they may meet with people more constant, less covetous, and more zealous than I have done; and that God may bless them with greater prosperity, to the end that by restoring the churches of France, they may execute that which I dared to undertake.”
His hopes were realized otherwise than he had any notion of. Henri de Rohan was the last warrior-chief of the French Reformation; but that which the sword has not effected, civilization and liberty have accomplished in the day of God’s destiny.
Rohan offered his sword to the republic of Venice, and afterwards to Gustavus Adolphus, and died in 1638, on the plains of Germany, for the same cause, which he had so long and so valiantly defended in his own country.
VII.
The Calvinist party had definitively ceased to exist after the taking of La Rochelle, and the history of the Reformers is no longer mixed up with the great affairs of the kingdom, until the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
It was in vain that persons of the highest birth, who belonged to the (Roman) Catholic communion, provoked them to resort to arms; Huguenots were no longer to be found in the ranks of the adversaries of royalty.
In 1632, the Duke Henri de Montmorency, supported by Gaston d’Orléans, brother of Louis XIII., essayed to re-awaken the religious passions in Languedoc, where he was governor. He addressed himself to the noblemen of the religion, to the pastors, the consistories, and the synods, and met with nothing but refusals. He had five or six bishops in his party, but not a single Reformer. The second consul of Nismes preserved the town for the king, by expelling the bishop and the first consul, who was a (Roman) Catholic. The inhabitants of Montauban offered to march against the troops of Montmorency, and, memorable fact! the miserable remnants of the population of Privas defended their town for the service of the king, and Cardinal de Richelieu could but say of the Reformers, “They have done more than all the rest.”