The Huguenots had observed a rigid discipline at the outset of the campaign. Having newly taken up the cross and risen at the call of their conscience, they wished to absolve their arms by the austerity of their lives. There were no women in their camps; no cards or dice; no blasphemy; no profane discourse; no maurauding or pillage. The nobles paid in money for all that they took for themselves or for their followers. Those who committed violence were punished. A lord of Dammartin, who had outraged the daughter of a villager, narrowly escaped execution. Another was hanged at Orleans for adultery; and this, much more than any differences of doctrine had done, aroused the dissolute court of Catherine de Medicis.
At morning and evening, public prayers were said. The ministers, distributed by companies, maintained good order by their exhortations. A prayer has been preserved which was repeated in the army. The Calvinists addressed supplications to God for the king, the queen-mother, the princes of the royal blood, and the members of the council.
The same discipline prevailed at Orleans. “Besides the ordinary sermons and the prayers to the corps de garde,” says Theodore de Bèze, “extraordinary general prayers were said at six o’clock in the morning, after which, the ministers and the people without exception went to work at the fortifications with all their strength, each one returning at four o’clock in the evening to prayers; a place was also set apart for the wounded, who were most humanely tended by the most distinguished ladies of the town, who spared neither their money nor their labour.”[44]
Unfortunately this lasted only for a few months; Coligny had foreseen it. “This discipline is indeed a noble thing,” said he, “as long as it lasts; but I fear these people will throw down all their goodness at once. I have commanded infantry, and I know them; they often fulfil the proverb which says: ‘out of a young hermit grows an old devil.’”
Religious passions, added to the want of money, drove the Huguenots to carry off the ornaments of the churches. They broke the sacred vessels, mutilated the statues of the saints, and dispersed the relics. These excesses excited in the hearts of the (Roman) Catholics a rage impossible to be described. “You knock down the images,” they said; “you destroy the relics of the dead; well! we will knock down as many living images as fall into our hands.”
The decrees of the Parliaments added fuel to the popular fury, by giving it a semblance of justice. The peasant left his plough, the artisan his trade. The [Roman Catholic bands] consisted of people of no calling, vagabonds, and beggars, and free companies armed with reaping-hooks, knives, and pikes. They chose a captain at hazard, some famous brigand, or else a monk, or curate; sometimes even a bishop; and these bands, drunk with fanaticism and revenge, respected neither law, modesty, nor pity. In Champagne they were called “naked-feet” (pieds-nus).
They fell upon the Calvinists by surprise, massacred the men, outraged the women, demolished the houses, tore down the vines, rooted up the trees, and desolated entire cantons. “There are too many people in France,” cried out a leader of these ruffians, “I will kill a sufficient number to make provisions cheap.”
The Huguenots, it may be believed, also resorted to reprisals; but being less numerous, and mostly belonging to the more cultivated classes, they did less harm than they suffered.
The excesses, serious everywhere, were especially so to the south of the Loire, on account of the great number of the Reformed, and the ardent character of the population. At Cahors, five hundred Huguenots were attacked one Sunday while they were at service, and the bishop, Pierre Bertrandi, had them all butchered to the last man. At Montauban the inhabitants had quitted their town at the approach of the (Roman) Catholic bands; but having been massacred in crowds, the survivors returned within their walls, and sustained three sieges with heroic constancy.
The events which happened at Toulouse in May, 1562, will serve to characterize what was passing throughout the whole extent of the southern provinces.