Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

CHAPTER VI. THE CIVIL WARS IN FRANCE, TO THE DEATH OF HENRY IV. (1610).

FRANCIS I.: HENRY II.—In France, the old faith had strong support in the Sorbonne, the influential theological faculty of the University of Paris, and in the Parliament. The new culture, the influx of Italian scholars and Italian influences, produced a party averse to the former style of education, and, to some extent, unfriendly to the old opinions. The Lutheran doctrines were first introduced; but it was Calvinism which prevailed among the French converts to Protestantism, and acquired a strong hold in the middle and higher classes, although the preponderance of numbers in the country was always on the Catholic side. Francis I. was a friend of the new learning. His sister Margaret, Queen of Navarre, who was of a mystical turn, was favorably inclined to the new doctrines, and befriended preachers who were of the same spirit. The king did the same until after the battle of Pavia, when he helped on the persecution of them; for his conduct was governed by the interest of the hour, and by political motives. It was doubtful what course he would finally take amid the conflict of parties; but his motto was, "One king, one code, one creed." He would put down the new doctrine at home, and sustain it by force, if expedient, abroad. Henry II., who acceded to the throne in 1547, unlike his father had no personal sympathy with Protestantism. The Huguenots, as the Calvinists were called, were led to the stake, and their books burned. Yet in 1558 they had two thousand places of worship in France: they soon held a general synod at Paris, and organized themselves (1559). That same year, when, in the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis, Henry had given up all his conquests except the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun, and Calais, he suddenly died from a wound in the eye, accidentally inflicted in a tilt.

CATHERINE DE MEDICI: THE TWO PARTIES.—The widow of Henry II. was Catherine de Medici, to whom he had been married from political considerations. She was a woman of talents, full of ambition which had hitherto found no field for its exercise, trained from infancy in an atmosphere of deceit, and void of moral principle. Her aim was to rule by keeping up an ascendency over her sons, and by holding in check whatever party threatened to be dominant. For this end she did not scruple to accustom her children to debauchery, and to resort to whatever other means, however false and however cruel, to effect her purposes. She proved to be the curse of the house of Valois, and the evil genius of France. Francis II. was a boy of sixteen, and legally of age; but his mother expected to manage the government. She was thwarted by the control over him exercised by the family of Guise, sons of Claude of Guise, a wealthy and prominent nobleman of Lorraine, who had distinguished himself at Marignano, and in later contests against Charles V. Francis, the Duke of Guise, had defended Metz, and had taken Calais. Charles, the Cardinal of Lorraine, was the king's confessor. Their sister had married James V. of Scotland. Her daughter, Mary Stuart, a charming young girl, was married to Francis II., who was infirm in mind and body, and easily managed by his wife and her uncles. The great nobles of France, especially the Bourbons, sprung in a collateral line from Louis IX., Montmorency, and his three nephews, among them a man of extraordinary ability and worth, the Admiral Coligny, looked on the Guises as upstarts. The Bourbons and the nobles allied to them were, some from sincere conviction and some from policy, adherents of Calvinism. Thus the Protestants in France became a political party, as well as a religious body, and a party with anti-monarchical tendencies. Anthony of Bourbon, a weak and vacillating person, had married Jeanne d'Albret, the heiress of Béarn and Navarre, a heroic woman and an earnest Protestant, the mother of Henry IV. His brother Louis, Prince of Condé, a brave, impetuous soldier, whose wife, the niece of the Grand Constable Montmorency, was a strict Protestant, joined that side.

CONSPIRACY OF AMBOISE.—La Rénaudie, a Protestant nobleman who was determined to avenge the execution of a brother, contrived the Conspiracy of Amboise (1560) in order to dispossess the Guises of their power by force. The plan was discovered, and a savage revenge was taken upon the conspirators. A great number of innocent persons, who had no share in the plot, were put to death. The Estates were summoned to Orleans, and the occasion was to be seized for extirpating heresy throughout the kingdom. Condé was under arrest, and charged with high treason. Just then, on Dec. 5, 1560, the young king died.

CHARLES IX.: EDICT OF ST. GERMAIN.—The coveted opportunity of the queen-mother had come. Charles IX. (1560-1574) was only ten years old. She assumed the practical guardianship over him, and with it a virtual regency. The plan of the Guises had failed, and they had to give way. There were now two parties in the council. The States-general were called together in 1561, and a great religious colloquy was held before a brilliant concourse at Poissy, where Theodore Beza, an eloquent and polished scholar and a man of high birth, pleaded the cause of the Calvinists. In 1562 the Edict of January was issued, which gave up the policy that had been pursued for forty years, of extirpating religious dissent. A very restricted toleration was given to Protestants: they could hold their meetings outside of the walls of cities, unarmed, and in the daytime. Calvin and his followers expected the largest results from this measure of liberty. Catherine wished for peace, without a rupture with the Pope and Philip II.

CIVIL WAR.—It was impossible to prevent outbreakings of violence against the hated dissenters. The Guises and their associates were resolved not to allow toleration. The event that occasioned war was the massacre of Vassy. On the 1st of March, 1562, the soldiers of the Duke of Guise, who was passing through the town, attacked some Huguenots who were worshiping in a barn at the village of Vassy. A large number were slain, and some houses plundered, in spite of the Duke's efforts to check his troops. The civil wars, so begun, closed only with the accession of Henry IV. to the throne. France was a prey to religious and political fanaticism. Other nations mingled in the frightful contest, and the country was well-nigh robbed of its independence. At first, there was petty warfare at Paris, Sens, and other places. The Huguenots destroyed altars and censers, monuments of art and sepulchers, which, as they thought, ministered to idolatry. Rouen was captured by the Catholics and sacked. At Dreux (1562) the Protestants were defeated; but in 1563 Guise, the leader of their adversaries, was assassinated by a Huguenot nobleman. The charge that Coligny had a part in the deed was false; but he was considered responsible for it, and vengeance was kept in store by the family of the slain chief. The Edict of Amboise (1563) was favorable to the Protestant nobles, but less favorable to the smaller gentry and to the towns. Paris, from which Calvinist worship was excluded, became more and more a stronghold of the Catholic party. Another war ended in the Peace of Longjumeau (1568), which was essentially the same as the Edict of Amboise. Philip II. and the Duke of Alva spared no effort to induce France to set about the extermination of the heretics. In the third war, the Huguenots were beaten at Jarnac, where Condé fell, leaving his name to his son Henry, a youth of seventeen (1569). The same year they were defeated again at Moncontour. La Rochelle was a place of safety to the Protestants, who were strong in the wise leadership of Coligny. There the Queen of Navarre held her court. Thence the Huguenot cavalry with the young princes Condé, and Henry of Navarre, her son, sallied forth and traversed France.

ENGLAND OR SPAIN.—The ambition of Philip alarmed the French. His complex schemes, if carried out, would involve the reduction of their country under Spanish control. He wanted to liberate Mary, Queen of Scots, then a prisoner of Elizabeth, to marry her to his half-brother, Don John, and to marry his sister to Charles IX. The court, in 1570, agreed to the Peace of St. Germain, which, for the security of the Huguenots, placed four fortified towns in their possession. Thus France became a kingdom divided against itself. England, as well as France, looked with alarm upon the ambitious projects of Philip II., who was now in union with Venice and with the Pope, and had beaten the Turks at Lepanto. It was proposed to marry the brother of Charles IX., the Duke of Anjou, to Queen Elizabeth; and when this negotiation was broken off, it was proposed that the Duke of Alençon, a younger brother, should marry her. Catherine de Medici fell in with this anti-Spanish policy. It was agreed that her youngest daughter, Margaret of Valois, should become the wife of Henry of Navarre. The policy favored by the Huguenots was in the ascendant. Their leaders were invited to Paris to be present at the nuptials. Coligny came, with Henry of Navarre, Condé, and a large number of their adherents. There was no place where the animosity against them was so rancorous.

THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.—The massacre of St. Bartholomew was devised by Catherine de Medici, who brought to her aid the Duchess of Nemours, widow of Francis of Guise and mother of Henry of Guise, Anjou (afterwards Henry III.), and Italian counselors who were no strangers to plots of assassination. The motive of the queen-mother was her dread of the ascendency which she saw that Coligny was gaining over the morbid mind of the king, in whom the Huguenot veteran had inspired esteem, and had stirred up a desire to enter into the proposed war against Philip II. in the Netherlands. On the 22d of August (1572), a shot was fired at Coligny, from a window of a house, by an adherent of the Guises. He was wounded, but not killed. Charles was incensed. At a visit made to the wounded chief, the king was warned by him, as Catherine quickly learned, against her pernicious influence in the government. Thereupon she arranged with her confederates for a general slaughter of the Huguenots, and almost coerced the half-frantic and irresolute king to acquiesce in the plan. Perhaps, in gathering them into the city, she had foreseen the possible expediency of a change of policy, and that such a crime as she now undertook to perpetrate might be found desirable. In the night of the 24th of August, at a concerted signal, the fanatical enemies of the Huguenots were let loose, and fell upon their victims. Several thousands, including Coligny, were murdered. Couriers were sent through the country, and like bloody scenes were enacted in many other cities and towns. Navarre and Condé, to save their lives, professed conformity to the Catholic Church. If these atrocious events excited joy in the mind of Philip II., and of the numerous intolerant party of which he was the head, they were regarded with horror and execration elsewhere, among the Catholic as well as the Protestant nations.

THE POLITIQUES: THE LEAGUE: HENRY III.—The queen-mother did not even now forsake her general policy. She stood aloof from the combinations of Philip. A new party, the Politiques, or liberal Catholics, in favor of toleration, arose. Henry III. (1574-1589) was incompetent to govern a country torn by factions, with an exhausted treasury, and a people groaning under the burdens of taxation. By his double dealing he lost the confidence of both the religious parties. In May, 1576, he agreed to allow the religious freedom which the Huguenots and Politiques demanded. But he had to reckon with the Catholic League which was organized under Henry of Guise. In 1584 Henry of Navarre was left the next heir to the throne. The League, with Spain and Rome, resolved that he should not reign. Together with Condé, he was excommunicated. In the war of he "three Henrys," he was supported by England, and by troops from Germany and Switzerland. Henry III., finding that Henry of Guise was virtual master, and that the States-general at Blois (1588) reduced the royal power to the lowest point, caused Guise and his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, to be assassinated. Excommunicated, and detested by the adherents of the League, the king took refuge in the camp of Henry of Navarre, where he was killed by a fanatical priest (1589).

ABJURATION AND ACCESSION OF HENRY IV.—The Duke of Mayenne, brother of the slain Guises, was at the head of the government provisionally established by the League. Philip II. was intriguing to bring the Catholic nations under his sway. There was discord in the League, from the jealousy of Philip on the part of Mayenne. Henry, a dashing soldier, gained a brilliant victory at Ivry in 1590. The grand obstacle in his way to the throne was his adhesion to Protestantism. A Calvinist by birth and education, but without profound religious convictions, a gallant and sagacious man, but loose in his morals, he yielded, for the sake of giving peace to France, to the persuasions addressed to him, and, from motives of expediency, conformed to the Catholic Church. The nation was now easily won to his cause.