Catherine de’ Medici had viewed with complacency the obstinacy of the English Queen. Although the reduction of Le Havre, a place which could easily be revictualled from the sea and which had been furnished during the English occupation with new defences, might prove a formidable undertaking, she had no doubt of success; and she preferred recovering it by conquest to seeing it amicably restored, since she would then be at liberty to retain Calais. Moreover, if Condé could be brought to turn against Elizabeth the army which her own money had assisted him to raise, and to take part in the war in person, an irremediable breach would be created between them, and she would have nothing more to fear from English intervention.
Inspired by Catherine, Isabelle de Limeuil employed all her persuasions to induce the prince to break with England; but, great as was the empire which she already exercised over Condé, and deeply incensed as the latter was by the tone of Elizabeth’s letters, and still more by the contemptuous manner in which she had spoken of him, he still remained undecided. There was no blinking the fact that, however great the difference between her promises and her performances, and however selfish her motives, the Queen had rendered the Huguenots material assistance in the late war; and Coligny and Andelot had so well recognized this that, while warmly approving of the refusal to surrender Calais, they had declined to bear arms against her. Condé was unwilling to show himself less scrupulous than they; and, besides, he had, while at Orléans, solemnly assured the English envoy that “his sword should never cut against the Queen’s Majesty.”[34]
He, therefore, urged Catherine to make a final endeavour to effect a peaceful settlement. Very reluctantly, she consented, and, towards the end of May, the Sieur d’Alluye was despatched to London with fresh propositions. D’Alluye was a young man of thirty, ignorant, conceited, and presumptuous; in fact, if it had been Catherine’s intention—which it probably was—to wound the pride of Elizabeth and provoke a new and humiliating refusal, she could not have made a better choice. Condé having requested that his confidant La Haye should be joined to d’Alluye, the Regent readily consented, well aware that a refusal transmitted through him would only have the more weight. Everything fell out precisely as might have been foreseen. After several acrimonious conferences with the English Ministers, in which d’Alluye “showed nothing but pride and ignorance,”[35] that gentleman haughtily informed the Queen, that “he had no commission to treat of Calais; his charge was only to demand Newhaven [Le Havre].”[36] Elizabeth lost her temper, and, red with anger, replied that, in occupying Le Havre, she had had no other purpose than to avenge the honour of England, which had been compromised by the loss of Calais.
This frank avowal stung the national pride of the French to the quick; from the Channel to the Pyrenees the universal cry was “Vive la France,” and Catholics and Huguenots, moved by a common impulse, pressed into the army which was being mobilized to wrest Le Havre from the grip of the English. Catherine adroitly seized the occasion to renew, through Isabelle de Limeuil, her importunities; the last scruples of Condé were overcome, and on 19 June the English envoy Middlemore, who, on the pretext of facilitating communications between Condé and Elizabeth, had been charged by the latter to attend the prince everywhere, writes to Cecil: “The inconstancy and miserableness of this Prince of Condé is so great, having both forgotten God and his own honour, as that he hath suffered himself to be won by the Q.[ueen] mother to go against her Majesty at Newhaven [Le Havre], and for the present is the person that, above all others, doth most solicit them of the Religion to serve in these wars against her Majesty.” And he adds that the prince, “specially desiring now to have every man to show himself as wicked as he, hath sent for the Admiral and M. Andelot, his brother, to come to the Court out of hand, where, being once arrived, they think to prevail with them as to win them to like and take in hand the said enterprise.”[37] Isabelle de Limeuil had served Catherine well.
A few days later, Condé having courteously desired Middlemore, who continued to stick to him like a burr, “to retire himself,” joined the army before Le Havre, where operations had already begun. The garrison had promised Elizabeth that “the Lord Warwick and all his people would spend the last drop of their blood before the French should fasten a foot in the town”; but, unhappily, they had an enemy to contend with within the walls infinitely more formidable than the one without—an enemy whom no skill could outwit and no courage repel. In the first days of June, the plague broke out among them, and, pent up in the narrow, fetid streets, the soldiers died like flies. By the end of the month, out of seven thousand men who had formed the original garrison, but three thousand were fit for duty; and by 11 July only fifteen hundred were left. Reinforcements were hurried across the Channel, only to sicken and die in their turn; a south-westerly gale drove the English ships from the coast, and the French succeeded in closing the harbour, so that soon famine was added to pestilence.
Elizabeth, alarmed by the disastrous news from Le Havre, began to repent of her obstinacy, and offered to accept the terms which she had so indignantly rejected. But it was now too late; the French, well aware of the condition of the garrison, refused to reopen the negotiations, and on 27 July, just as the besiegers, who had already made two breaches in the defences, were preparing for a general attack, Warwick, who, the previous evening, had received permission from the Queen to surrender at the last extremity, offered to capitulate. Terms were soon arranged, and on the 29th the town was restored to France, and the remnant of its brave defenders sailed for England, carrying with them the plague, which they spread far and wide through the land.
After long negotiations, peace was finally concluded at Troyes, in April 1564. Elizabeth lost all her rights over Calais, and had to content herself with a sum of 120,000 crowns, as the price of the freedom of the French hostages. Although she on more than one occasion pressed Condé and Coligny for the repayment of the money she had advanced the Huguenots, she does not appear to have succeeded in recovering any part of it.
CHAPTER IV
Condé is disappointed in his hopes of obtaining the post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom—The prince incurs the hatred of the extreme Catholics—Plot to assassinate him on the Feast of Corpus Christi—Suspicion with which he is regarded by the zealots of his own party—Condé, deceived in his ambition and mortified by the hostility of the extremists on both sides, turns to pleasure for consolation—Violent passion of the Maréchale de Saint-André for him—Indignation and alarm aroused at Geneva by the rumours of Condé’s amorous adventures—Calvin and Bèze address a joint letter of remonstrance to the prince—Condé at Muret—Death of two of his children—Failing health of the Princesse de Condé—Her touching devotion to her husband—Her dignified attitude in regard to his infidelities—Return of Condé to the Court—Quarrel between him and Isabelle de Limeuil—Temporary triumph of the Maréchale de Saint-André—Refusal of the King to sanction the betrothal of the Marquis de Conti to Mlle. de Saint-André—Condé quits the Court in anger, but is reconciled to Isabelle and returns—A second honeymoon.
After having broken definitely with his former allies, and even borne arms against them in person, Condé looked to receive from the hands of the Queen-Mother the post of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, which Catherine appears to have given him to understand would be the reward of his compliance with her wishes. But her Majesty, though she complimented him warmly on the courage he had displayed during the siege, had not the smallest intention of sharing with the prince the power of which she was so jealous; and, by causing the Parlement of Rouen to proclaim the majority of Charles IX., who had just entered his fourteenth year, she adroitly contrived to reduce to nothing all pretension on his part to the coveted title and to retain the sovereign authority in her own hands.