Foiled in this attempt, Condé turned southwards, with the intention of occupying Orléans, a place which, on account of its central position, would serve as an admirable base for his operations, and, to some extent, counterbalance the advantage which the Triumvirs derived from the possession of the capital.
On reaching Artenay, six leagues from Orléans, on the morning of April 2, he learned that Andelot, with a handful of men, had seized one of the gates of that town, and was holding it against the garrison and a part of the citizens. “He had with him about two thousand gentlemen and their valets, and, putting himself at their head, he set off at full gallop for the gate, and the whole pack after him.” Baggage, horses, and men fell and rolled over in the dust, without any one attempting to draw rein, amid shouts of laughter from the reckless cavalcade, and to the great astonishment of peaceable travellers, who, ignorant that hostilities had broken out, asked one another if it were “an assembly of all the madmen in France.” But the “madmen” swept along on their headlong course, and before noon had sounded from the clocks of Orléans, they were masters of the town and “of the taps of the most delicious wines of France.”[16]
“Under these joyous auspices,” observed Henri Martin, “began the most horrible civil war of modern times;” and unhappy France became the scene of a frightful orgy of massacre, rape, and pillage. At first Fortune smiled upon the Reformers, who, thanks to the organization of their churches, were better prepared for hostilities than their adversaries. The principal towns of Central France, Tours, Blois, and Bourges, declared against the Triumvirate, and admitted Huguenot garrisons; Rouen and Le Havre, in Normandy, Lyons and many cities in the South, fell into their hands. For a few weeks the movement seemed irresistible. But the Catholic party was by far the stronger. It had secured the person of the young King and forced Catherine to side with it, and thus had at its disposal the Treasury and most of the permanent forces of the realm. It appealed, also, to the Catholic States for assistance, and obtained from Phillip II. an auxiliary corps of 4000 Spaniards, which operated in Guienne and Gascony; while the Duke of Savoy sent troops into the Rhône valley. By the middle of August, all the towns seized at the outset by the Huguenots had been recovered, and the Protestant cause seemed well-nigh hopeless.
Desperately pressed, Condé turned to England for aid. Emissaries were dispatched to London, and on September 20, 1562, the Vidame de Chartres, on behalf of the prince, signed the Treaty of Hampton Court, which stipulated that Le Havre and Dieppe were to be placed in Elizabeth’s hands, in return for a loan of 140,000 crowns and a contingent of 6000 men. The vidame, however, went beyond his instructions, and permitted Cecil to insert an article whereby it was agreed that the English were to remain at Le Havre, not until the termination of the war, but until Calais was restored to them.
The calling in of the hereditary enemy brought great odium upon the Huguenot leaders, nor did they derive from it the advantages upon which they had counted, since Elizabeth, desirous only of securing an equivalent for Calais, declined to allow her troops to pass beyond the lines of Le Havre and Dieppe. At the risk of incurring her anger, Sir Adrian Poynings, who commanded temporarily at Le Havre, pending the arrival of the Earl of Warwick, sent five hundred men to endeavour to make their way into Rouen, which was now closely invested by the royal troops. The majority succeeded in this desperate enterprise, but they were powerless to save the town, which was taken by assault, after a siege during which the King of Navarre received a wound from which he died a month later, “still flattering himself with the hopes raised by the King of Spain.” He left as his heir a boy nine years old, who was one day to succeed to the throne of France through the common ruin of the Valois and the Guises.
The intervention of the English, if it had served no other purpose, had drawn off the Catholic army from its projected siege of Orléans, and Condé, ever sanguine, did not allow himself to be cast down by the reverses his cause had sustained. “We have lost our two castles (Bourges and Rouen),” said he, employing a chess metaphor, “but we shall take their knights”; and he was eager to stake the last chances of his party in a great battle. At the beginning of November, the news that a considerable force of German mercenaries, which Andelot had raised in the Rhineland, was on the march to join him, determined the prince to quit Orléans and advance upon Paris. At Pithiviers, on November 11, he affected his junction with the foreign levies, and, at the head of an army of some 15,000 men, more than one-third of whom were cavalry, he moved slowly towards the capital, taking and pillaging the towns on his line of march.
Paris was very weakly defended, most of its regular garrison being in the field with the Triumvirs, and, had he acted with vigour, he might have made himself master of at least a part of the city. But he allowed himself to be drawn into negotiations by Catherine, and the delay which these entailed enabled Guise to arrive with the advance-guard of the army which had been besieging Rouen.
After a skirmish beneath the walls, and two unsuccessful attempts to take the city by camisado, Condé drew off his troops and marched into Normandy, with the intention of getting into touch with the English at Le Havre. But, owing principally to the immense number of carts for the conveyance of past and future plunder which the Germans insisted on taking with them, his army made such slow progress that the Triumvirs were able to outmarch it, and on December 19 the prince found them barring his road near the town of Dreux.
The royal forces were superior in infantry and artillery to the Huguenots, but the latter had a decided preponderance in cavalry, and the battle which followed was long and obstinately contested. Condé, who had distinguished himself more by his intrepidity than his generalship, was unhorsed and taken prisoner; the Constable, who commanded the royal army, experienced a like fate; while Saint-André was killed.[17] The carnage on both sides was very great, but the Catholics remained masters of the field, though Coligny was able to draw off the beaten Huguenots in excellent order.