A commission, consisting of Chancellor L'Hospital, President De Thou, Counsellors Faye and Viole, and a few others, was appointed, on the thirteenth of November, to conduct the trial. Condé refused to plead before them, taking refuge in his privilege, as a prince, to be tried only before the king and by his peers.[949] His appeals, however, were rejected by the privy council, and he was commanded, in the king's name, to answer, under pain of being held a traitor. In view of the known desire and intention of the king and his chief advisers, the trial was likely to be expeditious and not over-scrupulous.[950] The most innocent expressions of disapproval of the violent executions at Amboise were perverted into open approval of a plot against the king. The prosecution sought to establish the heresy of the prince, in order to furnish some ground for finding him guilty of treason against Divine as well as royal authority. Nor was this difficult. A priest, in full officiating vestments, was introduced, as by royal command, to say mass in Condé's presence. But the young Bourbon drove him out with rough words, declaring "that he had come to his Majesty with no intention of holding any communion with the impieties and defilements of the Roman Antichrist, but solely to relieve himself of the false accusations that had been made against him."[951] Before so partial a court the trial could have but one issue. Condé was found guilty, and condemned to be beheaded on a scaffold erected before the king's temporary residence, at the opening of the States General.[952] The sentence was signed not only by the judges to whom the investigation had been entrusted, but by members of the privy council, by the members of the Order of St. Michael, and by a large number of less important dignitaries, without even a formal examination into the merits of the case—so anxious were the Guises to involve as many influential persons as possible in the same responsibility with themselves. Of the privy councillors, Du Mortier and Chancellor de l'Hospital alone refused to append their signatures without a longer term for reflection, and endeavored to ward off the blow by procrastination.[953]
Danger of the King of Navarre.
Navarre was himself in almost equal danger. An attempt to poison him was frustrated by its timely revelation; a plot to assassinate him on leaving the king's residence, by the strength of his body-guard. A still more atrocious scheme was concocted. Francis was to stab his cousin of Navarre with his dagger, leaving his attendants to despatch him with their swords. Such murderous projects can rarely be kept secret. Even Catharine de' Medici is said to have attempted to dissuade Antoine from going to the palace by warning him of the danger he would incur. At the door of the king's chamber a friendly hand interposed, and a friendly voice asked: "Sire, whither are you going to your ruin?" But the prince, with a resolution which it had been well had he manifested at an earlier period, paused only a moment to say to his faithful Renty: "I am going to the spot where a conspiracy has been entered into to take my life.... If it please God, He will save me; but, if I die, I entreat you, by the fidelity I have ever known in you, ... to carry the shirt I wear, all covered with blood, to my wife and son, and to conjure my wife, by the great love she has always borne me, and by her duty (since my son is not yet old enough to avenge my death), to send it, torn by the dagger, and bloody, to the foreign princes of Christendom, that they may avenge my death, so cruel and treacherous."[954] These gloomy forebodings were not destined to be realized. Francis's anger evaporated in words, or was restrained by his mother's secret injunctions,[955] and Antoine of Navarre was suffered to go away unharmed. The duke and cardinal, who witnessed the scene from the recess of a window, are said to have muttered half audibly as they left the room, "That is the most cowardly heart that ever was!"[956]
A plot for the utter destruction of the Huguenots.
The assassination of the King of Navarre was, however, but a part of a larger plot for the utter destruction of the Huguenots and of Protestantism in France, the details of which are but imperfectly known.[957] It is alleged that preliminary lists of those infected by heresy had been obtained from all parts of France, and that a more exact knowledge was to be obtained by compelling all classes—from the nobility and members of the Order of St. Michael down to the simple citizen—to subscribe to the articles of faith drawn up eighteen years before by the Sorbonne.[958] At the close of the sessions of the States General, the full forces at the command of the court were to be set on foot, and four armies, under the Duke of Aumale and Marshals St. André, Brissac, and Termes, were to serve as the instruments of destruction. Termes was to effect a junction with a Spanish force entering France through Béarn; and the Governor of Bayonne was instructed to surrender that important city into the hands of Philip. The expenses of the crusade were to be defrayed by the clergy, who, from cardinal down to chaplain, were to retain of their income only the amount necessary for their bare subsistence.[959] The recent publication of the Pope's bull, renewing the Council of Trent, meanwhile served as a good excuse for forbidding the discussion of religious questions by the States General, then about to meet, by the king's direction, at Orleans instead of Meaux.[960]
Illness of the king.
The moment for the execution of this widespread plan of destruction was approaching, when its devisers were startled by the sudden discovery that the health of their nephew, the king, was fast failing. Francis's constitution, always frail, and now still further undermined, was giving way in connection with a gathering in the ear, which resisted the efforts of the most skilful physicians.[961] "This King," wrote the English ambassador, on the twenty-first of November, giving to his fellow-envoy at Madrid the first intimation of Francis's illness, "thought to have removed hence for a fortnight, but the day before his intended journey he felt himself somewhat evil disposed of his body, with a pain in his head and one of his ears, which hath stayed his removing from hence."[962] But the rapid progress of the disease soon made it clear that the trip to Chenonceau, "the queen's house," whence the king "was not to return hither until the Estates are assembled," would never be taken by Francis. The sceptre must pass into other hands even more feeble than his.
The queen mother rejects the advances of the Guises,
and makes terms with Navarre.
The Guises in consternation proposed to Catharine to hasten the death of Navarre and Condé,[963] and perhaps to put into immediate execution their ulterior projects. But Catharine de' Medici little relished an increased dependence[964] upon a family she had good reason to distrust. Instead of accepting the advances of the Guises, she hastened to make terms with the King of Navarre. In an interview with that weak prince, a compact was made which proved the source of untold evils. He had been forewarned by ladies in Catharine's interest, as he valued his life, to oppose none of her demands; but the wily Florentine scarcely expected so easy a triumph as she obtained. To the amazement of friend and foe, Antoine de Bourbon ceded his right to the regency, without a struggle, to the queen mother, a foreigner and not of royal blood. For himself he merely retained the first place under her, as lieutenant-general of the kingdom. He even consented to be reconciled to his cousins of Guise, and, after publicly embracing them, promised to forget all past grounds of quarrel.[965]