Death of Francis II., Dec. 5, 1560.
The vows which Francis made "to God and to all the saints of paradise, male and female, and particularly to Notre-Dame-de-Cléry, that, if they should grant him restoration of health, he would never cease until he had wholly purged the kingdom of those wicked heretics,"[966] proved unavailing. On the fifth of December, 1560, he died in the eighteenth year of his age and the seventeenth month of his reign. "God, who pierced the eye of the father, had now stricken the ear of the son."[967]
"Epître au Tigre de la Prance."
The most annoying of the anonymous pamphlets against the Guises was a letter bearing the significant direction: Au Tigre de la France. Under this bloodthirsty designation every one knew that the Cardinal of Lorraine alone could be meant, and the style of the production showed that a master-hand in literature had been concerned in the composition. The Guises were furious, but it was impossible to discover the author or publisher of the libel. Both succeeded admirably in preserving their incognito. Yet, as victims were wanted to appease the anger of the ruling family, two unhappy men expiated by their death a crime of which they were confessedly innocent. The incident, which comes down to us attested not only by the best of contemporary historians, but by the records of the courts, recently brought to light, may serve to illustrate the prevalent corruption of the judges and the occasional whimsical application of the so-called justice wherein they were given to indulging. Diligent search on the part of the friends of the Guises led to the detection of only a single copy of the "Tigre," and this was found in the house of one Martin Lhomme, or Lhommet, a printer by trade, and miserably poor. There was no evidence at all that he had had any part in printing or publishing it. None the less did the judges of parliament, and particularly M. Du Lyon, to whom the case was specially confided, prosecute the trial with relentless ardor. On the 15th of July, the unfortunate Lhomme, after having been subjected to torture to extract information respecting his supposed accomplices, was publicly hung on a gibbet on the Place Maubert, in Paris. The well-informed Regnier de La Planche (p. 313) is our authority for the statement that Du Lyon having, at a supper, a few days later, been called to account for the iniquity of his decision, made no attempt to defend it, but exclaimed: "Que voulez-vous? We had to satisfy Monsieur le Cardinal with something, since we had failed to catch the author; for otherwise he would never have given us any peace (il ne nous eust jamais donné relasche)." Still more unreasonable was the infliction of the death-penalty upon Robert Dehors, a merchant of Rouen, who had chanced to ride into Paris just as Lhomme was being led to execution. Booted as he still was, he became a witness of the brutality with which the crowd followed the poor printer, and seemed disposed to snatch him from the executioner's hands in order to tear him in pieces. Indignant at this violation of decency, Dehors had the imprudence to remonstrate with those about him, dissuading them from imbruing their hands in the blood of a wretched man, when their desire was so soon to be accomplished by the minister of the law. The Rouen merchant little understood the ferocity of the Parisian populace. The mob instantly turned their fury upon him, and but for the intervention of the royal archers he would have met on the spot the fate from which he had sought to rescue another to whose person and offence he was an utter stranger. As it was, he escaped instant death only to become a victim to the perverse ingenuity of the same judges, and be hung on the same Place Maubert, "for the sedition and popular commotion caused by him, at the time of the execution of Martin Lhomme, by means of scandalous expressions and blasphemies uttered and pronounced by the said Dehors against the honor of God and of the glorious Virgin Mary, wherewith the said prisoner induced the people to sedition and public scandals." (See Registres du parlement, July 13, 15, and 19, 1560, reprinted by Read in "Le Tigre.")
It is not, perhaps, very much to be wondered at that a pamphlet so dangerous to have in one's possession should have so thoroughly disappeared that a few years since not a copy was known to be in existence. It doubtless fared with the "Tigre" much as it did with another outspoken libel—"Taxe des parties casuelles de la boutique du Pape"—published a few years later, of which Lestoile (Read, p. 21) tells us that he was for a long time unsuccessful in the search for a copy, to replace that which, to use his own words, "I burned at the St. Bartholomew, fearing that it might burn me!"
By a happy accident, M. Louis Paris, in 1834, discovered a solitary copy that had apparently been saved from destruction by being buried in some provincial library. The discovery, however, was of little avail to the literary world, as the pamphlet was eagerly bought by the famous collector Brunet, only to find a place in his jealously guarded cases, where, after a fashion only too common in these days, a few privileged persons were permitted to inspect it under glass, but not a soul was allowed to copy it. Fortunately, after M. Brunet's death, the city of Paris succeeded in purchasing the seven printed leaves, of which the precious book was composed, for 1,400 francs! Even then the singular fortunes of the book did not end. Placed in the Hôtel-de-Ville, this insignificant pamphlet, almost alone of all the untold wealth of antiquarian lore in the library, escaped the flames kindled by the insane Commune. M. Charles Read, the librarian, had taken it to his own house for the purpose of copying it and giving it to the world. This design has now been happily executed, in an exquisite edition (Paris, 1875), containing not only the text, illustrated by copious notes, but a photographic fac-simile. M. Read has also appended a poem entitled "Le Tigre, Satire sur les Gestes Mémorables des Guisards (1561), "for the recovery of which we are indebted to M. Charles Nodier. Although some have imagined this to be the original "Tigre" which cost the lives of Lhomme and Dehors, it needs only a very superficial comparison of the two to convince us that the poem is only an elaboration, not indeed without merit, of the more nervous prose epistle. The author of the latter was without doubt the distinguished François Hotman. This point has now been established beyond controversy. As early as in 1562 the Guises had discovered this; for a treatise published that year in Paris (Religionis et Regis adversus exitiosas Calvini, Bezæ, et Ottomani conjuratorum factiones defensio) uses the expressions: "Hic te, Ottomane, excutere incipio. Scis enim ex cujus officina Tigris prodiit, liber certe tigride parente, id est homine barbaro, impuro, impio, ingrato, malevolo, maledico dignissimus. Tu te istius libelli auctorem ... audes venditare?" While an expression in a letter written by John Sturm, Rector of the University of Strasbourg, July, 1562, to Hotman himself (Tygris, immanis illa bellua quam tu hic contra Cardinalis existimationem divulgari curasti), not only confirms the statement of the hostile Parisian pamphleteer, but indicates Strasbourg as the place of publication (Read, pp. 132-139).
The "Epistre envoyée au Tigre de la France" betrays a writer well versed in classical oratory. Some of the best of modern French critics accord to it the first rank among works of the kind belonging to the sixteenth century. They contrast its sprightliness, its terse, telling phrases with the heavy, dragging constructions that disfigure the prose of contemporary works. Without copying in a servile fashion the Catilinarian speeches of Cicero, the "Tigre" breathes their spirit and lacks none of their force. Take, for example, the introductory sentences: "Tigre enragé! Vipère venimeuse! Sépulcre d'abomination! Spectacle de malheur! Jusques à quand sera-ce que tu abuseras de la jeunesse de nostre Roy? Ne mettras-tu jamais fin à ton ambition démesurée, à tes impostures, à tes larcins? Ne vois-tu pas que tout le monde les sçait, les entend, les cognoist? Qui penses-tu qui ignore ton détestable desseing et qui ne lise en ton visage le malheur de tous tes [nos] jours, la ruine de ce Royaume, et la mort de nostre Roy?" Or read the lines in which the writer sums up a portion of the Cardinal's villainy: "Quand je te diray que les fautes des finances de France ne viennent que de tes larcins? Quand je te diray qu'un mari est plus continent avec sa femme que tu n'es avec tes propres parentes? Si je te dis encore que tu t'es emparé du gouvernement de la France, et as dérobé cet honneur aux Princes du sang, pour mettre la couronne de France en ta maison—que pourras-tu répondre? Si tu le confesses, il te faut pendre et estrangler; si tu le nies, je te convaincrai."
A passage of unsurpassed bitterness paints the portrait of the hypocritical churchman: "Tu fais mourir ceux qui conspirent contre toy: et tu vis encore, qui as conspiré contre la couronne de France, contre les biens des veuves et des orphelins, contre le sang des tristes et des innocens! Tu fais profession de prescher de sainteté, toy qui ne connois Dieu que de parole; qui ne tiens la religion chrétienne que comme un masque pour te déguiser; qui fais ordinaire trafic, banque et marchandise d'éveschés et de bénéfices: qui ne vois rien de saint que tu ne souilles, rien de chaste que tu ne violes, rien de bon que tu ne gâtes!... Tu dis que ceux qui reprennent tes vices médisent du Roy, tu veux donc qu'on t'estime Roy? Si Cæsar fut occis pour avoir pretendu le sceptre injustement, doit-on permettre que tu vives, toy qui le demandes injustement?"
With which terribly severe denunciation the reader may compare the statements of a pasquinade, unsurpassed for pungent wit by any composition of the times, written apparently about a year later. Addressing the cardinal, Pasquin expresses his perplexity respecting the place where his Eminence will find an abode. The French dislike him so much, that they will have him neither as master nor as servant; the Italians know his tricks; the Spaniards cannot endure his rage; the Germans abhor incest; the English and Scotch hold him to be a traitor; the Turk and the Sophy are Mohammedans, while the cardinal believes in nothing! Heaven is closed against the unbeliever, the devils would be afraid to have him in hell, and in the ensuing council the Protestants are going to do away with purgatory! "Et tu miser, ubi peribis?" Copy in State Paper Office (1561).