Henry orders him to be imprisoned.
Embarrassment of the court.
Greatly displeased with so frank an avowal of sentiments that would have cost one less nobly connected his life, Henry now pointed to the collar of the "Order of St. Michael" around D'Andelot's neck, and exclaimed: "I did not give you this order to be so employed; for you swore to attend mass and to follow my religion." "I knew not what it is to be a Christian," responded D'Andelot; "nor, had God then touched my heart as He now has, should I have accepted it on such a condition."[666] Unable any longer to endure the boldness of D'Andelot—who richly deserved the title he popularly bore, the fearless knight[667]—Henry angrily commanded him to leave his presence. The young man was arrested and taken by the archers of the guard to Meaux, whence he was subsequently removed to Melun.[668] The position of the court was, however, an embarrassing one. Henry manifested no desire to retain long as a prisoner, much less to bring to the estrapade, the nephew of the constable, and a warrior who had himself held the honorable post of Colonel-General of the French infantry, and was second to none in reputation for valor and skill. The most trifling concession would be sufficient to secure the scion of the powerful families of Châtillon and Montmorency. Even this concession, however, could not for a considerable time be gained. D'Andelot resisted every temptation, and his correspondence breathed the most uncompromising determination.
D'Andelot's constancy.
His temporary weakness.
In a long and admirable letter to Henry, it is true, he humbly asked pardon for the offence his words had given. And he begged the king to believe that, "save in the matter of obedience to God and of conscience," he would ever faithfully expose life and means to fulfil the royal commands. But he also reiterated his inability to attend the mass, and plainly denounced as blasphemy the approval of any other sacrifice than that made upon the Cross.[669] To the ministers of Paris he wrote, expressing a resolution equally strong; and the letters of the latter, as well as of the great Genevese reformer, were well calculated to sustain his courage. But D'Andelot was not proof against the sophistries of Ruzé, a doctor of the Sorbonne and confessor of the king. Moved by the entreaties of his wife,[670] of his uncle the constable, and of his brother the Cardinal of Châtillon, he was induced, after two months of imprisonment, to consent to be present, but without taking any part, at a celebration of the mass. By the same priest D'Andelot sent a submissive message to the king, to which the bearer, we have reason to believe, attributed a meaning quite different from that which D'Andelot had intended to convey. The noble prisoner was at once released; but the voice of conscience, uniting with that of his faithful friends, soon led him to repent bitterly of his temporary, but scandalous weakness. From this time forward he resumes the character of the intrepid defender of the Protestant doctrines—a character of which he never again divests himself.[671]
The bloody decemvirate.
Anxiety for peace.
Meanwhile, Henry and his adviser, the Cardinal of Lorraine, who really little deserved the reproaches showered on them by the Pope, took steps to encounter the new assaults which the reformed doctrines were making on the established church in every quarter of the kingdom. If the Parliament of Paris began to exhibit reluctance to shed more innocent blood, it was far otherwise with the decemvirate to whom the three cardinals had delegated their inquisitorial functions, and whose power was supreme.[672] But, to the prosecution of the work of exterminating heresy in France, the continuance of the war with Spain offered insurmountable obstacles. It diverted the attention of the government from the multiplication of "Lutheran" churches and communities. It hampered the court, by compelling it to mitigate its severities, in consequence of the importunate intercessions of its indispensable allies, the Protestant princes across the Rhine and the confederated cantons of Switzerland. Besides, the war had borne no fruit but disappointment. If Calais had been recovered, St. Quentin and other strongholds, which were the key to Paris, had been lost. The brilliant capture of Thionville (on the twenty-second of June, 1558) had been more than balanced by the disastrous rout of Marshal de Thermes at Gravelines (on the thirteenth of July).[673]
The almost uninterrupted hostilities of the last twelve years had not only exhausted the few thousand crowns which Henry had found in the treasury at his accession to the throne, but had reduced the French exchequer to as low an ebb as that of the Spanish king.[674] His antagonist was as anxious as Henry to reduce his expenditures, and obtain leisure for crushing heresy in the Low Countries and wherever else it had shown itself in his vast dominions. Constable Montmorency, too, employed his powerful influence to secure a peace which would restore him liberty, and the place in the royal favor likely to be usurped by the Guises, if his absence from court were to last much longer. And Paul the Fourth was now as earnestly desirous of effecting a reconciliation between the contending monarchs—that they might unitedly engage in the holy work of persecution—as he had been a few years before to embroil them in war.[675]