History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 2

by Henry Martyn Baird

The conflict was, in the judgment of that scarred old Huguenot warrior, Agrippa d'Aubigné, the sharpest and most obstinate in all the civil wars.[653] At last Condé's horse was killed under him, and the prince was unable to extricate himself. The day was evidently lost, and Condé, calling two of the enemies' knights with whom he was acquainted, and the life of one of whom he had on a former occasion saved, raised his visor, made himself known, and surrendered. His captors pledged him their word that his life should be spared, and respectfully endeavored to raise him from the ground. Just at that moment another horseman rode up. It was Montesquiou, captain of Anjou's guards, who came directly from his master, and was charged—so it was said—with a secret commission. He drew a pistol as he approached, and, without inquiring into the terms of the capture, shot Condé in the back. The shot penetrated between the joints of his armor, and caused almost instantaneous death.

So perished a prince even more illustrious for his courage and intrepidity than for his exalted rank—a prince who had conscientiously espoused the reformed faith, and had felt himself constrained by his duty to his God and to his fellow-believers to assert the rights of the oppressed Huguenots against illegal persecution. "Our consolation," wrote Jeanne d'Albret a few weeks later, "is that he died on the true bed of honor, both for body and soul, for the service of his God and his king, and the quiet of his fatherland."[654] So magnanimous a hero could not be insensible to the invasion of his claims as the representative of the family next in the succession to the Valois; but I cannot agree with those who believe that, in his assumption of arms in three successive wars, he was influenced solely, or even principally, by selfish or ambitious motives. His devotion to the cause which he had espoused was sincere and whole-souled. If his love of pleasure was a serious blot upon his character, let charity at least reflect upon the fearful corruption of the court in which he had been living from his childhood, and remember that if Condé yielded too readily to its fascinations, and fell into shameful excesses, he yet bore with meekness the pointed remonstrances of faithful friends, and in the end shook off the chains with which his enemies had endeavored to bind him fast.[655] As a soldier, no one could surpass Condé for bravery.[656] If his abilities as a general were not of the very first order, he had at least the good sense to adopt the plans of Gaspard de Coligny, the true hero of the first four civil wars. The relations between these two men were well deserving of admiration. On the part of Condé there was an entire absence of jealousy of the resplendent abilities and well-earned reputation of the admiral. On the part of Coligny there was an equal freedom from desire to supplant the prince either in the esteem of his followers or in military rank. Coligny was inflexible in his determination to accept no honors or distinctions that might appear to prejudice the respect due by a Châtillon to a prince of royal blood.[657]

The Prince of Condé was, unfortunately, not the only Huguenot leader murdered in cold blood at the battle of Jarnac. Chastelier-Pourtaut de Latour, who, having lately brought his flotilla back in safety to La Rochelle, had hastened to take the field with the Protestants, was recognized after his capture as the same nobleman who, five years before, had killed the Sieur de Charry at Paris, and was killed in revenge by some of Charry's friends. Robert Stuart, the brave leader descended from the royal house of Scotland, who was said to have slain Constable Montmorency in the battle of St. Denis, was assassinated after he had been talking with the Duke of Anjou, within hearing and almost in sight of the duke, by one of the constable's adherents.[658]

Henry of Navarre remonstrates against the perfidy.

These flagrant violations of good faith incurred severe animadversion. A letter is extant, written by young Prince Henry of Navarre, or in his name, to Henry of Anjou, on the twelfth of July, 1569, about four months after the battle of Jarnac. He begins by answering the aspersions cast upon his mother and himself, and by asserting that, if his age (which, however, is not much less than that of Anjou) disqualifies him from passing a judgment upon the present state of affairs, he has lived long enough to recognize the instigators of the new troubles as the enemies of the public weal. It is not Henry of Navarre, whose honors and dignities are all dependent upon the preservation of France, who seeks the ruin of the kingdom; but, rather, they seek its ruin who, in their eagerness to usurp the crown, have gone the length of making genealogical searches to prove their possession of a title superior to that of the Valois, "and have learned how to sell the blood of the house of France against itself,[659] constraining the king, as it were, to make use of his left arm to cut off his right, so as more easily to wrest his sceptre from him afterward." In reply to the statement of Anjou that Stuart alone was killed in cold blood, Henry of Navarre affirms that he can enumerate many others.[660] "But I shall content myself with merely reminding you of the manner in which the late Prince of Condé was treated, inasmuch as it touches you, Sir, and because it is a matter well known and free of doubt. For his death has left to posterity an example of as noted treachery, bad faith and cruelty as was ever shown, seeing that those, Sir, who murdered him could not be deterred from the perpetration of so wicked an act by the respect they owed to the greatness of your blood, to which he had the honor of being so nearly related, and that they dealt with him as they would have done with the most miserable soldier of the whole army."[661]

The Huguenot loss in the battle of Jarnac was surprisingly small in the number of men killed. It is probable that, including prisoners, they lost about four hundred men, or about twice as many as the Roman Catholics.[662] But the loss was in effect much more considerable. The dead and the prisoners were the flower of the French nobility. Among those that had fallen into the enemy's hands were the bastard son of Antoine of Navarre, François de la Noue, Soubise, La Loue, and others of nearly equal distinction. Of infantry the Huguenot army lost but few men, as the regiments, with the exception of that of Pluviaut, did not enter the engagement at all. Coming up too late, and finding themselves in danger of falling into the hands of the enemy's victorious cavalry, they evacuated Jarnac, crossed to the left bank of the Charente, and, after breaking down the bridge, retreated leisurely toward Cognac. Admiral Coligny, meantime, upon whom the command in chief now devolved, diverged to the right, and conducted the cavalry in safety to Saintes. The Roman Catholic army, apparently satisfied with the success it had gained, made no attempt at pursuit.

The Duke of Anjou entered Jarnac in triumph. With him was brought the corpse of the Prince of Condé, tied to an ass's back, to be afterward exposed by a pillar of the house where Anjou lodged—the butt of the sneers and low wit of the soldiers.[663] In the first glow of exultation over a victory, the real credit of which belonged to Gaspard de Tavannes,[664] Anjou contemplated erecting a chapel on the spot where Condé fell. The better counsels of M. de Carnavalet, however, induced him to abandon a design which would have confirmed all the sinister rumors respecting his complicity in the assassination.[665] The prince's dead body was given up for interment to the Prince of Navarre, and found a resting-place in the ancestral tomb at Vendôme.[666]

Exaggerated bulletins.

Henry of Anjou was not inclined to suffer his victory to pass unnoticed. Almost as soon as the smoke of battle had cleared away, a careful description of his exploit was prepared for circulation, and it was no fault of the compiler if the account he gave was not sufficiently flattering to the young prince's vanity. Condé's body had not been four days in the hands of the Roman Catholics, before Anjou wrote to his brother, the King of France, announcing the fact that he had already despatched messengers with the precious document to the Pope and the Duke of Florence, to the Dukes of Savoy, Ferrara, Parma, and Urbino, to the Republic of Venice and the Duke of Mantua, and to Philip of Spain; while copies were also under way, intended for the French ambassadors in England and Switzerland, for the Parliaments of Paris, Bordeaux, and Toulouse, the "prévôt des marchands," and the "échevins" of the capital, and others.[667]

The Pope's sanguinary injunctions.