History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 2

by Henry Martyn Baird

The assassin rewarded with the collar of the order.

The Roman Catholics were, nevertheless, entirely mistaken in their anticipations of the speedy subjugation of their opponents. The latter were disheartened for a few days, but not in the least disposed to give over the struggle. "The reformed were too numerous," a modern historian well remarks, "too well organized, and had struck their roots too deeply, to be subdued by the loss of a few pitched battles."[732] The prospect at first was, indeed, very dark. It seemed almost impossible for the Huguenots to maintain themselves in the region which for a whole year had been the chief field of operations. As Anjou advanced southward, Partenay was abandoned without a blow, and after occupying it he pushed on toward Niort. Of this important place the intrepid De Mouy had been placed by Coligny in command. Not content with a bare defence, he sallied out and repulsed the enemy. But his boldness proved fatal to him. There was a Roman Catholic "gentilhomme," Maurevel by name, who, allured by the reward of fifty thousand crowns offered by parliament for the capture or assassination of Admiral Coligny, had entered the Protestant camp with protestations of great disgust with his former patrons the Guises, and had vainly sought an opportunity to take the great chieftain's life. Three years later that opportunity was to present itself in the streets of Paris itself. Loth to return to his friends without accomplishing any noteworthy exploit, Maurevel joined De Mouy, with whom he so ingratiated himself that the general not only supplied him from his purse, but made him a companion and a bed-fellow. As the Huguenots were returning to Niort, the traitor found the conjuncture he desired. Chancing to be left alone with De Mouy, he drew a pistol and shot him in the loins; then putting spurs to his horse, reached with ease the advancing columns of Anjou. De Mouy was taken back to Niort mortally wounded. His friends, contrary to his earnest desire, insisted on taking him by boat down the Sèvre to La Rochelle, where he died. Meanwhile Niort, in discouragement, surrendered to the Roman Catholic army.[733] The assassin was well rewarded. A letter is extant, written by Charles the Ninth to the Duke of Anjou, from Plessis-lez-Tours, on the tenth of October, 1569, in which the king begs his brother to confer on "Charles de Louvier, sieur de Moureveil, being the person who killed Mouy," the collar of the royal order of Saint Michael, to which he had been elected by the knights companions, as a reward for "his signal service;" and to see that he receive from the city of Paris a present commensurate with his merits![734]

Fatal error of the court.

Catharine de' Medici and the Cardinal of Lorraine came from Tours, where they had been watching the course of the war, Niort, and the plan of future operations was discussed in their presence. Almost every place of importance previously held by the Huguenots toward the north and east of La Rochelle had fallen, even to the almost impregnable Lusignan. Saint Jean d'Angely, on the Boutonne, was the only remaining outwork, whose capture must precede an attack on the citadel itself. Should the victorious army of the king lay siege to Saint Jean d'Angely, or should it continue the pursuit of Coligny and the princes, who, in order to divert it from the undertaking, had retired from Saint Jean d'Angely to Saintes, and thence, not long after, in the direction of Montauban? This was the question that demanded an instant answer. Jean de Serres informs us that the Protestant leaders were extremely anxious that their enemies should adopt the latter course;[735] yet the best military authorities on both sides declare without hesitation that the failure of the Roman Catholics to follow it was the one capital error that saved the Huguenots, perhaps, from utter destruction. "Hundreds of times have I been amazed," says the Roman Catholic Blaise de Montluc, "that so many great and wise captains who were with Monsieur (the Duke of Anjou) should have adopted the bad plan of laying sieges, instead of pursuing the princes, who were routed and reduced to such extremities that they had no means of getting to their feet again." And the Protestant François de la Noue devotes an entire chapter of his "discourses" to the proof of the assertion that "as the siege of Poitiers was the beginning of the mishaps of the Huguenots, so that of Saint Jean was the means of arresting the good fortune of the Catholics."

What, it may be asked, led to the commission of so fatal an error? The memoirs of Tavannes, who advocated the immediate pursuit of the admiral, ascribe it to the reluctance of the Montmorencies to permit their cousin to be overwhelmed; to the jealousy felt by Cardinal Lorraine of the military successes which threw his brother, the Duke of Aumale, and his nephew, the Duke of Guise, into obscurity; and to the suggestions of De Retz, the king's favorite, who persuaded Charles that it was dangerous to permit the renown of Anjou to increase yet further.[736] It must, however, be remembered that the younger Tavannes is not always a good authority; and that where, as in the present instance, the glory of his father is affected, he becomes altogether untrustworthy. If we reject his account as apocryphal, which apparently we must do, there still remains good reason to believe that the siege of Saint Jean d'Angely was agreed to by the majority of the Roman Catholic leaders from the sincere conviction that its reduction, to be followed by the still more important capture of La Rochelle, would annihilate the Huguenot party in the west, its stronghold and refuge, and that it could then subsist but little longer in other parts of the kingdom.

Siege of Saint Jean d'Angely.

The defence of Saint Jean d'Angely had been intrusted by Coligny to competent hands. De Piles had found the fortifications weak and imperfect; he completed and strengthened them.[737] With a small garrison of Huguenots he repaired by night the breaches made by the enemy's cannon during the day, and repelled every attempt to storm the place. When the siege had advanced about two weeks, Charles himself, who was resolved not to suffer Henry of Anjou any longer to win all the laurels of the war, made his appearance in the Roman Catholic camp, on the twenty-sixth of October, and summoned the garrison to surrender. De Piles, however, declined to listen to the commands of the king, even as he had disobeyed those of the duke, taking refuge in the feudal theory that he could give up the place only to the Prince of Navarre, the royal governor of the province of Guyenne, at whose hands he had received it. Yet the position of the Protestants was growing extremely perilous. During one of the assaults upon the wall, De Piles himself became so thoroughly convinced that Saint Jean would be carried, that he caused a breach to be made in the fortifications in his rear, in order to facilitate the withdrawal of his troops. Happily, he had no need of this mode of escape on the present occasion. Meanwhile the most honorable terms were offered him. These he refused to accept; but, finding his stock of ammunition rapidly becoming exhausted, he agreed to a truce of ten days, that he might have time to send a messenger to the princes to obtain their orders; promising, in case he received no succor in the interval, to surrender the city on condition that the garrison should be permitted to retire with their horses, arms and personal effects, and that religious liberty should be granted to all the residents. But, before the armistice had quite expired, Saint Surin, and forty other brave horsemen from Angoulême, succeeded in piercing the enemy's lines, and relieved De Piles from an engagement into which he had entered with great reluctance. The hostages on both sides were given up, and the siege was renewed with greater fury than ever. In the end, seeing no prospect of sufficient reinforcement to enable him to maintain his position, De Piles capitulated (on the second of December) on similar terms to those that he had before declined, and the garrison marched out with flying banners. Seven weeks had they detained the entire army of the victors of Moncontour before an ill-fortified place. More than six thousand men had died under its walls, by the casualties of war and by the scarcely less destructive diseases that raged in the camp.[738] One of the ablest and most enterprising of the royal generals—Sebastian of Luxemburg, Viscount of Martigues and governor of Brittany—had been killed.[739] Of the Protestants, only about a hundred and eighty persons perished, nearly the half of them inhabitants of the town; for the men of Saint Jean d'Angely, and even the women and children, had labored industriously in defending their firesides.

It was a part of the compact, that, while neither De Piles nor his soldiers should serve on the Huguenot side for four months, they should be safely conducted without the Roman Catholic lines. The Duc d'Aumale and other leaders seem to have endeavored conscientiously to execute the stipulation; but their followers could not resist the temptation to attack the Huguenots as they were traversing the suburbs. Nearly all were robbed, and a considerable number—as many, according to Agrippa d'Aubigné, as fell during the siege—were murdered. De Piles, on his arrival at Angoulême, wrote to demand the punishment of those who had committed so flagrant a breach of faith, and, when he could obtain no satisfaction, sent a herald to the king to declare that he held himself and his fellow-combatants absolved from all obligations, and that they would at once resume their places in the Huguenot army.[740]

Nearly three months of precious time elapsed since the disastrous rout of Moncontour before the royalists completed the reduction of the region adjoining La Rochelle. Outside of that citadel of French Protestantism only the little town of Tonnay, on the Charente, still held for the Prince of Navarre. Yet so long as La Rochelle itself stood firm, the Duke of Anjou had accomplished little; and La Rochelle had made good use of the respite to strengthen its works. Every effort to gain a lodgement in its neighborhood had signally failed. The end of December came, and with it cold and discouragement. Anjou's army was dwindling away. The King of Spain and the Pope recalled their troops, as if the battle of the third of October had ended the war, and Santa Fiore, the pontifical general, sent to Rome twenty-six standards, taken by the Italians at Moncontour—a present from Charles the Ninth, which Pius accepted with great delight, and dedicated as a trophy in the Basilica of St. John Lateran.[741] Henry of Anjou himself was ill, or was unwilling any longer to endure separation from a court of whose pleasures he was inordinately fond; and, resigning the command of the army into the hands of the eldest son of the Duke of Montpensier, François de Bourbon—generally known as the prince dauphin—he hastened, at the beginning of the new year, to join Charles and Catharine de' Medici at Angers. The French troops, meantime, were either furloughed or scattered, and the generals condemned to inaction, while the German reiters and lansquenets and the Swiss pikemen were permitted to return to their own homes.[742] Such was the suicidal policy of the Roman Catholic party—a policy which saved the Huguenots from prostration; for it may with truth be affirmed that the errors committed in the siege of Saint Jean d'Angely, and in disbanding the powerful army of Anjou, completely obliterated the advantage which had been won on the bloody field of Moncontour.[743]

While the Protestants had been forced to abandon one important place after another in Poitou, Saintonge and Aunis, they had in other parts of the kingdom been displaying their old enterprise, and had obtained considerable success. Vézelay in Burgundy, the birthplace of the reformer Theodore Beza, passed through a fiery ordeal. This ancient town, built upon the brow of a hill, and strong as well by reason of its situation as of its walls constructed in a style that was now becoming obsolete in France, had been captured at the beginning of the war by some of the neighboring Huguenot noblemen, who scaled the walls and surprised the garrison. One of the few points the Protestants held in the eastern part of the kingdom, it was regarded as a place of the greatest importance to their cause.