Coligny partially succeeds in reassuring him.
So wrote that shrewd observer, Sir Francis Walsingham, just two weeks before the bloody Sunday of the massacre, and eight days before the marriage of Navarre, little suspecting, in spite of his anxiety, the flood of misery which was so soon to burst upon that devoted land. To all human foresight there was still hope that Charles, weak, nerveless, addicted to pleasure, but not yet quite lost to a sense of honor, might yet be induced to adopt a policy which would place France among the foremost champions of intellectual and civil liberty, and transfer to the north of the Pyrenees the prosperity which the Spanish monarchs had misused and had employed only as an instrument of oppression and degradation. And, indeed, Coligny was partially successful; for the impression made upon Charles by his mother's complaints and menaces at Montpipeau gradually wore away, and again he listened with apparent interest to the manly arguments of the great Huguenot leader.
Elizabeth toys with dishonorable proposals from Netherlands.
Fatal results.
Could Elizabeth at this moment have brought herself to a more noble course, could she for once have forgotten to "deal under hand," and help secretly while in public she disavowed—could she, in short, have realized for a single instant her responsibility as a great Protestant princess, and been willing to expose even her own life to peril in order to secure to the Reformation a chance of fair play, it might not even now have been too late. But what was she doing at this very moment? According to the admission of her own secretary, she was engaged in detaining volunteers from the Netherlands, on the pretext of "fearing too much disorder there through lack of some good head;" and "gently answering with a dilatory and doubtful answer" the Duke of Alva, when he demanded the revocation of the queen's subjects in Netherlands.[922] Was she projecting anything still more dishonorable? The Spanish envoy in England, Anton de Guaras, affirms it, in a letter of the thirtieth of June to the Duke of Alva; and we have no means of disproving his assertions. In his account of a private audience granted him by Queen Elizabeth, the ambassador writes: "She told me that emissaries were coming every day from Flushing to her, proposing to place the town in her hands. If it was for the service of his Majesty, and if his Majesty approved, she said that she would accept their offer. With the English who were already there, and with others whom she would send over for the purpose, it would be easy for her to take entire possession of the place, and she would then make it over to the Duke of Alva or to any one whom the duke would appoint to receive it."[923] Guaras can scarcely be suspected of misrepresenting the conversation upon so important a topic and in a confidential communication to the Spanish Governor of the Netherlands. The most charitable construction of Elizabeth's words seems to be that they were a clumsy attempt to propitiate the duke "with a dilatory answer," as Sir Thomas Smith somewhat euphemistically expresses it, and that she had no intention of making good her engagements. But it was a sad blunder on her part, and likely to be ruinous to her friends, the French Protestants. Alva was not slow in concluding that Elizabeth's offer was of greater value as documentary proof of her untrustworthy character, than as a means of recovering Flushing. "There is no positive proof," remarks the historian to whom we are indebted for an acquaintance with the letter of Guaras, "that Alva communicated Elizabeth's offers to the queen mother and the King of France, but he was more foolish than he gave the world reason to believe him to be if he let such a weapon lie idle in his writing-desk."[924] And so that inconstant, unprincipled Italian woman, on whose fickle purpose the fate of thousands was more completely dependent than even her contemporaries as yet knew, at last reached the definite persuasion that Elizabeth was preparing to play her false, at the very moment when Coligny was hurrying her son into war with Spain. Even if France should prove victorious, Catharine's own influence would be thrown into perpetual eclipse by that of the admiral and his associates. This result the queen mother resolved promptly to forestall, and for that purpose fell back upon a scheme which had probably been long floating dimly in her mind.
Mémoires de Michel de la Huguerye.
The Mémoires inédits de Michel de la Huguerye, of which the first volume was recently published (Paris, 1877), under the auspices of the National Historical Society, present some interesting points, and deserve a special reference. At first sight, the disclosures, with which the author tells us he was favored, would seem to establish the bad faith of the court in entering upon the peace of St. Germain, and the long premeditation of the succeeding massacre. A closer examination of the facts, assuming La Huguerye's thorough veracity, shows that this is a mistake. La Huguerye may, indeed, have been informed by companions on the way to Italy, who supposed him to be a partisan of the Guises, that a great blow would be struck at the Huguenots when the proper time arrived; and La Huguerye may have been confident that he was telling the truth, when, about Martinmas (November 11th), 1570, he stated to De Briquemault, that "the king, seeing that he could not attain his object by way of arms without greatly weakening—nay, endangering his kingdom, had resolved upon taking another road, by which, in a single day, he would cleanse his whole state." He may have been assured, on what he deemed good authority, that the Pope was in the plot, and would keep the King of Spain from doing anything that might interfere with the execution, and have inferred that, the peace being a treacherous one, the only hope of the Huguenots lay in skilfully enlisting Charles in its maintenance, contrary to his original purpose. So he was confirmed in his belief by the contents of the despatches of the Spanish ambassador at the French court, treacherously submitted to the Huguenots by an unfaithful agent of the envoy. But the former statements were, at most, little better than rumors, to which the circumstances of the hour gave color. The air was full of dark hints; but, apparently, they had no more solid foundation than the fact that, in an age abounding in perfidious schemes, the Protestants had already placed themselves partially in the power of their great enemies, and were likely soon to be more completely in their hands. The information received by La Huguerye was a very different thing from an authoritative avowal of a concealed purpose made by Catharine or by Charles himself. On the other hand, the assurances in the Spanish despatches were just of the same general nature as others with which the French government endeavored to quiet Philip, Alva, and the Roman pontiff himself.
The only other peculiarity of La Huguerye to which I shall allude is his studied misrepresentation of the character of Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre. Contrary to the uniform portraiture given by contemporaries of both religious parties, she here appears as "an inconsiderate woman (femme légère), with little forethought," "known to be jealous of the authority of the admiral," "whom she thwarted by her authority as much as was possible, at whatever cost or danger it might be." She had "intermeddled with affairs in the last war, unsolicited and of her own accord, not so much for conscience' sake, as because of the hatred her house bore to the popes, sole cause of the loss of the kingdom of Navarre, and especially through jealousy of the late Prince of Condé, whom she saw to be in the enjoyment of such credit, and to be so well followed, that she suspected great injury might result to her son in the event of his succession to the throne." She was, consequently, "not very sorry" to hear of Condé's death at Jarnac. Having been disappointed in securing for her son the sole (nominal) command of the Huguenots, she vented her vengeance upon Coligny, whom she held responsible for the association of the young Condé in the leadership with his cousin. From that time forward she took every opportunity to cross the admiral, with the view of compelling him to retire in disgust from the management of affairs. In one of the speeches—Sallustian, I suspect—in which the Mémoires abound, Count Louis of Nassau is represented as lamenting: "It is a great pity to have to do with a woman who has no other counsel than her own head, which is too little and light (légère) to contain so many reasons and precautions, and who is of such weight in matters of so great consequence. And the mischief is that she has such an aversion to the admiral through foolish jealousy," etc. At last the admiral is goaded on to unpardonable imprudence. In the spring of 1572 he yields to the importunities of Marshal Cossé, and goes from La Rochelle to the royal court at Blois: "weary of being near this princess, he exposed himself to the evident peril, of which he had had advices and arguments enough."
To all this misrepresentation, the remarks of La Huguerye's editor, the Baron de Ruble, are a sufficient answer: "No other historian of the period, Catholic or Huguenot, has accused the Queen of Navarre of so much jealousy, frivolity, and spite. To the calumnies of La Huguerye we should oppose the verdict which every impartial judge can pronounce respecting this princess, in accordance with the letters published by the Marquis de Rochambeau and the testimony of contemporaries."
FOOTNOTES:
[792] "La Royne et mons de Morvillier trettent eus deus seulz avecques eus, ce sont aujourdhuy les grans cous." See two important letters of Lorraine to his sister-in-law, the Duchess of Nemours, April 24th and May 1, 1570, in Soldan, Geschichte d. Prot. in Frank., ii. Appendix, 593, 594, from MSS. of the Bibliothèque nationale.
[793] "Though of late the Cardinal of Lorrain hath had access to the king's presence, yet is he not repaired in credit, neither dealeth he in government." Walsingham to Leicester, Aug. 29, 1570, Digges, Compleat Ambassador, p. 8.