History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 2

by Henry Martyn Baird

Condé takes the field.

With the four thousand lansquenets and the three thousand reiters brought him from Germany,[191] Condé was able to leave a force, under command of D'Andelot, sufficient to defend the city of Orleans, and himself to take the field with an army of about fifteen thousand men.[192] "Our enemies," he said, "have inflicted two great losses upon us in taking our castles"—meaning Bourges and Rouen—"but I hope that now we shall have their knights, if they move out upon the board."[193]

As he was leaving Orleans, he was waited upon by a deputation of fifty reformed ministers, who urged him to look well to the discipline and purity of the army. They begged him, by salutary punishment, to banish from the camp theft and rapine, and, above all, that more insidious and heaven-provoking sin of licentiousness, which, creeping in, had doubtless drawn down upon the cause such marked signs of the Lord's displeasure, that, of all the congregations in France, only the churches of a few islands on the coasts, and the churches of Montauban, Havre, Orleans, Lyons, and of the cities of Languedoc[194] and Dauphiny, continued to rear their heads through the storm that had prostrated all the rest; and, to this end, they warned him by no means to neglect to afford his soldiers upon the march the same opportunities of hearing God's Word and of public prayer which they had enjoyed in Orleans.[195]

The Huguenot army directed its course northward, and the different divisions united under the walls of Pluviers, or Pithiviers, a weak place, which surrendered after six hours of cannonading, with little loss to the besieging party. The greater part of the garrison was dismissed unharmed, after having been compelled to give up its weapons. Two of the officers, as guilty of flagrant breach of faith and other crimes, were summarily hung.[196] And here the Huguenot cause was stained by an act of cruelty for which no sufficient excuse can be found. Several Roman Catholic priests, detected, in spite of their disguise, among the prisoners, were put to death, without other pretext save that they had been the chief instigators of the resistance which the town had offered. Unhappily, the Huguenot regarded the priest, and the Roman Catholic the reformed minister, as the guilty cause of the civil war, and thought it right to vent upon his head the vengeance which his own religion should have taught him to leave to the righteous retribution of a just God. After the fall of Pithiviers, no resistance was attempted by Étampes and other slightly garrisoned places of the neighborhood, the soldiers and the clergy taking refuge, before the approach of the army, in the capital.

The prince appears before Paris.

The prince was now master of the country to the very gates of Paris, and it was the opinion of many, including among them the reformer, Beza, that the city itself might be captured by a sudden advance, and the war thus ended at a blow.[197] They therefore recommended that, without delay, the army should hasten forward and attack the terrified inhabitants before Guise and the constable should have time to bring the army and the king back from Normandy, where they still lingered. The view was so plausible, indeed, that it was adopted by most of the reformed historians, and, being indorsed by later writers, has caused the failure to march directly against the capital to be regarded as a signal error of Condé in this campaign. But it would certainly appear hazardous to adopt this conclusion in the face of the most skilful strategists of the age. It has already been seen that François de la Noue, one of the ablest generals of whom the Huguenots could ever boast, regarded the idea of capturing Paris at the beginning of the struggle, with the comparatively insignificant forces which the prince could bring to the undertaking, as the most chimerical that could be entertained. Was it less absurd now, when, if the Protestant army had received large accessions, the walls of Paris could certainly be held by the citizens for a few days, until an army of fully equal size, under experienced leaders, could be recalled from the lower Seine? Such, at least, was the conclusion at which Admiral Coligny, the commanding spirit in the council-chamber and the virtual head of the Huguenot army, arrived, when he calmly considered the perils of attacking, with twelve or fifteen thousand men and four pieces of artillery, the largest capital of continental Europe—a city whose population amounted to several hundred thousand souls, among whom there was now not a single avowed Protestant, and whose turbulent citizens were not unaccustomed to the use of arms. He resolved, therefore, to adopt the more practicable plan of making the city feel the pressure of the war by cutting off its supplies of provisions and by ravaging the surrounding country. Thus, Paris—"the bellows by whose blasts the war was kept in flames," and "the kitchen that fed it"—would at last become weary of sustaining in idleness an insolent soldiery, and of seeing its villages given over to destruction, and compel the king's advisers to offer just terms of peace, or to seek a solution of the present disputes on the open field.[198]

But, whatever doubt may be entertained respecting the propriety of the plan of the campaign adopted by the Prince of Condé, there can be none respecting the error committed in not promptly carrying that plan into execution. The army loitered about Étampes instead of pressing on and seizing the bridges across the Seine. Over these it ought to have crossed, and, entering the fruitful district of Brie, to have become master of the rivers by which the means of subsistence were principally brought to Paris. With Corbeil and Lagny in his possession, Condé would have held Paris in as deadly a grasp as Henry the Fourth did twenty-eight years later, when Alexander of Parma was forced to come from Flanders to its assistance.[199] When, at last, the Huguenot army took the direction of Corbeil, commanding one of the bridges, the news arrived of the death of Antoine of Navarre. And with this intelligence came fresh messengers from Catharine, who had already endeavored more than once by similar means to delay the Huguenots in their advance. She now strove to amuse Condé with the hope of succeeding his brother as lieutenant-general of the kingdom during Charles's minority.[200]

In vain did the soldiers chafe at this new check upon their enthusiasm, in vain did prudent counsellors remonstrate. There was a traitor even in the prince's council, in the person of Jean de Hangest, sieur de Genlis (brother of D'Ivoy, the betrayer of Bourges), whose open desertion we shall soon have occasion to notice, and this treacherous adviser was successful in procuring a delay of four days.[201] The respite was not thrown away. Before the Huguenots were again in motion, Corbeil was reinforced and rendered impregnable against any assaults which, with their feeble artillery, they could make upon it. Repulsed from its walls, after several days wasted in the vain hope of taking it, the prince moved down the left bank of the Seine, and, on the twenty-eighth of November, encamped opposite to Paris in the villages of Gentilly and Arcueil.[202] New proffers came from Catharine; there were new delays on the road. At Port à l'Anglais a conference with Condé had been projected by the queen mother, resulting merely in one between the constable and his nephew Coligny—as fruitless as any that had preceded; for Montmorency would not hear of tolerating in France another religion besides the Roman Catholic, and the Admiral would rather die a thousand deaths than abandon the point.[203]