Catharine was urgent for an immediate conclusion of peace. For the purpose of fixing its conditions, Condé was brought, under a strong guard, to the camp of the army before Orleans, and, on the small "Isle aux Bouviers" in the middle of the Loire, he and the constable, released on their honor, held a preliminary interview on Sunday, the seventh of March, 1563.[254] At first there seemed little prospect of harmonizing their discordant pretensions; for, if the question of the removal of the triumvirs had lost all its practical importance, the old bone of contention remained in the re-establishment of the Edict of January. On this point Montmorency was inflexible. He had been the prime instrument in expelling Protestantism from Paris, and had distinguished himself by burning the places of worship. It could hardly be expected that he should rebuild what he had so laboriously torn down. And, whatever had been his first intentions, Condé proved less tenacious than might have been anticipated from his previous professions. The fact was, that the younger Bourbon was not proof against the wiles employed with so much success against his elder brother. Flattered by Catharine, he was led to suppose that after all it made little difference whether the full demands of the Huguenots were expressly granted in the edict of pacification or not. The queen mother was resolved, so he was assured, to confer upon him the dignity and office of lieutenant-general, left vacant by Navarre's death. When this should be his, it would be easy to obtain every practical concession to which the Huguenots were entitled. So much pleased was the court with the ardor he displayed, that he was at last permitted to go to Orleans on his own princely parole, in order to consult his confederates.
The Huguenot ministers whose advice he first asked, seeing his irresolution, were the more decided in opposing any terms that did not expressly recognize the Edict of January. Seventy-two united in a letter (on the ninth of March, 1563), in which they begged him not to permit the cause to suffer disaster at his hands, and rather to insure an extension, than submit to an abridgment of the liberty promised by the royal ordinance.[255] From the ministers, however, Condé went to the Huguenot "noblesse," with whom his arguments of expediency had more weight, and who, weary of the length and privations of the war, and content with securing their own privileges, readily accepted the conditions reprobated by the ministers. The pacification was accordingly agreed upon, on the twelfth of March, and officially published in the form of a royal edict, dated at Amboise, on the nineteenth of March, 1563.
Edict of Pacification, March 12, 1563.
Charles the Ninth, by advice of his mother, the Cardinal of Bourbon, the Princes of Condé and La Roche-sur-Yon, the Dukes of Montmorency, Aumale, and Montpensier, and other members of his privy council, grants, in this document, to all barons, châtellains, and gentlemen possessed of the right to administer "haute justice," permission to celebrate in their own houses the worship of "the religion which they call reformed" in the presence of their families and retainers. The possessors of minor fiefs could enjoy the same privilege, but it extended to their families only. In every bailiwick or sénéchaussée, the Protestants should, on petition, receive one city in whose suburbs their religious services might be held, and in all cities where the Protestant religion was exercised on the seventh of March of the present year, it should continue in one or two places inside of the walls, to be designated hereafter by the king. The Huguenots, while secured in their liberty of conscience, were to restore all churches and ecclesiastical property which they might have seized, and were forbidden to worship according to their rites in the city of Paris or its immediate neighborhood. The remaining articles of the peace were of a more personal or temporary interest. Foreign troops were to be speedily dismissed; the Protestant lords to be fully reinstated in their former honors, offices, and possessions; prisoners to be released; insults based upon the events of the war to be summarily punished. And Charles declared that he held his good cousin, the Prince of Condé, and all the other lords, knights, gentlemen, and burgesses that had served under him, to be his faithful subjects, believing that what they had done was for good ends and for his service.[256]
Sir Thomas Smith's remonstrance.
Such was the Edict of Amboise—a half-way measure, very different from that which was desired on either side. The English ambassador declared he could find no one, whether Protestant or papist, that liked the "accord," or thought it would last three weeks. And he added, by way of warning to Coligny and Condé: "What you, who are the heads and rulers, do, I cannot tell; but every man thinketh that it is but a traine and a deceipt to sever the one of you from another, and all of you from this stronghold [Orleans], and then thei will talke with you after another sorte."[257] He urged the Huguenots to learn a lesson from the fate of Bourges, Rouen, and other cities which had admitted the "papists," and to consider that these fine articles came from the queen mother, the Cardinals of Bourbon, Ferrara, and Guise, and others like them, who desired to take the Protestants like fish in a net. And he gave D'Andelot the significant hint—very significant it was, in view of what afterwards befell his brother Gaspard—that the report spread by the enemy respecting Poltrot's confession was only a preparation that, in case any of the Huguenot noblemen should be assassinated, it might be said that the deed had been done in just revenge by the Guises, who would not hesitate to sacrifice them either by force or by treason.[258]
Coligny's disappointment.
Of the other party, Catharine de' Medici alone was jubilant over the edict. On the contrary, the Roman Catholic people of Paris regarded it as an approval of every sort of impiety and wicked action, and the parliament would register it only after repeated commands (on the twenty-seventh of March), and then with a formal declaration of its reluctance.[259] But no one was so much disappointed as the admiral. Hastening from Normandy to Orleans, he reached that city on the twenty-third of March, only to find that the peace had been fully concluded several days before. In the council of the confederates, the next day, he spoke his mind freely. He reminded Condé that, from the very commencement of hostilities, the triumvirs had offered the restoration of the Edict of January with the exclusion of the city of Paris; and that never had affairs stood on a better footing than now,[260] when two of the three chief authors of the war were dead, and the third was a prisoner. But the poor had surpassed the rich in devotion; the cities had given the example to the nobles. In restricting the number of churches to one in a bailiwick, the prince and his counsellors had ruined more churches by a single stroke of the pen than all the forces of their enemies could have overthrown in ten years. Coligny's warm remonstrance was heard with some regret for the precipitancy with which the arrangement had been made; but it was too late. The peace was signed. Besides, Condé was confident that he would soon occupy his brother's place, when the Huguenots would obtain all their demands.
But while the prince refused to draw back from the articles of peace to which he had pledged himself, he consented to visit the queen mother in company with the admiral, and endeavor to remove some of the restrictions placed upon Protestant worship. And Catharine was too well satisfied with her success in restoring peace, to refuse the most pressing of the admiral's requests. However, she took good care that none of her promises should be in writing, much less be incorporated in the Edict of Pacification. "The prince and the admyrall," wrote the special envoy Middlemore to Queen Elizabeth, "have bene twice with the quene mother since my commynge hyther, where the admirall hath bene very earnest for a further and larger lybertye in the course of religion, and so hath obtayned that there shall be preachings within the townes in every balliage, wheras before yt was accordyd but in the suburbs of townes only, and that the gentylmen of the visconte and provoste of Parys shall have in theyr houses the same libertye of religion as ys accordyd elzwhere. So as the sayd admyrall doth now seame to lyke well inoughe that he shewyd by the waye to mislyke so muche, which was the harde articles of religion concludyd upon by the prince in his absence."[261]
On Sunday, the twenty-eighth of March, 1563—the anniversary of that Sunday which they had kept with so much solemnity at Meaux, on the eve of their march to Orleans—the Huguenot nobles and soldiers celebrated the Lord's Supper, in the simple but grand forms of the Geneva liturgy, within the walls of the church of the Holy Rood, long since stripped of its idolatrous ornaments, and on the morrow began to disperse to the homes from which for a year they had been separated.[262] The German reiters, at the same time, set out on their march toward Champagne, whence they soon after retired to their own country.