Such stout demands did the Protestants of the south and south-west address to Charles the Ninth on the first anniversary of the fatal matins of Paris. They were, it must be admitted, somewhat different from what might have been expected, a brief year before, from the fugitives who made their escape from the bloody sword of their enemies. Moreover, the terms laid down by the Huguenots of Lower Languedoc and Nismes were conceived in the same brave language, and their demands were virtually identical. Huguenot troops, paid by the king, to garrison both the cities now in the hands of the Protestants, and two cities in each of the sixteen provinces required for additional protection; free worship irrespective of place; new parliaments in all the provinces, with Protestant judges to administer justice to Protestants; liberty to levy tithes for the support of reformed churches; punishment of the instigators and perpetrators of the atrocities of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, as robbers and disturbers of the public peace.[1322] The Tiers État of Provence and Dauphiny added to the demands of Languedoc and Guyenne an urgent petition in favor of the reduction of the onerous imposts under which the country was groaning.[1323]
"Les fronts d'airain."
Catharine's bitter reply.
The bearers of these demands were well able to give them forcible and fearless enunciation—Yolet, Philippi, Chavagnac, and others of the men known by the expressive designation of "Les fronts d'airain."[1324] Assuredly a brow of brass was not out of place, when the Protestant deputies, after a delay of some weeks, were reluctantly admitted to an audience. Charles the Ninth and his court were at this time at Villers-Cotterets, on their way to the eastern frontiers of France, accompanying the newly elected King of Poland as he slowly and unwillingly journeyed toward the capital of a kingdom regarded by him in the light of a detestable place of exile. Contemporary writers inform us that Yolet and his companions were in no degree overawed by the splendor of the scene, and made no weak abatement in the terms they had been instructed to propose. Charles heard them through with patient attention. He was not a little astonished at the extent of their demands, we may be certain; but he made no comment upon the courageous assertion of Protestant rights. Not so with the queen mother. When the deputies had at length finished their harangue, Catharine could no longer contain her indignation. "Why," she exclaimed with marked bitterness of tone, "if your Condé himself were alive and in the heart of the kingdom with twenty thousand horse and fifty thousand foot, and held the chief cities in his power, he would not make half so great demands!"[1325]
The Huguenots firm.
Despite the unwelcome character of the claims of the Huguenot deputies, some answer must be given. It was found impossible to induce the envoys to modify them. They denied that they had the power, even if they had the inclination, to alter the action of those who had sent them. They were therefore dismissed with expressions of good-will and the assurance that two royal commissioners, the Duc d'Uzès and the Chevalier de Caylus, would be sent to treat with the delegates whom the Huguenots might choose. Marshal Damville, governor of the province, was to participate in the negotiations and to appoint some city in the vicinity of Montauban where they might be held. Charles was to hear the result of their conference on his return from the German borders. Meanwhile he promised to instruct Damville to put an end to all hostilities, provided the Huguenots should desist from everything tending to provoke retaliation.[1326] The Tiers État received the answer to their petition more promptly. It was naturally to the effect that a return to the meagre scale of imposts under Louis XI. was utterly impracticable, in view of the burdens of the treasury arising from recent wars and the pensions yearly payable to various members of the royal family.[1327]
Progress of the court to the borders of France.
Decline of the health of Charles IX.
It would be out of place to describe here at any length the slow progress of the French court as it escorted the King of Poland to the borders of the realm. To none of the principal personages taking part was it the occasion of much satisfaction. Catharine was as reluctant to part from Henry, her favorite son, as he was himself averse to exchange the pleasures of the Louvre and Saint Germain for the crown of an unruly and half-civilized kingdom. As for Charles, the gratification he could not conceal at the prospect of being soon freed from the presence of a brother whom he both disliked and feared was more than counterbalanced by the rapid decline of his own health. The boy of eleven, whom the Venetian ambassador had described about the time of his accession to the throne as handsome, amiable, and graceful in appearance, quick, vivacious, and humane—in short, as possessing every quality from which a great prince and a great king might be expected,[1328] was now a man of twenty-three. But his constitution, never robust, had gained nothing. The violent exercises to which he had been addicted even as a child, and which, though princely, had been pronounced dangerous by the ambassador, had been incessantly practised—the ball, horsemanship, arms—and bodily feebleness, not strength, had been the result. Other excesses had contributed to hasten the catastrophe. More than all, if we may believe the testimony of those who were familiar with the young monarch's later life, the mental and moral experience of the last eighteen months left their impress on his physical system. Charles, with the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, had lost all the elasticity of youth. Remorse for complicity in the crime then perpetrated co-operated with the persuasion of the uselessness and complete failure of the attempt to exterminate the Huguenots, and the consciousness of having incurred the indelible mark of hatred and detestation of an impartial posterity. Even in his sleeping hours the curse of the murdered victims pursued him and disturbed his rest. Neither by day nor by night could he banish the remembrance of the time when blood ran so freely in the streets of Paris.
No attentive observer could doubt that the end was drawing near. The court had gone no farther on its way to Lorraine than the little town of Vitry-le-Français, on the river Marne, when Charles fell so seriously ill as to be unable to prosecute his journey. As was usual in such cases, while the physicians alleged as a sufficient explanation of the attack the king's immoderate exercise in the chase and in blowing the trumpet, the more suspicious frequenters of the court and the credulous people did not hesitate to invent the story that he had been poisoned. But by whom the crime had been committed was not settled. Some ascribed it to Catharine, others to Henry of Anjou, while others still laid the guilt at the door of a person of less note, whose honor the licentious king had offended.[1329]