History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 2

by Henry Martyn Baird

A second failure.

Alençon and Navarre examined.

A second attempt at flight made by Alençon and Navarre also failed, through the treachery of one of those to whom the secret had been confided. Alençon and Navarre were now placed under close guard, and subjected to long and repeated examinations before a royal commission. Alençon was sufficiently craven in his bearing, and did not hesitate by his admissions to involve in ruin the minor instruments in the execution of the plan. Navarre, in his answers to the interrogatories, displayed a courageous frankness. He was not, in truth, content with a simple denial of the evil designs attributed to him. On the contrary, he availed himself of the opportunity to rehearse the grievances under which he had been suffering for nearly two years. Detained at court only to find himself an object of suspicion, his ears had been filled with successive rumors of an approaching massacre, a second St. Bartholomew's Day, when he would not be spared in the general destruction. These rumors had, indeed, been declared false by the Duke of Anjou, before the walls of La Rochelle, but that prince had failed to keep the promises made before his departure for Poland—to commend Navarre to the royal favor. Consequently he had been subjected to the indignity of frequently being refused admission to the presence of Charles, while seeing La Chastre, and others of those who had figured most prominently among the actors in the Parisian matins, freely received at the king's rising. He had at length resolved to leave the court in company with his cousin of Alençon, partly in order to consult his own safety, partly that he might restore order in his estates of Béarn and Navarre, now suffering from his protracted absence. When his design had come to the queen mother's knowledge, he had explained the motives of his action to her, and obtained the promise of her protection. Subsequently there had reached him the intelligence that he was to be imprisoned with Alençon in the castle of Vincennes; whereupon he had renewed the attempt to escape the impending peril. In his second examination, in the presence of Catharine de' Medici and his uncle, Cardinal Bourbon, Henry reiterated his statements respecting the alarming reports that continually reached him. At one time he learned that it was decided that, should Margaret of Navarre bear a son, the luckless father would be put out of the way, in order that the child might inherit his dignities. At another time, in the very chamber of King Charles, the opinion had been boldly uttered, that, so long as a single member of the house of Bourbon should survive, there would always be war in France. Nor had the young prince dared to complain of these menaces.[1375]

It was no part of Catharine de' Medici's plan, at this juncture, to wreak her vengeance for the blow that had been aimed at her authority, either upon her son or upon her son-in-law. The Montmorencies, also, though suspected and long since the objects of jealousy, ultimately escaped with little difficulty. It is true that the eldest brother, Marshal François de Montmorency, was enticed to the court, as was also another marshal, M. de Cossé, and that both were thrown into the Bastile. But the younger Montmorencies, Thoré and Méru, had escaped, while their more energetic brother Marshal Damville, was too firmly fixed in the governorship of Languedoc, to be removed without a struggle. It was hardly prudent to drive so influential a family to extremities. Moreover, Catharine was too wise to desire the utter destruction of a clan whose authority might on occasion be employed, as it had often been in the past, as a counterpoise to the formidable power of the Guises.

Execution of La Mole and Coconnas.

Some victims of inferior rank were needed. They were found in the persons of Joseph Boniface de la Mole and Hannibal, Count de Coconnas, who, with one M. de Tourtray, expiated their error and that of their superiors, on the Place de Grève. The cruel procedure known as the administration of justice in the sixteenth century has no more striking illustration than in the barbarous torture, including the terrible trial by water, inflicted upon these wretched men. By such means it was not difficult to extort admissions which the prisoner was likely to retract at a subsequent time. Consequently it is not quite clear, even with the full record before us, how far La Mole and Coconnas were really implicated. As for the sufferers themselves, there was little about them to call forth our special sympathy. La Mole, of handsome appearance, but of cowardly disposition, was a firm believer in the magic that passed current in his day, and was questioned on the rack respecting the object of a waxen figure found among his effects. He admitted he had employed it for sorcery, to advance his suit with a lady whose love he sought. Coconnas, an Italian, instead of inviting contempt for his poltroonery, inspires aversion for his crimes. No assassin had distinguished himself more at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. We are inclined to believe the contemporary chronicler, who states that Charles the Ninth himself averred that he had never liked Coconnas since hearing the latter's sanguinary boast that he had redeemed as many as thirty Huguenots from the hands of the populace, only that he might induce them to abjure their religion, under promise of life, and afterward enjoy the satisfaction of murdering them by inches under his dagger.[1376]

Had Coconnas and La Mole been persons more entitled to our respect, we might have pitied their misfortune in falling into the hands of a royal commission with whom the evidence of the guilt of the prisoners was apparently of less weight than the desire to gratify the court by their condemnation. The first president of parliament, Christopher de Thou, again headed the commission. The same pliant tool of despotism who had signed the death-warrant of Prince Louis of Condé, just before the sudden close of the brief reign of Francis the Second, and had congratulated Charles the Ninth, twelve years later, in the name of the judiciary of the kingdom, on the "piety" he had displayed in butchering his unoffending subjects, again obeyed with docility the instructions of his superiors, and suppressed those more generous sentiments, which, if we may credit his son's account, he secretly entertained.

Condé retires to Germany.

Meantime the arrests and judicial proceedings at the capital did not delay the military enterprise in which the Huguenots and Malcontents were alike embarked. More fortunate than his cousin of Navarre, the Prince of Condé, chancing to be in Picardy at the outbreak of the pretended conspiracy of St. Germain, took Thoré's advice and fled out of the kingdom to Strasbourg.[1377] Himself free from the dangers encompassing his confederates in France, he was able to assist them materially by addressing personal solicitations to the German princes, and by superintending the levy of auxiliary troops.

Reasons for the success of the Huguenots in face of great difficulties.