The conference at Bayonne, June, 1565.
Early in the month of June, 1565, Charles the Ninth and his court reached the neighborhood of the city of Bayonne, where, on the very confines of France and Spain, a meeting had been arranged between Catharine and her daughter Isabella, wife of Philip the Second. Catharine's first proposal had been that her royal son-in-law should himself be present. She had urged that great good to Christendom might flow from their deliberations. Philip the Prudent, however, and his confidential adviser, the Duke of Alva, were suspicious of the design. Alva was convinced that Catharine had only her own private ends in view.[361] Granvelle observed that little fruit came of these interviews of princes but discord and confusion, and judged that, had not the queen mother strenuously insisted upon improving perhaps the only opportunity which she and her daughter might enjoy of seeing each other, even the interview between the two queens would have been declined.[362] As it was, however, Philip excused himself on the plea of engrossing occupations.
Such were the circumstances under which the Bayonne conference took place—a meeting which Cardinal Granvelle assured his correspondents was a simple visit of a daughter to her mother,[363] but to which contemporaries, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, ascribed a far deeper significance. At this meeting, according to Jean de Serres, writing only four or five years after the event,[364] a holy league, as it was called, was formed, by the intervention of Isabella, for the purpose of re-establishing the authority of the ancient religion and of extirpating the new. France and Spain mutually promised to render each other assistance in the good work; and both pledged themselves to the support of the Holy See by all the means in their power. Philip himself was not present, either, it was conjectured, in order that the league might the better be kept secret, or to avoid the appearance of lowering his dignity before that of the French monarch.[365] The current belief—until recently almost the universal belief of historians—goes farther, and alleges that in this mysterious conference Catharine and Alva, who accompanied his master's wife, concocted the plan of that famous massacre whose execution was delayed by various circumstances for seven years. Alva was the tempter, and the words with which he recommended his favorite method of dealing with heresy, by destroying its chief upholders, were embodied in the ignoble sentence, "Better a salmon's head than ten thousand frogs."[366]
In fact, a general impression that the conference had led to the formation of a distinct plan for the universal destruction of Protestantism gained ground almost immediately. Within about a month after the queen mother and her daughter had ended their interview, the English ambassador wrote to Leicester and Cecil that "they of the religion think that there has been at this meeting at Bayonne some complot betwixt the Pope, the King of Spain, and the Scottish queen, by their ambassadors, and some say also the Papists of England."[367]
No plan of massacre agreed upon.
Fortunately, however, we are not left to frame by uncertain conjecture a doubtful story of the transactions of this famous interview. The correspondence of the Duke of Alva himself with Philip the Second has been preserved among the manuscripts of Simancas, to dispel many inveterate misapprehensions. These letters not only prove that no plan for a massacre of the Huguenots was agreed upon by the two parties, but that Alva did not even distinctly declare himself in favor of such a plan. They furnish, however, an instructive view, such as can but rarely be so well obtained, of the net of treacherous intrigue which the fingers of Philip and his agents were for many years busy day and night in cautiously spreading around the throne of France.
June 14th.
June 15th.
On Thursday, the fourteenth of June, the young Spanish queen, with her brilliant train of attendant grandees, crossed the narrow stream forming the dividing line between the two kingdoms, and was conducted by her mother, her brothers and sister, and a crowd of gallant French nobles, to the neighboring town of Saint Jean de Luz. On Friday, Catharine and Charles rode forward to make their solemn entry into Bayonne, where they were to await their guests' arrival. Before they started, Alva had already been at work complimenting such good Catholics as the constable, Cardinal Bourbon, and Prince La Roche-sur-Yon, flattering Cardinal Guise (his brother of Lorraine was absent from court, not yet being fully reinstated in favor), the Duke of Montpensier, and vain old Blaise de Montluc. Nor were his blandishments thrown away. Poor weak Guise—the "cardinal des bouteilles" he was called, from the greater acquaintance he had with the wine and good living than with religious or political affairs[368]—was overcome with emotion and gratitude, and begged Alva to implore the Catholic king, by the love of God, to look in pity upon an unhappy kingdom, where religion was fast going to ruin. Montpensier threw himself into Alva's arms, and told him that Philip alone was the hope of all the good in France, declaring for himself that he was willing to be torn in pieces in his behalf, and maintaining the meanwhile, that, should that pleasant operation be performed, "Philip" would be found written on his heart. To Blaise de Montluc's self-conceit Alva laid siege in no very covert manner, assuring him that his master had not given his consent to Catharine's plan for an interview until he had perused a paper written by the grim old warrior's hand, in which he had expressed the opinion that the conference would be productive of wholesome results. The implied praise was all that was needed to induce Montluc to explain himself more fully. He was opposed to the exercise of any false humanity. He ascribed the little success that had attended the Roman Catholic arms in the last struggle to the half-way measures adopted and the attempt to exercise the courtesies of peace in time of war. The combatants on either side addressed their enemies as "my brother" and "my cousin." As for himself, he had made it a rule to spare no man's life, but to wage a war of extermination. To this unburdening of his mind Alva replied by giving Montluc to understand that, as a good Roman Catholic, it should be his task to discover the means of inducing Charles and his mother to perform their duty, and, if he failed in this, to disclose to Philip the course which he must pursue, "since it was impossible to suffer matters to go on, as they were going, to their ruin."
What the duty of the French king was, in Philip's and Alva's view, is evidenced by the advice of the "good" Papists which the minister reports to his master with every mark of approbation. It was, in the first place, to banish from the kingdom every Protestant minister, and prohibit utterly any exercise of the reformed religion. The provincial governors, whose orthodoxy in almost every case could be relied upon, were to be the instruments in the execution of this work.[369] But, besides this, it would be necessary to seize a few of the leaders and cut off their heads. Five or six, it was suggested, would be all the victims required.[370] It was, in fact, essentially the plan of operations with which Alva undertook a year or two later the reduction of the Netherlands to submission to Spanish tyranny and the Papal Church. Treacherous imprisonments of the most suspected, which could scarcely have been confined within such narrow numerical limits as Alva laid down, together with a "blood council" to complete the work, or with a massacre in which the proprieties of judicial investigation would be less nicely observed—such was the scheme after Philip's own heart.