The escape of the prince and the admiral rendered useless all further attempt at the concealment of the treacherous designs of the papal party; and the third religious war dates from this moment.
The city of La Rochelle and its privileges.
The city of La Rochelle, said to have become a walled place about 1126, had received many tokens of favor at the hands of its successive masters before the accession of Queen Alienor, or Éléonore, last Duchess of Aquitaine. It was by a charter of this princess, in 1199, that the municipality, or "commune," was established. (Arcère, Hist. de la Rochelle, ii., Preuves, 660, 661.) The terms of the charter are vague; but, as subsequently constituted, the "commune" consisted of one hundred prominent citizens, designated as "pairs," or peers, in whom all power was vested. The first member in dignity was the "maire" or mayor, selected by the Seneschal of Saintonge from the list of three candidates yearly nominated by his fellow-members. The historian of the city compares him, for power and for the sanctity attaching to his person, to the ancient tribunes of Rome. Next were the twenty-four "échevins," or aldermen, one-half of whom on alternate years assisted the mayor in the administration of justice. Last of all came seventy-five "pairs" having no separate designation, who took part in the election of the mayor, and voted, on important occasions, in the "assemblée générale." (See a historical discussion, Arcère, i. 193-199.)
From King John Lackland, of England, the Rochellois are said to have received express exemption from the duty of marching elsewhere in the king's service, without their own consent, and from admitting into their city any troops from abroad. (P. S. Callot, La Rochelle protestante, 1863, p. 6.) When, in 1224, after standing a siege of three weeks, La Rochelle fell into the hands of Louis VIII. of France, its new master engaged to maintain all its privileges—a promise which was well observed, for not only did the city lose nothing, but it actually received new favors at the king's hands. (Arcère, i. 212; Callot, 6.) In 1360, the disasters of the French, consequent upon the battle of Poitiers, compelled the monarch to surrender the city of La Rochelle to his captors in order to regain his liberty. The concession was reluctantly made, with the most flattering testimony to the past fidelity of the inhabitants (see letters of John II. of France, to the Rochellois, Calais, Oct., 1360, Arcère, ii, Preuves, 761), and it was with still greater reluctance that the latter consented to carry it into effect. "They made frequent excuses," says Froissard, "and would not, for upwards of a year, suffer any Englishman to enter their town. The letters were very affecting which they wrote to the King of France, beseeching him, by the love of God, that he would never liberate them of their fidelity, nor separate them from his government and place them in the hands of strangers; for they would prefer being taxed every year one-half of what they were worth, rather than be in the hands of the English." (Froissard, i. c. 214, Johnes's Trans.) When compelled to yield, it was with the words: "We will honor and obey the English, but our hearts shall never change." Edward the Third had solemnly confirmed their privileges (Callot, 8).
But La Rochelle's unwilling subjection to the English crown was of brief duration. By a plot, somewhat clumsily contrived, but happily executed (Aug., 1372), the commander of the garrison, who did not know how to read, was induced to lead his troops outside of the castle wall for a review. The royal order that had been shown him was no forgery, but had been sent on a previous occasion, and the attesting seal was genuine. At a preconcerted signal, two hundred Rochellois rose from ambush, and cut off the return of the English. The latter, finding their antagonists reinforced by two thousand armed citizens under the lead of the mayor himself, soon came to terms, and, withdrawing the few men they had left behind in the castle, accepted the offer of safe transportation by a ship to Bordeaux. (See the entertaining account in Froissard, i. c. 311.) The wary Rochellois took good care, before even admitting into their city Duguesclin, Constable of France, with a paltry escort of two hundred men-at-arms, to stipulate that pardon should be extended to those who immediately after the departure of the English had razed the hateful castle to the ground, and that no other should ever be erected; that La Rochelle and the country dependent upon it should henceforth form a particular domain under the immediate jurisdiction of the king and his parliament of Paris; that its militia should be employed only for the defence of the place; and that La Rochelle should retain its mint and the right to coin both "black and white money." (Froissard, ubi supra, corrected by Arcère, i. 260.) Not only did the grateful monarch readily make these concessions, and confirm all La Rochelle's past privileges, but, for its "immense services," by a subsequent order he conferred nobility upon the "mayor," "échevins" and "conseillers" of the city, both present and future, as well as upon their children forever. (Letters of January 8, 1372/3, Arcère, ii., Preuves, 673-675.)
The extraordinary prerogatives of which this was the origin were recognized and confirmed by subsequent monarchs, especially by Louis the Eleventh, Charles the Eighth, Louis the Twelfth, and Francis the First. (Callot, 11.) The resistance of the inhabitants to the exaction of the obnoxious "gabelle," or tax upon salt, did indeed, toward the end of the reign of the last-named king (1542), bring them temporarily under his displeasure; but, with the exception of a modification in their municipal government, made in 1530, and revoked early in the reign of Henry the Second, the city retained its quasi-independence without interruption until the outbreak of the religious wars.
As we have seen (ante, p. 227), La Rochelle was in 1552 the scene of the judicial murder of at least two Protestants. The constancy of one of the sufferers had been the means of converting many to the reformed doctrines, and among others Claude d'Angliers, the presiding judge, whose name may still be read at the foot of their sentence. (Arcère, i. 329.) So rapidly had those doctrines spread, that on Sunday, May 31, 1562, the Lord's Supper was celebrated according to the fashion of Geneva, not in one of the churches, but on the great square of the hay-market, in a temporary enclosure shut in on all sides by tapestries and covered with an awning of canvas. More than eight thousand persons took part in the exercises. But if the morning's services were remarkable, the sequel was not less singular. "As the disease of image-breaking was almost universal," says an old chronicler, "it was communicated by contagion to the inhabitants of this city, in such wise that, that very afternoon about three or four o'clock, five hundred men, who were under arms and had just received the same sacrament, went through all the churches and dashed the images in pieces. Howbeit it was a folly conducted with wisdom, seeing that this action passed without any one being wounded or injured." (P. Vincent, apud Callot, 34, and Delmas, 61.) As usual, the whole affair was condemned by the ministers.
Although La Rochelle had steadily refused, during the earlier part of the first religious war, to declare for the Prince of Condé, and had maintained a kind of neutrality, the court was in constant fear lest the weight of its sympathies should yet draw it in that direction. It was therefore a matter of great joy when, in October, 1562, the Duke of Montpensier succeeded, by a ruse meriting the designation of treachery, in throwing himself into La Rochelle with a large body of troops. With his arrival the banished Roman Catholic mass returned, and the Protestant ministers were warned to leave at once. (Arcère, i. 339.)
For two months after the restoration of peace, the Huguenots of La Rochelle, embracing almost the entire population, held their religious services, in accordance with the terms of the Edict of Pacification, in the suburbs of the city. But, on the 9th of May, 1563, Charles the Ninth was prevailed to give directions that one or two places should be assigned to the Huguenots within the city. This gracious permission was ratified with greater solemnity in letters patent of July 14th, in which the king declared the motive to be the representations made to him of "the inconveniences and eminent dangers that might arise in our said city of La Rochelle, if the preaching and exercise of the pretended reformed religion should continue to be held outside of the said city, being, as it is, a frontier city in the direction of the English, ancient enemies of the inhabitants of that city, where it would be easy for them, by this means, to execute some evil enterprise." (Commission of Charles IX., to M. de Jarnac. This valuable MS., with other MSS., carried to Dublin at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, by M. Elie Bouhereau, and placed in the Marsh Library, has recently been restored to La Rochelle, in accordance with M. Bouhereau's written directions. Delmas, 369.)
Two years later, Charles and his court, returning from their long progress through France, came to La Rochelle, and spent three days there (Sept., 1565). A noteworthy incident occurred at his entry. The jealous citizens had not forgotten an immemorial custom which was not without significance. A silken cord had been stretched across the road by which the monarch was to enter, that he might stop and promise to respect the liberties and franchises of La Rochelle. Constable Montmorency was the first to notice the cord, and in some anger and surprise asked whether the magistrates of the city intended to refuse their sovereign admission. The symbolism of the pretty custom was duly explained to him, but for all response the old warrior curtly observed that "such usages had passed out of fashion," and at the same instant cut the cord with his sword. (Arcère, i. 349; Delmas, 80, 81.) Charles himself refused the request of the mayor that he should swear to maintain the city's privileges. After so inauspicious a beginning of his visit, the inhabitants were not surprised to find the king, during his stay, reducing the "corps-de-ville" from 100 to 24 members, under the presidency of a governor invested with the full powers of the mayor; ordering that the artillery should be seized, two of the towers garrisoned by foreign troops, and the magistrates enjoined to prosecute all ministers that preached sedition; or banishing some of the most prominent Protestants from La Rochelle.
It was characteristic of the government of Catharine de' Medici—always destitute of a fixed policy, and consequently always recalling one day what it had done the day before—that scarcely two months elapsed before the queen mother put everything back on the footing it had occupied before the royal visit to La Rochelle.
FOOTNOTES:
[430] The most authentic account of these important interviews is that given by François de la Noue in his Mémoires, chap. xi. It clearly shows how much Davila mistakes in asserting that "the prince, the admiral, and Andelot persuaded them, without further delay, to take arms." (Eng. trans., London, 1678, bk. iv., p. 110.) Davila's careless remark has led many others into the error of making Coligny the advocate, instead of the opposer, of a resort to arms. See also De Thou, iv. (liv. xlii.) 2-7, who bases his narrative on that of De la Noue, as does likewise Agrippa d'Aubigné, l. iv., c. vii. (i. 209), who uses the expression: "L'Amiral voulant endurer toutes extremitez et se confier en l'innocence."
[431] "Ains avec le fer."
[432] "Une armée gaillarde." La Noue, ubi supra.
[433] Mém. de Castelnau, liv. vi., c. iv., c. v.; La Noue, c. xi.; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlii.) 5, 6. Davila, l. iv., p. 110, alludes to the accusation, extorted from Protestant prisoners on the rack, that "the chief scope of this enterprise was to murder the king and queen, with all her other children, that the crown might come to the Prince of Condé," but admits that it was not generally credited. The curate of Saint Barthélemi is less charitable; describing the rising of the Protestants, he says: "En ung vendredy 27e se partirent de toutes les villes de France les huguenots, sans qu'on leur eust dit mot, mais ils craignoient que si on venoit au dessein de leur entreprise qui estoit de prendre ou tuer le roy Charles neuvième, qu'on ne les saccagea ès villes." Journal d'un curé ligueur (J. de la Fosse), 85.
[434] La Noue, and De Thou, ubi supra.
[435] The historian, Michel de Castelnau, sieur de Mauvissière, had been sent as a special envoy to congratulate the Duke of Alva on his safe arrival, and the Duchess of Parma on her relief. As he was returning from Brussels, he received, from some Frenchmen who joined him, a very circumstantial account of the contemplated rising of the Huguenots, and, although he regarded the story as an idle rumor, he thought it his duty to communicate it to the king and queen. Mémoires, liv. vi., c. iv.