The time was a peculiarly propitious one. With the prince of Condé out of the way[251] she counted upon the vacillation and hesitancy of the king of Navarre to keep the Huguenots from overt action, while the prospect of the coming States-General, which had grown out of the assembly at Fontainebleau, as the bishop of Valence had predicted,[252] filled the Guises with dismay, so much so that when the demand for the summons of that body began to grow, they had endeavored to persuade the King to ordain that whoever spoke of their convocation should be declared guilty of lèse-majesté.[253] The reason of their alarm is not far to seek. The demand for the States-General was the voice of France, speaking through the noblesse and the bourgeoisie. crying out for a thorough inquiry into the administration of the Guises and reformation of the governmental system of both state and church; as such it was a menace to the cardinal and his brother and in alignment with the demands of the political Huguenots. The costly wars of Henry II, the extravagance of the court; the burdensome taxation; the venality of justice; the lawlessness and disorder prevailing everywhere; the impoverishment of many noble families, and the rise of new nobles out of the violence of the wars in Picardy and Italy, more prone to license and less softened by the social graces that characterized the old families;[254] the dilapidation of ancestral fortunes and the displacements of wealth; the religious unrest; the corruption of the church—all these grievances, none of which was wholly new, were piling up with a cumulative force, whose impending attack the Guises regarded with great apprehension.[255]
The administration of the cardinal of Lorraine and his ducal brother had not mended matters, but in justice to them it should be said that their ministry was quite as much the occasion as the cause of the popular outcry for reform. The evils of the former reign were reaching a climax which their haughtiness and ambition served to accentuate.[256] Misappropriation of public moneys, exorbitant taxation, denial of justice, spoliation of the crown lands, especially the forests, the dilapidation of church property, and the corruption of manners, were undoubtedly the deepest popular grievances. In the demand for redress of these grievances all honest men were united. In 1560 the cry of the Huguenots for freedom of worship was the voice of a minority of them only. Most Huguenots at this time were political and not religious Huguenots, who simply used the demand of the new religionists as a vehicle of expression; this sentiment also for local risings to rescue arrested Calvinists, the participants in many cases being actuated more by the desire to make a demonstration against the government than by sympathy with the Calvinist doctrines.[257]
The debts of the crown at the accession of Francis II aggregated forty-three millions of livres,[258] upon which interest had to be paid, without including pensions and salaries due to officers and servants of the royal household, and the gendarmerie, which were from two to five years in arrears,[259] a sum so great that if the entire revenue of the crown for a decade could have been devoted to its discharge, it would not have been possible to liquidate it. The result was the provinces abounded with poor men driven to live by violence and crime, while even the nobility, because of their reduced incomes, and the soldiery on account of arrears of wages, were driven to plunder the people.[260] Even members of the judiciary and the clergy had recourse to illicit practices.[261] The regular provincial administration was powerless to suppress evils so prevalent, whose roots were found in the condition of society. It was in vain that the crown announced that it was illegal to have recourse to arms for redress of injuries and commanded the governors in the provinces, the bailiffs, seneschals, and other similar officers to stay within their jurisdictions and vigilantly to sustain the provost-marshals in suppressing sedition or illegal assemblies. Some men thought the remedy lay in more drastic penalties and advocated the abolishment of appeal in criminal causes, as in Italy and Flanders.[262] But history in many epochs shows that the social maladies of a complex society cannot be so cured. Obviously the true remedy lay in searching out the causes of the trouble and destroying them, and this was the intent of the demand for the States-General.
The summons of the States-General of Orleans and the further act of the government in announcing that it would summon a national council of the French clergy to meet in Paris on January 10, 1561, unless the Council General was called in the meantime, were equivalent to promises that reform would be undertaken in both state and church. The double announcement was the simultaneous recognition of one necessity—reformation.
[CHAPTER III]
THE STATES-GENERAL OF ORLEANS
The prosecution of the prince of Condé and the vidame of Chartres was pushed during the month of November in order to overcome any Huguenot activity in the coming States-General.[263] The Guises assured both the Pope and Spain that their intention was, after the execution of the prince, to send soldiery into the provinces under the command of the marshals St. André, Termes, Brissac, and Sipierre, whose Catholicism was of a notoriously militant type, and thus either to crush the Huguenots, or drive them out of the country.[264] Condé claimed, upon the advice of his counsel, the advocates Claudius Robert and Francis Marillac, that as a prince of the blood he had to give account to the King alone and to judges suitable to his condition, as peers of France, denying the jurisdiction of the ordinary judges.[265] This the latter refused to allow, on the ground that there was no appeal from the King in council (which at least had been the practice of the crown since Francis I) because the judgment so given was an absolute declaration of the king’s pleasure; whereupon Condé, after the example of Marchetas, when condemned by Philip of Macedon, appealed from the King in bad council to the King in good council. The prince, however, adhered to his claim, until by a subterfuge he was made, in a way, to commit himself; for at last he signed an answer to his counsel, Robert, whereby the prosecution gained a point prejudicial to him, although good lawyers affirmed that a defendant’s counsel could not be made his judge. Thereupon the government organized a court in which there was a sprinkling of peers, in order to seem to comply with the law.[266] Under such practices the judgment was a foregone conclusion, although even after being declared guilty, the general opinion was that the prince would not be put to death, but that the worst that could befall him would be imprisonment in the dungeons of Loches, where Ludovic Sforza died in the reign of Louis XII; or that he would be kept in confinement elsewhere pending greater age on the part of the king and new developments.[267]
What Condé’s fate would have been still remains a problematical question, for Francis II died at Orleans on December 5, 1560, and his death put an end to all proceedings against the prince.[268] The prince of Condé was released on December 24, and immediately went to La Fère in Picardy.[269] The crown descended to the dead king’s younger brother, Charles IX, a boy ten years of age. His accession was not an auspicious one. Well might the Venetian ambassador exclaim: “Vae tibi terra cujus rex puer est.”[270] The execution of two Calvinists in Rouen on December 3 occasioned a riot during which the gates of the city were shut,[271] and at Bordeaux a serious insurrection of 1,200 persons had taken place in consequence of the arrest of Condé, so that the general pardon of religious offenders issued on January 3, 1561, was a wise step.[272] All the plans designed and prepared for execution at Orleans were broken by the death of the King. The Guises were furious.[273]