Although Montgomery was unaware of it, the government already, alarmed by the English intervention, had made overtures to the prince of Condé in Orleans. But in each case, a condition required would not be yielded. The demand of the Rouennais that the Edict of January be revised so as to permit Protestant worship in all towns broke off negotiations with them. In the overtures made to Condé and Coligny, restitution of all in rebellion to their estates and offices was promised, as also the assurance to the Huguenots that they might enjoy their religion peaceably in their houses, but public worship, even without the towns, was not to be permitted. The Protestant leaders seem to have been inclined to yield to these terms, although they implied a reduction of their religious privileges, but insisted that the crown should assume the payments due to Condé’s German auxiliaries. The government balked at this proposal, and the prince and the admiral themselves balked when the king of Navarre declared that D’Andelot’s German troopers and the Huguenots should unite to expel the English from France, so that in the end neither set of negotiations was successful.[614]
During the successful assault upon Fort St. Catherine which followed the rupture of these negotiations both Antoine of Navarre and the duke of Guise were wounded, the former by an arquebus-shot in the joint of the shoulder, as it proved, mortally, because mortification of the wound could not be stayed.[615] Montgomery fought furiously in the assault, which lasted seven hours, and threatened to use his sword upon any who might seek to yield. It was a desperate and vain battle, however.[616] The King’s forces mined clear to the walls of the town, and the havoc of their explosions could not be remedied. The breach in the walls made by both mine and shot was so wide that some of the royal force rode through on horseback.[617] On Monday, October 26, the besiegers fought their way through and over the walls. In this supreme movement the English and the Catholic Germans came sharply together. No quarter was given the English in the town, the command being given “that they should all pass the sword.” Many of them were stripped naked by the victors. The wounded English who were found had their throats cut; the rest were sent to the galleys. The King entered Rouen the day after its capture, making his way over dead bodies which had been spoiled by the soldiers.[618] The royal forces now had unlimited control of the Seine below Rouen; at Caudebec they staked half the river, so that ships and boats were compelled to pass close under their guns.
The Guises now anticipated a swift collapse of the Huguenot cause. All the chief towns in France save Orleans[619] and Lyons were either by inclination or compulsion obedient to the crown, which found powerful support from the property-owning and lawyer class. Politically and financially the government was stronger, although the court was in want of money at this time. The duke of Guise, the most notable captain and soldier in France, the constable and veteran marshals like Brissac and St. André, had made a combination too strong to be overcome. In this strait, the Huguenot leaders grasped at the last straw—the hope that the prince of Condé might succeed the king of Navarre as lieutenant of the realm by winning the support of liberal Catholics and the anti-Guisard element.[620] There was ground for this hope if the Calvinists could be persuaded to be a little less radical, and if the Catholic religion would be suffered without criticism to be and remain the religion of France, and the Huguenots would make no further alteration in their form of worship than the English Reformation had done.[621]
Antoine of Bourbon, since sustaining the wound received at Rouen, had been gradually sinking, and died on board a boat on his way to Paris, October 26, after prolonged suffering.[622] Condé now, by virtue of the arrangement made at the meeting of the States-General at Orleans, legally succeeded to his brother’s office as lieutenant of the realm, and proceeded forthwith to send out commissions to the constable, marshals, and to all the governors of provinces and places, to repair to him as the King’s lieutenant-general and governor of France. But in spite of the regulation of the estates, the court and Catholic party, by the advice of the cardinals of Ferrara, Lorraine, and Guise, the duke of Guise, the constable, and marshal St. André, with the special solicitation of the Spanish ambassador who voiced his master’s wishes with “a lusty swelling tongue,” resolved to establish the cardinal of Bourbon in the authority the king of Navarre had held.[623]
[CHAPTER VII]
THE FIRST CIVIL WAR (Continued). THE BATTLE OF DREUX (DECEMBER 19, 1562). THE PEACE OF AMBOISE (MARCH 19, 1563)
After the fall of Rouen, the chief military design of the Guises seems to have been to protract the war, without giving battle, until the Germans with D’Andelot and Condé either deserted for lack of pay or were corrupted by them. Catherine’s wish, on the other hand, was to end the war by composition and not by the sword, fearing to have either party become flushed with success. In pursuance of this policy numbers of the soldiers were permitted to go home, the war being considered to be practically at an end until the spring, except that garrisons of horse and foot were kept in the towns round about Orleans after the manner of a flying siege (siège volante). But the rapid advance of the prince toward Paris from Orleans, where he had been waiting for D’Andelot, who mustered his German horse in Lorraine in the middle of September, after he learned of his brother’s death, required the duke of Guise to change his plans. Passing by Etampes, which the Guises abandoned at his approach,[624] the prince of Condé marched toward Corbeil in order to win the passage of the Seine, where 4,000 footmen and 2,000 horse of the enemy lay in order to keep the Marne and the Seine open above Paris for provisioning the capital. The Huguenot army numbered about 6,000 footmen; 4,000 of them Germans, and nearly 3,000 horsemen. Most of the Germans were well armed and mounted, and all “very Almain soldiers, who spoil all things where they go.”[625]