INTERVIEW ON THE ILE-AUX-BŒUFS
(Bib. Nat., Estampes, Histoire de France, Q. b)
The terms of Amboise are interesting because they mark the triumph of the aristocratic element in the Huguenot party, whose interests were identified with their political purposes and their feudal position, over the “Geneva party,” who were austere Calvinists, and who had an eye single to religion only.[685] D’Andelot, and to a less degree the admiral, were representatives of this latter group.[686] The terms of peace provided that the prince of Condé was to succeed to the place of the late king of Navarre; that the Huguenot army was to be paid by the government; that in all towns where the Reformed religion prevailed, save Paris, it was to be protected; that in every bailiwick the King was to appoint one town where the gospel might be preached; that all gentlemen holding fiefs in low or mean justice might have preaching in their houses for the benefit of their families; that all nobles enjoying high justice might have preaching on their estates; that property confiscated from either church was to be restored.[687] Paris firmly refused at first to tolerate any terms of peace,[688] its Catholic prejudices being aggravated by desire to revenge the murder of the duke of Guise; but the King replied to the demur of the Parlement that the city must make up its mind to accept the conditions.[689] On the other hand, Lyons as obstinately refused to receive the mass, so that the country round about it remained turbulent well into the autumn.[690] Rouen, Dijon, Toulouse, encouraged by the opposition of the Parlement, refused to recognize the edict.[691] The roads were filled with robbers, and the continued presence of the reiters, to whom an enormous sum in wages was due, was a perpetual menace.
The Germans who had been in the service of the King and those of the prince of Condé fraternized on the road home. They made a great troop to the number of 10,000 or 12,000, taking the road from Orleans by way of Pluvières and Etampes to Paris, and arrived there in Easter week, where they stayed for five weeks at least. When they left they were an entire day crossing the bridge over the Seine, because of the enormous amount of baggage which they had. After having crossed the Seine, the reiters divided into two bands for better living, one of them skirting the right bank of the Seine, the other crossing Brie to the Marne, in order to find better provisions for themselves and their horses. These latter traversed Champagne to the River Aube and encamped at Montier-en-Der near Vassy for six entire weeks, marauding the country for five or six leagues about. Their depredations drove the peasantry to such despair that protective associations composed of the peasantry and nobles were formed to resist their aggressions, and these fell upon stragglers whenever they found a little group of them, and cut their throats. Gradually, however, these despoilers were drawn off out of the land, being accompanied to the frontier by the French infantry under the command of the prince de Porcien, who was then at Metz, where he had been stationed to foil any effort the Emperor might make for its recovery.[692] The priest-historian of Provins has graphically depicted the depredations of the reiters:
At the beginning of this war [he says] the people of the villages were so rich and well provided for, so well furnished in their houses with all kinds of furniture, so well provided with poultry and animals, that it was noble to see.... But the soldiers destroyed their beautiful tables, their shining brass-bound chests, and killed a great quantity of poultry without paying for it, or else offering a paltry sum in proportion to the number of soldiers who were lodged in the house. It was all one whether one man or many were so lodged, because the soldier who had a house to himself seized everything to his own profit. The wives and daughters of the peasantry were compelled to defend their honor. Property was seized and every sort of villainy was done by the soldiers, within the space of the three or four days that they might remain at a place.[693]
Not since the Hundred Years’ War had France beheld a people more fearful and formidable than were these reiters. They plundered the wretched people of all their goods, loading their horses and wagons therewith. Amid their equipment they carried winnowing fans to winnow the grain, flails to beat it in the granges, and sacks to bind it up in. They had with them mills to grind the grain and little ovens to bake bread in. Wherever they lodged they tore up floors, broke into closets, and ransacked gardens, courts, and chimneys, in order to find booty. They even fell upon the houses and châteaux of the nobles, where they passed, if they saw they were not strong or well defended.[694] For this reason those living in poorly fortified houses vacated them and fled to the towns. Those who owned strong and well-fortified houses levied soldiers for their defense. What happened at Provins happened, doubtless, in many other places, too.
In the carrefours of Provins, it was proclaimed that no inhabitant of the town, under pain of a fine of one hundred livres tournois and imprisonment, should leave it, and that every man at the hour of ten in the morning must report with his arms before the house of his sergeant (dizainier) for the purpose of mounting guard upon the walls, each in his own part of the city. Everybody in the surrounding country began to vacate their houses and to drive their cattle into the town. On the evening before Easter messengers of Provins reported that the reiters were near. At this news watchers were set upon the wall of the town, and a corps de garde posted by the town authorities. On the morning of the morrow, which was Easter Sunday, the gates of the town were not opened until eight o’clock, upon which there poured into the town an infinite number of wagons and pack-animals laden with the possessions of the villagers round about. There was hardly room to bestow so many people and so many animals. Divine service was celebrated in the parish churches, for it was expected that the reiters would take their course toward the town, and the people were resolved not to let them enter, but to resist to the very last drop of blood.
In order to ascertain what was the equipment and the arms of each inhabitant of the town, a general meeting was called at midday for a view of arms, but it was not possible to hold the meeting because all the streets and squares were packed with the refugees and their animals. In consequence of this, local meetings were held in each of the quarters of the city. Thus the day wore on and consternation abated only when it was learned that the reiters had gone off toward the Marne, which they crossed above Coulumiers On the morrow, Easter Monday, there was no procession in the streets as usual, for fear of a surprise, and it was not until evening that the people who had found refuge within the town, began to depart.[695]
But the undisguised hostility of Spain to the Edict of Amboise was a greater source of danger to France than protests of the Parlement or popular violence. “If the heretics obtain their demands with the aid of the English queen,” Chantonnay had threatened on March 6, “the Catholics in their turn will rise, and they will be sustained by the King my master and by all the Catholic princes.”[696] But Catherine was in no mood to be intimidated. She openly told him that he treated her as if he governed the country, and charged him with wilful fabrication, sarcastically adding that she could excuse him for so doing in some degree because she knew from whom he derived his opinions, meaning the constable and the two deceased members of the Triumvirate.[697] Philip II’s religious convictions were outraged by the toleration of Calvinism allowed in the Edict of Amboise, the more so because the queen mother, in justification of the course of the government, compromised the church at large by declaring that the sole practical solution of the difficulty could be accomplished by a true general council of the church, and not by the one sitting at Trent, in defiance of whose conclusions she asserted the legality and inviolability of the edict.[698]