No Huguenot leader ever thought of subordinating the government of France to a foreign ruler for the maintenance of the faith he believed in,[791] as the Guises, Montmorency, and St. André did. Condé’s declaration that the civil war was caused by the Triumvirate’s action had much truth in it. The rules of the association which the Huguenots formed at Orleans, on April 11, 1562, were as much a body of military regulations for the discipline of the army as they were a political compact, as a reading of the articles will prove.[792] There was little of the politico-military character of the Catholic leagues about it. It is not until after the Bayonne episode that we find a solid federation of the Reformed churches beginning to form, and the first test of the Protestant organization was made at the beginning of the second civil war.[793] This is not the place, however, to dwell upon its development. In due time the subject will be taken up.

The edict confirming the act of pacification (March 19, 1563) in its sixth article forbade the formation of any leagues in the future, and ordered the dissolution of those already in existence.[794] This prohibition was a dead letter from the beginning. The government not only was unable to prevent the formation of new leagues; it was even unable to suppress those already in existence.[795] When the first civil war ended, there were three well-organized Catholic leagues in southern France, namely those of Provence, of Toulouse, and of Agen. Catherine de Medici, who, for some months to come, continued to give substantial manifestation of her desire for peace,[796] in announcing the act of Amboise to Montluc, demanded the dissolution of these associations. Instead of so doing, however, Candalle, Montluc’s chief agent in Guyenne, continued his activities. On March 13, 1563, as has been noticed, in defiance of the impending edict of pacification (which was completed and only awaited promulgation) the Catholic seigneurs of Guyenne, at Cadillac (near Bordeaux) entered into a league identical in purpose and in form with those of Agen and Languedoc.[797] This league, which is the germ of that which spread over Gascony, seems to have been denounced to the government by Lagebaston, the president of the parlement of Bordeaux, between whom and Montluc there was friction, partly because of Montluc’s preference for Agen as a working capital for the region, partly because of his notorious dislike of the lawyer class, whose disposition to regard forms of law and vested right interfered with Montluc’s high-handed and arbitrary management of affairs.[798] This new league in such glaring violation of the edict, called forth a sharp letter of rebuke from the queen mother to Montluc on March 31. After alluding in a general way to “les maulx” due to the existence of “les partialitez et les associations, qui se sont faictes” she says:

J’ay esté advertye qu’il s’en est faicte une autre en la Guyenne dont est chef Monsieur de Candalle, laquelle encores qu’elle ayt esté faicte à bonne intention durant la guerre, si n’est-ce que, cessant la dicte guerre et se faisant la paix, elle n’est plus nécessaire et ne la peult ung roy trouver bonne, ny que ceulx qui veullent estre estimez obéyssans ne peuvent soustenir sans encourir le mesme cryme de rebellion dont ilz ont accusé leurs adversaires. Et pour ceste cause, et que le Roy monsieur mon filz n’est pas délibéré d’en souffrir plus aucun, de quelque costé qu’elle procedde ny permectre plus à ses subjectz, de quelque religion qu’ilz soient, d’avoir autre association qu’avec luy et selon son obéyssance, il fault, Monsieur de Monluc, que, pour le bien de son service, comme il le vous commande expressément par ses lettres, que vous, qui estes son lieutenant-général par delà, faciez rompre celle qui s’est faicte sans permectre qu’ilz ayent aucune force, puissance ou authorité que celle que vous leur baillerez, ny aucune volunté que d’obéyr à ce que par vous, pour le bien du service du Roy monsieur mon filz, leur sera commandé; pour lequel effect j’en scriptz, comme faict le Roy monsieur mon filz, une lectre audit sr de Candalle et à tous ceulx qui y sont comprins, comme nous en avons esté bien amplement advertiz.[799]

Until the ambition of the Guises created an opposition to them among the old-line nobility, and so identified the Huguenot movement with the interests of the aristocracy,[800] the French Reformation found its chief support among the lower bourgeois class in the towns. The proportion naturally varied from place to place. Lyons, partly from its proximity to Geneva, but more because of its strong commercial position and its great manufacturing interests, among which the silk industry was of most importance, was the greatest Huguenot city in France.[801] Where we find Protestantism prevailing in feudal districts, it is largely to be ascribed to the influence of Protestant gentleman-farmers, often retired bourgeois, who purchased the county estates of the older nobility who had been bankrupted by the wars in Italy and Flanders, or else preferred to live at court. The strongholds of French Protestantism were the river towns, on the highways of trade, or sea-ports like Rouen and La Rochelle. Dauphiné, which fattened on the commerce out of Italy through the Alpine passes, and Provence which bordered the Mediterranean, both of which “cleared” through Lyons; Lower Poitou, where La Rochelle was, and Normandy on the Channel were the chief Protestant provinces of France. Normandy was probably the most Protestant province of all, for here Calvinism not only obtained in the ports and “good” towns, but in the country areas as well.[802]

But there are evidences of the penetration of Protestantism into the country districts elsewhere as well—in Orléannais, Nivernais, Blésois, the diocese of Nîmes and even in isolated parts of Champagne and Gascony.[803] In general, however, the French peasantry were strongly Catholic.

The reason for this is, first, a social one: while the revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was ruinous for the artisan, it was profitable to the peasant. The rent paid to the landlord, immutably fixed in the twelfth or thirteenth century, represented under the new values of money a very light burden, while the fall in the price of silver considerably raised the nominal worth of the products of the soil, when the villein sold them. The price of land was falling rapidly at the very time when the French gentry, ceasing to be an aristocracy of gentlemen-farmers and becoming a court-nobility, were compelled to sell their estates to meet their expenses and, as was said, to put their mills and meadows on their shoulders. When a lord wished to sell at any price a part of his estates, there was always, in the parish, a countryman who had been, as one may say, saving money for centuries, and who, realizing at last the dream of bygone generations, bought land. Thus did the French villein become a landowner. The reign of Louis XII and the beginning of that of Francis I was for the French peasants an epoch of real prosperity; his situation presented a striking contrast with that of the German peasant who, at the same date, was in danger of relapsing into bondage. We may easily understand why there was not in France, as in Germany, a peasants’ revolution both social and religious.[804]

But there are other reasons for the religious growth of the Huguenot cause among the people not so hard to find. Their ministers preached in the French language and avoided the use of Latin, which tended to mystery and obscurity; after sermons the service was continued with prayer and the singing of psalms in French rhyme, with vocal and instrumental music in which the congregation joined. In their church polity, the Huguenots had carried changes farther than had the Reformation elsewhere in Europe. In Germany and England the Reformation still adhered to many of the institutions of the mediaeval church, retaining the episcopate and inferior clergy, as deacons, archdeacons, canons, curates, together with vestures, canonical habits, and the use of ornaments.[805]

No reliable estimate can be made of the proportion between Catholics and Huguenots in the sixteenth century. A remonstrance of 1562 to the Pope declared that one-fourth of France was separate from the communion of Rome.[806] The Venetian ambassador thought “hardly a third part of the people heretical” in 1567.[807] The échevins of Amiens declared three-quarters of the inhabitants of Amiens were Protestant in the same year.[808] Charles IX in a remonstrance to Pius IV asserted that a fourth part of France was Protestant.[809] Montluc, no mean observer, estimated that one-tenth of the population of Guyenne was Protestant.[810] If this proportion be applied to France at large, the Huguenots would have numbered something like 1,600,000. Beza, who presided over the synod of La Rochelle in 1571, claimed that the Huguenots had 2,150 congregations, some of them very large, as in the case of the church of Orleans, which was said to have 7,000 members. At the time of the Colloquy of Poissy, Normandy was said to have 305 pastors, Provence 60.[811] But the number of Huguenots in Normandy, Provence, or the Orléannais was exceptionally large. The average congregation must have been small. If we assume that the population of France was sixteen millions[812] and that one-tenth of the people were Calvinist, we would have a total of 1,600,000 Protestants for all France, which would give an average of about 750 members to each congregation on the basis of Beza’s statement as to the number of the Huguenot churches. This is certainly much too high a figure. Personally I believe the average was less than half of this. If the congregation averaged 400 members each, on Beza’s calculation there would have been 860,000 Huguenots in France. A Venetian source of the year 1562 sets the number at 600,000.[813] This may be too low, but all things considered, I believe it not far from the truth. The total Protestant population of France I do not believe to have exceeded three-quarters of a million before 1572, and after that date it is often difficult to distinguish between Huguenots and Politiques.

Such was the state of things when the first civil war came to an end.