[CHAPTER X]
THE TOUR OF THE PROVINCES.[814] THE BAYONNE EPISODE
“I am always en voyage,” wrote the Venetian ambassador to the senate. “Since the beginning of my embassy the King has not staid more than fifteen days in any one place. He goes from Lorraine to Poitou, and then to Normandy and the edge of Belgium, back again to Normandy, then to Paris, Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy.”[815] Dr. Dale wrote in the same strain to Lord Burghley: “The Spanish ambassador has a saying that ambassadors in France are eaten up by their horses, since they are constrained to keep so many because of the habit of the court of moving from place to place continually.”[816]
But there was point to Charles IX’s famous tour of the provinces in 1564-66. The unsettled condition of the country, if no other reason, accounts for Catherine’s great design of completing the pacification of the kingdom by having the King tour the realm. The route lay through Sens[817] (March 15) to Troyes (March 23)[818] where the peace with England was signed on April 13; thence to Châlons-sur-Marne, Bar-le-Duc, Dijon (May 15), Macon (June 8), and thence to Lyons, where the court arrived on June 13. The King traveled with his ordinary train, that is, with his mother, his brother, the duke of Anjou, the constable, and the archers of the guard, in order to spare the people the burden of great entertainment, and those princes and nobles who wished to follow were accompanied only by their ordinary servants.[819] If the Huguenots viewed the King’s sojourn at Bar-le-Duc with apprehension,[820] it was not without anxiety that his Catholic subjects saw Charles IX visit the great city located at the junction of the Rhone and the Saône rivers.[821] Lyons seems to have imbibed something of Calvinism from the very waters of the arrowy river whose source was the lake of the citadel of Calvinism.[822] The rumor was current that a greater conspiracy than that of Amboise was on foot; that the King and queen were to be deposed and slain, and that Lyons would unite with Geneva to form a greater Calvinistic republic.[823]
But Lyons welcomed the King graciously, and gave him sumptuous accommodation.[824] Charles was charmed with the reception given him and amazed at the wealth and commercial prosperity of the city.[825] Situated at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saône rivers, the wines and grain of Burgundy came to Lyons for market, while it was the natural entrepôt of the commerce out of Italy, besides much that came from Spain and Flanders. There were four fairs there each year. The great industry of the city was silk manufacturing. In 1450 Charles VII had granted it the monopoly in this. Francis I in 1536 relieved the silk operatives of all taxes and military service. The bulk of the commerce was in the hands of Italians, of whom there were said to be above twelve thousand in the city—chiefly Florentines, Genoese, and Milanese.[826] There were also many Germans and Swiss, whose presence gave the governor, the duke of Nemours,[827] great anxiety, because large quantities of arms were smuggled into the city in the guise of merchandise.[828]
The court had not been long upon its tour through the provinces before Catherine de Medici discovered that the petition of the estates of Burgundy for the abolition of Protestant worship was not merely a local prejudice, but the sense of the provinces.[829] The elements of this public opinion were various: The clergy—not all, however—wanted the findings of the Council of Trent accepted in toto; all of them were dissatisfied with the recognition of the rights of the Protestants; the alienation of their lands was a grievance to the clergy, the more so because speculators had bought them at a low price because of the doubt as to the validity of the title.[830] The Guises were angry that the prosecution of Coligny for the murder of the duke had been abandoned.[831] Among high and low alike there were unprincipled folk who had hopes of profiting by confiscations and forfeitures imposed upon the Huguenots.[832]
The queen mother was too good a politician not to pay heed to these signs of popular feeling, more especially as the voice of the provinces chimed with those in high authority, who not only urged that the war be renewed against the Protestants but also hinted broadly of foreign support in aid of the crown. At first Catherine answered graciously, yet guardedly, to the effect that a peace which had been so solemnly made, by the advice of the princes of the blood and the council, could not be too lightly cast aside.