Long before this time, however, Spain had begun to be impatient for the fulfilment of the compact of Bayonne. But procrastination was Catherine’s trump suit. She averred that the plague was too prevalent to make it safe for the court to return to Paris until winter,[987] and when the cold weather diminished the danger from that source, pleaded the poverty and famine of the realm as an excuse.[988] It was an excuse the validity of which was everywhere manifest. France truly had been in the dire pangs of hunger and intense cold during the celebrated winter of 1564-65.[989] Claude Haton, the priest-historian of Provins, who was a close observer of meteorological phenomena has given a graphic description of this season.
The winter at its commencement in November [he says] was very mild and was so until December 20, the vigil of St. Thomas the apostle, without either cold or frost in the mornings. The rain was so warm that it was thought that the winter would be mild and open, but on the vigil of St. Thomas there came a great cold, accompanied in the morning by a cold rain, which by midday turned into snow, and which fell all the rest of the day in so great abundance that the earth, which was very wet, was covered on the morrow to the depth of a foot, king’s measure, and more, with snow. With this snow came a northeast wind, which froze everything under a coating of thick ice. This cold continued down to the last day of December. The ice was so thick that a man could cross the river without breaking through. The snow lay so heavy upon the fields that in the open places the drifts were as high as a man. After the snow-storm had passed the cold redoubled, so that even the best clad suffered whenever they went out doors. There was not a house in the village where the water did not freeze, if it was not set close by the fire; and I do not exaggerate when I say that in many good and well-built houses wine froze before the great chimney, though the latter was heaped up with wood. I saw in many houses iron pots suspended above the fire with icicles hanging over the edge. Every night and morning when the people got up there was frost upon the coverlet, from the evaporation of the bodies of the sleepers. There was not a wine-cellar where the wine did not freeze in the casks, unless care was taken to keep charcoal fires burning there. In some wine-cellars it was necessary to close every aperture in order to prevent the wine from freezing. It frequently froze so hard that it was necessary to pierce the bung-hole with a red hot poker in order to draw it out. On the night of the 23-24 December, as also on Christmas night, the ice was so heavy upon the trees that the boughs were broken. These things had not been seen in France since the year 1480.[990] The greatest cold was on the day of the feast of the Innocents (December 28). Many men who were exposed died in the roads. The crests of cocks and poultry were frozen and fell off some days afterwards, and many were found dead under their roosts. The sheep also died.
Early in January the ice began to melt. It grew uncommonly warm for the season, so that fire became unnecessary. On the day following the edict of the king, about noon, a soft warm rain began to fall, which caused the snow to vanish rapidly. This lasted for five days, so that the earth was covered with water. And then came a second cold for three entire weeks, until the 28th of the month, and snow with a high wind came, which drove the snow everywhere and piled it in great drifts. The winter grain was frozen in the furrows. God knows how much the poor people who had no wood suffered. Most of them stayed in bed night and day without getting up except to eat once in twenty-four hours. The poor of Paris and others who had no means, were compelled to burn their furniture. Those who had made no provision for the winter, chiefly of wood, were compelled to purchase at high prices, for it was not possible to do carting because of the condition of the roads; in many cases, moreover, the bridges were destroyed. When the thaw came, the high waters penetrated houses and churches in Provins to the depth of three, four, and even five feet, washing out the very dead in the cemetery.[991] At Paris the flood damaged the Pont-au-Change and caused many houses to topple. Vine-growers found themselves in great difficulty. Those who were wise cut their vines back to the root, in order that they might sprout better again, and were repaid for so doing, for they were the only ones that bore.
The spring was fair and mild, so that barley and oats were sown. Yet much ground lay bare because in the fields sown with winter wheat the roots were all killed, so that no grain grew. The walnut trees seemed to be dead through all the month of April and half of May, for they did not put forth their buds. Pear and apple trees bore a few blossoms. In some places there were plums and cherries, but not everywhere.[992]
The winter was just as bad in Gascony, Provence, and Languedoc. On the day of the Feast of St. John the Baptist (June 24) it snowed![993] Even the poor people were compelled to build fires, though they could not afford the fuel. The vines throughout central France were so badly injured that not a third part of the crop remained. The grain likewise was destroyed. Water courses were swollen and overflowed their banks, and in the meadows of the Seine people had to take care lest they be drowned. As a result of the cold spring, the harvest of 1565 failed over almost all the realm to such an extent that it was necessary to abolish the tolls between provinces and to permit free trade in grain. Paris imported wheat from Champagne, Picardy, Anjou, Lower Brittany, Burgundy, and Auvergne, the least stricken of the provinces.[994] The Parlement of Paris passed an ordinance forbidding speculation in foodstuffs and compelled those possessed of a surplus of grain to throw what was not needed for their own necessity upon the market.[995] A measure (boisseau) of wheat, from January to April cost from 12-15 sous (= 1½ pecks at from 36 to 45 cents), and after April the price rose every week until harvest time, to the sum of 25 sous tournois (approximately 75 cents). Wheat was very dear in Paris and throughout all Brie, the Ile-de-France, Valois, Soissonais, and Picardy; less so in Champagne, Burgundy, and Lorraine, where there was rye and barley enough for the people. The stock starved because the grain was consumed by the people. Many people went over into Champagne in order to purchase rye and barley to make bread with until the harvest came. Fortunately grain was plentiful in Champagne, and wheat fell to 7 and 6 sous per measure (from 19 to 22 cents), and corn in like proportion after the harvest. Because of the hard times which they had experienced, many accumulated great stores in the expectation that in a short time there would again be a dearth.
Wine was very dear until the vintage. In the months of August and September before the grapes were gathered, it was not possible to purchase wine by the cup at taverns, even for silver; it was with great difficulty that sufficient wine was procurable for church service. But after the vintage the price dropped to 14 livres tournois ($8.70) la queue du creu, whereas it had been as high as 80 before ($49.60).[996]
As so often appears elsewhere in history, the economic distress and strain of poverty was followed by psychological manifestations of a religio-sociological sort, among the lower and poor classes. In 1565, in the villages of Champagne and Brie and especially in the bailiwicks of Sens, Melun, Montereau, Nogent, Troyes, Châlons, Rheims, Epernay, Château-Thierry, Meaux, and Provins, the belief spread among the peasantry that in honor of the Virgin they ought to refrain from working in the fields on Saturday after midday, and that this Saturday rest had been formally ordered by the Virgin in revelations and apparitions. A young girl of Charly-sur-Marne, near Epernay, boasted of having received these confidences, and showed miraculous signs of her mission. But the cardinal of Lorraine caused her to be arrested and questioned, and she was burned alive as a witch.[997]
Instead of going to Paris, the court passed the winter at Moulins in Bourbonnais,[998] where the famine was most slightly felt. By this time the expectations of the Catholics and the fears of the Huguenots were beginning to bear their bitter fruit, and in the state of public tension every incident was magnified. At Angers, in November, the Rohans, having forbidden Catholic worship upon their domains, the King had had to compel them to reinstate it by threatening to dispossess them of their châteaux; at Blois the cardinal Bourbon reproached the queen mother for suffering the edict to be violated by permitting the queen of Navarre and the prince of Condé to maintain court-preachers in their entourage. The Catholics of Dijon demanded that in future Calvinist ministers be forbidden to attend the last hours of the dying, a petition which the cardinal of Lorraine supported in order to make the chancellor L’Hôpital commit himself. The answer of the latter sustained the edict’s grant of the right of selection in the matter of religion. Of greater anxiety still was the influx of Huguenots into the town of Moulins, Montgomery among the rest, who for the first time since the fatal tournament of June 30, 1559, looked upon the court.[999]
The memory of the conspiracy of Amboise haunted the queen like a specter, and was the more vivid because of the rapprochement between the leaders of the Huguenots and the Montmorencys, who had met together at Paris in November at the marriage of the amorous prince of Condé to Mlle. de Longueville. The incident was sharp enough to strike fire between the Catholic-Guisard and the Huguenot-Montmorency party. For when the papal nuncio indignantly demanded the cardinal of Beauvais’ renunciation of the purple, the constable bluffly said: “I am a papist. But if the Pope and his agents still seek to trouble the kingdom, my sword will be Huguenot. My nephew will never renounce his dignity. The edict gives him the right to it.” It is no wonder Catherine de Medici was anxious to hear of the report of these words at Madrid and what Philip II would say.[1000] The interdiction of the Protestant worship at Moulins on January 9, 1566, on the very day that Coligny returned from the wedding festivities, was her own reply.