It profoundly modified both the public and private law of France. In the former sphere the ordinance strengthened the legislative power of the crown by laying down the principle that the King’s ordinances must be observed in spite of remonstrances on the part of the parlements, and even if the latter refused to register them; the maîtres des requêtes were enjoined to punish severely any infraction or failure to observe the ordinances. The powers of the governors in the provinces were much reduced; they were forbidden to exercise the right of pardon, to levy taxes, or to institute fairs and markets. The judicial power of the great villes was almost entirely suppressed. The communal judges were deprived of all civil jurisdiction and retained cognizance only of petty offenses; at the same time, the attempt was made to restrain seigneurial jurisdiction. The right of written proof was recognized in cases involving 100 livres or more.[1007] No less than 1,500 superfluous offices, treasurerships, secretaryships, etc., were abolished. In the matter of religion some of the articles were a confirmation of the edict of 1563. Another article abolished entirely all confraternities, and prohibited the formation of all leagues.[1008]
The financial administration came in for a most searching investigation. The flaunting arrogance of some of the King’s treasurers is remarkable. Numbers of them had had houses, and even châteaux which rivaled the King’s own in elegance, the means to purchase and furnish which they had secured by plundering the people and robbing the government. One treasurer—among four who were hanged at Montfaucon—was found to owe the crown over three million livres.[1009]
The young duke of Guise, who had refused to be a party to the farcical reconciliation between his house and the Châtillons soon found means to leave the court. In May the duke of Nemours and the duchess of Guise were married at St. Maur-des-Fosses. It was a match which sowed dragon’s teeth once more. For Nemours forsook his wife, who was a Rohan, having induced the Pope to nullify the marriage. The Huguenots murmured indignantly against the insult done the Rohan clan whose powerful family influence was now joined with the Châtillons and Montmorencys.[1010]
Catherine de Medici was not the ruler to govern France with a firm yet facile hand under the circumstances that existed in 1566. Irrespective of foreign influences, which we shall presently come to, the economic distress[1011] of the country, the rivalry of the great houses, and the religious acrimony prevailing made a combination of forces that needed another sort of ruler to reconcile them—a ruler such as Henry of Navarre was to be. The queen mother, while a woman of force, was so deficient in sincerity that no one could have confidence in her; so jealous of power that she would brook no other control of the King, whose sovereignty she confounded with her maternal oversight of him, making no distinction between Charles IX the ruler and Charles IX the son. Catherine time and again marred or ruined the progress she had made with the aid of one party’s support by her own envious fear of that party’s predominance. Her “bridge policy,”[1012] instead of uniting France, kept it divided. To maintain the balance of power—an immemorial Italian policy—her Italian nature resorted to duplicity and deception continually. Accordingly, suspicion prevailed at court and suspicion prevailed in the provinces, the more so in the latter because of the Huguenots’ uncertainty about what was done at Bayonne, and doubt as to Philip II’s course. Men were doubtful of their neighbors; towns were fearful of other nearby towns. “All the way of my coming hither,” reported Sir Thomas Hoby, the new English ambassador to France, “I found the strong towns marvelously jealous of strangers, insomuch that only by the sound of a bell they discovered a number of horsemen or footmen before they come; but also, after they are entered they have an eye to them.”[1013]
When the court finally moved to Paris, the great nobles came thither with such numerous trains[1014] that the queen sent four companies of the King’s guard ahead of his coming, and ordered the marshal Montmorency to require the retirement from the city of all those who were not of the ordinary household of each nobleman and gentleman. In vain the marshal, anxious to protect his party against the Guisards, resisted the order and complained that the queen was interfering with his authority. The King ordered Lansac and De la Garde to accomplish what Montmorency was unwilling to do.
If choice must be made as to who were the worst offenders in this respect, the greater blame lies with the Protestants. It was not only impolitic, it was insolent on their part to permit Montgomery to swagger around Paris as he did, “booted and spurred with all his men.”[1015] Apparently the queen had not the daring to compel his withdrawal, as she did that of the Guises’ recruiting sergeant, Roggendorf.[1016] Her policy for the time being was to favor the Châtillon-Montmorency faction.[1017] Backed by the joint support of the admiral and the constable, the queen accordingly undertook to bring certain unsettled or indefinite matters of religion and the church to a conclusion. On May 31, 1566, Charles IX sent a series of articles to the cardinal Bourbon for consideration by the clergy of Paris, then sitting at St. Germain des Près. Two of these had to do with the baptism of infants where one of the parents was a Catholic, and the maintenance of Protestants schools. Three concerned church temporalities, namely, the redemption of the fourth part of the temporals of the church, given to the King during the late civil war; the subsidy which was to expire in eighteen months; and the preparation of an edict defining the privileges and jurisdiction of the church. The residue of the articles dealt with infractions of the Edict of Amboise, such as restraint of preaching according to the edict, and the molestation of former Protestants who had returned to the church of Rome by the Huguenots. By an awkward coincidence, the sending of these articles exactly coincided with the arrival of the papal legate in Paris, who came to request the promulgation of the decrees of Trent in conformity with the agreement made with the cardinal de Santa Croce at Bayonne.[1018]
Catherine de Medici’s policy at this time was that of the political Huguenots. She hoped that the question of religion would settle itself with time, and to divert attention from that issue, and also because there was great need of it, she energetically continued the administrative and economic reforms begun at Moulins. L’Hôpital began so searching an investigation of the conduct of the King’s treasurers that some of them were hanged and others banished. The constable was of service here, although his notorious avarice tarnished the honesty of his work.[1019] Yet there was peril even in a policy so just and so much needed by France. Sooner or later such a course would unearth the dishonesty of bigger thieves than the small collectors of the revenue who, in many cases undoubtedly suffered for the peculation of their superiors. The administration was full of “grafters” such as St. André had been, who would not scruple to conceal their thievery behind the smoke of another civil war. The queen mother knew this only too well from former experience, not being unaware of the fact that one of the causes of “the late unpleasantness” was the demand of the estates that the Guises should make an accounting and be forced to disgorge their ill-gotten gains. The government resorted to various devices to raise money and an imposition was laid upon inn-keepers. The most singular expedient, though, was the offer of a Genoese syndicate to pay the King a lump sum for the privilege of taxing dowry gifts and for a license to endure eight years to levy a crown on every first-born infant, and after, for every boy born into a family five sous, and for every girl babe, three sous.[1020] This preposterous measure actually passed the council, and was only prevented from becoming law by the good sense of the Parlement.[1021]
But the events happening in the Netherlands were of greater importance to France at this time than anything within her borders. From the beginning of the insurrection there the Huguenots had recognized the important bearing of that struggle upon their own movement, and as the shadow of Philip II fell in greater length each year across France, the interest of the French Protestants in the rebellion of the Low Countries increased.[1022] As Huguenot preachers in Flanders sowed the double seed of Calvinism and revolt, so Protestant preachers exiled from the Low Countries sought refuge in France.[1023] This intercourse became a formidable historical issue by 1566. The issue was understood from the beginning by all parties concerned, and Philip II and his ministers were determined to profit by the lesson of France and to prevent similar trouble by crushing all opposition in the bud. The Turkish attack upon Malta[1024] had been very favorable to the Protestant cause, and the raising of the siege in September, 1565, probably influenced the King of Spain in his resolution to extirpate heresy in the Low Countries.[1025] The Flemish government suspected William of Orange who by July was openly allied with the Gueux[1026] and his brother, Louis of Nassau, of direct intercourse with Condé and Coligny,[1027] and sent Montigny—the faithless member of the patriotic quartette composed of Orange, Egmont, Hoorne, and himself—to Paris in the spring to pick up information.[1028] The fear lest Montgomery might come to Flanders, which Granvella had once laughed at, by the summer of 1566 had some basis of reality, although the braggadocio character of this adventurer discounted alarm.[1029]
Knowledge of the solidarity existing between his revolted subjects in Flanders and the Huguenots[1030] which Montluc had warned Philip of even two years before,[1031] coupled with information concerning the dealings of Louis of Nassau with Protestant Germany[1032] and France, stirred the Spanish King’s habitual indecision into action. He sounded Charles IX as to the possibility of sending Spanish troops directly across France to the Low Countries and asked him to restrain his subjects from coming thither with arms,[1033] crowds of whom went to Flanders disguised as merchants.[1034] Simultaneously Margaret of Parma begged the Emperor to take the same course.[1035] But the government of France could not have honored Philip II’s request, even if it had been so minded, without risking an immediate rising of the Huguenots. As a matter of fact, it had no desire to do so. The resentment felt by France toward Spain on account of past scores at Trent, Rome, and in Switzerland, was now all eclipsed in her rancor because of the massacre by the Spaniards of her ill-fated colony in Florida in September, 1565.[1036]