The Wars of Religion in France 1559-1576 / The Huguenots, Catherine de Medici and Philip II

by James Westfall Thompson

[880] “Ne se passoit jour sans nouvelle sorte de combatz, passe-temps et plaizirs.... L’on dréçoit joustes, tournoy, commédies et tragoedies.”—Fourquevaux to St. Sulpice, L’Ambassade de St. Sulpice, 266; cf. Papiers d’état du cardinal de Granvelle, VIII, 466. For an account of one of these entertainments, see Castelnau, Book V, chap. vi.

[881] “Le pays est tel que vous avez entendu, pleins de montagnes et bandoliers.”—Catherine to St. Sulpice, January 9, 1564, L’Ambassade de St. Sulpice, 331.

[882] Charles III had been educated in France and was a French pensioner to the amount of 250,000 francs annually (Rel. vén., I, 451). On this Spanish pressure to revoke the Edict of Amboise see Papiers d’état du cardinal de Granvelle, VII, 461, 468; Poulet, I, 576, note; Castelnau, Book V, chap. ix; R. Q. H., XXXIV, 462, 463. The Huguenots quickly divined it (Languet, Epist. secr., II, 268, November 18, 1563; Arch. d’Orange-Nassau, I, 136).

The anxiety of the French Protestants over the King’s visit of Lorraine is well expressed in the letter of Lazarus Schwendi to the Prince of Orange, August 22, 1564, in Arch. d’Orange-Nassau, I, 191.

[883] Ranke, Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, 226.

[884] Davila, Guerre civile di Francia, III, 144. On September 27, 1564, the prévôt Morillon wrote to the cardinal Granvella: “L’édit de France contre les apostatz me faict espérer que la royne mère passera plus avant, puisque la saison est à propos; et si elle ne le faict, je crains qu’elle et les siens le paieront.”—Papiers d’état du card. de Granvelle, VIII, 361.

[885] Castelnau Book V, chap. x. Granvella expressed impatience at Catherine’s slowness in repressing the Huguenots. See his letters to vice-chancellor Seld and Philip II at this time in Papiers d’état du cardinal de Granvelle, VIII, 598, 599, 632, 633.

[886] Unless the order forbidding Renée of Ferrara to hold Protestant service even in private while at the court, be taken as the first; see R. Q. H., XXXIV, 467.

[887] Near Lyons, where on account of the plague the court was stopping July 17 to August 15; it belonged to the cardinal Tournon, who held it in apanage.

[888] Isambert, XIV, 166; Castelnau, Book V, chap. x; La Popelinière, II, Book XI, 5, 6; Chéruel, Histoire de l’administration monarchique de la France, I, 196.