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

by James Westfall Thompson

[889] D’Aubigné, II, 211. On the last complaint see Correspondance de Catherine de Médicis, II, 195, 203, and notes. These Catholic associations generally at this time went by the name of “Confréries du St. Esprit,” as D’Aubigné’s allusion shows.

[890] For an episode showing at once the manners of some in the court, and the Catholic intensity of the people of Marseilles, see Papiers d’état du cardinal de Granvelle, VIII, 475.

[891] Lamathe, “Délibération des consuls de Nismes au sujet de l’entrée de Charles IX dans ladite ville (1564),” Rev. des Soc. savant des départ., 5^e série, III (1872), 781.

[892] While here, Catherine dispatched the marshal Bourdillon into Guyenne for the purpose of dissolving the league formed at Cadillac on March 13, 1563 (D’Aubigné, II, 213). As we shall see, the mission was fruitless.

[893] Correspondance de Catherine de Médicis, II, Introd., lviii. The editor adds: “De toutes les villes du Midi, c’était [Beziers] celle qui comptait le plus de Protestants.” On account of the alarm evinced by the Huguenots of the south—300 gentlemen of Beziers visited the King in a body—Charles IX, when at Marseilles on November 4, “confirmed” the Edict of Amboise. Yet so apprehensive was the court that whenever it stopped an effort was made to disarm the local populace (C. S. P. For., No. 788-1564).

[894] On the incident of Catherine reading a MS chronicle about Blanche of Castile, see the extract of the Venetian ambassador in Baschet (La diplomatie vénetienne, 521, 522).

[895] Correspondance de Catherine de Médicis, II, Introd., lix.

[896] Claude Haton, I, 378.

[897] The order of the King of December 13, 1564, prohibiting any nobles whoever they might be, unless princes of the house of France, from entering the government of the Ile-de-France is still unpublished. It is preserved in a report of the Spanish ambassador, Arch. nat., K. 1,505, No. 31. It is to be distinguished from the general ordonnance of the year before—“Lettres du roy contenans defenses à toutes personnes de ne porter harquebuzes, pistoles, ni pistolets, ni autres bastons à feu, sur peine de confiscation de leurs armes et chevaulx,” Paris, 1564. Cf. Isambert, XIV, 142.

[898] All the historians notice this episode. See D’Aubigné, Book IV, chap, v; Corresp. de Catherine de Médicis, II, Introd., lix, lx, and 253-56 where the letters of the marshal and the queen mother on the subject are given. The editor, in a long note, sifts the evidence. Other accounts are in Claude Haton, I, 381-83 (other references in note); C. S. P. For., No. 942, January 24, 1564; Mém. du duc de Nevers, V, 12, 13; Castelnau, Book VI, chap. ii.