“Enough,” Charles rejoined. “I would rather die free with you than live a captive among rebels.”[1104]
The return to Paris began at four o’clock in the morning. “When the Swiss arrived at Meaux,” wrote Correro, “I vow they were the most villainous looking gang I have ever seen. Yet in battle array they were admirable. Three times they turned upon the enemy and lowering their pikes charged upon them like savage dogs in serried ranks and in good order, without one being a pace in advance of another. Thus the King was able with his suite to get to Paris.”[1105] He reached the Louvre that night, travel-worn, hot, famished, and so angry that his fierce disposition never lost the memory of that humiliation.[1106]
The affair of Meaux came like a thunder-clap to most of France. The suddenness of the Huguenot action and the all but complete success of it astonished men. “This movement,” wrote the Venetian ambassador, “of which several thousand men had knowledge, was conducted with such precaution that nothing leaked out until it was all but an accomplished fact. This could not possibly have been done without the perfect intelligence that exists among the Huguenots, and is a striking manifestation of their organization throughout the realm.”[1107]
In the light of this judgment, it remains to describe the Huguenot form of government.
The ecclesiastical—and political unit—of French Calvinism was the congregation. Congregations were grouped “according to number and convenience” into colloquies or classes which met from two to four times each year, the division being made by the authority of the provincial synod.[1108] In church matters, no church had any primacy or jurisdiction over another, nor one province over another.[1109] Ministers brought with them to local classes or provincial synods one or two elders chosen out of their consistories.[1110] Elders who were deputies of churches had an equal power of voting with the pastors.[1111] The authority of a provincial synod was subordinate to that of the national synod,[1112] and whatever had been decreed by provincial synods for the government of the churches in their province had to be brought before the national synod.[1113] The grand lines of division followed the historic provincial divisions of France, but smaller provinces and parts of the larger ones, as Guyenne and Languedoc, were associated together. The national synod of 1559 divided France into sixteen Protestant provinces, as follows: (1) The Ile-de-France, Chartrain, Picardy, Champagne and Brie; (2) Normandy; (3) Brittany; (4) Orleans, Blesois, Dunois, Nivernais, Berry, Bourbonnais, and La Marche; (5) Touraine, Anjou, Loudunois, Maine, Vendôme, and Perche; (6) Upper and Lower Poitou; (7) Saintonge, Aunis, La Rochelle, and Angoumois; (8) Lower Guyenne, Périgord, Gascony, and Limousin; (9) Upper and Lower Vivarais, together with Velay, and Le Forêt; (10) Lower Languedoc, including Nîmes, Montpellier, and Beziers; (11) Upper Languedoc, Upper Guyenne, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Quercy, Rouergue, Armagnac, and Upper Auvergne; (12) Burgundy, Lyonnais, Beaujolais, Bresse, Lower Auvergne, and Gex; (13) Provence; (14) Dauphiné and Orange; (15) Béarn; (16) the Cevennes and Gévaudan.[1114]
This administrative partition, however, did not remain fixed. Some provinces, like Brittany, had so few Protestants in them, that the Huguenots therein could not stand alone, and the first civil war brought out the weakness of this system. Accordingly, in 1563, the map of France was partitioned anew, and the former sixteen “provinces” were reduced to nine. Some of the changes made are interesting. For example, the Chartrain was cut off from the Ile-de-France and attached to the “province” of Orleans, manifestly in the endeavor to keep a connecting link between Normandy and the Loire country. Brittany was strengthened by the annexation of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine which formerly constituted an independent “province,” which obviously drew it into closer connection with the stronger Calvinistic provinces. The “province” of Upper and Lower Poitou was combined with Saintonge, Aunis, and Angoumois, thus knitting together all the country watered by the Charente, the Clain, and lesser streams. Burgundy, Lyonnais, Beaujolais, Bresse, Lower Auvergne, and Gex absorbed the small Huguenot province composed of Vivarais, Velay, and Le Forêt. But the most interesting consolidation was in the south of France. Formerly Upper Languedoc, in which were Nîmes, Montpellier, and Beziers; Lower Languedoc, comprising Upper Guyenne, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Quercy, Rouergue, Armagnac, and Upper Auvergne; Provence; Dauphiné, and Cevennes-Gévaudan had each formed separate “provinces.” But in 1563 this immense territory was all united to form the great Huguenot province of Languedoc. The only ancient provinces which remained unchanged in 1563 were Normandy,[1115] Béarn, and Lower Guyenne, with Périgord and Limousin.
The Huguenot ecclesiastical organization and its political organization were one and the same. The congregations, the “colloquia,” the synods, constituted both taxation units and military cadres.[1116] The strength of the Huguenot organization, however, before the massacre of St. Bartholomew, I believe has been exaggerated, except in Guyenne where, in the vicinity of Nérac especially, Montluc early came in contact with a powerful combination of the Huguenots.[1117] The strong elements in the Protestant organization were its simplicity and the vigilance of all, from provincial chiefs to simple pastors, who made up for scarcity of numbers by the most zealous activity.[1118] “If our priests,” wrote the Venetian Correro in 1569, “were half so energetic, of a certainty Christianity would not be in danger in this country.”[1119] It was not until after 1572 that the Huguenot organization reached a high point of military and political development, when a solid federation of the Reformed churches was formed at Milhaud in 1574, with rating precincts, military hundreds and civil jurisdictions.[1120]
Exactly as the early organization of the Huguenots has been overemphasized, so has the republican nature of the early Huguenot movement been exaggerated. Apart from whatever religious motives may have actuated them, the Protestant nobles were influenced by political ambition; the bourgeoisie by the hope of administrative and economic reform; the masses by the general spirit of discontent. The Huguenots did not present a united front until after St. Bartholomew, when the fusion of the political Huguenots with the Politiques reduced the “religious” Huguenots to a left-wing minority. Before 1572 the political ideas of the Reformed, if not still inchoate, were not harmonized into one homogeneous cause, backed up by a compact and highly organized political system. Individual political theorists or fanatic devotees, of course, were to be found in the Huguenot ranks, but there was no systematic political philosophy to guide their conduct before the massacre of St. Bartholomew. It was this catastrophe that crystallized Huguenot opinion and organized combination on a large scale.[1121] In Guyenne, alone, where, as has been said, the Huguenot organization was most completely developed at an early date, does any clear republican idea seem to have early obtained.[1122]