It was not long before the Guise opposition organized. Failing of their hold upon Charles IX, the Guises directed their efforts upon his brother, Henry, duke of Anjou, whose Catholic sentiments[1214] were less impeachable than those of Charles and who began to “show some tokens of an ambitious heart,” was a sworn Catholic, and showed great offense at his royal brother’s action in “very courteously” entertaining the cardinal Châtillon, the count Rochefoucauld, and Brocarde, the Protestant governor of Orleans.[1215] On the night of March 29 a secret conference was held at the Louvre of the leaders among the Guise party, in which it was proposed that a pacific attitude be pretended until the disarming of the prince of Condé’s forces and the withdrawal of the reiters had taken place, and then suddenly to seize Orleans, Soissons, Auxerre, and La Rochelle—the Huguenot strongholds—for which duty Lansac, Martigues, Chavigny, and Brissac were to be appointed, reinforce the garrison of Paris, and send the ferocious Montluc into Gascony to subjugate the strongest Protestant provinces, seize the sea-ports, and drive a Catholic wedge in between Poitou and the territories of the queen of Navarre, who already had taken the precaution to strengthen her defenses. By some means, perhaps through the marshal Cossé, who was a Politique at heart, the cardinal Châtillon learned of the plot the very next day, and straightway informed the marshal Montmorency, another moderate, of it. At the same time the plan was discovered from another source to the prince of Condé. When Charles IX was taxed with information of it, he swore that the whole thing was done without his knowledge, accused the cardinal of Lorraine of treasonable practice, and calling for pen and ink wrote to Condé promising “good and sincere” observation of all that had been agreed upon at Longjumeau.[1216]
It will be observed how completely this plan of the Guises for the subjugation of Guyenne and Gascony is in alignment with the views of Montluc which he had expressed to Philip II.[1217] Hitherto the King of Spain had been sustaining two separate lines of secret correspondence, one with Montluc direct; the other with the cardinal of Lorraine through the duke of Alva. These two lines now are fused into a larger whole, at least so far as the Spanish king is concerned.[1218] Montluc is the military, the cardinal of Lorraine the diplomatic, agent of Philip’s purposes.
The development of the Holy League has now advanced another stage in its evolution. The old warrior had not discontinued his secret relations with Spain, in spite of his warm denial of the fact to the queen mother, who taxed him with it,[1219] but through Bardaxi still kept in communication with Philip II. We find him writing twice to the King in February 1567 and Philip responding in terms of encouragement in the following month.[1220] Guyenne was peculiarly vulnerable to such an attack as was now contemplated, and Montluc was certainly the best captain to execute it. The army of the Huguenots there was in a bad state.[1221]
The instrument was already forged to Philip II’s hand in the local Catholic leagues in France. His interest in these was one of the silent activities at Bayonne. The instructions to the duke of Alva and to Bardaxi were almost identical. “As the queen mother lacks either fixity of ideas or honesty of purpose”—the words are those of the procès-verbal framed in the Spanish council-chamber, it is necessary to encourage the practices of Montluc and the Catholics.[1222] It must have been a source of delight to the Spanish king to observe the rapid increase of these associations. There are two changes to be noticed in these provincial leagues: their increasingly popular character, and their tendency to fuse together. Hitherto they had been local in their operations. Now a process of federation is to be observed by which the provincial leagues are gradually welded into one whole—in a word the mighty Sainte Ligue of 1576 potentially exists now.[1223] The federative tendency of these associations was a natural result of their increase in number and membership. It was not a haphazard development at all. Design is evident throughout.[1224]
The renewal of civil war in 1567 had given a great impulse to this spirit of association.[1225] Nowhere was it more pronounced than in Burgundy. Tavannes, who was governor of Burgundy, in the year 1567 (July 18), formed a league under the name of the Confrérie du St. Esprit. Churchmen, the nobility of Burgundy, and wealthy bourgeois who wished to preserve the Catholic religion were united together in the service of the King. The version of its origin in the Mémoires de Tavannes is so interesting that I venture to quote it:
Seeing so much discontent and so many threatening enterprises among the Huguenots, the queen, for safety’s sake, in the beginning of the year 1567 caused a levy of 9,000 Swiss [the actual number was 6,000] to be made under pretext that they were to be for the service of the duke of Alva in the Flemish War. The prevailing unrest and the rumors of insurrection gave the sieur de Tavannes, who penetrated the designs of the queen and the purpose of the Huguenots, the thought that a prudent man might also take precautions of his own. He reasoned that the Huguenots did not have more zeal for their cause than the Catholics for the old religion, and that those who would preserve it would give their lives and employ their last sou to succor the King; in a word, oppose league to league. He therefore organized the Confrérie du St. Esprit, which in reality was a league of the ecclesiastics and the nobility of Burgundy, with rich men from the towns, who voluntarily swore to serve in the interest of the Catholic religion against the Huguenots, sacrificing both person and property for the sake of the King. Without using coercion he gave orders for the enrolment of men-at-arms and the collection of money, created warders, spies, and messengers, in imitation of the Huguenots, in order to discover their machinations. The oath subscribed to justified this design. Each parish of Dijon paid its men for three months, and each town contributed 200 horse and 250 footmen. Burgundy could furnish 1,500 horse and 400 men on foot, paid for three months of the year. The sieur de Tavannes summoned an assembly in the Maison du Roi, ... and there caused the oath to be read.
The oath began:
We swear by the most holy and incomprehensible name of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in whose name we have been baptized, and we promise on our honor and the peril of our lives that, henceforth, at all times, through the chiefs and those who shall be named by the King under these articles, we will make known any enterprise that may work contrary to our said law and faith of which we have made profession in our baptism, and which we have maintained by the grace of God to the present, and also to make known every enterprise, which may clothe itself in hatred of the maintenance of the said faith, against the said royal Majesty, madame his mother, and messieurs his brothers, who rule over us by divine permission.
And further on in the oath:
We swear and promise in the present writing to render all friendship and fraternity the one to the other, to aid each other reciprocally against all phases of the opposite party, if they shall undertake any enterprise against any one of the signatories to the cause of this party; and for the sake of said aid we promise respectively, the one and the other, to employ all our persons, our credit, and our favors without sparing anything. And we promise to observe all the articles above sworn to without regard to friends, parents, or any relationship which we may have with those who undertake the contrary.[1226]