Late in May the duke of Montmorency left Paris for Chantilly, while his brother Damville stayed in the capital. The action of each was significant. At Chantilly the cardinal Châtillon and other Protestant nobles deliberated, while in Paris Damville’s house was frequented by those hostile to the cardinal of Lorraine’s authority, notably the four marshals, all of whom inveighed against him and were popularly believed to be forming a new opposition to him.[1243] The Huguenot leaders, Condé, Coligny, D’Andelot, all lay in various castles throughout the Ile-de-France, with captains, soldiers, and gentlemen around them, and so distributed that no river separated them one from the other, while one ford between Paris and Rouen was kept open to enable those of the religion in Picardy to keep in touch with the prince.[1244] So skilfully was the distribution made that the leaders could have been able to unite within a day and a half if necessary.[1245]
The strain upon Charles IX soon began to tell. He was heard to say that he would rather lose his crown outright than live in continual fear, and as the feud became intenser, the King yielded and finally showed his hand by displacing the marshal Montmorency as governor of Paris, though he dared not go quite so far as to put Henri d’Anjou in his room, but chose his youngest brother, the duke of Alençon.[1246]
We discover at this time the germ of the Politique party.[1247] If the Guises had been aware of the astonishing diplomatic stroke Montmorency had conceived in his retreat at Chantilly and which he had communicated to the Huguenot leaders, they might not have pressed the case of Anjou so insistently. This scheme was to separate the King’s brother from his attachment to the Guises and at the same time enlist English aid in support of religious toleration in France—the aim of the Politique party—by nothing less than bringing about the marriage of the Valois prince with Queen Elizabeth. At the same time Montmorency, by gaining the favor of the duke, would work the cardinal out of power. To this end the duke approached the English envoy in France.[1248]
Day by day the animosity of the parties grew. In a certain sense the peril of the times was greater than during a state of war. Daily murder by dagger and by drowning, and violation of property took place throughout France, to such an extent that it was said more had been murdered since the publication of the peace than were in the war which it was supposed to have concluded.[1249] But although the animosity of the parties was strong enough to incite them to war, the renewal of hostilities was yet very dependent upon the fluctuation of events in the Netherlands,[1250] and at this moment the balance there was inclined in Spain’s favor.[1251]
William of Orange, while not in alliance with the French, nevertheless sought to avail himself of the services of the 4,000 reiters which John Casimir had raised for the French Protestants, whose use was no longer required by the Huguenots after the peace of Longjumeau. A horror of Spanish cruelty was beginning to pervade Germany and brought him sympathy and support.[1252] Calvinist Europe built high hopes upon this assistance for the Dutch.[1253] But Orange was straitened for money[1254] and it was not until the middle of August that he was ready to return to give Alva battle with an army of 6,000 horsemen and four regiments of foot, besides the Lorrainers and Gascons who were all gunners. According to the plan of the prince, three armies were to enter the Netherlands at once, the French under a Huguenot leader named Cocqueville, through Artois; the Count of Hoogstraeten between the Rhine and the Meuse, and Louis of Nassau through Groningen.
But the whole plan failed. Cocqueville raised seven or eight hundred men with the intention of provoking Artois to revolt.[1255] Failing to take Doulens by surprise, Cocqueville pillaged the abbey-town of Dammartin. The duke of Alva energetically protested to Charles IX against this violation of the Spanish provinces by French subjects, and the marshal Cossé was sent into Picardy. The foreigners in Cocqueville’s band were summarily beheaded at St. Valéry, the leader himself was sent to Abbeville for trial for treason and executed, and the whole expedition came to naught.[1256] The enforced delay of the prince of Orange, united with this repulse, was fatal to the Netherland project. On July 21, 1568, Louis of Nassau was defeated at Jemmingen by Alva, Spanish tyranny was fixed more firmly in the Low Countries, and Egmont and Hoorne were shortly afterward sent to the scaffold.[1257]
Everything was now out of joint. The success of the Dutch would have emboldened their French coreligionists to renew the struggle with some hope of success.[1258] But the Catholic victory in the Low Countries hardened the resolution of the French government. Hitherto chiefly the lesser nobility of France had been successfully coerced by the French crown. Now the cardinal of Lorraine intended to do the like with the higher nobles, compelling them either to abandon their religious and political contentions or to take up arms.[1259] At the same time military preparations began to be made which could not but be viewed with alarm by the Huguenots. The crown was stronger in cavalry, in infantry, in artillery, and in munitions. The country as a whole was with the King, and the chief cities were in his hands. “The great cities,” said Coligny mournfully, “are the tombs of our armies.”[1260]
So carefully were the preparations made that the King remained armed while the Huguenots were scattered and unarmed,[1261] saving large numbers of individual nobles who yet stood upon their guard. In northern and central France, La Rochelle excepted, the government controlled all the towns. In Provence and Languedoc, however, many of the towns were governed by the Protestants.[1262] In order to prevent the communication of intelligence between the various parts of France under Protestant control, Charles IX even had refused to permit Condé to levy money upon the Huguenots for payment of the reiters, notwithstanding the governments’ own poverty, although the prince cunningly suggested such an action.[1263] The outlook was dark indeed. The Huguenots nowhere save in the south seemed strong enough to take the field, and it seemed hopeless for them to expect to join with their coreligionists of the north owing to the vigilance of Montluc in Languedoc and Tavannes in Burgundy and to the fact that the whole course of the Loire was patrolled by forces of the government. Moreover, the general contribution being stopped, both resources and communication were at an end; the gentry too were impoverished by the late war to a very great extent, having “consumed as much in eight months as they had gathered in four years before,”[1264] so that the wisest of the Huguenot leaders were of the opinion that the religion was not in a state to attempt anything by open arms.
While he tried to augment his forces Condé sought to remedy matters by appeal to the King,[1265] complaining of the outrages inflicted on the Huguenots[1266] (Montluc had even hanged seven gentlemen of the entourage of the queen of Navarre, in Languedoc), being careful not to impute these wrongs, however, to the King, but reprobating the malignancy of the cardinal of Lorraine and accusing him of secret intelligence with Spain.[1267] The cardinal, thus assailed, parried through the King, who two days later issued a proclamation, which after reciting the complaints of murder, robberies and other wrongs alleged by those of “the pretended Reformed religion,” declared that the King, having sent his maîtres des requêtes into the provinces where these acts of violence had been perpetrated, was satisfied of the substantial justice of the administration, and asserted that the complaints had either been manufactured by the Huguenot leaders, or else grossly exaggerated. The proclamation closed by commanding all judges and other officers, on pain of deprivation, to search out and punish wrong-doers, so that those of the religion might not have ground for complaining that justice was not done them.[1268]
Such a proclamation was mere verbiage, however, and was intended to lull the anxiety of the Huguenots while the government’s preparations went forward. It deceived none of the Protestant leaders. The signs of the times were too plain to be concealed. Arms were secretly levied and stored in La Rochelle, Saintes, Châtellerault, St. Jean-d’Angély.[1269] To these signs was now added another unmistakable indication. In August, 1568 the concentration of fourteen companies of gendarmes and several bands of infantry in Burgundy, where the two most conspicuous of the leaders of the Huguenots then were—the prince of Condé and Coligny[1270]—ostensibly to prevent the prince from delivering his German reiters to the prince of Orange, precipitated civil war anew.