BATTLE OF MONCONTOUR, OCTOBER 3, 1569
(Tortorel and Perissin)
At the first shock it seemed as if the Huguenots would win, and they cried in exaltation, “Victory, victory! The Evangel has won the victory and has vanquished the mass of the popes. Down with the Papists!”[1364] The admiral began the fray by charging Anjou’s center with 2,000 reiters and such French gendarmes as he had, but was himself attacked on the flank by the duke of Aumale and Villars so furiously that he was compelled to fall back. The Protestant infantry which had followed the horse into the battle, was thus left unsustained, and when the duke of Guise’s light horse charged, the lansquenets broke in flight, abandoning the artillery. In the midst of the melée various companies of reiters, seeing the battle lost, ran to their baggage, seized their most valuable effects, and decamped in haste. Mansfeldt’s reiters alone fought well; the others were of slight service. Matters were little better with the hirelings of the King. Many of the leaders on both sides were injured in the course of the battle; Guise in the hand and foot, Bassompierre, a German captain destined to become a very prominent man at court, in both arms; Anjou was borne to the ground off his horse but escaped injury; Coligny was hurt in the face by a pistol-ball. Among the Catholic dead was Montbrun, captain of the Swiss guard. He was haughty and cruel, and a despot with his men, but it is to his credit that he sought to prevent the soldiery from abusing the peasantry.[1365] The most of the Huguenot dead were the German reiters and lansquenets, many of whom were killed by their Catholic compatriots or the Swiss, who distinguished themselves by their ferocity.[1366] The fight endured for four hours, from 11 until 3 o’clock, at the end of which time the forces of Anjou overthrew the admiral, routed both his horse and foot, and captured his artillery and baggage. But for the good fortune that some of Coligny’s horse intercepted a treasurer of the King coming out of Limousin with 30,000 francs, the distribution of which among his reiters quieted their murmurs, Coligny might have been all but deserted by the German horse.[1367] As it was, he was able to fall back on Niort and thence make his retreat to the far south.[1368]
Fortunately for the Huguenots, the enemy did not attempt pursuit of them, but instead undertook the siege of St. Jean-d’Angély, which lay directly in the way southward, to the disgust of the liberal marshal Cossé and even Tavannes, who urged that the King, in the light of this great victory, might now make peace with good grace.[1369] Others, considering the strength of St. Jean-d’Angély thought that the war would be protracted into the depth of winter and that the capture of St. Jean-d’Angély would be of small importance while La Rochelle still remained. Instead of accepting the advice, the government hardened its policy. A reward of 50,000 crowns was offered for the head of Coligny,[1370] 600,000 francs were distributed among the soldiers and 300,000 sent into Germany to make a new levy against the spring.[1371]
On October 16 Charles IX arrived before St. Jean-d’Angély and beheld the greatest part of the royal troops ranged in order of battle. Anticipating a desperate resistance upon the part of those in the city, the King’s infantry requested to be equipped with the gendarmes’ cuirasses. One incident will illustrate the desperate valor of the besieged. On the night of October 21 they made a sortie, entered the enemy’s trenches, slew twenty men, took two ensigns prisoner, and all the arms they found in the corps de garde, and returned into the town. The Protestant garrison was not over 1,500 men, but in spite of the odds against him (he had no artillery except falconets and muskets, while Anjou had eleven guns, great and small), the Huguenot commander, Pilles, refused to surrender. Instead, when the governor of the town urged him to surrender rather than make resistance, the desperate captain had him hanged and his body cast into the river. The attack upon St. Jean-d’Angély opened on October 25, but although the wall was badly battered, no sufficient breach was made for days. The town resisted every attack until December 2, when it at last surrendered.[1372]
Yet in spite of the double victory of Moncontour and at St. Jean-d’Angély, hard experience was proving the wisdom of the course advised by Tavannes and Cossé. The King was without money to pay the Swiss and the reiters who threatened to mutiny at any minute. The country round about the army was so denuded that there was great misery for want of food and multitudes of the soldiers fell sick.[1373] Finally, on November 24, in a sitting of the King’s council, Charles IX was formally petitioned by certain of its members to make peace overtures to his revolted subjects,[1374] and expressed his willingness to comply with the request.
The hand of the government was forced by events; the courageous resistance of St. Jean-d’Angély, Montluc’s action in resigning his commission, and the growing strength of the Reformed among the southern “viscounts,” made the crown think eagerly of peace. As an earnest of this purpose, the King sent the liberal marshal Cossé in company with De Losses, the new captain of the Scotch Guard, to La Rochelle to confer with the queen of Navarre and La Rochefoucault. But Jeanne d’Albret was not minded to use haste, to which the marshal meaningly rejoined that “there were many of rank in the Protestant army who would not give her that advice.”[1375] Yet even if she had wanted to, the queen of Navarre could not have hastened a settlement. For at this time there was a real division of opinion existing between the Huguenot nobles and the people of the Huguenot towns like St. Jean-d’Angély and La Rochelle. The former class were weary of war and wanted to return to their homes and were in favor of peace and inclined to make their own terms, even to the extent of ignoring the claims of their coreligionists of the towns. The latter felt aggrieved at seeing themselves thus deserted, when they had done so much to maintain the general cause of the Huguenots, not merely in contributing money but by making such heroic resistance as that of the people of St. Jean-d’Angély, and Jeanne D’Albret sympathized with them. She would not listen to talk of peace, being firmly convinced that it was but another ruse, like that at Longjumeau, and resolutely declared that there would be time enough to consider terms of peace when their forces were more equal; that nothing short of the free exercise of the religion as granted by former edicts would avail; that even if all the Huguenot nobles consented to the terms, her own signature and that of Henry of Navarre would never be affixed to any half-way terms of pacification.[1376] But at last, after long debate, the queen of Navarre yielded, and sent the admiral’s future son-in-law, Teligny, who had conferred with Coligny, to the King to request “a good assured and inviolable peace,”[1377] probably being in part influenced by the treatment of St. Jean-d’Angély, whose garrison was suffered to march out, bag and baggage, with colors flying. The Huguenots demanded liberty of conscience, the restitution of their goods, estates, and offices to those of the religion, and the reversal of all sentences against them, together with guaranties for the observance of the articles.[1378]
The essential issue, and that which protracted the debate so long was the demand for chambres mi-parties,[1379] and that the crown give over certain cities into the hands of the Huguenots to be garrisoned and governed by them alone. On February 3, 1570, the King replied, promising to grant amnesty for the past, the restoration of their estates and offices to the Huguenots, the expulsion of the reiters, with liberty of the religion within private dwellings and in two towns which he would appoint.[1380] But Jeanne d’Albret, who conducted the negotiations for the Huguenots, refused to be satisfied. In a long letter to the queen mother a week later she recapitulated the former negotiations at great length and complained of the government’s want of good faith, especially alluding to the cardinal of Lorraine and the duke of Alva.[1381] As a matter of fact the government was not yet willing to give in. The cardinal of Lorraine still hoped to hasten forward a new levy of reiters in Germany when spring should open, and held out the vain hope of the restoration of the Three Bishoprics if the Emperor would lend France this assistance and stay the Protestant levies.[1382] But the Emperor himself had something to say about the matter and asserted that he would not consider the proposed marriage of his daughter with the French King until peace was concluded in France.[1383] Aware of the Emperor’s attitude, the queen of Navarre resolutely demanded terms of peace in conformity with the demands of the Huguenots.[1384]