EXECUTION OF DU BOURG
(Tortorel and Perissin)
Five of the advocates of the Parlement of Paris, of whom Du Bourg and Du Four were the most prominent, protested against this action, both because of its intolerance and because they believed it to be a political measure, at least in part, and were put under arrest for this manifestation of courage. Men reasoned very differently regarding this edict. The politicians and intense Catholics regarded it as necessary, both to preserve the church and in order to suppress those seditious spirits, who, under color of religion, aimed to alter or subvert the government. Others, who had no regard either for policy or religion, likewise approved of it, not as tending to extirpate the Protestants, for they believed it would rather increase their numbers, but because they hoped to be enriched by confiscations and that the King might thereby be enabled to pay his debts, amounting to forty-two millions, according to Castelnau, and thus restore his finances.[49] The trial of the parliamentary councilors was postponed for some time on account of Henry II’s death, but soon afterward they were brought before “the bishops and Sorbonnists.”[50] Du Four, upon retraction, was suspended from office for five years;[51] three others were fined and ignominiously punished; but Du Bourg[52] was condemned and executed on December 23, 1559, in spite of the solicitations of Marguerite, wife of the duke of Savoy, and the count palatine who wrote to the King for his life.[53]
At the same time the measures of the government were redoubled. In November, 1559, a new edict ordained that all who went to conventicles, or assisted at any private assemblies, should be put to death, and their houses be pulled down and never rebuilt. By special decree the provost of the city was authorized, because Huguenot sessions were more frequent in Paris and its suburbs than elsewhere, to proclaim with the trumpet that all people who had information of Protestant assemblies should notify the magistrates, on pain of incurring the same punishment; and promise of pardon and a reward of five hundred livres was to be given to every informer. The commissaires des quartiers of Paris were enjoined to be diligent in seeking out offenders and to search the houses of those under suspicion from time to time using the archers de la ville for that purpose. Letters-patent were also given to the lieutenant-criminal of the Châtelet and certain other judges chosen by the cardinal of Lorraine to judge without appeal. The curés and vicars in the parishes were to excommunicate all those who had knowledge of Protestant doings and failed to report them.[54] In order to discover those who were Calvinists, priests bore the host (corpus Domini) through the streets and images of the Virgin were set up at the street corners, and all who refused to bow the head and bend the knee in adoration were arrested.[55] Similar measures were adopted in Poitou, at Toulouse, and at Aix in Provence where the double enginery of state and church was brought to bear in the suppression of heresy.[56] So great was the volume of judicial business as a result of these new measures that four criminal chambers were established at the end of the year, one to try offenses carrying the death penalty, the second for trial of those who might be condemned to make amende honorable, the third to judge those who might be publicly burned, the last to punish various other offenses.[57] The saner Catholic opinion, as, for example, that of Tavannes, the brilliant cavalry leader, reprobated this recourse to extraordinary tribunals on the ground that the judging of criminals by special commissioners, who were persons chosen according to the passion of the ruler, was bound to be unjust or tyrannical, and that those counselors who were drawn from the courts of the parlements to be so employed offended their consciences and mingled in that which did not pertain to them. Tavannes justified his contention, legally as well as morally, on the ground that the King, being a party in the cause could not justly change the ordinary judges.[58]
The assassination of Minard, vice-president of the Grand Chamber of the Parlement of Paris, and one of the judges, who was shot in his coach[59] on the night of December 18, the same day that Du Bourg was degraded, was the protest against this order of things.[60] The murder was committed in such a way that the author of it could never be discovered.[61] This was followed by that of Julien Frène, a messenger of the Parlement, while bearing some papers and instructions relating to the prosecution of certain Protestants. These two crimes undoubtedly hardened the government[62] and hastened the prosecution of Du Bourg, who was put to death just a week later, on December 23, and led to some new regulations. In order to protect the Parlement, it was commanded to adjourn before four o’clock, from St. Martin’s Eve (November 10) until Easter; a general police order forbade the carrying of any firearms whatsoever[63] and in order to prevent their concealment, the wearing of long mantles or large hunting-capes was forbidden.[64]
It is to be observed that the Huguenots were concerted not only for religious, but for political interests. The distinction was fully appreciated at the time, the former being called “Huguenots of religion” and the latter “Huguenots of state.”[65] The former were Calvinists who were resolved no longer to endure the cruelties of religious oppression; the latter—mostly nobles—those opposed to the monopoly of power enjoyed by the Guises.[66] The weight of evidence is increasingly in favor of the view that the causes of the Huguenot movement were as much if not more political and economic than religious.
It was only in the general dislocation and désœuvrement of society that followed the cessation of the foreign wars that the French began to realize the weight of the burdens which their governmental system laid upon them. Until the religious sense gave a voice to the dumb discontent, social or political, first in the Huguenot rising and afterward in the outbreak of the League, there was little to show the real force of the opposition to the established order.[67]
Abstractly considered, the religious Huguenots were not very dangerous to the state so long as they confined their activity to the discussion of doctrine. This could not easily be done, however, nor did the opponents of the church so desire; for the church was a social and political fabric, as well as a spiritual institution, and to challenge or deny its spiritual sovereignty meant also to invalidate its social and political claims, so that the whole structure was compromised. Thus the issue of religion raised by the Huguenots merged imperceptibly into that of the political Huguenots, who not only wanted to alter the foundations of belief, but to change the institutional order of things, and who used the religious opposition as a means to attack the authority of the crown. The most active of this class were the nobles, possessed of lands or bred to the profession of arms, whom a species of political atavism actuated to endeavor to recover that feudal power which the noblesse had enjoyed before the powerful kings like Louis IX and Philip IV coerced the baronage; before the Hundred-Years’ War ruined them; before Louis XI throttled the League of the Public Weal in 1465. The weakness of Francis II, the minority of the crown under Charles IX, and, above all, the dissatisfaction of the princes of the blood and the old aristocracy, like the Montmorencys, with the upstart pretensions and power of the Guises—these causes united to make the Huguenots of state a formidable political party. Religion and politics together provoked the long series of civil wars whose termination was not until Henry IV brought peace and prosperity to France again in 1598.[68]
It is necessary to picture the state of France at this time. The French were not essentially an industrial or commercial nation in the sixteenth century. France had almost no maritime power and its external commerce was not great. The great majority of the French people was composed of peasants, small proprietors, artisans, and officials. If we analyze city society, we find first some artisans and small merchants—the bourgeois and the gens-de-robe forming the upper class. The towns had long since ceased to govern themselves. Society was aristocratic and controlled by the clergy and nobility. The upper clergy was very rich. High prelates were all grand seigneurs, while the lower clergy was very dependent. Monks abounded in the towns, and the curates possessed a certain influence. The most powerful class was the nobles, seigneurs, and gentlemen, who possessed a great portion of the rural properties, and still had fortified castles. They were wholly employed either at court or in war, or held appointments as governors of provinces and captains of strongholds. The nobles alone constituted the regular companies of cavalry, that is to say, the dominant element of the army. This class was therefore of influence in the state and the most material force in society. The government was an absolute monarchy. The king was theoretically uncontested master and obeyed by all; he exercised an arbitrary and uncontrolled power, and could decide according to his pleasure, with reference to taxes, laws, and affairs both of the state and of the church, save in matters of faith. He named and revoked the commissions of all the governors and acted under the advice of a council composed of the princes of the blood and favorites. But this absolute authority was still personal. The king was only obeyed upon condition of giving the orders himself. There was no conception of an abstract kingship. If the king abandoned the power to a favorite, the other great personages of the court would refuse to obey, and declare that the sovereign was a prisoner. Everything depended upon a single person. No one thought of resisting Francis I or Henry II because they were men grown at their accession. But after 1559 we find a series of royal infants or an indolent monarch like Henry III. Then began the famous rivalries between the great nobles, rivalries out of which were born the political parties of the times, in which the Guises, the Montmorencys, and the famous Châtillon brothers figure so prominently.
Fundamentally speaking, the aims of both classes of Huguenots were revolutionary, and were directed, the one against the authority of the mediaeval church, the other against the authority of the French monarchy. The latter was a feudal manifestation, not yet republican. The republican nature of early political Huguenotism has been exaggerated. There was no such feeling at all as nearly as 1560,[69] and even at the height of Huguenot activity and power in 1570-72, most men still felt that the state of France was vrayement monarchique,[70] and that the structure of society and the genius of the people was strongly inclined to the form of government which eight centuries of development had evolved; that it was searching for false liberty by perilous methods to seek fundamentally to alter the state.[71] In a word, most political Huguenots in 1560 were reformers, not revolutionists; the extremists were Calvinist zealots and those of selfish purposes who were working for their own ends. For in every great movement there are always those who seek to exploit the cause. Mixed with both classes of Huguenots were those who sought to fish in troubled waters, who, under the guise of religion or the public good, took occasion to pillage and rob all persons, of whatever degree or quality; who plundered cities, pulled down churches, carried off relics, burnt towns, destroyed castles, seized the revenues of the church and the king, informed for the sake of reward, and enriched themselves by the confiscated property of others. Similar things are not less true of the Catholics. For there were zealots and fanatics among them also, who under pretext of religion and patriotism were guilty of great iniquity and heaped up much ill-gotten wealth.[72]