Languedoc was divided into two governments with Montauban and Nîmes as centers under the authority of the viscounts of Paulin and St. Romain, each assisted and controlled by a council. The councils, in turn, in all important matters were required to consult the local assemblies of Protestants. All these assemblies were elective. The Protestant organization thus constituted an all but full-fledged state within a state, asserting its own power to lay taxes, to administer justice, to carry on war, and to make peace. It was estimated that 20,000 men in these regions were able to bear arms.
In consequence of the continuance of the war in the south the Swiss and the rest of the soldiery not yet licensed were sent from the camp before La Rochelle into Dauphiné and Languedoc. But the government was heavily embarrassed financially and had been compelled to resort to forced loans in Paris and the old shift of mortgaging the revenue until the grant of the clergy was made in June.[1572] Even then it did not urge war. Charles IX, jealous of the Guises and of the military reputation which his brother had acquired, was again manifesting his hatred of the restraint imposed upon him, and desirous of recovering his independence.
The tendency of France was to return to its earlier policy which had been interrupted by the massacre.[1573] Charles again inclined to sustain Holland in its rebellion against Spain,[1574] at least underhandedly. To strike Spain was at the same time to strike at all the influences which he hated. Accordingly France made overtures anew to the prince of Orange, although it was not without repugnance that William of Orange brought himself to listen to them.[1575] But the voice of policy was stronger than sentiment.[1576] For on December 11, 1572, the famous siege of Haarlem had begun. It was Alva’s purpose by the capture of this city to cut the communications between south Holland, where the prince of Orange was, and north Holland.[1577]
From Germany the faithful and far-sighted Schomberg earnestly urged the project and so artfully did he fulfil his mission that the elector palatine, the landgrave, and the archbishop of Cologne all espoused it.[1578] “The repose of the kingdom, the security of the state, the ruin of the great enemy of France, direct and firm alliance with the princes of Germany, the subversion of all the designs of the house of Austria, and the culmination of your desires, is in the hands of your majesty,” he wrote to Catherine on March 23.[1579] At last, after months of deliberation and delay, the threads of these tortuous negotiations were all drawn together at a secret interview of Catherine de Medici with Louis of Nassau at Blamont in Lorraine, in December, 1573.[1580]
But there was yet another reason why the crown of France was desirous of closing the conflict at home, which goes far to explain the government’s willingness to compromise with La Rochelle. The throne of Poland had become vacant upon the death of Sigismund Augustus, the last of the Jagiello house, on July 7, 1572. The crown of Poland was an elective one, the suffrage being in the hands of the diet, composed solely of the two privileged orders. In the factional strife that too often ensued, the deadlock was sometimes broken by the election of an outside prince. This vicious and unnational policy triumphed in 1573. The Emperor, the King of Spain, and France had each a candidate. But Poland had no mind to experience the fate of Bohemia and pass under the suzerainty of the Hapsburgs. Spain, too, in the person of her ambassador, was deprived of a hearing and compelled to make overtures in writing. In this wise the way was cleared for French diplomacy. In the autumn of 1572, Charles IX had been sounded by the Poles as to the candidacy of the duke of Anjou and had intimated the conditions to be expected.[1581] On December 19, the secretary of the bishop of Valence, the French agent who had been hastily dispatched to Poland, arrived in Paris, and gave great hope for the election of the duke of Anjou, though the Polish diet had not met yet on account of the plague.[1582]
When it convened on April 15, 1573, the dexterous feat was accomplished by the papal legate, Cardinal Commendone, who, for his spiritual master, was hostile to the Emperor for having lately made a three years’ truce with the Turks and thus marred the glory of Lepanto, and opposed in principle to the widening of Spain’s activities anywhere, in view of the supreme struggle of the faith in France and the Low Countries, where the cause of Rome was in sore need of Spanish support. The French envoys[1583] then skilfully introduced the name of the duke of Anjou, lauding his Catholic virtues in the ears of a Catholic populace; promising that if elected Henry of Valois would spend all his revenues—how little these were the Poles could not know—in Poland for the benefit of the kingdom; they promised, too, that the prospective king would recover from the Muscovite all the territories whereof the kingdom of Poland had been despoiled in times past, as well as Wallachia from the Turks.[1584] The arguments told, and on May 19, 1573, the duke of Anjou was elected king of Poland.
On August 8, 1573, the official deputation of Polish nobles sent to France to notify the duke of Anjou of his election reached Metz, and soon afterward (June 24, St. John’s Day) arrived at Paris. They were the advance guard of almost two thousand Polish nobles and gentry who visited the kingdom during this summer. They were all magnificently lodged and entertained in the city at the expense of the crown, or rather at the expense of the people, for a new tax was imposed for purposes of entertainment. The appearance of the Poles struck the French with amazement. They were all tall, handsome men, “speaking Latin down to the very hostlers,” but marvelously given to drink and great gourmands. The wine-shops of the capital were almost drunk dry. Two Poles, the saying went, drank more wine and consumed more meat than six Frenchmen.[1585]
The honor of the crown of Poland salved the wounded pride of Anjou, still before La Rochelle. But the army murmured so much that a royal mandate was issued making it a misdemeanor to argue or to discuss the Polish election in the streets of Paris, or to discountenance the election of the duke of Anjou to the throne of Poland in written work or speech.[1586] Without victory, without pay, without even enough to eat, the soldiers grumbled to the point of mutiny and averred that the government was bribed, and took the Huguenot money in order to provide funds for the King’s trip to Poland.[1587] Henry dared not openly leave the camp for fear of their rebellion and was compelled to make a feint of going boating in the bay and then effect an escape by sea to Nantes.[1588]