Distance lent enchantment to the view. Poland was in a wretched condition through the dissensions of the nobility. The Emperor was angry and talked of stopping the duke en route.[1589] Lithuania seceded and entered into an alliance with the duke of Prussia, the king of Sweden, and Russia, to overthrow the Polish government.[1590] The Hanseatic cities, too, like Dantzig, Riga, and Revel, were very dissatisfied, for it was open knowledge that Poland aspired to the control of their commerce.[1591] The Poles themselves soon discovered that their new king was a goose without a golden egg. For the French lawyers found an interpretation of the promise that the French would discharge the debts of the realm to the effect that the promise meant only those arising since the death of the late king. The Polish agents in Paris made wry faces at the finding, but so the agreement was registered by the Parlement of Paris on September 17, 1573.[1592] In the same month the duke of Anjou set out for his new kingdom, going via Nancy, Heidelberg, and Frankfurt to Cracow. Metz he avoided because the Emperor, still sullen and still smarting from the loss of the city twenty-one years before (1552), had commanded the imperial commissioners appointed to conduct him, to receive him in Metz as though it were a free city of the empire, which the French naturally refused to permit.
Again the foolish affection of Catherine de Medici for one of her children,[1593] again her political fatuity, threw France far off from the course she should have followed. As before the massacre, so now that course was the path to Italy.[1594] Instead of narrowing the field of her ambition for her children and concentrating her power, not content with Poland for the duke of Anjou, she even dreamed of the Hapsburg crown for Charles IX,[1595] and that of England for Alençon. Schomberg’s missions in 1572-73 to Germany[1596] were not merely to dispose the German princes in favor of France’s projected enterprise in the Netherlands, but also to persuade them, especially the electors of Cologne and the Palatinate, in favor of the French King’s imperial ambition. France’s policy in Poland[1597] and her policy in Germany were two parts of one grand design and in a large sense had to stand or fall together. Peace with the Huguenots was an essential element in the forwarding of this project, especially with the Protestant German princes, as Schomberg pointed out.[1598]
But there were two great obstacles in the way of advance—German resentment because of the massacre of St. Bartholomew[1599] and the counter-diplomacy of Spain.[1600] The Guisard-Spanish party at home naturally exerted itself to thwart the prosecution of these designs.[1601] Morvilliers warned Charles IX that their continuance would involve France in a war with Spain.[1602]
[CHAPTER XVII]
THE LAST DAYS OF CHARLES IX. THE CONSPIRACY OF THE POLITIQUES
The war in the south, during the months of these negotiations, had gone on in its own course almost unhindered by the government. Many of the men of service had gone with Anjou into Poland and many others, especially the Swiss, were licensed. In consequence the Huguenots made themselves masters of the Rhone, even seizing Avignon, to the great anger of the Pope, who refused to receive Paul de Foix as French ambassador to Rome on the double ground that he was of the Huguenot persuasion and because the French King would not give safe-conduct to troops from Italy to go to Avignon for the purpose of recovering it.[1603] After the departure of his brother for Poland, Charles IX weakly took up the Protestant issue again, and he and his mother spent three days at Chantilly with Montmorency in consideration of the course to follow.[1604] Deputations from various provinces came to the King to petition immediate reduction of the taxes on account of the exhausted state of the country, but there was a unanimous wish against calling another session of the estates on account of the expense.[1605] As an earnest of the King’s good intentions, the prince of Condé was made governor of Picardy, an office made vacant by the timely decease of the duke of Longueville, the prince, to the chagrin of the duke of Nevers who was an aspirant for the post, having recovered from the smallpox, with which the duke of Alençon also fell ill.[1606] The King had planned to convene deputies of the Huguenots of Languedoc and Dauphiné at least at Compiègne, but fell ill of smallpox[1607] and the project came to an end.[1608] To add to embarrassments Paris and Rouen, where the populace were of the opposing religions, entered into war for the restraint of foodstuffs, Paris stopping all wine passing down the Seine and Rouen in turn preventing corn from passing up the river to Paris.[1609] The economic condition of the country gave the government great concern. Hard times and high prices still prevailed and the measures of the government only irritated things the more, though some of them were wisely meant. For example, in February, 1574, an edict of the King forbade the circulation of all foreign silver coin, as well as that which was mutilated or debased. When the merchants of Troyes learned of this condemnation of all foreign or cut coin, they sent a deputation to remonstrate with the King, saying that their town and the county of Champagne as well as all Lorraine and Burgundy abounded with this money and no other; and it was not possible to exclude these coins from the country without entailing ruin, if the edict were enforced. They further urged that the edict would act as a serious bar to traffic across the frontier. But the King refused to rescind the ordinance. In consequence, those familiar with money palmed off the forbidden currency upon the simpler folk, who found to their dismay that they had been cheated, when the King’s officers refused to accept these coins in payment of taxes. Nevertheless, in the long run, the action raised the standard of coin in France.[1610] Less wise action was the new sale of offices—those of the procureurs du roi—and it was even suggested that the office of advocate be made a salable one, but fortunately for the administration of justice, this was not done.[1611]
Popular suspicion was also attached to an ordinance commanding the governors of the provinces, through the bailiffs and seneschals, to take a census in their localities, giving the name, surname, and employment of all men between the ages of twenty-one and sixty. It was beyond the imagination of the people to know the reason of this action, or to divine what the King meant to do. Some thought that the crown was going to establish a local constabulary for the arrest of the numerous robbers and vagabonds, who, under the guise of war, looted and pillaged the country, and that men would be chosen in each parish like the francs-archers of the days of Louis XII and Francis I. Others thought that the King merely wanted to raise a new army to send into Languedoc where the Huguenots and the Politiques were now making common cause together. Others still thought that the device was one for taxing purposes.[1612]