But Milan, which had cost France so much to win, was soon lost by the conquest of Charles V., Emperor of Germany and King of Spain. This prince having formed a league with Pope Leo X. against Francis I.,—which league was afterwards joined by Henry VIII., of England—active hostilities were soon commenced. After a war of four disastrous years, the emperor captured Francis, obliged him to relinquish his claims to Naples, Milan, Genoa, Asti, Flanders and Artois; to dismember his kingdom by surrendering Burgundy; and to ransom himself by the payment of 2,000,000 crowns. The popularity and victorious march of the German emperor now alarmed the jealous fears of the holy father, Pope Clement VII., who, apprehending in them his own subjugation, united in an alliance with. Francis I:, the former antagonist of the Roman See, and with all the Italian powers, to arrest the dangerous triumphs of his new rival. The allies succeeded in humbling the pride of Charles; but in the midst of their victories a plague, more fearful than their foes, broke out in the French army, and thinned its ranks with fearful mortality. This circumstance led to the peace of Cambray. But the ambition of Francis, and his indomitable thirst for the reconquest of Milan, soon led him to violate the terms of this covenant. Confederating with Solyman II., Sultan of the Ottoman empire, he drove Charles before his forces. The interest of the Holy See being threatened by the successes of the allied army, and perhaps in the event of the triumph of Charles not perfectly secure, Pope Paul III. interposed his friendly mediation, and induced the belligerents to conclude a truce of ten years.
In 1559 Francis II., son of Francis I., succeeded to the crown of France. Amid the flattering successes of the papal intrigues, the rapid progress of Protestantism in Europe, and the fearless boldness of its advocates, occasioned great uneasiness to the Holy See. Scorning the mild but able services of reason and conciliation, it counselled the most sanguinary measures. The records of the times are consequently filled with accounts of disorders, assassinations, massacres, and the most deplorable conflicts. The French nation was divided into two great factions; the one in favor of Catholicism, the other in favor of Protestantism. By means of the papal machinery of bishops, abbots, priests, monks and spies, the Catholics were made to believe that the religious disorders which had convulsed the empire were but a prelude to an intended extermination of all Romanists. To narrow-minded bigots, who absurdly believed that their church afforded the only possible method of escaping the pangs of purgatory, and of obtaining eternal happiness, all the zeal which their hopes and fears of eternity could inspire was awakened in the defence of their religion. While the Protestants who, on the other hand, believed that Catholicism was idolatry, subversive of Christianity, demoralizing in its tendency, and destructive of the rights of conscience, reason and religious liberty, became equally heated in the defence of their faith. Both factions had been educated in intolerent principles; in the belief that error of opinion was perilous to the soul; that it rendered a person a proper object of aversion and denunciation; and, that a difference of opinion was a sufficient justification of hatred and persecution. Both factions being educated in the principles of bigotry and intolerance, nursed amid convulsions and barbarity, embittered against each other by mutual provocations and injury, were incapable of pacification by just and reasonable concession. The Catholics, having the power, were enabled to inflict on the Protestants the deeper injuries; and, to the credit of the Protestants it will ever be remembered, that they sought not to exterminate their foes, but to obtain equal rights with them.
The Cardinal of Lorraine, who had supervision of the clergy, and Henry, Duke of Guise, the uncle of the king, who directed the military affairs, were both uncompromising in their hostility to the Protestants. Antony of Bourbon, King of Navarre, and his brother Louis, Prince of Condé, being excluded from the governmental administration, united with the Calvinists for the overthrow of the regime, under pretext of religious zeal. Catherine de Medici, mother of the king, and niece of Pope Clement VII., jealous of a power in which she could not participate, favored the designs of Louis, and employed her art in stimulating the opposition of the reformers to the administration of the Duke of Guise. Under these circumstances a conspiracy against the duke was formed at Amboise, which led to a murderous onslaught, and inaugurated civil war. Louis was captured and condemned to death.
In the midst of the distraction of conflicting parties Francis I. died, and Charles IX., in 1560, succeeded to the throne at the age of ten years. Catherine de Medici, his mother, with the acquiesence of parliament, administered the affairs of government. Although a bigoted Catholic, yet having no principle but the love of sway, she was ready to support any faction or creed that administered to her power, or removed an obstacle to her ambition. Without profound views of policy, she was incapable of either originating a great national object, or of supporting it by adequate measures. So indomitable was her passion for dominion, that it as much obdurated her maternal feelings as it disqualified her for a judicious regent. She even studied to incapacitate her sons for the exercise of the governmental functions, and to divert their attention from the state of national affairs. With this end in view she involved them in the grossest dissipation, and strove to keep them in a perpetual whirl of voluptuous intoxication. Perfect in the art of dissimulation, she cajoled Catholics and Protestants. Anxious to obtain the support of all parties, she alternately favored the one and the other. To embarrass the Duke of Guise she threw everything into confusion; but to conciliate the Protestants she had to redeem her pledges; and in spite of the opposition of the court, to issue an act of toleration in their favor.
The lines of party became now distinctly drawn. The Protestant faction, headed by the Prince of Condé, and Coligny, admiral of France, was assisted by the English; and the Catholic faction, headed by Francis, Duke of Guise, was assisted by Spain. At a season of intense public excitement the Duke of Guise, with a band of adherents, was passing a barn in which some Calvinists were singing psalms. Irritating taunts were mutually exchanged between the two parties. This exasperating conduct brought on a collision, in which sixty Calvinists were killed, the flames of civil war ignited, and the empire divided and distracted by the hostile conflicts of the two religious parties. The duke, at the head of his forces, pursued the Protestants with pitiless revenge, and the Protestants retaliated his cruelties with fearful retribution. Desperate conflicts perpetually took place, and the land was drenched with blood. The bigotry of both factions stained their cause with deplorable excesses. At the battle of Dreux the belligerents came to a decisive engagement. The Protestants were defeated, and Condé captured. The Duke of Guise designing to crush Protestantism by striking a blow at Orleans, its centre, commenced active preparations for the enterprise; but while he was engaged in them he was shot by Poltrot de Mercy, a Huguenot nobleman. Advising peace in his last moments, terms of conciliation were accordingly offered the Protestants, which being accepted, tranquillity was restored to the empire.
The arts of Catherine, the intolerance of Catholicism, and the suspicion and fervor of Protestantism, soon convulsed the nation again with the disorders of civil war. Aspiring to rule with more absolute power than she had hitherto been able, Catherine conceived the idea of having the king, whom she held helplessly under her control, declared to be of competent age for the exercise of the royal functions. This accomplished, she made a tour through the empire in company with him. At Bayonne the young king had an interview with his sister, wife of Philip II., King of Spain. The suspicions of the Calvinists were immediately excited; they precipitately armed themselves for defence, and formed a conspiracy to assassinate the king. Civil war consequently broke out. A severe and bloody engagement took place at St. Dennis. The losses were heavy on both sides; but Montmorency, a prominent Catholic leader being killed, another treaty of peace was concluded. But the artifice and dissimulation of Catherine only made treaties which contained the elements of future wars. They satisfied neither the Catholics nor the Protestants; and were evaded by both. Contrary to the stipulations of the treaty of St. Dennis, the Calvinists still continued to hold places which they had contracted to surrender, and to continue correspondence with England and Holland, which they had agreed to break off. The inflammable material of religious bigotry, together with these circumstances, provoked another intestine war. The Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry III., commanded the Catholic faction; and Condé and Admiral Coligny headed the Protestant faction. At the battle of Jarnac, Condé was captured and shot; and at the battle of Montcontour Coligny was defeated. Amid these discomfitures of the Protestants a peace was offered them on terms of such extraordinary generosity by the Catholics, that they were unconditionally accepted.
Henry of Navarre, Condé's son, subsequently Henry IV., on hearing of his father's death swore to revenge his murder; but the peace which had just been concluded rendered him destitute of means and arms. His mother, Queen Jeanne d'Albret, after the death of her husband, Condé, King of Navarre, had, in order to avoid the intrigues of Catherine, retired from the French court to Bearn, her hereditary possessions. In this retreat she declared herself in favor of the Huguenots. When her son was but eleven years old the Guises, in conjunction with Philip II., King of Spain, devised a plot for depriving the young prince of his hereditary possessions in lower Navarre, and of placing him in the hands of the latter tyrant. The sagacity of Elizabeth, Queen of England, however, detected this conspiracy in time to frustrate it. In consequence of this base machination, Queen Jeanne d'Albert placed her son Henry, when he was but sixteen years old, at the head of a Protestant army, and caused him to take an oath to shed the last drop of his blood in the defence of his kingdom and religion.
Henry Guise, son of Francis Guise, Duke of Lorraine, became the commander of the royal army. The bloody Catherine, in collusion with this ambitious and bigoted duke, concocted a plot for the total extermination of all the Protestants in the French empire. The peace which had been concluded with the Protestants at Jarnac and Montcontour was but the preliminary measure in the accomplishment of this horrible project. The terms it accorded were so surprisingly advantageous to the conquered forces, that the more cautious Protestants regarded it with suspicion. The next device in this insidious plot, was a specious pretence of uniting all parties in interest and harmony by the bonds of two marriages, the one between the king, Charles IX., and Elizabeth, daughter of Maximilian II., Emperor of Germany, and the other between Margaret, the queen's sister, and Henry, Prince of Navarre. All the distinguished Protestant leaders were earnestly invited to be present at the celebration of the royal nuptials. Fearing treachery many of them, however, declined the honor. Amid the magnificence and festivity of the occasion Queen Jeanne d'Albert was poisoned. Shortly after Coligny was wounded by a shot from a window. The king swore to punish the villain who had attempted the assassination. His mother assured him Coligny had the same designs on his life. Bursting into rage he exclaimed: "Kill every Protestant—kill Coligny." Catherine then held her council of blood. All having been concerted for a general massacre, on Bartholomew's eve, at midnight of the day fixed, the church bells announced the signal for commencing the horrible butchery. Wild shrieks and murderous clamor immediately shook the air. "Spare none; it is God's, it is Catherine's it is the kings order." shouted the Catholic leaders as they led on their gangs of remorseless bigots. In the red glare of terrifying flambeaux, were seen daggers dripping with the blood of men, women, and even babes. The people without means of defence or flight saw they were doomed to perish without mercy or revenge. Coligny awakened from his sleep by the terrific yells and screams that filled the air, arose from his bed and opened the door of his mansion. Meeting the assassins, he courteously invited them into his chamber. "Companions," said he, "finish your work. Take the blood sixty years of war have respected: Coligny will forgive you. My life is of little consequence, and though I would rather lose it in defending you, yet take it." Touched at these words, and his calm, majestic countenance, the ruffians fell upon their knees; one of them threw away his dagger; another embraced the knees of his intended victim, and the courage of all dissolved into tears. Besme, the commander of the gang, who had waited in the court for Coligny's head, becoming impatient entered the chamber, and seeing the assassins overcome by humanity denounced them as traitors to Catherine. At this denunciation one of them averting his head, drew his sword and plunged it into Coligny's breast. For thirty days in every part of the kingdom the most atrocious acts were perpetrated. Doors were burst open; men and women assassinated night and day; babes torn from their mother's arms were murdered before their parents' eyes. Over this dreadful calamity the friends and foes of France might have together wept; but Rome was illuminated, cannons were fired in its honor, churches were shaken with the peals of thanksgiving, priests formed themselves into holy processions to testify their joy, jubilees were proclaimed, and the pope, jealous of the authorship of atrocities that shook the world with horror, had medals prepared to immortalize his right to the honor of having originated the most horrible massacre on record. When we consider the atrociousness of the massacre, and the exultations of the holy father, we are at a loss which most to pity, the victims of the catastrophe, or the fiend that rejoiced over it. After the incidents of that day Henry of Navarre and the Prince of Condé had to profess Catholicism in order to save their lives. This device defeating the designs of Catherine on the life of Henry, she next added to the ignominy of her character by attempting to dissolve the marriage which, through her influence, had just been consummated. Foiled in this scheme, she then sought to poison the happiness of the royal pair. To hold Henry spell-bound in the power of her fascinations, she spread around him all the voluptuous allurements of sensual pleasure. But the native magnanimity of his spirit broke the thralls of her enchantment; and secretly escaping from a corrupt and besotted court, he recanted his Catholicism, and placed himself at the head of the Protestant League as King of Navarre; a title which he had rightfully assumed since his mother's death. The revenge which was now rife on the lips of thousands, for slaughtered relatives and citizens, and the portentous disasters which overhung the empire, convinced Catherine of her error; and Charles, tracing the calamities of the nation to her ambition, resolved to atone for his past neglect by governing the empire himself: but death too soon deprived him of an opportunity to make this atonement.
On the death of Charles IX., Henry III., his brother, succeeded to the throne. But being then King of Poland, Catherine, his mother, was permitted to govern in his name until he should be able to assume the administration himself. Catherine immediately concluded a peace with the Huguenots, which granted them religious liberty But this liberal concession exasperated the Catholics, and afforded Henry Guise a pretext for perfecting a league which had been projected by Cardinal Lorraine. The professed object of this league was to defend Catholicism, and extirpate religious liberty; but it had also a secret object, which was to usurp the throne. After Henry III. had returned to his domains, his profligate disposition, and his want of decision and firmness made him the dupe of his mother's intrigues. By her machinations he was kept imprisoned in the royal palace, occupied with frivolous intrigues and stupefied with debauch, even while dissension was shaking his government, and treason plotting his downfall. Besides the unpopularity which his neglect of national affairs engendered in the minds of his subjects, his marriage with the Countess of Lorraine, giving the Guises increased influence in the government, added suspicion to the popular discontent.
By the support of the papal machinery, Henry Guise became sufficiently powerful to dictate laws to the king. He obliged him to annul all provisions in favor of the reformers, and carried his insolence so far that the king forbid him to approach the capitol. It was now discovered that the duke intended to kidnap the king, imprison him in a monastic dungeon, and usurp the imperial authority. Conscious of his power, the duke boldly violated the king's command, that he should not enter Paris. At this defiance the king called on his troops for assistance; but so effectively had the pope's machinery operated, that the people attacked the royal troops, drove them away, and thirty thousand papists sprung to arms in the defence of the duke. Such was the helplessness of the king that he had to fly for safety to Chartres, and to conclude a treaty with his enemy. Upon the assembling of the Estates of Blois, they decided that the duke was too powerful to be brought to trial, but that his open treason would justify the king in having him assassinated. Appearing to be reconciled to him he then partook of the eucharist in company with him; but while he did so, gave secret orders for his assassination. In a few days after this event the duke was stabbed as he entered the royal palace, and Cardinal Lorraine met the same fate in a dungeon. The severe disappointments which these melancholy events occasioned to the hopes of the Papal See, gave rise to a holy league against Henry III., headed by the Duke of Mayenne, brother of the Duke of Guise, which league was supported by all the resources of Rome. Every department of the papal machinery was now set in the most vigorous action. Paris and the principal cities of France were incited to declare against the king. The Sorbonne, the highest Catholic university in the empire, absolved the subjects from their allegiance to him; the pope threatened him with excommunication; and his assassination was publicly preached in the churches; But by a fortunate coalition with Henry of Navarre the king defeated the pope and his league, re-captured Paris, and established again his authority in the empire. Yet the Catholic church, which never forgives an offence, and scruples at no means to remove an obstacle, found a Dominican monk who executed her vengeance by the assassination of the king.