A Book of the Pyrenees

by S. Baring-Gould

Of the four that were on fire, two died on the spot. The other two—the Bastard of Foix and the Count de Joigny—died two days after in great agony.

Orthez contains the Calvinist University established here by Jeanne d’Albret, a building of the sixteenth century, now no longer used for the purpose designed.

The bridge over the Gave is picturesque; it has one broad arch spanning the river, and three pointed arches sustaining the road leading to it, raised high to avoid floods. On the main pier is a tower, whence in 1569 the Calvinist soldiery of Montgomery precipitated the priests who would not abjure the faith, upon the pointed rocks below.

Jeanne d’Albret, after the death of her husband, Antoine de Bourbon, threw off the mask, and set diligently to work Protestantizing her dominions. She put one of her pastors in the see of Oloron; her kinsman, d’Albret, Bishop of Lescar, apostatized and married. She found in many places that the people were ready for a change, especially such as had been subject to exactions from the monasteries, which owned much land and exercised extensive jurisdiction. In many, however, there was strong resistance. In 1566 she was about to absolutely interdict the exercise of the Catholic religion in Béarn, Foix, and Bigorre, when the resistance of the Estates and the threatening attitude of the people alarmed her and she withheld the edict for a time. In 1568, finding that Charles IX was about to send troops into her land to protect the oppressed Catholics, and fearing lest she should have her children taken from her, she fled to La Rochelle, the Geneva of French Calvinism.

Charles IX announced his resolution to take possession of Béarn. Bigorre was in revolt against her reforms, and a good many of the seigneurs of Béarn could not endure them. The King commissioned the terrible Monluc to pacify Bigorre, and the Baron de Terride to do the same in Béarn. The Béarnais were in difficulties. They were to a man loyal to their Viscountess, the titular Queen of Navarre, but a considerable number of them were opposed to her religious policy, and did not relish the taste of Calvinism. If they joined the forces of the King they were rebels to their sovereign. If they took up arms for her they fought for a religion that their soul abhorred. Nay, Pontacq, Morlaas, shut their gates against the royal forces, and were reduced. Lescar, Sauveterre, and Salies opened their gates to them.

Béarn was rapidly reduced. Clearly the object at which the King aimed was to bring it completely under the crown of France. Two syndics of Béarn addressed the King in the name of the Estates to declare that for eight centuries the viscounty had been independent, that the King of France was the protector but not the sovereign of the land. The Queen of Navarre now gave commission to the Count of Montgomery to drive the French out of her territories, and to establish throughout them the reform of Calvin as the sole religion permissible. Montgomery was the lieutenant of the Scottish Guard, who, in a tournament, in 1559, had inadvertently killed Henry II, King of France. Obliged to fly the land, he placed his sword at the disposal of any prince who was disposed to smite the Catholics and the Royalists hip and thigh. Obeying the orders of Jeanne, communicated to him from La Rochelle, Montgomery raised a body of sturdy Huguenots and entered Béarn.

Alarmed at the rapidity of his movements, and himself at the head of but a small body of men, the Baron de Terride retreated to Orthez, and shut himself up in the Castle of Moncada.

Montgomery arrived at Pontacq on 6 August, 1562, crossed the Gave, and advanced on Orthez. There, taking advantage of the gates being opened to receive fugitives from the villages round, some of his soldiers thrust in. Simultaneously the walls were escaladed, and the town was given up to indiscriminate slaughter. In the name of their queen, all the inhabitants were put to the sword.

The Gave rolled down the dead and flowed crimson with blood. The Protestant historian Olhagaray says: “The river was full of blood, the streets were heaped up with corpses. The convents were burnt. The cries of the dying and the shouts of the murderers, the lamentations of women and children filled the air with piteous sounds.” The Convent of the Cordeliers offered a theatre for barbarities. The friars were made to leap from the windows into the river, and were shot if they endeavoured to gain the bank.

No excuse offered for this massacre will avail. The town was not taken after a siege; it was not stormed by night; it was entered without offering resistance, in broad day. The butchery at Orthez leaves an indelible stain on the brow of Jeanne d’Albret.