The triumvirate’s relations with Spain and Rome were very close; they had complete ascendancy over the king and over Catherine; and now the massacre of two hundred Protestants at Vassy on the 1st of March 1562 made Character of the religious wars. the cup overflow. The duke of Guise had either ordered this, or allowed it to take place, on his return from an interview with the duke of Württemberg at Zabern, where he had once more demanded the help of his Lutheran neighbours against the Calvinists; and the Catholics having celebrated this as a victory the signal was given for the commencement of religious wars. When these eight fratricidal wars first began, Protestants and Catholics rivalled one another in respect for royal authority; only they wished to become its masters so as to get the upper hand themselves. But in course of time, as the struggle became embittered, Catholicism itself grew revolutionary; and this twofold fanaticism, Catholic and Protestant, even more than the ambition of the leaders, made the war a ferocious one from the very first. Beginning with surprise attacks, if these failed, the struggle was continued by means of sieges and by terrible exploits like those of the Catholic Montluc and the Protestant des Adrets in the south of France. Neither of these two parties was strong enough to crush the other, owing to the apathy and continual desertions of the gentlemen-cavaliers who formed the élite of the Protestant army and the insufficient numbers of the Catholic forces. Allies from outside were therefore called in, and this it was that gave a European character to these wars of religion; the two parties were parties of foreigners, the Protestants being supported by German Landsknechts and Elizabeth of England’s cavalry, and the royal army by Italian, Swiss or Spanish auxiliaries. It was no longer patriotism but religion that distinguished the two camps. There were three principal theatres of war: in the north Normandy and the valley of the Loire, where Orleans, the general centre of reform, ensured communications between the south and Germany; in the south-west Gascony and Guienne; in the south-east Lyonnais and Vivarais.
In the first war, which lasted for a year (1562-1563), the triumvirs wished to secure Orleans, previously isolated. The threat of an English landing decided them to lay siege to Rouen, and it was taken by assault; but this First religious war. cost the life of the versatile Antoine de Bourbon. On the 19th of December 1562 the duke of Guise barred the way to Dreux against the German reinforcements of d’Andelot, who after having threatened Paris were marching to join forces with the English troops for whom Coligny and Condé had paid by the cession of Havre. The death of marshal de St André, and the capture of the constable de Montmorency and of Condé, which marked this indecisive battle, left Coligny and Guise face to face. The latter’s success was of brief duration; for on the 18th of February 1563 Poltrot de Méré assassinated him before Orleans, which he was trying to take once and for all. Catherine, relieved by the loss of an inconvenient preceptor, and by the disappearance of the other leaders, became mistress of the Catholic party, of whose strength and popularity she had now had proof, and her idea was to make peace at once on the best terms possible. The egoism of Condé, who got himself made lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and bargained for freedom of worship for the Protestant nobility only, compromised the future of both his church and his party, though rendering possible the peace of Amboise, concluded the 19th of March 1563. All now set off together to recapture Havre from the English.
The peace, however, satisfied no one; neither Catholics (because of the rupture of religious unity) nor the parlements; the pope, the emperor and king of Spain alike protested against it. Nor yet did it satisfy the Protestants, Peace of Amboise (1563). who considered its concessions insufficient, above all for the people. It was, however, the maximum of tolerance possible just then, and had to be reverted to; Catherine and Charles IX. soon saw that the times were not ripe for a third party, and that to enforce real toleration would require an absolute power which they did not possess. After three years the Guises reopened hostilities against Coligny, whom they accused of having plotted the murder of their chief; while the Catholics, egged on by the Spaniards, rose against the Protestants, who had been made uneasy by an interview between Catherine and her daughter Elizabeth, wife of Philip II. of Spain, at Bayonne, and by the duke of Alva’s persecutions of the reformed church of the Netherlands—a daughter-church of Geneva, like their own. The second civil war began like the Second civil war.
Peace of Longjumeau. first with a frustrated attempt to kidnap the king, at the castle of Montceaux, near Meaux, in September 1567; and with a siege of Paris, the general centre of Catholicism, in the course of which the constable de Montmorency was killed at Saint-Denis. Condé, with the men-at-arms of John Casimir, son of the Count Palatine, tried to starve out the capital; but once more the defection of the nobles obliged him to sign a treaty of peace at Longjumeau on the 23rd of March 1568, by which the conditions of Amboise were re-established. After the attempt at Montceaux the Protestants had to be contented with Charles IX.’s word.
This peace was not of long duration. The fall of Michel de l’Hôpital, who had so often guaranteed the loyalty of the Huguenots, ruined the moderate party (May 1568). Catholic propaganda, revived by the monks and the Third war. Jesuits, and backed by the armed confraternities and by Catherine’s favourite son, the duke of Anjou, now entrusted with a prominent part by the cardinal of Lorraine; Catherine’s complicity in the duke of Alva’s terrible persecution in the Netherlands; and her attempt to capture Coligny and Condé at Noyers all combined to cause a fresh outbreak of hostilities in the west. Thanks to Tavannes, the duke of Anjou gained easy victories at Jarnac over the prince of Condé, who was killed, and at Moncontour over Coligny, who was wounded (March-October 1569); but these successes were rendered fruitless by the jealousy of Charles IX. Allowing the queen of Navarre to shut herself up in La Rochelle, the citadel of the reformers, and the king to loiter over the siege of Saint Jean d’Angély, Coligny pushed boldly forward towards Paris and, having reached Burgundy, defeated the royal army at Arnay-le-duc. Catherine had exhausted all her resources; and having failed in her project of remarrying Philip II. to one of her daughters, and of betrothing Charles IX. to the eldest of the Austrian archduchesses, exasperated also by the presumption of the Lorraine family, who aspired to the marriage of their nephew with Charles IX.’s Peace of St Germain (1570). sister, she signed the peace of St Germain on the 8th of August 1570. This was the culminating point of Protestant liberty; for Coligny exacted and obtained, first, liberty of conscience and of worship, and then, as a guarantee of the king’s word, four fortified places: La Rochelle, a key to the sea; La Charité, in the centre; Cognac and Montauban in the south.
The Guises set aside, Coligny, supported as he was by Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre, now received all Charles IX.’s favour. Catherine de’ Medici, an inveterate matchmaker, and also uneasy at Philip II.’s increasing Coligny and the Netherlands. power, made advances to Jeanne, proposing to marry her own daughter, Marguerite de Valois, to Jeanne’s son, Henry of Navarre, now chief of the Huguenot party. Coligny was a Protestant, but he was a Frenchman before all; and wishing to reconcile all parties in a national struggle, he “trumpeted war” (cornait la guerre) against Spain in the Netherlands—despite the lukewarmness of Elizabeth of England and the Germans, and despite the counter-intrigues of the pope and of Venice. He succeeded in getting French troops sent to the Netherlands, but they suffered defeat. None the less Charles IX. still seemed to see only through the eyes of Coligny; till Catherine, fearing to be supplanted by the latter, dreading the results of the threatened war with Spain, and egged on by a crowd of Italian adventurers in the pay of Spain—men like Gondi and Birague, reared like herself in the political theories and customs of their native land—saw no hope but in the assassination of this rival in her son’s esteem. A murderous attack upon Coligny, who had opposed the candidature of Catherine’s favourite son, the duke of Anjou, for the throne of Poland, having only succeeded in wounding him and in exciting the Calvinist leaders, who were congregated in Paris for the occasion of Marguerite de Valois’ marriage with the king of Navarre, Catherine St Bartholomew, August 24, 1572. and the Guises resolved together to put them all to death. There followed the wholesale massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, in Paris and in the provinces; a natural consequence of public and private hatreds which had poisoned the entire social organism. This massacre had the effect of preventing the expedition into Flanders, and destroying Francis I.’s policy of alliance with the Protestants against the house of Austria.
Catherine de’ Medici soon perceived that the massacre of St Bartholomew had settled nothing. It had, it is true, dealt a blow to Calvinism just when, owing to the reforms of the council of Trent, the religious ground had been The party of the politiques. crumbling beneath it. Moreover, within the party itself a gulf had been widening between the pastors, supported by the Protestant democracy and the political nobles. The reformers had now no leaders, and their situation seemed as perilous as that of their co-religionists in the Netherlands; while the sieges of La Rochelle and Leiden, the enforced exile of the prince of Orange, and the conversion under pain of death of Henry of Navarre and the prince of Condé, made the common danger more obvious. Salvation came from the very excess of the repressive measures. A third party was once more formed, composed of moderates from the two camps, and it was recruited quite as much by jealousy of the Guises and by ambition as by horror at the massacres. There were the friends of the Montmorency party—Damville at their head; Coligny’s relations; the king of Navarre; Condé; and a prince of the blood, Catherine de’ Medici’s third son, the duke of Alençon, tired of being kept Fourth War. Edict of Boulogne (1573). in the background. This party took shape at the end of the fourth war, followed by the edict of Boulogne (1573), forced from Charles IX. when the Catholics were deprived of their leader by the election of his brother, the duke of Anjou, as king of Poland. A year later the latter succeeded his brother on the throne of France as Henry III. This meant a new lease of power for the queen-mother.
The politiques, as the supporters of religious tolerance and an energetic repression of faction were called, offered their alliance to the Huguenots, but these, having formed Fifth War. themselves, by means of the Protestant Union, into a sort of republic within the kingdom, hesitated to accept. It is, however, easy to bring about an understanding between people in whom religious fury has been extinguished either by patriotism or by ambition, like that of the duke of Alençon, who had now escaped from the Louvre where he had been confined on account of his intrigues. The compact was concluded at Millau; Condé becoming a Protestant once more in order to treat with Damville, Montmorency’s brother. Henry of Navarre escaped from Paris. The new king, Henry III., Henry III. (1574-1589). vacillating and vicious, and Catherine herself, eager for war as she was, had no means of separating the Protestants and the politiques. Despite the victory of Guise at Dormans, the agreement between the duke of Alençon and John Casimir’s German army obliged the royal party to grant all that the allied forces demanded of them in the “peace of Monsieur,” signed at Beaulieu on the 6th of May Peace of Monsieur (1576). 1576, the duke of Alençon receiving the appanage of Anjou, Touraine and Berry, the king of Navarre Guienne, and Condé Picardy, while the Protestants were granted freedom of worship in all parts of the kingdom except Paris, the rehabilitation of Coligny and the other victims of St Bartholomew, their fortified towns, and an equal number of seats in the courts of the parlements.
This was going too fast; and in consequence of a reaction against this too liberal edict a fourth party made its appearance, that of the Catholic League, under the Guises—Henry le Balafré, duke of Guise, and his two brothers, Charles, The Catholic League. duke of Mayenne, and Louis, archbishop of Reims and cardinal. With the object of destroying Calvinism by effective opposition, they imitated the Protestant organization of provincial associations, drawing their chief supporters from the upper middle class and the lesser nobility. It was not at first a demagogy maddened by the preaching of the irreconcilable clergy of Paris, but a union of the more honest and prudent classes of the nation in order to combat heresy. Despite the immorality and impotence of Henry III. and the Protestantism of Henry of Navarre, this party talked of re-establishing the authority of the king; but in reality it inclined more to the Guises, martyrs in the good cause, who were supported by Philip II. of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII. A sort of popular government was thus established to counteract the incapacity of royalty, and it was in the name of the imperilled rights of the people that, from the States of Blois onward, this Holy League demanded the re-establishment of Catholic unity, and set the religious right of the nation in opposition to the divine right of incapable or evil-doing kings (1576).
In order to oust his rival Henry of Guise, Henry III. made a desperate effort to outbid him in the eyes of the more extreme Catholics, and by declaring himself head of the League The States of Blois (1576).
Sixth War and peace of Bergerac (1577). Seventh War and peace of Fleix (1580). degraded himself into a party leader. The League, furious at this stroke of policy, tried to impose a council of thirty-six advisers upon the king. But the deputies of the third estate did not support the other two orders, and the latter in their turn refused the king money for making war on the heretics, desiring, they said, not war but the destruction of heresy. This would have reduced Henry III. to impotence; fortunately for him, however, the break of the Huguenots with the “Malcontents,” and the divisions in the court of Navarre and in the various parties at La Rochelle, allowed Henry III., after two little wars in the south west, during which fighting gradually degenerated into brigandage, to sign terms of peace at Bergerac (1577), which much diminished the concessions made in the edict of Beaulieu. This peace was confirmed three years after by that of Fleix. The suppression of both the leagues was stipulated for (1580). It remained, however, a question whether the Holy League would submit to this.
The death of the duke of Anjou after his mad endeavour to establish himself in the Netherlands (1584), and the accession of Henry of Navarre, heir to the effeminate Henry III., reversed the situations of the two parties: the Protestants Union between the Guises and Philip II. again became supporters of the principle of heredity and divine right; the Catholics appealed to right of election and the sovereignty of the people. Could the crown of the eldest daughter of the Church be allowed to devolve upon a relapsed heretic? Such was the doctrine officially preached in pulpit and pamphlet. But between Philip II. on the one hand—now master of Portugal and delivered from William of Orange, involved in strife with the English Protestants, and desirous of avenging the injuries inflicted upon him by the Valois in the Netherlands—and the Guises on the other hand, whose cousin Mary Stuart was a prisoner of Queen Elizabeth, there was a common interest in supporting one another and pressing things forward. A definite agreement was made between them at Joinville (December 31, 1584), the religious and popular pretext being the danger of leaving the kingdom to the king of Navarre, and the ostensible end to secure the succession to a Catholic prince, the old Cardinal de Bourbon, an ambitious and violent man of mean intelligence; while the secret aim was to secure the crown for the Guises, who had already attempted to fabricate for themselves a genealogy tracing their descent from Charlemagne. In the meantime Philip II., being rid of Don John of Austria, whose ambition he dreaded, was to crush the Protestants of England and the Netherlands; and the double result of the compact at Joinville was to allow French politics to be controlled by Spain, and to transform the wars of religion into a purely political quarrel.