The civil law might justly repress such men, if not on the simple ground of teaching false doctrines, at least for their claim of right to destroy the liberty of those who professed the religion of their ancestors.
For some years the reform gained slowly in France, the emissaries of Calvin never relaxing their efforts, and finally winning to their side Queen Jane of Navarre, the Prince of Condé and the three famous brothers of the house of Chatillon, D'Andelot, Admiral Coligny, find the profligate Cardinal Odet. By this time the Protestant churches, true to their aggressive character, assumed a military organization, as White (p. 23) and Fauriel, a recent French Protestant author, admit, and aimed at the overthrow alike of Catholicity and royalty. This secret preparation for an armed attempt to secure the mastery of France had, by 1560, attained its full development.[Footnote 2] The moment had come for a grand effort which was to exterminate Catholicity from France as utterly as it has been from Sweden, where not even gratitude for their foremost struggle for independence saved the Catholic Dalecarlians from annihilation.
[Footnote 2: Consult Mémoires de Saulx Tavannes, p. 29; Lavallée, Histoire des Français, i. p. 575; Fauriel, Essai sur les Evénements qui ont précédé et antené le St. Barthélemy, p. 19-]
The position of affairs in France justified the hopes of the reformers. There were three parties in the state—the earnest Catholic party, headed by the Guises of Lorraine; the Huguenot party, directed by Calvin, with Condé in France as its future king, and Coligny as its master-spirit; and, as usual in such cases, a third party of weak men, who hampered the Catholics, and thus strengthened their opponents, by hesitation, uncertainty, and fitfulness.
The queen mother, Catharine de Medicis, disliked the house of Lorraine more than she loved Catholicity; and, jealous of the growing power of the Guises, was not disinclined to see the party of Condé counterbalance it. Hence, she generally threw her influence into the third party, in which figured the Duke d'Alençon, the Montmorencies, Cossé, Biron, and to which men like the famous Chancellor l'Hopital gave their influence. How little the true Catholic spirit, as we understand it now, prevailed among the higher nobility, may be inferred from the fact that the two great Protestant leaders, Condé and Coligny, were brothers of cardinals, their close relationship to princes of the Roman Church exerting no influence. One of these cardinals apostatized, and, after defying the pope, fled to England, to be poisoned by his valet; the other was a mere figure in the stirring scenes and times in which he lived.
Francis II., husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, on ascending the throne, placed the control of affairs in the hands of his uncles, the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise. This meant a firm government, not one to tolerate an imperium in imperio—a power able to put in the field, as Coligny boasted, one hundred and fifty thousand men.
Encouraged by the edict of January, 1560, the masses of the reformed party were, everywhere that their numbers permitted it, seizing Catholic churches and monasteries, expelling the inmates, demolishing every vestige of the ancient faith. While they were thus committing themselves, and overawing the Catholics, the leaders formed the celebrated plot of Amboise to assassinate the Guises, seize the person of the king, and, of course, the control of the government. In spite of his disavowal, made after it had failed, Calvin really approved of it at first. This White denies, (p. 82;) but the letter to Sturm, cited by Gandy, (p. 28,) is decisive; and in the very letter where he seems to condemn his followers, he says: "Had they not been opposed, in time our people would have seized many churches; … but there, too, they yielded with the same weakness." (Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Français, i. p. 250.) Coligny's complicity is as evident. The ostensible leader was Bary de la Renaudie, "whose enmity to Guise," says White, "probably made him renounce his religion and join the reformers."
Protestant writers all admit that the plot of Amboise would, if successful, have overthrown Catholicity for ever in France. The Guises saw the danger to themselves, to Catholicity, and to royalty, and acted with promptness and energy. Every road and avenue leading to the place was guarded, and the separate bands of the conspirators as they came up were met and crushed, la Renaudie, the ostensible leader, being slain.
Then followed a series of terrible criminal proceedings. The partisans of the rebellion were tried, condemned, and executed with as little mercy as English rulers ever manifested to Irish rebels. White puts the number executed at one thousand two hundred, but cites no authorities to justify so large an estimate.
After this affair at Amboise, "the political character of the Huguenots," as White admits, "became more prominent, and proved the temporary destruction of French Protestantism." The reformers committed many outrages on the Catholics after the failure at Amboise, especially in the districts where Montbrun and Mouvans swept through with the hand of destruction, till the latter perished miserably at Draguignan. Then followed a new Huguenot plot, formed by Condé and his brother Anthony, but Francis II. raised a considerable force, and, marching down, overawed them. Condé and the other Huguenot leaders were summoned to appear before him. D'Andelot fled; Condé appeared, was tried, and condemned; but before any other steps were taken Francis II. died in November. "Did you ever hear or read of anything so opportune as the death of the little king?" wrote Calvin; and Beza gloried over "the foul death of the miserable boy."