This sudden rebellion was the work of Coligny, who, with his army of religious enthusiasts, and "all the restless, factious, and discontented, who linked their fortunes to a party whose triumph would involve confiscation of the wealth of the church," with German mercenaries and English plunderers, swept through the land with prayer on his lips and treason in his heart.
He cloaked his treason under the hypocritical pretext that he was in arms not against the king, but against the king's advisers. White allows himself to be deluded by this hypocritical sham, and in several places censures the treasonable conduct of the Cardinal of Lorraine and others, who wrote to the King of Spain soliciting his aid to save Catholicity in France, while Coligny, in arms against his king, making treaties with Elizabeth of England, introducing into France English and German mercenaries, is never branded as a traitor at all. And if Condé and Coligny merely sought to banish the Guises, how was that to be effected by pillaging Catholic churches? They took up arms to exterminate the leaders of the Catholic party and the clergy, suppress the Catholic worship, and place Condé on the throne. White, too, censures the pope for interfering, but neglects to put before his reader the fact that part of France, the Comté Venaissin, then belonged to the Holy See, and that in that part the Huguenots were committing the same ravages. Meanwhile the royal armies rallied; and, as a first step, endeavored to induce the Huguenot leaders to lay down their arms. Condé was so far influenced by the offers made, that he agreed to leave France if Guise would do the same, but Beza traversed the projects of peace. He besought the prince, says White, "not to give over the good work he had begun, which God, whose honor it concerned, would bring to perfection."
Negotiation failing, the royal troops began the campaign to recover the conquered cities. Blois, Tours, Poitiers, Angers, Bourges, and Rouen were at once retaken, and Orleans, the stronghold of reform, besieged. In the battle of Dreux, fought on the 19th of December, the rebels were utterly defeated, Condé remaining a prisoner in the hands of the royal forces.
While besieging Orleans, (February 18th,) Guise was assassinated by Jean Méré de Poltrot, a man whom Coligny aided with money, and who had revealed to that nobleman his project of murder. White's endeavor to exculpate Coligny is very lame. He deems it suspicious that Poltrot was executed at once without his being confronted with Coligny; as though the rebel general would have come into court for the purpose, in the very heat of the civil war. He finally, however, admits: "This leaves no doubt that Coligny assented, if he did not consent, to the crime. He was not unwilling to profit by it, though he would do nothing to further it. This may diminish the lofty moral pedestal on which some writers have placed the Protestant hero; but he was a man, and had all a man's failings, though he may have controlled them by his religious principles. Nor was assassination considered at all cowardly or disgraceful in those days; not more so than killing a man in a duel was, until very recently, among us."
As he knew the project and gave money, it is hard to see how "he would do nothing to further it." That he had all a man's failings is a very loose form of speech; so loose and broad that, if assassination was not then deemed cowardly or disgraceful, the subsequent killing of Coligny himself, "a man with all a man's failings," can scarcely be deemed cowardly or disgraceful. In fact, at the time, the Protestant party openly defended the murder of Guise, and Beza, not exempt himself from suspicion of complicity, "conferred on Poltrot the martyr's crown."
The Catholic party, thus deprived of its best military leader, (for Montmorency was a prisoner, and St. Andre was butchered in cold blood after the battle of Dreux,) again inclined to peace. A negotiation, opened through Condé, resulted in the pacification of Amboise, March 19th, 1563. This gave each man liberty to profess the religion of his choice in his own domicile, but restricted public worship of the Protestants more than the edict of January had done.
The conference at Bayonne between the French and Spanish courts has often been represented as a plot for the utter extermination of the Huguenots. White shows that it was but a series of festivities; and though the troubles were spoken of, neither court counselled violent measures. Even Alva went no further than suggesting the seizure of the most turbulent leaders.
Charles himself, favorable at Bayonne, became embittered against the reformers, as White himself states, by what he saw as he returned through the states of the Queen of Navarre, who had, with relentless fury, extirpated Catholicity from her territory.
The pacification could not restore peace to the excited public mind while the two antagonistic parties stood face to face. The favor shown to Condé after he joined in expelling his English allies from Havre, as well as to Coligny, whom Montmorency summoned to garrison Paris, emboldened the reformers. The remaining Catholic churches began to undergo the terrible profanation that visited so many, and with this came retaliation. The Protestant princes in Germany at this time appealed to Charles to show lenity to their fellow-believers in his kingdom. The French monarch rebuked their intermeddling, and added, "I might also pray them to permit the Catholics to worship freely in their own cities." And White admits that the Catholics there fared no better than the Huguenots in France.