Meanwhile the Huguenot party was preparing for a new effort to obtain complete control. A force raised to watch the Spanish movements in the Low Countries was made the pretext. A plot was formed to seize the king and his mother, and Coligny, to blind the court, remained superintending his vineyards. But on the 28th of September, 1567, all France was in flames. Fifty towns were seized, and a strong force of Huguenot cavalry dashed upon Meaux to seize the king. Charles, nearly entrapped by the specious L'Hopital, reached Paris, protected by a body of gentlemen under the Duke de Nemours, but Condé pressed so close that Charles more than once turned on his pursuers, and fought at the head of his little body-guard.
As before, the Catholics were without union or plan, while the Huguenots were an organized body of secret conspirators, acting on a well-concerted plan.
Protestant allegiance to a Catholic monarch has never been very strong; indeed, it seems simply a creature of circumstance, not a matter of obligation. The attempt to set aside a Catholic sovereign after the death of Edward VI. and of Charles II. has never been treated as a crime. In the same spirit, White sees nothing wrong in Condé except failure: "His failure (to seize the king's person) made him a traitor as well as a rebel." And yet, with that strange perversity of ideas that seems inherent in his school, he at once brands the Cardinal of Lorraine as a traitor for inviting in the King of Spain, as Condé had Elizabeth.
The battle of St. Denis, under the walls of Paris, cost the royal party the life of Montmorency, while it gave them a doubtful victory. The usual horrors again desolated France. Nismes, in 1567, witnessed its famous Michelade, or massacre of the Catholics. It was a deliberate act. White says none has attempted to justify it. He puts the number of victims at seventy or eighty, but cites no authority. Mesnard, in his Histoire de Nismes; and Vaissette, in his Histoire Générale de Languedoc, make it from one hundred and fifty to three hundred.
The military operations continued until Catharine visited the Huguenot camp, and effected the treaty of Longjumeau, (March 20th, 1568.) But this peace was as hollow as the rest. White charges that the Catholics put numbers of Protestants to death. The Huguenots certainly continued their destruction of Catholic churches. "Brequemant, one of their leaders," says White, "cheered them on to murder, wearing a string of priests' ears around his neck."
At last the Catholics saw the necessity of organizing, and in June, 1568, a Christian and Royal League was formed at Champagne, "to maintain the Catholic Church in France, and preserve the crown in the house of Valois, so long as it shall govern according to the Catholic and Apostolic religion."
This White qualifies as "a formidable league that shook the throne, and brought France to the brink of destruction:" while he has no such terms to apply to the military organization of the Huguenot churches, which was endeavoring to seize the government, and raise Condé to the throne under the name of Louis XIII.
The Catholics did not act too soon. The Huguenots were again ripe for action. The leaders retired to Rochelle, and France was again in arms. Elizabeth sent to Rochelle men, arms, and money; the Prince of Orange also promised aid.
The first great battle was fought at Jarnac, March 13th, 1569, where Condé was defeated and killed. Andelot died soon after, in May, and Duke Wolfgang, of Deux Ponts, who brought fourteen thousand Germans to swell the Huguenot ranks, soon followed. Coligny gained some advantage in the action at Roche Abeille, showing terrible cruelty to the prisoners; but in the battle of Moncontour his army of eighteen thousand was scattered to the winds, scarcely a thousand being left around him. Then cries for quarter were met by shouts of "Remember Roche Abeille!"