History of the Rise of the Huguenots

The Huguenots recover strength.

The events of the next two or three months certainly exhibited no diminution in the power or in the spirit of the Huguenots. St. Jean d'Angely, into which Count Montgomery had thrown himself, defied the entire army of Anjou, and the siege was abandoned. Angoulême, an equally tempting morsel, he tried to obtain, but failed. At Mucidan, a town somewhat to the south-west of Périgueux, he was more successful. But he effected its capture at the expense of the life of Brissac, one of his bravest officers – a loss which he attempted to avenge by murdering the garrison, after it had surrendered on condition that life and property should be spared.676 Within a month or two after the battle of Jarnac the Protestants at La Rochelle wrote, for Queen Elizabeth's information, that they were more powerful than ever, that Piles had brought them 4,000 recruits, that D'Andelot was soon to bring the viscounts with a large force.677

Death of D'Andelot.

But the course of that indefatigable warrior was now run. D'Andelot's excessive labors and constant exposure had brought on a fever to which his life soon succumbed. There were not wanting those, it is true, who ascribed his sudden death, like most of the deaths of important personages in the latter part of this century, to poison; and Huguenot and loyal pamphleteers alike laid the crime at the door of Catharine de' Medici.678 But there is no sufficient evidence to substantiate the accusation, and we must not unnecessarily ascribe this base act to a woman already responsible for too many undeniable crimes.679 The death of so gallant and true-hearted a nobleman, a faithful and unflinching friend of the Reformation from the time when it first began to spread extensively among the higher classes of the French population, and who had amply atoned for a momentary act of weakness, in the time of Henry the Second, by an uncompromising profession of his religion on every occasion during the reigns of that monarch's two sons, was deeply felt by his comrades in arms. As "colonel-general of the French infantry," he had occupied the first rank in this branch of the service,680 and his experience was as highly prized as his impetuous valor upon the field of battle. The brilliancy of his executive abilities seemed to all beholders indispensable to complement the more calm and deliberative temperament of his elder brother. It was natural, therefore, that the admiral, while pouring out his private grief for one who had been so dear to him, in a touching letter to D'Andelot's children,681 should experience as deep a sorrow for the loss of his wise and efficient co-operation. He might be pardoned a little despondency as he recalled the prophetic words that had dropped from D'Andelot's lips during a brief respite from his burning fever: "France shall have many woes to suffer with you, and then without you; but all will in the end fall upon the Spaniard!"682 The prospect was not bright. Peace was yet far distant – peace, which Coligny preferred a thousand times to his own life, but would not purchase dishonorably by the sacrifice of civil liberty and of the right to worship his God according to the convictions of his heart and conscience. The burden of the defence of the Protestants had appeared sufficiently heavy when Condé, a prince of the blood, was alive to share it with him. But now, with the entire charge of maintaining the party against a powerful and determined enemy, who had the advantage of the possession of the person of the king, and thus was able to cloak his ambitious designs with the pretence of the royal authority, and deprived of a brother whom the army had appropriately surnamed "le chevalier sans peur,"683 the task might well appear to demand herculean strength.

New responsibility imposed on Admiral Coligny.

Henry of Navarre had, indeed, just been recognized as general-in-chief, and he was accompanied by his cousin, Henry of Condé; but Navarre was a boy of little more than fifteen, and his cousin was not much older. Nothing could for the present be expected from such striplings; and the public, ever ready to look upon the comical side of even the most serious matters, was not slow in nicknaming them the "admiral's two pages."684 Coligny, however, was not crushed by the new responsibility which devolved upon him. No longer hampered by the authority of one whose counsels often verged on foolhardiness, he soon exhibited his consummate abilities so clearly, that even his enemies were forced to acknowledge that they had never given him the credit he deserved. "It was soon perceived," observes an author by no means friendly to the Huguenots, "that the accident (of Condé's death) had happened only in order to reveal in all its splendor the merits of the Admiral de Châtillon. The admiral had had during his entire life very difficult and complicated matters to unravel, and, nevertheless, he had never had any that were not far below his abilities, and in which, consequently, he had no need of exerting his full capacity. Thus those qualities that were rarest, and that exalted him most above others, remained hidden, through lack of opportunity, and would apparently have remained always concealed during the lifetime of the Prince of Condé, because the world would have attributed to the prince all those results to whose accomplishment it could not learn that the admiral had contributed more than had the former. But, after the battle of Jarnac had permitted the admiral to exhibit himself fully on the most famous theatre of Europe, the Calvinists perceived that they were not so unhappy as they thought, since they still had a leader who would prevent them from noticing the loss they had experienced, so many singular qualities had he to repair it."685

The Duke of Deux Ponts comes with German auxiliaries.

Wolfgang, Duke of Deux Ponts, had at length entered France, and was bringing to the Huguenots their long-expected succor. He had seven thousand five hundred reiters from lower Germany, six thousand lansquenets from upper Germany, and a body of French and Flemish gentlemen, under William of Orange and his brother, Mouy, Esternay and others, which may have swelled his army to about seventeen thousand men in all.686 In vain did his cousin, the Duke of Lorraine, attempt to dissuade him, offering to reimburse him the one hundred thousand crowns he had already spent upon the preparations for the expedition. Even Condé's death did not discourage him. He came, he said, to fight, not for the prince, but for "the cause."687 When about entering his Most Christian Majesty's dominions, he had published the reasons of his coming to assist the Huguenots. In this paper he treated as pure calumnies the accusations brought by their enemies against Condé, Coligny, and their associates, and proved his position by quoting the king's own express declaration, in the recent edicts of pacification, "that he recognized everything they had attempted as undertaken by his orders and for the good of the kingdom."688 The point was certainly well taken. Charles's various declarations were not remarkably consistent. In one, Condé was "his faithful servant and subject," and his acts were prompted by the purest of motives. In the next, he and his fellow-Huguenots were incorrigible rebels, with whom every method of conciliation had signally failed. But Charles did not trouble himself to attempt to smooth away these contradictions. He is even said to have replied to the envoy whom Deux Ponts sent him (April, 1569), demanding the restitution of the Edict of January and the payment of thirty thousand crowns due to Prince Casimir, that "Deux Ponts was too insignificant a personage (trop petit compagnon) to undertake to dictate laws to him, and that, as to the money, he would deliberate about that when the duke had laid down his arms."689

The secret of this arrogant demeanor is found in the fact that the court believed it impossible for the Germans to join Coligny. Even so late as the middle of May, when Deux Ponts had penetrated to Autun in Burgundy, Charles regarded the attempt as well nigh hopeless. The fortunes of the Huguenots were desperate. "There remains for them as their last resort," he wrote to one of his ambassadors, "but the single hope that the Duke of Deux Ponts will venture so far as to go to find them where they are. But there is little likelihood that an army of strangers, pursued by another of about equal strength – an army destitute of cities of its own, without means of passing the rivers, favored by no one in my kingdom, dying of hunger, so often harassed and put to inconvenience – should be able to make so long a journey without being lost and dissipated of itself, even had I no forces to combat it." "The duke," continued the king, "will soon repent of his mad project of entering France, and attempting to cross the Loire, where such good provision has been made to obstruct him."690

They overcome all obstacles and join Coligny.

Death of Deux Ponts.

Charles had not exaggerated the difficulties of the undertaking; but Deux Ponts, under the blessing of Heaven, surmounted them all. The discord between Aumale and Nemours rendered weak and useless an army that might, in the hands of a single skilful general, have checked or annihilated him.691 Mouy and his French comrades were good guides. The Loire was reached, while Aumale and Nemours followed at a respectful distance. Guerchy, an officer lately belonging to Coligny's army, discovered a ford by which a part of the Germans crossed. The main body laid siege to the town of La Charité, which was soon reduced (on the twentieth of May), the Huguenots thus gaining a bridge and stronghold that proved of great utility for their future operations. Six days after the king had demonstrated the impossibility of the enterprise, Deux Ponts was on the western side of the Loire.692 Meantime, Coligny and La Rochefoucauld were advancing to meet him with the élite of their army and with all the artillery they had. On approaching Limoges on the Vienne, they learned that the Germans had crossed the river and were but two leagues distant. Coligny at once took horse, and rode to their encampment, in order to greet and congratulate their leader. He was too late. The general, who had conducted an army five hundred miles through a hostile country, was in the last agonies of death, and on the next day (the eleventh of June) fell a victim to a fever from which he had for some time been suffering. "It is a thing that ought for all time to be remarked as a singular and special act of God," said a bulletin sent by the Queen of Navarre to Queen Elizabeth, "that He permitted this prince to traverse so great an extent of country, with a great train of artillery, infantry, and baggage, and in full view of a large army; and to pass so many rivers, and through so many difficult and dangerous places, of such kind that it is not in the memory of man that an army has passed through any similar ones, and by which a single wagon could not be driven without great trouble, so that it appears a dream to those who have not seen it; and that being out of danger, and having arrived at the place where he longed to be, in order to assist the churches of this realm, God should have been pleased, that very day, to take him to Himself; and, what is more, that his death should have produced no change or commotion in his army."693

Duke Wolfgang of Deux Ponts was quietly succeeded in the command of the German troops by Count Wolrad of Mansfeld. A day later the two armies met with lively demonstrations of joy. In honor of the alliance thus cemented a medal was struck, bearing on the one side the names and portraits of Jeanne and Henry of Navarre, and on the other the significant words, "Pax certa, victoria integra, mors honesta" – the triple object of their desires.694

Huguenot success at La Roche Abeille.

The combined army, now numbering about twenty-five thousand men, soon came to blows with the enemy. The Duke of Anjou, whose forces were somewhat superior in numbers, had approached within a very short distance of Coligny, but, unwilling to risk a general engagement, had intrenched himself in an advantageous position. A part of his army, commanded by Strozzi, lay at La Roche Abeille, where it was furiously assaulted by the Huguenots. Over four hundred royalists were left dead upon the field, and Strozzi himself was taken prisoner. The disaster had nearly proved still more serious; but a violent rain saved the fugitives by extinguishing the lighted matches upon which the infantry depended for the discharge of their arquebuses, and by seriously impeding the pursuit of the cavalry.695

Furlough of Anjou's troops.

Although the Duke of Anjou had recently received considerable reinforcements – about five thousand pontifical troops and twelve hundred Florentines, under the command of Sforza, Count of Santa Fiore696– it was now determined in a military council to disband the greater part of the army, giving to the French forces a short furlough, and, for the most part, trusting to the local garrisons to maintain the royal supremacy in places now in the possession of the Roman Catholics. In adopting this paradoxical course, the generals seem to have been influenced partly by a desire to furnish the "gentilhommes," serving at their own expense, an opportunity to revisit their homes and replenish their exhausted purses, and thus diminish the temptation to desertion which had thinned the ranks; partly, also, by the hope that the new German auxiliaries of the Huguenots would of themselves melt away in a climate to which they were unaccustomed.697

Huguenot petition to the king.

Meanwhile, the admiral, whose power had never been so great as it now was, exhibited the utmost anxiety to avert, if possible, any further effusion of blood. Under his auspices a petition was drawn up in the name of the Queen of Navarre, and the Princes, Seigneurs, Chevaliers, and gentlemen composing the Protestant army. A messenger was sent to the Duke of Anjou to request a passport for the deputies who were to carry it to the court. But the duke was unwilling to terminate a war in which he had (whether deservedly or not) acquired so much reputation, and reluctant to be forced to resume the place of a subject near a brother whose capricious and jealous humor he had already experienced. He therefore either refused or delayed compliance with the admiral's demand.698 Coligny succeeded, however, in forwarding the document to his cousin Francis, Marshal of Montmorency – a nobleman who, although he had not taken up arms with the Huguenots, virtually maintained, on his estates near Paris, a neutrality which, from the suspicion it excited, was not without its perils. Montmorency laid the petition before Catharine and the king.

The single purpose of the Huguenots.

The voluminous state papers of the period would possess little claim to our attention, were it not for the singleness of purpose which they exhibit as animating the patriotic party through a long succession of bloody wars. The Huguenots were no rebels seeking to undermine the authority of the crown, no obstinate democrats striving to carry into execution an impracticable scheme of government,699 no partisans struggling to supplant a rival faction. They were not turbulent lovers of change. They had for their leaders princes and nobles with interests all on the side of the maintenance of order, men whose wealth was wasted, whose magnificent palaces were plundered of their rich contents,700 whose lives, with the lives of their wives and children, were jeoparded in times of civil commotion. Even the unauthorized usurpations of the foreigners from Lorraine701 would not have been sufficient to move the greater part of them to a resort to the sword. Their one purpose, the sole object which they could not renounce, was the securing of religious liberty. The Guises – even that cruel and cowardly cardinal with hands dripping with the blood of the martyrs of a score of years – were nothing to them, except as impersonations of the spirit of intolerance and persecution. Liberty to worship their God in good conscience was their demand alike after defeats and after successes, under Louis de Bourbon or under Gaspard de Coligny. They did, indeed, sympathize with the first family of the blood, deprived of the position near the throne to which immemorial custom entitled it – and what true Frenchman did not? But Admiral Coligny, rather than the Prince of Condé, was the type of the Huguenot of the sixteenth century – Coligny, the heroic figure that looms up through the mist of the ages and from among the host of meaner men, invested with all the attributes of essential greatness – pious, loyal, truthful, brave, averse to war and bloodshed, slow to accept provocation, resolute only in the purpose to secure for himself and his children the most important among the inalienable prerogatives of manhood, the freedom of professing and practising his religious faith.

The present petition differed little from its predecessors. It reiterated the desire of the Huguenots for peace – a desire evidenced on so many occasions, sometimes when prudence might have dictated a course opposite to that which they adopted. The return they had received for their moderation could be read in broken edicts, and in "pacifications" more sanguinary than the wars they terminated. The Protestant princes and gentlemen, therefore, entreated Charles "to make a declaration of his will respecting the liberty of the exercise of the reformed religion in the form of a solemn, perpetual, and irrevocable edict." They begged him "to be pleased to grant universally to all his subjects, of whatever quality or condition they might be, the free exercise of that religion in all the cities, villages, hamlets, and other places of his kingdom, without any exception, reservation, modification, or restriction as to persons, times, or localities, with the necessary and requisite securities." True, however, to the spirit of the age, which dreaded unbridled license of opinion as much as it did the intolerance of the papal system, the Huguenots were careful to preclude the "Libertines" from sheltering themselves beneath this protection, by calling upon Charles to require of all his subjects the profession of the one or the other religion702– so far were even the most enlightened men of their country and period from understanding what spirit they were of, so far were they from recognizing the inevitable direction of the path they were so laboriously pursuing!

It scarcely needs be said that the petition received no attention from a court not yet tired of war. Marshal Montmorency was compelled to reply to Coligny, on the twentieth of July, that Charles refused to take notice of anything emanating from the admiral or his associates until they should submit and return to their duty. Coligny answered in a letter which closed the negotiations; protesting that since his enemies would listen to no terms of accommodation, he had, at least, the consolation of having done all in his power to avert the approaching desolation of the kingdom, and calling upon God and all the princes of Europe to bear witness to the integrity of his purpose.703

Coligny's plans overruled.

Disastrous siege of Poitiers.

The Huguenots now took some advantage of the temporary weakness of the enemy in the open field. On the one hand they reduced the city of Châtellerault and the fortress of Lusignan, hitherto deemed impregnable.704 On the other, they despatched into Béarn the now famous Count Montgomery, who, joining the "viscounts," was successful in wresting the greater part of that district from the hands of Terrides, a skilful captain sent by Anjou, and in restoring it to the Queen of Navarre.705 Respecting their plan of future operations a great diversity of opinion prevailed among the Huguenot leaders. Admiral Coligny was strongly in favor of pressing on to the north, and laying siege to Saumur. With this place in his possession, as it was reasonable to suppose it soon might be, he would enjoy a secure passage across the river Loire into Brittany, Anjou, and more distant provinces, as he already had access by the bridge of La Charité to Burgundy, Champagne, and the German frontier. Unfortunately the majority of the generals regarded it as a matter of more immediate importance to capture Poitiers, a rich and populous city, said at that time to cover more ground than any other city in France, with the single exception of Paris. They supposed that their recent successes at Châtellerault and Lusignan, on either side of Poitiers, and the six pieces of cannon they had taken at Lusignan would materially help them. Coligny reluctantly yielded to their urgency, and the army which had appeared before Poitiers on the twenty-fourth of July, 1569,706 began the siege three days later. It was a serious blunder. The Huguenots succeeded, indeed, in capturing a part of the suburbs, and in reducing the garrison to great straits for food; but they were met with great determination, and with a singular fertility of expedient. The Count de Lude was the royal governor. Henry, Duke of Guise (son of the nobleman assassinated near Orleans in 1563), with his brother Charles, Duke of Mayenne, and other good captains, had thrown himself into Poitiers two days before Coligny made his appearance. It was Guise's first opportunity to prove to the world that he had inherited his father's military genius; and the glory of success principally accrued to him. He met the assailants in the breach, and contested every inch of ground. Their progress was obstructed by chevaux-de-frise and other impediments. Boiling oil was poured upon them from the walls. Burning hoops were adroitly thrown over their heads. Pitch and other inflammable substances fell like rain upon their advancing columns. They were not even left unmolested in their camp. A dam was constructed on the river Clain, and the inundation spread to the Huguenot quarters. To these difficulties raised by man were added the ravages of disease. Many of the Huguenot generals, and the admiral himself, were disabled, and the mortality was great among the private soldiers.

In spite of every obstacle, however, it seemed probable that Coligny would carry the day. "The admiral's power exceedeth the king's," wrote Cecil to Nicholas White: "he is sieging of Poitiers, the winning or losing whereof will make an end of the cause. He is entered within the town by assault, but the Duke of Guise, etc., are entrenched in a stronger part of the town; and without the king give a battle, it is thought that he cannot escape from the admiral."707 Just at this moment, the Duke of Anjou, assembling the remnants of his forces, appeared before Châtellerault; and the peril to the Huguenot city seemed so imminent, that Coligny was compelled to raise the siege of Poitiers, on the ninth of September, and hasten to its relief. Seven weeks of precious time had been lost, and more than two thousand lives had been sacrificed by the Huguenots in this ill-advised undertaking. The besieged lost but three or four hundred men.708 Great was the delight manifested in Paris, where, during the prevalence of the siege, solemn processions had gone from Notre Dame to the shrine of Sainte Geneviève, to implore the intercession of the patron of the city in behalf of Poitiers.709

Meanwhile the Huguenots had been more fortunate on the upper Loire, where La Charité sustained a siege of four weeks by a force of seven thousand Roman Catholics under Sansac. Its works were weak, its garrison small, but every assault was bravely met. In the end the assailants, after severe losses experienced from the enemy and from a destructive explosion of their own magazine, abandoned their enterprise in a panic, on hearing an ill-founded rumor of Coligny's approach.710

Cruelties to the Huguenots in the prisons of Orleans.

It was fortunate for the Protestants of the north and east that they still had Sancerre and La Charité as asylums from the violence of their enemies. Far from their armed companions, there was little protection for their lives or their property. The edict of the preceding September, assuring to peaceable Protestants freedom from molestation in their homes, was as much a dead letter as any of its predecessors. The government, the courts of justice, and the populace, were equally eager to oppress them. At Orleans the "lieutenant-general" placed all the Huguenots of the city, without distinction of age or sex, in the public prisons, upon pretext of providing for the public security. A few days after (on the twenty-first of August) the people, inflamed to fanaticism by seditious priests, attacked these buildings. They succeeded in breaking into the first prison, and every man, woman, and child was murdered. The door of the second withstood all their attempts to gain admission. But the bloodthirsty mob would not be balked of its prey. The whole neighborhood was ransacked for wood and other combustible materials, and willing hands kindled the fire. As the flames rose high above the doomed house, parents who had lost all hope of saving their own lives sought to preserve the lives of their infant children by throwing them to relatives or acquaintances whom they recognized among their persecutors. But there are times when the heart of man knows no pity. The laymen who had been taught that heretics must be exterminated, even to the babe in the cradle, now put into practice the savage lesson they had learned from their spiritual instructors. Fathers and brothers took a cruel pleasure in receiving the hapless infants on the point of their pikes, or in despatching them with halberds, reserving the same fate for any of more mature age who might venture to appeal from the devouring flames to their merciless fellow-men. The number of the victims of sword and fire is said to have reached two hundred and eighty persons.711