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History of the Rise of the Huguenots
Had persecution, war, and treachery succeeded?
The courtiers had already turned their eyes from the dead monarch to the successor whose speedy return from Poland all eagerly awaited. Henry the Third had already precipitately fled from Cracow, and was on his way to assume his ancestral throne. He was to find the kingdom plunged in disquiet, a prey to internal discord fostered by foreign princes. Neither Huguenot nor Roman Catholic was satisfied. A full half-century from the first promulgation of the reformed doctrines by Lefèvre d'Étaples found the friends of the purer faith more resolute than ever in its assertion, despite fire, massacre, and open warfare. No candid beholder could deny that the system of persecution had thus far proved an utter failure. It remained to be seen whether the new king would choose to repeat a dangerous experiment.
1
The nuncio alone seems to have thought that the edict would work so well, that "in six months, or a year at farthest, there would not be a single Huguenot in France!" His ground of confidence was that many, if not most of the reformed, were influenced, not by zeal for religion, but by cupidity. Santa Croce to Card. Borromeo, Jan. 17, 1562, Aymon, i. 44; Cimber et Danjou, vi. 30.
2
Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 428, 429. The letter is followed by an examination of the edict, article by article, as affecting the Protestants. Ib. i. 429-431.
3
Abbé Bruslart, Mém. de Condé. i. 70. Barbaro spoke the universal sentiment of the bigoted wing of the papal party when he described "the decree" as "full of concealed poison," as "the most powerful means of advancing the new religion," as "an edict so pestiferous and so poisonous, that it brought all the calamities that have since occurred." Tommaseo, Rel. des Amb. Vén., ii. 72.
4
Claude Haton, 211. "Et longtemps depuis ne faisoient sermon qu'ilz
Appendix to Mém. de Claude Haton, ii. 1, 110.
5
Ante, i. 477.
6
Mém. de Claude Haton, 211, 212.
7
Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 431.
8
Abbé Bruslart, Mém. de Condé. i. 70, 71.
9
Declaration of Feb. 14, 1561/2, Du Mont, Corps diplomatique, v. 91, 92.
10
And, indeed, with modifications which were to render it still more severe. Letter of Beza to Calvin, Feb. 26, 1562, Baum, ii., App., 167.
11
The registry took place on Friday, March 6th. Isambert, xiv. 124; La Fosse, 45, who says "Ledict édict fut publié en la salle du palais en ung vendredy, 5e [6e] de ce moys, là où il y eut bien peu de conseillers et le président Baillet qui signèrent."
12
The same prelate to whom Cardinal Lorraine doubtless referred in no complimentary terms, when, at the assembly of the clergy at Poissy, he said, "qu'il estoit contrainct de dire, Duodecim sumus, sed unus ex nobis Diabolus est, et passant plus outre, qu'il y avoit ung evesque de la compagnie … qui avoit revelé ce qui se faisoit en laditte assemblée," etc. Journal de Bruslart, Mém. de Condé, i. 50.
13
See the document in Schlosser, Leben des Theodor de Beze, App., 359-361; Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 436, 437.
14
Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 436-450; Baum, ii. 512-545. In connection with Prof. Baum's long and thorough account of the colloquy, Beza's correspondence, printed in the appendix, is unusually interesting.
15
"Cardinalium intercessione ac precibus mox soluta sunt omnia." Beza to Bullinger, March 2, 1562. Baum, ii., App., 169.
16
"Nihil hoc consilio gratius accidere potuit nostris adversariis quibus iste ludus minime placebat, adeo ut ipse Demochares … pene sui oblitus in meos amplexus rueret, et ejus sodales honorifice me salutarent!" Beza to Calvin, Feb. 26, 1562, ibid., 165. The Venetian Barbaro represents this second conference as an extremely efficient means of spreading heresy: "La qual [in San Germano] apportò un grandissimo scandalo e pregiudizio alla religion nostra, e diede alla loro, reputazione e fomento maggiore." Rel. des Amb. Vén., ii. 74.
17
Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 432.
18
"Qu'il ne s'y mettroit si avant qu'il ne s'en pust aisement tirer." Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ubi supra.
19
See the frank letter of Calvin, written to him about this time, in Bonnet, Lettres franç., ii. 441; Calvin's Letters, Amer. ed., iv. 247.
20
"That pestilent yle of Sardigna!" exclaimed Sir Thomas Smith, a clever diplomatist and a nervous writer, "that the pore crowne of it should enter so farre into the pore Navarrian hed (which, I durst warraunt, shall never ware it), [as to] make him destroy his owen countrey, and to forsake the truth knowen!" Forbes, State Papers, ii. 164.
21
Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ubi supra; De Thou, iii. (liv. xxviii.), 96-99.
22
Letter of Beza to Calvin, Feb. 1, 1562, Baum, ii., App., 163.
23
Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., i. 433.
24
Letter to Calvin, Feb. 26, 1562, apud Baum, ii., App., 167, 168.
25
Ibid., ubi supra.
26
Recordon, Le protestantisme en Champagne (Paris, 1863), from MSS. of Nicholas Pithou, p. 105. This learned jurist, the equal of his more celebrated brothers in ability, and their superior in moral courage, has left his testimony respecting the beneficent influence of the reformed doctrines upon his fellow-citizens: "A la verité la ville de Troyes en général fit une perte incroyable en la rupture de cette Église. Car c'était une grande beauté et chose plus que émerveillable de la voir si bien fleurie. Il se voyoit en la jeunesse, touchée par la prédication de la parole de Dieu, qui auparavant était si dépravée que rien plus, un changement si subit et si étrange que les catholiques mêmes en étoient tout étonnés. Car, tels qui au précédent se laissaient aller du tout à leurs voluptez et s'étaient plongez en gourmandises, yvrogneries et jeux défendus, tellement qu'ils y passaient la plus grande et meilleure partie du temps, et faisaient un fort mauvais ménage, depuis qu'ils étaient entrés dans l'Église quittaient du tout leur vie passée et la détestaient, se rangeant et se soumettant allègrement à la discipline ecclésiastique, ce qui était si agréable aux parents de tels personnages, que, quoiqu'ils fussent catholiques, ils en louaient Dieu." Ibid., pp. 107, 108.
27
"Nous avons espérance que non seulement la jeunesse d'icy se façonnera par la main d'un si excellent ouvrier qui nous est venu; mais que les chanoines mesmes de Sainte-Croix le viendront ouyr en ses leçons, ce qu'ils ont desja déclaré. De quoy sortiront des fruicts surmontant toute expectation." Gaberel, Hist. de l'égl. de Genève, i., Pièces justificatives, 168.
28
The archives of Stuttgart contain the instructive correspondence which the Duke of Guise had, ever since the previous summer, maintained with the Duke of Würtemberg. From the letters published in the Bulletin of the French Protestant Historical Society (February and March, 1875), we see that François endeavored to alienate Christopher from the Huguenots by representing the latter as bitter enemies of the Augsburg Confession, and as speaking of it with undisguised contempt. (Letter of July 2, 1561, Bull., xxiv. 72.) Christopher made no reply to these statements, but urged his correspondent to a candid examination of religious truth, irrespective of age or prescription, reminding him (letter of Nov. 22, 1561) that our Lord Jesus Christ "did not say 'I am the ancient custom,' but 'I am the Truth.'" (Ibid., xxiv. 114.) And he added, sensibly enough, that, had the pagan ancestors of both the French and the Germans followed the rule of blind obedience to custom, they would certainly never have become Christians.
29
Guise's original invitation was for Saturday, January 31st, but Christopher pleaded engagements, and named, instead, Sunday, Feb. 15th. (Ibid., xxiv. 116, 117.)
30
The relation was first noticed and printed by Sattler, in his Geschichte von Würtemberg unter den Herzögen. I have used the French translation by M. A. Muntz, in the Bulletin, iv. (1856) 184-196.
31
In a letter of Würtemberg to Guise, written subsequently to the massacre of Vassy, he reminds him of the advice he had given him, and of Guise's assurances: "Vous savez aussi avec quelle asseurance vous m'avez respondu que l'on vous faisoit grand tort de ce que l'on vous vouloit imposer estre cause et autheur de la mort de tant de povres chrestiens qui ont espandu leur sang par ci-devant," etc. Mémoires de Guise, 494.
32
There are some characters with whom mendacity has become so essential a part of their nature, that we cease to wonder at any possible extreme of lying. It was, however, no new thing with the cardinal to assume immaculate innocence. Over two years before this time, at the beginning of the reign of Francis II., when bloody persecution was at its height, Sir Nicholas Throkmorton wrote to Queen Elizabeth, Sept. 10, 1559: "I am enformed that they here begin to persecute againe for religion more than ever they did; and that at Paris there are three or four executed for the same, and diverse greate personages threatened shortly to be called to answer for their religion. Wherin the Cardinal of Lorraine having bene spoken unto, within these two daies, hathe said, that it is not his faulte; and that there is no man that more hateth extremités, then he dothe; and yet it is knowne that it is, notwithstanding, alltogither by his occasion." Forbes, State Papers, i. 226, 227.
33
Bulletin, iv. 196. De Thou's account of the Saverne conference (iii. (liv. xxix.) 127, 128) is pretty accurate so far as it goes, but has a more decidedly polemic tone than the Duke of Würtemberg's memorandum.
34
Throkmorton to the Queen, Paris, Feb. 16, 1562. State Paper Office. I have followed closely the condensation in the Calendars.
35
Same to Cecil, of same date. State Paper Office.
36
Discours entier de la persécution et cruauté exercée en la ville de Vassy, par le duc de Guise, le 1. de mars, 1562; reprinted in Mémoires de Condé, iii. 124-149, and Cimber et Danjou, iv. 123-156. This lengthy Huguenot narrative enters into greater details respecting the early history of the church of Vassy than any of the other contemporary relations. The account bears every mark of candor and accurate information.
37
"Que son cas estoit bien sale s'il eust esté ministre."
38
The "Destruction du Saccagement" has preserved the names of forty-five persons who died by Tuesday, March 3d; the "Discours entier" has a complete list of forty-eight that died within a month, and refers to others besides. A contemporary engraving is extant depicting in quaint but lively style the murderous affair. Montfaucon reproduces it. So does also M. Horace Gourjon in a pamphlet entitled "Le Massacre de Vassy" (Paris, 1844). He gives, in addition, an exterior view of the barn in which the Huguenots were worshipping.
39
Besides a brief Latin memoir of minor importance, there were published two detailed accounts of the massacre written by Huguenots. The one is entitled "Destruction du Saccagement, exerce cruellement par le Duc de Guise et sa cohorte, en la ville de Vassy, le premier jour de Mars, 1561. À Caens. M.D.LXII.," and having for its epigraph the second verse of the 79th psalm in Marot's poetical version, "The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth." (The year 1562, it will be remembered, did not commence in France until Easter Sunday, March 29th.) The account seems to have been composed on the spot and within a very few days of the occurrence. This may be inferred from the list of those who died being given only up to Tuesday, March 3d. The other narrative: "Discours entier de la persecution et cruauté exercée en la ville de Vassy," etc., enters into much greater detail, and is preceded by a full account of the early history of the Church. It was written and published a little later in the spring of 1562. Both memoirs are reprinted in the invaluable Archives curieuses of Messrs. Cimber et Danjou, iv. 103-110, and 123-156, as well as in the Mémoires de Condé, iii. 111-115, 124-149 (the former document with the title "Relation de l'occasion"), etc. Another contemporary account was written in Guise's interest, and contains a long extract of a letter of his to the Duke of Würtemberg: "Discours au vray et en abbregé de ce qui est dernièrement aduenu à Vassi, y passant Monseigneur le Duc de Guise. A Paris. M.D.LXII… Par priuilege expres dudict Seigneur." (Cimber, iv. 111-122; Mém. de Condé, iii. 115-122). To these authorities must be added Guise's vindication in parliament (Cimber, iv. 157, etc., from Reg. of Parl.; Mém. de Guise, 488, etc.), and his letter and that of the Cardinal of Lorraine to Christopher of Würtemberg, March 22 (Ib. 491, 492). Compare J. de Serres, De statu rel. et reip. (1571), ii. 13-17; De Thou, iii. 129, etc.; Jehan de la Fosse, 45. Davila, bk. iii. in init., is more accurate than Castelnau, iii., c. 7. Claude Haton's account (Mémoires, i. 204-206) may be classed with the curiosities of literature. This veracious chronicler would have it that a crowd of Huguenots, with stones in their hands, and singing at the top of their voices, attempted to prevent the passage of the duke and his company through the outskirts of Vassy, where they were apparently worshipping in the open air! Of course they were the aggressors.
40
And yet there is great force in M. Sismondi's observation (Hist. des Français, xviii. 264): "Malgré leur assertion, il est difficile de ne pas croire qu'au moment où ils se réunissoient en armes pour disputer aux protestans l'exercise public de leur culte que leur accordoit l'édit de janvier, c'etoit un coup prémédité que l'attaque du duc de Guise contre une congrégation de huguenots, composée, à ce qu'il assure, en partie de ses vassaux, et qui se trouvoit la première sur son passage à peu de distance de ses terres."
41
It is extremely unfortunate that Mr. Froude should have based his account of French affairs at this important point upon so inaccurate and prejudiced a writer as Varillas. To be correct in his delineation of these transactions was almost as important for his object, as to be correct in the narration of purely English occurrences. If he desired to avoid the labor, from which he might well wish to be excused, of mastering the great accumulation of contemporary and original French authorities, he might have resorted with propriety, as he has done in the case of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, to Henri Martin's noble history, or to the history of Sismondi, not to speak of Soldan, Von Polenz, and a host of others. Varillas wrote, about a century after the events he described, a number of works of slender literary, and still slighter historical value. His "Histoire de Charles IX." (Cologne, 1686) – the work which Mr. Froude has but too often followed – begins with an adulatory dedication to Louis XIV., the first sentence of which sufficiently reveals the author's prepossessions: "Sire, it is impossible to write the history of Charles IX. without beginning the panegyric of your Majesty." No wonder that Mr. Froude's account of the massacre of Vassy (History of England, vii. 401, 402), derived solely from this source (Hist. de Charles IX., i. 126, etc.), is as favorable to Guise as his most devoted partisan could have desired. But where in the world – even in Varillas – did the English historian ever find authority for the statement (vii. 402) that, in consequence of the necessity felt by Guise for temporizing, a little later "the affair at Vassy was censured in a public decree"? To have allowed that would have been for Guise to admit that he was guilty of murder, and that his enemies had not slandered him when they styled him a "butcher of the human race." The duke never did make such an acknowledgment; on the contrary, he asseverated his innocence in his last breath. What was really done on the occasion referred to was to try to shift the responsibility of the war from the shoulders of the papists to those of the Huguenots, by pretending to re-enact the edict of January with restrictions as to the capital.
42
Jean de Serres, ii. 17, 18; De Thou, iii. 132, 133.
43
"Sire, c'est à la vérité à l'Église de Dieu, au nom de laquelle je parle, d'endurer les coups, et non pas d'en donner. Mais aussi vous plaira-t-il vous souvenir que c'est une enclume qui a usé beaucoup de marteaux." Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ii. 1, 2; Pierre de Lestoile, Journal de Henri III. (ed. Petitot), i. 55; De Thou, iii. 132, 133.
44
Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 45, 46; Santa Croce to Borromeo, Aymon, i. 96, 97; Jean de Serres, ii. 18; Chantonnay, ubi supra, ii. 27; Hist, ecclés. des égl. réf., ii. 2, 3; Throkmorton to the Queen, March 20th, State Paper Office; De Thou, iii. 133; etc. The date was the 15th of March, according to La Fosse; the 16th, according to Languet (ii. 212) and Throkmorton; the 18th, according to Santa Croce; the 20th, according to J. de Serres. I prefer to all the authority of a letter of one Chastaigner, written from Paris to a friend in Poitou on the very day of Guise's entry. It is dated March 17th. "Quant aux nouvelles de Monsieur de Guyse, il est arrivé ce soir en ceste ville, Monsieur le connestable et Monsieur le maréchal de Saint-André avec luy, et en tout avoient bien deux mil chevaulx, les ungs disent plus." (Archives of Poitiers, and printed in Bulletin, xiii. (1864), 15, 16.)
45
This was not by accident. It had been planned by Condé, to show that the Huguenots were brave and determined, and it succeeded so well that it not only made an impression on the party of Guise, but also largely augmented the courage of his own men. Letter of Beza to Calvin, March 22, 1562, apud Baum, ii., App., 171. Condé had returned to Paris by the urgent request of the Protestants. Jean de Serres, ii. 19.
46
Letter of Chastaigner, ubi supra.
47
Throkmorton to the queen, March 6th, State Paper Office.
48
"The King of Navarre was never so earnest on the Protestant side as he is now furious on the papists' part, insomuch as men suspect he will become a persecutor." Throkmorton to Cecil, March 9th, State Paper Office. Summary in Calendar.
49
Throkmorton to the queen, March 6, 1562, State Paper Office.
50
The same to Cecil, same date, State Paper Office.
51
"Whilst these assemblies were in the town, the queen mother conceived great jealousy (the King of Navarre being allied to the said duke [Guise]), lest she should be put from the government and the king taken from her hands, to prevent which she left Monceaux, her own house, for Orleans, thinking they were secure there, because the Prince of Rochesurion (being governor of the king's person and also of Orleans) was not conjoined with the King of Navarre, the Duke of Guise, and the constable, in their purposes. The King of Navarre, perceiving this, would not consent to the king going to Orleans, and, after great disputes betwixt the queen mother and him, she, with the king, were constrained to reside all this Easter at Fontainebleau." Throkmorton to the queen, March, 20, 1562, State Paper Office, Summary in Calendar.
52
"Combien que le Chancelier luy dict, qu'il n'y espéroit plus rien, qu'elle n'avoit point de résolution, qu'il la congnoissoit bien." Mémoires de la vie de Jehan l'Archevesque, Sieur de Soubise, printed from the hitherto unknown MS. in the Bulletin, xxiii. (1874), 458, 459.
53
Four of the seven letters that constituted the whole correspondence are printed in the Mém. de Condé, iii. 213-215. Jean de Serres gives two of them in his Comment. de statu rel. et reip., ii. 38, 39. They were laid by Condé's envoy before the princes of Germany, as evidence that he had not taken up arms without the best warrant, and that he could not in any way be regarded as a rebel. They contain no allusion to any promise to lay down his arms so soon as she sent him word – the pretext with which she strove at a later time to palliate, in the eyes of the papal party at home and abroad, a rather awkward step. The curé of Mériot, while admitting the genuineness of the letters, observes: "La cautelle et malice de la dame estoit si grande, qu'elle se délectoit de mettre les princes en division et hayne les ungs contre les aultres, affin qu'elle régnast et qu'elle demeurast gouvernante seulle de son filz et du royaume." Mém. de Cl. Haton, i. 269. The queen mother's exculpatory statements may be examined in Le Laboureur, Add. aux Mém. de Castelnau, i. 763, 764.
54
Bruslart, in Mém. de Condé, i. 75, 76; J. de Serres, ii. 20; La Fosse, 46; De Thou, iii. 134. The date is variously given – March 17th or 18th.
55
J. de Serres, ii. 21; De Thou, ubi supra; the Prince of Condé's declaration of the causes which have constrained him to undertake the defence of the royal authority, etc., ap. Mém. de Condé, iii. 222, etc.; same in Latin in J. de Serres, ii. 46.
56
Throkmorton to the queen, March 20, State Paper Office.
57
March 23d. "Ce même jour (lundi xxiii.) le Prince de Condé s'en partit de Paris pour s'en aller à une sienne maison, combien qu'il avoit dict qu'il ne bougeroit de Paris que M. de Guise ne s'en fut parti." Journal anonyme de l'an 1562, ap. Baum, iii. App., 175, note.
58
Letter of March 28th, Baum, ii., App., 175, 176.
59
Hist. ecclés. des égl. réf., ii. 3.
60
Letter to Fonssomme, Œuvres choisies, ii. 248.