History of the Rise of the Huguenots

A great obstacle to the conclusion of peace was removed by Guise's death. There was no one in the Roman Catholic camp to take his place. The panegyric pronounced upon the duke by the English ambassador, Sir Thomas Smith, may perhaps be esteemed somewhat extravagant, but has at least the merit of coming from one whose sympathies were decidedly adverse to him. "The papists have lost their greatest stay, hope, and comfort. Many noblemen and gentlemen did follow the camp and that faction, rather for the love of him than for any other zeal or affection. He was indeed the best captain or general in all France, some will say in all Christendom; for he had all the properties which belong [to], or are to be wished in a general: a ready wit and well advised, a body to endure pains, a courage to forsake no dangerous adventures, use and experience to conduct any army, much courtesy in entertaining of all men, great eloquence to utter all his mind. And he was very liberal both of money and honor to young gentlemen, captains, and soldiers; whereby he gat so much love and admiration amongst the nobility and the soldiers in France, that I think, now he is gone, many gentlemen will forsake the camp; and they begin to drop away already. Then he was so earnest and so fully persuaded in his religion, that he thought nothing evil done that maintained that sect; and therefore the papists again thought nothing evil bestowed upon him; all their money and treasure of the Church, part of their lands, even the honor of the crown of France, they could have found in their hearts to have given him. And so all their joy, hope, and comfort one little stroke of a pistolet hath taken away! Such a vanity God can show men's hope to be, when it pleaseth Him."251

Of the four generals on the Roman Catholic side under whose auspices the war began, three were dead and the fourth was in captivity. The treasury was exhausted. The interest of old debts was left unpaid; new debts had been contracted. Less than half the king's revenues were available on account of the places which the Huguenots held or threatened. The alienation of one hundred thousand livres of income from ecclesiastical property had been recently ordered, greatly to the annoyance of the clergy. The admiral's progress had of late been so rapid that but two or three important places of lower Normandy remained in friendly hands. After the reduction of these he would move down through Maine and Anjou to Orleans, with a better force than had been marshalled at Dreux;252 the English would gain such a foothold on French soil as it would be difficult to induce them to relinquish. And where could competent generals be secured for the prosecution of hostilities? The post of lieutenant-general, now vacant, had, indeed, been offered to the Duke Christopher of Würtemberg; but what prospect was there that a Protestant would consent to conduct a war against Protestants?253

Deliberations for peace.

Catharine was urgent for an immediate conclusion of peace. For the purpose of fixing its conditions, Condé was brought, under a strong guard, to the camp of the army before Orleans, and, on the small "Isle aux Bouviers" in the middle of the Loire, he and the constable, released on their honor, held a preliminary interview on Sunday, the seventh of March, 1563.254 At first there seemed little prospect of harmonizing their discordant pretensions; for, if the question of the removal of the triumvirs had lost all its practical importance, the old bone of contention remained in the re-establishment of the Edict of January. On this point Montmorency was inflexible. He had been the prime instrument in expelling Protestantism from Paris, and had distinguished himself by burning the places of worship. It could hardly be expected that he should rebuild what he had so laboriously torn down. And, whatever had been his first intentions, Condé proved less tenacious than might have been anticipated from his previous professions. The fact was, that the younger Bourbon was not proof against the wiles employed with so much success against his elder brother. Flattered by Catharine, he was led to suppose that after all it made little difference whether the full demands of the Huguenots were expressly granted in the edict of pacification or not. The queen mother was resolved, so he was assured, to confer upon him the dignity and office of lieutenant-general, left vacant by Navarre's death. When this should be his, it would be easy to obtain every practical concession to which the Huguenots were entitled. So much pleased was the court with the ardor he displayed, that he was at last permitted to go to Orleans on his own princely parole, in order to consult his confederates.

The Huguenot ministers whose advice he first asked, seeing his irresolution, were the more decided in opposing any terms that did not expressly recognize the Edict of January. Seventy-two united in a letter (on the ninth of March, 1563), in which they begged him not to permit the cause to suffer disaster at his hands, and rather to insure an extension, than submit to an abridgment of the liberty promised by the royal ordinance.255 From the ministers, however, Condé went to the Huguenot "noblesse," with whom his arguments of expediency had more weight, and who, weary of the length and privations of the war, and content with securing their own privileges, readily accepted the conditions reprobated by the ministers. The pacification was accordingly agreed upon, on the twelfth of March, and officially published in the form of a royal edict, dated at Amboise, on the nineteenth of March, 1563.

Edict of Pacification, March 12, 1563.

Charles the Ninth, by advice of his mother, the Cardinal of Bourbon, the Princes of Condé and La Roche-sur-Yon, the Dukes of Montmorency, Aumale, and Montpensier, and other members of his privy council, grants, in this document, to all barons, châtellains, and gentlemen possessed of the right to administer "haute justice," permission to celebrate in their own houses the worship of "the religion which they call reformed" in the presence of their families and retainers. The possessors of minor fiefs could enjoy the same privilege, but it extended to their families only. In every bailiwick or sénéchaussée, the Protestants should, on petition, receive one city in whose suburbs their religious services might be held, and in all cities where the Protestant religion was exercised on the seventh of March of the present year, it should continue in one or two places inside of the walls, to be designated hereafter by the king. The Huguenots, while secured in their liberty of conscience, were to restore all churches and ecclesiastical property which they might have seized, and were forbidden to worship according to their rites in the city of Paris or its immediate neighborhood. The remaining articles of the peace were of a more personal or temporary interest. Foreign troops were to be speedily dismissed; the Protestant lords to be fully reinstated in their former honors, offices, and possessions; prisoners to be released; insults based upon the events of the war to be summarily punished. And Charles declared that he held his good cousin, the Prince of Condé, and all the other lords, knights, gentlemen, and burgesses that had served under him, to be his faithful subjects, believing that what they had done was for good ends and for his service.256

Sir Thomas Smith's remonstrance.

Such was the Edict of Amboise – a half-way measure, very different from that which was desired on either side. The English ambassador declared he could find no one, whether Protestant or papist, that liked the "accord," or thought it would last three weeks. And he added, by way of warning to Coligny and Condé: "What you, who are the heads and rulers, do, I cannot tell; but every man thinketh that it is but a traine and a deceipt to sever the one of you from another, and all of you from this stronghold [Orleans], and then thei will talke with you after another sorte."257 He urged the Huguenots to learn a lesson from the fate of Bourges, Rouen, and other cities which had admitted the "papists," and to consider that these fine articles came from the queen mother, the Cardinals of Bourbon, Ferrara, and Guise, and others like them, who desired to take the Protestants like fish in a net. And he gave D'Andelot the significant hint – very significant it was, in view of what afterwards befell his brother Gaspard – that the report spread by the enemy respecting Poltrot's confession was only a preparation that, in case any of the Huguenot noblemen should be assassinated, it might be said that the deed had been done in just revenge by the Guises, who would not hesitate to sacrifice them either by force or by treason.258

Coligny's disappointment.

Of the other party, Catharine de' Medici alone was jubilant over the edict. On the contrary, the Roman Catholic people of Paris regarded it as an approval of every sort of impiety and wicked action, and the parliament would register it only after repeated commands (on the twenty-seventh of March), and then with a formal declaration of its reluctance.259 But no one was so much disappointed as the admiral. Hastening from Normandy to Orleans, he reached that city on the twenty-third of March, only to find that the peace had been fully concluded several days before. In the council of the confederates, the next day, he spoke his mind freely. He reminded Condé that, from the very commencement of hostilities, the triumvirs had offered the restoration of the Edict of January with the exclusion of the city of Paris; and that never had affairs stood on a better footing than now,260 when two of the three chief authors of the war were dead, and the third was a prisoner. But the poor had surpassed the rich in devotion; the cities had given the example to the nobles. In restricting the number of churches to one in a bailiwick, the prince and his counsellors had ruined more churches by a single stroke of the pen than all the forces of their enemies could have overthrown in ten years. Coligny's warm remonstrance was heard with some regret for the precipitancy with which the arrangement had been made; but it was too late. The peace was signed. Besides, Condé was confident that he would soon occupy his brother's place, when the Huguenots would obtain all their demands.

But while the prince refused to draw back from the articles of peace to which he had pledged himself, he consented to visit the queen mother in company with the admiral, and endeavor to remove some of the restrictions placed upon Protestant worship. And Catharine was too well satisfied with her success in restoring peace, to refuse the most pressing of the admiral's requests. However, she took good care that none of her promises should be in writing, much less be incorporated in the Edict of Pacification. "The prince and the admyrall," wrote the special envoy Middlemore to Queen Elizabeth, "have bene twice with the quene mother since my commynge hyther, where the admirall hath bene very earnest for a further and larger lybertye in the course of religion, and so hath obtayned that there shall be preachings within the townes in every balliage, wheras before yt was accordyd but in the suburbs of townes only, and that the gentylmen of the visconte and provoste of Parys shall have in theyr houses the same libertye of religion as ys accordyd elzwhere. So as the sayd admyrall doth now seame to lyke well inoughe that he shewyd by the waye to mislyke so muche, which was the harde articles of religion concludyd upon by the prince in his absence."261

On Sunday, the twenty-eighth of March, 1563 – the anniversary of that Sunday which they had kept with so much solemnity at Meaux, on the eve of their march to Orleans – the Huguenot nobles and soldiers celebrated the Lord's Supper, in the simple but grand forms of the Geneva liturgy, within the walls of the church of the Holy Rood, long since stripped of its idolatrous ornaments, and on the morrow began to disperse to the homes from which for a year they had been separated.262 The German reiters, at the same time, set out on their march toward Champagne, whence they soon after retired to their own country.

Results of the war.

The war that had just closed undoubtedly constituted a turning-point in the Huguenot fortunes. The alliance between the persecuted reformers, on the one hand, and the princes of the blood and the nobility of France, on the other, had borne fruit, and it was not altogether good fruit. The patient confessors, after manfully maintaining their faith through an entire generation against savage attack, and gaining many a convert from the witnesses of their constancy, had grasped the sword thrust into their hands by their more warlike allies. In truth, it would be difficult to condemn them; for it was in self-defence, not against rightful authority, but against the tyranny of a foreign and hostile faction. Candidly viewing their circumstances at the distance of three centuries, we can scarcely see how they could have acted otherwise than as they did. Yet there was much that, humanly speaking, was unfortunate in the conjuncture. War is a horrible remedy at any time. Civil war super-adds a thousand horrors of its own. And a civil war waged in the name of religion is the most frightful of all. The holiest of causes is sure to be embraced from impure motives by a host of unprincipled men, determined in their choice of party only by the hope of personal gain, the lust of power, or the thirst for revenge – a class of auxiliaries too powerful and important to be altogether rejected in an hour when the issues of life or death are pending, even if by the closest and calmest scrutiny they could be thoroughly weeded out – a process beyond the power of mortal man at any time, much more in the midst of the tumult and confusion of war. The Huguenots had made the attempt at Orleans, and had not shrunk from inflicting the severest punishments, even to death, for the commission of theft and other heinous crimes. They had endeavored in their camp to realize the model of an exemplary Christian community. But they had failed, because there were with them those who, neither in peace nor in war, could bring themselves to give to so strict a moral code any other obedience than that which fear exacts. Such was the misery of war. Such the melancholy alternative to which, more than once, the reformed saw themselves reduced, of perishing by persecution or of saving themselves by exposing their faith to reproach through alliance with men of as little religion or morality as any in the opposite camp.

It prevents France from becoming Huguenot.

The first civil war prevented France from becoming a Huguenot country. This was the deliberate conclusion of a Venetian ambassador, who enjoyed remarkable opportunities for observing the history of his times.263 The practice of the Christian virtue of patience and submission under suffering and insult had made the reformers an incredible number of friends. The waging of war, even in self-defence, and the reported acts of wanton destruction, of cruelty and sacrilege – it mattered little whether they were true or false, they were equally credited and produced the same results – turned the indifference of the masses into positive aversion. It availed the Huguenots little in the estimate of the people that the crimes that were almost the rule with their opponents were the exception with them; that for a dozen such as Montluc, they were cursed with but one Baron des Adrets; that the barbarities of the former received the approbation of the Roman Catholic priesthood, while those of the latter were censured with vehemence by the Protestant ministers. Partisan spirit refused to hold the scales of justice with equal hand, and could see no proofs of superior morality or devotion in the adherents of the reformed faith.

Huguenot ballads and songs.

Besides their psalms, hallowed by so many thrilling associations, the Huguenots possessed a whole cycle of song. The meagre portion of this that has come down to us is among the most valuable of the monuments illustrative of their modes of thought and their religious and political aspirations. At the same time it brings vividly before us the great crises of their history. M. Henri Bordier has done a service not easily estimated at its full worth, by the publication of a considerable collection of the popular songs of the Protestants, under the title, "Le Chansonnier Huguenot du XVIe Siècle" (Paris, 1871). These songs are grouped in four divisions: religious songs, polemic and satirical songs, songs of war, and songs of martyrdom.

The three oldest Huguenot songs known to exist belong to the first two divisions, and have been saved from destruction by the enemies of their authors, in the very attempt to secure their suppression. They have recently been found upon the records of the Parliament of Paris, where they obtained a place, thanks to the zeal of the "lieutenant général" of Meaux in endeavoring to ferret out the composers of anti-papal ballads. They were entered, without regard to metre, as so much prose. A stanza or two of the song entitled Chanson nouvelle sur le chant: "N'allez plus au bois jouer," and evidently adapted to the tune of a popular ballad of the day, may suffice to indicate the character of the most vigorous of these compositions. It is addressed to Michel d'Arande, a friend of Farel, whom Bishop Briçonnet had invited to preach the Gospel in his diocese of Meaux, and begins:

Ne preschez plus la vérité,Maistre Michel!Contenue en l'Evangille,Il y a trop grand dangerD'estre menéDans la Conciergerie.Lire, lire, lironfa.Il y a trop grand dangerD'estre menéDans la ConciergerieDevant les chapperons fourrezMal informezPar gens plains de menterie.Lire, lire, lironfa.

The "chants religieux," of which M. Bordier's collection reproduces twenty-five, are partly poetical paraphrases of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, etc., and partly original compositions on a variety of themes, such as patient endurance of insult, etc. They display great familiarity with the Holy Scriptures, and sometimes not a little poetic fire.

The "chants polémiques" treat of a number of subjects, prominent among which are the monks and nuns, and the doctrines of the papal church. In one the expiring papacy is represented as summoning to her bedside cardinals, bishops, and other members of the clergy, to witness her last struggles. In another the Sorbonne is held up to ridicule, in company with all the mediæval doctors of theology. In a third the poet more seriously combats the belief in purgatory as unscriptural. But it is the mass that bears the brunt of attack. The Host figures under the designation, current in the literature of the sixteenth century,264 of Le Dieu de Pâte, or Le Dieu de Farine. The pompous and complicated ceremonial, with its repetitions devoid of meaning for the illiterate spectator, is, on the whole, the favorite object of satire. In strict accordance with the spirit of the rough controversy of the times, little mercy is shown to religious antagonists. There is a good specimen of this style of treatment in an interesting song dating from about 1564, entitled "Noel nouveau de la description ou forme et manière de dire la Messe, sur ce chant: Hari, bouriquet." Of the fifteen stanzas of which it is composed, two or three may serve as samples. The preliminary service over, the priest comes to the consecration of the wafer:

Un morceau de pasteIl fait adorer;Le rompt de sa pattePour le dévorer,Le gourmand qu'il est.Hari, hari l'asne, le gourmand qu'il est,Hari bouriquet!Le Dieu qu'il faict faire,La bouche le prend;Le cœur le digère,Le ventre le rend,Au fond du retrait!Hari, hari l'asne, au fond du retrait,Hari bouriquet!Le peuple regardeL'yvrongne pinterQui pourtant n'a gardeDe luy présenterA boire un seul traict.Hari, hari l'asne, à boire un seul traict,Hari bouriquet!Achève et despouilleTous ses drapeaux blancs,En sa bourse fouilleEt y met six blancs.C'est de peur du frais.Hari, hari l'asne, c'est de peur du frais,Hari bouriquet!

A somewhat older song (written before 1555) purports to be the dirge of the Mass uttered by itself —Désolation de la Messe expirant en chantant. The Mass in perplexity knows not how to begin the customary service:

Spiritus, Salve, Requiem,Je ne sçay si je diray bien.Quel Introite, n' OremusJe prenne; Sancti, Agimus.Feray-je des Martyrs ou Vierges?De ventre ad te clamamus!Sonnez là, allumez ces cierges:Y a-t-il du pain et du vin?Où est le livre et le calicePour faire l'office divin?Ça, cest autel, qu'on le tapisse!Hélas, la piteuse police.Ame ne me vient secourir.Sans Chapelain, Moine, Novice,

Me faudra-il ainsi périr?

Pope and cardinals are summoned in vain. No one comes, no one will bring reliquary or consecrated wafer. The Mass must finally resign all hope and die:

Hélas chantant, brayant, virant,Tant que le crime romp et blessePuis que voy tost l'ame expirant,Dites au moins adieu la Messe.A tous faisant mainte promesseOre ai-je tout mon bien quittéVeu qu'a la mort tens et abaisseIte Missa est; donc Ite,Ite Missa est.

The "chants de guerre" furnish a running commentary upon the military events of the last forty years of the sixteenth century, which is not devoid of interest or importance. The hopeful spirit characterizing the earlier ballads is not lost even in the latest; but the brilliant anticipations of a speedy triumph of the truth, found before the outbreak of the first civil war, or immediately thereafter, are lacking in other productions, dating from the close of the reign of Henry the Third. In a spirited song, presumably belonging to 1562, the poet, adopting the nickname of Huguenots given to the Protestants by their opponents, retaliates by applying an equally unwelcome term to the Roman Catholics, and forecasting the speedy overthrow of the papacy:

Vous appellez HuguenotsCeux qui Jesus veullent suivre,Et n'adorent vos marmotsDe boys, de pierre et de cuyvre.Hau, Hau, Papegots,Faictes place aux Huguenots.Nostre Dieu renverseraVous et vostre loy romaine,Et du tout se mocqueraDe vostre entreprise vaine.Hau, Hau, Papegots,Faictes place aux Huguenots.Vostre Antechrist tomberaHors de sa superbe placeEt Christ partout règneraEt sa loy pleine de grâce.Hau, Hau, Papegots,Faictes place aux Huguenots.

The current expectation of the Protestants is attested in a long narrative ballad by Antoine Du Plain on the siege of Lyons (1563), in which Charles the Ninth figures as another Josiah destined to abolish the idolatrous mass:

Ce Roy va chasser l'IdolePlain de doleCognoissant un tel forfait:Selon la vertu Royale,Et loyale,Comme Iosias a fait.

It is noticeable that the words "va chasser l'Idole" are an anagram of the royal title Charles de Valois– an anagram which gave the Huguenots no little comfort. The same play upon words appears with a slight variation in a "Huictain au Peuple de Paris, sur l'anagrammatisme du nom du tres-Chrestien Roy de France, Charles de Valois IX. de ce nom" (Recueil des Choses Mémorables, 1565, p. 367), of which the last line is,

"O Gentil Roy qui chassa leur idole."

But after the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day the hopes of the Huguenots were blighted. If the king is not referred to by name, his mother figures as the guilty cause of all the misfortune of France. She is a second Helen born for the ruin of her adopted country, according to Étienne de Maisonfleur.

Hélène femme estrangèreFut la seule mesnagèreQui ruina Ilion,Et la reine CatherineEst de France la ruinePar l'Oracle de Léon.

"Léon" is Catharine's uncle, Pope Leo the Tenth, who was said to have predicted the total destruction of whatever house she should be married into. See also the famous libel "Discours merveilleux de la vie de Catherine de Medicis" (Ed. of Cologne, Pierre du Marteau, 1693), p. 609.

The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day naturally contributes a considerable fund of laments, etc., to the Huguenot popular poetry of the century. A poem apparently belonging to a more remote date, discovered by Dr. Roullin, and perhaps the only Breton song of the kind that has come down to us, is as simple and unaffected a narrative as any of the modern Greek mœrologia (Vaurigaud, Essaie sur l'hist. des églises réf. de Bretagne, 1870, i. 6). It tells the story of a Huguenot girl betrayed to the executioner by her own mother. In spite of a few dialectic forms, the verses are easily understood.

Voulz-vous ouir l'histoireD'une fille d'espitQui n'a pas voulu croireChose que l'on lui dit.– Sa mère dit: "Ma fille,A la messe allons donc!"– "Y aller à la messe,Ma mère, ce n'est qu'abus.Apportez-moi mes livresAvec mes beaux saluts.J'aimerais mieux être brûléeEt vantée au grand ventQue d'aller à la messeEn faussant mon serment."– Quand sa très-chère mèreEut entendu c' mot là,Au bourreau de la villeSa fille elle livra."Bourreau, voilà ma fille!Fais à tes volontés;Bourreau, fais de ma filleComme d'un meurtrier."Quand elle fut sur l'échelle,Trois rollons jà montée,Elle voit sa mèreQui chaudement pleurait."Ho! la cruelle mèreQui pleure son enfantAprès l'avoir livréeDans les grands feux ardents.Vous est bien fait, ma mère,De me faire mourir.Je vois Jesus, mon père,Qui, de son beau royaume,Descend pour me quérir.Son royaume sur terreDans peu de temps viendra,Et cependant mon âmeEn paradis ira."