Europe in the Sixteenth Century 1494-1598 Part 31

Although the 'Tumult of Amboise' was by no means exclusively confined to the Protestants, it marks the moment when they finally became a political and aggressive party, and when they were joined by the smaller n.o.bility of the provinces; while it furnished the government with a pretext for declaring that the interests of the monarchy and of the Catholic Church were identical. For the moment the Guises pretended somewhat to change their policy. On first hearing of the plot, they had issued an Edict in the King's name promising forgiveness for all past deeds; and, although the Edict of Roromantin, which followed in May, 1560, gave exclusive jurisdiction over matters of conscience to the ecclesiastical courts, it urged the desirability of proceeding gently in the matter. The Guises even listened to demands of Coligny, which were supported by Catherine and Michel L'Hopital, who had just been made chancellor, to summon a States-General, and a Council of the French prelates for the discussion of grievances, political and religious. To these proposals, however, they had consented in the belief that they could postpone the ecclesiastical Council under pretext that the Council of Trent was shortly to be reopened, and that they could secure a subservient majority in the Estates-General by influencing the elections, and by excluding and imprisoning those who would not subscribe to the articles of the Catholic faith.

| The triumph of the Guises prevented, by death of | Francis II. Dec. 5, 1560.

The death of Mary, the Regent of Scotland (June 10, 1560), and the Treaty of Leith (July 6), by which the French were to evacuate Scotland, and King Francis and his wife, Mary Stuart, were to abandon their claims to the throne of England, had removed the apprehensions of Philip. He therefore offered to help the Guises in securing their power. The Pope and the Duke of Savoy were to send troops to exterminate the Vaudois and to attack Geneva, while Philip was to invade Navarre. Conde and the King of Navarre having rashly answered a summons to Orleans, where the court had a.s.sembled for the meeting of the States-General, were seized; an unsuccessful attempt was made to a.s.sa.s.sinate Navarre; and Conde, tried before a special commission for complicity in the late conspiracy, was condemned to die. The triumph of the Guises seemed secured, when it was s.n.a.t.c.hed from them by the sudden death of the young King from a disease in the ear (December 5, 1560).

-- 4. _Charles IX., December 1560--May 1574._

| Catherine rules in the name of Charles IX.

The Guises, baulked of their prey, went at first in such fear of their lives that they shut themselves up in their palace, and Catherine at last seemed to have her opportunity. As Charles IX. was only ten, a regency was necessary, and, beyond all dispute, the office should have been held by Antony of Navarre. But he agreed to surrender his right to the Queen-mother, reserving for himself only the office of Lieutenant-general. Catherine was delighted. 'He is so obedient,'

she wrote to her daughter the Queen of Spain, 'that I dispose of him as I please.' She now hoped to act the part of mediator between the two religious parties, and, by playing off the Guises against the Bourbons, to rule. Her first difficulty was with regard to the States-General. Summoned on December 15, 1560, to Orleans, they were prorogued till the following August, when they met again at Pontoise.

| The States-General. August 1561.

This, the first meeting of the States-General for seventy-seven years, is noticeable as ill.u.s.trating the political ideas of the Huguenots, who found themselves in a majority, and for the remarkable reforms proposed, which, if carried out, might have saved France from civil war, and altered her future history. The n.o.bles, while insisting on their privileges, urged the reformation of the judicial system, and the subst.i.tution of an elective magistracy for one which, through the system of purchase, was rapidly becoming hereditary; they denounced the chicanery of the ecclesiastical courts and the abuses of pluralities and non-residence; they pet.i.tioned that n.o.bles who preferred the Calvinistic wors.h.i.+p should be allowed to use the churches for their services.

The demands of the Tiers etat went further. They asked that the Prerogative should be limited by triennial meetings of the Estates, and by the appointment of a Council from which the clergy should be excluded. They pet.i.tioned for the sale of church lands. From the interest of the capital thus obtained, the clergy were to be paid fixed stipends, and the balance was to be spent on paying the debts of the crown, and in loans to the princ.i.p.al cities for the furtherance of their commerce. They demanded that persecution should cease, since 'it is unreasonable to compel men to do what in their hearts they consider wrong,' and that a national Council, in which the laity as well as the clergy should have votes, and in which the Word of G.o.d should be the sole guide, should be summoned for the final settlement of religious questions. This would have meant the establishment of the Reformed opinions in France, and for this Catherine was certainly not prepared, for the Huguenots after all only represented some one-thirtieth of the nation.

| The Colloquy of Poissy.

Nor did the results of the 'Colloquy of Poissy,' which was held near by at the same time, offer better hopes that comprehension would be possible. At this conference eleven ministers--among whom were Theodore Beza, the disciple of Calvin, and Peter Martyr the Italian--and twenty-two laymen appeared. But as might be expected, the attempt served rather to accentuate the differences between the two creeds. The only practical result of the Colloquy was that the bishops, to meet the demands of the third estate with regard to Church property, pledged themselves to pay by instalments the sum needed for the redemption of those crown lands which had been alienated to satisfy the public creditors.

| The Edict of Jan. 1562.

Comprehension was plainly impossible. It remained to be seen whether toleration was practicable. This was attempted by the Edict of January, 1562, which, while it insisted on the Huguenots surrendering the churches which they had occupied, allowed them, until the decision of a General Council, to a.s.semble for wors.h.i.+p in any place outside walled towns. Thus the policy of L'Hopital seemed to have triumphed. The Huguenots were given a legal recognition, and ceased to be outlaws. But the appearances were delusive, and the Edict of January really only precipitated civil war. L'Hopital himself had confessed, at the opening of the States-General, that 'It was folly to hope for peace between persons of different religions. A Frenchman and an Englishman,' he said, 'who are of the same religion have more affection for one another than citizens of the same city, or va.s.sals of the same lord, who hold to different creeds.' Nor was this all. Religious differences were in many cases embittered by personal rivalry, by selfish interests, and by political prejudices, and all these had been intensified by the demands of the third estate. If granted, the demands would have revolutionised the const.i.tution of the country, and they could only have been successful if backed up by the nation. But the third estate, nominated for the most part by the munic.i.p.al oligarchies, represented neither the views of the peasants in the country districts nor those of the lower cla.s.ses in the towns, who were mostly Catholics. Those whose interests and prejudices they a.s.sailed formed the great majority of the nation, and these henceforth learnt to look upon the Huguenots as their deadly enemies. The higher n.o.bility were frightened at the demand for resumption of the crown lands, many of which were in their hands; the Church resented the cry for disendowment; the lawyers were indignant at the attack on their privileges, and were as jealous as ever of the claims of the States-General to rule the country. It is, in fact, from this time that we must date the uncompromising hostility to the Reformers of these three powerful bodies--the n.o.bility, the clergy, and the lawyers--many of whom hitherto had not been unwilling to show some favour to the Huguenots. The only chance of the Huguenots now depended on the maintenance of peace. Although they had not gained all that they desired, and although the Edict was only to be provisional, their adherents were increasing so fast that in a short time they might hope to be able to command respect. One archbishop--that of Aix--and six bishops, besides the Cardinal of Chatillon, were said to favour the new opinions. Throgmorton informed the Queen of England that even Charles IX. himself was wavering. Catherine did not object to her ladies reading the New Testament and singing the psalms of the Huguenot Marot, and certainly she would not have hesitated to continue her policy of toleration if she could thereby have secured her authority. Unfortunately the administration was not powerful enough to enforce the law, and the religious and political animosities were too deep. The leaders of the Huguenots could not entirely control the more hot-headed spirits, and iconoclastic outrages occurred, more especially in the south; while the Catholics were determined to overthrow the Edict as soon as possible.

| The ma.s.sacre of Va.s.sy. March 1, 1562.

| Duke of Guise enters Paris, March 16; and secures the | person of the king. April 6.

Already in April, 1561, Montmorenci had been reconciled to the Guises. They now succeeded in gaining over the unstable King of Navarre by offering him the island of Sardinia and a kingdom in Africa, or possibly a divorce from his Protestant wife, Jeanne d'Albret, and the hand of Mary, Queen of Scots, with the crown of Scotland, and some day that of England. In the south, ma.s.sacres and outrages occurred; and finally, on Sunday, March 1, the Duke of Guise coming across some Huguenots who were wors.h.i.+pping in a barn at Va.s.sy, in Champagne, ordered his followers to disperse the meeting as being contrary to the law. The Huguenots, though unarmed, probably made some resistance, and the affair ended in the ma.s.sacre of some fifty or sixty men and women, while two hundred more were seriously wounded. As the town of Va.s.sy was apparently not a 'walled' one, the Huguenots were probably within their rights. In any case, the Duke had no authority to take the execution of the law into his own hands. It may be true that he had not intended his followers to proceed to such extremities, but at least he never denounced or punished the perpetrators. For the rest, the ma.s.sacre of Va.s.sy was not the only one that had occurred since the Edict, and it is important only because it was committed with the acquiescence of one of the great party leaders, and because in thus transferring the quarrel from the country to the court, it rendered war inevitable. The question was, Who should secure the person of the King? The Duke advancing rapidly, entered Paris (March 16) in spite of the order of Catherine to the contrary. On her retiring with the young King to Fontainebleau he followed her; and the Queen-mother, seeing no other alternative, consented to return to Paris (April 6), Charles IX. crying 'as if they were taking him to prison.' Catherine, after attempting to support the weaker party, had ended, as was her wont, in siding with the stronger.

| Conde's Manifesto. March.

Meanwhile, Conde had retreated from Paris (March 23) to Orleans. Being joined there by Coligny and d'Andelot he published a manifesto in which he justified his appeal to arms, and declared that he did so to free the King from unlawful detention by the 'Triumvirate'--Guise, Montmorenci, and the Marshal St. Andre. Thus, if the Catholics were the first to break the peace at Va.s.sy, the Huguenots were the first to appeal to arms. Many have blamed them for want of patience, and held that, if they had refrained from raising the standard of rebellion, they would in time have gained toleration. Calvin had always been opposed to war, and Coligny only consented after much hesitation, overborne, it is said, by the entreaties of his wife. But it is extremely doubtful whether they could thus have disarmed persecution; the Catholic party were determined to crush out heresy; and, as it was, the victims of 1562 exceeded those of the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew. A more serious charge is that the Huguenots, under the garb of religion, were pursuing political objects; but this a.s.sertion may be brought with equal truth against all parties in the religious struggles of the century. In France, as elsewhere, the religious disaffection furnished a rallying-point for, and a creed to, all the smouldering discontent in the country. With some the religious, with others the political, and even the personal element was strongest. 'The grandees,' says a Venetian observer, 'adopted reform for ambition, the middle cla.s.ses for Church property, the lower cla.s.ses for Paradise.' Moreover, the accusation would be equally true of the Catholics. If Conde was fighting for the control of the government, he had a juster claim thereto than the half-foreign Guises. The political aims of the Huguenots, as represented at Orleans, were more worthy of support than the absolutist opinions of the Guises. If the Huguenots may be charged with reviving feudalism at one moment, and of being republicans at another, the Guises at first fought for political as well as religious tyranny, and latterly masqueraded as the champions of pure democracy. Finally, the cause of the Huguenots, although that of a minority--and, it must be confessed, an unpopular minority--was yet the cause of national independence, which was threatened by the ever-tightening alliance of the Guises with Philip of Spain. Nor must it be supposed that there was nothing deeper on either side; indeed, it was the presence of religious convictions which gave to the struggle at once its earnestness and its ferocity.

| The geographical and social distribution of the two | parties.

The geographical distribution of the two parties does not bear out the idea that there is a natural affinity between Protestantism and the Teutonic races, and between the Celtic and Romance nations and Catholicism. It is true that the lower cla.s.ses in Celtic Brittany were strongly Catholic, but so was the north-east of France, in which the Teutonic element was strong, while the Huguenots found their chief support in the south-west, which was Romance. The main stronghold of the Huguenots may be described as a square enclosed between the Loire, the Saone, and the Rhone on the north and east; the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees, and the Bay of Biscay on the south and west; while Dauphine and Normandy were their outposts. Yet even here it was only in Eastern Languedoc and in Dauphine, and later, at La Roch.e.l.le, that they solidly held their own, or that they were supported by the majority of the population, both n.o.ble and non-n.o.ble. Elsewhere, in those provinces where the n.o.bles inclined to Protestantism, the peasants generally remained Catholic. While the Huguenots had, with the exception of Conde and his relations, few adherents among the grandees, they found their main support in the smaller n.o.bility and in the trading cla.s.ses of the towns. Of these, the n.o.bility formed, at their own charges, a most admirable light cavalry, and, in spite of the inferiority of their arms, proved in many a battle that they were more than a match for mail-clad men-at-arms. Unfortunately their poverty, their dislike of discipline, and their local interests rendered them unfit for a long campaign, and this accounts for the fact that their victories often led to such poor results.

On the side of the Catholics were ranged the ma.s.s of the greater n.o.bles, the Church, and the official cla.s.ses of the magistracy and bureaucracy, the peasants of the rural districts, except in the Cevennes and Dauphine, and the lower cla.s.ses in the towns, more especially of Paris, and later, of Orleans and Rouen. The intense Catholicism of these and other towns is to be explained by the influence of the religious houses, and in Paris of the University which, with its sixty-five colleges, formed almost a town of itself, and, together with the monasteries, owned a large part of the city and its suburbs. The moral strength of Catholicism depended on the conservative instincts of the people and on their religious traditions, which were so closely intertwined with the business and pleasures of life, and which were shocked by the iconoclasm of the Huguenots; while the feudal, separatist, and republican tendencies of the Huguenots at once prevented harmony among themselves, and opened them to the charge of being enemies to unity and centralisation--always dear to the French mind. The Catholics had also the possession of the King's person and of the financial resources of the government and the Church, and were a.s.sisted by the subsidies of Philip II. Finally, the Catholics were able to recruit their troops by mercenaries not only from the Catholic states of Germany, but also from the Lutherans, who gave but scant support to their Calvinistic brethren. That under these circ.u.mstances, coupled with the fact that they never numbered more than one-tenth of the population, the Huguenots maintained the struggle so long as they did must be, in the main, attributed to the zeal and devotion of many--notably of the ministers--to the stubbornness of the _bourgeoisie_, the superiority of their cavalry, and the ability of their leaders, especially of Conde and of Coligny.

| First Civil War. Aug. 1562-March 1563.

| Rouen taken by the Catholics. Oct. 26, 1562.

| Battle of Dreux. Dec. 19, 1562.

| a.s.sa.s.sination of Francis, Duke of Guise. Feb. 18, | 1563.

The war began in August by the taking of Poictiers by St. Andre, and the surrender of Bourges, which gave the centre of France, up to the gates of Orleans, to the Catholics. In September, the Huguenots secured the alliance of Elizabeth of England, who feared lest the triumph of the Guises might mean that the whole of the resources of France would be used to place Mary Queen of Scots on the English throne. Yet with her usual caution, Elizabeth demanded the cession of Dieppe and Havre as the price of her a.s.sistance. The indignation, however, caused by the cession of these towns was scarcely balanced by the n.i.g.g.ardly help which the Queen vouchsafed to the Protestants; and on the 28th of October, the Catholics gained a brilliant success by the capture of Rouen, the capital of Normandy, which henceforth became 'one of the eyes of the Catholics.' The loss of the town was, however, sufficiently compensated for by the death of the fickle Antony of Navarre of a wound received at the siege, for thereby the heads.h.i.+p of his house devolved on Conde, and on his own son the future Henry IV., a boy of ten years old. In December, the attempt of Conde to neutralise the effect of the loss of Rouen by an attack on Normandy led to the battle of Dreux, on the Eure, which was really a victory for the Catholics. The losses on their side were indeed the heavier; the Marshal St. Andre was slain, and the Constable Montmorenci taken prisoner. Nevertheless, Conde himself fell into the enemy's hands, and Coligny was forced to retire on Orleans. In February of the following year, Coligny again returned and took several towns of importance in Normandy. But the Duke of Guise had taken advantage of his absence to besiege Orleans (February 5), and the city seemed doomed, when the Duke was a.s.sa.s.sinated by a fanatic named Poltrot, who believed that it was the will of G.o.d that he should rid the world of 'the butcher of Va.s.sy.'

| Pacification of Amboise. March 12, 1563.

The death of the leader of the Catholics revived the hopes of Catherine that she might succeed in keeping the balance between the two parties. Accordingly, on March 12, the Pacification of Amboise was signed. By that treaty, Conde and Montmorenci were exchanged; n.o.bles were permitted to hold Protestant services in their houses; in each _senechaussee_,[81] one city was to be granted, in the suburbs of which the Huguenots might wors.h.i.+p; and in every town where the Protestant service had been held in the preceding March one or two places were to be designated by the King, where it might be continued _inside_ the walls. From these provisions, however, Paris was to be excepted. The treaty was followed by a united attack on Havre, from which the English were driven on the 25th of July, and Elizabeth was forced to surrender her claim to the rest.i.tution of Calais. Coligny was opposed to the treaty. It did not, in his opinion, give sufficient security to the Protestants; but Conde, who was as rash in making peace as he had been in declaring war, had fallen under the fatal influence of Mdlle. de Limeuil, one of the ladies of Catherine's suite, and was deluded with the promise that he would be appointed Lieutenant-general, and could then watch over the interests of his party. In this he was disappointed; for Catherine, to escape from her promise, had Charles, who was now thirteen, declared of age; and although she herself was anxious to prevent any further hostilities, such was not the wish of the Pope, of the Guises, or of Philip.

| The Conspiracy of Meaux, and the Second Civil War.

| Sept. 1567-March 1568.

| The battle of St. Denis. Nov. 10, 1567.

| The Edict of Longjumeau. March 1568.

At a conference held at Bayonne in June, 1565, Alva, in his master's name, urged the Queen-mother to dismiss the chancellor L'Hopital, to 'show herself a good Catholic,' and to proceed to stringent measures against the Huguenots. Very possibly she might have complied if Philip had consented to further her dynastic aims by giving the hand of Don Carlos to her second daughter, and that of his sister, the widowed Queen of Portugal, to her favourite son, Henry of Anjou; Philip, however, rejected the proposal, and Catherine refused to follow his advice. Nevertheless, the alarm of the Protestants was natural; it was rumoured that a League had been made and a ma.s.sacre of the Protestants decided upon, and finally, the levying of some Swiss Catholic troops, ostensibly to watch the march of Alva from Piedmont to the Netherlands (cf. p. 332), led to the conspiracy of Meaux in September, 1567. The Protestant leaders proposed to seize the person of the King, to insist on the removal of the Cardinal of Lorraine, and to demand that unrestricted liberty of conscience should be conceded. The court, warned at the last moment of its danger, escaped with difficulty to Paris, escorted by the Swiss troops; and the Cardinal, after a hair-breadth escape, fled to Rheims. Conde then advanced on St. Denis, where he was attacked by the Constable with an overwhelming force (November 10, 1567). But the Huguenots fought so stubbornly, and the Parisian levies so badly, that the battle was indecisive. On the Huguenot side, more men of note fell, yet on the Catholic side, the Constable Montmorenci was mortally wounded. The death of Montmorenci for the moment strengthened the hands of Catherine and the influence of L'Hopital. Accordingly, in March, 1568, the Edict of Longjumeau confirmed the Treaty of Amboise, which was to last 'till by G.o.d's grace all the king's subjects should be reunited in the profession of one religion.'

| Third Civil War. Sept. 1568-Aug. 1570.

| Battle of Jarnac. March 13, 1569.

Catherine hoped that the Catholic party would be weakened by the death of Montmorenci. She kept the office of Constable vacant, and conferred on the Duke of Anjou, the brother of the King, the less ambitious t.i.tle of Lieutenant-general. But her hopes of thus maintaining peace were not to be realised. The 'Parlements' throughout France had opposed the Edict of Longjumeau, and that of Toulouse went so far as to execute the King's messenger on the charge of heresy. The Huguenots, not unnaturally, refused to surrender all the cities, as they had promised in the treaty. The Cardinal of Lorraine returned, and, in August, 1568, a plot was formed to seize Conde and the Chatillons, who only succeeded in effecting their escape to La Roch.e.l.le owing to a sudden flood in the Loire. L'Hopital, in despair, retired; and Catherine was once more forced to adopt the policy of the Guises. The Edicts of Toleration were revoked, and the 'Patched-up Peace,' as it was called, was at an end. In this, the third Civil War, Orleans, which had been surrendered at the last truce, became one of the Catholic outposts; while La Roch.e.l.le, which only declared for the Huguenots in February 1568, was the chief Protestant stronghold. No serious battle, however, occurred till the spring of the year 1569. Then the Duke of Anjou, a young man of eighteen years, won the battle of Jarnac on the Charente (March 13th), in which Conde was slain after he had surrendered. The death of Conde was looked upon as a serious blow to the Huguenot cause. But it is doubtful whether they lost much, for, although Conde was popular, and did not, like his brother, sacrifice his religious convictions to his personal interest, he was an ambitious man, and his aims had been chiefly political. His moral character was, moreover, weak; and, though a brave soldier, he was not a general of the first order, while as a statesman his conduct often verged on foolhardiness.

The expectation of the Catholics that the victory of Jarnac would put an end to the war was not fulfilled. The battle was not much more than a cavalry skirmish. The death of Conde left Coligny in supreme command, and served, as a contemporary says, 'to reveal in all its splendour the merits of the admiral,' who was in every way, except as a diplomatist, the superior of his predecessor. Even the loss of d'Andelot, who at this juncture died of fever, did not prevent the Huguenots from meeting at first with considerable success.

| Expedition of the Duke of Zweibrucken and William of | Orange. May 1569.

| Battle of Moncontour. Oct. 3, 1569.

In May, 1569, Wolfgang, Duke of Zweibrucken (Deux Ponts), entered France at the head of 'reiters' from lower, and of 'landsknechts' from upper Germany, and a force of French and Flemish troops under William of Orange and Louis of Na.s.sau. Forcing their way to the Loire they seized La Charite, a place of considerable importance as commanding the pa.s.sage of the river from Burgundy and Champagne, and, although Wolfgang himself died of fever during the campaign, his troops effected a union with Coligny near Limoges (June 12). Unfortunately, instead of attacking Saumur, which commanded the road to Anjou and Brittany, they turned south against Poictiers. The city was bravely held by Henry, Duke of Guise, the young son of Francis, who here first displayed his military genius; and, after seven weeks, Coligny was forced to abandon the siege by the advance of the Duke of Anjou. Coligny was anxious to avoid a battle, for William of Orange had departed to raise fresh troops in Germany; his losses before Poictiers had been considerable; and, as usual, he had found it difficult to keep his forces long in the field. But the Germans demanded pay, which he could not give, or to be led against the enemy; and Coligny, forced to accept the challenge of Anjou with far inferior forces, suffered a serious defeat at Moncontour (October 3), where he was severely wounded. Had Anjou at once pursued, the Huguenots might have been completely crushed; fortunately, whether owing to the jealousy of the Guises at this success of Anjou or no, it was decided first to reduce Saint Jean d'Angely. The city fell, indeed, after seven weeks' siege, but 'as the siege of Poictiers was the beginning of the mishaps of the Huguenots, so that of Saint Jean d'Angely was the means of wasting the good fortune of the Catholics.' La Roch.e.l.le still held out; the winter came on; the Duke of Anjou resigned his command, while his successor, the Duke of Montpensier, retired to Angers.

| Expedition of Coligny. Oct. 1569-June 1570.

Meanwhile in October, Coligny, now recovered of his wounds, had started on a brilliant expedition. He crossed the south of France, his army growing like a s...o...b..ll, and reached the Rhone; thence, hugging the right bank of the Saone, he marched northwards to Arnay Le Duc, where an indecisive engagement with Marshal de Cosse (June 25), caused him to retreat to La Charite, and thence to his own castle at Chatillon-sur-Loire. Coligny had not, indeed, succeeded in carrying out his plan of uniting with William of Orange, who was collecting a force on the German frontier, and of forcing his way to Paris, but the campaign showed conclusively that the Huguenots were not yet crushed.

Philip II. would send to the Catholics nothing but promises; Queen Elizabeth, unwilling to see the Huguenots completely routed, was considering the question of aiding them; Charles was jealous of the military success of his brother Anjou; and Catherine was not sorry to listen to the advice of Francis of Montmorenci, eldest son of the old Constable, to come to terms once more.

| Peace of St. Germain. Aug. 8, 1570.

By the Peace of St. Germain (August 8, 1570), which closed the third Civil War, the Huguenots not only regained all that they had obtained by the Edict of Longjumeau, but were allowed to celebrate their services in two cities of each of the twelve provinces of France, and received as securities four cities which they were to hold for two years--La Roch.e.l.le, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charite. They were also to be restored to all their property, honours, and offices, and were given the right of challenging a certain number of the judges in the 'Parlements,' and a right of appeal from that of Toulouse, which had been the most violent. Thus the Huguenots had at last obtained liberty of conscience, and terms with regard to the holding of services, which, if not completely satisfactory, were perhaps as much as they could expect. Moreover, they might well hope that this time the terms would be kept, for the Treaty of St. Germain was followed by a complete change in the foreign policy of the court.

| Change in the policy of the French Court.

Catherine had hitherto followed two lines of conduct. At one time she had tried to act as a mediator between the two religious parties; at another to support the weaker, and thus maintain a balance. But both had failed. The crown was not powerful enough for the first, and, instead of succeeding in the second, she had been obliged to join the stronger party. A third alternative remained. Might it not be possible to revive the national hostility to Spain; sink religious differences in a foreign war; form a great Protestant league against the Pope and Spain; divide the Netherlands with England and William of Orange; and at home secure the authority of the crown? Such were the views of Coligny, which were now to be adopted by the King and Catherine. Charles IX., feeble though he was, was not without some traces of better things; he had always been averse to civil war, and saw that Spain had been the chief gainer from the discords of France, since, as Marshal Vielleville had said long ago, 'as many gallant gentlemen had fallen in one battle as would have sufficed to drive the Spaniards out of Flanders.' The Spanish victory of Lepanto over the Turks in October, 1571, only served to intensify Charles' dread of Philip. Moreover, as we have seen, he was jealous of the fame his brother, the Duke of Anjou (the favourite of his mother), had gained in the late campaign, and hoped that he might eclipse it by leading a national war against the Spaniard. But the support of the King would have been of little value had not Catherine also favoured the designs of Coligny. Philip had refused to further her dynastic interests at the Conference of Bayonne, in June 1565 (cf. p. 407). His third wife, Elizabeth of France, had died in 1568. He now declined either to marry Margaret of Valois, Catherine's second daughter, or to urge the claims of that lady upon the young King of Portugal. Accordingly Catherine wished to marry her to the young King of Navarre, the first prince of the blood, whose possessions[82] stretched from the Pyrenees to the other side of the Garonne, and whose friends.h.i.+p, whether he was converted or not, might be of great a.s.sistance to her. His mother, however, Jeanne d'Albret, dreaded the influence of the depraved court of France on her son, and rightly suspected the character of the young princess; and Catherine, eager to gain the a.s.sistance of the Admiral, who alone was likely to overcome the scruples of the Queen of Navarre, listened to his suggestions, and negotiations were opened with William of Orange and with England. The Prince eagerly welcomed these overtures. He had long realised that the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain would not be successful if fought solely on religious lines. The Protestants were too scattered, and too much divided among themselves, for that; and the only chance lay in waging a political war against Spanish tyranny, in alliance with foreign powers. Accordingly Louis of Na.s.sau was sent to negotiate, and there was talk of an alliance of France, England, and the Empire, and of a division of the Netherlands between them. In pursuance of this scheme, Elizabeth of England was approached; but though at this time quarrelling with Philip over the exploits of the 'Sea-dogs' on the Spanish Main, and angry at the support he had given to the Ridolfi plot in 1571, she had insuperable objections to see Antwerp and the Scheldt in French hands. It was therefore proposed that she should marry the Duke of Anjou, and that he should be declared sovereign of the Netherlands (cf. p. 338). To this proposal Elizabeth appeared more favourably inclined, and Walsingham, her agent in France, was closely questioned as to the personal appearance of the Duke. The negotiations broke down, indeed, in January, 1572, owing to the preference of Anjou, who had been influenced by the Guises, for the hand of the Queen of Scots, 'the rightful Queen of England,' but even then Alencon, Anjou's younger brother, was suggested; and a correspondence on the subject, which, on the part of Elizabeth at least, was only entered into to gain time, continued until arrested by the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew.

| La Marck seizes Brille. April 1, 1572.

While Elizabeth trimmed, events moved rapidly. On the 1st of April, 1572, the Comte de la Marck, a Flemish refugee, being expelled from Dover with his s.h.i.+ps by the order of the English Queen, who was not yet prepared for an open breach with Philip, seized Brille and Flus.h.i.+ng, and Holland and Zealand rose. In May, Louis of Na.s.sau, having by the connivance of Charles raised a force, chiefly of Huguenots, in France, took Mons, the capital of Hainault, while Elizabeth, not to be outdone, allowed English volunteers to cross to Flus.h.i.+ng. The dream of Coligny seemed likely to be fulfilled, and Charles appeared to be on the point of declaring war on Spain.

| Catherine becomes alarmed at the growing influence of | Coligny.