THE PEACE OF SAINT GERMAIN.

A problem of cardinal importance here confronts us, in the inquiry whether the peace which had at length dawned upon France was or was not concluded in good faith by the young king and his advisers. Was the treaty a necessity forced upon the court by the losses of men and treasure sustained during three years of almost continual civil conflict? Were the queen mother and those in whose hands rested the chief control of affairs, really tired of a war in which nothing was to be gained and everything was in jeopardy, a war whose most brilliant successes had been barren of substantial fruits, and had, in the sequel, been stripped of the greater part of their glory by the masterly conduct of a defeated opponent? Or, was the peace only a prelude to the massacre—a skilfully devised snare to entrap incautious and credulous enemies?

The latter view is that which was entertained by the majority of the contemporaries of the events, who, whether friends or foes of Charles and Catharine, whether Papists or Protestants, could not avoid reading the treaty of pacification in the light of the occurrences of the "bloody nuptials." The Huguenot author of the "Tocsin against the murderers" and Capilupi, author of the appreciative "Stratagem of Charles the Ninth"—however much they may disagree upon other points—unite in regarding the royal edict as a piece of treachery from beginning to end. It was even believed by many of the most intelligent Protestants that the massacre was already perfected in the minds of its authors so far back as the conference of Bayonne, five years before the peace of St. Germain, in accordance with the suggestions of Philip the Second and of Alva. This last supposition, however, has been overthrown by the discovery of the correspondence of Alva himself, in which he gives an account of the discussions which he held with Catharine de' Medici on that memorable occasion. For we have seen that, far from convincing the queen mother of the necessity for adopting sanguinary measures to crush the Huguenots, the duke constantly deplores to his master the obstinacy of Catharine in still clinging to her own views of toleration. It seems equally clear that the peace of St. Germain was no part of the project of a contemplated massacre of the Protestants. The Montmorencies, not the Guises, were in power, and were responsible for it. The influence of the former had become paramount, and that of the latter had waned. The Cardinal of Lorraine had left the court in disgust and retired to his archbishopric of Rheims, when he found that the policy of war, to which he and his family were committed, was about to be abandoned. Even in the earlier negotiations he had no part, while the queen mother and the moderate Morvilliers were omnipotent.[792] And when Francis Walsingham made his appearance at the French court, to congratulate Charles the Ninth upon the restoration of peace, he found his strongest reasons of hope for its permanence, next to the disposition and the necessities of the king, in the royal "misliking toward the house of Guise, who have been the nourishers of these wars,"[793] and in the increase of the royal "favor to Montmorency, a chief worker of this peace, who now carrieth the whole sway of the court, and is restored to the government of Paris."[794]

At home and abroad, the peace was equally opposed by those who could not have failed to be its warmest advocates had it been treacherously designed. We have already seen that both Pope Pius the Fifth, and the King of Spain insisted upon a continuance of the war, and offered augmented assistance, in case the government would pledge itself to make no compact with the heretical rebels. The pontiff especially was unremitting in his persuasions and threats; denouncing the righteous judgment of God upon the king who preferred personal advantage to the claims of religion, and reminding him that the divine anger was wont to punish the sins of rulers by taking away their kingdoms and giving them to others.[795] The project of a massacre of Protestants, had it in reality been entertained by the French court while adopting the peace, could scarcely have been kept so profound a secret from the king and the pontiff who had long been urging a resort to such measures, nor would Pius and Philip have been suffered through ignorance to persist in so open a hostility to the compact which was intended to render its execution feasible.

If the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, as enacted on the fatal Sunday of August, was not premeditated in the form it then assumed—if the peace of St. Germain was not, as so many have imagined, a trick to overwhelm the Huguenots taken unawares—are we, therefore, to believe that the idea of such a deed of blood was as yet altogether foreign to the mind of Catharine de' Medici? I dare not affirm that it was. On the contrary, there is reason to believe that the conviction that she might some day find herself in a position in which she could best free herself from entanglement by some such means had long since lodged in her mind. It was not a strange or repulsive notion to the careful student of the code of morality laid down in "Il Principe." Alva had familiarized her with it, and the civil wars had almost invested it in her eyes with the appearance of justifiable retaliation. She had gloated in secret over the story of the Queen Blanche, mother of Louis the Ninth, and her successful struggle with her son's insubordinate nobles, telling her countryman, the Venetian ambassador Correro, with a significant laugh such as she was wont occasionally to indulge in, that she would be very sorry to have it known that she had been reading the old manuscript chronicle, for they would at once infer that she had taken the Castilian princess as her pattern.[796] More unscrupulous than the mother of St. Louis, she had revolved in her mind various schemes for strengthening her authority at the expense of the lives of a few of the more prominent Huguenot chiefs, convinced, as she was, that Protestantism would cease to exist in France with the destruction of its leaders. But, despite pontifical injunctions and Spanish exhortations, she formed no definite plans; or, if she did, it was only to unravel on the morrow what she had woven the day before. What Barbaro said of her at one critical juncture was true of her generally in all such deliberations: "Her irresolution is extreme; she conceives new plans from hour to hour; within the compass of a single day, between morning and evening, she will change her mind three times.[797]"

While it is scarcely possible to believe Catharine to have been more sincere in the adoption of this peace than in any other event of her life, we may feel some confidence that her son was really in favor of peace for its own sake. He was weary of the war, jealous of his brother Anjou, disgusted with the Guises, and determined to attempt to conciliate his Huguenot subjects, whom he had in vain been trying to crush. Apparently he wished to make of the amnesty, which the edict formally proclaimed, a veritable act of oblivion of all past offences, and intended to regard the Huguenots, in point of fact as well as in law, as his faithful subjects. An incident which occurred about two months after the conclusion of peace, throws light upon the king's new disposition. Cardinal Odet de ChÂtillon, deprived by the Pope of his seat in the Roman consistory, had, on motion of Cardinal Bourbon, been declared by the Parisian parliament to have lost his bishopric of Beauvais, on account of his rebellion and his adoption of Protestant sentiments. All such judicial proceedings had indeed been declared null and void by the terms of the pacification, but the parliaments showed themselves very reluctant to regard the royal edict. In October, 1570, Charles the Ninth happening to be a guest of Marshal Montmorency at his palace of Écouen, a few leagues north of Paris, sent orders to Christopher de Thou, the first president, to wait upon him with the parliamentary records. Aware of the king's object, De Thou, pleading illness, sent four of his counsellors instead; but these were ignominiously dismissed, and the presence of the chief judge was again demanded. When De Thou at last appeared, Charles greeted him roughly. "Here you are," he said, "and not very ill, thank God! Why do you go counter to my edicts? I owe our cousin, Cardinal Bourbon, no thanks for having applied for and obtained sentence against the house of ChÂtillon, which has done me so much service, and took up arms for me." Then calling for the records, he ordered the president to point out the proceedings against the admiral's brother, and, on finding them, tore out with his own hand three leaves on which they were inscribed; and on having his attention directed by the marshal, who stood by, to other places bearing upon the same case, he did not hesitate to tear these out also.[798]

To all with whom he conversed Charles avowed his steadfast purpose to maintain the peace inviolate. He called it his own peace. He told Walsingham, "he willed him to assure her Majesty, that the only care he presently had was to entertain the peace, whereof the Queen of Navarre and the princes of the religion could well be witnesses, as also generally the whole realm."[799] And the shrewd diplomatist believed that the king spoke the truth;[800] although, when he looked at the adverse circumstances with which Charles was surrounded, and the vicious and irreligious education he had received, there was room for solicitude respecting his stability.[801] There was, indeed, much to strengthen the hands of Charles in his new policy of toleration. On the twenty-sixth of November he married, with great pomp and amid the display of the popular delight, Elizabeth, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian the Second. This union, far from imperilling the permanence of the peace in France,[802] was likely to render it more lasting, if the bridegroom could be induced to copy the conciliatory and politic example of his father-in-law. Not long after Charles received at Villers-Cotterets an embassy sent by the three Protestant electors of Germany and the other powerful princes of the same faith. They congratulated him upon the suppression of civil disorder in France, and entreated him to maintain freedom of worship in his dominions such as existed in Germany and even in the dominions of the Grand Turk; lending an ear to none who might attempt to persuade him that tranquillity could not subsist in a kingdom where there was more than one religion. Charles made a gracious answer, and the German ambassadors retired, leaving the friends of the Huguenots to entertain still better hopes for the recent treaty.[803]

It cannot be denied, however, that the Huguenots could see much that was disquieting and calculated to prevent them from laying aside their suspicions. There were symptoms of the old constitutional timidity on the part of Catharine de' Medici. She showed signs of so far yielding to the inveterate enemies of the Huguenots as to abstain from insisting upon the concession of public religious worship where it had been accorded by the Edict of St. Germain. No wonder that the Huguenots, on their side, warned her, with friendly sincerity and frankness, that, should she refuse to entertain their just demands, the present peace would be only a brief truce, the prelude to a relentless civil war. "We will all die," was their language, "rather than forsake our God and our religion, which we can no more sustain without public exercise than could a body live without food and drink."[804] Not only did the courts throw every obstacle in the way of the formal recognition of the law establishing the rights of the Huguenots, but the outbreaks of popular hatred against the adherents of the purer faith were alarming evidence that the chronic sore had only been healed over the surface, and that none of the elements of future disorder and bloodshed were wanting. Thus, in the little city and principality of Orange, the Roman Catholic populace, taking advantage of the supineness of the governor and of the consuls, introduced within the walls, under cover of a three days' religious festival, a large number of ruffians from the adjoining ComtÂt Venaissin. This was early in February, 1571. Now began a scene of rapine and bloodshed that might demand detailed mention, were it not that at the frequent repetition of such ghastly recitals the stoutest heart sickens. Men, and even mere boys, of the reformed faith were butchered in their homes, in the arms of their wives or their mothers. The goods of Protestants were plundered and openly sold to the highest bidder. Of many, a ransom was exacted for their safety. The work went on for two weeks. At last a deputy from Orange reached the Huguenot princes and the admiral at La Rochelle, and Count Louis of Nassau, who was still there, wrote to Charles with such urgency, in the name of his brother, the Prince of Orange, that measures were taken to repress and punish the disorder.[805]

A much more serious infringement upon the protection granted to the Protestants by the edict, took place at Rouen about a month later. Unable to celebrate their worship within the city walls, the Protestants had gone out one Sunday morning to the place assigned them for this purpose in the suburbs. Meantime a body of four hundred Roman Catholics posted themselves in ambush near the gates to await their return. When the unsuspecting Huguenots, devoutly meditating upon the solemnities in which they had been engaged, made their appearance, they were greeted first with imprecations and blasphemies, then with a murderous attack. Between one hundred and one hundred and twenty are said to have been killed or wounded. The punishment of this audacious violation of the rights of the Protestants was at first left by parliament to the inferior or presidial judges, and the investigation dragged. The judges were threatened as they went to court: "Si l'on sÇavoit que vous eussiez informÉ, on vous creveroit les yeux; si vous y mectez la main, on vous coupera la gorge!" The people broke into the prisons and liberated the accused. The civic militia refused to interfere. It was evident that no justice could be obtained from the local magistrates. The king, however, on receiving the complaints of the Huguenots, displayed great indignation, and despatched Montmorency to Rouen with twenty-seven companies of soldiers, and a commission authorized to try the culprits. The greater part of these, however, had fled. Only five persons received the punishment of death; several hundred fugitives were hung in effigy. Montmorency attempted to secure the Protestants against further aggression by disarming the entire population, with the exception of four hundred chosen men, and by compelling the parliament, on the fifteenth of May, to swear to observe the Edict of Pacification—precautions whose efficacy we shall be able to estimate more accurately by the events of the following year.[806]

The strength of the popular hatred of the Huguenots was often too great for even the government to cope with. The rabble of the cities would hear of no upright execution of the provisions respecting the oblivion of past injuries, and resisted with pertinacity the attempt to remove the traces of the old conflict. The Parisians gave the most striking evidence of their unextinguished rancor in the matter of the "Croix de Gastines," a monument of religious bigotry, the reasons for whose erection in 1569 have been sufficiently explained in a previous chapter.[807]

More than a year had passed since the promulgation of the royal edict of pacification annulling all judgments rendered against Protestants since the death of Henry the Second; and yet the Croix de Gastines still stood aloft on its pyramidal base, upon the site of the Huguenot place of meeting. Several times, at the solicitation of the Protestants, the government ordered its demolition. The municipal officers of Paris declined to obey, because it had not been erected by them; the parliament, because, as they alleged, the sentence was just and they could not retract; the Provost of Paris, because he was not above parliament, which had placed it there.[808] Charles himself wrote with his own hand to the provost: "You deliberate whether to obey me, and whether you will have that fine pyramid overturned. I forbid you to appear in my presence until it be cast down."[809] The end was not yet. The monks preached against the sacrilege of lowering the cross. MaÎtre Vigor, on the first Sunday of Advent, praised the people of Paris for having opposed the demolition, maintaining that they had acted "only from zeal for God, who upon the cross suffered for us." "The people," he declared, "had never murmured when they had taken down Gaspard de Coligny, who had been hung in effigy, and would soon, God willing, be hung in very deed!"[810] Meantime, the mob of Paris exhibited its zeal for the honor of the cross by assailing the soldiers sent to tear down the "Croix de Gastines," and by breaking open and plundering the contents of several Huguenot houses. It was not until the provost had called in the assistance of Marshal Montmorency, and the latter had killed a few of the seditious Parisians who opposed his progress, and hung one man to the windows of a neighboring house, that the disturbance ceased. The pyramid was then destroyed, and the cross transferred to the CimetiÈre des Innocents, where it is said to have remained until the outbreak of the French Revolution.[811] The "plucking down of the cross" was a distasteful draught to the fanatics. "The common people," wrote an eye-witness, "ease their stomacks onely by uttering seditious words, which is borne withal, for that was doubted. The Protestants by the overthrow of this cross receive greater comfort, and the papists the contrary."[812]

The Huguenot leaders, rejoicing at any evidence of the royal favor, desired to strengthen it and render it more stable. For this purpose they found a rare opportunity in projecting matrimonial alliances. Queen Elizabeth, of England, was yet unmarried, a princess of acknowledged ability, and reigning over a kingdom, which, if it had not at that time attained the wealth of industry and commerce which it now possesses, was, at least, one of the most illustrious in Christendom. Where could a more advantageous match be sought for Henry of Anjou, the French monarch's brother? True, the Tudor princess was no longer young, and her personal appearance was scarcely praised, except by her courtiers. She had been a candidate for many projected nuptials, but in none had the disparity of age been so great as in the present case, for, being a maiden of thirty-seven, she lacked but a single year of being twice as old as Anjou.[813] Besides these objections, and independently of the difference of creed between the queen and Anjou, she had the unenviable reputation of being irresolute, fickle, and capricious. And yet, in spite of all these difficulties, the match was seriously proposed and entertained in the autumn and winter succeeding the ratification of peace.

It is worthy of notice that the scheme originated with the French Protestants. Cardinal ChÂtillon, the admiral's brother, and the Vidame of Chartres, both of them zealous partisans of the Reformation, and at this time engaged in negotiations in England, were the first to make mention of the plan, and probably it took its rise in their minds. Their object was manifest: if France could be united to Protestant England by so distinguished a marriage, the permanence of the peace of St. Germain might be regarded as secure. Under such auspices, the Huguenots, long proscribed and persecuted, might hope for such favor and toleration as they had never yet enjoyed.

Catharine de' Medici, when approached on the subject, gave indications of hearty acquiescence. Of late there had been a growing estrangement between the French and Spanish courts. The selfishness and arrogance of Philip and his ministers had been particularly evident and offensive during the late war. It was sufficiently clear that the Catholic king opposed the peace less from hatred of heresy or of rebellion, than because of his scarcely disguised hope of profiting by the misfortunes of France. The queen mother was consequently quite inclined to tighten the bonds of amity and friendship with England, when those that had previously existed with Spain were loosened. The prospect of a crown for her favorite son was an alluring one—doubly so, because of Nostradamus's prophecy that she would see all her sons upon the throne, to which she gave a superstitious credence, trembling lest it should involve in its fulfilment their untimely death. It is true that, in view of Elizabeth's age, she would have preferred to marry the Duke of Anjou to some princess of the royal house of England, whom Elizabeth might first have proclaimed her heir and successor.[814] However, as the English queen was, perhaps, even more reluctant than the majority of mankind to be reminded of her advancing years and of her mortality, Catharine's ambassador may have deemed it advisable to be silent regarding the suggestion of so palpable a "memento mori," and contented himself with offering for her own acceptance the hand of one whom he recommended as "the most accomplished prince living, and the most deserving her good graces."[815] Elizabeth received the proposal with courtesy, merely alluding to the great difference between her age and Anjou's, but admitted her apprehension lest, since "she was already one whose kingdom rather than herself was to be wedded," she might marry one who would honor her as a queen rather than love her as a woman. In fact, the remembrance of the amours of the father and grandfather made her suspicious of the son, and the names of Madame d'Estampes and of Madame de Valentinois (Diana of Poitiers) inspired her with no little fear. All which coy suggestions La Mothe FÉnÉlon, astute courtier that he was, knew well how to answer.[816]

Soon, however, the difficulty threatened to be the unwillingness of the suitor, rather than the reluctance of the lady. Henry of Anjou was the head of the Roman Catholic party in France. Charles's orthodoxy might be suspected; there was no doubt of his brother's. His intimacy with the Guises, his successes as general of the royal forces in what was styled a war in defence of religion, were guarantees of his devotion to the papal cause. All his prestige would be lost if he married the heretical daughter of Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn. Hence desperate efforts were made to deter him—efforts which did not escape the Argus-eyed Walsingham. "The Pope, the King of Spain, and the rest of the confederates, upon the doubt of a match between the queen, my mistress, and monsieur, do seek, by what means they can, to dissuade and draw him from the same. They offer him to be the head and chief executioner of the league against the Turk, a thing now newly renewed, though long ago meant; which league is thought to stretch to as many as they repute to be Turks, although better Christians than themselves. The cause of the Cardinal of Lorraine's repair hither from Rheims, as it is thought, was to this purpose."[817]

Charles the Ninth was indignant at this interference, and said: "If this matter go forward, it behooveth me to make some counter-league," having his eye upon the German Protestant princes and Elizabeth.[818] Besides, there were at this juncture other reasons for displeasure, especially with Spain. Charles and his mother had received a rebuff from Sebastian of Portugal, to whom they had offered Margaret of Valois in marriage. The young king had replied, through Malicorne, "that they were both young, and that therefore about eight years hence that matter might be better talked of," "which disdainful answer," the English ambassador wrote from the French court, "is accepted here in very ill part, and is thought not to be done without the counsel of Spain."[819]

With Henry of Anjou, however, much to the disgust and disappointment of his mother, the "league" succeeded too well. Scarcely had a month passed, before Catharine was compelled to write to the envoy in England, telling him that Henry had heard reports unfavorable to Elizabeth's character, and positively declined to marry her.[820] In her extreme perplexity at this unexpected turn of events, the queen mother suggested to La Mothe FÉnÉlon that perhaps the Duke of AlenÇon would do as well, and might step into the place which his brother had so ungallantly abandoned.[821] Now, as this AlenÇon was a beardless boy of sixteen, and, unlike Charles and Henry, small for his age, it is not surprising that La Mothe declared himself utterly averse to making any mention of him for the present, lest the queen should come to the very sensible conclusion that the French were "making sport of her."[822]

But there was at present no need of resorting to substitution. For a time the ardor of Anjou was rekindled, and rapidly increased in intensity. Catharine first wrote that Anjou "condescended" to marry Elizabeth;[823] presently, that "he desired infinitely to espouse her."[824] A month or two later he declared to Walsingham: "I must needs confess that, through the great commendation that is made of the queen your mistress, for her rare gifts as well of mind as of body, being (as even her very enemies say) the rarest creature that was in Europe these five hundred years; my affection, grounded upon so good respects, hath now made me yield to be wholly hers."[825] On the other hand, Elizabeth began to exhibit such coldness that her most intimate servants doubted her sincerity in the entire transaction. With more candor than courtiers usually exhibit in urging a suit which they suspect to be distasteful to their sovereign, Lord Burleigh, the Earl of Leicester, and Sir Francis Walsingham used every means of persuading the queen to decisive action. "My very good Lord," wrote Walsingham, on the fourteenth of May, 1571, "the Protestants here do so earnestly desire this match; and on the other side, the papists do so earnestly seek to impeach the same, as it maketh me the more earnest in furthering of the same. Besides, when I particularly consider her Majesty's state, both at home and abroad, so far forth as my poor eyesight can discern; and how she is beset with foreign peril, the execution whereof stayeth only upon the event of this match, I do not see how she can stand if this matter break off."[826] Lord Burleigh, in perplexity on account of Elizabeth's conduct, exclaimed that "he was not able to discern what was best;" but added: "Surely I see no continuance of her quietness without a marriage, and therefore I remit the success to Almighty God."[827] The situation of Elizabeth's servants was, indeed, extremely embarrassing. Their mistress had laid an insuperable obstacle in the way. She did not, indeed, require Anjou to abjure his faith, but her demands virtually involved this. Not only did she refuse to grant the duke, by the articles of marriage, public or even private worship for himself and his attendants, according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church, but she wished to bind him to make no request to that effect after marriage.[828] In vain did Catharine protest that this was to require him to become an atheist, and her own advisers solemnly warn her that this could but lead to an entire rupture of the negotiations. Under the pretence of excluding all exercise of Popery from England, the queen disappointed the ardent hopes of thousands of sincere and thorough Protestants in France and of many more in England, who viewed the marriage as by far the most advisable cure—far better than a simple treaty of peace—for the ills of both kingdoms. "If you find not in her Majesty," wrote Walsingham to Leicester, "a resolute determination to marry—a thing most necessary for our staggering state—then were it expedient to take hold of amity, which may serve to ease us for a time, though our disease requireth another remedy;" and again, a few days later (on the third of August, 1571): "My lord, if neither marriage nor amity may take place, the poor Protestants here do think then their case desperate. They tell me so with tears, and therefore I do believe them. And surely, if they say nothing, beholding the present state here, I could not but see it most apparent."[829]

The fears of the Protestants were not baseless. As the marriage, and the consequent close friendship with England, seemed to insure the growth and spread of the reformed faith,[830] the failure of both was an almost unmistakable portent of the triumph of the opposite party and of the renewal of persecution and bloodshed. And so also the fanatical Roman Catholics read the signs of the times, and again they plied Anjou with their seductions. "Great practices are here for the impeachment of this match," wrote the English ambassador, near the end of July, 1571. "The Papal Nuncio, Spain, and Portugal, are daily courtiers to dissuade this match. The clergy here have offered Monsieur a great pension, to stay him from proceeding. In conclusion, there is nothing left undone, that may be thought fit to hinder."[831]

And these intrigues were not fruitless. Anjou now declared to his mother that he would not go to England without public assurances that he should enjoy the liberty to exercise his own religion. He was unwilling even to trust the queen's word, as Catharine and Charles would have wished him to do. Catharine meantime expressed her vexation in her despatches to La Mothe FÉnÉlon.[832] "We strongly suspect," she said, "that Villequier, Lignerolles, or Sarret, or possibly all three, may be the authors of these fancies. If we succeed in obtaining some certainty respecting this matter, I assure you that they will repent of it."[833] But she added that, should the negotiation unfortunately fail, she was resolved to put forth all her efforts in behalf of her son AlenÇon, who would be more easily suited.[834]

In fact, while Anjou was indifferent, or perhaps disgusted at the obstacles raised in the way of the marriage, and was unwilling to sacrifice his attachment to the party in connection with which he had obtained whatever distinction he possessed; and while Elizabeth, who was by no means blind, saw clearly enough that she was likely to get a husband who would regard his bride rather as an incumbrance than as an acquisition,[835] there were two persons who were as eager as Elizabeth's advisers, or the Huguenots themselves, to see the match effected. These were Charles the Ninth and Catharine de' Medici, both of whom just now gave abundant evidence of their disposition to draw closer to England and to the Huguenots of France and the Gueux of Holland, while suffering the breach between France and Spain to become more marked.

Count Louis of Nassau, ever since the conclusion of peace, had remained with the Huguenots within the walls of La Rochelle. At the repeated solicitations of his brother, the Prince of Orange, he had entered into correspondence with the king, and urged him to embrace an opportunity such as might never return, to endear himself to the Netherlanders, and add materially to the extent and power of France by espousing the cause of constitutional rights. His advances were so favorably received that he now came in disguise, accompanied by La Noue, TÉligny, and Genlis, to confer with Charles upon the subject. They met at Lumigny-en-Brie, whither the king had gone to indulge in his favorite pastime of the chase, and on several consecutive days held secret conferences.[836] Louis was a nobleman whose history and connections entitled him to respect; but his frank and sincere character was a still more powerful advocate in his behalf.[837] He proved to the king how justly he might interfere in defence of the Low Countries, where Philip was seeking "to plant, by inquisition, the foundation of a most horrible tyranny, the overthrow of all freedoms and liberties." He traced the course of events since the humiliating treaty of Cateau-CambrÉsis, and added: "If you think in conscience and honor you may not become the protector of this people, you should do well to forbear, for otherwise the success cannot be gained. If you think you may, then weigh in policy how beneficial it will be for you, and how much your father would have given, to have had the like opportunity offered unto him that is now presented unto you gratis; which, if you refuse, the like you must never look for."

Both Charles and his mother appeared well pleased with the proposal, and the king, who had listened attentively to the recital of the follies into which Philip had fallen in consequence of listening to evil advice, exclaimed: "Similar counsellors, by violating my edict, wellnigh brought me into like terms with my subjects, wherefrom ensued the late troubles; but now, thank God, He has opened my eyes to discern what their meaning was." Next, Louis showed that success was not difficult. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants in the Netherlands equally detested the tyranny of the Spaniards. The towns were ready to receive garrisons. Philip had not in the whole country over three thousand troops upon whose fidelity he could rely. The addition of a dozen ships to those already possessed by the patriots would enable them effectually to prevent the landing of Spanish reinforcements. In short, the Netherlands were ripe for a division which would amply recompense France and the German princes, as well as Queen Elizabeth, should she, as was hoped, consent to take part in the enterprise: for the provinces of Flanders and Artois, which had once belonged to the French crown, would gladly give themselves up to Charles; Brabant, Gelderland, and Luxemburg would be restored to the empire; and Holland, Zealand, and the rest of the islands would fall to the share of the queen.[838]

So favorably did Charles and his mother, with those counsellors to whom the secret was intrusted, receive the count's advances, that it was clearly advisable to bring them into communication with Admiral Coligny, to whose conduct the enterprise, if adopted, must be confided, and for whom the young king expressed great esteem. Indeed, so urgently was the admiral invited, and so intimately did the success or failure of the attempt to enlist France in the Flemish war seem to be dependent upon his personal influence, that Gaspard de Coligny, despite the ill-concealed solicitude of many of his more suspicious friends, consented to trust himself in the king's hands. As for himself, the admiral had little desire to leave the secure retreat of La Rochelle. Here he was surrounded by friends. Here his happiness had been enhanced by two marriages which promised to add greatly to the wealth and influence he already possessed. Jacqueline d'Entremont, the widow of a brave officer killed in the civil wars, had long entertained an admiration, which she made no attempt to disguise, for the bravery and piety of the stern leader of the Huguenots. Possessed of very extensive estates in the dominions of the Duke of Savoy, she had also the qualities of mind and disposition which fitted her to become the wife of so upright and magnanimous a man. The proposals of marriage are said to have come from her relatives, nor did the lady herself hesitate to express the wish before her death to become the Marcia of the new Cato.[839] The nuptials were celebrated with great pomp at La Rochelle, whither Jacqueline, after having been married by proxy,[840] was escorted by a goodly train of Huguenot nobles. Great were the rejoicings of the people, but not less great the anger of the Duke of Savoy, who, as Jacqueline's feudal lord, claimed the right to dispose of her hand, and had peremptorily forbidden her to marry the admiral. The barbarous revenge which Emmanuel Philibert too soon found it in his power to inflict upon the unfortunate widow of Coligny forms the subject for one of the darkest pages of modern history.[841] Under no less auspicious circumstances was consummated the union of Coligny's daughter, Louise de ChÂtillon, to TÉligny, a young noble whose skill as a diplomatist seemed to have destined him to hold a foremost rank among statesmen. Scarcely less unhappy, however, than her step-mother, Louise was to behold both her father and her husband perish in a single hour by the same dreadful catastrophe.

Was it foolish rashness or overweening presumption that led the admiral to leave the new home he had made within the strong defences of La Rochelle; or was he moved solely by a conscientious persuasion that he had no right to consider personal danger when the great interests of his country and his faith were at stake? The former view has not been without its advocates, some of whom have gloried in finding the proofs of a judicial blindness sent by Heaven to hasten the self-induced destruction of the Huguenots. A more careful consideration of all the circumstances of the case, illustrated by a better appreciation of Coligny's character, rather induces me to adopt the opposite conclusion. Certainly the noble language of Coligny in reply to the warnings of his friends, both now and later, when he was about to venture within the walls of Paris, displayed no unconsciousness of the perils by which he was environed. "Better, however, were it," he said, "to die a thousand deaths, than by undue solicitude for life to be the occasion of keeping up distrust throughout an entire kingdom."

About the beginning of September, 1571, Charles and his court repaired to Blois, on the banks of the Loire.[842] The avowed object of the movement was to meet Coligny and the Protestant princes. "There are many practices (intrigues) to overthrow this journey," wrote Walsingham, about the middle of the preceding month, "but the king sheweth himself to be very resolute. I am most constantly assured that the king conceiveth of no subject that he hath, better than of the admiral, and great hope there is that the king will use him in matters of greatest trust; for of himself he beginneth to see the insufficiency of others—some, for that they are more addicted to others than to himself; others, for that they are more Spanish than French, or else given more to private pleasures than public. There is none of any account within this realm, whose as well imperfections as virtues, he knoweth not. Those that do love him, do lament that he is so much given to pleasure: they hope the admiral's access unto the court will yield some redress in that case. Queen mother, seeing her son so well affected towards him, laboreth by all means to cause him to think well of her. She seemeth much to further the meeting."[843]

Nothing could surpass the honorable reception of the admiral, when, on the twelfth of September, he arrived with a small retinue at court in the city of Blois. On first coming into the royal presence, he humbly kneeled, but Charles graciously lifted him up, and embraced him, calling him his father, and protesting that he regarded this as one of the happiest days of his life, since he saw the war ended and tranquillity confirmed by Coligny's return. "You are as welcome," said he, "as any gentleman that has visited my court in twenty years." And in the same interview, he expressed his joy in words upon which subsequent events placed a sinister construction, but which nevertheless appear to have been uttered in good faith: "At last we have you with us, and you will not leave us again whenever you wish."[844] Nor was Catharine behind her son in affability. She surprised the courtiers by honoring the Huguenot leader with a kiss. And even Anjou, who chanced to be indisposed, received him in his bedchamber with a show of friendliness. More substantial tokens of favor followed. The same person, who, as the principal general of the rebels, had been attainted of treason, his castle and possessions being confiscated or destroyed by decree of the first parliament of France, and a reward of fifty thousand gold crowns being set upon his head, now received from the king's private purse the unsolicited gift of one hundred thousand livres, to make good his losses during the war. Moreover, he was presented with the revenues of his lately deceased brother, the Cardinal Odet de ChÂtillon, for the space of one year, and was intrusted with the lucrative office of guardian of the house of Laval during the minority of its heir. Indeed, throughout his stay at Blois, which was protracted through several weeks, Coligny was the favored confidant of Charles, who sometimes even made him preside in the royal council.[845]

Moreover, it was doubtless at Coligny's suggestion that the king at this time wrote to the Duke of Savoy interceding for those Waldenses who in the recent wars had aided the French Protestants in arms, and who since their return to the ducal dominions had experienced severe persecution on that account. "I desire," he says in this letter, "to make a request of you, a request of no ordinary character, but as earnest as you could possibly receive from me—that, just as for the love of me you have treated your subjects in this matter with unusual rigor, so you would be pleased, for my sake, and by reason of my prayer and special recommendation, to receive them into your benign grace, and reinstate them in the possessions which have for this cause been confiscated." He added that he desired not only to exhibit to his Protestant subjects his intention to execute his edict, but to extend to their allies from abroad the same love and protection.[846]

These and other marks of honorable distinction shown to the acknowledged head of the Huguenots, must have been excessively distasteful both to the Guises and to the Spaniard. The former now retired from court, and left Charles completely in the hands of the Montmorencies and the admiral.[847] Earlier in the year, the Duke of Alva had met with a signal rebuff at the hands of the French, when, in return for the aid furnished to Charles by his Catholic Majesty during the late wars, he requested him to supply him with German reiters, to allow him to levy in France troops to serve against the Prince of Orange, and to detain the fleet which was said to be preparing for the prince at La Rochelle. The first two demands were peremptorily refused, while the ships, it was replied, were intended merely to make reprisals upon the Spaniards, who had taken some Protestant vessels, drowned a part of their crew in the ocean, and delivered others into the power of the Inquisition, and could not be interfered with.[848] The Spanish ambassador had borne with the offensiveness of this answer; but the favor with which the Huguenots were now received, and the openness with which the Flemish war was discussed, rendered his further stay impossible. It is true that the interviews of Louis of Nassau with the king were held with great secrecy, and that Charles even had the effrontery to deny that he had met the brother of Orange at all.[849] It was impossible to deny that Philip's subjects were despoiled by vessels which issued with impunity from La Rochelle. But, although the ambassador declared that these grievances must be redressed, or war would ensue, he was bluntly informed by Charles that "Philip might not look to give laws to France." Catharine partook of her son's indignation, the more so as she seems at this time to have shared in the current belief that her daughter Elizabeth had been poisoned by her royal husband.[850] At last, in November, the ambassador withdrew from court, without taking leave of the king, after having, in scarcely disguised contempt,[851] given away to the monks the silver plate which Charles had presented to him.

While the new policy of conciliation and toleration thus disgusted one, at least, of those foreign powers which had spurred on the government to engage in suicidal civil contests, it was at home producing the beneficent results hoped for by its authors. Charles himself appeared to be daily more convinced of its excellence. In a letter to President Du Ferrier, the French envoy at Constantinople, written during the admiral's stay at Blois, he exposed for the sultan's benefit the reasons for the mutation in his treatment of the Huguenots, and for the cordial reception he had given Coligny at his court. "You know," he said, "that this kingdom fell into discord and division, in which it still is involved. I forgot no prescription which I thought might cure it of this ulcerous wound; at one time trying mild remedies, at others applying the most caustic, without sparing my own person, or those whom nature made most dear to me.... But, having at length discovered that only time could alleviate the ill, and that those who were at the windows were very glad to see the game played at my expense,[852] I had recourse to my original plan, which was that of mildness; and by good advice I made my Edict of Pacification, which is the seal of public faith, under whose benign influence peace and quiet have been restored." And referring to Coligny's arrival, he added: "You know that experience is dearly bought and is worth much. I must therefore tell you that the chief result which I hoped from his coming begins already to develop, inasmuch as the greater part of my subjects, who lately lived in some distrust, have by this demonstration gained such assurance of my kindness and affection, that all partisan feeling and faction are visibly beginning to fade away."[853]

Besides the Flemish project, an important domestic affair engaged the attention of the king and his counsellors at the time of Coligny's visit. This was the proposed marriage of young Henry, the Prince of BÉarn, and after his mother's death heir of the crown of Navarre, to Margaret of Valois, the youngest sister of Charles the Ninth. Margaret, who had lately entered upon her twentieth year, was a year and a half older than the prince.[854] In a court and a state of society where the birth of a daughter was the signal for the initiation of an unlimited number of matrimonial projects, it is not surprising that this match, among many others, was talked of in the very infancy of the parties, perhaps with little expectation that anything would ever come of it. The prince was a sprightly boy, and, it is said, so delighted his namesake, Henry the Second, that the monarch playfully asked him whether he would like to be his son-in-law—a question which the boy found no difficulty in answering in the affirmative. In fact, the matter went so far that, when the young Bearnese was little over three years of age, Antoine of Bourbon wrote to his sister, the Duchess of Nevers, with undisguised delight, of "the favor the king has been pleased to show me by the agreement between us for the marriage of Madam Margaret, his daughter, with my eldest son—a thing which I accept as so particular a token of his good grace, that I am now at rest and satisfied with what I could most ardently desire in this world."[855] But the boy's mother had not been inclined to accept the king's offer to take and educate him with his own children.[856] She was not very familiar with the disorders of the royal court; but she had seen enough to convince her that the quiet plains at the foot of the Pyrenees could furnish a safer school of manners and morals. More than once the idea of the connection between the crowns of France and Navarre was revived, and in 1562 Catharine bethought herself of it as a means of detaching the unfortunate Antoine from the triumvirs, whose cause he had espoused with such strange infatuation.[857] But other plans soon diverted the ambitious mind of the Italian queen. Moreover, the civil wars between Protestants and Roman Catholics made the marriage of the daughter of the "Very Christian King" to the son of the most obstinate Huguenot in France appear to be out of the range of propriety or likelihood. Meantime, Margaret's union with Sebastian of Portugal was seriously discussed.[858] The tiresome negotiations ended in January, 1571, with a haughty refusal of her hand, dictated, as we have seen, by Philip himself. A few weeks later, as Margaret informs us in her MÉmoires—which may generally be credited, except where the fair author's love affairs are concerned—the Prince of Navarre began again to be mentioned as an available candidate for her hand. She expressly states that it was from the Montmorencies that the first suggestion came[859]—that is, from FranÇois de Montmorency, the constable's oldest son. This nobleman, while he had inherited a great part of his father's influence, as the head of one of the most honorable feudal families in France, having its seat in the very neighborhood of the capital, had ranged himself with the party opposed to that with which Anne had been identified, and, although in outward profession a Roman Catholic, was in full sympathy with the liberal political views of his cousin, Admiral Coligny. This fact effectually disposes of the story that the marriage was proposed, however much it may subsequently have been entertained, as a trap to ensnare the Huguenots, thus thrown off their guard.

Marshal Biron, another statesman of the same type, was the messenger to carry the royal proposals to La Rochelle. He pictured to the Queen of Navarre in glowing colors the advantages that would flow from this alliance, the strength it would impart to the friends of mutual toleration, the consternation and dismay it would carry into the camp of the enemy. At the same time he declared that Charles the Ninth felt confident that, although he had not as yet obtained from the Pope the dispensation which the relationship subsisting between the parties, as well as their religious differences, rendered necessary, Pius the Fifth would ultimately place no obstacle in the way. Jeanne d'Albret gratefully acknowledged the honor offered by the king to her son, but, before accepting it, professed herself compelled to consult her spiritual advisers respecting the question whether such a marriage might in good conscience be entered into by a member of the reformed church.[860] As for Margaret herself, she gives us in her MÉmoires little light as to the state of her own feelings at this time. If we may imagine her so indifferent, she demurely expressed her acquiescence in whatever her mother might decide, but begged her to remember that "she was very Catholic," and that "she would be very sorry to marry any one who was not of her religion."[861] A few months later, however, when the prospects of the marriage became less bright, because of the difficulties arising from religion, it would seem that, with a perversity not altogether unexampled, Margaret became more anxious to have it consummated. At least, Francis Walsingham writes to Lord Burleigh: "The gentlewoman, being most desirous thereof, falleth to reading of the Bible, and to the use of the prayers used by them of the religion."[862]

Meanwhile, the project of a marriage between Elizabeth and Anjou had, as we have seen, been virtually abandoned. The matter of religion was the ostensible stumbling-block; it can scarcely have been the real difficulty on either side. As to Anjou, the sincerity of his religious convictions is certainly not above suspicion. But he was the head of a party in his brother's kingdom, a party that professed unalterable devotion to the "Holy See" and the old faith. If the eternal rewards of his fidelity to the papacy were at all problematical, there was no doubt whatever in his mind of the advantage of so powerful support as that which the ecclesiastics of France could give him. He was resolved not to throw away this advantage by openly agreeing to renounce all exercise of his own religion in England, and this, too, without the certainty that the concession would secure to him the hand of the queen. And, unfortunately, it was impossible for him to gain this certainty. Elizabeth was already pretty well understood. Her fancies and freaks it was beyond the power of the most astute of her ministers to predict or to comprehend. If the barrier of religion were demolished, there was no possibility of telling what more formidable works might be unmasked. And so Henry, rather more sensible upon this point than even Catharine and Charles, who would have had him shrink from no concessions, made a virtue of necessity, definitely withdrew from competition for the hand of a woman for whose personal appearance it was impossible for him to entertain any admiration; whose moral character, he had often been told and he more than half suspected, was bad;[863] and told his friends, and probably believed, that he had had a narrow escape. The queen, on the other hand, was perhaps not conscious of insincerity of purpose. She must marry, if not from inclination, for protection's sake—the protection of her subjects and herself—so all the world told her; and a marriage that would secure to England the support of France against Spain was the best. But that she sought excuses for not taking the Duke of Anjou is evident, even though she strove to make it appear to others, as well as to herself, that the refusal came at last from him.[864] And she had her advisers—subjects who in secret aspired to her hand, or others—who, in an underhand way, stimulated her aversion to Henry. It is not unlikely that the Earl of Leicester, despite his ardent protestations of zealous support of the match, was the most insidious of its opponents. "While 'the poor Huguenots' were telling Walsingham in tears that an affront from England would bring back the Guises, and end in a massacre of themselves, Leicester was working privately upon the queen, who was but too willing to listen to him, feeding her through the ladies of the bedchamber with stories that Anjou was infected with a loathsome disease, and assisting his Penelope to unravel at night the web which she had woven under Cecil's direction in the day."[865]

So the negotiation of a marriage between Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou, after being virtually dead for about a half-year, breathed its last in January, 1572. But the full accord between the two kingdoms was too important to the interests of both, and the opportunity of obtaining a crown for one of her sons too precious in the eye of Catharine. Accordingly the discussion of the terms of the treaty of amity was pressed with still greater zeal, while the French envoy to England was instructed to offer AlenÇon to Elizabeth in place of his brother. And now were the wits of the statesmen on both sides of the channel exercised to find good reasons why the match would be no incongruous one. Unfortunately, AlenÇon, as already stated, was short even for his age; but this was no insuperable obstacle. "Nay," said Catharine de' Medici to Sir Thomas Smith, when she was sounding him respecting his mistress's disposition, "he is not so little; he is so high as you, or very near." "For that matter, madam," replied Smith, "I for my part make small account, if the queen's majestie can fancie him. For Pipinus Brevis, who married Bertha, the King of Almain's daughter, was so little to her, that he is standing in Aquisgrave, or Moguerre, a church in Almain, she taking him by the hand, and his head not reaching to her girdle; and yet he had by her Charlemain, the great Emperor and King of France, which is reported to be almost a giant's stature."[866] It was not so easy to dispose of the disparity in years,[867] and perhaps still less of AlenÇon's disfigurement by small-pox; for that unlucky prince added this to the long catalogue of his misfortunes. The course of the treaty for mutual defence was, happily, somewhat smoother than that of the matchmaking. On the eighteenth of April the treaty was formally concluded,[868] and shortly after, Marshal Montmorency and M. de Foix were despatched to administer the oath to Queen Elizabeth. This solemn ceremony was performed on Sunday, the fifteenth of June. The deputies were received with every mark of distinction, and the marshal was publicly presented by the queen with the insignia of the Order of the Garter.[869] The commission of the French envoys instructed them to press upon Elizabeth the AlenÇon marriage as a powerful means of cementing the alliance; and it empowered them to expend money to the extent of ten or twelve thousand crowns in buying the consent of those lords who had hitherto opposed the union. The Earl of Leicester, whose straightforwardness may have been suspected, was to be tempted by the special offer of some French heiress in marriage, the name of Mademoiselle de Bourbon being suggested.[870] But the marriage was not destined to be accomplished, although the negotiations were kept up until the very time of the massacre, and Elizabeth sent to Catharine de' Medici her hearty acknowledgment of the honor she had done her in offering her all her sons successively.[871] At the very moment when the fearful blow fell which was to render any such marriage impossible, Catharine was planning and proposing an interview between Elizabeth on the one side, and herself and AlenÇon on the other. That the dignity of neither party might be compromised, it was suggested that the meeting might take place some calm day on the water between Dover and Boulogne.[872] Elizabeth had reconsidered her partial refusal, and encouraged the project; the nobles, the ladies of the court, the council, all favored it; and in a letter written four days after the streets of Paris flowed with blood, but before the appalling intelligence had reached him, the French ambassador wrote to Catharine: "All who are well affected cry to us, 'Let my Lord the Duke come!'"[873]

It cannot be supposed that such a leaning could be manifested toward the Huguenot party, and such amity concluded with the Protestant kingdom of England, without arousing grave solicitude on the part of the Pope and other Roman Catholic sovereigns of Europe. Pius the Fifth determined, if possible, to deter Charles from permitting the hateful marriage between his sister and the heretical Prince of Navarre. He therefore promptly despatched his nephew, the Cardinal of Alessandria,[874] first to Sebastian of Portugal, whom he found no great difficulty in persuading again to entertain the project of a marriage with Margaret of Valois, and thence, with the utmost haste, to the court of Charles the Ninth.[875] The legate, when admitted to an audience, unfolded at great length the grievances of the pontiff—the mission of a heretic, formerly a bishop, as envoy to Constantinople, the rumored opposition of the king to the Holy League against the Turk, but especially the contemplated nuptials of a daughter of France with the son of Jeanne d'Albret. Charles replied to these charges in the most politic manner. He prayed that the earth might open and swallow him up, rather than that he should stand in the way of so illustrious and holy league as that against the infidel. As to his zeal for the Christian faith, he demonstrated it—albeit some might object that the fraternal affection which was reported to subsist between the parties hardly rendered this argument convincing—by the fact of his having exposed, in its defence, his dearest brother, the Duke of Anjou, to all the perils of war. By civil war the resources of his kingdom had been so weakened that they barely sufficed for its protection. He justified the Navarrese marriage by alleging the remarkable traits which made Henry superior to any other prince of the Bourbon family, and by the great benefit which religion would gain from his conversion. In short, Charles was profuse in protestations of his sincere determination to maintain the Catholic faith; and, drawing a valuable diamond ring from his finger, he presented it to the legate as a pledge, he said, of his unalterable fidelity to the Holy See, and a token that he would more than redeem his promises. The cardinal legate, however, declined to receive the gift, saying that he was amply satisfied with the plighted word of so great a king, a security more firm than any other pledge that could be given to him.[876] Such seem to have been the assurances given by Charles on this celebrated occasion, vague and indefinite, but calculated to allay to a certain extent the anxiety of the head of the papal church.[877] There is good reason to believe that the king's intention of fulfilling them, not to say his plan for doing so, was equally undefined; although, so far as his own faith was concerned, he had no thought of abandoning the church of his fathers. The expressions by means of which Charles is made to point with unmistakable clearness to a contemplated massacre,[878] of which, however the case may stand with respect to his mother, it is all but certain that he had at this time no idea, can only be regarded as fabulous additions of which the earliest disseminators of the story were altogether ignorant. The fact that the cardinal legate's rejection of the ring was publicly known[879] seems to be a sufficient proof that it was offered simply as a pledge of the king's general fidelity to the Holy See, not of his intention to violate his edict and murder his Protestant subjects. The government made the attempt in like manner to quiet the people, whom even the smallest amount of concession and favor to the Huguenots rendered suspicious; and the words uttered for this purpose were often so flattering to the Roman Catholics, that, in the light of subsequent events, they seem to have a reference to acts of treachery to which they were not intended to apply.

The doubt propounded by Jeanne d'Albret to the reformed ministers, respecting the lawfulness of a mixed marriage, having been satisfactorily answered, and the devout queen being convinced that the union of Henry and Margaret would rather tend to advance the cause to which she subordinated all her personal interests, than retard it by casting reproach upon it, the project was more warmly entertained on both sides. Yet the subject was not without serious difficulty. Of this the religious question was the great cause. To the English ambassadors, Walsingham and Smith, Jeanne declared (on the fourth of March, 1572) in her own forcible language, "that now she had the wolf by the ears, for that, in concluding or not concluding the marriage, she saw danger every way; and that no matter (though she had dealt in matters of consequence) did so much trouble her as this, for that she could not tell how to resolve." She could neither bring herself to consent that her son with his bride should reside at the royal court without any exercise of his own religion—a course which would not only tend to make him an atheist, but cut off all hope of the conversion of his wife—nor that Margaret of Valois should be guaranteed the permission to have mass celebrated whenever she came into Jeanne's own domains in BÉarn, a district which the queen "had cleansed of all idolatry." For Margaret would by her example undo much of that which had been so assiduously labored for, and the Roman Catholics who had remained would become "more unwilling to hear the Gospel, they having a staff to lean to."[880]

It was this uncertainty about Margaret's course, and the consequent gain or loss to the Protestant faith, that rendered it almost impossible for Jeanne d'Albret to master her anxiety. "In view," she wrote to her son, "of Margaret's judgment and the credit she enjoys with the queen her mother and the king and her brothers, if she embrace 'the religion,' I can say that we are the most happy people in the world, and not only our house but all the kingdom of France will share in this happiness.... If she remain obstinate in her religion, being devoted to it, as she is said to be, it cannot be but that this marriage will prove the ruin, first, of our friends and our lands, and such a support to the papists that, with the good-will the queen mother bears us, we shall be ruined with the churches of France." It would almost seem that a prophetic glimpse of the future had been accorded to the Queen of Navarre. "My son, if ever you prayed God, do so now, I beg you, as I pray without ceasing, that He may assist me in this negotiation, and that this marriage may not be made in His anger for our punishment, but in His mercy for His own glory and our quiet."[881]

But there were other grounds for solicitude. Catharine de' Medici was the same deceitful woman she had always been. She would not allow Jeanne d'Albret to see either Charles or Margaret, save in her presence. She misrepresented the queen's words, and, when called to an account, denied the report with the greatest effrontery. She destroyed all the hopes Jeanne had entertained of frank discussion.

"You have great reason to pity me," the Queen of Navarre wrote to her faithful subject in BÉarn, "for never was I so disdainfully treated at court as I now am.... Everything that had been announced to me is changed. They wish to destroy all the hopes with which they brought me."[882] Catharine showed no shame when detected in open falsehood. She told Jeanne d'Albret that her son's governor had given her reason to expect that Henry would consent to be married by proxy according to the Romish ceremonial. But when she was hard pressed and saw that Jeanne did not believe her, she coolly rejoined: "Well, at any rate, he told me something." "I am quite sure of it, madam, but it was something that did not approach that!" "Thereupon," writes Jeanne in despair, "she burst out laughing; for, observe, she never speaks to me without trifling."[883]

But it was particularly the abominable immorality of the royal court that alarmed the Queen of Navarre for the safety of her only son, should he be called to sojourn there. The lady Margaret, she wrote—and her words deserve the more notice on account of the infamy into which the life as yet apparently so guileless was to lead—"is handsome, modest, and graceful; but nurtured in the most wicked and corrupt society that ever was. I have not seen a person who does not show the effects of it. Your cousin, the marquise, is so changed in consequence of it, that there is no appearance of religion, save that she does not go to mass; for, as for her mode of life, excepting idolatry, she acts like the papists, and my sister the princess still worse.... I would not for the world that you were here to live. It is on this account that I want you to marry, and your wife and you to come out of this corruption; for although I believed it to be very great, I find it still greater. Here it is not the men that solicit the women, but the women the men. Were you here, you would never escape but by a remarkable exercise of God's mercy.... I abide by my first opinion, that you must return to BÉarn. My son, you can but have judged from my former letters, that they only try to separate you from God and from me; you will come to the same conclusion from this last, as well as form some idea respecting the anxiety I am in on your account. I beg you to pray earnestly to God; for you have great need of His help at all times, and above all at this time. I pray to Him that you may obtain it, that He may give you, my son, all your desires."[884]

Such were the anxieties of the Queen of Navarre in behalf of a son whom she had carefully reared, hoping to see in him a pillar of the Protestant faith. She was to be spared the sight both of those scenes in his life which might have flushed her cheek with pride, and of other scenes which would have caused her to blush with shame. At length the last difficulties in the way of Henry of Navarre's marriage, so far as the court and the queen were concerned, were removed.[885] Charles and Catharine no longer insisted that Margaret should be allowed the mass when in BÉarn; while Jeanne reluctantly abandoned her objections to the celebration of the marriage ceremony in the city of Paris. Accordingly, about the middle of May the Queen of Navarre left Blois and came to the capital for the purpose of devoting her attention to the final arrangements for the wedding. She had not, however, been long in Paris before she fell sick of a violent fever, to which it became evident that she must succumb. We are told by a writer who regards this as a manifest provocation of Heaven, that one of her last acts before her sudden illness had been a visit to the Louvre to petition the king that, on the approaching festival of Corpus Christi (FÊte-Dieu), the "idol," as she styled the wafer, might not be borne in solemn procession past the house in which she lodged; and that the king had granted her request.[886] During the short interval before her death she exhibited the same devotion as previously to the purer Christianity she had embraced, mingled with affectionate solicitude for her son and daughter, so soon to be left orphans. Her constancy and fortitude proved her worthy of all the eulogies that were lavished upon her.[887] On Monday, the ninth of June, she died, sincerely mourned by the Huguenots, who felt that in her they had lost one of their most able and efficient supports, the weakness of whose sex had not made her inferior to the most active and resolute man of the party. Even Catharine de' Medici, who had hated her with all her cowardly heart, made some show of admiring her virtues, now that she was no longer formidable and her straightforward policy had ceased to thwart the underhanded and shifting diplomacy in which the queen mother delighted. Yet the report gained currency that Jeanne had been poisoned at Catharine's instigation. She had, it was said, bought gloves of Monsieur RenÉ, the queen mother's perfumer[888]—a man who boasted of his acquaintance with the Italian art of poisoning—and had almost instantly felt the effects of some subtle powder with which they were impregnated. To contradict this and other sinister stories, the king ordered an examination of her remains to be made; but no corroborative evidence was discovered. It is true that the physicians are said to have avoided, ostensibly through motives of humanity, any dissection of the brain, where alone the evidence could have been found.[889] Be this as it may, the charge of poisoning is met so uniformly in the literature of the sixteenth century, on occasion of every sudden death, that the most credulous reader becomes sceptical as to its truth, and prefers to indulge the hope that perhaps the age may not have been quite so bad as it was represented by contemporaries.

The Prince of BÉarn now became King of Navarre; and, as the court went into mourning for the deceased queen, his nuptials with Margaret of Valois were deferred until the month of August.

Admiral Coligny, instead of returning to La Rochelle after his friendly reception at the court at Blois, had gone to ChÂtillon, where his ruined country-seat and devastated plantations had great need of his presence.[890] Here he was soon afterward joined by his wife, travelling from La Rochelle with a special safe-conduct from the king, the preamble of which declared Charles's will and intention to retain Coligny near his own person, "in order to make use of him in his most grave and important affairs, as a worthy minister, whose virtue is sufficiently known and tried."[891] Coligny was not left long in his rural retirement. Charles expressed, and probably felt, profound disgust with his former advisers, and knew not whom to trust. On one occasion, about this time, he held a conversation with TÉligny respecting the Flemish war. TÉligny had just entreated his Majesty not to mention to the queen mother the details into which he entered—a promise which Charles readily gave, and swore with his ordinary profanity to observe. And then the poor young king, with a desperation which must enlist our sympathy in his behalf, undertook to explain to Coligny's son-in-law his own solitude in the midst of a crowded court. There was no one, he said, upon whom he could rely for sound counsel, or for the execution of his plans. Tavannes was prudent, indeed; but, having been Anjou's lieutenant, and almost the author of his victories, would oppose a war that threatened to obscure his laurels. Vieilleville was wedded to his cups. CossÉ was avaricious, and would sell all his friends for ten crowns. Montmorency alone was good and trustworthy, but so given to the pleasures of the chase that he would be sure to be absent at the very moment his help was indispensable.[892] It is not strange, under these circumstances, that Charles should have turned with sincere respect, and almost with a kind of affection, to that stern old Huguenot warrior, upright, honorable, pious, a master of the art of war, never more to be dreaded than after the reverses which he accepted as lessons from a Father's hands.

As for Coligny himself, his task was not one of his own seeking. But he pitied from his heart the boy-king—still more boyish in character than in years—as he pitied and loved France. Above all, he was unwilling to omit anything that might be vitally important for the progress of the Gospel in his native land and abroad. His eyes were not blind to his danger. When, at the king's request, he came to Paris, he received letters of remonstrance for his imprudence, from all parts of France. He was reminded that other monarchs before Charles had broken their pledges. Huss had been burned at Constance notwithstanding the emperor's safe conduct, and the maxim that no faith need be kept with heretics had obtained a mournful currency.[893] To these warnings Admiral Coligny replied at one moment with some annoyance, indignant that his young sovereign should be so suspected; at another, with more calmness, magnanimously dismissing all solicitude for himself in comparison with the great ends he had in view. When he was urged to consider that other Huguenots, less hated by the papists than he was, had been treacherously assassinated—as was the general opinion then—Andelot, Cardinal ChÂtillon, and lately the Queen of Navarre—his reply was still the same: "I am well aware that it is against me principally that the enmity is directed. And yet how great a misfortune will it be for France, if, for the sake of my individual preservation, she must be kept in perpetual alarm and be plunged on every occasion into new troubles! Or, what benefit will it be to me to live thus in continual distrust of the king? If my prince wishes to slay me, he can accomplish his will in any part of the realm. As a royal officer, I cannot in honor refuse to comply with the summons of the king, meantime committing myself to the providence of Him who holds in his hand the hearts of kings and princes, and has numbered my years—nay, the very hairs of my head. If I succeed in going in arms to the Low Countries, I hope that I may do signal service, and change hatred into good-will. But, if I fall there, at least the enmity against me will cease, and perhaps men will live in peace, without its being needful to set a whole world in commotion for the protection of the life of a single man."[894]

The juncture was critical, although the future still looked auspicious. Charles was resolved that the marriage of his sister should go forward, and seemed almost as resolute, when he had thus secured peace at home between Papist and Huguenot, to embark in a war against Spain—the natural enemy of French repose and greatness. Gregory the Thirteenth—for Pius the Fifth had died on the first of May, 1572, although his maxims and his counsels were unhappily still alive, and endowed with a mischievous activity—refused to grant the dispensation for the marriage except on impossible conditions.[895] But Charles was too impatient to await his caprice. "My dear aunt," he once said to the Queen of Navarre, a short time before her death, "I honor you more than the Pope, and I love my sister more than I fear him. I am not indeed a Huguenot, but neither am I a blockhead; and if the Pope play the fool too much, I will myself take Margot," his common nickname for his sister, "by the hand, and give her away in marriage in full prÊche."[896]

Charles was apparently equally in earnest in his intention to maintain his edict for the advantage of the Huguenots. Accordingly he published a new declaration to this effect, and sent it to his governors, accompanied with a letter expressive of his great gratification that the spirit of distrust was everywhere giving place to confidence, a proof of which was to be found in the recent restitution of the four cities of La Rochelle, Montauban, La CharitÉ, and Cognac, by those in whose hands they were intrusted by the edict of St. Germain.[897] And Charles's correspondence shows still further that the projects urged by Coligny, Louis of Nassau, and other prominent patriots, had made a deep impression upon his imagination, now that for the first time the prospect of a truly noble campaign opened before him. In carrying out the extensive plan against the Spanish king, it was indispensable—so thought the wisest politicians of the time—to secure the co-operation of the Turk. The extent of Philip's dominions in the Old and the New World, the prestige of his successes, the enormous treasure he was said to derive yearly from his colonial establishments in the Indies, all gave him a reputation for power which a more critical examination would have dissipated; but the time for this had not yet arrived. Consequently Charles had sent his ambassador to Constantinople, intending through him to conclude an alliance offensive and defensive with the Moslems. And his declarations to the half-Protestant prelate were explicit enough: "All my humors conspire to make me oppose the greatness of the Spaniards, and I am deliberating how I may therein conduct myself the most skilfully that I can."[898] "I have concluded a league with the Queen of England—a circumstance which, with the understanding I have with the Princes of Germany, puts the Spaniards in a wonderful jealousy."[899] Not only so, but he instructs the ambassador to inform the Grand Seignior that he has a large number of vessels ready, with twelve or fifteen thousand troops about to embark, ostensibly to protect his own harbors, "but in reality intended to keep the Catholic king uneasy, and to give boldness to those Beggars of the Netherlands to bestir themselves and form such enterprises as they already have done."[900] If these assurances had been addressed to a Protestant prince, it would readily be comprehended that they might have had for their object to lull his co-religionists into a fatal security. But, as they were intended only for a Mohammedan ruler, I can see no room for the suspicion that Charles was at this time animated by anything else than an unfeigned desire to realize the plan of Coligny, of a confederacy that should shatter the much-vaunted empire of Philip the Second.

An event now occurred which for a time raised high the hopes of the French Huguenots. This was the capture of the important cities of Mons and Valenciennes. To Count Louis of Nassau the credit of this bold and successful stroke was due. With the secret connivance of Charles, he had recruited in France a body of five hundred horsemen and a thousand foot soldiers, among whom, as was natural, the Huguenot element predominated. With these he now set foot again in the Netherlands. The success that first attended his enterprise was owing, however, rather to a well executed trick than to any practical exhibition of generalship; for the gates of Mons were opened from within by a party that had entered on the previous day in the disguise of wine-merchants.[901] Nevertheless the capture of Mons, the capital of the province of Hainault (on Saturday, the twenty-fourth of May), was so brilliant an exploit, coming as it did close upon the heels of other reverses of the Duke of Alva, that the French Huguenots and all who sympathized with them may be pardoned for having indulged even in somewhat extravagant demonstrations of joy. They seem to have believed that it was pretty nearly over with that hated instrument of Spanish tyranny. They fancied that, with his five hundred horse, Louis might penetrate the country by a rapid movement, and either take Alva prisoner, or, if the duke should retire to Antwerp, raise the whole country in revolt.[902]

For the next two months the Huguenot leaders were indefatigable in their efforts to persuade Charles to take open and decided ground against Spain; but they were met by Anjou and the party in his interest with arguments drawn from the difficulty or injustice of the undertaking, and by the suggestion that Elizabeth, as was her wont, would be likely to withdraw so soon as she saw France once engaged in war with her powerful neighbor, and to use Charles's embarrassments as a means of securing private advantages. In point of fact, Charles was personally unwilling to commit himself until sure of England's support. Meanwhile, Catharine, from whose Argus-eyed inspection nothing that was debated in the royal presence, openly or secretly, ever escaped notice, awaited with her accustomed irresolution Elizabeth's decision, before herself deciding whether to throw her influence into the scale with Coligny (of whose growing favor with her son she had begun to entertain some suspicion), or with Anjou and the Spaniards. But Elizabeth was as ever a riddle, not only to her allies, but even to her most confidential advisers. Certainly she was no friend to Philip and Alva; yet she would not abruptly enter into war against them. She could not help seeing that the interests of her person and of her kingdom, to say nothing of her Protestant faith, were bound up in the success of the Prince of Orange, who was about to cross the Rhine with twenty-five thousand Germans for the relief of Mons, now invested by Alva. For the duke wisely regarded the recapture of this place as the first step in extricating himself from his present embarrassments. In such a strife as that upon which Elizabeth must before long enter, whether with or without her consent, the cordial alliance of France would be valuable beyond computation. And yet, with a fatal perversity, she dallied with the proposal of marriage. One day she would not hear of AlenÇon, alleging that his age and personal blemishes placed the matter out of all consideration. On another she gave hopes, and agreed to take a month's consideration.[903] Thus she tantalized her suitor. Thus she convinced the cunning Italian woman who, although she made no present show of holding the reins of power in France, was ready at any moment to resume them, that there was no reliance to be placed on England's promise of support against Philip.[904]

The golden opportunity was in truth fast slipping away. Alva had struck promptly at that opponent whose thrust was likely to be most deadly. Mons must soon fall. A French Huguenot force, under command of Jean de Hangest, Sieur de Genlis, was sent forward to relieve it. But the Frenchman was no match for the cooler prudence of his antagonist,[905] and suffered himself, on the march, to be surprised (on the nineteenth of July) and taken prisoner by Don Frederick of Toledo and Chiappin Vitelli. Of his army, barely one hundred foot soldiers found their way into the beleaguered town. Twelve hundred were killed on the field of battle—almost in sight of Mons—and a much larger number butchered by the peasantry of the neighborhood.[906] A handful of officers and men, scarcely more fortunate, shared the captivity of their commander, and were destined to have their fortunes depend for a considerable time upon the fluctuating interests of two unprincipled courts.[907]

The rout of Genlis was not in itself a decisive event. While Coligny could bring forward a far more numerous army, and Orange was in command of a considerable German force, the loss of this small detachment was but one of those many reverses that are to be looked for in every war. But, happening under the peculiar circumstances of the hour, it was invested with a consequence disproportioned to its real importance. The fate of the French Huguenots was quivering in the balance. The papal party was known to be bitterly opposed to the war against Spain, and to be merely awaiting an opportunity to strike a deadly blow at the heretics whom the royal edict still protected. Catharine was undecided; but, with her, indecision was the ordinary prelude to the sudden adoption of some one of many conflicting projects, which had been long brooded over, but between which the choice was, in the end, the result rather of accident, caprice, or temporary impressions, than of calm deliberation.

This reverse at Mons, limited in its extent as it was, would be likely, so the Huguenot leaders of France foresaw—and they were not mistaken—to determine Catharine to take the Spanish side. With the queen mother in favor of Spain and intolerance, experience had taught them that there was little to expect from her weak son's intentions, however good they might be. The only ground of hope for Orange and the Netherlands, and the only prospect for security and religious toleration at home, lay in the success of the Flemish project at Paris; and of this but a single chance seemed to remain—in Elizabeth's finally espousing their cause with some good degree of resolution. "Such of the religion," wrote Walsingham to Lord Burleigh, inclosing the particulars of the disaster of Genlis, "as before slept in security, begin now to awake and to see their danger, and do therefore conclude that, unless this enterprise in the Low Countries have good success, their cause groweth desperate."[908] To the Earl of Leicester Walsingham was still more explicit in his warnings: "The gentlemen of the religion, since the late overthrow of Genlis, weighing what dependeth upon the Prince of Orange's overthrow, have made demonstration to the king, that, his enterprise lacking good success, it shall not then lie in his power to maintain his edict. They therefore desire him to weigh whether it were better to have foreign war with advantage, or inward war to the ruin of himself and his estate.[909] The king being not here, his answer is not yet received. They hope to receive some such resolution as the danger of the cause requireth. In the meantime, the marshal (Montmorency) desired me to move your lordship to deal with her Majesty to know whether she, upon overture to be made to the king, cannot be content to join with him in assistance of this poor prince." And the faithful ambassador did not forget to remind his mistress that the success of Philip in Flanders was still more dangerous for Elizabeth than for Charles.[910]

Meantime, Admiral Coligny, although disappointed at the rout of the vanguard of the expedition which was to have been fitted out for the liberation of the Netherlands, and yet more at the coolness which it had occasioned among those who up to this moment had been not unfriendly, did not yield to despondency, but labored all the more strenuously to engage Charles in an undertaking fitted to call forth the nobler faculties of his soul, and to free him from the thraldom under narrow-minded and interested counsellors to which he had been subject all his life long. Even before Genlis's defeat (in June, 1572), the admiral had presented an extended paper, wherein the justice and the fair prospects of the war had been set forth with rare force and cogency.[911] It may be that now, under the influence of a sincere and unselfish devotion that took no account of personal risks, the admiral distinctly told his young master that he could never be a king in the true sense until he should emancipate himself from his mother's control, and until he should find, outside of France, some occupation for his brother Henry of Anjou, such as the vacancy of the Polish throne seemed to offer.[912] Such frankness would have been patriotic and timely, although a politician, influenced only by a regard for his own safety, would have regarded it as foolhardy in the extreme.

This advice, promptly and faithfully reported to Catharine by the spies she kept around the king's person,[913] was the last drop in the cup of Coligny's offences. Charles, at the time of her discovery of this fact, was absent from court, seeking a few days' recreation at Montpipeau. Thither his mother, now really alarmed for the continuance of her influence, pursued him in precipitate haste.[914] Shutting herself up with him apart from his followers, she burst into tears and plied Charles with an artful harangue. For this woman, who had a masculine will and a heart as cold and devoid of pity as the most utter scepticism could make it, had the ability to counterfeit the feminine tenderness which she did not possess. "I had not thought it possible," she said amid her sobs to her son, who trembled like a culprit detected in his crime, "I had not thought it possible that, in return for my pains in rearing you—in return for my preservation of your crown, of which both Huguenots and Catholics were desirous of robbing you, and after having sacrificed myself and incurred such risks in your behalf, you would have been willing to make me so miserable a requital. You hide yourself from me, your mother, and take counsel of your enemies. You snatch yourself from my arms that saved you, in order to rest in the arms of those who wished to murder you. I know that you hold secret deliberations with the admiral. You desire inconsiderately to plunge into a war with Spain, and so to expose your kingdom, as well as yourself and us, a prey to 'those of the religion.' If I am so miserable, before compelling me to witness such a sight, give me permission to withdraw to my birthplace,[915] and send away your brother, who may well style himself unfortunate in having employed his life for the preservation of yours. Give him at least time to get out of danger and from the presence of enemies made in your service—the Huguenots, who do not wish for a war with Spain, but for a French war and a subversion of all estates, which will enable them to gain a secure footing."[916]

Such was a portion of the queen mother's crafty speech. But there was another point upon which she doubtless touched, and which she used to no little purpose. A report had reached her from England to the effect that Queen Elizabeth had decided to issue a proclamation recalling the English who had gone to Flushing to assist the patriots. The story was false; so the secretary, Sir Thomas Smith, subsequently assured Walsingham. Elizabeth neither had done so, nor intended anything of the kind.[917] But it was wonderfully like the usual practice of Henry the Eighth's daughter, and Catharine believed it, and looked with horror at the precipice before which she stood. Deserted by her faithless ally, France was entering single-handed a contest of life or death with the world-empire of Spain. In fact, the English ambassador ascribed to the receipt of this intelligence alone both the queen mother's tears and entreaties at Montpipeau and the king's altered policy. "Touching Flemish matters," he wrote to Lord Burleigh, "the king had proceeded to an open dealing, had he not received advertisement out of England, that her Majesty meant to revoke such of her subjects as are presently in Flanders; whereupon such of his council here as incline to Spain, have put the queen mother in such a fear, that the enterprise cannot but miscarry without the assistance of England, as she with tears had dissuaded the king for the time, who otherwise was very resolute."[918]

Catharine had not mistaken her power over the feeble intellect and the inconstant will of her son. Terrified less by the prospect of a Huguenot supremacy which she held forth, than by the menace of her withdrawal and that of Anjou, Charles, who was but too well acquainted with their cunning and ambition, admitted his fault in concealing his plans, and promised obedience for the future.[919]

It was a sore disappointment to Admiral Coligny. The young king had, until this time, shown himself so favorable, that "commissions were granted, ready to have been sealed, for the levying of men in sundry provinces." But he had now lost all his enthusiasm, and spoke coldly of the enterprise.[920] Gaspard de Coligny did not, however, even now lose courage or forsake the post of duty to which God and his country evidently called him. In truth, the superiority of his mental and moral constitution, less evident in prosperity, now became resplendent, and chained the attention of every beholder. "How perplexed the admiral is, who foreseeth the mischief that is like to follow, if assistance come not from above," wrote Walsingham, full of admiration, to the Earl of Leicester, "your lordship may easily guess. And surely to say truth, he never showed greater magnanimity, nor never was better followed nor more honored of those of the religion than now he is, which doth not a little appal the enemies. In this storm he doth not give over the helm. He layeth before the king and his council the peril and danger of his estate, and though he cannot obtain what he would, yet doth he obtain somewhat from him."[921]

So wrote that shrewd observer, Sir Francis Walsingham, just two weeks before the bloody Sunday of the massacre, and eight days before the marriage of Navarre, little suspecting, in spite of his anxiety, the flood of misery which was so soon to burst upon that devoted land. To all human foresight there was still hope that Charles, weak, nerveless, addicted to pleasure, but not yet quite lost to a sense of honor, might yet be induced to adopt a policy which would place France among the foremost champions of intellectual and civil liberty, and transfer to the north of the Pyrenees the prosperity which the Spanish monarchs had misused and had employed only as an instrument of oppression and degradation. And, indeed, Coligny was partially successful; for the impression made upon Charles by his mother's complaints and menaces at Montpipeau gradually wore away, and again he listened with apparent interest to the manly arguments of the great Huguenot leader.

Could Elizabeth at this moment have brought herself to a more noble course, could she for once have forgotten to "deal under hand," and help secretly while in public she disavowed—could she, in short, have realized for a single instant her responsibility as a great Protestant princess, and been willing to expose even her own life to peril in order to secure to the Reformation a chance of fair play, it might not even now have been too late. But what was she doing at this very moment? According to the admission of her own secretary, she was engaged in detaining volunteers from the Netherlands, on the pretext of "fearing too much disorder there through lack of some good head;" and "gently answering with a dilatory and doubtful answer" the Duke of Alva, when he demanded the revocation of the queen's subjects in Netherlands.[922] Was she projecting anything still more dishonorable? The Spanish envoy in England, Anton de Guaras, affirms it, in a letter of the thirtieth of June to the Duke of Alva; and we have no means of disproving his assertions. In his account of a private audience granted him by Queen Elizabeth, the ambassador writes: "She told me that emissaries were coming every day from Flushing to her, proposing to place the town in her hands. If it was for the service of his Majesty, and if his Majesty approved, she said that she would accept their offer. With the English who were already there, and with others whom she would send over for the purpose, it would be easy for her to take entire possession of the place, and she would then make it over to the Duke of Alva or to any one whom the duke would appoint to receive it."[923] Guaras can scarcely be suspected of misrepresenting the conversation upon so important a topic and in a confidential communication to the Spanish Governor of the Netherlands. The most charitable construction of Elizabeth's words seems to be that they were a clumsy attempt to propitiate the duke "with a dilatory answer," as Sir Thomas Smith somewhat euphemistically expresses it, and that she had no intention of making good her engagements. But it was a sad blunder on her part, and likely to be ruinous to her friends, the French Protestants. Alva was not slow in concluding that Elizabeth's offer was of greater value as documentary proof of her untrustworthy character, than as a means of recovering Flushing. "There is no positive proof," remarks the historian to whom we are indebted for an acquaintance with the letter of Guaras, "that Alva communicated Elizabeth's offers to the queen mother and the King of France, but he was more foolish than he gave the world reason to believe him to be if he let such a weapon lie idle in his writing-desk."[924] And so that inconstant, unprincipled Italian woman, on whose fickle purpose the fate of thousands was more completely dependent than even her contemporaries as yet knew, at last reached the definite persuasion that Elizabeth was preparing to play her false, at the very moment when Coligny was hurrying her son into war with Spain. Even if France should prove victorious, Catharine's own influence would be thrown into perpetual eclipse by that of the admiral and his associates. This result the queen mother resolved promptly to forestall, and for that purpose fell back upon a scheme which had probably been long floating dimly in her mind.

MÉmoires de Michel de la Huguerye.

The MÉmoires inÉdits de Michel de la Huguerye, of which the first volume was recently published (Paris, 1877), under the auspices of the National Historical Society, present some interesting points, and deserve a special reference. At first sight, the disclosures, with which the author tells us he was favored, would seem to establish the bad faith of the court in entering upon the peace of St. Germain, and the long premeditation of the succeeding massacre. A closer examination of the facts, assuming La Huguerye's thorough veracity, shows that this is a mistake. La Huguerye may, indeed, have been informed by companions on the way to Italy, who supposed him to be a partisan of the Guises, that a great blow would be struck at the Huguenots when the proper time arrived; and La Huguerye may have been confident that he was telling the truth, when, about Martinmas (November 11th), 1570, he stated to De Briquemault, that "the king, seeing that he could not attain his object by way of arms without greatly weakening—nay, endangering his kingdom, had resolved upon taking another road, by which, in a single day, he would cleanse his whole state." He may have been assured, on what he deemed good authority, that the Pope was in the plot, and would keep the King of Spain from doing anything that might interfere with the execution, and have inferred that, the peace being a treacherous one, the only hope of the Huguenots lay in skilfully enlisting Charles in its maintenance, contrary to his original purpose. So he was confirmed in his belief by the contents of the despatches of the Spanish ambassador at the French court, treacherously submitted to the Huguenots by an unfaithful agent of the envoy. But the former statements were, at most, little better than rumors, to which the circumstances of the hour gave color. The air was full of dark hints; but, apparently, they had no more solid foundation than the fact that, in an age abounding in perfidious schemes, the Protestants had already placed themselves partially in the power of their great enemies, and were likely soon to be more completely in their hands. The information received by La Huguerye was a very different thing from an authoritative avowal of a concealed purpose made by Catharine or by Charles himself. On the other hand, the assurances in the Spanish despatches were just of the same general nature as others with which the French government endeavored to quiet Philip, Alva, and the Roman pontiff himself.

The only other peculiarity of La Huguerye to which I shall allude is his studied misrepresentation of the character of Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre. Contrary to the uniform portraiture given by contemporaries of both religious parties, she here appears as "an inconsiderate woman (femme lÉgÈre), with little forethought," "known to be jealous of the authority of the admiral," "whom she thwarted by her authority as much as was possible, at whatever cost or danger it might be." She had "intermeddled with affairs in the last war, unsolicited and of her own accord, not so much for conscience' sake, as because of the hatred her house bore to the popes, sole cause of the loss of the kingdom of Navarre, and especially through jealousy of the late Prince of CondÉ, whom she saw to be in the enjoyment of such credit, and to be so well followed, that she suspected great injury might result to her son in the event of his succession to the throne." She was, consequently, "not very sorry" to hear of CondÉ's death at Jarnac. Having been disappointed in securing for her son the sole (nominal) command of the Huguenots, she vented her vengeance upon Coligny, whom she held responsible for the association of the young CondÉ in the leadership with his cousin. From that time forward she took every opportunity to cross the admiral, with the view of compelling him to retire in disgust from the management of affairs. In one of the speeches—Sallustian, I suspect—in which the MÉmoires abound, Count Louis of Nassau is represented as lamenting: "It is a great pity to have to do with a woman who has no other counsel than her own head, which is too little and light (lÉgÈre) to contain so many reasons and precautions, and who is of such weight in matters of so great consequence. And the mischief is that she has such an aversion to the admiral through foolish jealousy," etc. At last the admiral is goaded on to unpardonable imprudence. In the spring of 1572 he yields to the importunities of Marshal CossÉ, and goes from La Rochelle to the royal court at Blois: "weary of being near this princess, he exposed himself to the evident peril, of which he had had advices and arguments enough."

To all this misrepresentation, the remarks of La Huguerye's editor, the Baron de Ruble, are a sufficient answer: "No other historian of the period, Catholic or Huguenot, has accused the Queen of Navarre of so much jealousy, frivolity, and spite. To the calumnies of La Huguerye we should oppose the verdict which every impartial judge can pronounce respecting this princess, in accordance with the letters published by the Marquis de Rochambeau and the testimony of contemporaries."