THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW

The dominant politics of France in the years 1570-72 were foreign, not domestic, and had to do with Spain. The clouds hung heavy over Spain’s dominions in spite of the suppression of the Moriscos, and dark was the prospect ahead for Philip II. In the east only was light. The great victory at Lepanto over the Turks, fought on October 7, 1571, though of general benefit to Christendom, was of greatest advantage to Spain.

It is at this juncture that the duke of Anjou, the King’s brother, becomes a conspicuous political figure, one, indeed, of international importance. In order to confirm the confidence of the Huguenots, but especially to strengthen France against Spanish preponderance, the idea was again put forward of marrying Anjou to Queen Elizabeth.[1460] At the same time the plan was broached of marrying young Henry of Navarre to the sister of the duke of WÜrttemberg. But again Montmorency came to the forefront and revived the plan suggested in 1569 of marrying the princess Marguerite, Charles IX’s youngest sister, to Henry of Navarre. Coligny for the Huguenots, and Walsingham and Norris for England, urged the double plan.[1461] The Ridolfi plot proved to Elizabeth that England, like France, had her greatest enemy in Spain.

The consternation of the Guises and Spain at the discovery of this double marriage project was great. The Guises sought to break the proposed marriage of Anjou and Queen Elizabeth by offering him Mary Stuart, and that of Henry of Navarre with the King’s sister by offering the cardinal d’Este as a prospective husband, since he was universally expected to succeed his brother, the duke of Ferrara who was without issue. Tuscan influence was used to this end. Spain and the papacy, for their part, dangled before the eyes of the duke of Anjou the post of command over the fleet preparing against the Turks.[1462] The gulf between France and Spain, however, was too wide to be bridged by such an offer. Disappointed at Bayonne, Catherine was dreaming of the elder daughter of the Hapsburgs as the future wife of Charles IX. Such a marriage appealed to her as a practical way of playing one house of Hapsburg against the other, although she plausibly represented it as a new tie that would bind France and the Hapsburgs in greater amity.[1463]

The counter-claims of France and Austria to the Three Bishoprics, and the renewal by France of her former relations with Turkey, retarded this negotiation.[1464] The greatest hindrance, though, was the opposition of Philip II. It was with the object of frustrating the designs of France that Philip II had transferred his ambassador in France, Chantonnay, from Paris to Vienna.[1465] At Bayonne, the queen mother had exerted all her influence in vain to prevail upon the court of Spain to commit itself. When Fourquevaux succeeded St. Sulpice at Madrid, he, in turn, continued to urge that Charles IX should marry the princess Anne; that Marguerite of Valois should marry Don Carlos, and Henry of Anjou the infanta Juana, Philip’s sister. But Philip II still hesitated between Mary Stuart and Anne of Austria, and suggested the younger daughter of Maximilian as prospective spouse for Charles IX.[1466] Matters remained thus undetermined for years. The marriage of Mary Stuart to Darnley in 1565 and the death of Don Carlos in July, 1568 raised Catherine’s hopes. But they were dashed to pieces after the death of Elizabeth of Valois, on October 3, 1568, when Philip II himself became the suitor for the hand of Anne of Austria. French and Spanish diplomacy thereafter plotted and counterplotted, until in 1570 the French King had to endure the chagrin of seeing his expected queen become the fourth bride of Philip of Spain and himself be satisfied with the younger sister, whose physical charms[1467] did not compensate for the injury to his pride.[1468]

But Philip gained another point of advantage over the French King, a point which the latter never discovered. The duchy of Lorraine, was a fief of the empire and had been so ever since the Middle Ages. Situated in the penumbra between France and Germany, the duke of Lorraine’s position had become a complex one and he was a vassal of France for the border duchy of Bar. As a sign of his amity toward the Emperor, Charles IX at the time of his marriage agreed to release the duke of Lorraine from his fealty to France. This waiver stirred the patriotic indignation of the keeper of the seal, Morvilliers, who resigned his office, declaring that he would not be an agent for separating from the crown of France any principality owing allegiance to it. Unfortunately for the future, the King appointed a secret partisan of Spain to the post. This was Biragues, a Milanese by birth, whose sinister influence was to play no mean part in the future.[1469]

As might be expected, the winter and spring of 1571-72 were filled with cross-negotiations of great importance. The greatest Catholic-Spanish fear was lest a positive alliance be made between France, England, and Holland, and perhaps the Protestant German states for the liberation of the Netherlands, that league to have greater binding force through the double marriage of the duke of Anjou and Queen Elizabeth and Henry of Bourbon to Marguerite of France.[1470] Spain, to prove France, made final demand of Charles IX: namely, that he forcibly suppress the activity of the prince of Orange in France; that Spain be permitted to levy Catholics in France to serve in the Low Countries; that France restrain the preparations of the Huguenots, especially those of La Rochelle, from aiding the Dutch cause on the sea; that France renounce her alliance with Turkey and join the Holy League against the Ottoman; and finally, that Charles IX abandon the project of marrying his sister to the prince of Navarre. Charles IX’s replies were very vague. To the first of these demands he replied that his country was too much exhausted by the late wars to take up arms for any cause; to the second he said that if he permitted Catholic levies to be made in France, the Huguenots would not believe them to be for service abroad but would again take up arms; as to the preparations at La Rochelle, it remained to be seen if their purpose was not mercantile instead of military.[1471]

The attitude of the various parties in France toward the crown’s Spanish policy was a peculiar one. The Huguenots and moderate Catholics of course urged the marriage of the King’s brother to Queen Elizabeth with the greatest zeal. But even intense Catholics, like Tavannes, singular as it seems, urged the match, with Machiavellian ingenuity estimating that the King, by incurring the deeper enmity of Spain, would be compelled to avail himself of their services, and thus, in the end, the cause of Catholicism in France would be promoted.[1472] The queen mother, with characteristic caution, professed much inclination for the match, but urged that it could not be attempted without hazarding the King’s honor. Meanwhile Montmorency, pushed it with all his ability, alternately urging Catherine de Medici and Lord Burghley by an assiduous correspondence.[1473]

How purely political as an issue religion had become by this time in Europe is made almost cynically manifest in the conferences between the advocates of the French-English match for the purpose of overcoming the religious disparities represented by the principals in the proposed match. From the beginning of the negotiations it was evident that every compromise made in religion would have to be made by France. The incongruities of age and religion and the complications of politics were great. The hardest thing, perhaps, to estimate, is the influence of Elizabeth’s vacillation. Catherine de Medici, on the whole, seems to have been anxious for the match. So protracted and so intricate were the negotiations that the duke of Anjou, with mingled prejudice and despair, declared that “all was but dalliance.”[1474] It was speciously urged upon the duke that no attempt was being made to effect his sudden conversion to the Anglican religion, but that he should forego the use of private mass, and “examine whether he might not with good devotion use the forms of prayers appointed throughout her realm, the same being in effect nothing but that which the Church of Rome uses, saving that it is in the English tongue, which, if he pleased, might be translated into French; and further, that the usage of the divine service in England did not properly compel any man to alter his opinion in the great matters being now in controversy in the church.”[1475] To this it was rejoined that “religion was a constant persuasion confirmed by time” and that “relenting in religion, being a matter of conscience, was an inconvenience of more weight than any that might happen to the queen.”[1476] For a while Anjou, although after the Edict of St. Germain he had staunchly protested that no preaching be allowed anywhere in his territories—which the King granted—wavered between policy and conscience. One day while visiting Madame Carnevalet, the wife of his tutor, he said with affected gaiety: “Carnevalet, thou and I were once Huguenots, and now again are become good Catholics.” “Aye,” she said, “we were so, and if you proceed in the matter you wot of, you will then return to be a Huguenot.”[1477]

Spain did everything possible to thwart the negotiation. Her ambassador in the presence of the King’s council inveighed against the plan, asserting that the kingdom of France was going to ruin, but he was cautious not to allege any ground but that of religion.[1478] Finally the counter-practices of the Guises and the Spanish ambassador, partly by appeals to religious scruples and partly by the means of lavish promises, overcame Anjou’s hesitation and he flatly refused to consider the marriage.[1479] The King was furious. “Brother,” he said, “you should have used some plainness with me in this matter and not leave me to wade so far to abuse a prince I so much esteem and honour. You allege conscience to be the cause but I know it is a late pension offered unto you by the clergy, who would have you still remain here for a champion of the Catholic faith. I tell you plainly, I will have no other champion here but myself, and seeing you have such a desire to remain here on such respects, it behooves me the more narrowly to look to you; and as for the clergy, seeing they have so great superfluity, and I so great necessity, the benefices being at my disposition, I will take a new order; and as for those who make the offer, I will make some of them shorter by the head.”[1480]

Nevertheless, despite the fact that the cause was a lost one, the matter was protracted so long that the negotiators of the affair themselves perceived the humor in it. Elizabeth protested that “of herself she had no mind thereto, yet the continual crying unto her of her Privy Council, the necessity of the time, and the love of her subjects, had turned her mind to marriage,” while the duke of Anjou reasserted his belief in his future damnation if he yielded anything in the matter of religion. Smith, the English envoy, solemnly averred that “the matter of religion would be the most honourable to break off with,” both for his mistress and the duke, and in the same breath asked whether it would suffice if the duke were suffered for a time to have his mass private in some little oratory or chapel—this so that there should be no scandal to any of the Queen’s subjects. The queen mother replied that the duke must have the exercise of his religion open, lest he should seem to be ashamed of it, and that he was now of late so devout that he heard two or three masses every day, and fasted the Lent and vigils so precisely “that he began to be lean and evil-coloured,” so that she was angry with him and told him that she “had rather he were an Huguenot than be so foolishly precise to hurt his health.” She told the English ambassador that he would not be content to have his mass in a corner, but insisted upon “high mass and all the ceremonies thereof according to the time, and in song after all solemn fashion of the Roman church, and a church or chapel appointed where he might openly have his priests and singers and use all their ceremonies.”

“Why, Madame,” ejaculated Smith, “then he may require also the four orders of friars, monks, canons, pilgrimages, pardons, oil and cream, relics, and all such trumperies. The queen of England will never agree to any mass, let alone great high mass, with all the ceremonies of Rome according to the season, priest, deacon, subdeacon, chalice, altar, bells, candlesticks, paten, singing men, ‘les quatre mendiants et tous les mille diables’”—at which tirade all but Anjou laughed.[1481]

It is at this moment that the duke of AlenÇon comes forward into the light around the throne. Since the duke of Anjou was “so extraordinarily, papistically superstitious”[1482] both sides turned toward him, notwithstanding the absurd disparity between his age and that of Queen Elizabeth. Even Elizabeth’s hardy modesty blushed at the thought of such a match,[1483] and the objection of inequality in their ages was backed up by guarded expressions of repugnance on account of the disfigurement the young duke had suffered from smallpox.[1484]

The Huguenot pressure eagerly supported the proposed marriage between Queen Elizabeth and the duke of AlenÇon, for the duke was as easy in religion as his brother was straight.[1485] The admiral Coligny urged it upon Lord Burghley, pointing out that it would strengthen the treaty of Blois,[1486] while others urged that England would have a practical advantage from the fact that AlenÇon was as rich in lands as his brother, and that the duchy of AlenÇon adjoined Normandy, where the whole of the nobility was devoted to the duke, and hoped by his means to be restored to their ancient privileges and liberties, and that then England could make “a bulwark and defense” out of Normandy for her own protection.[1487]

It is a difficult story to take seriously, for each one of the actors felt its hollowness and unreality. One feels that it was a gigantic bubble produced by English and French councilors of state to amuse and occupy each other by its brilliancy and wavering instability. Yet the greatest statesmen in England were driven nearly to distraction by their endeavors to keep it in the air. At first this diplomatic affair assumes an almost farcical comedy aspect: then it darkens into tragedy. It is a game of chess in which the players are grave and reverend statesmen and the pieces queens and princes, with this distinction, that the pieces are always likely to move of themselves and create unexpected combinations. Yet, for all its hollowness, the story deserves attention, for as long as it lasted it absorbed the attention of the persons concerned, and it illustrates most admirably Elizabeth’s and Catherine’s tortuous methods of diplomacy.

When the negotiations began, Elizabeth was already thirty-eight years old and of vast experience in promoting and then avoiding marriages. As a coy and bashful damsel, she could always plead her repugnance to the marriage state, and as the head of a Protestant nation, religion was another rock of refuge when anxious or angry suitors pressed her too closely. She had fooled Philip and she had kept the poor Austrian archduke gamboling before her. What could the pockmarked FranÇois d’AlenÇon expect but disaster? Yet it was he who came the nearest to pinning her down to a state of matrimonial stability.

The two things in Catherine’s character which seem to be especially prominent in this tale of love and lying are her thirst for power for herself and a mother’s natural ambition for her children.

AlenÇon’s appearance is the one thing about him which is seriously discussed. He was born 1555 and was therefore twenty-two years younger than Elizabeth. This was, of course, an enormous objection, or, at least, one which could always be urged. His age is the official and public objection, but his face and stature affected Elizabeth far more.[1488] As to his character we have the testimony of the English and Venetian ambassadors. Smith, in January, 1572, calls him “a good fellow and a lusty prince” and says “he is not so obstinate, papistical, and restive like a mule as his brother is.” Dale, in the quaint letter in a Hatfield MS says of him: “As touching his behavior he ys the most moderate yn all the court; never present at any of the licentious acts of his brethren, nor here nor at Rochelle; of much credit, and namely with them of the religion; thus he ys and hath ben hetherto; what may be hereafter God knoweth.” On the whole, the English ambassadors favored him, Walsingham the least. Evidently he was not an unpleasant person, but a young and inexperienced lad, ambitious to do great things, resenting his treatment at the court, and so plunged into the current of things, only to be deceived and ruined by the superior cunning of his supposed friends. His shortcomings may be excused on the ground of his environment and bringing up; may even be praised as being more manly and significant than the effeminate Henry.

AlenÇon’s motives in attempting to win Elizabeth are obvious. His position in France was most unpleasant to him: suspected by his brothers, made fun of and pestered by the Guises and the “mignons” of the court; condemned to a life of subordination and idleness by the accident of his birth, the prospect of the hand of the Queen of England seemed most glowing, even though she was a heretic and more than twenty years older than he. But why should Catherine and Elizabeth ever consider such an intrinsically absurd proposition?

Elizabeth was face to face with several problems, foreign and domestic, upon the solution of which depended her throne and her very existence. It is hard to remember as one looks back upon her long and splendid reign that there was hardly a moment in it when she was free from the danger of overthrow and execution. This danger, at this time, had just manifested itself in the Ridolfi plot in which the duke of Norfolk, the greatest noblemen of England, Spain, Mary Stuart, and the Pope had all combined. Naturally the Catholic nobles rallied around Mary, the probable successor to the throne, while the Protestants were at a loss to know what to do in view of the unsettled succession. So great was the excitement that Elizabeth always hesitated to call a Parliament for fear it would attempt to urge her on to marriage. Negotiations, not to speak of marriage, with France would immensely relieve the situation. They could be used before Parliament to show that Elizabeth was doing her best; hopes of a settled succession would at once reassure the country and diminish Mary’s importance, both as a center of conspiracy and as a source of danger in other ways. To be sure, this possible marriage might excite the Catholics to renewed efforts to save their faith, but the fact that France was Catholic and that from it might come much of their help would militate against disturbance. Negotiations might bring about most of these results and would in any case gain time and postpone the solution of the difficulties.

A second problem before Elizabeth was the maintenance of the Protestant faith. So far as this enters the negotiations it is mostly a pretext, but there was, nevertheless, an actual problem. Negotiations for marriage with a Catholic prince might stir up the Catholics to renewed activities and raise hopes which it might be difficult to allay, but, on the other hand, Elizabeth could hope for relief from the Huguenot movement in France, and the rebellious Dutch, while the alliance with a Catholic prince would immensely strengthen her in her own middle ground. To allow him to bring the mass with him might cause trouble, but still one prince could not do much when queen and council were carefully watching him.

Scotland was another source of continual anxiety to the English ministry. The government was unsettled and the power likely to fall at any time into the hands of those who would turn it over to France. Of course this danger would be entirely removed by a French marriage, though as events proved, negotiations did not stop the intrigues. A similar point of attack existed in Ireland where the least encouragement was sure to raise rebellion. A French marriage would make danger in that quarter also less likely.

But perhaps the greatest source of danger was from Spain. There were countless reasons why Philip should declare war—religion, the seizure of his treasure by Elizabethan seamen, the treatment of Mary (though this did not at first much concern him), and Spanish repression in the Netherlands. English negotiation with France would be of value to England, if for nothing else, in keeping France and Spain apart. It was hoped, moreover, that once England and France were united, the combination might check Philip in his dealing with the Netherlands and the English Catholics and in the cruelties visited on Englishmen in Spain.

But there were grave objections to a marriage. It would introduce a new and unknown element into English councils. Suppose, as a Catholic, the King should join that party; or worse, ally himself with Mary herself, plot the death of Elizabeth and a Catholic restoration. Or suppose he should become king of France? or that his child should be heir to both thrones? The thought of becoming a French dependency was intolerable to England. In any case it would mean a break with Spain and how could England be sure that France was not merely tempting her to that, finally to leave her to face Spain alone? Plainly, marriage was too close and dangerous a union—as for negotiations, that was another matter, and it was simply for the negotiations themselves that Elizabeth entered upon them. This is proved, I think, by her entire policy. Whenever France seems most willing she draws away; but when France seems likely to abandon such fruitless endeavors, she at once becomes affable and yielding. Sometimes her ministers urged her to definite and decided action, but she always managed to find a loop-hole, if either they or circumstance had forced her into too dangerous agreement.

France, on the other hand, could not be content with mere negotiations. She, too, had several definite problems. Rent by civil war, with enormously powerful barons on the one side and a clamorous people on the other, while outside the realm stood Spain and England, only too glad to promote and foster her difficulties, the crown was in a struggle for existence as real as that of Elizabeth. To join Spain would be for France to lose her integral existence and to be swallowed up in the maw of the Hapsburgs. Therefore the English alliance was the only refuge. Besides there were many other advantages. It would stop England’s meddling in French affairs and would calm and reassure the Huguenots. But there was the rub: did the Huguenots need to be reassured? Could France safely commit herself to a liberal policy? To Catherine it was not so much that, as the question of her own authority and personal ambition for her family; she had no intention of giving place to the Huguenots any more than she had to the Guises. And so she wavered when the Guises were becoming too powerful, and helped along the marriage; when the Huguenots began to be too authoritative, she frowned on it.

To the Huguenots the marriage was a question of enormous advantage—if it were accomplished, the Calvinists might hope, not only for success in France, but in the Low Countries as well; while to the Guises, on the contrary, the alliance meant the ruin of their hopes for Mary and for absolute dominion in France.

But to all the risk was great. Elizabeth was by no means firmly seated upon her throne and seemed to be manifesting a reckless carelessness in the leniency of her treatment of the late conspirators. The English ambassadors noted that any “roundness” of treatment at home at once caused a quickening of the negotiations. The real objection, both with France and with England, was fear of duplicity. Neither could trust the other. Each insisted that the other should commit itself first; neither would consent, with the result that all came to naught. This was just what Philip expected. Naturally a French-English league would have seriously hampered him, but he had found by long and trying experience that when Elizabeth talked of marriage, she was only amusing herself with a polite fiction. Not once does he take the matter seriously. So the Spanish attitude was one of unconcern, which in itself added to the fear of both Elizabeth and Catherine, for each supposed some secret understanding with Spain on the part of the other.

With such motives and in such troubled waters the negotiations went on. In the end Elizabeth could not “digest the inconvenience” of the proposed marriage, and failing to cement the new friendship of France and England by this form of alliance, it was then suggested that a political compact, not a marriage alliance, be made between the two powers.[1489] But there were great difficulties in the way of this project. For, although the English desired a closer union with France, they were nevertheless not unprepared to treat with Spain, and to use the prospective alliance with France for the purpose of bringing Philip II to terms. England was unwilling yet to be considered as an open enemy of Spain, in spite of the fact she was well aware of Alva’s plot with Lord Seton and other Scotch and English refugees in Flanders.[1490]

Trade considerations were of great influence in governing this attitude. England could not afford to forfeit her commercial intercourse with Spain and Flanders for the none-too-sure friendship of France, since the staple in Flanders was worth between two and three millions.[1491] France could not offer any staple or port advantages to England comparable with those England enjoyed elsewhere.[1492] England accordingly proposed that the league be extended to include the Protestant princes of Germany and that they should join together “in defense against any who for matters of religion should use force against any of them;” secondly, that France would bind herself not to support the cause of Mary Stuart in Scotland; and thirdly, that France would not seek any greater trade advantages in the Low Countries than she had in former times. France balked at the proposed extension of the alliance to Germany and it was dropped; as to Scotland, she was willing to make a partial sacrifice of honor for the sake of political advantage.[1493]

But England’s fear of contributing to the aggrandizement of France was too keen to permit her to have free rein in the Netherlands,[1494] though Walsingham proposed a way to prevent the possibility of French ascendency there, and declared that the grandeur of France abroad was less to be feared by England than the continuance of civil war in France or the destructive policy of Alva in the Netherlands.[1495] Burghley was as cautious as his mistress. “If the sea-ports fall into the hands of the French,” he wrote, “they will regulate not only the commerce of our merchants abroad but the sovereignty of the Channel, which belongs to us.”[1496] The jealous determination of England to monopolize the commerce of the Low Countries was, the greatest obstacle to the formation of the alliance. For England most of all feared lest France would not content herself with Flanders and Artois.[1497]

In the delicate business of state which burdened him at this season, Charles IX showed more acumen than either his new-found friends of Protestant faith or the Catholics had expected to find, because while exerting himself to keep the peace with Spain on the one hand, on the other he endeavored to conciliate his Protestant subjects. Unlike his elder brother, Francis II, Charles IX was of strong physical frame, being big boned and vigorous, until the fatal taint of his heritage and his excesses undermined his constitution[1498] and brought on the disease of consumption of which he died. He was gross, even brutish in inclination, rejoicing in base physical sport and disinclined to books.[1499] But in the present politics Charles IX showed little of the rashness of his physical nature.[1500] Nevertheless the King went farther than caution approved in dealing with his new-found friends. He would have disarmed the suspicion of Spain, and the Guises[1501] to some degree, at least, if he had drawn close to the duke of Montmorency, whose moderate Catholicism, however impeachable, was not the detested heresy of the French Protestants. But instead of so doing, the King, unable to dissemble as much as his mother, openly manifested a great admiration for the admiral Coligny, than whom neither the Guises nor Spain had a more resolute foe. The admiral was received in Paris upon his arrival there early in September, 1571, with distinguished honors.[1502] His popularity with the King was at once a menace and a challenge to Philip II and the Guises.[1503] An added difficulty, as the result of this policy, was that Catherine de Medici, seeing her son so well affected toward the admiral, grew jealous of the latter’s influence, lest it supplant her own, and intrigued against him.

Despite the failure of the marriage alliance, France still had two strings to the Ulysses bow she was drawing against Spain—support of the Dutch, and the union of France by means of the marriage of Henry of Navarre and the princess Marguerite. Spain’s suspicions that the Huguenot naval preparations at La Rochelle were in favor of the Dutch[1504] had not been based on groundless suspicion. William of Orange’s own brother, Louis of Nassau, had remained in France after the Peace of St. Germain, urging an alliance between France and England against Spain,[1505] or else French intervention in the Netherlands.[1506] The count of Nassau enlarged upon the vast designs of the Spanish monarch and showed how sinister they were to France as well as Holland, artfully alluding to the peace of Cateau-CambrÉsis, “a peace dishonorable to France;” he dwelt upon the tyranny of Alva and the horrors of the inquisition; he demonstrated that all the inhabitants of the Low Countries, both Catholics and Protestants, hated the Spanish domination; that all the maritime towns were ready to receive French and Dutch garrisons, if but those of Spain could be driven out; that with the sea-power of France thrown into the scale, the Dutch could conquer Spain; and finally proposed the formation of an international league to overthrow Spain, and asserted that France might acquire Flanders and Artois and the empire Brabant, Guelders, and Luxembourg as reward of their services. So alluring was the prospect portrayed to Charles IX that he almost cast off the mask he wore of pretended friendship for Spain.[1507] He told Philip’s minister, Alava, than whom “there was no prouder man or one more disdainful in countenance”[1508] when the ambassador complained to the French King that certain ships of the prince of Orange were being harbored at La Rochelle,[1509] that “his master should not look to give laws to France.”[1510]

Meantime the proposed marriage of Henry of Navarre to Marguerite, the King’s sister, progressed. A full year before the nuptials were concluded, the jewels and apparel for the ceremony were already provided. The difficulty of arranging a religious form for the ceremony acceptable to both Catholics and Protestants was the great hindrance.[1511]

Again Spain made unavailing protest. Henry of Bourbon still bore the title of king of Navarre, though the kingdom had been lost to the house long before his birth and was, in fact, entirely in the possession of Spain. Her fear was lest the new bond of marriage might unite the parties of France in war for the acquisition of Navarre. It was in vain, however, that Spain sought to prey upon the fears of Charles IX, endeavoring to excite the King’s jealousy against the growing power of the house of Bourbon and pointing out that of the twelve provinces of the kingdom ten were in the hands of governors who were bound by blood or interest to the Bourbons.[1512] So eager were many of the gentry of France for war with Spain, either in Navarre or Flanders, that one of Coligny’s officers, when asked whether France meant to lose the favorable opportunity of attacking Spain, scornfully rejoined, “What can we do? We are good for nothing, for we have to deal with a scared King and a timid queen, who will not come to any decision.” By December, 1571, war with Spain was on every lip and the government began to collect money.[1513]

At this juncture, when all Europe was keyed to concert pitch of political tension, when anything seemed likely to happen and no one of the great powers dared make an overt move, the Gordian knot was cut. On April 1, 1572, the most notable event in the Low Countries since the iconoclastic outburst occurred. For on that day the count van der Marck, commander of the Beggars of the Sea, captured the port of Brille. From that time onward the Dutch and Flemings had a maritime point of their own on the mainland and were no longer dependent on the precarious shelter of English and Norman ports. The effect of this blow to Spain was great. Within the week—on Easter Day—Flushing, and soon afterward Middelburg, rebelled against the billeting of Spanish troops sent by Alva to replace the Walloon garrison there.[1514]

The Gueux were masters of the sea and when Dordrecht also rebelled, the inland water routes were endangered too. No vessel could come from Holland, Guelders, or Frisia and no communication could be made from the north with Brabant. Even Amsterdam could be starved and Alva determined to retire all his forces to Ghent and Antwerp.[1515] On April 14 William of Orange issued a proclamation from Dillenburg expressing his grief at the miseries suffered from the exactions, outrages, and cruelties inflicted by the Spaniards, and assured the people of his determination to liberate the land from their tyranny. As many towns and ports had already recognized him as their ruler, he urged others to follow their example, pledging his word to use all his power to restore the ancient privileges and liberties of each.[1516]

When news of these wondrous deeds reached France, Charles IX’s hesitation was swept away by the combined fervor of Louis of Nassau and the admiral. On April 19, the Anglo-French treaty of alliance was signed at Blois.[1517]

Du Plessis-Mornay, a young Huguenot gentleman of twenty-three, of marked literary ability and destined to be the intellectual leader of the Protestants in coming years, who had lately traveled through the Netherlands and visited England,[1518] in collaboration with the admiral drew up a remarkable memorial advocating French intervention in the Low Countries,[1519] which Coligny presented to the King. English and French volunteers soon poured into the land.[1520] Louis of Nassau left for Valenciennes, which had successfully revolted, accompanied by La Noue and Genlis.[1521] On May 24, by a stratagem, Genlis secured possession of Mons, one of the most important fortresses to Spain in the Low Countries in the present state of mind that France was in.[1522] From this point of vantage he wrote hopefully to Charles IX for more soldiers, a “good minister,” a surgeon, some cannon founders, and drugs.[1523] While these events were happening on land, on the sea the Zealanders attacked and dispersed the Spanish fleet in the Sluys on June 8, and seized twenty merchantmen under its convoy:[1524] and, to the elation of France,[1525] far down in the Bay of Biscay the fleet of Flushing three days later scattered another of Spain’s armadas.[1526] All Holland, Amsterdam and Rotterdam excepted, was lost to Spain.[1527] Sir Humphrey Gilbert with 1,200 English and some French and Walloons landed in the Low Countries, on July 10, and captured Sluys and Bruges.[1528] Money poured in upon William of Orange, who in June went to Frankfurt to purchase supplies and enlist men.[1529] The duke of Alva was in desperate straits. The Walloons everywhere in the army mutinied and deserted, and he was short of munitions.[1530]

But such successes were too great to last. Louis of Nassau found he could not hope to hold Mons for long with the slender forces at his command and sent Genlis back to France for reinforcements. Charles IX, under pressure from Coligny, provided men and money secretly, but Genlis’ relief column was intercepted on July 16 and captured by the duke of Alva.[1531] It was only a question of time before Mons surrendered.[1532] The blow was a heavy one to France. It mattered little to France that French subjects were killed or taken prisoner during the siege. But it was of tremendous consequence to France that Alva found on Genlis’ person a letter written by Charles IX to Louis of Nassau on April 27, 1572, in which the King said that he was resolved as soon as the condition of affairs at home permitted him, to employ the armies of France for the liberation of the Low Countries.[1533] Well might Alva’s secretary write “I have in my possession a letter of the king of France which would strike you with astonishment if you could see it.”[1534] Spain possessed indubitable proof at last of French duplicity.

The capture of Genlis and the knowledge that Spain had penetrated the whole secret of her design, filled the French government with consternation, though Charles IX affected a show of courage he did not feel.[1535] That consternation became abject dismay when it was learned that Elizabeth of England, partially out of reluctance to have war with Spain, more because of fear lest French foothold in the Low Countries would jeopardize her commercial ascendency there, repudiated the treaty of alliance.[1536] As one reviews the months before the massacre one asks just how far Elizabeth herself may have been responsible for it. It was she who, by her tortuous and insincere policy alarmed Charles IX and Catherine, causing the Flanders expedition to be abandoned; it was this which caused Coligny to turn upon Catherine in the King’s council, saying, “This war the King renounced. God grant he may not find himself involved in another less easy to renounce.” The line comes straight from Elizabeth surely, but can be emphasized too strongly. That some blame must rest on the English cannot be denied, however. Did Catherine de Medici plan the massacre of St. Bartholomew to save herself from the wrath of the Huguenots? Or, in her terror did she seek to appease the wrath of the Catholic dragon with human lives? Was the massacre of St. Bartholomew the bloody price of Spain’s satisfaction?

But there is another element to be considered in any endeavor to unravel the causes of that event. All the art of Catherine de Medici for years past had been expended in an endeavor to maintain control by balancing the parties against one another. At this minute she was insanely jealous of the admiral Coligny, whose political ascendency seemed all the greater because of the conduct of the Protestants who crowded Paris for the coming nuptials, enjoying their superficial popularity with too much arrogance in many cases, and angering the sentiment of the Parisians, the most Catholic populace in France.

The massacre seems primarily due to the jealousy and hatred felt by Catherine de Medici toward Coligny on account of his great ascendency over Charles IX, coupled with panic after the failure of her deliberate attempt to have him murdered, and fear of war with Spain—a fear all the greater because of England’s desertion of France in Flanders at this critical moment, lest English commercial ascendency there should suffer.[1537] It was a crime of fear, a horrible resource in a difficult emergency; partly a craven attempt to placate Spain for what had been done against her; partly a crime of jealousy. Perhaps jealousy of Coligny was even a stronger motive than fear of Spain. The attempt upon Coligny’s life on August 22, would seem to indicate this.[1538] Was the general slaughter of the Huguenots the consequence of the failure of this attempt? If the shot of August 22 had killed the admiral, would the massacre have taken place? I think not. The failure to kill the admiral was the immediate occasion of the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day. If Coligny had been killed then and there, the massacre probably would not have happened.

The failure to compass the death of the admiral made Catherine frantic with mingled rage and fear lest the Huguenots concentrated in Paris would rise in reprisal. She took council with Guise, Anjou, Madame de Nemours, and Gondi, the Italian bishop of Paris. The resolution of the King, who at first believed that the duke of Guise was the author of the attempted assassination, was beaten down by his mother, and when his fierce instincts were at last aroused, the way was easy. The hatred of Paris could be relied upon to do its worst, under the guidance of the provost who was taken into the plot.[1539]

There is no need to detail the history of this famous day. At one-thirty on the morning of August 24 the tocsin sounded from the tower of St. Germain-l’Auxerrois. Coligny was the first victim. From the Louvre the murderous spirit spread to the Ville, to the CitÉ, to the university quarter. Henry of Navarre and the prince of CondÉ saved themselves by abjuration. Montgomery escaped on a fleet horse to the south. Estimates of the dead are so different that any positive opinion is impossible. La PopeliniÈre gives 1,000 for Paris, the Tuscan ambassador 3,000, Davila 10,000. BrantÔme says nearly 4,000 bodies were thrown into the Seine.

From Paris the massacre spread to the provinces. On August 25 the fury reached Meaux and Troyes; on the 26th La CharitÉ, on the 27th Orleans and Bourges, on the 28th Caen, on the 30th Lyons. Bordeaux and Toulouse followed. At Rouen, Carrouges, the governor, would not obey the King’s warrant until doubly convinced, when he retired to his country house and refused to execute it, though he did not have the courage to prevent the massacre, as was the case at Dijon, Limoges, Blois, Nantes.[1540]

There is no reason for doubting that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was unpremeditated. It was not plotted years before, or even many days before. The light of modern investigation[1541] has proved this to the satisfaction of every unprejudiced historian, whether Protestant or Catholic. The combination of causes that led to the action; the motives of the principals; the responsibility for the massacre are today known with as much certainty as moral forces having relative and not absolute values can be. Even unprejudiced contemporaries, La Noue and Henry IV himself, did not believe the massacre to have been premeditated. A general slaughter of the Protestants was an old idea, but never regarded as a practical one, save by the papacy. The guilt of the massacre in all its monstrous proportions and consequences rests upon Catherine de Medici first of all. Fundamentally considered, it was the crime of a tigerishly hateful and essentially cowardly woman’s heart. Catherine was the author and instigator of it. The Guises entered into the plot chiefly to avenge themselves upon the admiral and really had little interest in prosecuting it beyond his death.[1542] The duke of Anjou and Tavannes were the fanatics. Charles IX was the creature of his mother’s malign influence and the victim of his own ferocious temperament which he had long indulged, and to which he now allowed monstrous license. For the rest the massacre of St. Bartholomew was perpetrated by men whose natures were compounded out of religious bigotry, political enmity, personal resentment or mere ruffianism and love of violence. The massacre of St. Bartholomew could not possibly have been of the remotest political benefit to any person. It was both a crime and a blunder. But Catherine de Medici was a ruler whose political conduct was governed by her personal feelings and prejudices. In the crisis in which she was, she had not the acumen to discern, or the courage to dare to follow, the course that lay open before her if she had had eyes to see and an understanding instead of a passionate heart. That course lay toward Italy and not toward the Netherlands. If France had reasserted her claims to Naples and Milan, then in the possession of Philip II, the nation would have been united in a common cause that would have appealed to ancient pride and achievement as well as existing animosity against Spain. England would have had no reason to be jealous, for her hand would have been free in Flanders. Moreover, in Italy France might have looked for support from Tuscany and Ferrara. Switzerland would have supported the enterprise; Venice would have made no opposition and the Emperor, for all his Spanish attachments, could not have done so. With the Turk in the Mediterranean on her side, France could have gone into war with Spain and the Pope without fear and with great promise of success.[1543]