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HISTORY] met in synod at Paris, were setting down their confession of faith founded upon the Scriptures, and their ecclesiastical discipline founded upon the independence of the churches. Thenceforward Protestantism adopted a new attitude, and refused obedience to the orders of a persecuting monarchy when contrary to its faith and its interests. After the saints came men. Hence those wars of religion which were to hold the monarchy in check for forty years and even force it to come to terms.

In slaying Henry II. Montgomery’s lance saved the Protestants for the time being. His son and successor, Francis II., was but a nervous sickly boy, bandied between two women: his mother, Catherine de’ Medici, hitherto kept in the background, and his wife, Mary Stuart, queen of

Scotland, who being a niece of the Guises brought her uncles, the constable Francis and the cardinal of Lorraine, into power. These ambitious and violent men took the government out of the hands of the constable de Montmorency and the princes of the blood: Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, weak, credulous, always playing a double game on account of his preoccupation with Navarre; Condé, light-hearted and brave, but not fitted to direct a party; and the cardinal de Bourbon, a mere nonentity. The only plan which these princes could adopt in the struggle, once they had lost the king, was to make a following for themselves among the Calvinist malcontents and the gentlemen disbanded after the Italian wars. The Guises, strengthened by the failure of the conspiracy of Amboise, which had been aimed at them, abused the advantage due to their victory. Despite the edict of Romorantin, which by giving the bishops the right of cognizance of heresy prevented the introduction of the Inquisition on the Spanish model into France; despite the assembly of Fontainebleau, where an attempt was made at a compromise acceptable to both Catholics and moderate Calvinists; the reform party and its Bourbon leaders, arrested at the states-general of Orleans, were in danger of their lives. The death of Francis II. in December 1560 compromised the influence of the Guises and again saved Protestantism.

Charles IX. also was a minor, and the regent should legally have been the first prince of the blood, Antoine de Bourbon; but cleverly flattered by the queen-mother, Catherine de’ Medici, he let her take the reins of government. Hitherto Catherine had been merely the resigned

and neglected wife of Henry II., and though eloquent, insinuating and ambitious, she had been inactive. She had attained the age of forty-one when she at last came into power amidst the hopes and anxieties aroused by the fall of the Guises and the return of the Bourbons to fortune. Indifferent in religious matters, she had a passion for authority, a characteristically Italian adroitness in intrigue, a fine political sense, and the feeling that the royal authority might be endangered both by Calvinistic passions and Catholic violence. She decided for a system of tolerance; and Michel de l’Hôpital, the new chancellor, was her spokesman at the states of Orleans (1560). He was a good and honest man, moderate, conciliatory and temporizing, anxious to lift the monarchy above the strife of parties and to reconcile them; but he was so little practical that he could believe in a reformation of the laws in the midst of all the violent passions which were now to be let loose. These two, Catherine and her chancellor, attempted, like Charles V. at Augsburg, to bring about religious pacification as a necessary condition for the maintenance of order; but they were soon overwhelmed by the different factions.

On one side was the Catholic triumvirate of the constable de Montmorency, the duke of Guise, and the marshal de St André; and on the other the Huguenot party of Condé and Coligny, who, having obtained liberty of conscience in January 1561, now demanded liberty

of worship. The colloquy at Poissy between the cardinal of Lorraine and Theodore Beza (September 1561), did not end in the agreement hoped for, and the duke of Guise so far abused its spirit as to embroil the French Calvinists with the German Lutherans. The rupture seemed irremediable when the assembly of Poissy recognized the order of the Jesuits, which the French church had held in suspicion since its foundation. However, yielding to the current which was carrying the greater part of the

nation towards reform, and despite the threats of Philip II. who dreaded Calvinistic propaganda in his Netherlands, Michel de l’Hôpital promulgated the edict of January 17, 1562—a true charter of enfranchisement for the Protestants. But the pressure of events and of parties was too strong; the policy of toleration which had miscarried at the council of Trent had no chance of success in France.

The triumvirate’s relations with Spain and Rome were very close; they had complete ascendancy over the king and over Catherine; and now the massacre of two hundred Protestants at Vassy on the 1st of March 1562 made the cup overflow. The duke of Guise had either

ordered this, or allowed it to take place, on his return from an interview with the duke of Württemberg at Zabern, where he had once more demanded the help of his Lutheran neighbours against the Calvinists; and the Catholics having celebrated this as a victory the signal was given for the commencement of religious wars. When these eight fratricidal wars first began, Protestants and Catholics rivalled one another in respect for royal authority; only they wished to become its masters so as to get the upper hand themselves. But in course of time, as the struggle became embittered, Catholicism itself grew revolutionary; and this twofold fanaticism, Catholic and Protestant, even more than the ambition of the leaders, made the war a ferocious one from the very first. Beginning with surprise attacks, if these failed, the struggle was continued by means of sieges and by terrible exploits like those of the Catholic Montluc and the Protestant des Adrets in the south of France. Neither of these two parties was strong enough to crush the other, owing to the apathy and continual desertions of the gentlemen-cavaliers who formed the élite of the Protestant army and the insufficient numbers of the Catholic forces. Allies from outside were therefore called in, and this it was that gave a European character to these wars of religion; the two parties were parties of foreigners, the Protestants being supported by German Landsknechts and Elizabeth of England’s cavalry, and the royal army by Italian, Swiss or Spanish auxiliaries. It was no longer patriotism but religion that distinguished the two camps. There were three principal theatres of war: in the north Normandy and the valley of the Loire, where Orleans, the general centre of reform, ensured communications between the south and Germany; in the south-west Gascony and Guienne; in the south-east Lyonnais and Vivarais.

In the first war, which lasted for a year (1562–1563), the triumvirs wished to secure Orleans, previously isolated. The threat of an English landing decided them to lay siege to Rouen, and it was taken by assault; but this cost the life of the versatile Antoine de Bourbon. On

the 19th of December 1562 the duke of Guise barred the way to Dreux against the German reinforcements of d’Andelot, who after having threatened Paris were marching to join forces with the English troops for whom Coligny and Condé had paid by the cession of Havre. The death of marshal de St André, and the capture of the constable de Montmorency and of Condé, which marked this indecisive battle, left Coligny and Guise face to face. The latter’s success was of brief duration; for on the 18th of February 1563 Poltrot de Méré assassinated him before Orleans, which he was trying to take once and for all. Catherine, relieved by the loss of an inconvenient preceptor, and by the disappearance of the other leaders, became mistress of the Catholic party, of whose strength and popularity she had now had proof, and her idea was to make peace at once on the best terms possible. The egoism of Condé, who got himself made lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and bargained for freedom of worship for the Protestant nobility only, compromised the future of both his church and his party, though rendering possible the peace of Amboise, concluded the 19th of March