Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/19

 might wish: but it was not the constitution of France; and therefore such coveting was a species of radicalism on his part.

The inhabitants of La Rochelle owed to their independence their escape from the St. Bartholomew massacre. The Queen of Navarre, though decoyed to Paris, escaped by the visitation of God, who removed her “from the evil to come,” and to the heavenly country, about two months before. A very great Huguenot soldier, second to none but Coligny, survived the massacre, namely, Francois, Seigneur de la Noue. This “Francis with the Iron Arm” had been Governor of La Rochelle. He was at Mons at the date of the massacre, but was spared, and graciously received by the king. Assuming that he would recant in return for his life, the Court sent him to La Rochelle to see if the citizens, on their liberty of conscience being promised, would surrender to royal authority. La Noue, as an envoy, was coldly received. Finding the citizens firm and courageous, he again accepted the chief command in the Protestant interest, and the Royalist besiegers withdrew in the summer of 1573.

An edict, dated 11th August 1573, conceded to the Huguenots liberty of domestic worship and the public exercise of their religion in La Rochelle, Montauban, and Nismes. The Government relieved its feelings of chagrin at such concessions by inventing, as the one legal designation of French Protestantism for all time coming, the contemptuous title, “La Religion Pretendue Reformée” (the pretended reformed religion), or “La R. P. R.” Charles IX., the responsible director of the St. Bartholomew massacre, died in 1574, and was succeeded by his brother, Henry III.

Catherine de Medicis, the mother of three successive Kings of France, was aiso the mother-in-law of Philip II., King of Spain and the Netherlands. It was in the kingdom of the Netherlands that the Protestantism of the European Continent was most vigorous, the Dutch-speaking inhabitants being influenced by the reformers of Germany, while the French reformers influenced the French-speaking inhabitants, who were called Walloons, on account of their dialect of the language. Although France and Spain were irreconcilable as kingdoms, yet Catherine and Philip had been literally one as Romanists and persecutors. Philip’s agent in the Netherlands was that incarnation of cruelty whom the English people called “Duke Alva.” Alva’s wholesale murders and the French massacres were but successive acts of one drama. In 1564 Queen Elizabeth of Spain, accompanied by Alva, had received a brilliant reception from the Queen-mother at Bayonne. On that occasion Catherine and Aiva had entered into secret negotiations for the extermination of heresy in Western Europe, the Duke promising, on behalf of Philip, to give a tremendous example of the most sanguinary and relentless methods. The object of the mysterious interviews, though not divulged, had been suspected; and the French Protestants had resolved to continue their attitude of armed observation.

The term “Walloon” designated (as I have already mentioned) an ancient dialect of the French language. The designation, “The Walloons,” belonged to all Philip’s French-speaking subjects, whether Romanist or Protestant. The Protestant Walloons received and accepted the nickname of “The Beggars” — les Gueux, called by an English translator, the Gueuxes. A similar name was given to the French Protestants — les Huguenots. That this was a nickname — a name given in pleasantry — appears, from Bishop Jewel’s “Defence of the Apology of the Church of England” (chap. xvi. Div. 2). Jewel’s Jesuit opponent, Harding, having used the expression, “Your brethren, the Huguenots of France,” the Bishop rejoined, “Our brethren in France, whom in your pleasant manner ye call Huguenots? The grand modern historian, Merle d’Aubigné, says that this name was imported from Switzerland, where in the year 1518 the Duke of Savoy’s party coined a French word from the German Eidesgenossen (confederates), and gave the name to the independent Genevans. The spelling varied in different chronicles of Geneva in those early times: Bonivard in 1518 wrote Eiguenots; the Genevan registers in 1520, Eyguenots; Galiffe in 1526, Eguenot. “Michel Roset, the most respectable of these authorities of the sixteenth century, generally wrote Huguenots.” “We (D’Aubigné continues) adopt that form because it is the only one that has passed into our language, it is possible that the name of the citizen, Besançon Hugues, who became the principal leader, may have contributed to the preference of this form overall the others.

In any case it must be remembered, that until after the Reformation this sobriquet had a purely political meaning — in no respect, religious — and designated simply the friends of independence. Many years after, the enemies of the Protestants of France called them by this name, wishing to impute to them a foreign, republican, and heretical origin.” Having the same enemies and the same creed, the same life 