1

Book Sixteen - Protestantism in the Waldensian Valleys 3
1. Antiquity and First Persecutions of the Waldenses 4
2. Cataneo’s Expedition Against the Dauphinese and Piedmontese Confessors
10
3. Failure of Cataneo’s Expedition
16
4. Synod in the Waldensian Valleys 20
5. Persecutions and Martyrdoms
6. Preparations for a War of Extermination
7. The Great Campaign of 1561
8. Waldensian Colonies in Calabria and Apulia
25
32
37
44
9. Extinction of Waldenses in Calabria
10. The Year of the Plague
11. The Great Massacre
12. Exploits of Gianavello - Massacre and Pillage of Rora
13. The Exile
14. Return to the Valleys
15. Final Re-Establishment in Their Valleys
48
52
56
65
72
78
83
89
94
16. Condition of the Waldenses From 1690
Footnotes - Book Sixteen
Book Seventeen - Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I
(1547) to Edict of Nantes (1598)
1. Henry II and Parties in France
2. Henry II and His Persecutions
3. First National Synod of the French Protestant Church
4. A Gallery of Portraits
5. The Guises and the Insurrection of Amboise
6. Charles II - The Triumvirate - Colloquy at Poissy
7. Massacre at Vassy and Commencement of the Civil Wars
8. Commencement of the Huguenot Wars
102
103
109
117
125
132
140
149
157
163 9. The First Huguenot War and Death of the Duke of Guise
10. Catherine De Medici and Charles IX - Conference at Bayonne -
The St. Bartholomew Massacre Plotted
11. Second and Third Huguenot Wars
12. Synod of La Rochelle
13. The Promoters of the St. Bartholomew Massacre
14. Negotiations of the Court With the Huguenots
15. The Marriage and Preparations for the Massacre
16. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew
17. Resurrection of Huguenotism - Death of Charles IX
18. New Persecutions - Reign and Death of Henry III
19. Henry IV and the Edict of Nantes
Footnotes - Book Seventeen
170
177
182
186
191
195
199
206
212
217
226
2

3

The Waldenes stand apart and alone in the Christian world. Their place on the surface of Europe is unique; their position in history is not less unique; and the end. appointed them to fulfil is one which has been assigned to them alone, no other people being permitted to share it with them. The Waldenses bear a twofold testimony. Like the snow-clad peaks amid which their dwelling is placed, which look down upon the plains of Italy on the one side, and the provinces of France on the other, this people stand equally related to primitive ages and modern times, and give by no means equivocal testimony respecting both Rome and the Reformation. If they are old, then
Rome is new; if they are pure, then Rome is corrupt; and if they have retained the faith of the apostles, it follows incontestably that Rome has departed from it. That the
Waldensian faith and worship existed many centuries before Protestantism arose is undeniable; the proofs and monuments of this fact lie scattered over all the histories and all the lands of mediaeval Europe; but the antiquity of the Waldenses is the antiquity of Protestantism. The Church of the Reformation was in the loins of the
Waldensian Church ages before the birth of Luther; her first cradle was placed amid those terrors and sublimities, those ice-clad peaks and great bulwarks of rock. In their dispersions over so many lands - over France, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland,
Bohemia, Moravia, England, Calabria, Naples - the Waldenses sowed the seeds of that great spiritual revival which, beginning in the days of Wycliffe, and advancing in the times of Luther and Calvin, awaits its full consummation in the ages to come.
In the place which the Church of the Alps has held, and the office she has discharged, we see the reason of that peculiar and bitter hostility which Rome has ever borne this holy and venerable community. It was natural that Rome should wish to efface so conclusive a proof of her apostasy, and silence a witness whose testimony so emphatically corroborates the position of Protestantism. The great bulwark of the
Reformed Church is the Word of God; but next to this is the pre-existence of a community spread throughout Western Christendom, with doctrines and worship substantially one with those of the Reformation.
The Persecutions of this remarkable people form one of the most heroic pages of the
Church’s history. These persecutions, protracted through many centuries, were endured with a patience, a constancy, a bravery honourable to the Gospel, as well as to those simple people, whom the Gospel converted into heroes and martyrs. Their resplendent virtues illumined the darkness of their age; and we turn with no little relief from a Christendom sunk in barbarism and superstition to this remnant of an ancient people, who here in their mountain-engirdled territory practiced the simplicity, the piety, and the heroism of a better age. It is mainly those persecutions of the Waldenses which connect themselves with the Reformation, and which were, in fact, part of the mighty effort made by Rome to extinguish Protestantism, on which we shall dwell. But we must introduce ourselves to the great tragedy by a brief notice of the attacks which led up to it.
That part of the great Alpine chain that extends between Turin on the east and
Grenoble on the west is known as the Cottian Alps. This is the dwelling-place of the
Waldenses, the land of ancient Protestantism. On the west the mountains slope
4

towards the plains of France, and on the east they run down to those of Piedmont.
That line of glittering summits, conspicuous among which is the lofty snow-clad peak of Monte Viso on the west, and the craggy escarpments of Genevre on the east, forms the boundary between the Albigenses and the Waldenses, the two bodies of these early witnesses. On the western slope were the dwellings of the former people, and on the eastern those of the latter. Not entirely so, however, for the Waldenses, crossing the summits, had taken possession of the more elevated portion of the western declivities, and scarcely was there a valley in which their villages and sanctuaries were not to be found.
But in the lower valleys, and more particularly in the vast and fertile plains of
Dauphine and Provence, spread out at the foot of the Alps, the inhabitants were mainly of cis-Alpine or Gallic extraction, and are known in history as the Albigenses.
How flourishing they were, how numerous and opulent their towns, how rich their corn-fields and vineyards, and how polished the manners and cultured the genius of the people, we have already said. We have also described the terrible expiation
Innocent III exacted of them for their attachment to a purer Christianity than that of
Rome. He launched his bull; he sent forth his inquisitors; and soon the fertility and beauty of the region were swept away; city and sanctuary sank in ruins; and the plains so recently covered with smiling fields were converted into a desert. The work of destruction had been done with tolerable completeness on the west of the Alps; and after a short pause it was commenced on the east, it being resolved to pursue these confessors of a pure faith across the mountains, and attack them in those grand valleys which open into Italy, where they lay entrenched, as in a fastness formed of massy chestnut forests and mighty pinnacles of rock.
We place ourselves at the foot of the eastern declivity, about thirty miles to the west of Turin. Behind us is the vast sweep of the plain of Piedmont. Above us in front tower the Alps, here forming a crescent of grand mountains, extending from the escarped summit that leans over Pinerolo on the right, to the pyramidal peak of Monte
Viso, which cleaves the ebon like a horn of silver, and marks the furthest limit of the
Waldensian territory on the left. In the bosom of that mountain crescent, shaded by its chestnut forests, and encircled by its glittering peaks, are hung the famous valleys of that people whose martyrdoms we are now to narrate.
In the centre of the picture, right before us, rises the pillar-like Castelluzzo; behind it is the towering mass of the Vandalin; and in front, as if to bar the way against the entrance of any hostile force into this sacred territory, is drawn the long, low hill of
Bricherasio, feathery with woods, bristling with great rocks, and leaving open, between its rugged mass and the spurs of Monte Friolante on the west, only a narrow avenue, shaded by walnut and acacia trees, which leads up to the point where the valleys, spreading out fan-like, bury themselves in the mountains that open their stony arms to receive them. Historians have enumerated some thirty persecutions enacted on this little spot.
One of the earliest dates in the martyr-history of this people is 1332, or thereabouts, for the time is not distinctly marked. The reigning Pope was John XXII. Desirous of resuming the work of Innocent III, he ordered the inquisitors to repair to the Valleys of Lucerne and Perosa, and execute the laws of the Vatican against the heretics that peopled them. What success attended the expedition is not known, and we instance it chiefly on this account, that the bull commanding it bears undesigned testimony to the
5

then flourishing condition of the Waldensian Church, inasmuch as it complains that synods, which the Pope calls chapters, were used to assemble in the Valley of
Angrogna, attended by 500 delegates.
[1]
This was before Wycliffe had begun his career in England.
After this date scarcely was there a Pope who did not bear unintentional testimony to their great numbers and wide diffusion. In 1352 we find Pope Clement VI charging the Bishop of Embrun, with whom he associates a Franciscan friar and inquisitor, to essay the purification of those parts adjoining his diocese which were known to be infected with heresy. The territorial lords and city.
After this date scarcely was there a Pope who did not bear unintentional testimony to their great numbers and wide diffusion. In 1352 we find Pope Clement VI charging the Bishop of Embrun, with whom he associates a Franciscan friar and inquisitor, to essay the purification of those parts adjoining his diocese which were known to be infected with heresy. The territorial lords and city syndics were invited to aid him.
While providing for the heretics of the Valleys, the Pope did not overlook those farther off. He urged the Dauphin, Charles of France, and Louis, King of Naples, to seek out and punish those of their subjects who had strayed from the faith. Clement referred doubtless to the Vaudois colonies, which are known to have existed in that age at Naples. The fact that the heresy of the Waldensian mountains extended to the plains at their feet, is attested by the letter of the Pope to Joanna, wife of the King of
Naples, who owned lands in the Marquisate
[2]
of Saluzzo, near the Valleys, urging her to purge her territory of the heretics that lived in it.
The zeal of the Pope, however, was but indifferently seconded by that of the secular lords. The men they were enjoined to exterminate were the most industrious and peaceable of their subjects; and willing as they no doubt were to oblige the Pope, they were naturally averse to incur so great a loss as would be caused by the destruction of the flower of their populations. Besides, the princes of that age were often at war among themselves, and had not much leisure or inclination to make war on the Pope’s behalf. Therefore the Papal thunder sometimes rolled harmlessly over the Valleys, and the mountain-home of these confessors was wonderfully shielded till very nearly the era of the Reformation, We find Gregory XI, in 1373, writing to Charles V of
France, to complain that his officers thwarted his inquisitors in Dauphine; that the
Papal judges were not permitted to institute proceedings against the suspected without the consent of the civil judge; and that the disrespect to the spiritual tribunal was sometimes carried so far as to release condemned heretics from prison.
[3]
Notwithstanding this leniency - so culpable in the eyes of Rome - on the part of princes and magistrates, the inquisitors were able to make not a few victims. These acts of violence provoked reprisals at times on the part of the Waldenses. On one occasion (1375) the Popish city of Susa was attacked, the Dominican convent forced, and the inquisitor put to death. Other Dominicans were called to expiate their rigor against the Vaudois with the penalty of their lives. An obnoxious inquisitor of Turin is said to have been slain on the highway near Bricherasio.
[4]
There came evil days to the Popes themselves. First, they were chased to Avignon; next, the yet greater calamity of the “schism” befell them; but their own afflictions had not the effect of softening their hearts towards the confessors of the Alps. During the clouded era of their “captivity,” and the tempestuous days of the schism, they pursued with the same inflexible rigor their policy of extermination. They were ever
6

and anon fulminating their persecuting edicts, and their inquisitors were scouring the
Valleys in pursuit of victims. An inquisitor of the name of Borelli had 150 Vaudois men, besides a great number of women, girls, and even young children, brought to
Grenoble and burned alive.
[5]
The closing days of the year 1400 witnessed a terrible tragedy, the memory of which has not been obliterated by the many greater which have followed it. The scene of this catastrophe was the Valley of Pragelas, one of the higher reaches of Perosa, which opens near Pinerolo, and is watered by the Clusone. It was the Christmas of 1400, and the inhabitants dreaded no attack, believing themselves sufficiently protected by the snows which then lay deep on their mountains. They were destined to experience the bitter fact that the rigors of the season had not quenched the fire of their persecutor’s malice. The man named above, Borelli, at the head of an armed troop, broke suddenly into Pragelas, meditating the entire extinction of its population. The miserable inhabitants fled in haste to the mountains, carrying on their shoulders their old men, their sick, and their infants, knowing what fate awaited them should they leave them behind. In their flight a great many were overtaken and slain. Nightfall brought them deliverance from the pursuit, but no deliverance from horrors not less dreadful. The main body of the fugitives wandered in the direction of Macel, in the storm-swept and now ice-clad valley of San Martino, where they encamped on a summit which has ever since, in memory of the event, borne the name of the Alberge or Refuge. Without shelter, without food, the frozen snow around them, the winter’s sky overhead, their sufferings were inexpressibly great. When morning broke what a heart-rending spectacle did day disclose! Of the miserable group the hands and feet of many were frozen; while others were stretched out on the snow, stiffened corpses. Fifty young children, some say eighty, were found dead with cold, some lying on the bare ice, others locked in the frozen arms of their mothers, who had perished on that dreadful night along with their babes.
[6]
In the Valley of Pragelas, to this day, sire recites to son the tale of that Christmas tragedy.
The century, the opening of which had been so fearfully marked, passed on amid continuous executions of the Waldenses. In the absence of such catastrophes as that of
Christmas, 1400, individual Vaudois were kidnapped by the inquisitors, ever on the track for them, or waylaid, whenever they ventured down into the plain of Piedmont, were carried to Turin and other towns, and burned alive. But Rome saw that she was making no progress in the extermination of a heresy which had found a seat amid these hills, as firm as it was ancient. The numbers of the Waldenses were not thinned; their constancy was not shaken, they still refused to enter the Roman Church, and they met all the edicts and inquisitors, all the torturings and burnings of their great persecutor with a resistance as unyielding as that which their rocks offer to the tempests of hail and snow, which the whirlwinds of winter hurl against them.
It was the year 1487. A great blow was meditated. The process of purging the Valleys languished. Pope Innocent VIII, who then filled the Papal chair, remembered how his renowned namesake, Innocent III, by an act of summary vengeance, had swept the
Albigensian heresy from the south of France. Imitating the rigor of his predecessor, he would purge the Valleys as effectually and as speedily as Innocent III had done the plains of Dauphine and Provence.
The first step of the Pope was to issue a bull, denouncing as heretical those whom he delivered over to slaughter. This bull, after the manner of all such documents, was
7

expressed in terms as sanctimonious as its spirit was inexorably cruel. It brings no charge against these men, as lawless, idle, dishonest, or disorderly; their fault was that they did not worship as Innocent worshipped, and that they practiced a “simulated sanctity,” which had the effect of seducing the sheep of the true fold, therefore he orders “that malicious and abominable sect of malignants,” if they “refuse to abjure, to be crushed like venomous snakes.”
[7]
To carry out his bull, Innocent VIII appointed Albert Cataneo, Archdeacon of
Cremona, his legate, devolving upon him the chief conduct of the enterprise. He fortified him, moreover, with Papal missives to all princes, dukes, and powers within whose dominions any Vaudois were to be found. The Pope especially accredited him to Charles VIII of France, and Charles II of Savoy, commanding them to support him with the whole power of their arms. The bull invited all Catholics to take up the cross against the heretics; and to stimulate them in this pious work, it “absolved from all ecclesiastical pains and penalties, general and particular; it released all who joined the crusade from any oaths they might have taken; it legitimatized their title to any property they might have illegally acquired, and promised remission of all their sins to such as should kill any heretic. It annulled all contracts made in favour of Vaudois, ordered their domestics to abandon them, forbade all persons to give them any aid whatever, and empowered all persons to take possession of their property.”
These were powerful incentives, plenary pardon and unrestrained licence. They were hardly needed to awaken the zeal of the neighbouring populations, always too ready to show their devotion to Rome by spilling the blood and harrying the lands and goods of the Waldenses. The King of France and the Duke of Savoy lent a willing ear to the summons from the Vatican. They made haste to unfurl their banners, and enlist soldiers in this holy cause, and soon a numerous army was on its march to sweep from the mountains where they had dwelt from immemorial time, these confessors of the
Gospel faith pure and undefiled. In the train of this armed host came a motley crowd of volunteers, “vagabond adventurers,” says Muston, “ambitious fanatics, reckless pillagers, merciless assassins, assembled from all parts of Italy,”
[8]
a horde of brigands in short, the worthy tools of the man whose bloody work they were assembled to do.
Before all these arrangements were finished, it was the June of 1488. The Pope’s bull was talked of in all countries; and the din of preparation rung far and near, for it was not only on the Waldensian mountains, but on the Waldensian race, wherever dispersed, in Germany, in Calabria, and in other cottatries, that this terrible blow was to fall.
[9]
All kings were invited to gird on the sword, and come to the help of the
Church in the execution of so total and complete an extermination of her enemies as should never need to be repeated. Wherever a Vaudois foot trod, the soil was polluted, and had to be cleansed; wherever a Vaudois breathed, the air was tainted, and must be purified; wherever Vaudois psalm or prayer ascended, there was the infection of heresy; and around the spot a cordon must be drawn to protect the spiritual health of the district. The Pope’s bull was thus very universal in its application, and almost the only people left ignorant of the commotion it had excited, and the bustle of preparation it had called forth, were those poor men on whom this terrible tempest was about to burst.
The joint army numbered about 18,000 regular soldiers. This force was swelled by the thousands of ruffians, already mentioned, drawn together by the spiritual and
8

temporal rewards to be earned in this work of combined piety and pillage. The
Piedmontese division of this host directed their course towards the “Valleys” proper, on the Italian side of the Alps. The French division, marching from the north, advanced to attack the inhabitants of the Dauphinese Alps, where the Albigensian heresy, recovering somewhat its terrible excision by Innocent III, had begun again to take root. Two storms, from opposite points, or rather from all points, were approaching those mighty mountains, the sanctuary and citadel of the primitive faith.
That lamp is about to be extinguished at last, which has burned here during so many ages, and survived so many tempests. The mailed band of the Pope is uplifted, and we wait to see the blow fall.
9

We see at this moment two armies on the march to attack the Christians inhabiting the
Cottian and Dauphinese Alps. The sword now unsheathed is to be returned to its scabbard only when there breathes no longer in these mountains a single confessor of the faith condemned in the bull of Innocent VIII. The plan of the campaign was to attack at the same time on two opposite points of the great mountain-chain; and advancing, the one army from the south-east, and the other from the north-west, to meet in the Valley of Angrogna, the centre of the territory, and there strike the final blow. Let us attend first to the French division of this host, that which is advancing from the north against the Alps of Dauphine.
This portion of the crusaders was led by a daring and cruel man, skilled in such adventures, the Lord of La Palu. He ascended the mountains with his fanatics, and entered the Vale of Loyse, a deep gorge overhung by towering mountains. The inhabitants, seeing an armed force, twenty times their own number, enter their valley, despaired of being able to resist them, and prepared for flight. They placed their old people and children in rustic carts, together with their domestic utensils, and such store of victuals as the urgency of the occasion permitted them to collect, and driving their herds before them, they began to climb the rugged slopes of Mount Pelvoux, which rises some six thousand feet over the level of the valley. They sang canticles as they climbed the steeps, which served at once to smooth their rugged path, and to dispel their terrors. Not a few were overtaken and slaughtered, and theirs was perhaps the happier lot.
About halfway up there is an immense cavern, called Aigue-Froid, from the cold springs that gush out from its rocky walls. In front of the cavern is a platform of rock, where the spectator sees beneath him only fearful precipices, which must be clambered over before one can reach the entrance of the grotto. The roof of the cave forms a magnificent arch, which gradually subsides and contracts into a narrow passage, or throat, and then widens once more, and forms a roomy hall of irregular form. Into this grotto, as into an impregnable castle, did the Vaudois enter. Their women, infants, and old men they placed in the inner hall; their cattle and sheep they distributed along the lateral cavities of the grotto. The able-bodied men posted themselves at the entrance. Having barricaded with huge stones both the doorway of the cave and the path that led to it, they deemed themselves secure. They had provisions to last, Cataneo says in his Memoirs, “two years;” and it would cost them little effort to hurl headlong down the precipices, any one who should attempt to scale them in order to reach the entrance of the cavern.
But a device of their pursuer rendered all these precautions and defences vain. La Palu ascended the mountain on the other side, and approaching the cave from above, let down his soldiers by ropes from the precipice that overhangs the entrance of the grotto. The platform in front was thus secured by his soldiers. The Vaudois might have cut the ropes, and dispatched their foes as they were being lowered one by one, but the boldness of the manoeuvre would seem to have paralysed them. They retreated into the cavern to find in it their grave. La Palu saw the danger of permitting his men to follow them into the depths of their hiding-place. He adopted the easier and safer
10

method of piling up at its entrance all the wood he could collect and setting fire to it.
A huge volume of black smoke began to roll into the cave, leaving to the unhappy inmates the miserable alternative of rushing out and falling by the sword that waited for them, or of remaining in the interior to be stifled by the murky vapour.
[1]
Some rushed out, and were massacred; but the greater part remained till death slowly approached them by suffocation. “When the cavern was afterwards examined,” says
Muston, “there were found in it 400 infants, suffocated in their cradles, or in the arms of their dead mothers. Altogether there perished in this cavern more than 3,000
Vaudois, including the entire population of Val Loyse. Cataneo distributed the property of these unfortunates among the vagabonds who accompanied him, and never again did the Vaudois Church raise its head in these bloodstained valleys.”
[2]
The terrible stroke that fell on the Vale of Loyse was the shielding of the neighbouring valleys of Argentiere and Fraissiniere. Their inhabitants had been destined to destruction also, but the fate of their co-religionists taught them that their only chance of safety lay in resistance. Accordingly barricading the passes of their valleys, they showed such a front to the foe when he advanced, that he deemed it prudent to turn away and leave them in peace. This devastating tempest now swept along to discharge its violence on other valleys. “One would have thought,” to use the words of Muston, “that the plague had passed along the track over which its march lay: it was only the inquisitors.”
A detachment of the French army struck across the Alps in a southeast direction, holding their course toward the Waldensian Valleys, there to unite with the main body of the crusaders under Cataneo. They slaughtered, pillaged, and burned as they went onward, and at last arrived with dripping swords in the Valley of Pragelas.
The Valley of Pragelas, where we now see these assassins, sweeps along, from almost the summit of the Alps, to the south, watered by the rivers Chinone and Dora, and opens on the great plain of Piedmont, having Pinerolo on the one side and Susa on the other. It was then and long after under the dominion of France. “Prior to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,” says Muston, “the Vaudois of these valleys [that is, Pragelas, and the lateral vales branching out from it] possessed eleven parishes, eighteen churches, and sixty-four centres of religious assembling, where worship was celebrated morning and evening, in as many hamlets. It was in Laus, in Pragelas, that was held the famous synod where, 200 years before the Protestant Reformation, 140
Protestant pastors assembled, each accompanied by two or three lay deputies; and it was from the Val di Pragelas that the Gospel of God made its way into France prior to the fifteenth century.”
[3]
This was the Valley of Pragelas which had been the scene of the terrible tragedy of
Christmas, 1400. Again terror, mourning, and death were carried into it. The peaceful inhabitants, who were expecting no such invasion, were busy reaping their harvests, when this horde of assassins burst upon them. In the first panic they abandoned their dwellings and fled. Many were overtaken and slain; hamlets and whole villages were given to the flames; nor could the caves in which multitudes sought refuge afford any protection. The horrible barbarity of the Val Loyse was repeated in the Valley of
Pragelas. Combustible materials were piled up and fires kindled at the mouths of these hiding-places; and when extinguished, all was silent within. Folded together in one motionless heap lay mother and babe, patriarch and stripling; while the fatal smoke, which had cast them into that deep sleep, was eddying along the roof, and slowly
11

making its exit into the clear sunlit summer sky. But the course of this destruction was stayed. After the first surprise the inhabitants took heart, and turning upon their murderers drove them from their valley, exacting a heavy penalty in the pursuit for the ravages they had committed in it.
We now turn to the Piedmontese portion of this army. It was led by the Papal legate,
Cataneo, in person. It was destined to operate against those valleys in Piedmont which were the most ancient seat of these religionists, and were deemed the stronghold of the Vaudois heresy. Cataneo repaired to Pinerolo, which adjoins the frontier of the doomed territory. Thence he dispatched a band of preaching monks to convert the men of the Valleys.
These missionaries returned without having, so far as appears, made a single convert.
The legate now put his soldiers in motion. Traversing the glorious plain, the Clusone gleaming out through rich corn-fields and vineyards on their left, and the mighty rampart of the hills, with their chestnut forests, their pasturages, and snows, rising grandly on their right, and turning round the shoulder of the copse-clad Bricherasio, this army, with another army of pillagers and cutthroats in its rear, advanced up the long avenue that leads to La Torre, the capital of the Valleys, and sat down before it.
They had come against a simple, unarmed people, who knew to tend their vines, and lead their herds to pasture, but were ignorant of the art of war. It seemed as if the last hour of the Waldensian race had struck.
Seeing this mighty host before their Valleys, the Waldenses sent two of their patriarchs to request an interview with Cataneo, and turn, if possible, his heart to peace. John Campo and John Besiderio were dispatched on this embassy. “Do not condemn us without hearing us,” said they, “for we are Christians and faithful subjects; and our Barbes are prepared to prove, in public or in private, that our doctrines are conformable to the Word of God … Our hope in God is greater than our desire to please men; beware how you draw down upon yourselves this anger by persecuting us; for remember that, if God so wills it, all the forces you have assembled against us will nothing avail.”
These were weighty words, and they were meekly spoken, but as to changing
Cataneo’s purpose, or softening the hearts of the ruffian-host which he led, they might as well have been addressed to the rocks which rose around the speakers.
Nevertheless, they fell not to the ground.
Cataneo, believing that the Vaudois herdsmen would not stand an hour before his men-at-arms, and desirous of striking a finishing blow, divided his army into a number of attacking parties, which were to begin the battle on various points at the same time. The folly of extending his line so as to embrace the whole territory led to
Cataneo’s destruction; but his strategy was rewarded with a few small successes at first.
One troop was stationed at the entrance of the Val Lucerna; we shall follow its march till it disappears on the mountains it hopes to conquer, and then we shall return and narrate the more decisive operations of the campaign under Cataneo in the Val
Angrogna.
12

The first step of the invaders was to occupy the town of La Torre, situated on the angle formed by the junction of the Val Lucerna and the Val Angrogna, the silver
Pelice at its feet and the shadow of the Castelluzzo covering it. The soldiers were probably spared the necessity or denied the pleasure of slaughter, the inhabitants having fled to the mountains. The valley beyond La Torre is too open to admit of being defended, and the troop advanced along it unopposed. Than this theatre of war nothing in ordinary times is more peaceful, nothing more grand. A carpet of rich meadows clothes it from side to side; fruitful trees fleck it with their shadows; the
Pelice waters it; and on either hand is a wall of mountains, whose sides display successive zones of festooned vines, golden grain, dark chestnut forests, and rich pasturages. Over these are hung stupendous battlements of rock; and above all, towering high in air, are the everlasting peaks in their robes of ice and snow. But the sublimities of nature were nothing to men whose thoughts were only of blood.
Pursuing their march up the valley, the soldiers next came to Villaro. It is situated about midway between the entrance and head of Lucerna, on a ledge of turf in the side of the great mountains, raised some 200 feet above the Pelice, which flows past at about a quarter-mile’s distance. The troop had little difficulty in taking possession.
Most of the inhabitants, warned of the approach of danger, had fled to the Alps. What
Cataneo’s troop inflicted on those who had been unable to make their escape, no history records. The half of Lucerna, with the towns of La Torre and Villaro and their hamlets, was in the occupation of Cataneo’s soldiers, their march so far had been a victorious one, though certainly not a glorious one, such victories as they had gained being only over unarmed peasants and bed-rid women.
Resuming their march the troop came next to Bobbio. The name of Bobbio is not unknown in classic story. It nestles at the base of gigantic cliffs, where the lofty summit of the Col la Croix points the way to France, and overhangs a path which apostolic feet may have trodden. The Pelice is seen forcing its way through the dark gorges of the mountains in a thundering torrent, and meandering in a flood of silver along the valley.
At this point the grandeur of the Val Lucerna attains its height. Let us pause to survey the scene that must here have met the eyes of Cataneo’s soldiers, and which, one would suppose, might have turned them from their cruel purpose. Immediately behind
Bobbio shoots up the “Barion,” symmetrical as Egyptian obelisk, but far taller and massier. Its summit rises 3,000 feet above the roofs of the little town. Compared with this majestic monolith the proudest monument of Europe’s proudest capital is a mere toy. Yet even the Barion is but an item in this assemblage of glories. Overtopping it behind, and sweeping round the extremity of the valley, is a glorious amphitheatre of crags and precipices, enclosed by a background of great mountains, some rounded like domes, others sharp as needles; and rising out of this sea of hills, are the grander and loftier forms of the Alp des Rousses and the Col de Malaure, which guard the gloomy pass that winds its way through splintered rocks and under overhanging precipices, till it opens into the valleys of the French Protestants, and lands the traveller on the plains of Dauphine. In this unrivalled amphitheatre sits Bobbio, in summer buried in blossoms and fruit, and in winter wrapped in the shadows of its great mountains, and the mists of their tempests. What a contrast between the still repose and grand sublimity of nature and the dreadful errand on which the men now
13

pressing forward to the little town are bent! To them, nature speaks in vain; they are engrossed with but one thought.
The capture of Bobbio - an easy task - put the soldiers in possession of the entire
Valley of Lucerna: its inhabitants had been chased to the Alps, or their blood mingled with the waters of their own Pelice. Other and remoter expeditions were now projected. Their plan was to traverse the Col Julten, sweep down on the Valley of
Prali, which lies on the north of it, chastise its inhabitants, pass on to the Valleys of
San Martino and Perosa, and pursuing the circuit of the Valleys, and clearing the ground as they went onward of its inveterate heresy, at least of its heretics, join the main body of crusaders, who, they expected, would by this time have finished their work in the Valley of Angrogna, and unitedly celebrate their victory. They would then be able to say that they had gone the round of the Waldensian territory, and had at last effected the long-meditated work, so often attempted, but hitherto in vain, of the utter extirpation of its heresy. But the war was destined to have a very different termination.
The expedition across the Col Julten was immediately commenced. A corps of 700 men was detached from the army in Lucerna for this service.
[4]
The ascent of the mountain opens immediately on the north side of Bobbio. We see the soldiers toiling upwards on the track, which is a mere footpath formed by the herdsmen. At every short distance they pass the thick-planted chalets and hamlets sweetly embowered amid man fling vines, or the branches of the apple and cherry tree, or the goodlier chestnut, but the inhabitants have fled. They have now reached a great height on the mountainside. Beneath is Bobbio, a speck of brown. There is the Valley of Lucerna, a ribbon of green, with a thread of silver woven into it, and lying along amid masses of mighty rocks. There, across Lucerna, are the great mountains that enclose the Valley of Rora, standing up in the silent sky; on the right are the spiky crags that bristle along the Pass of Mirabouc, that leads to France, and yonder in the east is a glimpse of the far-extending plains of Piedmont.
But the summit is yet a long way off, and the soldiers of the Papal legate, bearing their weapons, to be employed, not in venturesome battle, but in cowardly massacre, toil up the ascent. As they gain on the; mountain, they look down on pinnacles which half an hour before had looked down on them. Other heights, tall as the former, still rise above them; they climb to these airy spires, which in their turn sink beneath their feet. This process they repeat; again and again, and at last they come out upon the downs that clothe the shoulders of the mountain. Now it is that the scene around them becomes one of stupendous and inexpressible grandeur. Away to the east, now fully under the eye, is the plain of Piedmont, green as garden, and level as the ocean. At their feet yawn gorges and abysses, while spiky pinnacles peer up from below as if to buttress the mountain. The horizon is filled with Alps, conspicuous among which, in the east, is the Col la Verchera, whose snow-clad summit draws the eye to the more than classic valley over which it towers, where the Barbes in ancient days were wont to assemble in synod, and whence their missionaries went forth, at the peril of life, to distribute the Scriptures and sow the seed of the Kingdom. It was not unmarked, doubtless, by this corps, forming, as they meant it should do, the terminating point of their expedition in the Val di Angrogna. On the west, the crowning glory of the scene was Monte Viso, standing up in bold relief in the ebon vault, in a robe of silver. But in
14

vain had Nature spread out her magnificence before men who had neither eyes to see nor hearts to feel her glory.
Climbing on their hands and knees the steep grassy slope in which the pass terminates, they looked down from the summit on the Valley of Prali, at that moment a scene of peace. Its great snow-clad hills, conspicuous among which is the Col d’Abries, kept guard around it. Down their sides rolled foaming torrents, which, uniting in the valley, flowed along in a full and rapid river. Over the bosom of the plain were scattered numerous hamlets. The peasants were at work in the meadows and corn-fields; their children were at play; their herds were browsing in their pastures. Suddenly on the mountains above had gathered this flock of vultures that with greedy eyes were looking down upon their prey. A few hours, and these dwellings would be in flames, their inmates slaughtered, and their herds and goods carried off as booty. Impatient to begin their work, these 700 assassins rushed down on the plain.
The troop had reckoned that, no tidings of their approach having reached this secluded valley, they would fall upon its unarmed peasants as falls the avalanche, and crush them. But it was not to be so. Instead of fleeing, panic-struck, as the invaders expected, the men of Prali hastily assembled, and stood to their defence. Battle was joined at the hamlet of Pommiers.
The weapons of the Vaudois were rude, but their trust in God, and their indignation at the cowardly and bloody assault, gave them strength and courage. The Piedmontese soldiers, wearied with the rugged, slippery tracks they had traversed, fell beneath the blows of their opponents.
Every man of them was cut down with the exception of one ensign. Of all the 700, he alone survived. During the carnage, he made his escape, and ascending the banks of a mountain torrent, he crept into a cavity which the summer heats had formed in a mass of snow. There he remained hid for some days; at last, cold and hunger drove him forth to cast himself upon the mercy of the men of Prali. They were generous enough to pardon this solitary survivor of the host that had come to massacre them. They sent him back across the Col Julien, to tell those from whom he had come that the Vaudois had courage to fight for their hearths and altars, and that of the army of 700 which they had sent to slay them, he only had escaped to carry tidings of the fate which had befallen his companions.
15

The camp of Cataneo was pitched almost at the gates of La Torre, beneath the shadow of the Casteluzzo. The Papal legate is about to try to force his way into the Val di
Angrogna. This valley opens hard by the spot where the legate had established his camp, and runs on for a dozen miles into the Alps, a magnificent succession of narrow gorges and open dells, walled throughout by majestic mountains, and terminating in a noble circular basin - the Pra del Tor - which is set round with snowy peaks, and forms the most venerated spot in all the Waldensian territory, inasmuch as it was the seat of their college, and the meeting-place of their Barbes.
In the Pra del Tor, or Meadow of the Tower, Cataneo expected to surprise the mass of the Waldensan people, now gathered into it as being the strongest refuge which their hills afforded. There, too, he expected to be joined by the corps which he had sent round by Lucerna to make the circuit of the Valleys, and after devastating Prali and
San Martino, to climb the mountain barrier and join their companions in the “Pra,” little imagining that the soldiers he had dispatched on that errand of massacre were now enriching with their corpses the Valleys they had been sent to subdue.
[1]
In that same spot where the Barbes had so often met in synod, and enacted rules for the government of their Church and the spread of their faith, the Papal legate would reunite his victorious host, and finish the campaign by proclaiming that now the
Waldensian heresy, root and branch, was extinct.
The Waldenses - their humble supplication for peace having been contemptuously rejected, as we have already said - had three courses in their choice - to go to mass, to be butchered as sheep, or to fight for their lives. They chose the last, and made ready for battle. But first they must remove to a place of safety all who were unable to bear arms.
Packing up their kneading-troughs, their ovens, and other culinary utensils, laying their aged on their shoulders, and their sick in couches, and leading their children by the hand, they began to climb the hills, in the direction of the Pra del Tor, at the head of the Val di Angrogna. Transporting their household stuff, they could be seen traversing the rugged paths, and making the mountains resound with psalms, which they sweetly sung as they journeyed up the ascent. Those who remained busied themselves in manufacturing pikes and other weapons of defence and attack, in repairing the barricades, in arranging themselves into fighting parties, and assigning to the various corps the posts they were to defend.
Cataneo now put his soldiers in motion. Advancing to near the town of La Torre, they made a sharp turn to the right, and entered the Val di Angrogna. Its opening offers no obstruction, being soft and even as any meadow in all England. By-and-by it beans to swell into the heights of Roccomaneot, where the Vaudois had resolved to make a stand. Their fighting men were posted along its ridge. Their armour was of the simplest. The bow was almost their only weapon of attack. They wore bucklers of skin, covered with the bark of the chestnut-tree, the better to resist thrust of pike or cut of sword. In the hollow behind, protected by the rising ground on which their fathers, husbands, and brothers were posted, were a number of women and children, gathered there for shelter. The Piedmontese host pressed up the activity, discharging a shower
16

of arrows as they advanced, and the Waldensian line on which these missiles fell, seemed to waver, and to be on the point of giving way. Those behind, espying the danger, fell on their knees and, extending their hands in supplication to the God of battles, cried aloud, “0 God of our fathers, help us! O God, deliver us!” That cry was heard by the attacking host, and especially by one of its captains, Le Noir of Mondovi, or the Black Mondovi, a proud, bigoted, bloodthirsty man. He instantly shouted out that his soldiers would give the answer, accompanying his threat with horrible blasphemies. The Black Mondovi raised his visor as he spoke. At the instant an arrow from the bow of Pierre Revel, of Angrogna, entering between his eyes, transfixed his skull, and he fell on the earth a corpse.
The fall of this daring leader disheartened the Papal army. The soldiers began to fall back. They were chased down the slopes by the Vaudois, who now descended upon them like one of their own mountain torrents. Having driven their invaders to the plain, cutting off not a few in their flight, they returned as the evening began to fall, to celebrate with songs, on the heights where they had won it, the victory with which it had pleased the God of their fathers to crown their arms.
Cataamo burned with rage and shame at being defeated by these herdsmen. In a few days, reassembling his host, he made a second attempt to enter the Angrogna. This promised to be successful. He passed the height of Roccomaneot, where he had encountered his first defeat, without meeting any resistance. He led his soldiers into the narrow defiles beyond. Here great rocks overhang the path: mighty chestnut-trees fling their branches across the way, veiling it in gloom, and far down thunders the torrent that waters the valley. Still advancing, he found himself, without fighting, in possession of the ample and fruitful expanse into which, these defiles passed, the valley opens. He was now master so far of the Val di Angrogna, comprehending the numerous hamlets, with their finely cultivated fields and vineyards, on the left of the torrent. But he had seen none of the inhabitants. These, he knew, were with the men of Lucerna in the Pra del Tor. Between him and his prey rose the “Barricade,” a steep unscaleable mountain, which runs like a wall across the valley, and forms a rampart to the famous “Meadow,” which combines the solemnity of sanctuary with the strength of citadel.
Must the advance of the Papal legate and his army here end! It seemed as if it must.
Cataneo was in a vast cul-de-sac. He could see the white peaks round the Pra, but between him and the Pra itself rose, in Cyclopean strength and height, the Barricade.
He searched and, unhappily for himself, found all entrance. Some convulsion of nature has here rent the mountains, and through the long, narrow, and dark chasm thus formed lies the one only path that leads to the head of Angrogna. The leader of the
Papal host boldly ordered his men to enter and traverse this frightful gorge, not knowing how few of them he should ever lead back. The only pathway through this chasm is a rocky ledge on the side of the mountain, so narrow that not more than two abreast can advance along it. If assailed either in front, or in rear, or from above, there is absolutely no retreat. Nor is there room for the party attacked to fight. The pathway is hung midway between the bottom of the gorge, along which rolls the stream, and the summit of the mountain. Here the naked cliff runs sheer up for at least one thousand feet; there it leans over the path in stupendous masses, which look as if about to fall. Here lateral fissures admit the golden beams of the sun, which relieve the darkness of the pass, and make it visible. There a half-acre or so of level space
17

gives standing-room on the mountain’s side to a clump of birches, with their tall silvery trunks, or a chalet, with its bit of bright close-shaven meadow. But these only partially relieve the terrors of the chasm, which runs on from one to two miles, when, with a burst of light, and a sudden flashing of white peaks on the eye, it opens into an amphitheatre of meadow of dimensions so goodly, that an entire nation might find room to encamp in it.
It was into this terrible defile that the soldiers of the Papal legate now marched. They kept advancing, as best they could, along the narrow ledge. They were now nearing the Pra. It seemed impossible for their prey to escape them. Assembled on this spot the Waldensian people had but one neck, and the Papal soldiers, so Cataneo believed, were to sever that neck at a blow. But God was watching over the Vaudois. He had said of the Papal legate and his army, as of another tyrant of former days, “I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will cause thee to return by the way by which thou camest.” But by what agency was the advance of that host to be stayed? Will some mighty angel smite Cataneo’s army, as he did Sennacherib’s? No angel blockaded the pass. Will thunder-bolts and hailstones be rained upon Cataneo’s soldiers, as of old on Sisera’s? The thunders slept; the hail fell not. Will earthquake and whirlwind discomfit them? No earthquake rocked the ground; no whirlwinds rent the mountains. The instrumentality now put in motion to shield the Vaudois from destruction was one of the lightest and frailest in all nature; yet no bars of adamant could have more effectually shut the pass, and brought the march of the host to an instant halt.
A white cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, unobserved by the Piedmontese, but keenly watched by the Vandois, was seen to gather on the mountain’s summit, about the time the army would be entering the defile. That cloud grew rapidly bigger and blacker. It began to descend. It came rolling down the mountain’s side, wave on wave, like an ocean tumbling out of heaven - a sea of murky vapour. It fell right into the chasm in which was the Papal army, sealing it up, and filling it from top to bottom with a thick black fog. In a moment the host were in night; they were bewildered, stupefied, and could see neither before nor behind, could neither advance nor retreat.
They halted in a state bordering on terror.
[2]
The Waldenses interpreted this as an interposition of Providence in their behalf. It had given them the power of repelling the invader. Climbing the slopes of the Pra, and issuing from all their hiding-places in its environs, they spread themselves over the mountains, the paths of which were familiar to them, and while the host stood riveted beneath them, caught in the double toils of the defile and the mist, they tore up the great stones and rocks, and sent them thundering down into the ravine. The Papal soldiers were crushed where they stood. Nor was this all. Some of the Waldenses boldly entered the chasm, sword in hand, and attacked them in front. Consternation seized the Piedmontese host. Panic impelled them to flee, but their effort to escape was more fatal than the sword of the Vaudois, or the rocks that, swift as arrow, came bounding down the mountain. They jostled one another; they threw each other down in the struggle; some were trodden to death; others were rolled over the precipice, and crushed on the rocks below, or drowned in the torrent, and so perished miserably.
[3]
The fate of one of these invaders has been preserved in stone. He was a certain
Captain Saquet, a man, it is said, of gigantic stature, from Polonghera, in Piedmont.
He began, like his Philistine prototype, to vent curses on the Waldensian dogs. The
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words were yet in his mouth when his foot slipped. Rolling over the precipice, and tumbling into the torrent of the Angrogna, he was carried away by the stream, and his body finally deposited in a deep eddy or whirlpool, called in the patois of the country a “tompie,” from the noise made by its waters. It bears to this day the name of the
Tompie de Saquet, or Gulf of Saquet.
[4]
This war hung above the Valleys, like a cloud of tempest, for a whole year. It inflicted much suffering and loss upon the Waldenses; their homes were burned, their fields devastated, their goods carried off, and their persons slain; but the invaders suffered greatly more than they inflicted. Of the 18,000 regular troops, to which we may add about an equal number of desperadoes, with which the campaign opened, few ever returned to their homes. They left their bones on the mountains they had come to subdue. They were cut off mostly in detail. They were led weary chases from valley to mountain and from mountain to valley. The rocks rolled upon them gave them at once death and burial. They were met in narrow defiles and cut to pieces. Flying parties of Waldenses would suddenly issue from the mist, or from some cave known only to themselves, attack and discomfit the foe, and then as suddenly retreat into the friendly vapour or the sheltering rock. Thus it came to pass that, in the words of
Muston, “this army of invaders vanished from the Vaudois mountains as rain in the sands of the desert.”
[5]
“God,” says Leger, “turned the heart of their prince toward this poor people.” He sent a prelate to their Valleys, to assure them of his good-will, and to intimate his wish to receive their deputies. They sent twelve of their more venerable men to Turin, who being admitted into the duke’s presence, gave him such an account of their faith, that he candidly confessed that he had been misled in what he had done against them, and would not again suffer such wrongs to he inflicted upon them. He several times said that he “had not so virtuous, so faithful, and so obedient subjects as the Vaudois.”
[6]
He caused the deputies a little surprise by expressing a wish to see some of the
Vaudois children. Twelve infants, with their mothers, were straightway sent for from the Valley of Angrogna, and presented before the prince. He examined them narrowly. He found them well formed, and testified his admiration of their healthy faces, clear eyes, and lively prattle. He had been told, he said, that “the Vaudois children were monsters, with only one eye placed in the middle of the forehead, four rows of black teeth, and other similar deformities.”
[7]
He expressed himself as not a little angry at having been made to believe such fables.
The prince, Charles II,
[8]
a youth of only twenty years, but humane and wise, confirmed the privileges and immunities of the Vaudois, and dismissed them with his promise that they should be unmolested in the future. The Churches of the Valleys now enjoyed a short respite from persecution.
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The Duke of Savoy was sincere in his promise that the Vaudois should not be disturbed, but fully to make it good was not altogether in his power. He could take care that such armies of crusaders as that which mustered under the standard of
Cataneo should not invade their Valleys, but he could not guard them from the secret machinations of the priesthood. In the absence of the armed crusader, the missionary and the inquisitor assailed them. Some were seduced, others were kidnapped, and carried of to the Holy Office. To these annoyances was added the yet greater evil of a decaying piety. A desire for repose made many conform outwardly to the Romish
Church. “In order to be shielded from all interruption in their journeys on business, they obtained from the priests, who were settled in the Valleys, certificates or testimonials of their being Papists.”9 To obtain this credential it was necessary to attend the Romish chapel, to confess, to go to mass, and to have their children baptised by the priests. For this shameful and criminal dissimulation they fancied that they made amends by muttering to themselves when they entered the Romish temples,
“Cave of robbers, may God confound thee!”
[1]
At the same time they continued to attend the preaching of the Vaudois pastors, and to submit themselves to their censures. But beyond all question the men who practiced these deceits, and the
Church that tolerated them, had greatly declined. That old vine seemed to be dying. A little while and it would disappear from off those mountains which it had so long covered with the shadow of its boughs.
But He who had planted it “looked down from heaven and visited it.” It was now that the Reformation broke out. The river of the Water of Life was opened a second time, and began to flow through Christendom. The old and dying stock in the Alps, drinking of the celestial stream, lived anew; its boughs began to be covered with blossoms and fruit as of old. The Reformation had begun its career, and had already stirred most of the countries of Europe to their depths before tidings of the mighty changes reached these secluded mountains. When at last the great news was announced, the Vaudois “were as men who dreamed.” Eager to have them confirmed, and to know to what extent the yoke of Rome had been cast off by the nations of
Europe, they sent forth Pastor Martin, of the Valley of Lucrena, on a mission of inquiry. In 1526 he returned with the amazing intelligence that the light of the old
Evangel had broken on Germany, on Switzerland, on France, and that every day was adding to the number of those who openly professed the same doctrines to which the
Vaudois had borne witness from ancient times. To attest what he said, he produced the books he had received in Germany containing the views of the Reformers.
[2]
The remnant of the Vaudois on the north of the Alps also sent out men to collect information respecting that great spiritual revolution which had so surprised and gladdened them. In 1530 the Churches of Provence and Dauphine commissioned
George Morel, of Merindol, and Pierre Masson, of Burgundy, to visit the Reformers of Switzerland and Germany, and bring them word touching their doctrine and manner of life. The deputies met in conference with the members of the Protestant
Churches of Neuchatel, Morat, and Bern. They had also interviews with Berthold
Haller and William Farel. Going on to Basle they presented to Oecolampadius, in
October, 1530, a document in Latin, containing a complete account of their ecclesiastical discipline, worship, doctrine, and manners. They begged in return that
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Oecolampadius would say whether he approved of the order and doctrine of their
Church, and if he held it to be defective, to specify in what points and to what extent.
The elder Church submitted itself to the younger.
The visit of these two pastors of this ancient Church gave unspeakable joy to the
Reformer of Basle. He heard in them the voice of the Church primitive and apostolic speaking to the Christians of the sixteenth century, and bidding them welcome within the gates of the City of God. What a miracle was before him! For ages had this
Church been in the fires, yet she had not been consumed. Was not this encouragement to those who were just entering into persecutions not less terrific? “We render thanks,” said Oecolampadins in his letter, October 13th, 1530, to the Churches of
Provence, “to our most gracious Father that he has called you into such marvellous light, during ages in which such thick darkness has covered almost the whole world under the empire of Antichrist. We love you as brethren.”
But his affection for them did not blind him to their declensions, nor make him withhold those admonitions which he saw to be needed. “As we approve of many things among you,” he wrote, “so there are several which we wish to see amended.
We are informed that the fear of persecution has caused you to dissemble and to conceal your faith … There is no concord between Christ and Belial. You commune with unbelievers; you take part in their abominable masses, in which the death and passion of Christ are blasphemed …
I know your weakness, but it becomes those who have been redeemed by the blood of
Christ to be more courageous. It is better for us to die than to be overcome by temptation.” It was thus that Oecolampadius, speaking in the name of the Church of the Reformation, repaid the Church of the Alps for the services she had rendered to the world in former ages. By sharp, faithful, brotherly rebuke, he sought to restore to her the purity and glory which she had lost.
Having finished with Oecolampadius, the deputies went on to Strasburg. There they had interviews with Bucer and Capito. A similar statement of their faith to the
Reformers of that city drew forth similar congratulations and counsels. In the clear light of her morning the Reformation Church saw many things which had grown dim in the evening of the Vaudois Church; and the Reformers willingly permitted their elder sister the benefit of their own wider views. If the men of the sixteenth century recognised the voice of primitive Christianity speaking in the Vaudois, the latter heard the voice of the Bible, or rather of God himself, speaking in the Reformers, and submitted themselves with modesty and docility to their reproofs. The last had become first.
A manifold interest belongs to the meeting of these the two Churches. Each is a miracle to the other. The preservation of the Vaudois Church for so many ages, amid the fires of persecution, made her a wonder to the Church of the sixteenth century.
The bringing up of the latter from the dead made her a yet greater wonder to the
Church of the first century. These two Churches compare their respective beliefs: they find that their creeds are not twain, but one. They compare the sources of their knowledge: they find that they have both of them drawn their doctrine from the Word of God; they are not two Churches, they are one. They are the elder and younger members of the same glorious family, the children of the same Father. What a magnificent monument of the true antiquity and genuine catholicity of Protestantism!
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Only one of the two Provence deputies returned from their visit to the Reformers of
Switzerland. On their way back, at Dijon, suspicion, from some cause or other, fell on
Pierre Masson. He was thrown into prison, and ultimately condemned and burned. His fellow-deputy was allowed to go on his way. George Morel, bearing the answers of the Reformers, and especially the letters of Oecolampadius, happily arrived in safety in Provence.
The documents he brought with him were much canvassed. Their contents caused these two ancient Churches mingled joy and sorrow; the former, however, greatly predominating. The news touching the numerous body of Christians, now appearing in many lands, so full of knowledge, and faith, and courage, was literally astounding.
The confessors of the Alps thought that they were alone in the world; every successive century saw their numbers thinning, and their spirit growing less resolute; their ancient enemy, on the other hand, was steadfastly widening her dominion and strengthening her sway. A little longer, they imagined, and all public faithful profession of the Gospel would cease. It was at that moment they were told that a new army of champions had arisen to maintain the old battle. This announcement explained and justified the past to them, for now they beheld the fruits of their fathers’ blood. They who had fought the battle were not to have the honour of the victory.
That was reserved for combatants who had come newly into the field. They had forfeited this reward, they painfully felt, by their defections; hence the regret that mingled with their joy.
They proceeded to discuss the answers that should be made to the Churches of the
Protestant faith, considering especially whether they should adopt the reforms urged upon them in the communications which their deputies had brought back from the
Swiss and German Reforming.
The great majority of the Vaudois barbes were of opinion that they ought. A small minority, however, were opposed to this, because they thought that it did not become the new disciples to dictate to the old, or because they themselves were secretly inclined to the Roman superstitions. They went back again to the Reformers for advice; and, after repeated interchange of views, it was finally resolved to convene a synod in the Valleys, at which all the questions between the two Churches might be debated, and the relations which they were to sustain towards each other in time to come, determined. If the Church of the Alps was to continue apart, as before the
Reformation, she felt that she must justify her position by proving the existence of great and substantial differences in doctrine between herself and the newly-arisen
Church. But if no such differences existed, she would not, and dared not, remain separate and alone; she must unite with the Church of the Reformation.
It was resolved that the coming synod should be a truly oecumenical one - a general assembly of all the children of the Protestant faith. A hearty invitation was sent forth, and it was cordially and generally responded to. All the Waldensian Churches in the bosom of the Alps were represented in this synod. The Albigensian communities on the north of the chain, and the Vaudois Churches in Calabria, sent deputies to it. The
Churches of French Switzerland chose William Farel and Anthony Saunier to attend it. From even more distant lands, as Bohemia, came men to deliberate and vote in this famous convention.
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The representatives assembled on the 12th of October, 1532. Two years earlier the
Augsburg Confession had been given to the world, marking the culmination of the
German Reformation. A year before, Zwingle had died on the field of Cappel. In
France, the Reformation was beginning to be illustrated by the heroic deaths of its children. Calvin had not taken his prominent place at Geneva, but he was already enrolled under the Protestant banner. The princes of the Schmalkald League were standing at bay in the presence of Charles V. It was a critical yet glorious era in the annals of Protestantism which saw this assembly convened. It met at the town of
Chamforans, in the heart of the Valley of Angrogna. There are few grander or stronger positions in all that valley than the site occupied by this little town. The approach to it was defended by the heights of Roccomaneot and La Serre, and by defiles which now contract, now widen, but are everywhere overhung by great rocks and mighty chestnut-trees, behind and above which rise the taller peaks, some of them snow-clad. A little beyond La Serre is the plateau on which the town stood, overlooking the grassy bosom of the valley, which is watered by the crystal torrent, dotted by numerous chalets, and runs on for about two miles, till shut in by the steep, naked precipices of the Barricade, which, stretching from side to side of Angrogna, leaves only the long, dark chasm we have already described, as the pathway to the Pra del Tor, whose majestic mountains here rise on the sight and suggest to the traveller the idea that he is drawing nigh some city of celestial magnificence. The town of
Chamforans does not now exist; its only representative at this day is a solitary farmhouse.
The synod sat for six consecutive days. All the points raised in the communications received from the Protestant Churches were freely ventilated by the assembled barbes and elders. Their findings were embodied in a “Short Confession of Faith,” which
Monastier says “may be considered as a supplement to the ancient Confession of
Faith of the year 1120, which it does not contradict in any point.”
[3]
It consists of seventeen articles,
[4]
the chief of which are the Moral inability of man; election to eternal life; the will of God, as made known in the Bible, the only rule of duty; and the doctrine of two Sacraments only, baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
The lamp which had been on the point of expiring began, after this synod, to burn with its former brightness. The ancient spirit of the Waldenses revived. They no longer practiced those dissimulations and cowardly concealments to which they had had recourse to avoid persecution. They no longer feared to confess their faith.
Henceforward they were never seen at mass, or in the Popish churches. They refused to recognize the priests of Rome as ministers of Christ, and under no circumstances would they receive any spiritual benefit or service at their hands.
Another sign of the new life that now animated the Vaudois was their setting about the work of rebuilding their churches. For fifty years previous public worship may be said to have ceased in their Valleys. Their churches had been razed by the persecutor, and the Vaudois feared to rebuild them lest they should draw down upon themselves a new storm of violence and blood. A cave would serve at times as a place of meeting.
In more peaceful years the house of their barbe, or of some of their chief men, would be converted into a church; and when the weather was fine, they would assemble on the mountain-side, under the great boughs of their ancestral trees. But their old sanctuaries they dared not raise from the ruins into which the persecutor had cast them. They might say with the ancient Jews, “The holy and beautiful house in which
23

our fathers praised thee is burned with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid waste.”
But now, strengthened by the fellowship and counsels of their Protestant brethren, churches arose, and the worship of God was reinstituted. Hard by the place where the synod met, at Lorenzo namely, was the first of these post-Reformation churches set up; others speedily followed in the other valleys; pastors were multiplied; crowds flocked to their preaching, and not a few came from the plains of Piedmont, and from remote parts of their valleys, to drink of these living waters again flowing in their land.
Yet another token did this old Church give of the vigorous life that was now flowing in her veins. This was a translation of the Scriptures into the French tongue. At the synod, the resolution was taken to translate and print both the Old and New
Testaments, and, as this was to be done at the sole charge of the Vaudois, it was considered as them gift to the Churches of the Reformation. A most appropriate and noble gift! That Book which the Waldenses had received from the primitive Church - which their fathers had preserved with their blood - which their barbes had laboriously transcribed and circulated - they now put into the hands of the Reformers, constituting them along with themselves the custodians of this the ark of the world’s hopes. Robert Olivetan, a near relative of Calvin, was asked to undertake the translation, and he executed it - with the help of his great kinsman, it is believed. It was printed in folio, in black letter, at Neuchatel, in the year 1535, by Pierre de
Wingle, commonly called Picard. The entire expense was defrayed by the Waldenses, who collected for this object 1,500 crowns of gold, a large sum for so poor a people.
Thus did the Waldensian Church emphatically proclaim, at the commencement of this new era in her existence, that the Word of God was her one sole foundation.
As has been already mentioned, a commission to attend the synod had been given by the Churches of French Switzerland to Farel and Saunter. Its fulfilment necessarily involved great toil and peril. One crosses the Alps at this day so easily, that it is difficult to conceive the toil and danger that attended the journey then. The deputies could not take the ordinary tracks across the mountains for fear of pursuit; they were compelled to travel by unfrequented paths. The way often led by the edge of precipices and abysses, up steep and dangerous ascents, and across fields of frozen snow, for were their pursuers the only dangers they had to fear; they were exposed to death from the blinding drifts and tempests of the hills. Nevertheless, they arrived in safety in the Valleys, and added by their presence and their counsels to the dignity of this the first great ecclesiastical assembly of modern times. Of this we have a somewhat remarkable proof. Three years thereafter, a Vaudois, Jean Peyrel, of
Angrogna, being cast into prison, deposed on his trial that “he had kept guard for the ministers who taught the good law, who were assembled in the town of Chamforans, in the centre of Angrogna; and that amongst others present there was one called Farel, who had a red beard, and a beautiful white horse; and two others accompanied him, one of whom had a horse, almost black, and the other was very tall, and rather lame.”
24

The Church of the Alps had peace for twenty-eight years. This was a time of great spiritual prosperity. Sanctuaries arose in all her Valleys; her pastors and teachers were found too few, and men of learning and zeal, some of them from foreign lands, pressed into her service. Individuals and families in the cities on the plain of Piedmont embraced her faith; and the crowds that attended her worship were continually growing.
[1]
In short, this venerable Church had a second youth. Her lamp, retrimmed, burned with a brightness that justified her time-honoured motto, “A light shining in darkness.” The darkness was not now so deep as it had been; the hours of night were drawing to a close. Nor was the Vaudois community the only light that now shone in Christendom. It was one of a constellation of lights, whose brilliance was beginning to irradiate the skies of the Church with an effulgence which no former age had known.
The exemption from persecution, which the Waldenses enjoyed during this period, was not absolute, but comparative. The lukewarm are seldom molested; and the quickened zeal of the Vaudois brought with it a revival of the persecutor’s malignity, though it did not find vent in violences so dreadful as the tempests that had lately smitten them. Only two years after the synod - that is, in 1534 - wholesale destruction fell upon the Vaudois Churches of Provence; but the sad story of their extinction will more appropriately be told elsewhere. In the valleys of Piedmont events were from time to time occurring that showed that the inquisitor’s vengeance had been scotched, not killed. While the Vaudois as a race were prosperous, their churches multiplying, and their faith extending it geographical area from one area to another, individual
Vaudois were being at times seized, and put to death, at the stake, on the rack, or by the cord.
Three years after, the persecution broke out anew, and raged for a short time. Charles
III. of Savoy, a prince of mild manners, but under the rule of the priests, being solicited by the Archbishop of Turin and the inquisitor of the same city, gave his consent to “hunting down” the heretics of the Valleys
[2]
. The commission was given to a nobleman of the name of Bersour, whose residence was at Pinerolo, near the entrance of the Valley of Perosa.
Bersour, a man of savage disposition, collected a troop of 500 horse and foot, and attacked the Valley of Angrogna. He was repulsed, but the storm which had rolled away from the mountains fell upon the plains. Turning to the Vaudois who resided around his own residence, he seized a great number of persons, whom he threw into prisons and convents of Pinerolo and the Inquisition of Turin. Many of them suffered in the flames. One of these martyrs, Catalan Girard, quaintly taught the spectators a parabolic lesson, standing at the pile. From amid the flames he asked for two stones, which were instantly brought him. The crowd looked on in silence, curious to know what he meant to do with them. Rubbing them against each other, he said, “You think to extinguish our poor Churches by your persecutions. You can no more do so than I with my feeble hands can crush these stones.”
[3]
Heavier tempests seemed about to descend, when suddenly the sky cleared above the confessors of the Alps. It was a change in the politics of Europe in this instance, as in
25

many others, that stayed the arm of persecution. Francis I of France demanded of
Charles, Duke of Savoy, permission to march an army through his dominions. The object of the French king was the recovery of the Duchy of Milan, a long-contested prize between himself and Charles V. The Duke of Savoy refused the request of his brother monarch; but reflecting that the passes of the Alps were in the hands of the men whom he was persecuting, and that should he continue his oppressions, the
Vaudois might open the gates of his kingdom to the enemy, he sent orders to Bersour to stop the persecution in the Valleys.
In 1536, the Waldensian Church had to mourn the loss of one of the more distinguished of her pastors. Martin Gonin, of Angrogna - a man of public spirit and rare gifts - who had gone to Geneva on ecclesiastical affairs, was returning through
Dauphine, when he was apprehended on suspicion of being a spy. He cleared himself on that charge, but the gaoler searching his person, and discovering certain papers upon him, he was convicted of what the Parliament of Grenoble accounted a much greater crime - heresy. Condemned to die, he was led forth at night, and drowned in the river Isere. He would have suffered at the stake had not his persecutors feared the effect of his dying words upon the spectators.
[4]
There were others, also called to ascend the martyr-pile, whose names we must not pass over in silence. Two pastors returning from Geneva to their flocks in the Valleys, in company of three French Protestants, were seized at the Col de Tamiers, in Savoy, and carried to Chambery. There all five were tried, condemned, and burned. The fate of Nicolas Sartoire is yet more touching. He was a student of theology at Geneva, and held one of those bursaries which the Lords of Bern had allotted for the training of young men as pastors in the Churches of the Valleys. He set out to spend his holiday with his family in Piedmont. We know how Vaudois heart yearns for its native mountains; nor would the coming of the youth awaken less lively anticipations on the part of his friends. The paternal threshold, alas! he was never to cross; his native
Valleys he was to tread no more. Travelling by the pass of St. Bernard, and the grand
Valley of Aosta, he had just passed the Italian frontier, when he was apprehended on the suspicion of heresy. It was the month of May, when all was life and beauty in the vales and mountains around him; he himself was in the spring-time of existence; it was hard to lay down life at such a moment; but the great captain from whose feet he had just come, had taught him that the first duty of a soldier of Christ is obedience. He confessed his Lord, nor could promises or threats - and both were tried - make him waver. He continued steadfast unto the end, and on the 4th of May, 1557, he was brought forth from his dungeon at Aosta, and burned alive.
[5]
The martyr who died thus heroically at Aosta was a youth, the one we are now to contemplate was a man of fifty. Geofroi Varaile was a native of the town of Busco, in
Piedmont. His father had been a captain in that army of murderers who, in 1488, ravaged the Valleys of Lucerna and Angrogna.
The son in 1520 became a monk, and possessing the gift of a rare eloquence, he was sent on a preaching tour, in company with another cowled ecclesiastic, yet more famous, Bernardo Ochino of Sienna, the founder of the order of the Capuchins. The arguments of the men he was sent to convert staggered Varaile. He fled to Geneva, and in the city of the Reformers he was taught more fully the “way of life.” Ordained as a pastor, he returned to the Valleys, where “like another Paul,” says Leger, “he preached the faith he once destroyed.” After a ministry of some months, he set out to
26

pay a visit of a few days to his native town of Busco. He was apprehended by the monks who were lying in wait for him. He was condemned to death by the Inquisition of Turin. His execution took place in the castle-piazza of the same city, March 29th,
1558. He walked to the place where he was to die with a firm step and a serene countenance; he addressed the vast multitude around his pile in a way that drew tears from many eyes; after this, he began to sing with a loud voice, and so continued till he sank amid the flames.
[6]
Two years before this, the same piazza, the castle-yard at Turin, had witnessed a similar spectacle. Barthelemy Hector was a bookseller in Poictiers. A man of warm but well-tempered zeal, he travelled as far as the Valleys, diffusing that knowledge that maketh wise, unto salvation. In the assemblage of white peaks that look down on the Pra del Tor is one named La Vechera, so called because the cows love the rich grass that clothes its sides in summer-time. Barthelemy Hector would take his seat on the slopes of the mountain, and gathering the herdsmen and agriculturists of the Pra round him, would induce them to buy his books, by reading passages to them.
Portions of the Scriptures also would he recite to the granddames and maidens as they watched their goats, or plied the distaff. His steps were tracked by the inquisitor, even amid these wild solitudes. He was dragged to Turin, to answer for the crime of selling
Genevese books. His defence before his judges discovered an admirable courage and wisdom.
“You have been caught in the act,” said his judge, “of selling books that contain heresy. What say you?”
“If the Bible is heresy to you, it is truth to me,” replied the prisoner.
“But you use the Bible to deter men from going to mass,” urged the judge.
“If the Bible deters men from going to mass,” responded Barthelemy, “it is a proof that God disapproves of it, and that the mass is idolatry.”
The judge, deeming it expedient to make short shrift with such a heretic, exclaimed,
“Retract.”
“I have spoken only truth,” said the bookseller, “can I change truth as I would a garment?”
His judges kept him some months in prison, in the hope that his recantation would save them the necessity of burning him. This unwillingness to have resort to the last penalty was owing to no feeling of pity for the prisoner, but entirely to the conviction that these repeated executions were endangering the cause of their Church. “The smoke of these martyr-piles,” as was said with reference to the death of Patrick
Hamilton, “was infecting those on whom it blew.” But the constancy of Barthelemy compelled his persecutors to disregard these prudential considerations. At last, despairing of his abjuration, they brought him forth and consigned him to the flames.
His behaviour at the stake “drew rivers of tears,” says Leger, “from the eyes of many in the Popish crowd around his stake, while others vented reproaches and invectives against the cruelty of the monks and the inquisitors.”
[7]
27

These are only a few of the many martyrs by whom, even during this period of comparative peace and prosperity, the Church of the Valleys was called to testify against Rome. Some of these martyrs perished by cruel, barbarous, and most horrible methods. To recite all these cases would be beyond our purpose, and to depict the revolting and infamous details would be to narrate what no reader could peruse. We shall only quote part of the brief summary of Muston. “There is no town in
Piedmont,” says he, “under a Vandois pastor, where some of our brethren have not been put to death. Hugo Chiamps of Finestrelle had his entrails torn from his living body, at Turin. Peter Geymarali of Bobbio, in like manner, had his entrails taken out at Luzerna, and a fierce cat thrust in their place to torture him further; Maria Romano was buried alive at Roccopatia; Magdalen Foulano underwent the same fate at San
Giovanni; Susan Michelini was bound hand and foot, and left to perish of cold and hunger at Saracena. Bartholomew Fache, gashed with sabres, had the wounds filled up with quicklime, and perished thus in agony at Fenile; Daniel Michelini had his tongue torn out at Bobbio for having praised God. James Baridari perished covered with sulphurous matches, which had been forced into his flesh under the nails, between the fingers, in the nostrils, in the lips, and over all his body, and then lighted.
Daniel Revelli had his mouth filled with gunpowder, which, being lighted, blew his head to pieces. Maria Monnen, taken at Liousa, had the flesh cut from her cheek and chin bones, so that her jaw was left bare, and she was thus left to perish. Paul Garnier was slowly sliced to pieces at Rora. Thomas Margueti was mutilated in an indescribable manner at Miraboco, and Susan Jaquin cut in bits at La Torre. Sara
Rostagnol was slit open from the legs to the bosom, and so left to perish on the road between Eyral and Luzerna.
Anne Charbonnier was impaled and carried thus on a pike, as a standard, from San
Giovanni to La Torre. Daniel Rambaud, at Paesano, had his nails torn off, then his fingers chopped off, then his feet and his hands, then his arms and his legs, with each successive refusal on his part to abjure the Gospel.”
[8]
Thus the roll of martyrs runs on, and with each new sufferer comes a new, a more excruciating and more horrible mode of torture and death.
We have already mentioned the demand which the King of France made upon the
Duke of Savoy, Charles III, that he would permit him to march an army through his territories. The reply was a refusal; but Francis I must needs have a road into Italy.
Accordingly he seized upon Piedmont, and held possession of it, together with the
Waldensian Valleys, for twenty-three years. The Waldenses had found the sway of
Francis I more tolerant than that of their own princes; for though Francis hated
Lutheranism, the necessities of his policy often compelled him to court the Lutherans, and so it came to pass that while he was burning heretics at Paris he spared them in the Valleys. But the general peace of Chateau Cambresis, April 3rd, 1559, restored
Piedmont, with the exception of Turin, to its former rulers of the House of Savoy.
[9]
Charles III had been succeeded in 1553 by Emmanuel Philibert. Philibert was a prince of superior talents and humane disposition, and the Vaudois cherished the hope that under him they would be permitted to live in peace, and to worship as their fathers had done. What strengthened these just expectations was the fact that Philibert had married a sister of the King of France, Henry II, who had been carefully instructed in the Protestant faith by her illustrious relations, Margaret, Queen of Navarre, and
Renee of France, daughter of Louis XII. But, alas! the treaty that restored Emmanuel
Philibert to the throne of his ancestors, contained a clause binding the contracting
28

parties to extinguish heresy. This was to send him back to his subjects with a dagger in his hand.
Whatever the king might incline - and we dare say, strengthened by the counsels of his Protestant queen, he intended dealing humanely by his faithful subjects the
Vaudois - his intentions were overborne by men of stronger wills and more determined resolves. The inquisitors of his kingdom, the nuncio of the Pope, and the ambassadors of Spain and France, united in urging upon him the purgation of his dominions, in terms of the agreement in the treaty of peace. The unhappy monarch, unable to resist these powerful solicitations, issued on the 15th February, 1560, an edict forbidding his subjects to hear the Protestant preachers in the Valley of Lucerna, or anywhere else, under pain of a fine of 100 dollars of gold for the first offence, and of the galleys for life for the second. This edict had reference mainly to the Protestants on the plain of Piedmont, who resorted in crowds to hear sermon in the Valleys. There followed, however, in a short time a yet severer edict, commanding attendance at mass under pain of death. To carry out this cruel decree a commission was given to a prince of the blood, Philip of Savoy, Count de Raconis, and with him was associated
George Costa, Count de la Trinita, and Thomas Jacomel, the Inquisitor-General, a man as cruel in disposition as he was licentious in manners. To these was added a certain Councillor Corbis, but he was not of the stuff which the business required, and so, after witnessing a few initial scenes of barbarity and horror, he resigned his commission.
[10]
The first burst of the tempest fell on Carignano. This town reposes sweetly on one of the spurs of the Apennines, about twenty miles to the south-west of Turin. It contained many Protestants, some of whom were of good position. The wealthiest were selected and dragged to the burning-pile, in order to strike terror into the rest.
The blow had not fallen in vain; the professors of the Protestant creed in Carignano were scattered; some fled to Turin, then under the domination of France, some to other places, and some, alas! frightened by the tempest in front, turned back and sought refuge in the darkness behind them. They had desired the “better country,” but could not enter in at the cost of exile and death.
Having done its work in Carignano, this desolating tempest held its way across the plain of Piedmont, towards those great mountains which were the ancient fortress of the truth, marking its track through the villages and country communes in terror, in pillage and blood. It moved like one of those thunder-clouds which the traveller on the Alps may often descry beneath him, traversing the same plain, and shooting its lightnings earthwards as it advances. Wherever it was known that there was a Vaudois congregation, thither did the cloud turn. And now we behold it at the foot of the
Waldensian Alps, at the entrance of the Valleys, within whose mighty natural bulwarks crowds of fugitives from the towns and villages on the plain have already found asylum.
Rumours of the confiscations, arrests, cruel tortures, and horrible deaths which had befallen the Churches at the foot of their mountains, had preceded the appearance of the crusaders at the entrance of the Valleys. The same devastation which had befallen the flourishing Churches on the plain of Piedmont, seemed to impend over the
Churches in the bosom of the Alps. At this juncture the pastors and leading laymen assembled to deliberate on the steps to be taken. Having fasted and humbled themselves before God, they sought by earnest prayer the direction of his Holy
29

Spirit.
[11]
They resolved to approach the throne of their prince, and by humble remonstrance and petition, set forth the state of their affairs and the justice of their cause. Their first claim was to be heard before being condemned - a right denied to no one accused, however criminal. They next solemnly disclaimed the main offence laid to their charge, that of departing from the true faith, and of adopting doctrines unknown to the Scriptures, and the early ages of the Church. Their faith was that which Christ himself had taught; which the apostles, following their Great Master, had preached; which the Fathers had vindicated with their pens, and the martyrs with their blood, and which the first four Councils had ratified, and proclaimed to be the faith of the Christian world. From the “old paths,” the Bible and all antiquity being witnesses, they had never turned aside; from father to son they had continued these
1,500 years to walk therein. Their mountains shielded no novelties; they had bowed the knee to no strange gods, and, if they were heretics, so too were the first four
Councils; and so too were the apostles themselves. If they erred, it was in the company of the confessors and martyrs of the early ages. They were willing any moment to appeal their cause to a General Council, provided that Council were willing to decide the question by the only infallible standard they knew, the Word of
God. If on this evidence they should be convicted of even one heresy, most willingly would they surrender it. On this, the main point of their indictment, what more could they promise? Show us, they said, what the errors are which you ask us to renounce under the penalty of death, and you shall not need to ask a second time.
[12]
Their duty to God did not weaken their allegiance to their prince. To piety they added loyalty. The throne before which they now stood had not more faithful and devoted subjects than they. When had they plotted treason, or disputed lawful command of their sovereign? Nay, the more they feared God, the more they honoured the king.
Their services, their substance, their life, were all at the disposal of their prince; they were willing to lay them all down in defence of his lawful prerogative; one thing only they could not surrender - their conscience.
As regarded their Romanist fellow-subjects of Piedmont, they had lived in goodneighbourhood with them. Whose person had they injured - whose property had they robbed - whom had they overreached in their bargains? Had they not been kind, courteous, honest? If their hills had vied in fertility with the naturally richer plains at their feet, and if their mountain-homes had been filled with store of corn and oil and wine, not always found in Piedmontese dwellings, to what was this owing, save to their superior industry, frugality, and skill? Never had marauding expedition descended from their hills to carry off the goods of their neighbours, or to inflict retaliation for the many murders and robberies to which they had had to submit. Why, then, should their neighbours rise against them to exterminate them, as if they were a horde of evil-doers, in whose neighbourhood no man could live in peace; and why should their sovereign unsheathe the sword against those who had never been found disturbers of his kingdom, nor plotters against his government, but who, on the contrary, had ever striven to maintain the authority of his law and the honour of his throne?
“One thing is certain, most serene prince,” say they, in conclusion, “that the Word of
God will not perish, but will abide for ever. If, then, our religion is the pure Word of
God, as we are persuaded it is, and not a human invention, no human power will be able to abolish it.”
[13]
30

Never was there a more solemn, or a more just, or a more respectful remonstrance presented to any throne. The wrong about to be done them was enormous, yet not an angry word, nor a single accusatory sentence, do the Vaudois permit themselves to utter. But to what avail this solemn protest, this triumphant vindication? The more complete and conclusive it is, the more manifest does it make the immense injustice and the flagrant criminality of the House of Savoy. The more the Vaudois put themselves in the right, the more they put the Church of Rome in the wrong; and they who have already doomed them to perish are but the more resolutely determined to carry out their purpose.
This document was accompanied by two others: one to the queen, and one to the
Council. The one to the queen is differently conceived from that to the duke. They offer no apology for their faith: the queen herself was of it. They allude in a few touching terms to the sufferings they had already been subjected to, and to the yet greater that appeared to impend. This was enough, they knew, to awaken all her sympathies, and enlist her as their advocate with the king, after the example of Esther, and other noble women in former times, who valued their lofty station less for its dazzling honours, than for the opportunities it gave them of shielding the persecuted confessors of the truth.
[14]
The remonstrance presented to the Council was couched in terms more plain and direct, yet still respectful. They bade the counsellors of the king beware what they did; they warned them that every drop of innocent blood they should spill they would one day have to account for; that if the blood of Abel, though only that of one man, cried with a voice so loud that God heard it in heaven, and came down to call its shedder to a reckoning, how much mightier the cry that would arise from the blood of a whole nation, and how much more terrible the vengeance with which it would be visited! In fine, they reminded the Council that what they asked was not an unknown privilege in
Piedmont, nor would they be the first or the only persons who had enjoyed that indulgence if it should be extended to them. Did not the Jew and the Saracen live unmolested in their cities? Did they not permit the Israelite to build his synagogue, and the Moor to read his Koran, without annoyance or restraint? Was it a great thing that the faith of the Bible should be placed on the same level in this respect with that of the Crescent, and that the descendants of the men who for generations had been the subjects of the House of Savoy, and who had enriched the dominions with their virtues, and defended them with their blood, should be treated with the same humanity that was shown to the alien and the unbeliever?
These petitions the confessors of the Alps dispatched to the proper quarter, and having done so, they waited an answer with eyes lifted up to heaven. If that answer should be peace, with what gratitude to God and to their prince would they hail it! should it be otherwise, they were ready to accept that alternative too; they were prepared to die.
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Where was the Vaudois who would put his life in his hand, and carry this remonstrance to the duke? The dangerous service was undertaken by M. Gilles, Pastor of Bricherasio, a devoted and courageous man. A companion was associated with him, but wearied out. with the rebuffs and insults he met with, he abandoned the mission, and left its conduct to Gilles alone.
The duke then lived at Nice, for Turin, his capital, was still in the hands of the French, and the length of the journey very considerably increased its risks. Gilles reached
Nice in safety, however, and after many difficulties and delays he had an interview with Queen Margaret, who undertook to place the representations of which he was the bearer in the hands of her husband, the duke. The deputy had an interview also with
Philip of Savoy, the Duke’s brother, and one of the commissioners under the Act for the purgation of the Valleys. The Waldensian pastor was, on the whole, well received by him. Unequally yoked with the cruel and bigoted Count La Trinita, Philip of Savoy soon became disgusted, and left the bloody business wholly in the hands of his fellow-commissioner.
[1]
As regarded the queen, her heart was in the Valleys; the cause of the poor Vaudois was her cause also. But she stood alone as their intercessor with the duke; her voice was drowned by the solicitations and threats of the prelates, the King of Spain, and the Pope.
[2]
For three months there came neither letter nor edict from the court at Nice. If the men of the Valleys were impatient to know the fate that awaited them, their enemies, athirst for plunder and blood, were still more so. The latter, unable longer to restrain their passions, began the persecution on their own account. They thought they knew their sovereign’s intentions, and made bold to anticipate them.
The tocsin was rung out from the Monastery of Pinerolo. Perched on the frontier of the Valleys, the monks of this establishment kept their eyes fixed upon the heretics of the mountains, as vultures watch their prey, ever ready to sweep down upon hamlet or valley when they found it unguarded. They hired a troop of marauders, whom they sent forth to pillage. The band returned, driving before them a wretched company of captives whom they had dragged from their homes and vineyards in the mountains.
The poorer sort they burned alive, or sent to the galleys; the rich they imprisoned till they had paid the ransom to which they were held.
[3]
The example of the monks was followed by certain Popish landlords in the Valley of
San Martino. The two seigneurs of Perrier attacked, before day-break of April 2nd,
1560, the villagers of Rioclareto, with an armed band. Some they slaughtered, the rest they drove out, without clothes or food, to perish on the snow-clad hills. The ruffians who had expelled them, took possession of their dwellings, protesting that no one should enter them unless he were willing to go to Mass. They kept possession only three days, for the Protestants of the Valley of Clusone, to the number of 400, hearing of the outrage, crossed the mountains, drove out the invaders, and reinstated their brethren.
[4]
Next appeared in the Valleys, Philip of Savoy, Count de Raconis, and Chief
Commissioner. He was an earnest Roman Catholic, but a humane and upright man.
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He attended sermon one day in the Protestant church of Angrogna, and was so much pleased with what he heard, that he obtained from the pastor an outline of the Vaudois faith, so as to send it to Rome, in the hope that the Pope would cease to persecute a creed that seemed so little heretical. A sanguine hope truly! Where the honest count had seen very little heresy, the Pope, Pius IV, saw a great deal; and would not even permit a disputation with the Waldensian pastors, as the count had proposed. He would stretch his benignity no farther than to absolve “from their past crimes” all who were willing to enter the Church of Rome. This was not very encouraging, still the count did not abandon his idea of conciliation. In June, 1560, he came a second time to the Valley of Lucerna, accompanied by his colleague La Trinita, and assembling the pastors and heads of families, he told them that the persecution would cease immediately, provided they would consent to hear the preachers he had brought with him, Brothers of the Christian Doctrine. He further proposed that they should silence their own ministers while they were making trial of his. The Vaudois expressed their willingness to consent, provided the count’s ministers preached the pure Gospel; but if they preached human traditions, they (the Vaudois) would be under the necessity of withholding their consent; and, as regarded silencing their own ministers, it was only reasonable that they should be permitted first to make trial of the count’s preachers. A few days after, they had a taste of the new expositors. Selecting the ablest among them, they made him ascend the pulpit and hold forth to a Vaudois congregation. He took a very effectual way to make them listen. “I will demonstrate to you,” said he,
“that the mass is found in Scripture. The word massah signifies ‘sent,’ does it not?”
“Not precisely,” replied his hearers, who knew more about Hebrew than was convenient for the preacher. “The primitive expression,” continued he, “Ite missa est, was employed to dismiss the auditory, was it not?” “That is quite true,” replied his hearers, without very clearly seeing how it bore on his argument. “Well, then, you see, gentlemen, that the mass is found in the Holy Scripture.
[5]
The congregation were unable to determine whether the preacher was arguing with them or simply laughing at them.
Finding the Waldenses obdurate, as he deemed them, the Duke of Savoy, in October,
1560, declared war against them. Early in that month a dreadful rumour reached the
Valleys, namely, that the duke was levying an army to exterminate them. The news was but too true. The duke offered a free pardon to all “outlaws, convicts, and vagabonds” who would enrol as volunteers to serve against the Vaudois. Soon an army of a truly dreadful character was assembled. The Vaudois seemed doomed to total and inevitable destruction. The pastors and chief persons assembled to deliberate on the measures to be taken at this terrible crisis. Feeling that their refuge was in God alone, they resolved that they would take no means for deliverance which might be offensive to him, or dishonourable to themselves. The pastors were to exhort every one to apply to God, with true faith, sincere repentance, and ardent prayer; and as to defensive measures, they recommended that each family should collect their provisions, clothes, utensils, and herds, and be ready at a moment’s notice to convey them, together with all infirm persons, to their strongholds in the Mountabra.
Meanwhile, the duke’s army, if the collected ruffianism of Piedmont could be so called - came nearer every day.
[6]
On the 31st of October, a proclamation was posted throughout the Valley of
Angrogna, calling on the inhabitants to return within the Roman pale, under penalty of extermination by fire and sword. On the day following, the lst of November, the
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Papal army appeared at Bubiana, on the right bank of the Pelice, at the entrance to the
Waldensian Valley. The host numbered 4,000 infantry and 200 horse;
[7]
comprising, besides the desperadoes that formed its main body, a few veterans, who had seen a great deal of service in the wars with France.
The Vaudois, the enemy being now in sight, humbled themselves, in a public fast, before God. Next, they partook together of the Lord’s Supper. Refreshed in soul by these services, they proceeded to put in execution the measures previously resolved on. The old men and the women climbed the mountains, awakening the echoes with the psalms which they sung on their way to the Pra del Tor, within whose natural ramparts of rock and snow-clad peaks they sought asylum. The Vaudois population of the Valleys at that time was not more than 18,000; their armed men did not exceed
1,200;
[8]
these were distributed at various passes and barricades to oppose the enemy, who was now near.
On the 2nd of November the Piedmontese army, putting itself in motion, crossed the
Pelice, and advanced along the narrow defile that leads up to the Valiants, having the heights of Bricherasio on the right, and the spurs of Monte Friolante on the left, with the towering masses of the Vandalin and Castelluzzo in front. The Piedmontese encamped in the meadows of San Giovanni, within a stone’s-throw of the point where the Val di Lucerna and the Val di Angrogna divide, the former to expand into a noble breadth of meadow and vineyard, running on between magnificent mountains, with their rich clothing of pastures, chestnut groves, and chalets, till it ends in the savage
Pass of Mirabouc; and the latter, to wind and climb in a grand succession of precipice, and gorge, and grassy dell, till it issues in the funnel-shaped valley around which the ice-crowned mountains stand the everlasting sentinels. It was the latter of these two valleys (Angrogna) that La Trinita first essayed to enter. He marched 1,200 men into it, the wings of his army deploying over its bordering heights of La Cotiere. His soldiers were opposed by only a small body of Vaudois, some of whom were armed solely with the sling and the cross-bow. Skirmishing with the foe, the Vaudois retired, fighting, to the higher grounds. When the evening set in, neither side could claim a decided advantage. Wearied with skirmishing, both armies encamped for the night - the Vaudois on the heights of Roccomaneot, and the Piedmontese, their camp-fires lighted, on the lower hills of La Cotiere.
Suddenly the silence of the evening was startled by a derisive shout that rose from the
Piedmontese host. What had happened to evoke these sounds of contempt? They had descried, between them and the sky, on the heights above them, the bending figures of the Vaudois. On their knees the Waldensian warriors were supplicating the God of battles. Hardly had the scoffs with which the Piedmontese hailed the act died away, when a drum was heard to beat in a side valley. A child had got hold of the instrument, and was amusing itself with it. The soldiers of La Trinita saw in imagination a fresh body of Waldensians advancing from this lateral defile to rush upon them. They seized their arms in no little disorder. The Vaudois, seeing the movement of the foe, seized theirs also, and rushed downhill to anticipate the attack.
The Piedmontese threw away their arms and fled, chased by the Waldenses, thus losing in half an hour the ground it had cost them a day’s fighting to gain. The weapons abandoned by the fugitives formed a much-needed and most opportune supply to the Vaudois. As the result of the combats of the day, La Trinita had sixtyseven men slain; of the Vaudois three only had fallen.
[9]
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Opening on the left of La Trinita was the corn-clad, vine-clad, and mountainramparted Valley of Lucerna, with its towns, La Torre, Villaro, Bobbio, and others, forming the noblest of the Waldensian Valleys. La Trinita now occupied this valley with his soldiers. This was comparatively an easy achievement, almost all its inhabitants having fled to the Ira del Tor. Those that remained were mostly
Romanists, who were, at that time, mixed with the Waldensian population, and even they, committing their wives and daughters to the keeping of their Vaudois neighbours, had sent them with them to the Pra del Tor, to escape the brutal outrages of the Papal army. On the following days La Trinita fought some small affairs with the Vaudois, in all of which he was repulsed with considerable slaughter. The arduous nature of the task he had in hand now began to dawn upon him.
The mountaineers, he saw, were courageous, and determined to die rather than submit their conscience to the Pope, and their families to the passions of his soldiers. He discovered, moreover, that they were a simple and confiding people, utterly unversed in the ways of intrigue. He was delighted to find these qualities in them, because he thought he saw how he could turn them to account. He had tools with him as cunning and vile as himself - Jacomel, the inquisitor; and Gastaud, his secretary; the latter feigned a love for the Gospel. These men he set to work. When they had prepared matters, he assembled the leading men of the Waldenses, and recited to them some flattering words, which he had heard or professed to have heard the duke and duchess make use of towards them; he protested that this was no pleasant business in which he was engaged, and that he would be glad to have it off his hands; peace, he thought, could easily be arranged, ff they would only make a few small concessions to show that they were reasonable men; he would propose that they should deposit their arms in the house of one of their syndics, and permit him, for form’s sake, to go with a small train, and celebrate mass in the Church of St. Laurenzo, in Angrogna, and afterwards pay a visit to the Pra del Tor. La Trinita’s proposal proved the correctness of the estimate he had formed of Vaudois confidingness. The people spent a whole night in deliberation over the count’s proposition, and, contrary to the opinion of their pastors and some of their laymen, agreed to accept of it.
[10]
The Papal general said his mass in the Protestant church. After this he traversed the gloomy defiles that lead up to the famous Pra, on whose green slopes, with their snowy battlements, he was so desirous to feast his eyes, though, it is said, he showed evident trepidation when he passed the black pool of Tompie, with its memories of retribution. Having accomplished these feats in safety, he returned to wear the mask a little longer.
He resumed the efforts on which he professed to be so earnestly and laudably bent, of effecting peace. The duke had now come nearer, and was living at Vercelli, on the plain of Piedmont; La Trinita thought that the Vaudois ought by all means to send deputies thither. It would strengthen their supplication indeed, all but insure its success, if they would raise a sum of 20,000 crowns. On payment of this sum he would withdraw his army, and leave them to practice their religion in peace.
[11]
The
Vaudois, unable to conceive of dissimulation like La Trinita’s, made concession after concession. They had previously laid down their arms; they now sent deputies to the duke; next, they taxed themselves to buy off his soldiers; and last and worst of all, at the demand of La Trinita, they sent away their pastors. It was dreadful to think of a journey across the Col Julien at that season; yet it had to be gone. Over its snowy
35

summits, where the winter drifts were continually obliterating the track, and piling up fresh wreaths across the Valleys of Prali and San Martino, and over the ice-clad mountains beyond, had this sorrowful band of pastors to pursue their way, to find refuge among the Protestants in the French Valley of Pragelas. This difficult and dangerous route was forced upon them, the more direct road through the Valley of
Perosa being closed by the marauders and assassins that infested it, and especially by those in the pay of the monks of Pinerolo.
The count believed that the poor people were now entirely in his power. His soldiers did their pleasure in the Valley of Lucerna. They pillaged the houses abandoned by the Vaudois. The few inhabitants who had remained, as well as those who had returned, thinking that during the negotiations for peace hostilities would be suspended, were fain to make their escape a second time, and to seek refuge in the woods and caves of the higher reaches of the Valleys. The outrages committed by the ruffians to whom the Valley of Lucerna was now given over were of a kind that can not be told. The historian Gilles has recorded a touching instance. A helpless man, who had lived a hundred and three years, was placed in a cave, and his granddaughter, a girl of seventeen, was left to take care of him. The soldiers found out his hidingplace; the old man was murdered, and outrage was offered to his granddaughter. She fled from the brutal pursuit of the soldiers, leaped over a precipice, and died. In another instance, an old man was pursued to the brink of a precipice by one of La
Trinita’s soldiers.
The Vaudois had no alternative but to throw himself over the brink or die by the sword of his pursuer. He stopped, turned round, and dropped on his knees, as if to supplicate for his life. The trooper was raising his sword to strike him dead, when the
Vaudois, clasping him tightly round the legs, and swaying himself backward with all his might, rolled over the precipice, dragging the soldier with him into the abyss.
Part of the sum agreed on between La Trinita and the Waldenses had now been paid to him. To raise this money the poor people were under the necessity of selling their herds. The count now withdrew his army into winter quarters at Cavour, a point so near the Valleys that a few hours’ march would enable him to re-enter them at any moment. The corn and oil and wine which he had not been able to carry away he destroyed. Even the mills he broke in pieces. His design appeared to be to leave the
Vaudois only the alternative of submission, or of dying of hunger on their mountains.
To afflict them yet more he placed garrisons here and there in the Valleys; and, in the very wantonness of tyranny, required those who themselves were without bread to provide food for his soldiers. These soldiers were continually prowling about in search of victims on whom to gratify their cruelty and their lust. Those who had the unspeakable misfortune to be dragged into their den, had to undergo, if men, excruciating torture; if women, revolting outrage.
[12]
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These frightful inflictions the Waldenses had submitted to in the hope that the deputies whom they had sent to the duke would bring back with them an honourable peace. The impatience with which they waited their return may well be conceived. At last, after an absence of six weeks, the commissioners reappeared in the Valleys; but their dejected faces, even before they had uttered a word, told that they had not succeeded. They had been sent back with an order, enjoining on the Vaudois unconditional submission to the Church of Rome on pain of extermination. To enforce that order to the uttermost a more numerous army was at that moment being raised. The mass or universal slaughter - such was the alternative now presented to them.
The spirit of the people woke up. Rather than thus disgrace their ancestors, imperil their own souls, and entail a heritage of slavery on their children, they would die a thousand times. Their depression was gone; they were as men who had awakened from heavy sleep; they had found their arms. Their first care was to recall their pastors, their next to raise up their fallen churches, and their third to resume public service in them. Daily their courage grew, and once more joy lighted up their faces.
There came letters of sympathy and promises of help from their fellow-Protestants of
Geneva, Dauphine, and France. Over the two latter countries persecution at that hour impended, but their own dangers made them all the more ready to succour their brethren of the Valleys. “Thereupon,” says an historian, “took place one of those grand and solemn scenes which, at once heroic and religious, seem rather adapted for an epic poem than for grave history.”
[1]
The Waldenses of Lucerna sent deputies across the mountains, then covered to a great depth with snow, to propose an alliance with the Protestants of the Valley of Pragelas, who were at that time threatened by their sovereign Francis I. The proposed alliance was joyfully accepted. Assembling on a plateau of snow facing the mountains of
Sestrieres, and the chain of the Guinevert, the deputies swore to stand by each other and render mutual support in the coming struggle.
[2]
It was agreed that this oath of alliance should be sworn with a like solemnity in the Waldensian Valleys.
The deputies from Pragelas, crossing the Mount Julien, arrived at Bobbio on the 21st
January, 1561. Their coming was singularly opportune. On the evening before a ducal proclamation had been published in the Valleys, commanding the Vaudois, within twenty-four hours, to give attendance at mass, or abide the consequences - “fire, sword, the cord: the three arguments of Romanism,” says Muston. This was the first news with which the Pragelese deputies were met on their arrival. With all the more enthusiasm they proceeded to renew their oath. Ascending a low hill behind Bobbio, the deputies from Pragelas, and those from Lucerna, standing erect in the midst of the assembled heads of families, who kneeled around, pronounced these words-”
In the name of the Vaudois Churches of the Alps, of Dauphine and of Piedmont, which have ever been united, and of which we are the representatives, we here promise, our hands on our Bible, and in the presence of God, that all our Valleys shall courageously sustain each other in matters of religion, without prejudice to the obedience due to their legitimate superiors.
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“We promise to maintain the Bible, whole and without admixture, according to the usage of the true Apostolic Church, persevering in this holy religion, though it be at the peril of our lives, in order that we may transmit it to our children, intact and pure, as we received it from our fathers.
“We promise aid and succour to our persecuted brothers, not regarding our individual interests, but the common cause; and not relying upon man, but upon God.”
[3]
The physical grandeurs of the spot were in meet accordance with the moral sublimity of the transaction. Immediately beneath was spread out the green bosom of the valley, with here and there the silver of the Pelice gleaming out amid vineyards and acacia groves. Filling the horizon on all sides save one stood up an array of magnificent mountains, white with the snows of winter. Conspicuous among them were the grand peaks of the Col de Malaure and the Col de la Croix. They looked the silent and majestic witnesses of the oath, in which a heroic people bound themselves to die rather than permit the defilement of their hearths, and the profanation of their altars, by the hordes of an idolatrous tyranny. It was in this grand fashion that the Waldenses opened one of the most brilliant campaigns ever waged by their arms.
The next morning, according to the duke’s order, they must choose between the mass and the penalty annexed to refusal. A neighbouring church - one of those which had been taken from them - stood ready, with altar decked and tapers lighted, for the
Vaudois to hear their first mass. Hardly had the day dawned when the expected penitents were at the church door. They would show the duke in what fashion they meant to read their recantation. They entered the building. A moment they stood surveying the strange transformation their church had undergone, and then they set to work. To extinguish the tapers, pull down the images, and sweep into the street rosary and crucifix and all the other paraphernalia of the Popish worship, was but the work of a few minutes. The minister, Humbert Artus, then ascended the pulpit, and reading out as his text Isaiah 45:20 - “Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a God that can not save” - preached a sermon which struck the key-note of the campaign then opening.
The inhabitants of the hamlets and chalets in the mountains rushed down like their own winter torrents into Lucerna, and the army of the Vaudois reinforced set out to purge the temple at Villaro. On their way they encountered the Piedmontese garrison.
They attacked and drove them back; the monks, seigneurs, and magistrates, who had come to receive the abjuration of the heretics, accompanying the troops in their ignominious flight. The whole band of fugitives - soldiers, priests, and judges - shut themselves up in the town of Villaro, which was now besieged by the Vaudois. Thrice did the garrison from La Torre attempt to raise the siege, and thrice were they repulsed. At last, on the tenth day, the garrison surrendered, and had their lives spared, two Waldensian pastors accompanying them to La Torre, the soldiers expressing greater confidence in them than in any other escort.
The Count La Trinita, seeing his garrison driven out, struck his encampment at
Carour, and moved his army into the Valleys. He again essayed to sow dissension amongst the Vaudois by entangling them in negotiations for peace, but by this time they had learned too well the value of his promises to pay the least attention to them,
38

or to intermit for an hour their preparations for defence. It was now the beginning of
February, 156l.
The Vaudois laboured with the zeal of men who feel that their cause is a great and a righteous one, and are prepared to sacrifice all for it. They erected barricades; they planted ambushes; they appointed signals, to telegraph the movements of the enemy from post to post. “Every house,” says Muston, “became a manufactory of pikes, bullets, and other weapons.” They selected the best marksmen their Valleys could furnish, and formed them into the “Flying Company,” whose duty it was to hasten to the point where danger pressed the most. To each body of fighting men they attached two pastors, to maintain the morale of their army. The pastors, morning and evening, led the public devotions; they prayed with the soldiers before going into battle; and when the fighting was over, and the Vaudois were chasing the enemy down their great mountains, and through their dark gorges, they exerted themselves to prevent the victory being stained by any unnecessary effusion of blood.
La Trinita knew well that if he would subjugate the Valleys, and bring the campaign to a successful end, he must make himself master of the Pra del Tor. Into that vast natural citadel was now gathered the main body of the Waldensian people. What of their herds and provisions remained to them had been transported thither; there they had constructed mills and baking ovens; there, too, sat their council, and thence directed the whole operations of the defence. A blow struck there would crush the
Vaudois’ heart, and convert what the Waldenses regarded as their impregnable castle into their tomb.
Deferring the chastisement of the other valleys meanwhile, La Trinita directed all his efforts against Angrogna. His first attempt to enter it with his army was made on the
4th February. The fighting lasted till night, and ended in his repulse. His second attempt, three days after, carried him some considerable way into Angrogna, burning and ravaging, but his partial success cost him dear, and the ground won had ultimately to be abandoned.
[4]
The 14th of February saw the severest struggle. Employing all his strategy to make himself master of the much-coveted Pra, with all in it, he divided his army into three corps, and advanced against it from three points. One body of troops, marching along the gorges of the Angrogna, and traversing the narrow chasm that leads up to the Pra, attacked it on the south. Another body, climbing the heights from Pramol, and crossing the snowy flanks of La Vechera, tried to force an entrance on the east; while a third, ascending from San Martino, and crossing the lofty summits that wall in the
Pra on the north, descended upon it from that quarter. The count’s confident expectation was that if his men should be unable to force an entrance at one point they were sure to do so at another.
No scout had given warning of what was approaching. While three armies were marching to attack them, the Waldenses, in their grand valley, with its rampart of icecrowned peaks, were engaged in their morning devotions. Suddenly the cries cf fugitives, and the shouts of assailants, issuing from the narrow chasm on the south, broke upon their, ear, together with the smoke of burning hamlets. Of the three points of attack this was the easiest to be defended. Six brave Waldensian youths strode down the valley, to stop the way against La Trinita’s soldiers. They were six against an army.
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The road by which the soldiers were advancing is long and gloomy, and overhung by great rocks, and so narrow that only two men can march abreast. On this side rises the mountain: on that, far down, thunders the torrent; a ledge in the steep face of the cliff running here in the darkness, there in the sunshine, serves as a pathway. It leads to what is termed the gate of the Pra. That gateway is formed by an angle of the mountain, which obtrudes upon the narrow ledge on the one side, while a huge rock rises on the other and still further narrows the point of ingress into the Pra del Tor.
Access into the famous Pra, of which La Trinita was now striving to make himself master, there is not on this side save through this narrow opening; seeing that on the right rises the mountain; on the left yawns the gulf, into which, if one steps aside but in the least, he tumbles headlong.
To friend and foe alike the only entrance into the Pra del Tor on the south is by this gate of Nature’s own erecting. It was here that the six Waldensian warriors took their stand.
[5]
Immovable as their own Alps, they not only checked the advance of the host, but drove it back in a panic-stricken mass, which made the precipices of the defile doubly fatal.
Others would have hastened to their aid, had not danger suddenly presented itself in another quarter. On the heights of La Vechera, crossing the snow, was descried an armed troop, making their entrance into the valley on the east. Before they had time to descend they were met by the Waldenses, who dispersed them, and made them flee.
Two of the attacking parties of the count have failed: will the third have better success?
As the Waldenses were pursuing the routed enemy on La Vechera, they saw yet another armed troop, which had crossed the mountains that separate the Val San
Marring from the Pra del Tor on the north, descending upon them. Instantly the alarm was raised. A few men only could they dispatch to meet the invaders. These lay in ambush at the mouth of a defile through which the attacking party was making its way down into the Pra. Emerging from the defile, and looking down into the valley beneath them, they exclaimed, “Haste, haste! Angrogna is ours.”
The Vaudois, starting up, and crying out, “It is you that are ours,” rushed upon them sword in hand. Trusting in their superior numbers, the Piedmontese soldiers fought desperately. But a few minutes sufficed for the men of the Valleys to hurry from the points where they were now victorious, to the assistance of their brethren. The invaders, seeing themselves attacked on all sides, turned and fled up the slopes they had just descended. Many were slain, nor would a man of them have recrossed the mountains but for the pastor of the Flying Company, who, raising his voice to the utmost pitch, entreated the pursuers to spare the lives of those who were no longer able to resist. Among the slain was Charles Truchet, who so cruelly ravaged the commune of Rioclaret a few months before. A stone from a sling laid him prostrate on the ground, and his head was cut off with his own sword. Louis de Monteuil, another noted persecutor of the Vaudois, perished in the same action.
Furious at his repulse, the Count La Trinita turned his arms against the almost defenceless Valley of Rora. He ravaged it, burning its little town, and chasing away its population of eighty families, who escaped over the snows of the mountains to
Villaro, in the Valley of Lucerna. That valley he next entered with his soldiers, and though it was for the moment almost depopulated, the Popish general received so
40

warm a welcome from those peasants who remained that, after being again and again beaten, he was fain to draw off his men-at-arms, and retreat to his old quarters at
Cavour, there to chew the cud over his misfortunes, and hatch new stratagems and plan new attacks, which he fondly hoped would retrieve his disgraces.
La Trinita spent a month in reinforcing his army, greatly weakened by the losses it had sustained. The King of France sent him ten companies of foot, and some other choice soldiers.
[6]
There came a regiment from Spain; and numerous volunteers from
Piedmont, comprising many of the nobility. From 4,000, the original number of his army, it was now raised to 7,000.
[7]
He thought himself strong enough to begin a third campaign. He was confident that this time he would wipe out the disgrace which had befallen his arms, and sweep from the earth at once and for ever the great scandal of the Waldenses. He again directed all his efforts against Angrogna, the heart and bulwark of the Valleys.
It was Sunday, the 17th of March, 1561. The whole of the Vaudois assembled in the
Pra del Tor had met on the morning of that day, soon after dawn, as was their wont, to unite in public devotion. The first rays of the rising sun were beginning to light up the white hills around them, and the last cadences of their morning psalm were dying away on the grassy slopes of the Pra, when a sudden alarm was raised. The enemy was approaching by three routes. On the ridges of the eastern summits appeared one body of armed men; another was defiling up the chasm, and in a few minutes would pour itself, through the gateway already described, into the Pra; while a third was forcing itself over the rocks by a path intermediate between the two. Instantly the enemy was met on all the points of approach. A handful of Waldensians sufficed to thrust back: along the narrow gorge the line of glittering cuirassed men, who were defiling through it. At the other two points, where bastions of rock and earth had been erected, the fighting was severe, and the dead lay thick, but the day at both places went against the invaders. Some of the ablest captains were among the slain. The number of the soldiers killed was so great that Count La Trinita is said to have sat down and wept when he beheld the heaps of the dead.
[8]
It was matter of astonishment at the time that the Waldenses did not pursue the invaders, for had they done so, being so much better acquainted with the mountain-paths, not one of all that host would have been left alive to carry tidings of its discomfiture to the inhabitants of
Piedmont. Their pastors restrained the victorious Vaudois, having laid it down as a maxim at the beginning of the campaign, that they would use with moderation and clemency whatever victories the “God of battles” might be pleased to give them, and that they would spill no blood unless when absolutely necessary to prevent their own being shed. The Piedmontese dead was again out of all proportion to those who had fallen on the other side; so much so, that it was currently said in the cities of Piedmont that “God was fighting for the barbers.”
[9]
More deeply humiliated and disgraced than ever, La Trinita led back the remains of his army to its old quarters. Well had it been for him if he had never set foot within the Waldensian territory, and not less so for many of those who followed him, including not a few of the nobles of Piedmont, whose bones where now bleaching on the mountains of the Vaudois. But the Popish general was slow to see the lesson of these events. Even yet he harboured the design of returning to assail that fatal valley where he had lost so many laurels, and buried so many soldiers; but he covered his purpose with craft. Negotiations had been opened between the men of the Valleys and
41

the Duke of Savoy, and as they were proceeding satisfactorily, the Vaudois were without suspicions of evil. This was the moment that La Trinita chose to attack them.
He hastily assembled his troops, and on the night of the 16th April he marched them against the Pra del Tor, hoping to enter it unopposed, and give the Vaudois “as sheep to the slaughter.”
The snows around the Pra were beginning to burn in the light of morning when the attention of the people, who had just ended their united worship, was attracted by unusual sounds which were heard to issue from the gorge that led into the valley. On the instant six brave mountaineers rushed to the gateway that opens from the gorge.
The long the of La Trinita’s soldiers was seen advancing two abreast, their helmets and cuirasses glittering in the light. The six Vaudois made their arrangements, and calmly waited till the enemy was near. The first two Vaudois, holding loaded muskets, knelt down. The second two stood erect, ready to fire over the heads of the first two. The third two undertook the loading of the weapons as they were discharged. The invaders came on. As the first two of the enemy turned the rock they were shot down by the two foremost Vaudois. The next two of the attacking force fell in like maimer by the shot of the Vaudois in the rear. The third rank of the enemy presented themselves only to be laid by the side of their comrades. In a few minutes a little heap of dead bodies blocked the pass, rendering impossible the advance of the accumulating the of the enemy in the chasm.
Meantime, other Vaudois climbed the mountains that overhang the gorge in which the
Piedmontese army was imprisoned. Tearing up the great stones with which the hillside was strewn, the Vaudois sent them rolling down upon the host. Unable to advance from the wall of dead in front, and unable to flee from the ever-accumulating masses behind, the soldiers were crushed in dozens by the falling rocks. Panic set in and panic in such a position how dreadful! Wedged together on the narrow ledge, with a murderous rain of rocks falling on them, their struggle to escape was frightful.
They jostled one another, and trod each other under foot, while vast numbers fell over the precipice, and were dashed on the rocks or drowned in the torrent.
[10]
When those at the entrance of the valley, who were watching the result, saw the crystal of the
Angrogna begin about midday to be changed into blood, “Ah!” said they, “the Pra del
Tor has been taken; La Trinita has triumphed; there flows the blood of the Vaudois.”
And, indeed, the count on beginning his march that morning is said to have boasted that by noon the torrent of the Angrogna would be seen to change colour; and so in truth it did. Instead of a pellucid stream, rolling along on a white gravelly bed, which is its usual appearance at the mouth of the valley, it was now deeply dyed from recent slaughter. But when the few who had escaped the catastrophe returned to tell what had that day passed within the defiles of the Angrogna, it was seen that it was not the blood of the Vaudois, but the blood of their ruthless invaders, which dyed the waters of the Angrogna. The count withdrew on that same night with his army, to return no more to the Valleys.
Negotiations were again resumed, not this time through the Count La Trinita, but through Philip of Savoy, Count of Raconis, and were speedily brought to a satisfactory issue. The Duke of Savoy had but small merit in making peace with the men whom he found he could not conquer. The capitulation was signed on the 5th of
June, 1561, and its first clause granted an indemnity for all offences. It is open to remark that this indemnity was given to those who had suffered, not to those who had
42

committed the offences it condoned. The articles that followed permitted the Vaudois to erect churches in their Valleys, with the exception of two or three of their towns, to hold public worship, in short, to celebrate all the offices of their religion. All the
“ancient franchises, immunities, and privileges, whether conceded by his Highness, or by his Highness’s predecessors,” were renewed, provided they were vouched by public documents.
[11]
Such was the arrangement that closed this war of fifteen months. The Vaudois ascribed it in great part to the influence of the good Duchess
Margaret. The Pope designated it a “pernicious example,” which he feared would not want imitators in those times when the love of many to the Roman See was waxing cold. It stank in the no perils of the prelates and monks of Piedmont, to whom the heretics had been a free booty.
Nevertheless, Duke Emmanuel Philibert faithfully maintained its stipulations, the duchess being by his side to counteract any pressure in the contrary direction. This peace, together with the summer that was now opening, began to slowly efface the deep scars the persecution had left on the Valleys; and what further helped to console and reanimate this brave but afflicted people, was the sympathy and aid universally tendered them by Protestants abroad, in particular by Calvin and the Elector Palatine, the latter addressing a spirited letter to the duke on behalf of his persecuted subjects.
[12]
Nothing was more admirable than the spirit of devotion which the Vaudois exhibited all through these terrible conflicts. Their Valleys resounded not less with the voice of prayer and praise, than with the din of arms. Their opponents came from carousing, from blaspheming, from murdering, to engage in battle; the Waldenses rose from their knees to unsheathe the sword, and wield it in a cause which they firmly believed to be that of Him to whom they had bent in supplication. When their little army went a-field their barbes always accompanied it, to inspirit the soldiers by suitable exhortations before joining battle, and to moderate in the hour of victory a vengeance which, however excusable, would yet have lowered the glory of the triumph. When the fighting men hastened to the bastion or to the defile, the pastors betook them to the mountain’s slope, or to its summit, and there with uplifted hands supplicated help from the “Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.” When the battle had ceased, and the enemy were in flight, and the victors had returned from chasing their invaders from their Valleys, the grey-haired pastor, the lion-hearted man of battle, the matron, the maiden, the stripling, and the little child, would assemble in the Pra del
Tor, and while the setting sun was kindling into glory the mountain-tops of their once more ransomed land, they would raise their voices together, and sing the old war-song of Judah, in strains so heroic that the great rocks around them would send back the thunder of their praise in louder echoes than those of the battle whose triumphant issue they were celebrating.
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One day, about the year 1340, two Waldensian youths were seated in an inn in Turin, engaged in earnest conversation respecting their home prospects. Shut up in their valleys, and cultivating with toil their somewhat sterile mountains, they sighed for wider limits and a more fertile land. “Come with me,” said a stranger, who had been listening unperceived to their discourse, “Come with me, and I will give you fertile fields for your barren rocks.” The person who now courteously addressed the youths, and whose steps Providence had directed to the same hotel with themselves, was a gentleman from Calabria, at the southern extremity of the Italian Peninsula.
On their return to the Valleys the youths reported the words of the stranger, and the flattering hopes he had held out should they be willing to migrate to this southern land, where skies more genial, and an earth more emollient, would reward their labour with more bounteous harvests. The elders of the Vaudois people listened not without interest. The population of their Valleys had recently received a great accession in the
Albigensian refugees, who had escaped from the massacres of Innocent III in the south of France; and the Waldenses, feeling themselves overcrowded, were prepared to welcome any fair scheme that promised an enlargement of their boundaries. But before acceding to the proposition of the stranger they thought it advisable to send competent persons to examine this new and to them unknown land. The Vaudois explorers returned with a flattering account of the conditions and capabilities of the country they had been invited to occupy. Compared with their own more northern mountains, whose summits Winter covers all the year through with his snows, whose gorges are apt to be swept by furious gusts, and their sides stripped of their corn and vines by devastating torrents, Calabria was a land of promise. “There are beautiful hills,” says the historian Gilles, describing this settlement, “clothed with all kinds of fruit-trees spontaneously springing up according to their situations in the plains, vines and chestnuts; on the rising ground, walnuts and every fruit-tree. Everywhere were seen rich arable land and few labourers.” A considerable body of emigrants set out for this new country. The young men were accompanied to their future homes with partners. They carried with them the Bible in the Romance version, “that holy ark of the New Covenant, and of everlasting peace.”
The conditions of their emigration offered a reasonable security for the free and undisturbed exercise of their worship. “By a convention with the local seigneurs, ratified later by the King of Naples, Ferdinand of Arragon, they were permitted to govern their own affairs, civil and spiritual, by their own magistrates, and their own pastors.”
[1]
Their first settlement was near the town of Montalto. Half a century later rose the city of San Sexto, which afterwards became the capital of the colony. Other towns and villages sprang up, and the region, which before had been thinly inhabited, and but poorly cultivated, was soon transformed into a smiling garden. The swelling hills were clothed with fruit-trees, and the plains waved with luxuriant crops.
So struck was the Marquis of Spinello with the prosperity and wealth of the settlements, that he offered to cede lands on his own vast and fertile estates where these colonists might build cities and plant vineyards. One of their towns he authorised them to surround with a wall; hence its name, La Guardia. This town, situated on a height near the sea, soon became populous and opulent.
[2]
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Towards the close of the same century, another body of Vaudois emigrants from
Provence arrived in the south of Italy. The new-comers settled in Apulia, not far from their Calabrian brethren, villages and towns arose, and the region speedily put on a new face under the improved arts and husbandry of the colonists. Their smiling homes, which looked forth from amid groves of orange and myrtle, their hills covered with the olive and the vine, their corn-fields and pasture-lands, were the marvel and the envy of their neighbours.
In 1500 there arrived in Calabria yet another emigration from the Valleys of Pragelas and Fraissinieres. This third body of colonists established how different the aspect of the one from that of the other! The soil, touched by the plough of Vaudois, seemed to feel a charm that made it open its bosom and yield a tenfold increase. The vine tended by Vaudois hands bore richer clusters, and themselves on the Volturata, a river which flows from the Apennines into the Bay of Tarento. With the increase of their numbers came an increase of prosperity to the colonists. Their neighbours, who knew not the secret of this prosperity, were lost in wonder and admiration of it. The physical attributes of the region occupied by the emigrants differed in no respect from those of their own lands, both were placed under the same sky, but strove in generous rivalry with the fig and the olive to outdo them in enriching with its produce the Vaudois board. And how delightful the quiet and order of their towns; and the air of happiness on the faces of the people! And how sweet to listen to the bleating of the flocks on the hills, the lowing of the herds in the meadows, the song of the reaper and grapegatherer, and the merry voices of children at play around the hamlets and villages! For about 200 years these colonies continued to flourish.
“It is a curious circumstance,” says the historian McCrie, “that the first gleam of light, at the revival of letters, shone on that remote spot of Italy where the Vaudois had found an asylum. Petrarch first acquired a knowledge of the Greek tongue from
Barlaam, a monk of Calabria; and Boccaccio was taught it from Leontius Pilatus, who was a hearer of Barlaam, if not also a native of the same place.”
[3]
Muston says that
“the sciences flourished among them.”
[4]
The day of the Renaissance had not yet broken. The flight of scholars which was to bear with it the seeds of ancient learning to the West, had not yet taken place; but the Vaudois of Calabria would seem to have anticipated that great literary revival. They had brought with them the Scriptures in the Romance version. They possessed doubtless the taste and genius for which the
Romance nations were then famous; and, moreover, in their southern settlement they may have had access to some knowledge of those sciences which the Saracens then so assiduously cultivated; and what so likely, with their leisure and wealth, as that these
Vaudois should tune their attention to letters as well as to husbandry, and make their adopted country vocal with the strains of that minstrelsy with which Provence and
Dauphine had resounded so melodiously, till its music was quenched at once and for ever by the murderous arms of Simon de Montfort? But here we can only doubtfully guess, for the records of this interesting people are scanty and dubious.
These colonists kept up their connection with the mother country of the Valleys, though situated at the opposite extremity of Italy. To keep alive their faith, which was the connecting link, pastors were sent in relays of two to minister in the Churches of
Calabria and Apulia; and when they had fulfilled their term of two years they were replaced by other two. The barbes, on their way back to the Valleys, visited their brethren in the Italian towns; for at that time there were few cities in the, peninsula in
45

which the Vaudois were not to be found. The grandfather of the Vaudois historian,
Gilles, in one of these pastoral visits to Venice, was assured by the Waldenses whom he there conversed with, that there were not fewer than 6,000 of their nation in that city. Fear had not yet awakened the suspicions and kindled the hatred of the
Romanists, for the Reformation was not yet come. Nor did the Waldenses care to thrust their opinions upon the notice of their neighbours. Still the priests could not help observing that the manners of these northern settlers were, in many things, peculiar and strange. They eschewed revels and fetes; they had their children taught by foreign schoolmasters; in their churches was neither image nor lighted taper; they never went on pilgrimage; they buried their dead without the aid of the priests; and never were they known to bring a candle to the Virgin’s shrine, or purchase a mass for the help of their dead relatives. These peculiarities were certainly startling, but one thing went far to atone for them - they paid with the utmost punctuality and fidelity their stipulated tithes; and as the value of their lands was yearly increasing, there was a corresponding yearly increase in both the tithe due to the priest and the rent payable to the landlord, and neither was anxious to disturb a state of things so beneficial to himself, and which was every day becoming more advantageous.
[5]
But in the middle of the sixteenth century the breath of Protestantism from the north began to move over these colonies. The pastors who visited them told them of the synod which had been held in Angrogna in 1532, and which had been as the
“beginning of months” to the ancient Church of the Valleys. More glorious tidings still did they communicate to the Christians of Calabria. In Germany, in France, in
Switzerland, and in Denmark the old Gospel had blazed forth in a splendour unknown to it for ages. The Lamp of the Alps was no longer the one solitary light in the world: around it was a circle of mighty torches, whose rays, blending with those of the older luminary, were combining to dispel the night from Christendom. At the hearing of these stupendous things their spirit revived: their past conformity appeared to them like cowardice; they, too, would take part in the great work of the emancipation of the nations, by making open confession of the truth; and no longer content with the mere visit of a pastor, they petitioned the mother Church to send them one who might statedly discharge amongst them the office of the holy ministry.
[6]
There was at that time a young minister at Geneva, a native of Italy, and him the
Church of the Valleys designated to the perilous but honourable post. His name was
John Louis Paschale; he was a native of Coni in the Plain of Piedmont. By birth a
Romanist, his first profession was that of arms; but from a knight of the sword he had become, like Loyola, but in a truer sense, a knight of the Cross. He had just completed his theological studies at Lausaune. He was betrothed to a young Piedmontese
Protestant, Camilia Guerina.
[7]
“Alas!” she sorrowfully exclaimed, when he intimated to her his departure for
Calabria, “so near to Rome and so far from me.” They parted, nevermore to meet on earth.
The young minister carried with him to Calabria the energetic spirit of Geneva. His preaching was with power; the zeal and courage of the Calabrian flock revived, and the light formerly hid under a bushel was now openly displayed. Its splendour attracted the ignorance and awoke the fanaticism of the region. The priests, who had tolerated a heresy that had conducted itself so modestly, and paid its dues so punctually, could be blind no longer. The Marquis of Spinello, who had been the
46

protector of these colonists hitherto, finding his kindness more than repaid in the flourishing condition of his states, was compelled to move against them. “That dreadful thing, Lutheranism,” he was told, “had broken in, and would soon destroy all things.”
The marquis summoned the pastor and his flock before him. After a few moments’ address from Paschale, the marquis dismissed the members of the congregation with a sharp reprimand, but the pastor he threw into the dungeons of Foscalda. The bishop of the diocese next took the matter into his own hands, and removed Paschale to the prison of Cosenza, where he remained shut up during eight months.
The Pope heard of the case, and delegated Cardinal Alexandrini, Inquisitor-General, to extinguish the heresy in the Kingdom of Naples.
[8]
Alexandrini ordered Paschale to be removed from the Castle of Cosenza, and conducted to Naples. On the journey he was subjected to terrible sufferings. Chained to a gang of prisoners the handcuffs so tight that they entered the flesh - he spent nine days on the road, sleeping at night on the bare earth, which was exchanged on his arrival at Naples for a deep, damp dungeon,
[9]
the stench of which almost suffocated him.
On the 16th of May, 1560, Paschale was taken in chains to Rome, and imprisoned in the Torre di Nona, where he was thrust into a cell not less noisome than that which he had occupied at Naples.
His brother, Bartolomeo, having obtained letters of recommendation, came from Coni to procure, if possible, some mitigation of his fate. The interview between the two brothers, as told by Bartolomeo, was most affecting. “It was quite hideous to see him,” says he, “with his bare head, and his hands and arms lacerated by the small cords with which he was bound, like one about to be led to the gibbet. On advancing to embrace him I sank to the ground. ‘My brother,’ said he, ‘if you are a Christian, why do you distress yourself thus? Do you know that a leaf can not fall to the ground without the will of God? Comfort yourself in Christ Jesus, for the present troubles are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come.’” His brother, a Romanist, offered him half his fortune if only he would recant, and save his life. Even this token of affection could not move him. “Oh, my brother!” said he, “the danger in which you are involved gives me more distress than all that I suffer.”
[10]
He wrote to his affianced bride with a pen which, if it softened the picture of his own great sufferings, freely expressed the affection he bore for her, which “grows,” said he, “with that I feel for God.” Nor was he unmindful of his flock in Calabria. “My state is this,” says he, in a letter which he addressed to them, “I feel my joy increase every day, as I approach nearer the hour in which I shall be offered a sweet-smelling sacrifice to the Lord Jesus Christ, my faithful Saviour; yea, so inexpressible is my joy that I seem to myself to be free from captivity, and am prepared to die for Christ, and not only once, but ten thousand times, if it were possible; nevertheless, I persevere in imploring the Divine assistance by prayer, for I am convinced that man is a miserable creature when left to himself, and not upheld and directed by God.”
[11]
47

Leaving the martyr for a little while in his dungeon at Rome, we shall return to his flock in Calabria, on whom the storm which we saw gathering had burst in terrific violence.
When it was known that Protestant ministers had been sent from Geneva to the
Waldensian Churches in Calabria, the Inquisitor-General, as already mentioned, and two Dominican monks, Valerio Malvicino and Alfonso Urbino, were dispatched by the Sacred College to reduce these Churches to the obedience of the Papal See, or trample them out. They arrived at San Sexto, and assembling the inhabitants, they assured them no harm was intended them, would they only dismiss their Lutheran teachers and come to mass. The bell was rung for the celebration of the Sacrament, but the citizens, instead of attending the service, left the town in a body, and retired to a neighbouring wood. Concealing their chagrin, the inquisitors took their departure from San Sexto, and set out for La Guardia, the gates of which they locked behind them when they had entered, to prevent a second flight. Assembling the inhabitants, they told them that their co-religionists of San Sexto had renounced their errors, and dutifully attended mass, and they exhorted them to follow their good example, and return to the fold of the Roman shepherd; warning them, at the same time, that should they refuse they would expose themselves as heretics to the loss of goods and life.
The poor people taken unawares, and believing what was told them, consented to hear mass; but no sooner was the ceremony ended, and the gates of the town opened, than they learned the deceit which had been practiced upon them. Indignant, and at the same time ashamed of their own weakness, they resolved to leave the place in a body, and join their brethren in the woods, but were withheld from their purpose by the persuasion and promises of their feudal superior, Spinello.
The Inquisitor-General, Alexandrini, now made request for two companies of men-atarms, to enable him to execute his mission. The aid requested was instantly given, and the soldiers were sent in pursuit of the inhabitants of San Sexto. Tracking them to their hiding-places, in the thickets and the caves of the mountains, they slaughtered many of them; others, who escaped, they pursued with bloodhounds, as if they had been wild beasts. Some of these fugitives scaled the craggy summits of the
Apennines, and hurling down the stones on the soldiers who attempted to follow them, compelled them to desist from the pursuit.
Alexandrini dispatched a messenger to Naples for more troops to quell what he called the rebellion of the Vaudois. The viceroy obeyed the summons by coming in person with an army. He attempted to storm the fugitives now strongly entrenched in the great mountains, whose summits of splintered rock, towering high above the pine forests that clothe their sides, presented to the fugitives an almost inaccessible retreat.
The Waldenses offered to emigrate; but the viceroy would listen to nothing but their return within the pale of the Church of Rome. They were prepared to yield their lives rather than accept peace on such conditions. The viceroy now ordered his men to advance; but the shower of rocks that met his soldiers in the ascent hurled them to the bottom, a discomfited mass in which the bruised, the maimed, and the dying were confusedly mingled with the corpses of the killed.
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The viceroy, seeing the difficulty of the enterprise, issued an edict promising a free pardon to all bandits, outlaws, and other criminals, who might be willing to undertake the task of scaling the mountains and attacking the strongholds of the Waldenses. In obedience to this summons, there assembled a mob of desperadoes, who were but too familiar with the secret paths of the Apennines. Threading their way through the woods, and clambering over the great rocks, these assassins rushed from every side on the barricades on the summit, and butchered the poor Vaudois. Thus were the inhabitants of San Sexto exterminated, some dying by the sword, some by fire, while others were torn by bloodhounds, or perished by famine.
[1]
While the outlaws of the Neapolitan viceroy were busy in the mountains, the
Inquisitor-General and his monks were pursuing their work of blood at La Guardia.
The military force at their command not enabling them to take summary measures with the inhabitants, they had recourse to a stratagem. Enticing the citizens outside the gates, and placing soldiers in ambush, they succeeded in getting into their power upwards of 1,600 persons.
[2]
Of these, seventy were sent in chains to Montalto, and tortured, in the hope of compelling them to accuse themselves of practising shameful crimes in their religious assemblies. No such confession, however, could the most prolonged tortures wring from them. “Stefano Carlino,” says McCrie, “was tortured till his bowels gushed out;” and another prisoner, named Verminel, “was kept during eight hours on a horrid instrument called the hell, but persisted in denying the atrocious calumny.”
[3]
Some were thrown from the tops of towers, or precipitated over cliffs; others were torn with iron whips, and finally beaten to death with fiery brands; and others, smeared with pitch, were burned alive.
But these horrors pale before the bloody tragedy of Montalto, enacted by the Marquis di Buccianici, whose zeal was quickened, it is said, by the promise of a cardinal’s hat to his brother, if he would clear Calabria of heresy. One’s blood runs cold at the perusal of the deed. It was witnessed by a servant to Ascanio Caraccioli, himself a
Roman Catholic, and described by him in a letter, which was published in Italy, along with other accounts of the horrible transaction, and has been quoted by McCrie.
“Most illustrious sir, I have now to inform you of the dreadful justice which began to be executed on these Lutherans early this morning, being the 11th of June. And, to tell you the truth, I can compare it to nothing but the slaughter of so many sheep. They were all shut up in one house as in a sheep-fold. The executioner went, and bringing out one of them, covered his face with a napkin, or benda, as we call it, led him out to a field near the house, and causing him to kneel down, cut his throat with a knife.
Then, taking off the bloody napkin, he went and brought out another, whom he put to death after the same manner. In this way the whole number, amounting to eighty-eight men, were butchered. I leave you to figure to yourself the lamentable spectacle, for I can scarcely refrain from tears while I write; nor was there any person, after witnessing the execution of one, could stand to look on a second. The meekness and patience with which they went to martyrdom and death are incredible.
Some of them at their death professed themselves of the same faith with us, but the greater part died in their cursed obstinacy. All the old met their death with cheerfulness, but the young exhibited symptoms of fear. I still shudder while I think of the executioner with the bloody knife in his teeth, the dripping napkin in his hand, and his arms be-smeared with gore, going to the house, and taking out one victim after another, just as a butcher does the sheep which he means to kill.”
[4]
Their bodies
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were quartered, and stuck up on pikes along the high road leading from Montalto to
Chateau-Vilar, a distance of thirty-six miles.
Numbers of men and women were burned alive, many were drafted off to the Spanish galleys, some made their submission to Rome, and a few, escaping from the scene of these horrors, reached, after infinite toil, their native Valleys, to tell that the onceflourishing Waldensian colony and Church in Calabria no longer existed, and that they only had been left to carry tidings to their brethren of its utter extermination.
Meanwhile, preparations had been made at Rome for the trial of Jean Louis Paschale.
On the 8th of September, 1560, he was brought out of his prison, conducted to the
Convent della Minerva, and cited before the Papal tribunal. He confessed his Saviour, and, with a serenity to which the countenances of his judges were strangers, he listened to the sentence of death, which was carried into execution on the following day.
Standing upon the summit of the Janiculum Mount, vast crowds could witness the spectacle. In front the Campagna spreads out its once glorious but now desolated bosom; and winding through it like a thread of gold is seen the Tiber, while the
Apennines sweeping round it in craggy grandeur enclose it like a vast wall.
Immediately beneath, uprearing her domes and monuments and palaces, with an air that seems to say, “I sit a queen,” is the city of Rome. Yonder, asserting an easy supremacy amid the other fabrics of the Eternal City, is the scarred and riven yet
Titanic form of the Coliseum, with its stains of early Christian blood not yet washed out. By its side, the partner of its guilt and doom, lies the Palatine, once the palace of the world’s master, now a low mound of ruins, with its row of melancholy cypresses, the only mourners on that site of vanished glory and fallen empire. Nearer, burning in the midday sun, is the proud cupola of St. Peter’s, flanked on the one side by the buildings of the Inquisition, and on the other by the huge Mole of Hadrian, beneath whose gloomy ramparts old Tiber rolls sluggishly and sullenly along. But what shout is this which we hear? Why does Rome keep holiday? Why do all her bells ring? Lo! from every street and piazza eager crowds rush forth, and uniting in one overwhelming and surging stream, they are seen rolling across the Bridge of St.
Angelo, and pressing in at the gates of the old fortress, which are thrown wide open to admit this mass of human beings.
Entering the court-yard of the old castle, an imposing sight meets the eye. What a confluence of ranks, dignities, and grandeurs! In the centre is placed a chair, the emblazonry of which tells us that it claims to rise in authority and dignity over the throne of kings. The Pontiff, Pius IV, has already taken his seat upon it, for he has determined to be present at the tragedy of today. Behind his chair, in scarlet robes, are his cardinals and counsellors, with many dignitaries besides in mitres and cowls, ranged in circles, according to their place in the Papal body. Behind the ecclesiastics are seated, row on row, the nobility and beauty of Rome. Plumes wave, stars gleam, and seem to mock the frocks and cowls gathered near them, whose wearers, however, would not exchange these mystic garments for all the bravery that blazes around them. The vast sweep of the Court of St. Angelo is densely occupied. Its ample floor is covered from end to end with a closely-wedged mass of citizens, who have come to see the spectacle. In the centre of the throng, rising a little way over the sea of human heads, is seen a scaffold, with an iron stake, and beside it a bundle of faggots.
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A slight movement begins to be perceptible in the crowd beside the gate. Some one is entering. The next moment a storm of hissing and execration salutes the ear. It is plain that the person who has just made his entrance is the object of universal dislike. The clank of irons on the stone floor of the court, as he comes forward, tells how heavily his limbs are loaded with fetters. He is still young; but his face is pale and haggard with suffering. He lifts his eyes, and with countenance undismayed surveys the vast assembly, and the dismal apparatus that stands in the midst of it, waiting its victim.
There sits a calm courage on his brow; the serene light of deep, untroubled peace beams in his eye. He mounts the scaffold, and stands beside the stake. Every eye is now turned, not on the wearer of the tiara, but on the man who is clad in the sanbenito. “Good people,” says the martyr - and the whole assembly keep silence - “I am come here to die for confessing the doctrine of my Divine Master and Saviour,
Jesus Christ.” Then turning to Pius IV he arraigned him as the enemy of Christ, the persecutor of his people, and the Antichrist of Scripture, and concluded by summoning him and all his cardinals to answer for their cruelties and murders before the throne of the Lamb. “At his words,” says the historian Crespin, “the people were deeply moved, and the Pope and the cardinals gnashed their teeth.”
[5]
The inquisitors hastily gave the signal. The executioners came round him, and having strangled him, they kindled the faggots, and the flames blazing up speedily reduced his body to ashes. For once the Pope had performed his function. With his key of fire, which he may truly claim to carry, he had opened the celestial doors, and had sent his poor prisoner from the dark dungeons of the Inquisition, to dwell in the palace of the sky. So died, or rather passed into the life eternal, Jean Louis Paschale, the
Waldensian missionary and pastor of the flock in Calabria. His ashes were collected and thrown into the Tiber, and by the Tiber they were borne to the Mediterranean.
And this was the grave of the preacher-martyr, whose noble bearing and undaunted courage before the very Pope himself, gave added value to his splendid testimony for the Protestant cause. Time may consume the marble, violence or war may drag down the monumental pile;
“The pyramids that cleave heaven’s jewelled portal;
Ele’an Jove’s star-spangled dome; the tomb
Where rich Mausolus sleeps - are not immortal.”
[6]
But the tomb of the far-sounding sea to which the ashes of Paschale were committed, with a final display of impotent rage, was indeed a nobler mausoleum than ever Rome raised to any of her Pontiffs, and it will remain through all the ages, until time shall be no more.
51

A whole century nearly wore away between the trampling out of the Protestant
Church in Calabria, and the next great persecution which befell that venerable people whose tragic history we are recording. We can touch on a few only, and these the more prominent, of the events which fill up the interval.
The war that La Trinita, so ingloriously for himself, had waged against the
Waldenses, ended, as we have seen, in a treaty of peace, which was signed at Cavour on the 5th of June, 1561, between Philip of Savoy and the deputies of the Valleys. But though the cloud had rolled past, it had left numerous and affecting memorials of the desolation it had inflicted. The inhabitants descended from the mountains to exchange the weapons of war for the spade and the pruning-knife. With steps slow and feeble the aged and the infirm were led down into the vales, to sit once more at noon or at eve beneath the shadow of their vines and ancestral chestnut-trees. But, alas! how often did the tear of sorrow moisten the eye as it marked the desolation and ruin that deformed those scenes lately so fair and smiling! The fruit-bearing trees cut down; vineyard and corn-field marred; hamlets burned; villages, in some cases, a heap of ruins, all testified to the rage of the enemy who had invaded their land. Years must pass before these deep scars could be effaced, and the beauty of their Valleys restored.
And there were yet tenderer griefs weighing upon them. How many were there who had lived under the same roof-tree with them, and joined night and morning in the same psalm, who would return no more!
Distress, bordering on famine, began to invade the Valleys. Seven months of incessant fighting had left them no time to cultivate the fields; and now the stock of last year’s provisions was exhausted, and starvation stared them in the face. Before the treaty of peace had been signed, the time of sowing was past, and when the autumn came there was scarcely anything to reap. Their destitution was further aggravated by the fugitives from Calabria, who began about this time to arrive in the
Valleys. Escaping with nothing but their lives, they presented themselves in hunger and nakedness. Their brethren opened their arms to receive them, and though their own necessities were great, they nevertheless shared with them the little they had.
The tale of the suffering now prevailing in the Valleys was known in other countries, and evoked the sympathy of their Protestant brethren. Calvin, with characteristic promptness and ardour, led in the movement for their relief. By his advice they sent deputies to represent their case to the Churches of Protestantism abroad, and collections were made for them in Geneva, France, Switzerland, and Germany. The subscriptions were headed by the Elector Palatine, after whom came the Duke of
Wurtemberg, the Canton of Bern, the Church at Strasburg, and others.
By-and-by, seed-time and harvest were restored in the Valleys; smiling chalets began again to dot the sides of their mountains, and to rise by the banks of their torrents; and the miseries which La Trinita’s campaign had entailed upon them were passing into oblivion, when their vexations were renewed by the appointment of a deputygovernor of their Valleys, Castrocaro, a Tuscan by birth.
52

This man had served against the Vaudois as a colonel of militia under La Trinita; he had been taken prisoner in an encounter with them, but honourably treated, and at length generously released. He returned the Waldenses evil for good.
His appointment as governor of the Valleys he owed mainly to his acquaintance with the Duchess Margaret, the protectress of the Vaudois, into whose favour he had ingratiated himself by professing a warm affection for the men of the Valleys; and his friendship with the Archbishop of Turin, to whom he had pledged himself to do his utmost to convert the Vaudois to Romanism. When at length Castrocaro arrived in the
Valleys in the character of governor, he forgot his professions to the duchess, but faithfully set about fulfilling the promise he had made to the archbishop. The new governor began by restricting the liberties guaranteed to their Churches in the treaty of peace, he next ordered the dismissal of certain of the pastors, and when their congregations refused to comply, he began to fine and imprison the recusants, he sent false and calumnious reports to the court of the duke, and introduced a troop of soldiers into the country, on the pretext that the Waldenses were breaking out into rebellion. He built the fortress of Mirabouc, at the foot of the Col de la Croix, in the narrow gorge that leads from Bobbio to France, to close this gate of exit from their territory, and overawe the Valley of Lucerna. At last, he threatened to renew the war unless the Waldenses should comply with his wishes.
What was to be done? They carried their complaints and remonstrances to Turin; but, alas! the ear of the duke and duchess had been poisoned by the malice and craft of the governor. Soon again the old alternative would be presented to them, the mass or death.
[1]
In their extremity they sought the help of the Protestant princes of Germany. The cry from the Alps found a responsive echo from the German plains. The great Protestant chiefs of the Fatherland, especially Frederick, Elector Palatine, saw in these poor oppressed herdsmen and vine-dressers his brethren, and with zeal and warmth espoused their cause. He indited a letter to the duke, distinguished for its elevation of sentiment, as well as the catholicity of its views. It is a noble defence of the rights of conscience, and an eloquent pleading in behalf of toleration. “Let your highness,” says the elector, “know that there is a God in heaven, who not only contemplates the actions, but also tries the hearts and reins of men, and from whom nothing is hid. Let your highness take care not voluntarily to make war upon God, and not to set secure
Christ in his members … Persecution, moreover, will never advance the cause it pretends to defend. The ashes of the martyrs are the seed of the Christian Church.
For the Church resembles the palm-tree, whose stem only shoots up the taller, the greater the weights that are hung upon it. Let your highness consider that the Christian religion was established by persuasion, and not by violence; and as it is certain that religion is nothing else than a firm and enlightened persuasion of God, and of his will, as revealed in his Word, and engraved in the hearts of believers by his Holy Spirit, it can not, when once rooted, be torn away by tortures.”
[2]
So did the Elector Palatine warn the duke.
These are remarkable words when we think that they were written in the middle of the sixteenth century. We question whether our own age could express itself more justly on the subject of the rights of conscience, the spirituality of religion, and the impolicy, as well as criminality, of persecution. We sometimes apologise for the cruel deeds of
53

Spain and France, on the ground of the intolerance and blindness of the age. But six years before the St. Bartholomew Massacre was enacted, this great voice had been raised in Christendom for toleration.
What effect this letter had upon the duke we do not certainly know, but from about this time Castrocaro moderated his violence, though he still continued at intervals to terrify the poor people he so basely oppressed by fulminating against them the most atrocious threats. On the death of Emmanuel Philibert, in 1580, the villainy of the governor came to light. The young Duke Charles Emmanuel ordered his arrest; but the execution of it was a matter of difficulty, for Castrocaro had entrenched himself in the Castle of La Torre, and surrounded himself with a band of desperadoes, to which he had added, for his yet greater defence, a pack of ferocious blood-hounds of unusual size and strength.
[3]
A captain of his guard betrayed him, and thus as he had maintained himself by treachery, so by treachery did his doom at last overtake him.
He was carried to Turin, where he perished in prison.
[4]
Famine, persecution, war - all three, sometimes in succession and sometimes together had afflicted this much-enduring people, but now they were visited from the hand of
God. For some years they had enjoyed an unusual peace; and this quiet was the more remarkable inasmuch as all around their mountains Europe was in combustion. Their brethren or the Reformed Church in France, in Spain, and in Italy were falling on the field, perishing by massacre, or dying at the stake, while they were guarded from harm. But now a new calamity carried gloom and mourning into their Valleys. On the morning of the 23rd of August, 1629, a cloud of unusual blackness gathered on the summit of the Col Julion. It burst in a water- spout or deluge. The torrents rolled down the mountain on both sides, and the villages of Bobbio and Prali, situated the one in the southern and the other in the northern valley, were overflown by the sudden inundation.
Many of the houses were swept away, and the inhabitants had barely time to save their lives by flight. In September of the same year, there came an icy wind, accompanied by a dry cloud, which scathed their Valleys and destroyed the crop of the chestnut-tree. There followed a second deluge of rain, which completely ruined the vintage. These calamities were the more grievous inasmuch as they succeeded a year of partial famine. The Vaudois pastors assembled in solemn synod, to humble themselves and to lift up their voices in prayer to God. Little did they imagine that at that moment a still heavier calamity hung over them, and that this was the last time they were ever to meet one another on earth.
[5]
In 1630, a French army, under Marshal Schomberg, suddenly occupied the Valleys. In that army were many volunteers, who had made their escape from a virulent contagious disease then raging in France. The weather was hot, and the seeds of the pestilence which the army had brought with it speedily developed themselves. The plague showed itself in the first week of May in the Valley of Perosa; it next broke out in the more northern Valley of Martino; and soon it spread throughout all the
Valleys. The pastors met together to supplicate the Almighty, and to concert practical measures for checking the ravages of this mysterious and terrible scourge. They purchased medicine and collected provisions for the poor.
[6]
They visited the sick, consoled the dying, and preached in the open air to crowds, solemnised and eager to listen.
54

In July and August the heat was excessive, and the malady raged yet more furiously.
In the month of July four of the pastors were carried off by the plague; in August seven others died; and in the following month another, the twelfth, was mortally stricken. There remained now only three pastors, and it was remarked that they belonged to three several valleys - Lucerna, Martino, and Perosa. The three survivors met on the heights of Angrogna, to consult with the deputies of the various parishes regarding the means of providing for the celebration of worship. They wrote to
Geneva and Dauphine requesting that pastors might be sent to supply the place of those whom the plague had struck down, that so the venerable Church of the Valleys, which had survived so many calamities, might not become extinct. They also recalled
Antoine Leger from Constantinople.
[7]
The plague subsided during the winter, but in spring (1631) it rose up again in renewed force. Of the three surviving pastors, one other died; leaving thus only two,
Pierre Gilles of Lucerna, and Valerius Gross of Martino. With the heats of the summer the pestilence waxed in strength. Armies, going and coming in the Valleys, suffered equally with the inhabitants. Horsemen would be seen to drop from the saddle on the highway, seized with sudden illness. Soldiers and sutlers, struck in bypaths, lay there infecting the air with their corpses. In La Torre alone fifty families became extinct. The most moderate estimate of the numbers cut off by the plague is
10,000, or from a half to two-thirds of the entire population of the Valleys. The corn in many places remained uncut, the grapes rotted on the bough, and the fruit dropped from the tree. Strangers who had come to find health in the pure mountain air, obtained from the soil nothing but a grave. Towns and villages, which had rung so recently with the sounds of industry, were now silent. Parents were without children, and children were without parents. Patriarchs, who had been wont with pride and joy to gather round them their numerous grandchildren, had seen them sicken and die, and were now alone. The venerable pastor Gilles lost his four elder sons. Though continually present in the homes of the stricken, and at the bedsides of the dying, he himself was spared to compile the monuments of his ancient Church, and narrate among other woes that which had just passed over his native land, and “part of which he had been.”
Of the Vaudois pastors only two now remained; and ministers hastened from Geneva and other places to the Valleys, lest the old lamp should go out. The services of the
Waldensian Churches had hitherto been performed in the Italian tongue, but the new pastors could speak only French.
Worship was henceforward conducted in that language, but the Vaudois soon came to understand it, their own ancient tongue being a dialect between the French and Italian.
Another change introduced at this time was the assimilation of their ritual to that of
Geneva. And farther, the primitive and affectionate name of Barba was dropped, and the modern title substituted, Monsieur le Ministre.
[8]
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The first labour of the Waldenses, on the departure of the plague, was the reorganization of society. There was not a house in all their Valleys where death had not been. All ties rent, the family relationship was all but extinct; but the destroyer being gone, the scattered inhabitants began to draw together, and to join hand and heart in restoring the ruined churches, raising up the fallen habitations, and creating anew family, and home.
Other events of an auspicious kind, which occurred at this time, contributed to revive the spirits of the Waldenses, and to brighten with a gleam of hope the scene of the recent great catastrophe. The army took its departure, peace having been signed between the French monarch and the duke, and the Valleys returned once more under the dominion of the House of Savoy. A decade and a half of comparative tranquillity allowed the population to root itself anew, and their Valleys and mountain-sides to be brought again under tillage. Fifteen years - how short a breathing-space amid storms so awful!
These fifteen years draw to a close; it is now 1650, and the Vaudois are entering within the shadow of their greatest woe. The throne of Savoy was at this; time filled by Charles Emmanuel II, a youth of fifteen. He was a prince of mild and humane disposition; but he was counselled and ruled by his mother, the Duchess Christina, who had been appointed regent of the kingdom during his minority. That mother was sprung of a race which have ever been noted for their dissimulation, their cruelty, and their bigoted devotion to Rome. She was the daughter of Henry IV of France and his second wife, Mary de Medici, daughter of Francis II, Duke of Tuscany. The ferocious temper and gloomy superstition of her ancestors, the Medici a name so conspicuously mixed up with the world-execrated massacre of St. Bartholomew - had descended to the Duchess Christina.
In no other reign did the tears and blood of the Waldenses flow so profusely, a fact for which we can not satisfactorily account, unless on the supposition that the sufferings which now overwhelmed them came not from the mild prince who occupied the throne, but from the cold, cruel, and bloodthirsty regent who governed the kingdom.
In short, there is reason to believe that it was not the facile spirit of the House of
Savoy, but the astute spirit of the Medici, prompted by the Vatican, that enacted those scenes of carnage that we are now to record.
The blow did not descend all at once; a series of lesser attacks heralded the great and consummating stroke. Machinations, chicaneries, and legal robberies paved the way for an extermination that was meant to be complete and final.
First of all came the monks. We have seen the plague with which the Valleys were visited in 1630; there came a second plague - not this time the pestilence, but a swarm of Capuchins. They had been sent to convert the heretics, and they began by eagerly challenging the pasters to a controversy, in which they felt sure of triumphing. A few attempts, however, convinced them that victory was not to be so easily won as they had fondly thought. The heretics made “a Pope of their Bible,” they complained, and as this was a book which the Fathers had not studied, they did not know where to find
56

the passages which they felt sure would confute the Vaudois pastors. They could silence them only by banishing them, and among others whom they drove into exile was the accomplished Antione Leger, the uncle of the historian. Thus were the people deprived of their natural leaders.
[1]
The Vaudois were forbidden on pain of confiscation and death to purchase or farm lands outside their own narrow territories.
Certain of their churches were closed. Their territory was converted into a prison by an order forbidding them to cross the frontier even for a few hours, unless on fairdays. The wholly Protestant communes of Bobbio, Villaro, Angrogna, and Rora were ordered to maintain each a mission of Capuchins; and foreign Protestants were interdicted from settling in the Valleys under pain of death, and a fine of 1,000 gold crowns upon the communes that should receive them. This law was levelled against their pastors, who, since the plague, were mostly French or Swiss. It was hoped that in a few years the Vaudois would be without ministers. Monts-de-Piete were established to induce the Vaudois, whom confiscations, bad harvests, and the billeting of soldiers had reduced to great straits, to pawn their goods, and when all had been put in pledge they were offered restitution in full on condition of renouncing their faith. Dowries were promised to young maidens on the same terms.
[2]
These various arts had a success surprisingly small. Some dozen of Waldensian perverts were added to the
Roman Church. It was plain that the good work of proselytising was proceeding too slowly. More efficient measures must be had recourse to.
The Society for the “Propagation of the Faith,” established by Pope Gregory XV in
1622, had already been spread over Italy and France. The object of the society was originally set forth in words sufficiently simple and innocent - “De Propaganda Fidei”
(for the Propagation of the Faith). Since the first institution of this society, however, its object had undergone enlargement, or, if not its object, at all events its title. Its first modest designation was supplemented by the emphatic words, “et Extirpandis
Haereticis” (and the Extirpation of Heretics). The membership of the society soon became numerous: it included both laymen and priests; all ranks, from the noble and the prelate to the peasant and the pauper, pressed forward to enrol themselves in it - the inducement being a plenary indulgence to all who should take part in the good work so unmistakably indicated in the one brief and pithy clause, “et Extirpandis
Haereticis.” The societies in the smaller towns reported to the metropolitan cities; the metropolitan cities to the capital; and the capitals to Rome, where, in the words of
Leger, “sat the great spider that held the threads of this mighty web.”
In 1650 the “Council of the Propagation of the Faith” was established at Turin. The chief counsellors of state, the great lords of the country, and the dignitaries of the
Church enrolled themselves as a presiding board. Societies of women were formed, at the head of which was the Marchioness di Pianeza. She was the first lady at court; and as she had not worn “the white rose of a blameless life,” she was all the more zealous in this cause, in the hope of making expiation for the errors of the past. She was at infinite pains to further the object of the society; and her own eager spirit she infused into all under her. “The lady propagandists,” says Leger
[3]
: “distributed the towns into districts, and each visited the district assigned to her twice a week, suborning simple girls, servant maids, and young children by their flattering allurements and fair promises, and doing evil turns such as would not listen to them. They had their spies everywhere, who, among other information, ascertained in what Protestant families disagreements existed, and hither would the propagandists repair, stirring up the flame of dissension in order to separate the husband from the wife, the wife from the
57

husband, the children from the parents; promising them, and indeed giving them, great advantages, if they would consent to attend mass. Did they hear of a tradesman whose business was falling off, or of a gentleman who from gambling or otherwise was in want of money, these ladies were at hand with their Dabo tibi (I will give thee), on condition of apostasy; and the prisoner was in like manner relieved from his dungeon, who would give himself up to them. To meet the very heavy expenses of this proselytising, to keep the machinery at work, to purchase the souls that sold themselves for bread, regular collections were made in the chapels, and in private families, in the shops, in the inns, in the gambling-houses, in the streets - everywhere was alms-begging in operation. The Marchioness of Pianeza herself, great lady as she was, used every second or third day to make a circuit in search of subscriptions, even going into the taverns for that purpose. . If any person of condition, who was believed able to contribute a coin, chanced to arrive at any hotel in town, these ladies did not fail to wait upon him, purse in hand, and solicit a donation. When persons of substance known to belong to the religion [Reformed] arrived in Turin, they did not scruple to ask money of them for the propagation of the faith, and the influence of the marchioness, or fear of losing their errand and ruining their affairs, would often induce such to comply.”
While busied in the prosecution of these schemes the Marchioness di Pianeza was stricken with death. Feeling remorse, and wishing to make atonement, she summoned her lord, from whom she had been parted many years, to her bedside, and charged him, as he valued the repose of her soul and the safety of his own, to continue the good work, on which her heart had been so much set, of converting the Vaudois. To stimulate his zeal, she bequeathed him a sum of money, which, however, he could not touch till he had fulfilled the condition on which it was granted. The marquis undertook the task with the utmost goodwill.
[4]
A bigot and a soldier, he could think of only one way of converting the Vaudois. It was now that the storm burst.
On the 25th of January, 1655, came the famous order of Gastaldo. This decree commanded all the Vaudois families domiciled in the communes of Lucerua, Fenile,
Bubiana, Bricherasio, San Giovanni, and La Torre - in short, the whole of that rich district that separates their capital from the plain of Piedmont - to quit their dwellings within three days, and retire into the Valleys of Bobbio, Angrogna, and Rora. This they were to do on pain of death. They were farther required to sell their lands to
Romanists within twenty days. Those who were willing to abjure the Protestant faith were exempted from the decree.
Anything more inhuman and barbarous in the circumstances than this edict it would not be easy to imagine. It was the depth of winter, and an Alpine winter has terrors unknown to the winters of even more northern regions. However could a population like that on which the decree fell, including young children and old men, the sick and bed-ridden, the blind and the lame, undertake a journey across swollen rivers, through valleys buried in snow, and over mountains covered with ice? They must inevitably perish, and the edict that cast them out was but another form of condemning them to die of cold and hunger. “Pray ye,” said Christ, when warning his disciples to flee when they should see the Roman armies gathering round Jerusalem, “Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter.” The Romish Propaganda at Turin chose this season for the enforced flight of the Vaudois. Cold were the icy peaks that looked down on this miserable troop, who were now fording the torrents and now struggling up the
58

mountain tracks, but the heart of the persecutor was colder still. True, an alternative was offered them: they might go to mass. Did they avail themselves of it? The historian Leger informs us that he had a congregation of well-nigh 2,000 persons, and that not a man of them all accepted the alternative. “I can well bear them this testimony,” he observes, “seeing I was their pastor for eleven years, and I knew every one of them by name; judge, reader, whether I had not cause to weep for joy, as well as for sorrow, when I saw that all the fury of these wolves was not able to influence one of these lambs, and that no earthly advantage could shake their constancy. And when I marked the traces of their blood on the snow and ice over which they had dragged their lacerated limbs, had I not cause to bless God that I had seen accomplished in their poor bodies what remained of the measure of the sufferings of
Christ, and especially when I beheld this heavy cross borne by them with a fortitude so noble?”
[5]
The Vaudois of the other valleys welcomed these poor exiles, and joyfully shared with them their own humble and scanty fare. They spread the table for all, and loaded it with polenta and roasted chestnuts, with the milk and butter of their mountains, to which they did not forget to add a cup of that red wine which their valleys produce.
[6]
Their enemies were amazed when they saw the whole community rise. up as one man and depart.
Greater woes trod fast upon the heels of this initial calamity. A part only of the
Vaudois nation had suffered from the cruel decree of Gastaldo, but the fixed object of the Propaganda was the extirpation of the entire race, and the matter was gone about with consummate perfidy and deliberate cruelty. From the upper valleys, to which they had retired, the Waldenses sent respectful representations to the court of Turin.
They described their piteous condition in terms so moving - and it would have been hard to have exaggerated it - and besought the fulfilment of treaties in which the honour and truth of the House of Savoy were pledged, in language so temperate and just, that one would have thought that their supplication must needs prevail. Alas, no!
The ear of their prince had been poisoned by falsehood. Even access to him was denied them. As regarded the Propaganda, their remonstrances, though accompanied with tears and groans, were wholly unheeded. The Vaudois were but charming deaf adders. They were put off with equivocal answers and delusive promises till the fatal
17th of April had arrived, when it was no longer necessary to dissemble and equivocate.
[7]
On the day above named, April 17th, 1655, the Marquis di Pianeza departed secretly at midnight from Turin, and appeared before the Valleys at the head of an army of
15,000 men.
[8]
The Waldensian deputies were by appointment knocking at the door of the marquis in Turin, while he himself was on the road to La Torre. He appeared under the walls of that town at eight o’clock on Saturday evening, the same 17th of
April, attended by about 300 men; the main body of his army he had left encamped on the plain. That army, secretly prepared, was composed of Piedmontese, comprehending a good many banditti, who were promised pardon and plunder should they behave themselves well, some companies of Bavarians, six regiments of French, whose thirst for blood the Huguenot wars had not been able to slake, and several companies of Irish Romanists, who, banished by Cromwell, arrived in Piedmont dripping from the massacre of their Protestant fellow-subjects in their native land.
[9]
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The Waldenses had hastily constructed a barricade at the entrance of La Torre. The marquis ordered his soldiers to storm it; but the besieged resisted so stoutly that, after three hours’ fighting, the enemy found he had made no advance. At one o’clock on the Sunday morning, Count Amadeus of Lucerna, who knew the locality, made a flank movement along the banks of the Pelice, stole silently through the meadows and orchards, and, advancing from the opposite quarter, attacked the Vaudois in the rear.
They faced round, pierced the ranks of their assailants, and made good their retreat to the hills, leaving La Torre in the hands of the enemy. The Vaudois had lost only three men in all that fighting. It was now between two and three o’clock on Sunday morning, and though the hour was early, the Romanists repaired in a body to the church and chanted a Te Deum.
[10]
The day was Palm-Sunday, and in this fashion did the Roman Church, by her soldiers, celebrate that great festival of love and goodwill in the Waldensian Valleys.
The Vaudois were once more on their mountains. Their families had been previously transported to their natural fastnesses. Their sentinels kept watch night and day along the frontier heights. They could see the movements of Pianeza’s army on the plains beneath. They beheld their orchards falling by the axes, and their dwellings being consumed by the torches of the soldiers. On Monday the 19th, and Tuesday the 20th, a series of skirmishes took place along the line of their mountain passes and forts. The
Vaudois, though poorly armed and vastly outnumbered - for they were but as one to a hundred - were victorious on all points. The Popish soldiers fell back in ignominious rout, carrying wondrous tales of the Vaudois’ valour and heroism to their comrades on the plain, and infusing incipient panic into the camp.
[11]
Guilt is ever cowardly. Pianeza now began to have misgivings touching the issue. The recollection that mighty armies had aforetime perished on these mountains haunted and disquieted him. He betook him to a weapon which the Waldenses have ever been less able to cope with than the sword. On Wednesday, the 21st, before daybreak, he announced, by sound of trumpet at the various Vaudois entrenchments, his willingness to receive their deputies and treat for peace. Delegates set out for his camp, and on their arrival at headquarters were received with the utmost urbanity, and sumptuously entertained. Pianeza expressed the utmost regret for the excesses his soldiers had committed, and which had been done, he said, contrary to orders, he protested that he had come into their valleys only to track a few fugitives who had disobeyed Gastaldo’s order, that the higher communes had nothing to fear, and that if they would admit a single regiment each for a few days, in token of their loyalty, all would be amicably ended. The craft of the man conquered the deputies, and despite the warnings of the more sagacious, the pastor Leger in particular, the Waldenses opened the passes of their valleys and the doors of their dwellings to the soldiers of
Pianeza.
Alas! alas! these poor people were undone. They had received under their roof the murderers of themselves and their families. The first two days, the 22rid and 23rd of
April, were passed in comparative peace, the soldiers eating at the same table, sleeping under the same roof, and conversing freely with their destined victims. This interval was needed to allow every preparation to be made for what was to follow.
The enemy now occupied the towns, the villages, the cottages, and the roads throughout the valleys. They hung upon the heights. Two great passes led into France: the one over the snows of the lofty Col Julten, and the other by the Valley of Queyras
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into Dauphine. But, alas! escape was not possible by either outlet. No one could traverse the Col Julten at this season and live, and the fortress of Mirabouc, that guarded the narrow gorge which led into the Valley of Queyras, the enemy had been careful to secure.
[12]
The Vaudois were enclosed as in a net - shut in as in a prison.
At last the blow fell with the sudden crash of the thunderbolt. At four o’clock on the morning of Saturday, the 24th of April, 1655, the signal was given from the castle-hill of La Torre.
[13]
But who shall rehearse the tragedy that followed? “It is Cain a second time,” says Monastier, “shedding the blood of his brother Abel.”
[14]
On the instant a thousand assassins began the work of death. Dismay, horror, agony, woe in a moment overspread the Valleys of Lucerna and Angrogna. Though Pandemonium had sent forth its fiends to riot in crime and revel in blood, they could not have outdone the soldiers of the Propaganda. We see the victims climbing the hills with what speed they are able, the murderer on their track. We see the torrents as they roll down from the heights beginning to be tinged with blood. Gleams of lurid light burst out through the dark smoke that is rolling through the vales, for a priest and monk accompany each party of soldiers, to set fire to the houses as soon as the inmates have been dispatched. Alas! what sounds are these that fall upon our ears.
The cries and groans of the dying are echoed and re-echoed from the rocks around, and it seems as if the mountains had taken up a wailing for the slaughter of their children. “Our Valley of Lucerna,” exclaims Leger, “which was like a Goshen, was now converted into a Mount Etna, darting forth cinders and fire and flames. The earth resembled a furnace, and the air was filled with a darkness like that of Egypt, which might be felt, from the smoke of towns, villages, temples, mansions, granges, and buildings, all burning in the flames of the Vatican.”
[15]
The soldiers were not content with the quick dispatch of the sword, they invented new and hitherto unheard-of modes of torture and death. No man at this day dare write in plain words all the disgusting and horrible deeds of these men; their wickedness can never be all known, because it never can be all told.
From the awful narration of Leger we select only a few instances; but even these few, however mildly stated, grow, without our intending it, into a group of horrors. Little children were torn from the arms of their mothers, clasped by their tiny feet, and their heads dashed against the rocks; or were held between two soldiers and their quivering limbs torn up by main force. Their mangled bodies were then thrown on the highways or fields, to be devoured by beasts. The sick and the aged were burned alive in their dwellings. Some had their hands and arms and legs lopped off, and fire applied to the severed parts to staunch the bleeding and prolong their suffering. Some were flayed alive, some were roasted alive, some disembowelled; or tied to trees in their own orchards, and their hearts cut out. Some were horribly mutilated, and of others the brains were boiled and eaten by these cannibals. Some were fastened down into the furrows of their own fields, and ploughed into the soil as men plough manure into it.
Others were buried alive.
[16]
Fathers were marched to death with the heads of their sons suspended round their necks. Parents were compelled to look on while their children were first outraged, then massacred, before being themselves permitted to die. But here we must stop. We can not proceed farther in Leger’s awful narration.
There come vile, abominable and monstrous deeds, utterly and overwhelmingly disgusting, horrible and fiendish, which we dare not transcribe. The heart sickens, and the brain begins to swim. “My hand trembles,” says Leger, “so that I scarce even hold
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the pen, and my tears mingle in torrents with my ink, while I write the deeds of these children of darkness - blacker even than the Prince of Darkness himself.”
[17]
No general account, however awful, can convey so correct an idea of the horrors of this persecution as would the history of individual cases; but this we are precluded from giving. Could we take these martyrs one by one - could we describe the tragic fate of Peter Simeon of Angrogna - the barbarous death of Magdalene, wife of Peter
Pilon of Villare - the sad story - but no, that story could not be told - of Anne, daughter of John Charbonier of La Torre - the cruel martyrdom of Paul Garnier of
Rora, whose eyes were first plucked out, who next endured other horrible indignities, and, last of all, was flayed alive, and his skin, divided into four parts, extended on the window gratings of the four principal houses in Lucerna - could we describe these cases, with hundreds of others equally horrible and appalling, our narrative would grow so harrowing that our readers, unable to proceed, would turn from the page.
Literally did the Waldenses suffer all the things of which the apostle speaks, as endured by the martyrs of old, with other torments not then invented, or which the rage of even a Nero shrank from inflicting: - “They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy); they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens, and caves of the earth.”
These cruelties form a scene that is unparalleled and unique in the history of at least civilized countries. There have been tragedies in which more blood was spilt, and more life sacrificed, but none in which the actors were so completely dehumanized, and the forms of suffering so monstrously disgusting, so unutterably cruel and revolting. The “Piedmontese Massacres” in this respect stand alone. They are more fiendish than all the atrocities and murders before or since, and Leger may still advance his challenge to “all travellers, and all who have studied the history of ancient and modern pagans, whether among the Chinese, Tartars and Turks, they ever witnessed or heard tell of such execrable perfidies and barbarities.”
The authors of these deeds, thinking it may be that their very atrocity would make the world slow to believe them, made bold to deny that they had ever been done, even before the blood was well dry in the Valleys. Pastor Leger took instant and effectual means to demonstrate the falsehood of that denial, and to provide that clear, irrefragable, and indubitable proof of these awful crimes should go down to posterity.
He travelled from commune to commune, immediately after the massacre, attended by notaries, who took down the depositions and attestations of the survivors and eyewitnesses of these deeds, in presence of the council and consistory of the place.
[18]
From the evidence of these witnesses he compiled and gave to the world a book, which Dr. Gilly truly characterised as one of the most “dreadful” in existence.
[19]
The originals of these depositions Leger gave to Sir Samuel Morland, who deposited them, together with other valuable documents pertaining to the Waldenses, in the
Library of the University of Cambridge.
Uncontrollable grief seized the hearts of the survivors at the sight of their brethren slain, their country devastated, and their Church overthrown. “Oh that my head were waters,” exclaims Leger, “and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” “It was then,” he adds, “that the fugitives, who had been
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snatched as brands from the burning, could address God in the words of the 79th
Psalm, which literally as emphatically describes their condition: -
“‘O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritances,
Thy holy temple have they defiled;
They have laid Jerusalem on heaps.
The dead bodies of thy servants have they given
To be meat unto the fowls of heaven,
The flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth,
Their blood have they shed like water; …
And there was none to bury them!’”
[20]
When the storm had abated, Leger assembled the scattered survivors, in order to take counsel with them as to the steps to be now taken. It does not surprise us to find that some had begun to entertain the idea of abandoning the Valleys altogether. Leger strongly dissuaded them against the thought of forsaking their ancient inheritance.
They must, he said, rebuild their Zion in the faith that the God of their fathers would not permit the Church of the Valleys to be finally overthrown. To encourage them, he undertook to lay a representation of their sufferings and broken condition before their brethren of other countries, who, he was sure, would hasten to their help at this great crisis. These counsels prevailed. “Our tears are no longer of water,” so wrote the remnant of the slaughtered Vaudois to the Protestants of Europe, “they are of blood; they do not merely obscure our sight, they choke our very hearts. Our hands tremble and our heads ache by the many blows we have received. We can not frame an epistle answerable to the intent of our minds, and the strangeness of our desolations. We pray you to excuse us, and to collect amid our groans the meaning of what we fain would utter.” After this touching introduction, they proceed with a representation of their state, expressing themselves in terms the moderation of which contrasts strongly with the extent of their wrongs. Protestant Europe was horror-struck when the tale of the massacre was laid before it.
Nowhere did these awful tidings awaken a deeper sympathy or kindle a stronger indignation than in England. Cromwell, who was then at the head of the State, proclaimed a fast, ordered a collection for the sufferers,
[21]
and wrote to all the
Protestant princes, and to the King of France, with the intent of enlisting their sympathy and aid in behalf of the Vaudois. One of the noblest as well as most sacred of the tasks ever undertaken by the great poet, who then acted as the Protector’s Latin secretary, was the writing of these letters. Milton’s pen was not less gloriously occupied when writing in behalf of these venerable sufferers for conscience sake, than when writing “Paradise Lost.” In token of the deep interest he took in this affair,
Cromwell sent Sir Samuel Morland with a letter to the Duke of Savoy, expressive of the astonishment and sorrow he felt at the barbarities which had been committed on those who were his brethren in the faith.
Cromwell’s ambassador visited the Valleys on his way to Turin, and saw with his own eyes the frightful spectacle which the region still presented. “If,” said he, addressing the duke, the horrors he had just seen giving point to his eloquence, and kindling his republican plainness into Puritan fervour, “If the tyrants of all times and ages were alive again, they would doubtless be ashamed to find that nothing barbarous nor inhuman, in comparison of these deeds, had ever been invented by them. In the meantime,” he continued, “the angels are stricken with horror; men are
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dizzy with amazement; heaven itself appears astonished with the cries of the dying, and the very earth to blush with the gore of so many innocent persons. Avenge not thyself, O God, for this mighty wickedness, this parricidal slaughter! Let thy blood, O
Christ, wash out this blood!”
We have repeatedly mentioned the Castelluzzo in our narrative of this people and their many martyrdoms. It is closely connected with the Massacre of 1655, and as such kindled the muse of Milton. It stands at the entrance of the Valleys, its feet swathed in feathery woods; above which is a mass of debris and fallen rocks, which countless tempests have gathered like a girdle round its middle. From amidst these the supreme column shoots up, pillar-like, and touches that white cloud which is floating past in mid-heaven. One can see a dark spot on the face of the cliff just below the crowning rocks of the summit. It would be taken for the shadow of a passing cloud upon the mountain, were it not that it is immovable. That is the mouth of a cave so roomy, it is said, as to be able to contain some hundreds. To this friendly chamber the
Waldenses were wont to flee when the valley beneath was a perfect Pandemonium, glittering with steel, red with crime, and ringing with execrations and blasphemies. To this cave many of the Vaudois fled on occasion of the great massacre. But, alas! thither the persecutor tracked them, and dragging them forth rolled them down the awful precipice.
The law that indissolubly links great crimes with the spot where they were perpetrated, has written the Massacre of 1655 on this mountain, and even it in eternal keeping to its rock. There is not another such martyrs’ monument in the whole world.
While the Castelluzzo stands the memory of this great crime can not die; through all the ages it will continue to cry, and that cry our sublimest poet has interpreted in his sublime sonnet: -
“Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter’d saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmentese, that roll’d
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyr’d blood and ashes sow
O’er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learned thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.”
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The next tragic episode in the history of the Waldenses takes us to the Valley of Rora.
The invasion and outrages of which this valley became the scene were contemporaneous with the horrors of the Great Massacre. In what we are now to relate, feats of heroism are blended with deeds of suffering, and we are called to admire the valour of the patriot, as well as the patience of the martyr.
The Valley of Rora lies on the left as one enters La Torre; it is separated from
Lucerna by a barrier of mountains, Rora has two entrances: one by a side ravine, which branches off about two miles before reaching La Torre, and the other by crossing the Valley of Lucerna and climbing the mountains. This last is worthy of being briefly described. We start, we shall suppose, from the town of La Torre; we skirt the Castelluzzo on the right, which high in air hangs its precipices, with their many tragic memories, above us. From this point we turn to the left, descend into the valley, traverse its bright meadows, here shaded by the vine which stretches its arms in classic freedom from tree to tree. We cross the torrent of the Pelice by a small bridge, and hold on our way till we reach the foot of the mountains of La Combe, that wall in the Valley of Rora. We begin to climb by a winding path. Pasturage and vineyard give place to chestnut forest; the chestnut in its turn yields to the pine; and, as we mount still higher, we find ourselves amid the naked ledges of the mountain, with their gushing rills, margined by moss or other Alpine herbage.
An ascent of two hours brings us to the summit of the pass. We have here a pedestal, some 4,000 feet in height, in the midst of a stupendous amphitheatre of Alps, from which to view their glories. How profoundly deep the valley from which we have just climbed up! A thread of silver is now the Pelice; a patch of green a few inches square is now the meadow; the chestnut-tree is a mere dot, hardly visible; and yonder are La
Torre and the white Villaro, so tiny that they look as if they could be packed into a child’s toy-box.
But while all else has diminished, the mountains seem to have enlarged their bulk and increased their stature, high above us towers the summit of the Castelluzzo; still higher rise the rolling masses of the Vandalin, the lower slopes of which form a vast and magnificent hanging garden, utterly dwarfing those of which we read as one of the wonders of Babylon. And in the far distance the eye rests on a tumultuous sea of mountains, here rising in needles, there running off in long serrated ridges, and there standing up in massy peaks of naked granite, wearing the shining garments which winter weaves for the giants of the Alps.
We now descend into the Valley of Rora. It lies at our feet, a cup of verdure, some sixty miles in circumference, its sides and bottom variously clothed with corn-field and meadow, with vineyard and orchard, with the walnut, the cherry, and all fruitbearing trees, from amid which numerous brown chalets peep out. The great mountains sweep round the valley like a wall, and among them, pre-eminent in glory as in stature, stands the monarch of the Cottian Alps - Monte Viso.
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As among the Jews of old, so among the Waldenses, God raised up, from time to time, mighty men of valour to deliver his people. One of the most remarkable of these men was Gianavello, commonly known as Captain Joshua Gianavello, a native of this same Valley of Rora. He appears, from the accounts that have come down to us, to have possessed all the qualities of a great military leader. He was a man of daring courage, of resolute purpose, and of venturous enterprise. He had the faculty, so essential in a commander, of skilful combination. He was fertile in resource, and self possessed in emergencies; he was quick to resolve, and prompt to execute. His devotion and energy were the means, under God, of mitigating somewhat the horrors of the Massacre of 1655, and his heroism ultimately rolled back the tide of that great calamity, and made it recoil upon its authors. It was the morning of the 24th of April,
1655, the day which saw the butchery commenced that we have described above. On that same day 500 soldiers were dispatched by the Marquis di Pianeza to the Valley of
Rora, to massacre its unoffending and unsuspecting inhabitants. Ascending from the
Valley of the Pelice, they had gained the summit of the pass, and were already descending on the town of Rora, stealthily and swiftly, as a herd of wolves might descend upon a sheep-fold, or as, says Leger, “a brood of vultures might descend upon a flock of harmless doves.” Happily Gianavello, who had known for weeks before that a storm was gathering, though he knew not when or where it would burst, was on the outlook. He saw the troop, and guessed their errand.
There was not a moment to be lost; a little longer, and not a man would be left alive in
Rora to carry tidings of its fate to the next commune. But was Gianavello singlehanded to attack an army of 500 men? He stole uphill, under cover of the rocks and trees, and on his way he prevailed on six peasants, brave men like himself, to join him in repelling the invaders. The heroic little band marched on till they were near the troop, then hiding amid the bushes, they lay in ambush by the side of the path. The soldiers came on, little suspecting the trap into which they were marching.
Gianavello and his men fired, and with so unerring an aim that seven of the troop fell dead. Then, reloading their pieces, and dexterously changing their ground, they fired again with a like effect. The attack was unexpected; the foe was invisible; the frightened imaginations of Pianeza’s soldiers multiplied tenfold the number of their assailants. They began to retreat. But Gianavello and his men, bounding from cover to cover like so many chamois, hung upon their rear, and did deadly execution with their bullets. The invaders left fifty-four of their number dead behind them; and thus did these seven peasants chase from their Valley of Rora the 500 assassins who had come to murder its peaceful inhabitants.
[1]
That same afternoon the people of Rora, who were ignorant of the fearful murders which were at that very moment proceeding in the valleys of their brethren, repaired to the Marquis di Pianeza to complain of the attack. The marquis affected ignorance of the whole affair. “Those who invaded your valley,” said he, “were a set of banditti.
You did right to repel them. Go back to your families and fear nothing; I pledge my word and honour that no evil shall happen to you.”
These deceitful words did not impose upon Gianavello. He had a wholesome recollection of the maxim enacted by the Council of Constance, and so often put in practice in the Valleys, “No faith is to be kept with heretics.” Pianeza, he knew, was the agent of the “Council of Extirpation.” Hardly had the next morning broke when the hero-peasant was abroad, scanning with eagle-eye the mountain paths that led into
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his valley. It was not long till his suspicions were more than justified. Six hundred men-at-arms, chosen with special reference to this difficult enterprise, were seen ascending the mountain Cassuleto, to do what their comrades of the previous day had failed to accomplish. Gianavello had now mustered a little host of eighteen, of whom twelve were armed with muskets and swords, and six with only the sling. These he divided into three parties, each consisting of four musketeers and two slingers, and he posted them in a defile, through which he saw the invaders must pass. No sooner had the van of the enemy entered the gorge than a shower of bullets and stones from invisible hands saluted them. Every bullet and stone did its work. The first discharge brought down an officer and twelve men. That volley was succeeded by others equally fatal. The cry was raised, “All is lost, save yourselves!” The flight was precipitate, for every bush and rock seemed to vomit forth deadly missiles. Thus a second ignominious retreat rid the Valley of Rora of these murderers.
The inhabitants carried their complaints a second time to Pianeza. “Concealing,” as
Leger says, “the ferocity of the tiger under the skin of the fox,” he assured the deputies that the attack had been the result of a misunderstanding; that certain accusations had been lodged against them, the falsity of which had since been discovered, and now they might return to their homes, for they had nothing to fear. No sooner were they gone than Pianeza began vigorously to prepare for a third attack.
[2]
He organized a battalion of from 800 to 900 men. Next morning, this host made a rapid march on Rora, seized all the avenues leading into the valley, and chasing the inhabitants to the caves in Monte Friolante, set fire to their dwellings, having first plundered them. Captain Joshua Gianavello, at the head of his little troop, saw the enemy enter, but their numbers were so overwhelming that he waited a more favourable moment for attacking them. The soldiers were retiring, laden with their booty, and driving before them the cattle of the peasants. Gianavello knelt down before his hero-band, and giving thanks to God, who had twice by his hand saved his people, he prayed that the hearts and arms of his followers might be strengthened, to work yet another deliverance. He then attacked the foe. The spoilers turned and fled uphill, in the hope of escaping into the Valley of the Pelice, throwing away their booty in their flight. When they had gained the pass, and begun their descent, their flight became yet more disastrous; great stones, torn up and rolled after them, were mingled with the bullets, and did deadly execution upon them, while the precipices over which they fell in their haste consummated their destruction. The few who survived fled to Villaro.
[3]
The Marquis di Pianeza, instead of seeing in these events the finger of God, was only the more inflamed with rage, and the more resolutely bent on the extirpation of every heretic from the Valley of Rora. He assembled all the royal troops then under his command, or which could be spared from the massacre in which they were occupied in the other valleys, in order to surround the little territory. This was now the fourth attack on the commune of Rora, but the invaders were destined once more to recoil before the shock of its heroic defenders. Some 8,000 men had been got under arms, and ‘were ready to march against Rora, but the impatience of a certain Captain Mario, who had signalized himself in the massacre at Bobbio, and wished to appropriate the entire glory of the enterprise, would not permit him to await the movement of the main body. He marched two hours in advance, with three companies of regular troops, few of whom ever returned. Their ferocious leader, borne along by the rush of his
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panic-stricken soldiers, was precipitated over the edge of the rock into the stream, and badly bruised. He was drawn out and carried to Lucerna, where he died two days afterwards, in great torment of body, and yet greater torment of mind. Of the three companies which he led in this fatal expedition, one was composed of Irish, who had been banished by Cromwell, and who met in this distant land the death they had inflicted on others in their own, leaving their corpses to fatten those valleys which were to have been theirs, had they succeeded in purging them of heresy and heretics.
[4]
This series of strange events was now drawing to an end. The fury of Pianeza knew no bounds. This war of his, though waged only with herdsmen, had brought him nothing but disgrace, and the loss of his bravest soldiers. Victor Amadeus once observed that “the skin of every Vaudois cost him fifteen of his best Piedmontese soldiers.” Pianeza had lost some hundreds of his best soldiers, and yet not one of the little troop of Gianavello, dead or alive, had he been able to get into his hands.
Nevertheless, he resolved to continue the struggle, but with a much greater army. He assembled 10,000, and attacked Rora on three sides at once. While Gianavello was bravely combating with the first troop of 3,000, on the summit of the pass that gives entrance from the Valley of the Pelice, a second of 6,000 had entered by the ravine at the foot of the valley; and a third of 1,000 had crossed the mountains that divide
Bagnolo from Rora. But, alas! who shall describe the horrors that followed the entrance of these assassins? Blood, burning, and rapine in an instant overwhelmed the little community. No distinction was made of age or sex. None had pity for their tender years; none had reverence for their grey hairs. Happy they who were slain at once, and thus escaped horrible indignities and tortures. The few spared from the sword were carried away as captives, and among these were the wife and the three daughters of Gianavello.
[5]
There was now nothing more in the Valley of Rora for which the patriot-hero could do battle. The light of his hearth was quenched, his village was a heap of smoking ruins, his fathers and brethren had fallen by the sword; but rising superior to these accumulated calamities, he marched his little troop over the mountains, to await on the frontier of his country whatever opportunities Providence might yet open to him of wielding his sword in defence of the ancient liberties and the glorious faith of his people.
It was at this time that Pianeza, intending to deal the finishing blow that should crush the hero of Rora, wrote to Gianavello as follows: - “I exhort you for the last time to renounce your heresy. This is the only hope of your obtaining the pardon of your prince, and of saving the life of your wife and daughters, now my prisoners, and whom, if you continue obstinate, I will burn alive. As for yourself, my soldiers shall no longer pursue you, but I will set such a price upon your head, as that were you
Beelzebub himself, you shall infallibly be taken; and be assured that, if you fall alive into my hands, there are no torments with which I will not punish your rebellion.” To these ferocious threats Gianavello magnanimously and promptly replied: “There are no torments so terrible, no death so barbarous, that I would not choose rather than deny my Saviour. Your threats can not cause me to renounce my faith; they but fortify me in it. Should the Marquis di Pianeza cause my wife and daughters to pass through the fire, it can but consume their mortal bodies; their souls I commend to God, trusting that he will have mercy on them, and on mine, should it please him that I fall
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into the marquis’s hands.”
[6]
We do not know whether Pianeza was capable of seeing that this was the most mortifying defeat he had yet sustained at the hands of the peasant-hero of Rora; and that he might as well war against the Alps themselves as against a cause that could infuse a spirit like this into its champions. Gianavello’s reply, observes Leger, “certified him as a chosen instrument in the hands of God for the recovery of his country seemingly lost.”
Gianavello had saved from the wreck of his family his infant son, and his first care was to seek a place of safety for him. Laying him on his shoulders, he passed the frozen Alps which separate the Valley of Lucerna from France, and entrusted the child to the care of a relative resident at Queyras, in the Valleys of the French
Protestants. With the child he carried thither the tidings of the awful massacre of his people. Indignation was roused. Not a few were willing to join his standard, brave spirits like himself; and, with his little band greatly recruited, he repassed the Alps in a few weeks, to begin his second and more successful campaign. On his arrival in the
Valleys he was joined by Giaheri, under whom a troop had been assembling to avenge the massacre of their brethren.
In Giaheri, Captain Gianavello had found a companion worthy of himself, and worthy of the cause for which he was now in arms. Of this heroic man Leger has recorded that, “though he possessed the courage of a lion, he was as humble as a lamb, always giving to God the glory of his victories; well versed in Scripture, and understanding controversy, and of great natural talent.” The massacre had reduced the Vaudois race to all but utter extermination, and 500 men were all that the two leaders could collect around their standard. The army opposed to them, and at. this time in their Valleys, was from 15,000 to 20,000 strong, consisting of trained and picked soldiers. Nothing but an impulse from the God of battles could have moved these two men, with such a handful, to take the field against such odds. To the eye of a common hero all would have seemed lost; but the courage of these two Christian warriors was based on faith.
They believed that God would not permit his cause to perish, or the lamp of the
Valleys to be extinguished; and, few though they were, they knew that God was able by their humble instrumentality to save their country and Church. In this faith they unsheathed the sword; and so valiantly did they wield it, that soon that sword became the terror of the Piedmontese armies. The ancient promise was fulfilled, “The people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits.”
We can not go into details. Prodigies of valour were performed by this little host. “I had always considered the Vaudois to be men,” said Descombies, who had joined them, “but I found them lions.” Nothing could withstand the fury of their attack. Post after post and village after village were wrested from the Piedmontese troops. Soon the enemy was driven from the upper valleys. The war now passed down into the plain of Piedmont, and there it was waged with the same heroism and the same success. They besieged and took several towns, they fought not a few pitched battles; and in nearly all of them they were victorious, though opposed by more than ten times their number. Their success could hardly be credited had it not been recorded by historians whose veracity is above suspicion, and the accuracy of whose statements was attested by eye-witnesses. Not unfrequently did it happen at the close of a day’s fighting, that 1,400 Piedmontese dead covered the field of battle, while not more than six or seven of the Waldensea had fallen. Such success might well be termed miramfious; and not only did it appear so to the Vaudois themselves, but even to their
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foes, who could not refrain from expressing their conviction “that surely God was on the side of the Barbers.”
While the Vaudois were thus heroically maintaining their cause by arms, and rolling back the chastisement of war on those from whom its miseries had come, tidings of their wrongs were travelling to all the Protestant States of Europe. Wherever these tidings came a feeling of horror was evoked, and the cruelty of the Government of
Savoy was universally and loudly execrated. All confessed that such a tale of woe they had never before heard. But the Protestant States did not content themselves with simply condemning these deeds; they judged it to be their clear duty to move in behalf of this poor and greatly oppressed people; and foremost among those who did themselves lasting honour by interposing in behalf of a people “drawn unto death and ready to perish,” was, as we have already said, England, then under the Protectorate of
Cromwell. We mentioned in the previous chapter the Latin letter, the composition of
Milton, which the Protector addressed to the Duke of Savoy. In addition, Cromwell wrote to Louis XIV of France, soliciting his mediation with the duke ill behalf of the
Vaudois. The letter is interesting as containing the truly catholic and noble sentiments of England, to which the pen of her great poet gave fitting expression: -
“Most Serene and Potent King,
“After a most barbarous slaughter of persons of both sexes, and of all ages, treaty of peace was concluded, or rather secret acts of hostility were committed the more securely under the name of a pacification. The conditions of the treaty were determined in your town of Pinerolo: hard conditions enough, but such as these poor people would gladly have agreed to, after the horrible outrages to which they had been exposed, provided that they had been faithfully observed. But they were not observed; the meaning of the treaty is evaded and violated, by putting in false interpretation upon some of the articles, and by straining others. Many of the complainants have been deprived of their patrimonies, and many have been forbidden the exercise of their religion. New payments have been exacted, and a new fort has been built to keep them in check, from whence a disorderly soldiery make frequent sallies, and plunder or murder all they meet. In addition to these things, fresh levies of troops are clandestinely preparing to march against them; and those among them who profess the Roman Catholic religion have been advised to retire in time; so that everything threatens the speedy destruction of such as escaped the former massacre. I do therefore beseech and conjure your Majesty not to suffer such enormities, and not to permit (I will not say any prince, for surely such barbarity never could enter into the heart of a prince, much less of one of the duke’s tender age, or into the mind of his mother) those accursed murderers to indulge in such savage ferocity, who, while they profess to be the servants and followers of Christ, who came into the world to save sinners, do blaspheme his name, and transgress his mild precepts, by the slaughter of innocent men. Oh, that your Majesty, who has the power, and who ought to be inclined to use it, may deliver so many supplicants from the hands of murderers, who are already drunk with blood, and thirst for it again, and who take pleasure in throwing the odium of their cruelty upon princes! I implore your Majesty not to suffer the borders of your kingdom to be polluted by such monstrous wickedness.
“Remember that this very race of people threw themselves upon the protection of your grandfather, King Henry IV, who was most friendly disposed towards the
Protestants, when the Duke of Lesdiguieres passed victoriously through their country,
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as affording the most commodious passage into Italy at the time he pursued the Duke of Savoy in his retreat across the Alps. The act or instrument of that submission is still extant among the public records of your kingdom, in which it is provided that the
Vaudois shall not be transferred to any other government, but upon the same condition that they were received under the protection of your invincible grandfather.
As supplicants of his grandson, they now implore the fulfilment of this compact.
“Given at our Court at Westminster, this 26th of May, 1658.”
The French King undertook the mediation, as requested by the Protestant princes, but hurried it to a conclusion before the ambassadors from the Protestant States had arrived. The delegates from the Protestant cantons of Switzerland were present, but they were permitted to act the part of onlookers simply. The Grand Monarch took the whole affair upon himself, and on the 18th of August, 1655, a treaty of peace was concluded of a very disadvantageous kind. The Waldenses were stripped of their ancient possessions on the right bank of the Pelice, lying toward the plain of
Piedmont. Within the new boundary they were guaranteed liberty of worship; an amnesty was granted for all offences committed during the war; captives were to be restored when claimed; and they were to be exempt from all imposts for five years, on the ground that they were so impoverished as not to be able to pay anything.
When the treaty was published it was found to contain two clauses that astonished the
Protestant world. In the preamble the Vaudois were styled rebels, whom it had pleased their prince graciously to receive back into favour; and in the body of the deed was an article, which no one recollected to have heard mentioned during the negotiations, empowering the French to construct a fort above La Torre. This looked like a preparation for renewing the war.
By this treaty the Protestant States were outwitted; their ambassadors were duped; and the poor Vaudois were left as much as ever in the power of the Duke of Savoy and of the Council for the Propagation of the Faith, and the Extirpation of Heretics.
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After the great Massacre of 1655, the Church of the Valleys had rest from persecution for thirty years. This period, however, can be styled one of rest only when contrasted with the frightful storms which had convulsed the era that immediately preceded it.
The enemies of the Vaudois still found innumerable ways in which to annoy and harass them. Ceaseless intrigues were continually breeding new alarms, and the
Vaudois had often to till their fields and prune their vines with their musket slung across their shoulders. Many of their chief men were sent into exile.
Captain Gianavello and Pastor Leger whose services to their people were too great ever to be forgiven, had sentence of death passed on them. Leger was “to be strangled; then his body was to be hung by one foot on a gibbet for four-and-twenty hours; and, lastly, his head was to be cut off and publicly exposed at San Giovanni.
His name was to be inserted in the list of noted outlaws; his houses were to be burned.”
[1]
Gianavello retired to Geneva, where he continued to watch with unabated interest the fortunes of his people. Leger became pastor of a congregation at Leyden, where he crowned a life full of labour and suffering for the Gospel, by a work which has laid all Christendom under obligations to him; we refer to his History of the
Churches of the Vaudois - a noble monument of his Church’s martyr-heroism and his own Christian patriotism.
Hardly had Leger unrolled to the world’s gaze the record of the last awful tempest which had smitten the Valleys, when the clouds returned, and were seen rolling up in dark, thunderous masses against this devoted land. Former storms had assailed them from the south, having collected in the Vatican; the tempest now approaching had its first rise on the north of the Alps. It was the year 1685; Louis XIV was nearing the grave, and with the great audit in view he inquired of his confessor by what good deed as a king he might atone for his many sins as a man. The answer was ready. He was told that he must extirpate Protestantism in France.
The Grand Monarch, as the age styled him, bowed obsequiously before the shaven crown of priest, while Europe was trembling before his armies. Louis XIV did as he was commanded; he revoked the Edict of Nantes. This gigantic crime, which inflicted so much misery on the Protestants in the first place, and brought so many woes on the throne and nation of France in the second, will be recorded in its place. It is the nation of the Vaudois, and the persecution which the counsel of Father la Chaise brought upon them, with which we have here to do. Wishing for companionship in the sanguinary work of purging France from Protestantism, Louis XIV. sent an ambassador to the Duke of Savoy, with a request that he would deal with the
Waldenses as he was now dealing with the Huguenots. The young and naturally humane Victor Amadeus was at the moment on more than usually friendly terms with his subjects of the Valleys. They had served bravely under his standard in his late war with the Genoese, and he had but recently written them a letter of thanks.
How could he unsheathe his sword against the men whose devotion and valor had so largely contributed to his victory? Victor Amadeus deigned no reply to the French ambassador. The request was repeated; it received an evasive answer; it was urged a third time, accompanied by a hint from the potent Louis that if it was not convenient
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for the duke to purge his dominions, the King of France would do it for him with an army of 14,000 men, and would keep the Valleys for his pains. This was enough. A treaty was immediately concluded between the duke and the French King, in which the latter promised an armed force to enable the former to reduce the Vaudois to the
Roman obedience, or to exterminate them.
[2]
On the 31st of January, 1686, the following edict was promulgated in the Valleys: -
1. The Vaudois shall henceforth and for ever cease and discontinue all the exercises of their religion.
2. They are forbidden to have religious meetings, under pain of death, and penalty of confiscation of all their goods.
3. All their ancient privileges are abolished.
4. All the churches, prayer-houses, and other edifices consecrated to their worship shall be razed to the ground.
5. All the pastors and schoolmasters of the Valleys are required either to embrace
Romanism or to quit the country within fifteen days, under pain of death and confiscation of goods.
6. All the children born, or to be born, of Protestant parents, shall be compulsorily trained up as Roman Catholics. Every such child yet unborn shall, within a week after its birth, be brought to the cure of its parish, and admitted of the Roman Catholic
Church, under pain, on the part of the mother, of being publicly whipped with rods, and on the part of the father of labouring five years in the galleys.
7. The Vaudois pastors shall abjure the doctrine they have hitherto publicly preached; shall receive a salary, greater by one-third than that which they previously enjoyed; and one-half thereof shall go in reversion to their widows.
8. All Protestant foreigners settled in Piedmont are ordered either to become Roman
Catholics, or to quit the country within fifteen days.
9. By a special act of his great and paternal clemency, the sovereign will permit persons to sell, in this interval, the property they may have acquired in Piedmont, provided the sale be made to Roman Catholic purchasers.
This monstrous edict seemed to sound the knell of the Vaudois as a Protestant people.
Their oldest traditions did not contain a decree so cruel and unrighteous, nor one that menaced them with so complete and summary a destruction as that which now seemed to impend over them. What was to be done! Their first step was to send delegates to Turin, respectfully to remind the duke that the Vaudois had inhabited the
Valleys from the earliest times; that they had led forth their herds upon their mountains before the House of Savoy had ascended the throne of Piedmont; that treaties and oaths, renewed from reign to reign, had solemnly secured them in the freedom of their worship and other liberties; and that the honour of princes and the stability of States lay in the faithful observance of such covenants; and they prayed him to consider what reproach the throne and kingdom of Piedmont would incur if he should become the executioner of those of whom he was the natural protector.
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The Protestant cantons of Switzerland joined their mediation to the intercessions of the Waldenses. And when the almost incredible edict came to be known in Germany and Holland, these countries threw their shield over the Valleys, by interceding with the duke that he would not inflict so great a wrong as to cast out from a land which was theirs by irrevocable charters, a people whose only crime was that they worshipped as their fathers had worshipped, before they passed under the sceptre of the duke.
All these powerful parties pleaded in vain. Ancient charters, solemn treaties, and oaths, made in the face of Europe, the long-tried loyalty and the many services of the
Vaudois to the House of Savoy, could not stay the uplifted arm of the duke, or prevent the execution of the monstrously criminal decree. In a little while the armies of France and Savoy arrived before the Valleys.
At no previous period of their history, perhaps, had the Waldenses been so entirely devoid of human aid as now. Gianavello, whose stout heart and brave arm had stood them in such stead formerly, was in exile. Cromwell, whose potent voice had stayed the fury of the great massacre, was in his grave. An avowed Papist filled the throne of
Great Britain. It was going in at this hour with Protestantism everywhere. The
Covenanters of Scotland were hiding on the moors, or dying in the Grass-market of
Edinburgh. France, Piedmont, and Italy were closing in around the Valleys; every path guarded, all their succours cut off, an overwhelming force waited the signal to massacre them. So desperate did their situation appear to the Swiss envoys, that they counselled them to “transport elsewhere the torch of the Gospel, and not keep it here to be extinguished in blood.”
The proposal to abandon their ancient inheritance, coming from such a quarter, startled the Waldenses. It produced, at first, a division of opinion in the Valleys; but ultimately they united in rejecting it. They remembered the exploits their fathers had done, and the wonders God had wrought in the mountain passes of Rora, in the defiles of Angrogna, and in the field of the Pra del Tor, and their faith reviving, they resolved, in a reliance on the same Almighty Arm which had been stretched out in their behalf in former days, to defend their hearths and altars. They repaired the old defences, and made ready for resistance: On the 17th of April, being Good Friday, they renewed their covenant, and on Easter Sunday their pastors dispensed to them the
Communion. This was the last time the sons of the Valleys partook of the Lord’s
Supper before their great dispersion.
Victor Amadeus II had pitched his camp on the plain of San Gegonzo before the
Vaudois Alps. His army consisted of five regiments of horse and foot. He was here joined by the French auxiliaries who had crossed the Alps, consisting of some dozen battalions, the united force amounting to between 15,000 and 20,000 men. The signal was to be given on Easter Monday, at break of day, by three cannon-shots, fired from the hill of Bricherasio. On the appointed morning, the Valleys of Lucerna and San
Martino, forming the two extreme opposite points of the territory, were attacked, the first by the Piedmontese host, and the last by the French, under the command of
General Catthat, a distinguished soldier. In San Martino the fighting lasted ten hours, and ended in the complete repulse of the French, who retired at night with a loss of more than 500 killed and wounded, while the Vaudois had lost only two.
[3]
On the following day the French, burning with rage at their defeat, poured a more numerous army into San Martino, which swept along the valley, burning, plundering, and
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massacring, and having crossed the mountains descended into Pramol, continuing the same indiscriminate and exterminating vengeance. To the rage of the sword were added other barbarities and outrages too shocking to be narrated.
[4]
The issue by arms being deemed uncertain, despite the vast disparity of strength, treachery, on a great seal, was now had recourse to. Wherever, throughout the
Valleys, the Vaudois were found strongly posted, and ready for battle, they were told that their brethren in the neighbouring communes had submitted, and that it was vain for them, isolated and alone as they now were, to continue their resistance. When they sent deputies to head-quarters to inquire - and passes were freely supplied to them for that purpose - they were assured that the submission had been universal, and that none save themselves were now in arms. They were assured, moreover, that should they follow the example of the rest of their nation, all their ancient liberties would be held intact.
[5]
This base artifice was successfully practiced at each of the Vaudois posts in succession, till at length the Valleys had all capitulated. We can not blame the
Waldenses, who were the victims of an act so dishonourable and vile as hardly to be credible; but the mistake, alas! was a fatal one, and had to be expiated afterwards by the endurance of woes a hundred times more dreadful than any they would have encountered in the rudest campaign. The instant consequence of the submission was a massacre which extended to all their Valleys, and which was similar in its horrors to the great butcher of 1655. In that massacre upwards of 3,000 perished. The remainder of the nation, amounting, according to Arnaud, to between 12,000 and 15,000 souls, were consigned to the various gaols and fortresses of Piedmont.
[6]
We now behold these famous Valleys, for the first time in their history, empty. The ancient lamp burns no longer. The school of the prophets in the Pra del Tor is razed.
No smoke is seen rising from cottage, and no psalm is heard ascending from dwelling or sanctuary. No herdsman leads forth his kine on the mountains, and no troop of worshippers, obedient to the summons of the Sabbath-bell, climbs the mountain paths.
The vine flings wide her arms, but no skilful hand is nigh to train her boughs and prune her luxuriance. The chestnut-tree rains its fruits, but there is no group of merry children to gather them, and they lie rotting on the ground. The terraces of the hills, that were wont to overflow with flowers and fruitage, and which presented to the eye a series of hanging gardens, now torn and breached, shoot in a mass of ruinous rubbish down the slope. Nothing is seen but dismantled forts, and the blackened ruins of churches and hamlets. A dreary silence overspreads the land, and the beasts of the field strangely multiply. A few herdsmen, hidden here and there in forests and holes of the rocks, are now the only inhabitants. Monte Viso, from out the silent vault, looks down with astonishment at the absence of that ancient race over whom, from immemorial time, he had been wont to dart his kindling glories at dawn, and let fall at eve the friendly mantle of his purple shadows.
We know not if ever before an entire nation were in prison at once. Yet now it was so.
All of the Waldensian race that remained from the sword of their executioners were immured in the dungeons of Piedmont! The pastor and his flock, the father and his family, the patriarch and the stripling had passed in, in one great procession, and exchanged their grand rock-walled Valleys, their tree-embowered homes, and their sunlit peaks, for the filth, the choking air, and the Tartarean walls of an Italian gaol.
And how were they treated in prison? As the African slave was treated on the “middle passage.” They had a sufficiency of neither food nor clothing. The bread dealt out to
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them was fetid. They had putrid water to drink. They were exposed to the sun by day and to the cold at night. They were compelled to sleep on the bare pavement, or on straw so full of vermin that the stone-floor was preferable. Disease broke out in these horrible abodes, and the mortality was fearful. “When they entered these dungeons,” says Henri Arnaud, “they counted 14,000 healthy mountaineers, but when, at the intercession of the Swiss deputies, their prisons were opened, 3,000 skeletons only crawled out.” These few words portray a tragedy so awful that the imagination recoils from the contemplation of it.
Well, at length the persecutor looses their chains, and opening their prison doors he sends forth these captives - the woe-worn remnant of a gallant people. But to what are they sent forth? To people again their ancient Valleys? To rekindle the fire on their
‘ancestral hearths? To rebuild “the holy and beautiful house” in which their fathers had praised God? Ah, no! They are thrust out of prison only to be sent into exile - to
Vaudois a living death.
The barbarity of 1655 was repeated. It was in December (1686) that the decree of liberation was issued in favour of these 3,000 men who had escaped the sword, and now survived the not less deadly epidemic of the prison. At that season, as every one knows, the snow and ice are piled to a fearful depth on the Alps; and daily tempests threaten with death the too adventurous traveller who would cross their summits. It was at this season that these poor captives, emaciated with sickness, weakened by hunger, and shivering from insufficient clothing, were commanded to rise up and cross the snowy hills. They began their journey on the afternoon of that very day on which the order arrived; for their enemies would permit no delay. One hundred and fifty of them died on their first march. At night they halted at the foot of the Mont
Cents. Next morning, when they surveyed the Alps they saw evident signs of a gathering tempest, and they besought the officer in charge to permit them, for the sake of their sick and aged, to remain where they were till the storm had spent its rage.
With heart harder than the rocks they were to traverse, the officer ordered them to resume their journey. That troop of emaciated beings began the ascent, and were soon struggling with the blinding drifts and fearful whirlwinds of the mountain. Eighty-six of their number, succumbing to the tempest, dropped by the way. Where they lay down, there they died. No relative or friend was permitted to remain behind to watch their last moments or tender them needed succour. That ever-thinning procession moved on and on over the white hills, leaving it to the falling snow to give burial to their stricken companions. When spring opened the passes of the Alps, alas! what ghastly memorials met the eye of the horror-stricken traveller.
Strewed along the track were the now unshrouded corpses of these poor exiles, the dead child lying fast locked in the arms of the dead mother. But why should we prolong this harrowing tale? The first company of these miserable exiles arrived at
Geneva on Christmas Day, 1686, having spent about three weeks on the journey.
They were followed by small parties, who crossed the Alps one after the other, being let out of prison at different times. It was not till the end of February, 1687, that the last band of these emigrants reached the hospitable gates of Geneva. But in what a plight! way-worn, sick, emaciated, and faint through hunger. Of some the tongue was swollen in their mouth, and they were unable to speak; of others the arms were bitten with the frost, so that they could not stretch them out to accept the charity offered to them; and some there were who dropped down and expired on the very threshold of
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the city, “finding,” as one has said, “the end of their life at the beginning of their liberty.” Most hospitable was the reception even them by the city of Calvin. A deputation of the principal citizens of Geneva, headed by the patriarch Gianavello, who still lived, went out to meet them on the frontier, and taking them to their homes, they vied with each other which should show them the greatest kindness. Generous city! If he who shall give a cup of cold water to a disciple shall in nowise lose his reward, how much more shalt thou be requited for this thy kindness to the suffering and sorrowing exiles of the Saviour!
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We now open the bright page of the Vaudois history. ‘We have seen nearly 3,000
Waldensian exiles enter the gates of Geneva, the feeble remnant of a population of from 14,000 to 16,000. One city could not contain them all, and arrangements were made for distributing the expatriated Vaudois among the Reformed cantons. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes had a little before thrown thousands of French
Protestants upon the hospitality of the Swiss; and now the arrival of the Waldensian refugees brought with it yet heavier demands on the public and private charity of the cantons; but the response of Protestant Helvetia was equally cordial in the case of the last comers as in that of the first, and perhaps even more so, seeing their destitution was greater. Nor were the Vaudois ungrateful. “Next to God, whose tender mercies have preserved us from being entirely consumed,” said they to their kind benefactors,
“we are indebted to you alone for life and liberty.”
Several of the German princes opened their States to these exiles; but the influence of their great enemy, Louis XIV, was then too powerful in these parts to permit of their residence being altogether an agreeable one. Constantly watched by his emissaries, and their patrons tampered with, they were moved about from place to place. The question of their permanent settlement in the future was beginning to be anxiously discussed. The project of carrying them across the sea in the ships of Holland, and planting them at the Cape, was even talked of. The idea of being separated for ever from their native land, dearer in exile than when they dwelt in it, gave them intolerable anguish. Was it not possible to reassemble their scattered colonies, and marching back to their Valleys, rekindle their ancient lamp in them? This was the question which, after three years of exile, the Vaudois began to put to themselves. As they wandered by the banks of the Rhine, or traversed the German plains, they feasted their imaginations on their far-off homes. The chestnuts shading their former abodes, the vine bending gracefully over their portal, and the meadow in front, which the crystal torrent kept perpetually bright, and whose murmur sweetly blended with the evening psalm, all rose before their eyes. They never knelt to pray but it was with their faces turned toward their grand mountains, where slept their martyred fathers.
Attempts had been made by the Duke of Savoy to people their territory by settling in it a mongrel race, partly Irish and partly Piedmontese; but the land knew not the strangers, and refused to yield its strength to them. The Vaudois had sent spies to examine its condition;
[1]
its fields lay untilled, its vines unpruned, nor had its ruins been raised up; it was almost as desolate as on the day when its sons had been driven out of it. It seemed to them that the land was waiting their return.
At length the yearning of their heart could no longer be repressed. The march back to their Valleys is one of the most wonderful exploits ever performed by any people. It is famous in history by the name of “La Rentree Glorieuse.” The parallel event which will recur to the mind of the scholar is, of course, the retreat of “the ten thousand
Greeks.” The patriotism and bravery of both will be admitted, but a candid comparison will, we think, incline one to assign the palm of heroism to the return of
“the eight hundred.”
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The day fixed on for beginning their expedition was the 10th of June, 1688. Quitting their various cantonments in Switzerland, and travelling by by-roads, they traversed the country by night, and assembled at Bex, a small town in the southern extremity of the territory of Bern. Their secret march was soon known to the senates of Zurich,
Bern, and Geneva; and, foreseeing that the departure of the exiles would compromise them with the Popish powers, their Excellencies took measures to prevent it. A bark laden with arms for their use was seized on the Lake of Geneva. The inhabitants of the Vallais, in concert with the Savoyards, at the first alarm seized the Bridge of St.
Maurice, the key of the Rhone Valley, and stopped the expedition. Thus were they, for the time, compelled to abandon their project.
To extinguish all hopes of their return to the Valleys, they were anew distributed over
Germany. But scarcely had this second dispersion been effected, when war broke out; the French troops overran the Palatinate, and the Vaudois settled there, dreading, not without reason, the soldiers of Louis XIV, retired before them, and retook the road to
Switzerland. The Protestant cantons, pitying these poor exiles, tossed from country to country by political storms, settled them once more in their former allotments.
Meanwhile, the scenes were shifting rapidly around the expatriated Vaudois, and with eyes uplifted they waited the issue. They saw their protector, William of Orange, mount the throne of England. They saw their powerful enemy, Louis XIV, attacked at once by the emperor and humiliated by the Dutch. They saw their own Prince Victor
Amadeus withdraw his soldiers from Savoy, seeing that he needed them to defend
Piedmont. It seemed to them that an invisible Hand was opening their path back to their own land. Encouraged by these tokens, they began to arrange a second time for their departure.
The place of appointed rendezvous was a wood on the northern shore of the Leman, near the town of Noyon. For days before they continued to converge, in scattered bands, and by stealthy marches, on the selected point. On the decisive evening, the
16th of August, 1689, a general muster took place under cover of the friendly wood of
Prangins. Having by solemn prayer commended their enterprise to God, they embarked on the lake, and crossed by star-light. Their means of transport would have been deficient but for a circumstance which threatened at first to obstruct their expedition, but which, in the issue, greatly facilitated it. Curiosity had drawn numbers to this part of the lake, and the boats that brought hither the sightseers furnished more amply the means of escape to the Vaudois.
At this crisis, as on so many previous ones, a distinguished man arose to lead them.
Henri Arnaud, whom we see at the head of the 800 fighting men who are setting out for their native possessions, had at first discharged the office of pastor, but the troubles of his nation compelling him to leave the Valleys, he had served in the armies of the Prince of Orange. Of decided piety, ardent patriotism, and of great decision and courage, he resented a beautiful instance of the union of the pastoral and the military character. It is hard to say whether his soldiers listened more reverentially to the exhortations he at times delivered to them from the pulpit, or to the orders he gave them on the field of battle.
Arriving on the southern shore of the lake, these 800 Vaudois bent their knees in prayer, and then began their march through a country covered with foes. Before them rose the great snow-clad mountains over which they were to fight their way. Arnaud arranged his little host into three companies - an advanced-guard, a centre, and a rear-
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guard. Seizing some of the chief men as hostages, they traversed the Valley of the
Arve to Sallenches, and emerged from its dangerous passes just as the men of the latter place had completed their preparations for resisting them.
Occasional skirmishes awaited them, but mostly their march was unopposed, for the terror of God had fallen upon the inhabitants of Savoy. Holding on their way they climbed the Haut Luce Alp,
[2]
and next that of Bon Homme, the neighbouring Alp to
Mont Blanc; sinking sometimes to their middle in snow. Steep precipices and treacherous glaciers subjected them to both toil and danger. They were wet through with the rain, which at times fell in torrents. Their provisions were growing scanty, but their supply was recruited by the shepherds of the mountains, who brought them bread and cheese, while their huts served them at night. They renewed their hostages at every stage; sometimes they “caged” - to use their own phrase - a Capuchin monk, and at other times an influential landlord, but all were treated with uniform kindness.
Having crossed the Bon Homme, which divides the basin of the Arve from that of the
Isere, they descended, on Wednesday, the fifth day of their march, into the valley of the latter stream. They had looked forward to this stage of their journey with great misgivings, for the numerous population of the Val Isere was known to be well armed, and decidedly hostile, and might be expected to oppose their march, but the enemy was “still as a stone” till the people had passed over. They next traversed Mont
Iseran, and the yet more formidable Mont Cenis, and finally descended into the
Valley of the Dora. It was here, on Saturday, the 24th of August, that they encountered for the first time a considerable body of regular troops.
As they traversed the valley they were met by a peasant, of whom they inquired whether they could have provisions by paying for them. “Come on this way,” said the man, in a tone that had slight touch of triumph in it, “you will find all that you want; they are preparing an excellent supper for you.”
[3]
They were led into the defile of
Salabertrand, where the Col d’Albin closes in upon the stream of the Dora, and before they were aware they found themselves in presence of the French army, whose campfires - for night had fallen - illumined far and wide the opposite slope. Retreat was impossible. The French were 2,500 strong, flanked by the garrison of Exiles, and supported by a miscellaneous crowd of armed followers.
Under favour of the darkness, they advanced to the bridge which crossed the Dora, on the opposite bank of which the French were encamped. To the challenge, “Who goes there?” the Vandots answered, “Friends.” The instant reply shouted out was “Kill, kill!” followed by a tremendous fire, which was kept up for a quarter of an hour. It did no harm, however, for Arnaud had bidden his soldiers lie flat on their faces, and permit the deadly shower to pass over them. But now a division of the French appeared in their rear, thus placing them between two fires. Some one in the Vaudois army, seeing that all must be risked, shouted out, “Courage! the bridge is won!” At these words the Vaudois started to their feet, rushed across the bridge sword in hand, and clearing it, they threw themselves with the impetuosity of a whirlwind upon the enemy’s entrenchments.
Confounded by the suddenness of the attack, the French could only use the butt-ends of their muskets to parry the blows. The fighting lasted two hours, and ended in the total rout of the French. Their leader, the Marquis de Larrey, after a fruitless attempt
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to rally his soldiers, fled wounded to Briancon, exclaiming, “Is it possible that I have lost the battle and my honour?”
Soon thereafter the moon rose and showed the field of battle to the victors. On it, stretched out in death, lay 600 French soldiers, besides officers; and strewn promiscuously with the fallen, all over the field, were arms, military stores, and provisions. Thus had been suddenly opened an armoury and magazines to men who stood much in need both of weapons and of food. Having amply replenished themselves, they collected what they could not carry away into a heap, and set fire to it. The loud and multifarious noises formed by the explosions of the gunpowder, the sounding of the trumpets, and the shouting of the captains, who, throwing their caps in the air, exclaimed, “Thanks be to the Lord of hosts who hath given us the victory,” echoed like the thunder of heaven, and reverberating from hill to hill, formed a most extraordinary and exciting scene, and one that is seldom witnessed amid these usually quiet mountains. This great victory cost the Waldenses only fifteen killed and twelve wounded.
Their fatigue was great, but they feared to halt on the battle-field, and so, rousing those who had already sunk into sleep, they commenced climbing the lofty Mont Sci.
The day was breaking as they gained the summit. It was Sunday, and Henri Arnaud, halting till all should assemble, pointed out to them, just as they were becoming visible in the morning light, the mountain-tops of their own land. Welcome sight to their longing eyes! Bathed in the radiance of the rising sun, it seemed to them, as one snowy peak began to burn after another, that the mountains were kindling into joy at the return of their long-absent sons. This army of soldiers resolved itself into a congregation of worshippers, and the summit of Mont Sci became their church.
Kneeling on the mountaintop, the battle-field below them, and the solemn and sacred peaks of the Col du Pis, the Col la Vechera, and the glorious pyramid of Monte Viso looking down upon them in reverent silence, they humbled themselves before the
Eternal, confessing their sins, and giving thanks for their many deliverances. Seldom has worship more sincere or more rapt been offered than that which this day ascended from this congregation of warrior-worshippers gathered under the dome-like vault that rose over them.
Refreshed by the devotions of the Sunday, and exhilarated by the victory of the day before, the heroic band now rushed down to take possession of their inheritance, from which the single Valley of Clusone only parted them. It was three years and a half since they had crossed the Alps, a crowd of exiles, worn to skeletons by sickness and confinement, and now they were returning a marshalled host, victorious over the army of France, and ready to encounter that of Piedmont. They traversed the Clusone, a plain of about two miles in width, watered by the broad, clear, blue-tinted
Gelmagnasca, and bounded by hills, which offer to the eye a succession of terraces, clothed with the richest vines, mingled with the chestnut and the apple tree. They entered the narrow defile of Pis, where a detachment of Piedmontese soldiers had been posted to guard the pass, but who took flight at the approach of the Vaudois, thus opening to them the gate of one of the grandest of their Valleys, San Martino. On the twelfth day after setting out from the shores of the Leman they crossed the frontier, and stood once more within the limits of their inheritance. When they mustered at
Balsiglia, the first Vaudois village which they entered, in the western extremity of San
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Martino, they found that fatigue, desertion, and battle had reduced their numbers from
800 to 700.
Their first Sunday after their return was passed at the village of Prali. Of all their sanctuaries the church of Prali alone remained standing; of the others only the ruins were to be seen. They resolved to recommence this day their ancient and scriptural worship. Purging the church of its Popish ornaments, one half of the little army, laying down their arms at the door, entered the edifice, while the other half stood without, the church being too small to contain them all. Henri Arnaud, the soldierpastor, mounting a table which was placed in the porch, preached to them. They began their worship by chanting the 74th Psalm - “O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? Why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?” etc. The preacher then took as his text the 129th Psalm - “Many a time have they afflicted me front my youth, may Israel now say.” The wonderful history of his people behind him, so to speak, and the reconquest of their land before him, we can imagine how thrilling every word of his discourse must have been, and how it must have called up the glorious achievements of their fathers, provoking the generous emulation of their sons. The worship was closed by these 700 warriors chanting in magnificent chorus the psalm from which their leader had preached. So passed their first Sunday in their land.
To many it seemed significant that here the returned exiles should spend their first
Sunday, and resume their sanctuary services. They remembered how this same village of Prali had been the scene of a horrible outrage at the time of their exodus. The
Pastor of Prali, M. Leidet, a singularly pious man, had been discovered by the soldiers as he was praying under a rock, and being dragged forth, he was first tortured and mutilated, and then hanged; his last words being, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” It was surely appropriate, after the silence of three years and a half, during which the rage of the persecutor had forbidden the preaching of the glorious Gospel, that its reopening should take place in the pulpit of the martyr Leidet.
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The Vaudois had entered the land, but they had not yet got possession of it. They were a mere handful; they would have to face the large and well-appointed army of
Piedmont, aided by the French. But their great leader to his courage added faith. The
“cloud” which had guided them over the great mountains, with their snows and abysses, would cover their camp, and lead them forth to battle, and bring them in with victory. It was not surely that they might die in the land, that they had been able to make so marvellous a march back to it. Full of these courageous hopes, the “seven hundred” now addressed themselves to their great task.
They began to climb the Col Julten, which separates Prali from the fertile and central valley of the Waldenses, that of Lucerna. As they toiled up and were now near the summit of the pass, the Piedmontese soldiers, who had been stationed there, shouted out, “Come on, ye Barbers; we guard the pass, and there are 3,000 of us!” They did come on. To force the entrenchments and put to flight the garrison was the work of a moment. In the evacuated camp the Vaudois found a store of ammunition and provisions, which to them was a most seasonable booty. Descending rapidly the slopes and precipices of the great mountain, they surprised and took the town of
Bobbio, which nestles at its foot. Driving out the Popish inhabitants to whom it had been made over, they took possession of their ancient dwellings, and paused a little while to rest after the march and conflict of the previous days. Here their second
Sunday was passed, and public worship again celebrated, the congregation chanting their psalm to the clash of arms. On the day following, repairing to the “Rock of
Sibaud,” where their fathers had pledged their faith to God and to one another, they renewed on the same sacred spot their ancient oath, swearing with uplifted hands to abide steadfastly in the profession of the Gospel, to stand by one another, and never to lay down their arms till they had re-established themselves and their brethren in those galleys, which they believed had as really been given to them by the God of heaven, as Palestins had been to the Jews.
Their next march was to Villaro, which is situated half-way between Bobbio at the head and La Torre at the entrance of the valley. This town they stormed and took, driving away the new inhabitants. But here their career of conquest was suddenly checked. The next day a strong reinforcement of regular troops coming up, the
Vaudois were under the necessity of abandoning Villaro, and falling back on
Bobbio.
[1]
This patriot army now became parted into two bands, and for many weeks had to wage a sort of guerrilla war on the mountains. France on the one side, and
Piedmont on the other, poured in soldiers, in the hope of exterminating this handful of warriors. The privations and hardships which they endured were as great as the victories which they won in their daily skirmishes were marvellous. But though always conquering, their ranks were rapidly thinning. What though a hundred of the enemy were slain for one Waldensian who fell? The Piedmontese could recruit their numbers, the Vaudois could not add to theirs. They had now neither ammunition nor provisions, save what they took from their enemies; and, to add to their perplexities, winter was near, which would bury their mountains beneath its snows, and leave them without food or shelter. A council of war was held, and it was ultimately resolved to repair to the Valley oi Martino, and entrench themselves on La Balsiglia.
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This brings us to the last heroic stand of the returned exiles. But first let us sketch the natural strength and grandeur of the spot on which that stand was made. The Balsiglia is situated at the western extremity of San Martino, which in point of grandeur yields to few things in the Waldensian Alps. It is some five miles long by about two in width, having as its floor the richest meadow-land; and for walls, mountains superbly hung with terraces, overflowing with flower and fruitage, and ramparted a-top with splintered cliffs and dark peaks. It is closed at the western extremity by the naked face of a perpendicular mountain, down which the Germagnasca is seen to dash in a flood of silver. The meadows and woods that clothe the bosom of the valley are seamed by a broad line of white, formed by the torrent, the bed of which is strewn with so many rocks that it looks a continuous river of foam.
Than the clothing of the mountains that form the bounding walls of this valley nothing could be finer. On the right, as one advances up it, rises a succession of terraced vineyards, finely diversified with corn-fields and massy knolls of rock, which rise crowned with cottages or hamlets, looking out from amid their rich embowerings of chestnut and apple-tree. Above this fruit-bearing zone are the grassy uplands, the resort of herdsmen, which in their turn give place to the rocky ridges that rise off to the higher summits, which recede into the clouds.
On the left the mountain-wall is more steep, but equally rich in its clothing. Swathing its foot is a carpeting of delicious sword. Trees, vast of girth, part, with their overarching branches, the bright sunlight. Higher up are fields of maize and forests of chestnut; and higher still is seen the rock-loving birch, with its silvery stem and graceful tresses. Along the splintered rocks a-top runs a bristling line of firs, forming a mighty chevaux-de-frise.
Toward the head of the valley, near the vast perpendicular cliff already mentioned, which shuts it in on the west, is seen a glorious assemblage of mountains. One mighty cone uplifts itself above and behind another mighty cone, till the last and highest buries its top in the rolling masses of cloud, which are seen usually hanging like a canopy above this part of the valley. These noble aiguilles, four in number, rise feathery with firs, and remind one of the fretted pinnacles of some colossal cathedral.
This is La Balsiglia. It was on the terraces of this mountain that Henri Arnaud, with his patriot-warriors, pitched his camp, amid the dark tempests of winter, and the yet darker tempests of a furious and armed bigotry. The Balsiglia shoots its gigantic pyramids heavenward, as if proudly conscious of having once been the resting-place of the Vaudois ark. It is no castle of man’s erecting; it had for its builder the Almighty
Architect himself.
It only remains, in order to complete this picture of a spot so famous in the wars of conscience and liberty, to say that behind the Balsiglia on the west rises the lofty Col du Pis. It is rare that this mountain permits to the spectator a view of his full stature, for his dark sides run up and bury themselves in the clouds. Face to face with the Col du Pis, stands on the other side of the valley, the yet loftier Mont Guinevert, with, most commonly, a veil of cloud around him, as if he too were unwilling to permit to the eye of visitor a sight of his stately proportions. Thus do these two Alps, like twin giants, guard this famous valley.
It was on the lower terrace of this pyramidal mountain, the Balsiglia, that Henri
Arnaud - his army now, alas! reduced to 400 - sat down. Viewed from the level of the
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valley, the peak seems to terminate in a point, but on ascending, the top expanse into a level grassy plateau. Steep and smooth as escarped fortress, it is tin-scalable on every side save that on which a stream rushes past from the mountains. The skill of Arnaud enabled him to add to the natural strength of the Vaudois position, the defences of art.
They enclosed themselves within earthen walls and ditches; they erected covered ways; they dug out some four-score cellars in the rock, to hold provisions, and they built huts as temporary barracks. Three springs that gushed out of the rock supplied them with water. They constructed similar entrenchments on each of the three peaks that rose above them, so that if the first were taken they could ascend to the second, and so on to the fourth. On the loftiest summit of the Balsiglia, which commanded the entire valley, they placed a sentinel, to watch the movements of the enemy.
Only three days elapsed till four battalions of the French army arrived, and enclosed the Balsiglia on every side. On the 29th of October, an assault was made on the
Vaudois position, which was repulsed with great slaughter of the enemy, and the loss of not one man to the defenders. The snows of early winter had begun to fall, and the
French general thought it best to postpone the task of capturing the Balsiglia till spring. Destroying all the corn which the Vaudois had collected and stored in the villages, he began his retreat from San Martiino, and, taking laconic farewell of the
Waldenses, he bade them have patience till Easter, when he would again pay them a visit.
[2]
All through the winter of 1689-90, the Vaudois remained in their mountain fortress, resting after the marches, battles, and sieges of the previous months, and preparing for the promised return of the French. Where Henri Arnaud had pitched his camp, there had he also raised his altar, and if from that mountain-top was pealed forth the shout of battle, from it ascended also, morning and night, the prayer, and the psalm. Besides the daily devotions, Henri Arnaud preached two sermons weekly, one on Sunday and another on Thursday. At stated times he administered the Lord’s Supper. Nor was the commissariat overlooked. Foraging parties brought in wine, chestnuts, apples, and other fruits, which the autumn, now far advanced, had fully ripened. A strong detachment made an incursion into the French valleys of Pragelas and Queyras, and returned with salt, butter, some hundred head of sheep, and a few oxen. The enemy, before departing, had destroyed their stock of grain, and as the fields were long since reaped, they despaired of being able to repair their loss. And yet bread to last them all the winter through had been provided, in a way so marvellous as to convince them that He who feeds the fowls of the air was caring for them. Ample magazines of grain lay all around their encampment, although unknown as yet to them. The snow that year began to fall earlier than usual, and it covered up the ripened corn, which the
Popish inhabitants had not time to cut when the approach of the Vaudois compelled them to flee. From this unexpected store-house the garrison drew as they had need.
Little did the Popish Peasantry, when they sowed the seed in spring, dream that
Vaudois hands would reap the harvest.
Corn had been provided for them, and, to Vaudois eyes, provided almost as miraculously as was the manna for the Israelites, but where were they to find the means of grinding it into meal? At almost the foot of the Balsiglia, on the stream of the Germagnasca, is a little mill. The owner, M. Tron-Poulat, three years before, when going forth into exile with his brethren, threw the mill-stone into the river; “for,” said he, “it may yet be needed.” It was needed now, and search being made for it, it was
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discovered, drawn out of the stream, and the mill set a-working. There was another and more distant mill at the entrance of the valley, to which the garrison had recourse when the immediate precincts of the Balsiglia were occupied by the enemy, and the nearer mill was not available. Both mills exist to this day, their roofs of brown slate may be seen by the visitor, peering up through the luxuriant foliage of the valley, the wheel motionless, it may be, and the torrent which turned it shooting idly past in a volley of spray.
With the return of spring, the army of France and Piedmont reappeared. The Balsiglia was now completely invested, the combined force amounting to 22,000 in all - 10,000
French and 12,000 Piedmontese. The troops were commanded by the celebrated De
Catinat, lieutenant-general of the armies of France. The “four hundred” Waldenses looked down from their “camp of rock” on the valley beneath them, and saw it glittering with steel by day, and shining with camp-fires by night. Catinat never doubted that a single day’s fighting would enable him to capture the place. That the victory, which he looked upon as already won, might be duly celebrated, he ordered four hundred ropes to be sent along with the army, in order to hang at once the four hundred Waldenses; and he had commanded the inhabitants of Pinerolo to prepare feux-de-joie to grace his return from the campaign. The head-quarters of the French were at Great Passet - so called in contradistinction to Little Passet, situated a mile lower in the valley. Great Passer counts some thirty roofs, and is placed on an immense ledge of rock that juts out from the foot of Mont Guinevert, some 800 feet above the stream, and right opposite the Balsiglia. On the flanks of this rocky ledge are still to be seen the ruts worn by the cannon and baggage-wagons of the French army. There can be no doubt that these marks are the memorials of the siege, for no other wheeled vehicles ever were in these mountains.
[3]
Having reconnoitred, Catinat ordered the assault (1st May, 1690). Only on that side of
Balsiglia, where a stream trickles down from the mountains, and which offers a gradual slope, instead of a wall of rock as everywhere else, could the attack be made with any chance of success. But this point Henri Arnaud had taken care to fortify with strong palisades. Five hundred picked men, supported by seven thousand musketeers, advanced to storm the fortress.
[4]
They rushed forward with ardour: they threw themselves upon the palisades; but they found it impossible to tear them down, formed as they were of great trunks, fastened by mighty boulders. Massed behind the defence were the Vaudois, the younger men loading the muskets, and the veterans taking steady aim, while the besiegers were falling in dozens at every volley. The assailants beginning to waver, the Waldensians made a fierce sally, sword in hand, and cut in pieces those whom the musket had spared. Of the five hundred picked soldiers only some score lived to rejoin the main body, which had been spectators from the valley of their total rout. Incredible as it may appear, we are nevertheless assured of it as a fact, that not a Vaudois was killed or wounded: not a bullet had touched one of them. The fireworks which Catinat had been so provident as to bid the men of Pinerolo get ready to celebrate his victory, were not needed that night.
Despairing of reducing the fortress by other means, the French now brought up cannon, and it was not till the 14th of May that all was ready, and that the last and grand assault was made. Across the ravine in which the conflict we have just described took place, an immense knoll juts out, at art equal level with the lower entrenchments of the Waldenses. To this rock the cannons were hoisted up to play
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upon the fortress.
[5]
Never before had the sound of artillery shaken the rocks of San
Martino. It was the morning of Whit-Sunday, and the Waldenses were preparing to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, when the first boom from the enemy’s battery broke upon their ear.
[6]
All day the cannonading continued, and its dreadful noises, reechoed from rock to rock, and rolled upwards to the summits of the Col du Pis and the
Mont Guinevert, were still further heightened by the thousands of musketeers who were stationed all round the Balsiglia. When night closed in the ramparts of the
Waldenses were in ruins, and it was seen that it would not be possible longer to maintain the defence. What was to be done? The cannonading had ceased for the moment, but assuredly the dawn would see the attack renewed.
Never before had destruction appeared to impend so inevitably over the Vandots. To remain where they were was certain death, yet whither could they flee? Behind them rose the unsealable precipices of the Col du Pis, and beneath them lay the valley swarming with foes. If they should wait till the morning broke it would be impossible to pass the enemy without being seen; and even now, although it was night, the numerous camp-fires that blazed beneath them made it almost as bright as day. But the hour of their extremity was the time of God’s opportunity. Often before it had been seen to be so, but perhaps never so strikingly as now. While they looked this way and that way, but could discover no escape from the net that enclosed them, the mist began to gather on the summits of the mountains around them. They knew the old mantle that was wont to be cast around their fathers in the hour of peril. It crept lower and yet lower on the great mountains. Now it touched the supreme peak of the
Balsiglia.
Will it mock their hopes? Will it only touch, but not cover their mountain camp?
Again it is in motion; downward roll its white fleecy billows, and now it hangs in sheltering folds around the war-battered fortress and its handful of heroic defenders.
They dared not as yet attempt escape, for still the watch-fires burned brightly in the valley. But it was only for a few minutes longer. The mist kept its downward course, and now all was dark. A Tartarean gloom filled the gorge of San Martino.
At this moment, as the garrison stood mute, pondering whereunto these things would grow, Captain Poulat, a native of these parts, broke silence. He bade them be of good courage, for he knew the paths, and would conduct them past the French and
Piedmontese lines, by a track known only to himself. Crawling on their hands and knees, and passing close to the French sentinels, yet hidden from them by the mist, they descended frightful precipices, and made their escape. “He who has not seen such paths,” says Arnaud in his Rentree Glorieuse, “can not conceive the danger of them, and will be inclined to consider my account of the march a mere fiction. But it is strictly true; and I must add, the place is so frightful that even some of the Vaudois themselves were terror-struck when they saw by daylight the nature of the spot they had passed in the dark.” When the day broke, every eye in the plain below was turned to the Balsiglia. That day the four hundred ropes which Catinat had brought with him were to be put in requisition, and the feux-de-joie so long prepared were to be lighted at Pinerolo. What was their amazement to find the Balsiglia abandoned! The Vaudois had escaped and were gone, and might be seen upon the distant mountains, climbing the snows, far out of the reach of their would-be captors. Well might they sing -
“Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers.
The snare is broken, and we are escaped.”
[7]
Psalm 124:7
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There followed several days, during which they wandered from hill to hill, or lay hid in woods, suffering great privations, and encountering numerous perils. At last they succeeded in reaching the Pra del Tor. To their amazement and joy, on arriving at this celebrated and hallowed spot, they found deputies from their prince, the Duke of
Savoy, waiting them with an overture of peace. The Vaudois were as men that dreamed. An overture of peace! How was this? A coalition, including Germany, Great
Britain, Holland, and Spain, had been formed to check the ambition of France, and three days had been given Victor Amadeus to say to which side he would join himself the Leaguers or Louis XIV. He resolved to break with Louis and take part with the coalition. In this case, to whom could he so well commit the keys of the Alps as to his trusty Vaudois? Hence the overture that met them in the Pra del Tor. Ever ready to rally round the throne of their prince the moment the hand of persecution was withdrawn, the Vaudois closed with the peace offered them. Their towns and lands were restored: their churches were reopened for Protestant worship: their brethren still in prison at Turin were liberated, and the colonists of their countrymen in Germany had passports to return to their homes; and thus, after a dreary interval of three and a half years, the Valleys were again peopled with their ancient race, and resounded with their ancient songs. So closed that famous period of their history, which, in respect of the wonders, we might say the miracles that attended it, we can compare only to the march of the chosen people through the wilderness to the Land of Promise.
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With this second planting of the Vaudois in their Valleys, the period of their great persecutions may be said to have come to an end. Their security was not complete, nor their measure of liberty entire. They were still subject to petty oppressions; enemies were never wanting to whisper things to their prejudice; little parties of
Jesuits would from time to time appear in their Valleys, the forerunners, as they commonly found them, of some new and hostile edict; they lived in continual apprehension of having the few privileges which had been conceded to them swept away; and on one occasion they were actually threatened with a second expatriation.
They knew, moreover, that Rome, the real author of all their calamities and woes, still meditated their extermination, and that she had entered a formal protest against their rehabilitation, and given the duke distinctly to understand that to be the friend of the
Vaudois was to be the enemy of the Pope.
[1]
Nevertheless, their condition was tolerable compared with the frightful tempests which had darkened their sky in previous eras.
The Waldenses had everything to begin anew. Their numbers were thinned; they were bowed down by poverty; but they had vast recuperative power; and their brethren in
England and Germany hastened to aid them in reorganizing their Church, and bringing once more into play that whole civil and ecclesiastical economy which the
“exile” had so rudely broken in pieces. William III of England incorporated a Vaudois regiment at his own expense, which he placed at the service of the duke, and to this regiment it was mainly owing that the duke was not utterly overwhelmed in his wars with his former ally, Louis XIV. At one point of the campaign, when hard pressed,
Victor Amadeus had to sue for the protection of the Vaudois, on almost the very spot where the deputies of Gianavello had sued to him for peace, but had sued in vain.
In 1692 there were twelve churches in the Valleys; but the people were unable to maintain a pastor to each. They were ground down by military imposts. Moreover, a peremptory demand was made upon them for payment of the arrears of taxes which had accrued in respect of their lands during the three years they had been absent, and when to them there was neither seed-time nor harvest. Anything more extortionate could not be imagined. In their extremity, Mary of England, the consort of William III granted them a “Royal Subsidy,” to provide pastors and schoolmasters, and this grant was increased with the increased number of parishes, till it reached the annual sum of
£550. A collection which was made in Great Britain at a subsequent period (1770) permitted an augmentation of the salaries of the pastors. This latter fund bore the name of the “National Subsidy,” to distinguish it from the former, the “Royal
Subsidy.” The States-General of Holland followed in the wake of the English sovereign, and made collections for salaries to schoolmasters, gratuities to superannuated pastors, and for the founding of a Latin school. Nor must we omit to state that the Protestant cantons of Switzerland appropriated bursaries to students from the Valleys at their academies - one at Basle, five at Lausanne, and two at
Geneva.
[2]
The policy of the Court of Turin towards the Waldenses changed with the shifting in the great current of European politics. At one unfavourable moment, when the
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influence of the Vatican was in the ascendant, Henri Arnaud, who had so gloriously led back the Israel of the Alps to their ancient inheritance, was banished from the
Valleys, along with others, his companions in patriotism and virtue, as now in exile.
England, through William, sought to draw the hero to her own shore, but Arnaud retired to Schoenberg, where he spent his last years in the humble and most affectionate discharge of the duties of a pastor among his expatriated countrymen, whose steps he guided to the heavenly abodes, as he had done those of their brethren to their earthly land. he died in 1721, at the age of four-score years.
The century passed without any very noticeable event. The spiritual condition of the
Vandots languished. The year 1789 brought with it astounding changes. The French
Revolution rung out the knell of the old times, and introduced, amidst those earthquake-shocks that convulsed nations, and laid thrones and altars prostrate, a new political age. The Vaudois once again passed under the dominion of France. There followed an enlargement of their civil rights, and an amelioration of their social condition; but, unhappily, with the friendship of France came the poison of its literature, and Voltairianism threatened to inflict more deadly injury on the Church of the Alps than all the persecutions of the previous centuries. At the Restoration the
Waldenses were given back to their former sovereign, and with their return to the
House of Savoy they returned to their ancient restrictions, though the hand of bloody persecution could no more be stretched out.
The time was now drawing near when this venerable people was to obtain a final emancipation. That great deliverance rose on them, as day rises on the earth, by slow stages. The visit paid them by the apostolic Felix Neff, in 1808, was the first dawning of their new day: With him a breath from heaven, it was felt, had passed over the dry bones. The next stage in their resurrection was the visit of Dr. William Stephen Gilly, in 1828. He cherished, he tells us, the conviction that “this is the spot from which it is likely that the great Sower will again cast his seed, when it shall please him to permit the pure Church of Christ to resume her seat in those Italian States from which
Pontifical intrigues have dislodged her.”
[3]
The result of Dr. Gilly’s visit was the erection of a college at La Torre, for the instruction of youth and the training of ministers, and an hospital for the sick; besides awakening great interest on their behalf in England.
[4]
After Dr. Gilly there stood up another to befriend the Waldenses, and prepare them for their coming day of deliverance. The career of General Beckwith is invested with a romance not unlike that which belongs to the life of Ignatius Loyola. Beckwith was a young soldier, and as brave, and chivalrous, and ambitious of glory as Loyola. He had passed unhurt through battle and siege. He fought at Waterloo till the enemy was in full retreat, and the sun was going down. But a flying soldier discharged his musket at a venture, and the leg of the young officer was hopelessly shattered by the bullet.
Beckwith, like Loyola, passed months upon a bed of pain, during which he drew forth from his portmanteau his neglected Bible, and began to read and study it. He had lain down, like Loyola, a knight of the sword, and like him he rose up a knight of the
Cross, but in a truer sense. One day in 1827 he paid a visit to Apsley House, and while he waited for the duke, he took up a volume which was lying on the table.
It was Dr. Gilly’s narrative of his visit to the Waldenses. Beckwith felt himself drawn irresistibly to a people with whose wonderful history this book made him acquainted for the first time. From that hour his life was consecrated to them. He lived among
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them as a father - as a king. He devoted his fortune to them. He built schools, and churches, and parsonages. He provided improved school-books, and suggested better modes of teaching. He strove above all things to quicken their spiritual life.
He taught them how to respond to the exigencies of modern times. He specially inculcated upon them that the field was wider than their Valleys; and that they would one day be called to arise and to walk through Italy, in the length of it and in the breadth of it. He was their advocate at the Court of Turin; and when he had obtained for them the possession of a burying-ground outside their Valleys, he exclaimed,
“Now they have got infeoffment of Piedmont, as the patriarchs did of Canaan, and soon all the land will be theirs.”
[5]
But despite the efforts of Gilly and Beckwith, and the growing spirit of toleration, the
Waldenses continued to groan under a load of political and social disabilities. They were still a proscribed race.
The once goodly limits of their Valleys had, in later times, been greatly contracted, and like the iron cell in the story, their territory was almost yearly tightening its circle round them. They could not own, or even farm, a foot-breadth of land, or practice any industry, beyond their own boundary. They could not bury their dead save in their
Valleys; and when it chanced that any of their people died at Turin or elsewhere, their corpses had to be carried all the way to their own graveyards They were not permitted to erect a tombstone above their dead, or even to enclose their burial-grounds with a wall. They were shut out from all the learned and liberal professions - they could not be bankers, physicians, or lawyers. No avocation was left them but that of tending their herds and pruning their vines. When any of them emigrated to Turin, or other
Piedmontese town, they were not permitted to be anything but domestic servants.
There was no printing-press in their Valleys - they were forbidden to have one; and the few books they possessed, mostly Bibles, catechisms, and hymn-books, were printed abroad, chiefly in Great Britain; and when they arrived at La Torre, the
Moderator had to sign before the Reviser-in-Chief an engagement that not one of these books should be sold, or even lent, to a Roman Catholic.
[6]
They were forbidden to evangelize or make converts. But though lettered on the one side they were not equally protected on the other, for the priests had full liberty to enter their Valleys and proselytise; and if a boy of twelve or a girl of ten professed their willingness to enter the Roman Church, they were to be taken from their parents, that they might with the more freedom carry out their intention. They could not marry save among their own people. They could not erect a sanctuary save on the soil of their own territory. They could take no degree at any of the colleges of Piedmont. In short, the duties, lights, and privileges that constitute life they were denied. They were reduced as nearly as was practicable to simple existence, with this one great exception
- which was granted them not as a right, but as a favour - namely, the liberty of
Protestant worship within their territorial limits.
The Revolution of 1848, with trumpet-peal, sounded the overthrow of all these restrictions. They fell in one day. The final end of Providence in preserving that people during long centuries of fearful persecutions now began to be seen. The
Waldensian Church became the door by which freedom of conscience entered Italy.
When the hour came for framing a new constitution for Piedmont, it was found desirable to give standing-room in that constitution to the Waldenses, and this
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necessitated the introduction into the edict of the great principle of freedom of worship as a right. The Waldenses had contended for that principle for ages - they had maintained and vindicated it by their sufferings and martyrdoms; and therefore they were necessitated to demand, and the Piedmontese Government to grant, this great principle. It was the only one of the many new constitutions framed for Italy at that same time in which freedom of conscience was enacted. Nor would it have found a place in the Piedmontese constitution, but for the circumstance that here were the
Waldenses, and that their great distinctive principle demanded legal recognition, otherwise they would remain outside the constitution. The Vaudois alone had fought the battle, but all their countrymen shared with them the fruits of the great victory.
When the news of the Statute of Carlo Alberto reached La Torre there were greetings on the streets, psalms in the churches, and blazing bonfires at night on the crest of the snowy Alps.
At the door of her Valleys, with lamp in hand, its oil unspent and its light unextinguished, as seen, at the era of 1848, the Church of the Alps, prepared to obey the summons of her heavenly King, who has passed by in earthquake and whirlwind, casting down the thrones that of old oppressed her, and opening the doors of her ancient prison. She is now to go forth and be “The Light of all Italy,”
[7]
as Dr. Gilly, twenty years before, had foretold she would at no distant day become. Happily not all
Italy as yet, but only Piedmont, was opened to her. She addressed herself with zeal to the work of erecting churches and forming congregations in Turin and other towns of
Piedmont. Long a stranger to evangelistic work, the Vaudois Church had time and opportunity thus given her to acquire the mental courage and practical habits needed in the novel circumstances in which she was now placed. She prepared evangelists, collected funds, organized colleges and congregations, and in various other ways perfected her machinery in anticipation of the wider field that Providence was about to open to her.
It is now the year 1859, and the drama which had stood still since 1849 begins once more to advance. In that year France declared war against the Austrian occupation of the Italian peninsula. The tempest of battle passes from the banks of the Po to those of the Adige, along the plain of Lombardy, rapid, terrible, and decisive as the thundercloud of the Alps, and the Tedeschi retreat before the victorious arms of the French.
The blood of the three great battles of the campaign was scarcely dry before Austrian
Lombardy, Modena, Parma, Tuscany, and part of the Pontifical States had annexed themselves to Piedmont, and their inhabitants had become fellow-citizens of the
Waldenses. With scarcely a pause there followed the brilliant campaign of Garibaldi in Sicily and Naples, and these rich and ample territories were also added to the kingdom of the patriotic Victor Emmanuel. We now behold the whole of Italy - one little spot excepted, the greatly diminished “States of the Church” - comprehended in the Kingdom of Piedmont, and brought under the operation of that constitution which contained in its bosom the beneficent principle of freedom of conscience. The whole of Italy, from the Alps to Etna, with the exception already stated, now became the field of the Waldensian Church. Nor was this the end of the drama. Another ten years pass away: France again sends forth her armies to battle, believing that she can command victory as aforetime. The result of the brief but terrible campaign of 1870, in which the French Empire disappeared and the German uprose, was the opening of the gates of Rome. And let us mark for in the little incident we hear the voice of ten centuries - in the first rank of the soldiers whose cannon had burst open the old gates,
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there enters a Vaudois colporteur with a bundle of Bibles. The Waldenses now kindle their lamp at Rome, and the purpose of the ages stands revealed!
Who can fail to see in this drama, advancing so regularly and majestically, that it is the Divine Mind that arranges, and the Divine Hand that executes? Before this Power it becomes us to bow down, giving thanks that he does his will, nor once turns aside for the errors of those that would aid or the strivings of those that would oppose his plan; and, by steps unfathomably wise and sublimely grand, carries onward to their full accomplishment his infinitely beneficent purposes.
93

CHAPTER 1
[1]
Compare Antoine Monastier, History of the Vaudois Church, p. 121 (Lond.,
1848), with Alexis Muston, Israel of the Alps~ p. 8 (Lond., 1852).
[2]
Monastier, p. 123.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Histoire Generale des Eglises Evangeliques des Vallees de Piedmont, ou
Vaudoises. Par Jean Leger. Part 2, pp. 6,7. Leyden, 1669. Monastier, pp. 123,124.
[6]
The bull is given in full in Leger, who also says that he had made a faithful copy of it, and lodged it with other documents in the University Library of Cambridge.
[Hist. Gen. des Eglises Vaud., part 2, pp. 7-15.)
[7]
Muston, Israel of the Alps, p. 10.
[8]
Leger, livr. 2, p. 7.
[9]
Ibid., livr. 2., p. 26.
CHAPTER 2
[1]
Monastier, p. 128.
[2]
Muston, p. 20.
[3]
Ibid., part 2, p. 234.
[4]
Monastier, p. 129.
CHAPTER 3
[1]
Monastier, p. 130.
[2]
Monastier, pp. 133,134.
[3]
Monastier, p. 134.
[4]
The Author was shown this pool when he visited the chasm. No one of the Valleys of the Waldenses is more illustrated by the sad, yet glorious, scenes of their martyrdom than this Valley of Angrogna. Every rock in it has its story. As you pass through it you are shown the spot where young children were dashed against the stones - the spot where men and women, stripped naked, were rolled up as balls, and precipitated down the mountain, and where caught by the stump of tree, or projecting angle of rock, they hung transfixed, enduring for days the agony of a living death.
You are shown the entrance of caves, into which some hundreds of the Vaudois having fled, their enemies, lighting a fire at the mouth of their hiding-place, ruthlessly
94

killed them all. Time would fail to tell even a tithe of what has been done and suffered in this famous pass.
[5]
Muston, p. 11.
[6]
Leger livr. 2, p. 26.
[7]
Leger, livr. 2, p. 26.
[8]
Leger and Gilles say that it was Philip VII who put an end to this war. Monastier says they “are mistaken, for this prince was then in France, and did not begin to reign till 1496.” This peace was granted in 1489.
CHAPTER 4
[1]
Monastier, Hist. of the Vaudois, p. 138.
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Gilles, p. 80. Monastier, p. 141.
[4]
Ruchat, tom. 3, pp. 176, 557.
CHAPTER 5
[1]
George Morel states, in his Memoirs, that at this time there were more than
800,000 persons of the religion of the Vaudois. (Leger, Hist. des Vaudois, livr. 2, p.
27.) He includes, of course, in this estimate the Vaudois in the Valleys, on the plain of
Piedmont, in Naples and Calabria, in the south of France, and in the countries of
Germany.
[2]
Gilles, p. 40. Monastier, p. 146.
[3]
Leger, livr. 2, p. 27.
[4]
Monastier, p. 153.
[5]
Leger, livr. 2, p. 29.
[6]
Leger, livr. 2, p. 29. Monsastier, p. 168.
[7]
Leger, livr. 2, p. 28.
[8]
Muston, Israel of the Alps, chapter 8.
[9]
Leger, livr. 2, p. 29.
[10]
Monastier, chapter 19, p. 172. Muston, chapter 10, p. 52.
[11]
Leger, livr. 2, p. 29.
[12]
First, we do protest before the Almighty and All-just God, before whose tribunal we must all one day appear, that we intend to live and die in the holy faith, piety, and
95

religion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that we do abhor all heresies that have been, and are, condemned by the Word of God. We do embrace the most holy doctrine of the prophets and apostles, as likewise of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds; we do subscribe to the four Councils, and to all the ancient Fathers, in all such things as are not repugnant to the analogy of faith.” (Leger, livr. 2, pp. 30,31.)
[13]
See in Leger (livr. 2, pp. 30,31) the petition of the Vaudois presented “Au
Serenissime et tres-Puissant Prince, Philibert Emanuel, Duc de Saveye, Prince de
Piemont, notre tres-Clement Seigneur” (To the Serene and most Mighty Prince,
Philibert Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, Prince of Piedmont, our most Gracious Lord).
[14]
See in Leger. (livr. 2, p. 32), “A la tres-Vertueuse et tres-Excellente Dame,
Madame Marguerite de France, Duchesse de Savoye et de Berry” - “the petition of her poor and humble subjects, the inhabitants of the Valleys of Lucerna and
Angrogna, and Perosa and San Martino, and all those of the plain who call purely upon the name of the Lord Jesus.”
CHAPTER 6
[1]
Muston p. 68.
[2]
Muston, p. 72.
[3]
Muston, p. 69. Monastier, p. 178.
[4]
Mustn, p. 70. Monastier, pp. 176,177.
[5]
Muston, p. 71. Monastier, pp. 177,178.
[6]
Muston, p. 72. Monastier, p. 182.
[7]
Letter of Scipio Lentullus, Pastor of San Giovanni, (Leger, Hist. des Eglises
Vaud., livr. 2, p. 35).
[8]
So says the Pastor of Giovanni, Scipio Lentullus, in the letter already referred to.
(Leger livr. 2, p. 35.)
[9]
Letter of Scipio Lentullus. (Leger, livr. 2, p. 35.) Muston, pp. 73,74.
[10]
Leger livr. 2, p. 35. Monastier, pp. 184,185.
[11]
Leger, livr. 2, p. 35.
[12]
Muston, p. 77. Monastier, pp. 186,187.
CHAPTER 7
[1]
Muston, p. 78.
[2]
Monastier, p. 188. Muston, p. 78.
[3]
Muston, pp. 78,79.
96

[4]
Monastier, p. 190. Muston, p. 80.
[5]
Monastier, p. 191.
[6]
Leger, part 2, p. 36. Gilles, chapter 25.
[7]
Ibid., part 2, p. 37.
[8]
Muston, p. 83.
[9]
Ibid. Monastier, p. 194.
[10]
Leger, part 2, p. 37. Muston, p. 85.
[11]
The Articles of Capitulation are given in full in Leger, part 2, pp. 38-40.
[12]
Leger, part 2, p. 41.
CHAPTER 8
[1]
Muston, p. 37.
[2]
Leger, part 2, p. 333.
[3]
McCrie, Italy, pp. 7,8.
[4]
Muston, lsraet of the Alps, p. 38.
[5]
Perrin, Histoire des Vaudois, p. 197. Monastier, pp. 203,204.
[6]
Muston, p. 38. Monastier and McCrie say that the application for a pastor was made to Geneva, and that Paschale set out for Calabria, accompanied by another minister and two schoolmasters. It is probable that the application was made to
Geneva through the intermediation of the home Church.
[7]
McCrie, p. 324.
[8]
Monastier, p. 205.
[9]
McCrie, p. 325.
[10]
Ibid., pp. 325 - 327.
[11]
Ibid., pp. 326, 327.
CHAPTER 9
[1]
Leger, part 2, p. 333. McCrie, p. 303. Muston, p. 41.
[2]
Monastier, p. 206.
[3]
McCrie, p. 304.
97

[4]
Pantaleon, Rerum in Ecclesiastes Gest. Hist., f. 337,338. De Porta, tom. 2, pp.
309,312 - ex McCrie, pp. 305,306.
[5]
Crespin, Hist. des Martyrs, fol. 506 - 516. Leger, part 1, p. 204, and part 2, p. 335.
[6]
Sextus Propertius (Cranstoun’s translation), p. 119.
CHAPTER 10
[1]
Muston, chapter 16. Monastier, chapter 21.
[2]
See the letter in full in Leger, part 1, pp. 41 - 45.
[3]
Muston, p. 98.
[4]
Monastier, p. 222.
[5]
Muston, p. 111.
[6]
Monastier, p. 241.
[7]
Muston, pp. 112,113. Antoine Leger was uncle of Leger the historian. He had been tutor for many years in the family of the Ambassador of Holland at
Constantinople.
[8]
Monastier, chapter 18. Muston, pp. 242,243.
CHAPTER 11
[1]
Musto, p. 126.
[2]
Muston, p. 129.
[3]
Leger, part 2, chapter 6, pp. 72,73.
[4]
Muston, p. 130.
[5]
Leger, part 2, chapter 8, p. 94.
[6]
Monastier, p. 265.
[7]
Leger, part 2, pp. 95,96.
[8]
Ibid., part 4, p. 108.
[9]
Monastier, p. 267.
[10]
Muston, p. 135.
[11]
Leger, part 2, pp. 108,109.
[12]
Leger part 2, p. 110.
98

[13]
So says Leger, Who was an eye-witness of these horrors.
[14]
Monastier, p. 270.
[15]
Leger, part 2, p. 113.
[16]
Leger, part 2, p. 111.
[17]
Leger, part 2, p. 112.
[18]
The book is that from which we have so largely quoted, entitled Histoire
Generale des Eglises Evangeliques des Vallees de Piemont ou Vaudoises. Par Jean
Leger, Pasteur et Moderateur des Eglises des Val1ees, et depuis la violence de la
Persecution, appele a l’Eglise Wallonne de Leyde. A. Leyde, 1669.
[19]
Leger, part 2, p. 113.
[20]
The sum collected in England was, in round numbers, £38,000. Of this, £16,000 was invested on the security of the State, to pension pastors, schoolmasters, and students in the Valleys. This latter sum was appropriated by Charles II, on the pretext that he was not bound to implement the engagements of a usurper.
[21]
The History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont: containing a most exact Geographical Description of the place, and a faithful Account of the
Doctrine, Life, and Persecutions of the ancient Inhabitants, together with a most naked and punctual Relation of the late bloody Massacre, 1655. By Samuel Motland,
Esq., His Highness’ Commissioner Extraordinary for the Affairs of the said Valleys.
London, 1658.
CHAPTER 12
[1]
Leger, part 2, chapter 11, p. 186.
[2]
Legcr, part 2, pp. 186,187.
[3]
Ibid, part 2, p. 187. Muston, pp. 146,147.
[4]
Leger, part 2, p. 188. Muston, pp. 148,149.
[5]
Ibid., part 2, p. 189. Monastier, p. 277.
[6]
Leger, part 2, p. 189.
CHAPTER 13
[1]
Leger, part 2, p. 275.
[2]
Monastier, p. 311.
[3]
Monastier, p. 317. Muston, p. 199.
[4]
Muston, p. 200.
99

[5]
Muston, p. 202.
[6]
Monastier, p. 320.
CHAPTER 14
[1]
Monastier, p. 336.
[2]
So named by the author of the Rentree, from the village at its foot, but which without doubt, says Monastier (p. 349), “is either the Col Joli (7,240 feet high) or the
Col de la Fene~tre, or Portetta, as it was named to Mr. Brockedon, who has visited these countries, and followed the same road: as the Vaudois.”
[3]
Monastier, p. 352.
CHAPTER 15
[1]
Monastier, p. 356.
[2]
Monastier, pp. 365,365.
[3]
The Author was conducted over the ground, and had all the memorials of the siege pointed out to him by two most trustworthy and intelligent guides - M. Turin, then
Pastor of Macel, whose ancestors had figured in the “Glorious Return;” and the late
M. Tron, Syndic of the Commune. The ancestors of M. Tron had returned with Henri
Arnaud, and recovered their lands in the Valley of San Martino, and here had the family of M. Troll lived ever since, and the precise spots where the more memorable events of the war had taken place had been handed down from father to son.
[4]
Monastier, pp. 369,370.
[5]
Cannon-balls are occasionally picked up in the neighbourhood of the Balsiglia. In
1857 the Author was shown one in the Presbytere of Pomaretto, which had been dug up a little before.
[6]
Monastier, p. 371.
[7]
Psalm 124:7
CHAPTER 16
[1]
Monastier, p. 3S9. The Pope, Innocent XII, declared (19th August, 1694) the edict of the duke re-establishing the Vaudois null and void, and enjoined his inquisitors to pay no attention to it in their pursuit of the heretics.
[2]
Muston, pp. 220,221. Monastier, pp. 388, 389.
[3]
Waldensian Researches, by William Stephen Gilly, M.A., Prebendary of Durham; p. 158; Lond., 1831.
100

[4]
So deep was the previous ignorance respecting this people, that Sharon Turner, speaking of the Waldenses in his History of England, placed them on the shores of the
Lake Leman, confounding the Valleys of the Vaudois with the Canton de Vaud.
[5]
The Author may be permitted to bear his personal testimony to the labours of
General Beckwith for the Waldenses, and through them for the evangelization of
Italy. On occasion of his first visit to the Valleys in 1851, he passed a week mostly in the society of the general, and had the detail from his own lips of the methods he was pursuing for the elevation of the Church of the Vaudois. All through the Valleys he was revered as a father. His common appellation among them was “The Benefactor of the Vaudois.”
[6]
General Beckwlth: his Life and Labours, etc. By J.P. Meille, Pastor of the
Waldensian Church at Turin. Page 26. Lond., 1873.
[7]
“Totius Italiae lumen.”
101

102

We have rapidly traced the line of Waldensian story from those early ages when the assembled barbes are seen keeping watch around their lamp in the Pra del Tor, with the silent silvery peaks looking down upon them, to those recent days when the
Vaudois carried that lamp to Rome and set it in the city of Pius IX. Our desire to pursue their conflicts and martyrdoms till their grand issues to Italy and the world had been reached has carried us into modern times. We shall return, and place ourselves once more in the age of Francis I.
We resume our history at the death-bed of that monarch. Francis died March 31st,
1547, at the age of fifty-two, “of that shameful distemper,” says the Abbe Millot,
“which is brought on by debauchery, and which had been imported with the gold of
America.”
[1]
The character of this sovereign was adorned by some fine qualities, but his reign was disgraced by many great errors. It is impossible to withhold from him the praise of a generous disposition, a cultivated taste, and a chivalrous bearing; but it is equally impossible to vindicate him from the charge of rashness in his enterprises, negligence in his affairs, fickleness in his conduct, and excess in his pleasures. He lavished his patronage upon the scholars of the Renaissance, but he had nothing but stakes wherewith to reward the disciples of Protestantism. He built Fontainebleau, and began the Louvre. And now, after all his great projects for adorning his court with learned men, embellishing his capital with gorgeous fabrics, and strengthening his throne by political alliances, there remains to him only “darkness and the worm.” Let us enter the royal closet, and mark the setting of that sun which had shed such a brilliance during his course. Around the bed upon which Francis I lies dying is gathered a clamorous crowd of priests, courtiers, and courtesans,
[2]
who watch his last moments with decent but impatient respect, ready, the instant he has breathed his last, to turn round and bow the knee to the rising sun. Let us press through the throng and observe the monarch. His face is haggard. He groans deeply, as if he were suffering in soul. His starts are sudden and violent. There flits at times across his face a dark shadow, as if some horrible sight, afflicting him with unutterable woe, were disclosed to him; and a quick tremor at these moments runs through all his frame. He calls his attendants about him and, mustering all the strength left him, he protests that it is not he who is to blame, inasmuch as his orders were exceeded. What orders? we ask; and what deed is it, the memory of which so burdens and terrifies the dying monarch?
We must leave the couch of Francis while we narrate one of the greatest of the crimes that blackened his reign. The scene of the tragedy which projected such dismal shadows around the death-bed of the king was laid in Provence. In ancient times
Provence was comparatively a desert. Its somewhat infertile soil was but thinly peopled, and but indifferently tilled and planted. It lay strewn all over with great boulders, as if here the giants had warred, or some volcanic explosion had rained a shower of stones upon it. The Vaudois who inhabited the high-lying valleys of the
Piedmontese Alps, cast their eyes upon this more happily situated region, and began to desire it as a residence. Here, said they, is a fine champaign country, waiting for occupants; let us go over and possess it. They crossed the mountains, they cleared the land of rocks, they sowed it with wheat, they planted it with the vine, and soon there was seen a smiling garden, where before a desert of swamps, and great stones, and
103

wild herbage had spread out its neglected bosom to be baked by the summer’s sun, and frozen by the winter’s winds. “An estate which before their establishment hardly paid four crowns as rental, now produced from three to four hundred.”
[3]
The successive generations of these settlers flourished here during a period of three hundred years, protected by their landlords, whose revenues they had prodigiously enriched, loved by their neighbours, and loyal to their king.
When the Reformation arose, this people sent delegates - as we have related in the previous book - to visit the Churches of Switzerland and Germany, and ascertain how far they agreed with, and how far they differed from themselves. The report brought back by the delegates satisfied them that the Vaudois faith and the Protestant doctrine were the same; that both had been drawn from the one infallible fountain of truth; and that, in short, the Protestants were Vaudois, and the Vaudois were Protestants. This was enough. The priests, who so anxiously guarded their territory against the entrance of Lutheranism, saw with astonishment and indignation a powerful body of
Protestants already in possession. They resolved that the heresy should be swept from off the soil of France as speedily as it had arisen. On the 18th of November, 1540, the
Parliament of Aix passed an arret to the following effect: - “Seventeen inhabitants of
Merindol shall be burnt to death” (they were all the heads of families in that place);
“their wives, children, relatives, and families shall be brought to trial, and if they can not be laid. hold on, they shall be banished the kingdom for life. The houses in
Merindol shall be burned and razed to the ground, the woods cut down, the fruit-trees torn up, and the place rendered uninhabitable, so that none may be built there.”
[4]
The president of the Parliament of Aix, a humane man, had influence with the king to stay the execution of this horrible sentence. But in 1545 he was succeeded by Baron d’Oppede, a cruel, intolerant, bloodthirsty man, and entirely at the devotion of
Cardinal Tournon - a man, says Abbe Millot, “of greater zeal than humanity, who principally enforced the execution of this barbarous arret.”
[5]
Francis I offered them pardon if within three months they should enter the pale of the Roman Church. They disdained to buy their lives by apostasy; and now the sword, which had hung for five years above their heads, fell with crushing force. A Romanist pen shall tell the sequel:
“Twenty-two towns or villages were burned or sacked, with an inhumanity of which the history of the most barbarous people hardly presents examples. The unfortunate inhabitants, surprised, during the night, and pursued from rock to rock by the light of the fires which consumed their dwellings, frequently escaped one snare only to fall into another; the pitiful cries of the old men, the women, and the children, far from softening the hearts of the soldiers, mad with rage like their leaders, only set them on following the fugitives, and pointed out the places whither to direct their fury.
Voluntary surrender did not exempt the men from execution, nor the women from excesses of brutality. It was forbidden, under pain of death, to afford them any refuge.
At Cabrieres, one of the principal towns of that canton, they murdered more than seven hundred men in cold blood; and the women, who had remained in their houses, were shut up in a barn filled with straw, to which they set fire; those who attempted to escape by the window were driven back by swords and pikes. Finally, according to the tenor of the sentence, the houses were razed, the woods cut down, the fruit-trees pulled up, and in a short time this country, so fertile and so populous, became uncultivated and uninhabited.”
[6]
104

Thus did the red sword and the blazing torch purge Provence. We cast our eyes over the purified land, but, alas! we are unable to recognize it. Is this the land which but a few days ago was golden with the yellow grain, and purple with the blushling grape; at whose cottage doors played happy children; and from whose meadows and mountain-sides, borne on the breeze, came the bleating of flocks and the lowing of herds? Now, alas! its bosom is scarred and blackened by smouldering ruins, its mountain torrents are tinged with blood, and its sky is thick with the black smoke of its burning woods and cities.
We return to the closet of the dying monarch. Francis is still protesting that the deed is not his, and that too zealous executioners exceeded his orders. Nevertheless he can not banish, we say not from his memory, but from his very sight, the awful tragedy enacted on the plains of Provence. Shrieks of horror, wailings of woe, and cries for help seem to resound through his chamber. Have his ministers and courtiers no word of comfort wherewith to assuage his terrors, and fortify him in the prospect of that awful Bar to which he is hastening with the passing hours? They urged him to sanction the crime, but they leave him to bear the burden of it alone. He summons his son, who is so soon to mount his throne, to his bedside, and charges him with his last breath to execute vengeance on those who had shed this blood.
[7]
With this slight reparation the unhappy king goes his dark road, the smoking and blood-sprinkled
Provence behind him, the great Judgment-seat before him.
Having breathed his last, the king lay in state, preparatory to his being laid in the royal vaults at St. Denis. Two of his sons who had pre-deceased him - Francis and Charles - were kept unburied till now, and their corpses accompanied that of their father to the grave. Of the king’s lying-in-state, the following very curious account is given us by
Sleidan: -
“For some days his effigies, in most rich apparel, with his crown, sceptre, and other regal ornaments, lay upon a bed of state, and at certain hours dinner and supper were served up before it, with the very same solemnity as was commonly performed when he was alive. When the regal ornaments were taken off, they clothed the effigies in mourning; and eight-and-forty Mendicant friars were always present, who continually sung masses and dirges for the soul departed. About the corpse were placed fourteen great wax tapers, and over against it two altars, on which from daylight to noon masses were said, besides what were said in an adjoining chapel, also full of tapers and other lights. Four-and-twenty monks, with wax tapers in their hands, were ranked about the hearse wherein the corpse was carried, and before it marched fifty poor men in mourning, every one with a taper in his hand. Amongst other nobles, there were eleven cardinals present.”
Henry II now mounted the throne of France. At the moment of his accession all seemed to promise a continuance of that prosperity and splendour which had signalized the reign of his father. The kingdom enjoyed peace, the finances were flourishing, the army was brave and well-affected to the throne; and all men accepted these as auguries of a prosperous reign. This, however, was but a brief gleam before the black night. France had missed the true path. Henry had worn the crown for only a short while when the clouds began to gather, and that night to descend which is only now beginning to pass away from France. His father had early initiated him into the secrets of governing, but Henry loved not business. The young king sighed to get away from the council-chamber to the gay tournament, where mailed and plumed
105

warriors pursued, amid applauding spectators, the mimic game of war. What good would this princedom do him if it brought him not pleasure? At his court there lacked not persons, ambitious and supple, who studied to flatter his vanity and gratify his humours. To lead the king was to govern France, and to govern France was to grasp boundless riches and vast power. It was under this feeble king that those factions arose, whose strivings so powerfully influenced the fate of Protestantism in that great kingdom, and opened the door for so many calamities to the nation. Four parties were now formed at court, and we must pause here to describe them, otherwise much that is to follow would be scarcely intelligible. In the passions and ambitions of these parties, we unveil the springs of those civil wars which for more than a century deluged
France with blood.
At the head of the first party was Anne de Montmorency, High Constable of France.
Claiming descent from a family which had been one of the first to be baptised into the
Christian faith, he assumed the glorious title of the First Christian and Premier Baron
[8]
of France. He possessed great strength of will, and whatever end he proposed to himself he pursued, without much caring whom he trod down in his way to it. He had the misfortune on one occasion to give advice to Francis I which did not prosper, and this, together with his head-strongness, made that monarch in his latter days banish him from the court. When Francis was dying he summoned his son Henry to his bedside, and earnestly counselled him never to recall Montmorency, fearing that the obstinacy and pride which even he had with difficulty repressed, the weaker hands to which he was now bequeathing his crown
[9]
would be unequal to the task of curbing.
No sooner had Henry assumed the reins of government than he recalled the Constable.
Montmorency’s recall did not help to make him a meeker man. He strode back to court with brow more elate, and an air more befitting one who had come to possess a throne than to serve before it. The Constable was beyond measure devout, as became the first Christian in France. Never did he eat flesh on forbidden days; and never did morning dawn or evening fall but his beads were duly told. It is true he sometimes stopped suddenly in the middle of his chaplet to issue orders to his servants to hang up this or the other Huguenot, or to set fire to the corn-field or plantation of some neighbour of his who was his enemy; but that was the work of a minute only, and the
Constable was back again with freshened zeal to his Paternosters and his Ave-Marias.
It became a proverb, says Brantome, “God keep us from the Constable’s beads.”
[10]
These singularities by no means lessened his reputation for piety, for the age hardly placed acts of religion and acts of mercy in the same category. Austere, sagacious, and resolute, he constrained the awe if not the love of the king, and as a consequence his heavy hand was felt in every part of the kingdom.
The second party was that of the Guises. The dominancy of that family in France marks one of the darkest eras of the nation. The House of Lorraine, from which the
Lords of Guise are descended, derived its original from Godfrey Bullen, King of
Jerusalem, and on the mother’s side from a daughter of Charlemagme. Anthony, flourishing in wealth and powerful in possessions, was Duke of Lorraine; Claude, a younger brother, crossed the frontier in 1513, staff in hand, attended by but one servant, to seek his fortunes in France. He ultimately became Duke of Guise. This man had six sons, to all of whom wealth seemed to come at their wish. Francis I, perceiving the ambition of these men, warned his son to keep them at a distance.
[11]
But the young king, despising the warning, recalled Francis de Lorraine as he had
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done the Constable Montmorency, and the power of the Guises continued to grow, till at last they became the scourge of the country in which they had firmly rooted themselves, and the terror of the throne which they aspired to mount.
The two brothers, Francis and Charles, stood at the head of the family, and figured at the court. Franzis, now in the flower of his age, was sprightly and daring; Charles was crafty, but timid; Laval says of him that he was “the cowardliest of all men.” The qualities common to both brothers, and possessed by each in inordinate degree, were cruelty and ambition. Rivals they never could. become, for though their ambitions were the same, their spheres lay apart, Francis having chosen the profession of arms, and Charles the Church. This division of pursuits doubled their strength, for what the craft of the one plotted, the sword of the other executed. They were the acknowledged heads of the Roman Catholic party. “But for the Guises,” says Mezeray, “the new religion would perhaps have become dominant in France.”
The third party at the court of France was that of Diana of Poictiers. This woman was the daughter of John of Poicters, Lord of St. Valier, and had been the wife of
Seneschal of Normandy. She was twenty years older than the king, but this disparity of age did not hinder her from becoming the mistress of his heart. The populace could not account for the king’s affection for her, save by ascribing it to the philtres which she made him drink. A more likely cause was her brilliant wit and sprightly manners, added to her beauty, once dazzling, and not yet wholly faded. But her greed was enormous. The people cursed her as the cause of the taxes that were grinding them into poverty; the nobility hated her for her insulting airs; but access there was none to the king, save through the good graces of Diana of Poictiers, whom the king created
Duchess of Valentinois. The title by embellishing made only the more conspicuous the infamy of her relation to the man who had bestowed it. The Constable on the one side, and the Guises on the other, sought to buttress their own power by paying court to Diana.
[12]
To such a woman the holy doctrines of Protestantism could not be other than offensive; in truth, she very thoroughly hated all of the religion, and much of the righteous blood shed in the reign of Henry II is to be laid at the door of the lewd, greedy, and cruel Diana of Poictiers.
The fourth and least powerful faction was that of the Marshal de St. Andre. He was as brave and valiant as he was witty and polite; but he was drowned in debt. Though a soldier he raised himself not by his valour, but by court intrigues; “under a specious pretence for the king’s service he hid a boundless ambition, and an unruly avarice,” said his Romanist friends, “and was more eager after the forfeited estates than after the overthrow of the rebels and Huguenots.”
[13]
Neither court nor country was likely to be quiet in which such a man figured.
To these four parties we may add a fifth, that of Catherine de Medici, the wife of
Henry. Of deeper passions but greater self-control than many of those around her,
Catherine meanwhile was “biding her time.” There were powers in this woman which had not yet disclosed themselves, perhaps not even to herself; but when her husband died, and the mistress no longer divided with the wife the ascendency over the royal mind, then the hour of revelation came, and it was seen what consummate guile, what lust of power, what love of blood and revenge had slumbered in her dark Italian soul.
As one after another of her imbecile sons, each more imbecile than he who had preceded him - mounted the throne, the mother stood up in a lofty and yet loftier measure of truculence and ambition. As yet, however, her cue was not to form a party
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of her own, but to maintain the poise among the other factions, that by weakening all of them she might strengthen herself.
Such were the parties that divided the court of Henry II. Thrice miserable monarch! without one man of real honour and sterling patriotism in whom to confide. And not less miserable courtiers! They make a brave show, no doubt, living in gilded saloons, wearing sumptuous raiment, and feasting at luxuriant tables, but their hearts all the while are torn with envy, or tortured with fear, lest this gay life of theirs should come to a sudden end by the stiletto or the poison-cup. “Two great sins,” says an old historian, “crept into France under this prince’s reign - atheism and magic.”
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Henry II walked in the ways of his father, Francis, who first made France to sin by beginning a policy of persecution. To the force of paternal example was added, in the case of Henry, the influence of the maxims continually poured into his ear by
Montmorency, Guise, and Diana of Poictiers. These counsellors inspired him with a terror of Protestantism as pre-eminently the enemy of monarchs and the source of all disorders in States; and they assured him that should the Huguenots prevail they would trample his throne into the dust, and lay France at the feet of atheists and revolutionists. The first and most sacred of duties, they said, was to uphold the old religion. To cut off its enemies was the most acceptable atonement a prince could make to Heaven. With such schooling, is it any wonder that the deplorable work of burning heretics, begun by Francis, went on under Henry; and that the more the king multiplied his profilgacies, the greater his zeal in kindling the fires by which he thought he was making atonement for them?
[1]
The historians of the time record a sad story, which unhappily is not a solitary instance of the bigotry of the age, and the vengeance that was beginning to animate
France against all who favoured Protestantism. It affectingly displays the heartless frivolity and wanton cruelty two qualities never far apart - which characterized the
French court. The coronation of the queen, Catherine de Medici, was approaching, and Henry, who did his part so ill as a husband in other respects, resolved to acquit himself with credit in this. He wished to make the coronation fetes of more than ordinary splendour; and in order to this he resolved to introduce what would form a new feature in these rejoicings, and give variety and piquancy to them, namely, the burning piles of four Huguenots. Four victims were selected, and one of these was a poor tailor, who, besides having eaten flesh on a day on which its use was forbidden, had given other proofs of being not strictly orthodox. He was to form, of course, one of the coronation torches; but to burn him was not enough. It occurred to the Cardinal of Lorraine that a little amusement might be extracted from the man. The cardinal pictured to himself the confusion that would overwhelm the poor tailor, were he to be interrogated before the king, and how mightily the court would be diverted by the incoherence of his replies. He was summoned before Henry, but the matter turned out not altogether as the Churchman had reckoned it would. The promise was fulfilled to take confessor, “When ye shall be brought before kings and rulers for my sake and the
Gospel’s, it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak.” So far from being abashed, the tailor maintained perfect composure in the royal presence, and replied so pertinently to all interrogatories and objections put by the Bishop of Macon, that it was the king and the courtiers who were disconcerted. Diana of Poictiers - whose wit was still fresh, if her beauty had faded - stepped boldly forward, in the hope of rescuing the courtiers from their embarrassment; but, as old Crespin says, “the tador cut her cloth otherwise than she expected; for he, not being able to endure such unmeasured arrogance in her whom he knew to be the cause of these cruel persecutions, said to her, ‘Be satisfied, Madam, with having infected France, without mingling your venom and filth in a matter altogether holy and sacred, as is the religion and truth of our Lord Jesus Christ.’”
[2]
The king took the words as an affront, and ordered the man to be reserved for the stake. When the day of execution came
(14th July, 1549), the king bade a window overlooking the pile be prepared, that thence he might see the man, who had had the audacity to insult his favourite, slowly
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consuming in the fires. Both parties had now taken their places, the tailor burning at the stake, the king reposing luxuriously at the window, and Diana of Poictiers seated in haughty triumph by his side. The martyr looked up to the window where the king was seated, and fixed his eye on Henry. From the midst of the flames that eye looked forth with calm steady gaze upon the king. The eye of the monarch quailed before that of the burning man. He turned away to avoid it, but again his glance wandered back to the stake. The flames were still blazing around the martyr; has limbs were dropping off, his face was growing fearfully livid, but his eye, unchanged, was still looking at the king; and the king felt as if, with Medusa-power, it was changing him into stone.
The execution was at an end: not so the terror of the king. The tragedy of the day was reacted in the dreams of the night. The terrible apparition rose before Henry in his sleep. There again was the blazing pile, there was the martyr burning in the fire, and there was the eye looking forth upon him from the midst of the flames. For several successive nights was the king scared by this terrible vision. He resolved, nay, he even took an oath, that never again would he be witness to the burning of a heretic. It had been still better had he given orders that never again should these horrible executions be renewed
[3]
.
So far, however, was the persecution from being relaxed, that its rigor was greatly increased. Piles were erected at Orleans, at Poictiers, at Bordeaux, at Nantes - in short, in all the chief cities of the kingdom. These cruel proceedings, however, so far from arresting the progress of the Reformed opinions, only served to increase the number of their professors. Men of rank in the State, and of dignity in the Church, now began, despite the disfavour in which all of the “religion” were held at court, to enrol themselves in the Protestant army. But the Gospel in France was destined to owe more to men of humble faith than to the possessors of rank, however lofty. We have mentioned Chatelain, Bishop of Macon, who disputed with the poor tador before
Henry II. As Beza remarks, one thing only did he lack, even grace, to make him one of the most brilliant characters and most illustrious professors of the Gospel in France.
Lowly born, Chatelain had raised himself by his great talents and beautiful character.
He sat daily at the table of Francis I, among the scholars and wise men whom the king loved to hear discourse. To the accomplishments of foreign travel he added the charms of an elegant latinity. He favoured the new opinions, and undertook the defence of Robert Stephens, the king’s printer, when the Sorbonne attacked him for his version of the Bible.
[4]
These acquirements and gifts procured his being made
Bishop of Macon. But the mitre would seem to have cooled his zeal for the
Reformation, and in the reign of Henry II we find him persecuting the faith he had once defended. Soon after his encounter with the tailor he was promoted to the See of
Orleans, and he set out to take possession of his new bishopric. Arriving at a monastery in the neighbourhood of Orleans, he halted there, intending to make his entry into the city on the morrow. The Fathers persuaded him to preach; and, as Beza remarks, to see a bishop in a pulpit was so great a wonder in those days, that the sight attracted an immense crowd. As the bishop was thundering against heretics, he was struck with a sudden and violent illness, and had to be carried out of the pulpit. He died the following night.
[5]
At the very gates of his episcopal city, on the very steps of his episcopal throne, he encountered sudden arrest, and gave up the ghost.
Five days thereafter (9th July, 1550), Paris was lighted up with numerous piles. Of these martyrs, who laid gloriously with their blood the foundations of the French
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Protestant Church, we must not omit the names of Leonard Galimar, of Vendome, and
Florent Venot, of Sedan. The latter endured incredible torments, for no less a period than four years, in the successive prisons into which he was thrown. His sufferings culminated when he was brought to Paris. He was there kept for six weeks in a hole where he could neither lie, nor stand upright, nor move about, and the odour of which was beyond measure foul and poisonous, being filled with all manner of abominable filth. His keepers said that they had never known any one inhabit that dreadful place for more than fifteen days, without losing either life or reason. But Venot surmounted all these sufferings with a most admirable courage. Being burned alive in the Place
Maubert, he ceased not at the stake to sing and magnify the Saviour, till his tongue was cut out, and even then he continued to testify his joy by signs.
[6]
In the following year (1551) a quarrel broke out between Henry and Pope Julius III, the cause being those fruitful sources of strife, the Duchies of Parma and Placentia,
The king showed his displeasure by forbidding his subjects to send money to Rome, and by protesting against the Council of Trent, the Fathers having returned for the second time to that town. But this contention between the king and the Pope only tended to quicken the flames of persecution. Henry wished to make it clear to his subjects that it was against the Pope in his temporal and not in his spiritual character that he had girded on the sword; that if he was warring against the Prince of the
Roman States, his zeal had not cooled for the Holy See; and that if Julius the monarch was wicked, and might be resisted, Julius the Pope was none the less entitled to the obedience of all Christians.
[7]
To teach the Protestants, as Maimbourg observes, that they must not take advantage of these quarrels to vent their heresies, there was published at this time (27th June) the famous Edict of Chateaubriand, so called from the place where it was given. By this law, all former severities were re-enacted; the cognizance of the crime of heresy was given to the secular power; informers were rewarded with the fourth part of the forfeited goods; the possessions and estates of all those who had fled to Geneva were confiscated to the king; and no one was to hold any office under the crown, or teach any science, who could not produce a certificate of being a good Romanist.
[8]
This policy has at all times been pursued by the monarchs of France when they quarrelled with the Pope. It behooved them, they felt, all the more that they had incurred suspicion, to vindicate the purity of their orthodoxy, and their claim to the proud title of “the Eldest Son of the Church.”
Maurice, Elector of Saxony, was at this time prosecuting his victorious campaign against Charles V. The relations which the King of France had contracted with the
Protestant princes, and which enabled him to make an expedition into Lorraine, and to annex Metz and other cities to his crown, moderated for a short while the rigors of persecution. But the Peace of Passau (1552), which ratified the liberties of the
Protestants of Germany, rekindled the fires in France. “Henry having no more measures to observe with the Protestant princes,” says Laval, “nothing was to be seen in his kingdom but fires kindled throughout all the provinces against the poor
Reformed.”
[9]
Vast numbers were executed in this and the following year. It was now that the gag was brought into use for the first time. It had been invented on purpose to prevent the martyrs addressing the people at the stake, or singing psalms to solace themselves when on their way to the pile. “The first who suffered it,” says Laval,
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“was Nicholas Noil, a book-hawker, who was executed at Paris in the most barbarous manner.”
[10]
The scene of martyrdom was in those days at times the scene of conversion. Of this, the following incident is a proof. Simon Laloe, of Soisson, was offering up his life at
Dijon. As he stood at the stake, and while the faggots were being kindled, he delivered an earnest prayer for the conversion of his persecutors. The executioner,
Jacques Sylvester, was so affected that his tears never ceased to flow all the time he was doing his office. He had heard no one before speak of God, or of the Gospel, but he could not rest till he was instructed in the Scriptures. Having received the truth, he retired to Geneva, where he died a member of the Reformed Church.
[11]
The same stake that gave death to the one, gave life to the other.
The insatiable avarice of Diana of Poictiers, to whom the king had gifted the forfeited estates of the Reformed, not less than zeal for Romanism, occasioned every day new executions. The truth continued notwithstanding to spread. “When the plague,” says
Maimbourg, “attacks a great city, it matters little what effort is made to arrest it. It enters every door; it traverses every street; it invades every quarter, and pursues its course till the whole community have been enveloped in its ravages: so did this dangerous sect spread through France. Every day it made new progress, despite the edicts with which it was assailed, and the dreadful executions to which so many of its members were consigned.”
[12]
It was in the midst of this persecution that the first congregations of the Reformed Church in France were settled with pastors, and began to be governed by a regular discipline.
The first Church to be thus constituted was in Paris; “where,” says Laval, “the fires never went out.” At that time the disciples of the Gospel were wont to meet in the house of M. de la Ferriere, a wealthy gentleman of Maine, who had come to reside in the capital. M. de la Ferriere had a child whom he wished to have baptized, and as he could not present him to the priests for that purpose, nor undertake a journey to
Geneva, he urged the Christians, who were wont to assemble in his house, to elect one of themselves to the office of pastor, with power to administer the Sacraments. They were at last prevailed upon, and, after prayer and fasting, their choice fell on Jean
Maqon de la Riviere. He was the son of the king’s attorney at Angers, a rich man, but a bitter enemy of Protestantism. He was so offended at his son for embracing the
Reformed faith, that he would have given him up to the judges, had he not fled to
Paris. The sacrifice which M. de la Riviere had made to preserve the purity of his conscience, fixed the eyes of the little flock upon him. In him we behold the first pastor of the Reformed Church of France,
[13]
elected forty years after Lefevre had first opened the door for the entrance of the Protestant doctrines. “They chose likewise,” says Laval, speaking of this little flock, “some amongst them to be elders and deacons, and made such other regulations for the government of their Church as the times would allow. Such were the first beginnings of the Church of Paris in the month of September, 1555, which increased daily during the war of Henry II with
Charles V.”
[14]
If France blazed with funeral piles, it was day by day more widely illuminated with the splendour of truth. This gave infinite vexation and torment to the friends of Rome, who wearied themselves to devise new methods for arresting the progress of the
Gospel. Loud accusations and reproaches passed between the courts of jurisdiction for not showing greater zeal in executing the edicts against heresy. The cognizance of that
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crime was committed sometimes to the royal and sometimes to the ecclesiastical judges, and sometimes parted between them. The mutual recriminations still continued. A crime above all crimes, it was said, was leniently treated by those whose duty it was to pursue it without mercy.
At last, in the hope of attaining the requisite rigor, the Cardinal of Lorraine stripped the Parliament and the civil judges of the right of hearing such causes, and transferred it to the bishops, leaving nothing to the others but the mere execution of the sentence against the condemned. This arrangement the cardinal thought to perfect by establishing the Inquisition in France on the Spanish model. In this, however, he did not succeed, the Parliament having refused its consent thereto.
[15]
The calamities that befell the kingdom were a cover to the evangelization. Henry II had agreed on a truce with the Emperor Charles for five years. It did not, however, suit the Pope that the truce should be kept. Paul IV sent his legate to France to dispense Henry from his oath, and induce him to violate the peace. The flames of war were rekindled, but the French arms were disgraced. The battle of St. Quentin was a fatal blow to France, and the Duke of Guise was recalled from Italy to retrieve it. He recovered in the Low Countries the reputation which he had lost in Sicily;
[16]
but even this tended in the issue to the weakening of France. The duke’s influence at court was now predominant, and the intrigues which his great rival, Montmorency, set on foot to supplant him, led to the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis (1559), by which France lost 198 strongholds,
[17]
besides the deepening of the jealousies and rivalships between the House of Lorraine and that of the Constable, which so nearly proved the ruin of France. One main inducement with Henry to conclude this treaty with Philip of Spain, was that it left him free to prosecute the design formed by the Cardinal of
Lorraine and the Bishop of Arras for the utter extirpation of the Reformed.
In fact, the treaty contained a secret clause binding both monarchs to combine their power for the utter extirpation of heresy in their dominions. But despite the growing rigor of the persecution, the shameful slanders which were propagated against the
Reformed, and the hideous deaths inflicted on persons of all ages and both sexes, the numbers of the Protestants and their courage daily increased. It was now seen that scarcely was there a class of French society which did not furnish converts to the
Gospel. Mezeray says that there was no town, no province, no trade in the kingdom wherein the new opinions had not taken root. The lawyers, the learned, nay, the ecclesiastics, against their own interest, embraced them.
[18]
Some of the greatest nobles of France now rallied round the Protestant standard. Among these was Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendome, and first prince of the blood, and Louis de Bourbon,
Prince of Conde, his brother. With these were joined two nephews of the Constable
Montmorency, the Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, and his brother, Francois de
Chatilion, better known as the Sire d’Andelot. A little longer and all France would be
Lutheran. The king’s alarm was great: the alarm of all about him was not less so, and all united in urging upon him the adoption of yet more summary measures against an execrable belief, which, if not rooted out, would most surely overthrow his throne, root out his house, and bring his kingdom to ruin. Might not the displeasure of
Heaven, evoked by that impious sect, be read in the many dark calamities that were gathering round France.
It was resolved that a “Mercuriale,” as it is called in France, should be held, and that the king, without giving previous notice of his coming, should present himself in the
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assembly. He would thus see and hear for himself, and judge if there were not, even among his senators, men who favoured this pestilent heresy. It had been a custom from the times of Charles VIII (1493), when corruption crept into the administration, and the State was in danger of receiving damage, that representatives of all the principal courts of the realm should meet, in order to inquire into the evil, and admonish one another to greater vigilance. Francis I had ordered that these
“Censures” should take place once every three months, and from the day on which they were held - namely, Wednesday (Dies Mercurii) - they were named
“Mercuriales.”
[19]
On the 10th of June, 1559, the court met in the house of the Austin Friars, the
Parliament Hall not being available, owing to the preparations for the wedding of the king’s daughter and sister. The king suddenly appeared in the assembly, attended by the princes of the blood, the Constable, and the Guises. Having taken his seat on the throne, he delivered a discourse on religion; he enlarged on his own labours for the peace of Christendom, which he was about to seal by giving in marriage his daughter
Elizabeth to Philip of Spain, and his only sister Margaret to Philibert Emmanuel,
Duke of Savoy; and he concluded by announcing his resolution to devote himself henceforward to the healing of the wounds of the Christian world. He then ordered the senators to go on with their votes.
Though all felt that the king was present to overawe them in the expression of their sentiments, many of the senators declared themselves with that ancient liberty which became their rank and office. They pointed to the fact that a Council was at that moment convened at Trent to pronounce on the faith, and that it was unjust to burn men for heresy before the Council had decreed what was heresy. Arnold du Ferrier freely admitted that the troubles of France sprang out of its religious differences, but then they ought to inquire who was the real author of these differences, lest, while pursuing the sectaries, they should expose themselves to the rebuke, “Thou art the man that troubles Israel.”
Annas du Bourg, who next rose, came yet closer to the point. There were, he said, many great crimes and wicked actions, such as oaths, adulteries, and perjuries, condemned by the laws, and deserving of the severest punishment, which went without correction, while new punishments were every day invented for men who as yet had been found guilty of no crime. Should those be held guilty of high treason who mentioned the name of the prince only to pray for him? and should the rack and the stake be reserved, not for those who raised tumults in the cities, and seditions in the provinces, but for those who were the brightest patterns of obedience to the laws, and the firmest defenders of order! It was a very grave matter, he added, to condemn to the flames men who died calling on the name of the Lord Jesus. Other speakers followed in the same strain. Not so the majority, however. They recalled the examples of old days, when the Albigensian heretics had been slaughtered in thousands by
Innocent III; and when the Waldenses, in later times, had been choked with smoke in their oval dwellings, and the dens of the mountains; and they urged the instant adoption of these time-honoured usages. When the opinions of the senators had been marked, the king took possession of the register in which the votes were recorded, then rising up, he sharply chid those members who had avowed a preference for a moderate policy; and, to show that under a despot no one could honestly differ from the royal opinion and be held guiltless, he ordered the Constable to arrest Du Bourg.
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The captain of the king’s guard instantly seized the obnoxious senator, and carried him to the Bastile. Other members of Parliament were arrested next day at their own houses.
[20]
The king’s resolution was fully taken to execute all the senators who had opposed him, and to exterminate Lutheranism everywhere throughout France. He, would begin with Du Bourg, who, shut up in an iron cage in the Bastile, waited his doom. But before the day of Du Bourg’s execution arrived, Henry himself had gone to his account. We have already mentioned the delight the king took in jousts and tournaments. He was giving his eldest daughter in marriage to the mightiest prince of his time - Philip II of Spain - and so great an occasion he must needs celebrate with fetes of corresponding magnificence. Fourteen days have elapsed since his memorable visit to his Parliament, and now Henry presents himself in a very different assemblage. It is the last day of June, 1559, and the rank and beauty of Paris are gathered in the Faubourg St. Antoine, to see the king tilting with selected champions in the lists. The king bore himself “like a sturdy and skilful cavalier” in the mimic war. The last passage-at-arms was over, the plaudits of the brilliant throng had saluted the royal victor, and every one thought, that the spectacle was at an end. But no; it wan to close with a catastrophe of which no one present. so much as dreamed. A sudden resolve seizing the king yet farther to display his prowess before the admiring multitude, he bade the Count Montgomery, the captain of his guard, make ready and run a tilt with him. Montgomery excused himself, but the king insisted. Mounting his horse and placing his lance in rest, Montgomery stood facing the king. The trumpet sounded. The two warriors, urging their steeds to a gallop, rushed at each other:
Montgomery’s lance struck the king with such force that the staff was shivered. The blow made Henry’s visor fly open, and a splinter from the broken beam entered his left eye and drove into his brain. The king fell from his horse to the ground. A thrill of horror ran through the spectators. Was the king slain? No; but he was mortally wounded, and the death-blow had been dealt by the same hand - that of the captain of his guard which he had employed to arrest the martyr Du Bourg. He was carried to the
Hotel de Tournelles, where he died on the 10th of July, in the forty-first year of his age.
[21]
Many strange things were talked of at the time; and have been related by contemporary historians, in connection with the death of Henry II. His queen,
Catherine de Medici, had a dream the night before, in which she saw him tilting in the tournament, and so hard put to, that in the morning when she awoke she earnestly begged him that day not to stir abroad; but, says Beza, he no more heeded the warning than Julius Caesar did that of his wife, who implored him on the morning of the day on which he was slain not to go to the Senate-house. Nor did it escape observation that the same palace which had been decked out with so much magnificence for the two marriages was that in which the king breathed his last, and so “the hall of triumph was changed into the chamber of mourning.” And, finally, it was thought not a little remarkable that when the bed was prepared on which Henry was to lie in state, and the royal corpse laid upon it, the attendants, not thinking of the matter at all, covered it with a rich piece of tapestry on which was represented the conversion of St. Paul, with the words in large letters, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” This was remarked upon by so many who saw it, that the officer who had charge of the body ordered the coverlet to be taken away, and replaced with another piece.
[22]
The
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incident recalled the last words of Julian, who fell like Henry, warring against Christ:
“Thou hast overcome, O Galilean!”
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The young vine which had been planted in France, and which was beginning to cover with its shadow the plains of that fair land, was at this moment sorely shaken by the tempests; but the fiercer the blasts that warred around it, the deeper did it strike its roots in the soil, and the higher did it lift its head into the heavens. There were few districts or cities in France in which there was not to be found a little community of disciples. These flocks had neither shepherd to care for them, nor church in which to celebrate their worship. The violence of the times taught them to shun observation; nevertheless, they neglected no means of keeping alive the Divine life in their souls, and increasing their knowledge of the Word of God. They assembled at stated times, to read together the Scriptures, and to join in prayer, and at these gatherings the more intelligent or the more courageous of their number expounded a passage from the
Bible, or delivered a word of exhortation. These teachers, however, confined themselves to doctrine. They did not dispense the Sacraments, for Calvin, who was consulted on the point, gave it as his opinion that, till they had obtained the services of a regularly ordained ministry, they should forego celebrating the Lord’s Supper. They were little careful touching the fashion of the place in which they offered their united prayer and sang their psalm. It might be a garret, or a cellar, or a barn. It might be a cave of the mountains, or a glen in the far wilderness, or some glade shaded by the ancient trees of the forest. Assemble where they might, they knew that there was One ever in the midst of them, and where he was, there was the Church. One of their number gave notice to the rest of the time and place of meeting. If in a city, they took care that the house should have several secret doors, so that, entering by different ways, their assembling might attract no notice. And lest their enemies should break in upon them, they took the precaution of bringing cards and dice with them, to throw upon the table in the room of their Bibles and Psalters, as a make-believe that they had been interrupted at play, and were a band of gamblers instead of a congregation of
Lutherans.
[1]
In the times we speak of, France was traversed by an army of book-hawkers. The printing-presses of Geneva, Lausanne, and Neuchatel supplied Bibles and religious books in abundance, and students of theology, and sometimes even ministers, assuming the humble office of colporteurs carried them into France. Staff in hand, and pack slung on their back, they pursued their way, summer and winter, by highways and cross-roads, through forests and over marshes, knocking from door to door, often repulsed, always hazarding their lives, and at times discovered, and dragged to the pile. By their means the Bible gained admission into the mansions of the nobles, and the cottages of the peasantry. They employed the same methods as the ancient
Vaudois colporteur to conceal their calling. Their precious wares they deposited at the bottom of their baskets, so that one meeting them in city alley, or country highway, would have taken them for vendors of silks and jewellery - a deception for which
Florimond de Raemond rebukes them, without, however, having a word in condemnation of the violence that rendered the concealment necessary. The success of these humble and devoted evangelists was attested by the numbers whom they prepared for the stake, and who, in their turn, sowed in their blood the seed of new confessors and martyrs.
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At times, too, though owing to the fewness of pastors it was only at considerable intervals, these little assemblies of believing men and women had the much-prized pleasure of being visited by a minister of the Gospel. From him they learned how it was. going with their brethren in other parts of France. Their hearts swelled and their eyes brightened as he told them that, despite the fires everywhere burning, new converts were daily pressing forward to enrol themselves in the army of Christ, and that the soldiers of the Cross were multiplying faster than the stake was thinning them. Then covering the table, and placing upon it the “bread” and “cup,” he would dispense the Lord’s Supper, and bind them anew by that holy pledge to the service of their heavenly King, even unto the death. Thus the hours would wear away, till the morning was on the point of breaking, and they would take farewell of each other as men who would meet no more till, by way of the halter or the stake, they should reassemble in heaven. The singular beauty of the lives of these men attracted the notice, and extorted even the praise, of their bitterest enemies. It was a new thing in
France. Florimond de Raemond, ever on the watch for their halting, could find nothing of which to accuse them save that “instead of dances and Maypoles they set on foot Bible-readings, and the singing of spiritual hymns, especially the psalms after they had been turned into rhyme. The women, by their deportment and modest apparel, appeared in public like sorrowing Eves, or penitent Magdalenes, as Tertullian said of the Christian women of his day. The men too, with their mortified air, seemed to be overpowered by the Holy Ghost.”
[2]
It does not seem to have occurred to the monkish chronicler to inquire why it was that what he considered an evil tree yielded fruits like these, although a true answer to that question would have saved France from many crimes and woes. If the facts were as Raemond stated them - if the confessors of an heretical and diabolical creed were men of pre-eminent virtue the conclusion was inevitable, either that he had entirely misjudged regarding their creed, or that the whole moral order of things had somehow or other come to be reversed.
Even Catherine de Medici, in her own way, bore her testimony to the moral character of Protestantism. “I have a mind,” observed she one day, “to turn to the new religion, to pass for a prude and a pious woman.” The persecutors of that age are condemned out of their own mouths. They confess that they “killed the innocent.”
Truly wonderful was the number of Protestant congregations already formed in
France at the time of the death of Henry II. “Burning,” yet “not consumed,” the
Reformed Church was even green and flourishing, because refreshed with a secret dew, which was more eiticacious to preserve its life than all the fury of the flames to extinguish it. We have already recorded the organization of the Church in Paris, in
1555. It was followed in that and the five following years by so many others in all parts of France, that we can do little save recite the names of these Churches. The perils and martyrdoms through which each struggled into existence, before taking its place on the soil of France, we can not recount. The early Church of Meaux, trodden into the dust years before, now rose from its ruins. In 1546 it had seen fourteen of its members burned; in 1555 it obtained a settled pastor.
[3]
At Angers (1555) a congregation was formed, and placed under the care of a pastor from Geneva. At
Poictiers, to which so great an interest belongs as the flock which Calvin gathered together, and to whom he dispensed, for the first time in France, the Sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper, a congregation was regularly organized (1555). It happened that the plague came to Poictiers, and drove from the city the bitterest enemies of the
Reformation; whereupon its friends, taking heart, formed themselves into a Church, which soon became so flourishing that it supplied pastors to the congregations that
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by-and-by sprang up in the neighbourhood.
[4]
At Alevert, an island lying off the coast of Saintonge, a great number of the inhabitants received the truth, and were formed into a congregation in 1556. At Agen, in Guienne, a congregation was the same year organized, of which Pierre David, a converted monk, became pastor. He was afterwards chaplain to the King of Navarre.
At Bourges, at Aubigny, at Issoudun, at Blois, at Tours, at Montoine, at Pau in Bearn,
Churches were organized under regular pastors in the same year, 1556. To these are to be added the Churches at Montauban and Angouleme.
[5]
In the year following (1557), Protestant congregations were formed, and placed under pastors, at Orleans, at Sens, at Rouen in Normandy, and in many of the towns and villages around, including Dieppe on the shores of the English Channel. Protestantism had penetrated the mountainous region of the Cevennes, and left the memorials of its triumphs amid a people proverbially primitive and rude, in organized Churches. In
Brittany numerous Churches arose, as also along both banks of the Garonne, in Nerac, in Bordeaux, and other towns too numerous to be mentioned. In Provence, the scene of recent slaughter, there existed no fewer than sixty Churches in the year 1560.
[6]
The beginnings of the “great and glorious” Church of La Rochelle are obscure. So early as 1534 a woman was burned in Poitou, who said she had been instructed in the truth at La Rochelle. From that year we find no trace of Protestantism there till 1552, when its presence there is attested by the barbarous execution of two martyrs, one of whom had his tongue cut out for having acted as the teacher of others; from which we may infer that there was a little company of disciples in that town, though keeping themselves concealed for fear of the persecutor.
[7]
In 1558 the King and Queen of Navarre, on their way to Paris, visited La Rochelle, and were splendidly entertained by the citizens. In their suite was M. David, the exmonk, and now Protestant preacher, already referred to. He proclaimed openly the pure Word of God in all the places through which the court passed, and so too did he in La Rochelle. One day during their majesties’ stay at titis city, the town-crier announced that a company of comedians had just arrived, and would act that day a new and wonderful piece. The citizens crowded to the play; the king, the queen, and the court being also present.
When the curtain rose, a sick woman was seen at the point of death, shrieking in pain, and begging to be confessed. The parish priest was sent for. He arrived in breathless haste, decked out in his canonicals. He began to shrive his penitent, but to little purpose. Tossing from side to side, apparently in greater distress than ever, she cried out that she was not well confessed. Soon a crowd of ecclesiastics had assembled round the sick woman, each more anxious than the other to give her relief. One would have thought that in such a multitude of physicians a cure would be found; but no: her case baffled all their skill. The friars next took her in hand. Opening great bags which they had brought with them, they drew forth, with solemn air, beads which they gave her to count, relics which they applied to various parts of her person, and indulgences which they read to her, with a perfect confidence that these would work an infallible cure.
It was all in vain. Not one of these renowned specifics gave her the least mitigation of her sufferings. The friars were perfectly non-plussed. At last they bethought them of
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another expedient. They put the habit of St. Francis upon her. Now, thought they, as sure as St. Francis is a saint, she is cured. But, alas! attired in cowl and frock, the poor sick woman sat rocking from side to side amid the friars, still grievously tormented by the pain in her conscience, and bemoaning her sad condition, that those people understood not how to confess her. At that point, when priest and friar had exhausted their skill, and neither rosary nor holy habit could work a cure, one stepped upon the stage, and going up to the woman, whispered into her ear that he knew a man who would confess her right, and give her ease in her conscience; but, added he, he goes abroad only in the night-time, for the day-light is hurtful to him. The sick person earnestly begged that that man might be called to her. He was straightway sent for: he came in a lay-dress, and drawing near the bolster, he whispered something in the woman’s ear which the spectators did not hear. They saw, however, by her instant change of expression, that she was well pleased with what had been told her. The mysterious man next drew out of his pocket a small book, which he put into her hand, saying aloud, “This book contains the most infallible recipes for the curing of your disease; if you will make use of them, you will recover your health perfectly in a few days.” Hereupon he left the stage, and the sick woman, getting out of bed with cheerful air, as one perfectly cured, walked three times round the stage, and then turning to the audience, told them that that unknown man had succeeded where friar and priest had failed, and that she must confess that the book he had given her was full of most excellent recipes, as they themselves might see from the happy change it had wrought in her; and if any of them was afflicted with the same disease, she would advise them to consult that book, which she would readily lend them; and if they did not mind its being somewhat hot in the handling, and having about it a noisome smell like that of a fagot, they might rest assured it would certainly cure them. If the audience desired to know her name, and the book’s name, she said, they were two riddles which they might guess at.
[8]
The citizens of La Rochelle had no great difficulty in reading the riddle. Many of them made trial of the book, despite its associations with the stake and the fagot, and they found that its efficacy sufficiently sovereign to cure them. They obtained deliverance from that burden on the conscience which had weighed them down in fear and anguish, despite all that friar or penance could do to give them ease. From that time Protestantism flourished in La Rochelle; a Church was formed, its members not daring as yet, however, to meet for worship in open day, but assembling under cloud of night, as was still the practice in almost all places in France.
We are now arrived at a new and most important development of Protestantism in
France. As has been already mentioned, the crowns of France and Spain made peace between themselves, that they might be at liberty to turn their arms against
Protestantism, and effect its extermination. Both monarchs were preparing to inflict a great blow. It was at that hour that the scattered sections of the French Protestant
Church drew together, and, rallying around a common standard, presented a united front to their enemies.
It was forty years since Lefevre had opened the door of France to the Gospel. All these years there had been disciples, confessors, martyrs, but no congregations in our sense of the term. The little companies of believing men and women scattered over the country, were cared for and fed only by the Great Shepherd, who made them lie down int he green pastures of his Word, and by the still waters of his Spirit. But this
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was an incomplete and defective condition. Christ’s people are not only a “flock,” but a “kingdom,” and it is the peculiarity of a kingdom that it possesses “order and government” as well as subjects. The former exists for the edification and defence of the latter.
In 1555 congregations began to be formed on the Genevan model. A pastor was appointed to teach, and with him was associated a small body of laymen to watch over the morals of the flock. The work of organizing went on vigorously, and in 1560 from one to two thousand Protestant congregations existed in France. Thus did the individual congregation come into existence. But the Church of God needs a wider union, and a more centralized authority.
Scattered over the wide space that separates the Seine from the Rhone and the
Garonne, the Protestant Churches of France were isolated and apart. In the fact that they had common interests and common dangers, a basis was laid, they felt, for confederation. In this way would the wisdom of all be available for the guidance of each, and the strength of each be combined for the defence of all.
As the symbol of such a confederation it was requisite that a creed should be drafted which all might confess, and a code of discipline compiled to which all would submit.
Not to fetter the private judgment of individual Christians, nor to restrict the rights of individual congregations, was this creed framed; on the contrary, it was intended as a shield of both liberty of opinion and liberty of Christian action. But in order to effect this, it was essential that it should be drawn from the doctrines of the Bible and the models of apostolic times, with the same patient investigation, and the same accurate deduction, with which men construct a science from the facts which they observe in nature, but with greater submission of mind, inasmuch as the facts observed for the framing of a creed are of supernatural revelation, and with a more anxious vigilance to avoid error where error would be so immensely more pernicious and destructive, and above all, with a dependence on that Spirit who inspired the Word, and who has been promised to enlighten men in the true sense of it. As God has revealed himself in his Word, so the Church is bound to reveal the Word to the world. The French
Protestant Church now discharged that duty to its nation.
It was agreed between the Churches of Paris and Poictiers, in 1558, that a National
Synod should be held for the purpose of framing a common confession and a code of discipline. In the following spring, circular letters were addressed to all the Churches of the kingdom, and they, perceiving the benefit to the common cause likely to acrue from the step, readily gave their consent. It was unanimously agreed that the Synod should be held in Paris. The capital was selected, says Beza, not because any preeminence or dignity was supposed to belong to the Church there, but simply because the confluence of so many ministers and elders was less likely to attract notice in
Paris than in a provincial town.
[9]
As regards rank, the representative of the smallest congregation stood on a perfect equality with the deputy of the metropolitan Church.
The Synod met on the 25th of May, 1559. At that moment the Parliament was assembling for the Mercuriale, at which the king avowed his purpose of pursuing the
Reformed with fire and sword till he had exterminated them. From eleven Churches only came deputies to this Synod: Paris, St. Lo, Dieppe, Angers, Orleans, Tours,
Poictiers, Saintes, Marennes, Chatellerault, and St. Jean d’Angely.
[10]
Pastor
Francois Morel, Sieur of Cellonges, was chosen to preside. Infinite difficulties had to
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be overcome, says Beza, before the Churches could be advertised of the meeting, but greater risks had to be run before the deputies could assemble: hence the fewness of their number. The gibbet was then standing in all the public places of the kingdom, and had their place of meeting been discovered, without doubt, the deputies would have been led in a body to the scaffold. There is a simplicity and a moral grandeur appertaining to this assembly that compels our homage. No guard stands sentinel at the door. No mace or symbol of authority traces the table round which the deputies of the Churches are gathered; no robes of office dignify their persons; on the contrary, royal edicts have proclaimed them outlaws, and the persecutor is on their track.
Nevertheless, as if they were assembled in peaceful times, and under the shadow of law, they go on day by day, with calm dignity and serene power, planting the foundations of the House of God in their native land. They will do their work, although the first stones should be cemented with their blood.
We can present only an outline of their great work. Their Confession of Faith was comprehended in forty articles, and agrees in all essential points with the Creed of the
Church of England. They received the Bible as the sole infallible rule of faith and manners. They confessed the doctrine of the Trinity; of the Fall, of the entire corruption of man’s nature, and his condemnation; of the election of some to everlasting life; of the call of sovereign and omnipotent race; of a free redemption by
Christ, who is our righteousness; of that righteousness as the ground of our justification; of faith, which is the gift of God, as the instrument by which we obtain an interest in that righteousness; of regeneration by the Spirit to a new life, and to good works; of the Divine institution of the ministry; of the equality of all pastors under one chief Pastor and universal Bishop, Jesus Christ; of the true Church, as composed of the assembly of believers, who agree to follow the rule of the Word; of the two Sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper; of the policy which Christ has established for the government of his Church; and of the obedience and homage due to rulers in monarchies and commonwealths, as God’s lieutenants whom he has set to exercise a lawful and holy office.
[11]
Their code of discipline was arranged also in forty articles. Dismissing details, let us state in outline the constitution of the Reformed Church of France, as settled at its first
National Synod. Its fundamental idea was that which had been taught both at
Wittemberg and Geneva, namely, that the government of the Church is diffused throughout the whole body of the faithful, but that the exercise of it is to be restricted to those to whom Christ, the fountain of that government, has given the suitable gifts, and whom their fellow Church members have called to its discharge. On this democratic basis there rose four grades of power: -
1. The Consistory.
2. The Colloquy.
3. The Provincial Synod.
4. The National Synod.
Corresponding with these four grades of power there were four circles or areas - the
Parish, the District, the Province, and the Kingdom. Each grade of authority narrowed as it ascended, while the circle within which it was exercised widened. What had its beginning in a democracy, ended in a constitutional monarchy, and the interests of each congregation and each member of the Church were, in the last resort, adjudicated
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upon by the wisdom and authority of all. There was perfect liberty, combined with perfect order.
Let us sketch briefly the constitution of each separate court, with the sphere within which, and the responsibilities under which, it exercised its powers. First came the
Consistory. It bore rule over the congregation, and was composed of the minister, elders, and deacons. The minister might be nominated by the Consistory, or by the
Colloquy, or by the Provincial Synod, but he could not be ordained till he had preached three several Sundays to the congregation, and the people thus had had an opportunity of testing his gifts, and his special fitness to be their pastor. The elders and deacons were elected by the congregation.
The Colloquy came next, and was composed of all the congregations of the district.
Each congregation was represented in it by one pastor and one elder or deacon. The
Colloquy met twice every year, and settled all questions referred to it from the congregations within its limits. Next came the Provincial Synod. It comprehended all the Colloquies of the Province, every congregation sending a pastor and an elder to it.
The Provincial Synod met once a year, and gave judgment in all cases of appeal from the court below, and generally in all matters deemed of too great weight to be determined in the Colloquy.
At the head of this gradation of ecclesiastical authority came the National Synod. It was composed of two pastors and two elders from each of the Provincial Synods, and had the whole kingdom for its domain or circle. It was the court of highest judicature; it determined all great causes, and heard all appeals, and to its authority, in the last resort, all were subject. It was presided over by a pastor chosen by the members. His pre-eminence was entirely official, and ended at the moment the Synod had closed its sittings.
In the execution of their great task, these first builders of the Protestant Church in
France availed themselves of the counsel of Calvin. Nevertheless, their eyes were all the while directed to a higher model than Geneva, and they took their instructions from a higher authority than Calvin. They studied the New Testament, and what they aimed at following was the pattern which they thought stood revealed to them there, and the use they made of Calvin’s advice was simply to be able to see that plan more clearly, and to follow it more closely. Adopting as their motto the words of the apostle
- “One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren” - they inferred that there must be government in the Church - “One is your Master” - that the source of that government is in heaven, namely, Christ; that the revelation of it is in the Bible, and that the depository of it is in the Church - “All ye are brethren.” Moving between the two great necessities which their motto indicated, authority and liberty, they strove to adjust and reconcile these two different but not antagonistic forces - Christ’s royalty and his people’s brotherhood. Without the first there could not be order, without the second there could not be freedom. Their scheme of doctrine preceded their code of discipline; the first had been accepted before the second was submitted to; thus all the bonds that held that spiritual society together, and all the influences that ruled it, proceeded out of the throne in the midst of the Church. If they, as constituted officers, stood between the Monarch and the subjects of this spiritual empire, it was neither as legislators nor as rulers, strictly so called. “One” only was Master, whether as regarded law or government. Their power was not legislative but administrative, and
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their rule was not lordly but ministerial; they were the fellow-servants of those among whom, and for whom, their functions were discharged.
The Synod sat four days; its place of meeting was never discovered, and its business finished, its members departed for their homes, which they reached in safety. Future councils have added nothing of moment to the constitution of the French Protestant
Church, as framed by this its first National Synod.
[12]
The times subsequent to the holding of this assembly were tunes of great prosperity to the Protestants of France. The Spirit of God was largely given them; and though the fires of persecution continued to burn, the pastors were multiplied, congregations waxed numerous, and the knowledge and purity of their members kept pace with their increase. The following picture of the French Church at this era has been drawn by
Quick: - “The holy Word of God is duly, truly, and powerfully preached in churches and fields, in ships and houses, in vaults and cellars, in all places where the Gospel ministers can have admission and convenience, and with singular success. Multitudes are convinced and converted, established and edified. Christ rideth out upon the white horse of the ministry, with the sword and the bow of the Gospel preached, conquering and to conquer. His enemies fall under him, and submit themselves unto him.”
“Oh! the unparalleled success of the plain and earnest sermons of the first Reformers!
Multitudes flock in like doves into the windows of God’s ark. As innumerable drops of dew fall from the womb of the morning, so hath the Lord Christ the dew of his youth. The Popish churches are drained, the Protestant churches are filled. The priests complain that their altars are neglected; their masses are now indeed solitary. Dagon can not stand before God’s ark. Children and persons of riper years are catechized in the rudiments and principles of the Christian religion, and can give a satisfactory account of their faith, a reason of the hope that is in them. By this ordinance do their pious pastors prepare them for communion with the Lord at his holy table.”
[13]
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Henry II went to his grave amid the deepening shadows of fast-coming calamity. The auspicious signs which had greeted the eyes of men when he ascended the throne had all vanished before the close of his reign, and given place to omens of evil. The finances were embarrassed, the army was dispirited by repeated defeat, the court was a hotbed of intrigue, and the nation, broken into factions, was on the brink of civil war. So rapid had been the decline of a kingdom which in the preceding reign was the most flourishing in Christendom.
Henry II was succeeded on the throne by the eldest of his four sons, under the title of
Francis III. The blood of the Valois and the blood of the Medici - two corrupt streams
- were now for the first time united on the throne of France. With the new monarch came a shifting of parties in the Louvre; for of all slippery places in the world those near a throne are the most slippery. The star of Diana of Poictiers, as a matter of course, vanished from the firmament where it had shone with bright but baleful splendour. The Constable Montmorency had a hint given him that his health would be benefited by the air of his country-seat. The king knew not, so he said to him, how to reward his great merits, and recompense him for the toil he had undergone in his service, save by relieving him of the burden of affairs, in order that he might enjoy his age in quiet, being resolved not to wear him out as a vassal or servant, but always to honour him as a father.
[1]
The proud Constable, grumbling a little, strode off to his
Castle of Chantilly, ten leagues from Paris. The field cleared of these parties, the contest for power henceforward lay between the Guises and the Queen-mother.
Francis II was a lad of sixteen, and when we think who had had the rearing of him, we are not surprised to learn that he was without principles and without morals. Feeble in mind and body, he was a tool all the more fit for the hand of a bold intriguer. At the foot of the throne from which she had just descended stood the crafty Italian woman, his mother, Catherine de Medici: might she not hope to be the sovereign-counsellor of her weak-minded son? During the lifetime of her husband, Henry II, her just influence as the wife had been baulked by the ascendency of the mistress, Diana of Poictiers.
That rival had been swept from her path, but another and more legitimate competitor had come in the room of the fallen favourite. By the side of Francis II, on the throne of France, sat Mary Stuart, the heir of the Scottish crown, and the niece of the Guises.
The king doted upon her beauty,
[2]
and thus the niece was able to keep open the door of the royal closet, and the ear of her husband, to her uncles. This gave the Guises a prodigious advantage in the game that was now being played round the person of the king. And when we think how truculent they were, and how skilled they had now become in the arts by which princes’ favour is to be won, it does not surprise us to learn that in the end of the day they were foremost in the race. Catherine de Medici was a match for them any day in craft and ambition, but with the niece of her rivals by the king’s side, she found it expedient still to dissemble, and to go on a little while longer disciplining herself in those arts in which nature had fitted her to excel, and in which long practice would at last make her an expert, and then would she grasp the government of France.
The question which the Queen-mother now put, “What shall be my policy?” was to be determined by the consideration of who were her rivals, and what the tactics to which
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they were committed. Her rivals, we have just said, were the Guises, the heads of the
Roman Catholic party. This threw Catherine somewhat on the other side. She was nearly as much the bigot as the Cardinal of Lorraine himself, but if she loved the
Pope, still more did she love power, and in order to grasp it she stooped to caress what she mortally hated, and reigned to protect what she secretly wished to root out. Thus did God divide the counsels and the arms of these two Powerful enemies of his
Church. Had the Guises stood alone, the Reformation would have been crushed in
France; or had Catherine de Medici stood alone, a like fate would have befallen it; but
Providence brought both upon the scene together, and made their rivalry a shield over the little Protestant flock. The Queen-mother now threw herself between the leaders of the Reformed, and the Guises who were for striking them down without mercy.
The new relation of Catherine brings certain personages upon the stage whom we have not yet met, but whom it is fitting, seeing they are to be conspicuous actors in what is to follow, we should now introduce.
The first is Anthony de Bourbon, Duke of Vendome, and first prince of the blood.
From the same parent stock sprang the two royal branches of France, the Valois and the Bourbon. Louis IX (St. Louis) had four sons, of whom one was named Philip and another Robert. From Philip came the line of the Valois, in which the succession was continued for upwards of 300 years. From Robert, through his son’s marriage with the heiress of the Duchy of Bourbon, came the house of that name, which has come to fill so large a space in history, and has placed its members upon the thrones
[3]
of France, and Spain, and Naples. Princes of the blood, and adding to that dignity vast possessions, a genius for war, and generous dispositions, the Bourbons aspired to fill the first posts in the kingdom. Their pretensions were often troublesome to the reigning monarch, who found it necessary at times to visit their haughty bearing with temporary banishment from court. They were under this cloud at the time when Henry
II died. On the accession of Francis II they resolved on returning to court and resuming their old influence in the government; but to their chagrin they found those places which they thought they, as princes of the blood, should have held, already possessed by the Guises. The latter united with the Queen-mother in repelling their advances, and the Bourbons had again to retire, and to seek amid the parties of the country that influence which they were denied in the administration.
Anthony de Bourbon had married Jeanne d’Albret, who was the most illustrious woman of her time, and one of the most illustrious women in all history. She was the daughter of Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre, whose genius she inherited, and whom she surpassed in her gifts of governing, and in her more consistent attachment to the Reformation. Her fine intellect, elevated soul, and deep piety were unequally yoked with Anthony de Bourbon, who was a man of humane dispositions, but of low tastes, indolent habits, and of paltry character. His marriage with Jeanne d’Albret brought him the title of King of Navarre; but his wife was a woman of too much sense, and cherished too enlightened a regard for the welfare of her subjects, to give him more than the title. She took care not to entrust him with the reins of government.
Today, so zealous was he for the Gospel, that he exerted himself to have the new opinions preached in his wife’s dominions; and tomorrow would he be so zealous for
Rome, that he would persecute those who had embraced the opinions he had appeared, but a little before, so desirous to have propagated. “Unstable as water,” he spent his life in travelling between the two camps, the Protestant and the Popish, unable long to adhere to either, and heartily despised by both.
[4]
The Romanists,
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knowing the vulgar ambition that actuated him, promised him a territory which he might govern in his own right, and he kept pursuing this imaginary princedom. It was a mere lure to draw him over to their side; and his life ended without his ever attaining the power he was as eager to grasp as he was unable to wield. He died fighting in the ranks of the Romanists before the walls of Rouen; and, true to his character for inconsistency to the last, he is said to have requested in his dying moments to be re-admitted into the Protestant Church.
His brother, the Prince of Conde, was a person of greater talent, and more manly character. He had a somewhat diminutive figure, but this defect was counterbalanced by the graces of his manner, the wit of his discourse, and the gallantry of his spirit.
[5]
He shone equally among the ladies of the court and the soldiers of the camp. He could be oozy with the one, and unaffectedly frank and open with the other. The Prince of
Conde attached himself to the Protestant side, from a sincere conviction that the doctrines of the Reformation were true, that they were favourable to liberty, and that their triumph would contribute to the greatness of France. But the Prince of Conde was not a great man. He did not rise to the true height of the cause he had espoused, nor did he bring to it that large sagacity, that entire devotion of soul, and that singleness of purpose which were required of one who would lead in such a cause.
But what was worse, the Prince of Conde had not wholly escaped the blight of the profligacy of the age; although he had not suffered by any means to the same extent as his brother, the King of Navarre. A holy cause can not be effectually succoured save by holy hands. “It may be asked whether the Bourbons, including even Henry IV, did not do as much damage as service to the Reformation. They mixed it up with politics, thrust it into the field of battle, dragged it into their private quarrels, and then when it had won for them the crown, they deserted it.”
[6]
The next figure that comes before us is a truly commanding one. It is that of Gaspard de Coligny, better known as Admiral de Coligny. He towers above the Bourbon princes, and illustrates the fact that greatness of soul is a much more enviable possession than mere greatness of rank. Coligny, perhaps the greatest layman of the
French Reformation, was descended from an ancient and honourable house, that of
Chatillon. He was born in the same year in which Luther commenced the Reformation by the publication of his Theses, 1517. He lost his father on the 24th of August, 1522, being then only five years of age. The 24th of August was a fatal day to Coliguy, for on that day, fifty years afterwards, he fell by the poignard of an assassin in the St.
Bartholomew Massacre. His mother, Louise de Montmorency, a lady of lofty virtue and sincere piety, was happily spared to him, and by her instructions and example those seeds were sown in his youthful mind which afterwards bore so noble fruit in the cause of his country’s religion and liberty. He was offered a cardinal’s hat if he would enter the Church. He chose instead the profession of arms. He served with great distinction in the wars of Flanders and Italy, was knighted on the field of battle, and returning home in 1547 he married a daughter of the illustrious house of Laval - a woman of magnanimous soul and enlightened piety, worthy of being the wife of such a man, and by whose prompt and wise counsel he was guided at more than one critical moment of his life. What he might have been as cardinal we do not know, but in his own profession as a soldier he showed himself a great reformer and administrator.
Brantome says of the military ordinances which he introduced into the French army,
“They were the best and most politic that have ever been made in France, and, I believe, have preserved the lives of a million of persons; for, till then, there was
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nothing but pillage, brigandage, murders, and quarrels, so that the companies resembled hordes of wild Arabs rather than noble soldiers.”
[7]
At an early age Coligny was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and to beguile the solitary hours of his confinement, he asked for a Bible and some religious books. His request was complied with, and from that incident dates his attachment to the
Reformed doctrines. But he was slow to declare himself. He must be fully persuaded in his own mind before openly professing the truth, and he must needs count the cost.
With Coligny, Protestantism was no affair of politics or of party, which he might cast aside if on trial he found it did not suit. Having put his hand to the plough, he must not withdraw it, even though, leaving castle and lands and titles, he should go forth an outcast and a beggar. For these same doctrines men were being every day burned at the stake.
Before making profession of them, Coligny paused, that by reading, and converse with the Reformed pastors, he might arrive at a full resolution of all his doubts. But the step was all the more decisive when at last it was taken. As men receive the tidings of some great victory or of some national blessing, so did the Protestants of
France receive the news that Coligny had cast in his lot with the Reformation. They knew that he must have acted from deep conviction, that his choice would never be reversed, and that it had brought a mighty accession of intellectual and moral power to the Protestant cause. They saw in Coligny’s adherence an additional proof of its truth, and a new pledge of its final triumph. Protestantism in France, just entering on times of awful struggles, had now a leader worthy of it. A captain had risen up to march before its consecrated hosts, and fight its holy battles.
From the moment he espoused the Protestant cause, Coligny’s character acquired a new grandeur. The arrangements of his household were a model of order. He rose early, and having dressed himself, he summoned his household to prayers, himself leading their devotion. Business filled up the day and not a few of its hours were devoted to the affairs of the Church; for deputies were continually arriving at the
Castle of Chatillon from distant congregations, craving the advice or aid of the admiral. Every other day a sermon was preached before dinner when it chanced, as often happened, that a minister was living under his roof. At table a psalm was sung, and a prayer offered. After an early supper came family devotions, and then the household were dismissed to rest. It mattered not where Colby was, or how occupied - in the Castle of Chatillon surrounded by his children and servants, or in the camp amid the throng of captains and soldiers - this was ever the God-fearing manner of his life. Not a few of the nobles of France felt the power of his example, and in many a castle the chant of psalms began to be heard, where aforetime there had reigned only worldly merriment and boisterous revelry.
To the graces of Christianity there were added, in the character of Coligny, the gifts of human genius. He excelled in military tactics, and much of his life was passed on the battle-field; but he was no less fitted to shine in senates, and to guide in matters of
State. His foresight, sagacity, and patriotism would, had he lived in happier times, have been the source of manifold blessings to his native country. As it was, these great qualities were mainly shown in arranging campaigns and fighting battles.
Protestantism in France, so at least Coligny judged, had nothing for it but to stand to its defence. A tyranny, exercised in the king’s name, but none the less art audacious
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usurpation, was trampling on law, outraging all rights, and daily destroying by horrible deaths the noblest men in France, and the Protestants felt that they owed it to their faith, to their country, to the generations to come, and to the public liberties and
Reformation of Christendom, to repel force by force, seeing all other means of redress were denied them. This alone made Coligny unsheathe the sword. The grand object of his life was freedom of worship for the Reformed in France. Could he have secured that object, most gladly would he have bidden adieu for ever to camps and battlefields, and, casting honours and titles behind him, been content to live unknown in the privacy of Chatillon. This, however, was denied him. He was opposed by men who
“hated peace,” and so he had to fight on, almost without intermission, till the hour came when he was called to seal with his blood the cause he had so often defended with his sword.
Before quitting this gallery of portraits, there is one other figure which must detain us a little. Her name we have already mentioned incidentally, but her great qualities make her worthy of more lengthened observation. Jeanne d’Albret was the daughter of the accomplished and pious Margaret of Valois; but the daughter was greater than the mother. She had a finer genius, a stronger character, and she displayed the graces of a more consistent piety. The study of the Bible drew her thoughts in her early years to the Reformation, and her convictions ripening into a full belief of its truth, although untoward circumstances made her long conceal them, she at last, in 1560, made open profession of Protestantism. At that tune not only did the Protestant cause underlie the anathemas of Popes, but the Parliament of Paris had put it beyond the pale of law, and having set a price upon the heads of its adherents, it left them to be hunted down like wild beasts. Jeanne d’Albret, having made her choice, was as resolute as her husband,
Anthony de Bourbon, was vacillating. Emulating the noble steadfastness of Coligny, she never repented of her resolution. Whether victory shone or defeat lowered on the
Reformed cause, Jeanne d’Albret was ever by its side. When overtaken by disaster, she was ever the first to rally its dispirited adherents, and to bring them succour. Her husband forsook her; her son was taken from her; nothing daunted, she withdrew to her own principality of Bearn, and there devised, with equal wisdom and spirit, measures for the Reformation of her own subjects, at the same time that she was aiding, by her counsels and her resources, the Protestants in all parts of France.
Her little kingdom lay on the slope of the Pyrenees, looking toward France, which it touched on its northern frontier. In former times it was divided into Lower Navarre, of which we have spoken above, and Upper Navarre, which lay on the southern slope of the Pyrenees, and was conterminous with Old Castile. Though but a small territory, its position gave Navarre great importance. Seated on the Pyrenees, it held in the one hand the keys of France, and in the other those of Spain. It was an object of jealousy to the sovereigns of both countries. It was coveted especially by the Kings of Spain, and in the days of Jeanne’s grandfather Upper Navarre was torn from its rightful sovereigns by Ferdinand, King of Arragon, whose usurpation was confirmed by Pope
Julius II. The loss of Upper Navarre inferred the loss of the capital of the kingdom,
Pampeluna, which contained the tombs of its kings. Henceforward it became a leading object with Jean d’Albret to recover the place of his fathers’ sepulchres, that his own ashes might sleep with theirs, but in this he faded; and when his granddaughter came to the throne, her dominions were restricted to that portion of the ancient Navarre which lay on the French side of the Pyrenees.
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In 1560, we have said, Jeanne d’Albret made open profession of the Protestant faith.
In 1563 came her famous edict, dated from her castle at Pau, abolishing the Popish service throughout Bearn, and introducing the Protestant worship. The majority of her subjects were already prepared for this change, and the priests, though powerful, did not venture openly to oppose the public sentiment. A second royal edict confiscated a great part of the temporalities of the Church, but without adding them to the crown.
They were divided into three parts. One-third was devoted to the education of the youth, another third to the relief of the poor, and the remaining third to the support of the Protestant worship. The private opinion of the Roman Catholic was respected, and only the public celebration of this worship forbidden. All trials and punishment for differences of religious opinions were abolished. Where the majority of the inhabitants were Protestant, the cathedrals were made over to them for their use, the images, crucifixes, and relics being removed. Where the inhabitants were equally divided, or nearly so, the two faiths were permitted the alternate use of the churches.
The monasteries were converted into schools, thus anticipating by three centuries a measure long afterwards adopted by the Italian and other Continental Governments.
Colleges were founded for the higher education. Jeanne caused the Bible to be translated into the dialects of her dominions. She sent to Geneva for ministers, and recalled the native evangelists who had been driven out of Navarre, in order to the more perfect instruction of her subjects in the doctrines of the Word of God. Thus did she labour for the Reformation of her kingdom. The courage she displayed may be judged of, when we say that the Pope was all the while thundering his excommunications against her; and that the powerful Kings of Spain and France. affronted by the erection of an heretical establishment on the frontiers of their dominions, were threatening to overrun her territory, imprison her person in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and raze her kingdom from the map of Europe.
In the midst of these distractions the Queen of Navarre gave herself to the study of the principles of jurisprudence. Comparing together the most famous codes of ancient and modern times, she produced, after the labour of seven years, a body of laws for the government of her kingdom, which was far in. advance of her times. She entertained the most enlightened views on matters then little cared for by kings or parliaments. By her wise legislation she encouraged husbandry, improved the arts, fostered intelligence, and in a short time the beautiful order and amazing prosperity of her principality attracted universal admiration, and formed a striking contrast to the disorder, the violence, and misery that overspread the lands around it. In her dominions not a child was permitted to grow up uneducated, nor could a beggar be seen. The flourishing condition of Bearn showed what the mightier realms of Spain and France would have become, had their peoples been so wise as to welcome the
Reformation. The code of the wise queen continued in operation in the territories of the House of d’Albret down to almost our own times. She is still remembered in these parts, where she is spoken of as the “good queen.”
We have dwelt the longer upon these portraits because one main end of history is to present us with such. The very contemplation of them is ennobling. In a recital like the present, which brings before us some of the worst of men that have ever lived, and portrays some of the darkest scenes that have ever been enacted, to meet at times and characters, like those we have just passed in review, helps to make us forget the wickedness and worthlessness on which the mind is apt to dwell disproportionately, if
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not exclusively. All is not dark in the scene we are surveying; beams of glory break in through the deep shadows. Majestic and kingly spirits pass across the stage, whose deeds and renown shall live when the little and the base among their fellows, who laboured to defame their character and to extinguish their fame, have gone down into oblivion, and passed for ever from the knowledge of the world. Thus it is that the good overcomes the evil, and that the heroic long survives the worthless. The example of great men has a creative power: they reproduce, in the ages that come after, their own likeness, and enrich the world with men cast in their own lofty and heroic mould.
Humanity is thus continually receiving seeds of greatness into its bosom, and the world is being led onwards to that high platform where its Maker has destined that it shall ultimately stand.
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Henry II smitten by a sudden blow, has disappeared from the scene. Francis II is on the throne of France. The Protestants are fondly cherishing the hope that with a change of men will come a change of measures, and that they have seen the dawn of better times. “Alas! under the reign of this monarch,” says Beza, “the rage of Satan broke out beyond all former bounds.”
[1]
No sooner had Henry breathed his last, than the Queen-mother and the two Guises carried the young king to the Louvre, and, installing him there, admitted only their own partisans to his presence. Now it was that the star of the Guises rose proudly into the ascendant. The duke assumed the command of the army; the cardinal, head of the Church, took also upon him the charge of the finances - thus the two brothers parted between them the government of
France. Francis wore the crown; a sort of general superintendence was allowed to the
Queen-mother; but it was the Guise and not the Valois that governed the country.
[2]
One of the last acts of Henry II had been to arrest Counsellor Du Bourg and issue a commission for his trial. One of the first acts of the son was to renew that commission. Du Bourg, shut up in his iron cage, and fed on bread and water, was nevertheless continually singing psalms, which he sometimes accompanied on the lute. His trial ended in his condemnation as a heretic, and he was first strangled and then burned in the Place de Greve. His high rank, his many accomplishments, and his great character for uprightness fixed the eyes of all upon his stake, and made his death serviceable in no ordinary degree to the cause of Protestantism.
[3]
The power of the Guises, now in full blossom, was wholly put forth in the extirpation of heresy. Their zeal in this good work was not altogether without alloy. “Those of the religion,” as the Protestants were termed, were not less the enemies of the House of
Guise than of the Pope, and to cut them off was to consolidate their own power at the same time that they strengthened the foundations of the Papacy. To reclaim by argument men who had fallen into deadly error was not consonant with the habits of the Guises, scarcely with the habits of the age. The sword and the fanatical mob were their quickest and readiest weapons, and the only ones in which they had any confidence. They were the masters of the king’s person; they carried him about from castle to castle; they took care to gratify his tastes; and they relieved him of all the cares of government, for which his sickly body, indolent disposition, and weak intellect so thoroughly indisposed him.
While the monarch lived in this inglorious pupillage, the Guises appended his seal to whatever edict it pleased them to indite. In the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis, our readers will remember, there was a special clause binding the late king to exert himself to the utmost of his power to extirpate heresy. Under pretence of executing that treaty, the Guises fulminated several new and severe edicts against the Reformed.
Their meetings were forbidden on pain of death, without any other form of judgment, and informers were promised half the forfeitures. Other rewards were added to quicken their diligence. The commissaries of the various wards of Paris were commanded to pay instant attention to the informations lodged before them by the spies, who were continually on the search, and the Lieutenant-Criminal was empowered by letters patent to judge without appeal, and execute without delay, those brought before him. And the vicars and cures were set to work to thunder
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excommunication and anathema in their parishes against all who, knowing who among their neighbours were Lutherans, should yet refrain from denouncing them to the authorities.
[4]
The Protestant Church in Paris in this extremity addressed the Queen-mother,
Catherine de Medici. A former interview had inspired the members of that Church with the hope that she was disposed to pursue a moderate policy. They had not yet learned with what an air of sincerity, and even graciousness, the niece of Clement VII could cover her designs - how bland she could look while cherishing the most deadly purpose. They implored Catherine to interpose and stay the rigor of the government, and, with a just and sagacious foresight, which the centuries since have amply justified, they warned her that “if a stop was not speedily put to those cruel proceedings, there was reason to fear lest people, provoked by such violences, should fall into despair, and break forth into civil commotions, which of course would prove the ruin of the kingdom: that these evils would not come frets those who lived under their direction, from whom she might expect a perfect submission and obedience; but that the far greater number were of those who, knowing only the abuses of Popery, and having not as yet submitted to any ecclesiastical discipline, could not or would not bear persecution: that they had thought proper to give this warning to her Majesty, that if any mischief should happen it might not be put to their account.”
[5]
It suited the Queen-mother to interpret the warning of the Protestants, among whom were
Coligny and other nobles, as a threat; and the persecution, instead of abating, grew hotter every day.
[6]
We have already related the failure of the priests and the Sorbonne to establish the
Inquisition in Paris. Paul IV, whose fanaticism had grown in his old age into frenzy, had forwarded a bull for that purpose, but the Parliament put it quietly aside. The project was renewed by the Guises, and if the identical forms of the Spanish tribunal were not copied in the courts which they succeeded in erecting, a procedure was adopted which gained their end quite as effectually. These courts were styled
Chambres Ardentes, nor did their name belie their terrible office, which was to dispatch to the flames all who appeared before them accused of the crime of heresy.
They were presided over by three judges or inquisitors, and, like the Spanish Court, they had a body of spies or familiars in their employment, who were continually on the hunt for victims. The sergeants of the Chatelet, the commissaries of the various quarters of Paris, the officers of the watch, the city guard, and the vergers and beadles of the several ecclesiastical jurisdictions - a vast body of men - were all enjoined to aid the spies of the Chambres Ardentes, by day or night.
[7]
These ruffians made domiciliary visits, pried into all secrets, and especially put their ingenuity on the rack to discover the Conventicle. When they succeeded in surprising a religious meeting, they fell on its members with terrible violence, maltreating and sometimes murdering them, and those unable to escape they dragged to prison. These miscreants were by no means discriminating in their seizures; they must approve their diligence to their masters by furnishing their daily tale of victims. Besides, they had grudges to feed, and enmities to avenge, and their net was thrown at times over some who had but small acquaintance with the Gospel. A certain Mouchares, or Mouchy, became the head of a band who made it their business to apprehend men in the act of eating flesh on Friday, or violating some other equally important command of the Church. This man has transmitted his name and office to our day in the term mouchard, a spy of the police. The surveillance of Mouchares’ band was specially exercised over the
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Faubourg St. Germain, called, from the number of the Reformed that lived in it, “the
Little Geneva.” A hostelry in this quarter, at which the Protestants from Geneva and
Germany commonly put up, was assailed one Friday by Mouchares’ men. They found the guests to the number of sixteen at table. The Protestants drew their swords, and a scuffle ensued. Mouchares’ crew was driven off, but returning reinforced, they sacked the house, dragged the landlord and his family to prison, and in order to render them odious to the mob, they carried before them a larded capon and a piece of raw meat.
[8]
The footsteps of these wretches might be traced in the wreckings of furniture, in the pillage and ruins which they left behind them, fit those quarters of Paris which were so unfortunate as to be visited by them. “Nothing was to be seen in the streets,” says
Beza, describing the violences of those days, “but soldiers carrying men and women, and persons of all ages and every rank, to prison. The streets were so encumbered with carts loaded with household furniture, that it was hardly possible to pass. The houses were abandoned, having been pillaged and sacked, so that Paris looked like a city taken by storm. The poor had become rich, and the rich poor. What was more pitiable still was to see the little children, whose parents had been imprisoned, famishing at the doors of their former homes, or wandering through the streets crying piteously for bread, and no man giving it to them, so odious had Protestantism become to the Parisians. Still more to inflame the populace, at the street-corners certain persons in priests’ habits barangered the crowd, telling them that those heretics met together to feast upon children’s flesh, and to commit all kinds of impurity after they had eaten a pig instead of the Paschal lamb. The Parliament made no attempt to stop these outrages and crimes.”
[9]
Nor were these violences confined to the capital; the same scenes were enacted in many other cities, as Poictiers, Toulouse, Dijon,
Bordeaux, Lyons, Aix, and other places of Languedoc.
[10]
This terror, which had so suddenly risen up in France, struck many Romanists as well as Protestants with affright. Some Popish voices joined in the cry that was now raised for a moderate Reform; but instead of Reform came new superstitions. Images of the
Virgin were set up at the corners of streets, tapers were lighted, and persons stationed near on pretence of singing hymns, but in reality to watch the countenance of the passer-bys. If one looked displeased, or if he refused to uncover to the Virgin, or if he did not drop a coin into the box for defraying the cost of the holy candle that was kept burning before “our Lady,” the cry of heretic was raised, and the obnoxious individual was straightway surrounded by the mob, and if not torn to pieces on the spot, was carried off to the prison of the Chatelet. The apprehensions were so numerous that the prisons were filled to overflow, and the trials of the incarcerated had to be hurried through to make room for fresh victims. The cells emptied in the morning were filled before night. “It was one vast system of terror,” says Felice, “in which even the shadow of justice was no longer visible.”
[11]
No arts were neglected by the Guises and the priests to maintain at a white heat the fanaticism of the masses, on which their power to a large extent was based. If any public calamity happened - if a battle was lost, if the crops were destroyed by hailstorms, or if a province or city was ravaged by disease - “Ah!” it was said, “see what judgments these heretics are bringing on France!” Odious calumnies were put in circulation against those of the “religion.” To escape the pursuit of the spies by whom on all sides they were beset, the Reformed sought for retreats yet more secret in which
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to assemble - the darkest alley in city, the gloomiest recess of forest, the most savage ravine of wilderness. “Ah!” said their enemies, “they seek the darkness to veil their monstrous and unnatural wickedness from the light of heaven and from the eyes of men.” It was the story of pagan times over again. The long-buried calumny of the early persecutor was raked up from old histories, and flung at the French Protestant.
Even the Cardinal of Lorraine was mean enough to have recourse to these arts. His own unchaste life was no secret, yet he had the effrontery to advance, not insinuations merely, but open charges against ladies of illustrious rank, and of still more illustrious virtue - ladies whose lives were a rebuke of the profligacy with which his lawn was be-spotted and bemired. The cardinal knew how pure was the virtue which he laboured to blacken. Not so the populace. They believed these men and women to be the atheists and monsters which they had been painted as being, and they thought that in massacring and exterminating them, they were cleansing France from what was at once a defilement of the earth, and a provocation of Heaven.
Avarice came to the aid of bigotry. Not a few of the Reformed were persons of position and property, and in their case confiscation of goods was added to loss of life. Their persecutors shared their estates among them, deeming them doubtless a lawful prize for their orthodox zeal; and thus the purification of the kingdom, and the enriching of the court and its myrmidons, went on by equal stages. The history of these manors and lands can not in every case be traced, but it is known that many of them remained in possession of the families which now appropriated them till the great day of reckoning in 1789, and then the wealth that had been got by confiscation and injustice went as it had come. Indeed, in perusing the era of Francis II we seem to be reading beforehand the history of the times of the Great Revolution. The names of persons and parties changed, the same harrowing tale will suit both periods. The machinery of injustice and oppression, first constructed by the Guises, was a second time set a-working under Danton and Robespierre. Again is seen a Reign of Terror; again are crowds of spies; again are numberless denunciations, with all their terrible accompaniments - prison cells emptied in the morning to be filled before night, tribunals condemning wholesale, the axe incessantly at work, a triumphant tyranny wielding the mob as its tool, confiscations on a vast scale, and a furious political fanaticism madly driving the nation into civil war.
It was evident that a crisis was approaching. The king was a captive in the hands of the Guises. The laws were not administered - wrong and outrage stalked defiantly through the kingdom; and to complain was to draw upon oneself the punishment which ought to have visited the acts of which one complained. None were safe except the more bigoted of the Roman Catholics, and the rabble of the great cities, the pliant tools of the oppressor. Men began to ask one another, “What right have these strangers from Lorraine to keep the king a captive, and to treat France like a conquered country? Let us hurl the usurpers from power, and restore the government to its legitimate channels.” This led to what has been called the “Conspiracy of
Amboise.”
This movement, in its first origin, was entirely political. It was no more formed in the interest of the Reformed religion than of the Popish faith. It was devised in the interests of France, the emancipation of which from a tyrannous usurpation was its sole aim. It was promoted by both Roman Catholics and Protestants, because both were smarting from the oppression of the Guises. The testimony of Davila, which is
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beyond suspicion, is full to this effect, that the plot was not for the overthrow of the royal house, but for the liberation of the king and the authority of the laws.
[12]
The judgment of the German and Swiss pastors was asked touching the lawfulness of the enterprise. Calvin gave his voice against it, foreseeing “that the Reformation might lose, even if victorious, by becoming in France a military and political party.”
[13]
Nevertheless, the majority of the pastors approved the project, provided a prince of the blood were willing to take the lead, and that a majority of the estates of the nation gave it their sanction. Admiral de Coligny stood aloof from it. It was resolved to proceed in the attempt. The first question was, Who should be placed at the head of the movement? The King of Navarre was the first prince of the blood; but he was too apathetic and too inconstant to bear the weight of so great an affair. His brother, the
Prince of Conde, was believed to have the requisite talents, and he was accordingly chosen as the chief of the enterprise. It was judged advisable, however, that he should meanwhile keep himself out of sight, and permit Godfrey du Barry, Lord of La
Renaudie, to be the ostensible leader.
[14]
Renaudie was a Protestant gentleman of broken fortunes, but brave, energetic, and able.
Entering with prodigious zeal into the affair, Renaudie, besides travelling over France, visited England,
[15]
and by his activity and organizing skill, raised a little army of
400 horse and a body of foot, and enlisted not fewer than 200 Protestant gentlemen in the business. The confederates met at Nantes, and the 10th of March, 1560, was chosen as the day to begin the execution of their project. On that day they were to march to the Castle of Blois, where the king was then residing, and posting their soldiers in the woods around the castle, an unarmed deputation was to crave an audience of the king, and present, on being admitted into the presence, two requests, one for liberty of worship, and the other for the dismissal of the Guises. If these demands were rejected, as they anticipated they would be, they would give the signal, their men-at-arms would rush in, they would arrest the Guises, and place the Prince of
Conde at the head of the government. The confederates had taken an oath to hold inviolable the person of the king. The secret, though entrusted to thousands, was religiously kept till it was on the very eve of execution. A timorous Protestant, M. d’Avenelles, an attorney in Paris, revealed it to the court just at the last moment.
[16]
The Guises, having come to the knowledge of the plot, removed to the stronger Castle of Amboise, carrying the king thither also. This castle stood upon a lofty rock, which was washed by the broad stream of the Loire. The insurgents, though disconcerted by the betrayal of their enterprise, did not abandon it, nevertheless they postponed the day of execution from the 10th to the 16th of March.
Renaudie was to arrive in the neighbourhood of Amboise on the eve of the appointed day. Next morning he was to send his troops into the town, in small bodies, so as not to attract notice; he himself was to enter at noon. One party of the soldiers were to seize the gates of the citadel, and arrest the duke and the cardinal; this done, they were to hoist a signal on the top of the tower, and the men-at-arms, hidden in the neighbouring woods, would rush in and complete the revolution.
[17]
But what of the king while these strange events were in progress? Glimpses of his true condition, which was more that of a captive than a monarch, at times dawned upon him. One day, bursting into tears, he said to his wife’s uncles, “What have I done to my people that they hate me so? I would like to hear their complaints and their reasons I hear it said that people are against you only. I wish you could be away from
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here for a time, that we might see whether it is you or I that they are against.” The men to whom he had made this touching appeal gruffly replied, “Do you then wish that the Bourbon should triumph over the Valois? Should we do as you desire, your house would speedily be rooted out.”
[18]
We return to affairs outside the walls of Amboise. Among those to whom the secret was entrusted was a Captain Lignieres, who repairing to Amboise revealed the whole matter to the Queen-mother. He made known the names of the confederates, the inns at which they were to lodge, the roads by which they were to march on Amboise - in short, the whole plan of the assault. The Guises instantly took their measures for the security of the town. They changed the king’s guards, built up the gate of the citywall, and dispatched troops to occupy the neighbouring towns. Renaudie, surrounded as he was advancing by forced marches to Amboise, fell, fighting bravely, while his followers were cut in pieces, or taken prisoners. Another body of troops under Baron de Castelnau was overpowered, and their leader, deeming farther resistance useless, surrendered on a written promise that his own life and that of his soldiers should be spared.
The insurgents were now in the power of the Guises, and their revenge was in proportion to their former terror, and that had been great. The market-place of the town of Amboise was covered with scaffolds. Fast as the axe and the gallows could devour one batch of victims, another batch was brought out to be dispatched in like manner. Crowding the windows of the palace were the Cardinal of Lorraine and the duke, radiant with victory; the ladies of the court, including the Scottish Mary Stuart, in their gayest attire; the young king and his lords, all feasting their eyes on the terrible scenes which were being enacted in front of the palace. The blood of those that fell by the axe overflowed the scaffolds, filled the kennels, and poured in rushing torrents to the Loire.
[19]
That generous blood, now shed like water, would in afteryears have enriched France with chivalry and virtue. Not fewer than 1,200 persons perished at this time. Four dismal weeks these tragedies were continued. At last the executioners grew weary, and bethought them of a more summary way of dispatching their victims. They tied their hands and feet, and flung them into the Loire. The stream went on its way with its ghastly freight, and as it rolled past corn-field and vineyard, village and city, it carried to Tours and Nantes, and other towns, the first horrifying news of the awful tragedies proceeding at Amboise. Castelnau and his companions, despite the promise on which they had surrendered, shared the fate of the other prisoners. One of the gentlemen of his company, before bowing his head to the axe, dipped his hands in the blood of his already butchered comrades, and holding them up to heaven, exclaimed, “Lord, behold the blood of thy children unjustly slain; thou wilt avenge it.”
[20]
That appeal went up to the bar of the great Judge; but the answer stood over for 230 years. With the Revolution of 1789, came Carrier of
Nantes, a worthy successor of the Cardinal of Lorraine, and then it was seen that the cry had been heard at the great bar to which it ascended. On the banks of the same river did this man enact, in the name of liberty, the same horrible butcheries which the cardinal had perpetrated in the name of religion. A second time did the Loire roll onward a river of blood, bearing on its bosom a ghastly burden of corpses.
When we look down on France in 1560, and see her rivers reddening the seas around her coasts, and when again we look down upon her in 1790, and see the same portentous spectacle renewed, we seem to hear the angel of the waters saying, “Thou
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art righteous, O Lord, who art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus: for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink, for they are worthy. And I heard another angel out of the altar say, Even so,
Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.”
[21]
The Reformation continued to advance in the face of all this violence.
[22]
“There were many even among the prelates,” Davila tells us, “that inclined to Calvin’s doctrine.”
[23]
The same year that witnessed the bloody tragedy we have just recorded, witnessed also the establishment of the public celebration of Protestant worship in France. Up till this time the Reformed had held their assemblies for worship in secret; they met over-night, and in lonely and hidden places; but now the very increase of their numbers forced them into the light of day. When whole cities, and well-nigh entire provinces, had embraced the Reformation, it was no longer possible for the confessors of Protestant truth to bury themselves in dens and forests.
Why should the population of a whole town go out of its gates to worship? why not assemble in its own cathedrals, seeing in many places there were not now Papists to occupy them? The very calumnies which their enemies invented and circulated against them compelled them to this course. They would worship in open day, and with open doors, and see who should dare accuse them of seeking occasion for unnatural and abominable crimes. But this courageous course on the part of the
Reformed stung the Guises to madness, and their measures became still more violent.
They got together bands of ruffians, and sent them into the provinces where the
Calvinists abounded, with a commission to slay and burn at their pleasure. The city of
Tours was almost entirely Protestant. So, too, were Valence and Romans. The latter towns were surprised, the principal inhabitants hanged, and the Protestant pastors beheaded with a label on their breasts, “These are the chiefs of the rebels.”
[24]
These barbarities, as might have been expected, provoked reprisals. Some of the less discreet of the Protestants made incursions, at the head of armed bands, into Provence and
Dauphine. Entering the cathedrals, and turning the images and priests to the door, they celebrated Protestant worship in them, sword in hand; and when they took their departure, they carried with them the gold and silver utensils which had been used in the Romish service.
Such was now the unhappy condition of France. The laws were no longer administered. The land, scoured by armed bands, was full of violence and terror, of rapine and blood. The anarchy was complete; the cup of the ruler’s oppression, and the people’s suffering, was full and running over.
The Guises, intent on profiting to the utmost from the suppression of the “Conspiracy of Amboise,” pushed hard to crush their rivals before they had time to rally, or set on foot a second and, it might be, more formidable insurrection. In order to this, they resolved on two measures - first, to dispatch the Prince of Conde, the head of the
Protestant party; and, secondly, to compel every man and woman in the kingdom to abjure Protestantism. In prosecution of the first, having lured the prince to Orleans, they placed him under arrest, and brought him to trial for complicity in the Amboise
Conspiracy. As a matter of course he was condemned, and the Guises were now importuning the king to sign the death-warrant and have him executed. The moment
Conde’s head had fallen on the scaffold, they would put in force the second measure - the abjuration, namely. A form of abjuration was already drawn up, and it was resolved that on Christmas Day the king should present it to all the princes and
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officers of the court for their signature; that the queen, in like manner, should present it to all her ladies and maids of honour; the chancellor to all the deputies of Parliament and judges; the governors of provinces to all the gentry; the cures to all their parishioners; and the heads of families to all their dependents. The alternative of refusing to subscribe the abjuration oath was to be immediate execution. The cardinal, who loved to mingle a little grim pleasantry with his bloody work, called this cunning device of his “the Huguenot’s rat-trap.”
[25]
All was prospering according to the wish of the government. The scaffold was already erected on which Conde was to die. The executioner had been summoned, and was even now in Orleans. The abjuration formula was ready to be presented to all ranks and every individual the moment the prince had breathed his last; the year would not close without seeing France covered with apostasies or with martyrdoms. Verily, it seemed as if the grave of the French Reformation were dug.
When all was lost, as it appeared, an unseen finger touched this complicated web, woven with equal cruelty and cunning, and in an instant its threads were rent - the snare was broken. The king was smitten with a sudden malady in the head, which defied the skill of all his physicians. The Guises were thrown into great alarm by the illness of the king. “Surely,” said the duke to the physicians, “your art can save one who is only fit the flower of his age.” And when told that the royal patient would not live till Easter, he stormed exceedingly, and accused the physicians of killing the king, and of having taken the money of the heretics for murdering him. His brother, the cardinal, betook him to the saints of Paradise. He ordered prayers and processions for his recovery. But, despite the prayers that ascended in the temples - despite the images and relics that were carried in solemn procession through the streets - the king rapidly sank, and before Conde’s death-warrant could be signed, or the abjuration test presented for subscription, Francis II had breathed his last.
[26]
The king died (5th December, 1560) at the age of seventeen, after a reign of only as many months. The courtiers were too busy making suit for their places, or providing for their safety, to care for the lifeless body of the king. It lay neglected on the bed on which he had expired. Yesterday they had cringed and bowed before him, today he was nothing more to them than so much carrion. A few days thereafter we see a funeral procession issuing from the gates of Orleans, and proceeding along the road to the royal vaults at St. Denis. But what a poor show! What a meagre following!
We see none of the usual pageantry of grief - no heralds; no nodding plumes, no grandees of State in robes of mourning; we hear no boom of cannon, no toiling of passing bell - in short, nothing to tell us that it is a king who is being borne to the tomb. A blind bishop and two aged domestics make up the entire train behind the funeral car.
[27]
It was in this fashion that Francis II was carried to his grave.
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We have seen Francis II carried to the tomb with no more pomp or decency than if, instead of the obsequies of a king, it had been the funeral of a pauper. There followed a sudden shifting of the scenes at court. The day of splendour that seemed to be opening to Mary Stuart was suddenly overcast. From the throne of France she returned to her native country, carrying with her to the Scottish shore her peerless beauty, her almost unrivalled power of dissembling, and her hereditary and deeply cherished hatred of the Reformation. To her uncles, the Guises, the death of the king brought a not less sad reverse of fortune. Though they still retained their offices and dignities, they were no longer the uncontrolled masters of the State, as when Francis occupied the throne and their niece sat by his side.
But in the room of the Guises there stood up one not less the enemy of the Gospel, and whose rule was not less prolific of woes to France. Catherine de Medici was now supreme in the government; her day had at last arrived. If her measures were less precipitate, and her violence less open, her craft was deeper than that of the Guises, and her stroke, if longer delayed, was the more deadly when it fell. Her son, Charles
IX, who now occupied the throne, was a lad of only nine and a half years; and, as might have been expected in the case of such a mother and such a son, Charles wore the crown, but Catherine governed the kingdom. The sudden demise of Francis had opened the prison doors to Conde. Snatching him from a scaffold, if, restored him to liberty. As a prince of the blood, the Regency of France, during the minority of
Charles, by right belonged to him; but Catherine boldly put him aside, and made herself be installed in that high office. In this act she gave a taste of the rigor with which she meant to rule. Still she did not proceed in too great haste. Her caution, which was great, served as a bridle to her ambition, and the Huguenots,
[1]
as they began to be called, had now a breathing-space.
The Queen-mother fortified herself on the side of the Guises by recalling the
Constable Montmorency, and installing him in all his dignities and offices. The next event of importance was the meeting of the States-General at Orleans (December
13th, 1560), a few days after Charles IX had ascended the throne. The assembly was presided over by the Chancellor Michel de l’Hopital, a man learned in the law, revered on the judgment-seat for the wisdom and equity of his decisions, and tolerant beyond the measure of his times. The words, few but weighty, with which he opened the proceedings, implied a great deal more than they expressed. The Church, he said, that great fountain of health or of disease to a nation, had become corrupt.
Reformation was needed. “Adorn yourselves,” said he to the clergy, “but let it be with virtues and morality. Attack your foes, by all means, but let it be with the weapons of charity, prayer, and persuasion.”
[2]
Enlightened counsels these, which needed only wisdom in those to whom they were addressed, to work the cure of many of the evils which afflicted France.
The city of Bordeaux had sent an orator to the Parliament. Lying remote from the court, and not domineered over by the Popish rabble as Paris was, Bordeaux breathed a spirit more friendly to liberty and the Reformation than did the capital, and its deputy was careful to express the sentiments entertained by those who had
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commissioned him to represent them in this great assembly of the nation. “Three great vices,” he said, “disfigure the clergy - ignorance, avarice, and luxury;” and after dwelling at some length on each, he concluded by saying that if the ministers of religion would undertake to reform themselves, he would undertake to reform the nation. The spokesman of the nobility, the Lord of Rochefort, next rose to express the sentiments of the body he represented. His words were not more palatable to the clergy than had been those of the speakers who preceded him. He complained that the course of justice was obstructed by the interference of the priests. He did not know which was the greater scandal, or the source of greater misery to the country - the prodigious wealth of the clergy, or the astounding ignorance of their flocks. And he concluded by demanding “churches” for the “gentlemen of the religion.”
Thus all the lay speakers in the States-General united as one man in arraigning the
Roman Church as pre-eminently the source of the many evils which afflicted France.
They all with one voice demanded that the clergy should reform their doctrine, amend their lives, moderate the magnificence and luxury in which they lived, and laying aside their arrogance and bigotry, should labour to instruct their flocks, and to reclaim those who had gone astray, not with the knife and the faggot, but with the weapons of truth and reason.
It was now the turn of the clergy to be heard through the oracle whom they had selected - Jean Quintin, Professor of Canon Law. He had undertaken the cause of an institution laden with abuses, and now arraigned at the bar of the nation, as the cause of the manifold distractions and oppressions under which the country groaned. He took the responsibility lightly. He began by expressing his regret - a regret, we doubt not, perfectly sincere - that a most unwonted and dangerous innovation had been practiced in permitting the nobility and commons to address the assembly. The
Church, he said, was the mouth of the States-General; and had that mouth, and no other, been permitted to address them, they would have been spared the pain of listening to so many hard things of the Church, and so many smooth things of heresy.
The heretics, said the orator, had no other Gospel than revolution; and this pestiferous
Gospel admitted of no remedy but the sword. Were not all the men who had embraced this Gospel under the excommunication of the Church? and for what end had the sword been put into the hand of the king, if not to execute the deserved vengeance to which “the Church” had adjudged those who had so fatally strayed? And, turning to the young king, he told him that his first and most sacred duty, as a magistrate, was to defend the Church, and to root out her enemies. Coligny, who sat facing the speaker, started to his feet on hearing this atrocious proposal, which doomed to extermination a third of the population of France. He demanded an apology from the speaker. Quintin could doubtless plead the authority of canon law, and many a melancholy precedent to boot, for what he had said; but he had overshot the mark. He found no response in that assembly; even Catherine de Medici felt the speech to be an imprudent one, and the priests, whatever their secret wishes, durst not openly support their orator; and so
Quintin was compelled to apologize. Sickening under his mortification, he died three days thereafter.
Something had been gained by the meeting of the States-General. The priest-party had suffered a rebuff; Catherine de Medici had felt the pulse of the nation, and was more convinced than ever that the course she had resolved to steer was the wise one. Her supreme object was power; and she would best attain it by being on good terms with
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both parties. She opened the halls of Fontainebleau to the Protestant preachers, and she and her maids of honour were to be seen at times waiting with edifying seriousness upon the sermons of the Reformed pastors. So far did the Queen Regent carry her favours to the Protestants, that the Roman Catholics took alarm, fearing that she had gone over, not in seeming only, but in reality, to the “religion.” There was little cause for their alarm. Catherine had no intention of becoming a Huguenot. She was merely holding the balance between the two parties - making each weaken the. other - judging this to be the most effectual way of strengthening herself.
These favours to the Protestants roused the slumbering zeal of the Romanists. Now arose the Triumvirate. The party so named, which makes some figure in the history of the times, was formed for the defence of the old religion, its members being the Duke of Guise, the Constable Montmorency, and the Marshal St. Andre. These three men had little in common. The bond which held them together was hatred of the new faith, the triumph of which, they foresaw, would strip them of their influence and possessions. There had been a prodigal waste of the public money, and a large confiscation of the estates of the Protestants under the two former reigns; these three men had carried off the lion’s share of the spoil; and should Protestantism win the day, they would, in modern phrase, have to recoup, and this touched at once their honour and their purses. As regards the Guises, their whole influence hung upon the
Roman Church; her destruction, therefore, would be their destruction. As respects the
Constable Montmorency, he prided himself on being the first Christian in France. He was descended in a direct line from St. Louis; and a birth so illustrious - not to speak of the fair fame of his saintly ancestors - imposed upon him the duty of defending the old faith, or if that were impossible, of perishing with it. He was incapable of defending it by argument; but he had a sword, and it would ill become him to let it rust in its scabbard, when the Church needed its service. As regards Marshal St. Andre, the least influential member of the
Triumvirate, he was a noted gourmand, a veritable Lucullus, to whom there was nothing in life half so good as a well-furnished table. Marshal St. Andre foresaw that should Roman Catholicism go down in France, he would not only lose his Church - he would lose his dinner. The first might be borne, but the latter was not to be thought of.
These men had formerly been at deadly feud among themselves; but now they resolved to sacrifice their differences upon the altar of their country, and to unite together in this holy league for the defence of their religion and their estates. The
Triumvirate will again come before us: it has left its mark on the history of France.
The States-General again assembled in the end of 1561. The first thing that came under its notice was the financial state of the kingdom. The national debt amounted to
£48,000,000, and bade fair greatly to exceed that sum in a short time, for the expenditure was a long way in excess of the revenue.
What was to be done? A proposal was made that anticipated the measure which was carried out in France in 1789, and adopted long after that date in all the countries in which Roman Catholicism is the established religion. The speaker who made the proposal in question, laid down the principle that the ecclesiastical property belongs to the nation; that the clergy are merely its administrators; and founding on that principle, he proposed that the estates of the Church should be put up for sale, and the proceeds divided as follows: - one-third to go to the support of the Church; one-third to the payment of the national debt; and one-third to the revenues of the crown, to be
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applied, of course, to national uses. In this way it was hoped the financial difficulty would be got over; but the great difficulty - the religious one - lay behind; how was it to be got over?
It was agreed that a Council should be summoned; but it augured ill for the era of peace it was to inaugurate, that men disputed regarding its name before it had assembled. The priests strongly objected to its being called a Council. That would imply that the Protestant pastors were Christian ministers as well as themselves, entitled to meet them on terms of equality, and that the Reformed bodies were part of the Church as well as the Roman Catholics. The difficulty was got over by the device of styling the approaching assembly a Colloquy. The two parties had a different ideal before their mind. That of the Romanists was, that the Protestants came to the bar to plead, and to have their cause judged by the Church. That of the Protestants was, that the two parties were to debate on equal terms, that the Bible should be the supreme standard, and that the State’s authorities should decide without appeal. Knox, in
Scotland, drew the line more justly; framing his creed from the Bible, he presented it to the Parliament, just a year before this, and asked the authorities to judge of it, but only for themselves, in order to the withdrawal from the Roman hierarchy of that secular jurisdiction in which it was vested, and which it was exercising for the hindrance of the evangel, and for the destruction of its disciples. The Protestant
Church of France had no Knox.
On September 9th, 1561, this Colloquy - for we must not call it a Council - assembled at Poissy. On this little town, which lay a few leagues to the lyest of Paris, were the eyes of Christendom for the moment fixed. Will the conference now assembling there unite the two religions, and give peace to France? This issue was as earnestly desired by the Protestant States of Germany and England, as it was dreaded by the Pope and the King of Spain.
Nothing was wanting which pomp could give to make the conference a success. The hall in which it was held was the refectory of the convent at Poissy. There was set a throne, and on that throne sat the youthful sovereign of France, Charles IX. Right and left of him were ranged the princes and princesses of the blood, the great ministers of the crown, and the high lords of the court.
[3]
Along two sides of the hall ran a row of benches, and on these sat the cardinals in their scarlet robes. On the seats below them were a crowd of bishops, priests, and doctors. The assembly was a brilliant one.
Wherever the eye turned, it fell upon the splendour of official robes, upon the brilliance of rank, upon stars, crosses, and other insignia of academic distinction or of military achievement. It lacked the moral majesty, however, which a great purpose, earnestly and sincerely entertained, only can give. No affluence of embroidered and jewelled attire can compensate for the absence of a great moral end.
The king rose and said a few words. Much could not be looked for from a lad of only ten years. The chancellor, Michel de ‘Hopital, followed in a long speech, abounding in the most liberal and noble sentiments; and had the members of the assembly opened their ears to these wise counsels, they would have guided its deliberations to a worthy issue, and made the future of France a happy and glorious one. “Let us not pre-judge the cause we are met to discuss,” said in effect the chancellor, “let us receive these men as brethren - they are Christians as well as ourselves; let us not waste time in subtleties, but with all humility proceed to the Reformation of the doctrine of the Church, taking the Bible as the arbiter of all our differences.”
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L’Hopital aimed at striking the key-note of the discussions; but so little were his words in harmony with the sentiments of those to whom they were addressed, that the speech very nearly broke up the conference before it had well begun. It called for
Reform according to the Bible. “The Bible is enough,” said he; “to this, as to the true rule, we must appeal for the decision of the doctrine. Neither must we be so averse to the Reformed, for they are our brethren, regenerated by the same baptism, and worshipping the same Christ as we do.”
[4]
Straightway there arose a great commotion among the cardinals and bishops; angry words and violent gestures bespoke the irritation of their minds; but the firmness of the chancellor succeeded in calming the storm, and the business was proceeded with.
The Protestant deputies had not yet been introduced to the conference. This showed that here all did not meet on equal terms. But now, the Papal members having taken their seats, and the preliminary speeches being ended, there was no excuse for longer delaying the admission of the Protestants. The doors were thrown open, and Theodore
Beza, followed by ten Protestant pastors and twenty-two lay deputies, entered the hall.
There was a general desire that Calvin, then in the zenith of his fame, should have taken part in the discussions. The occasion was not unworthy of him, and Catherine de Medici had invited him by letter; but the magistrates of Geneva, unable to obtain hostages of high rank as pledges of his safety, refused to let him come, and Theodore
Beza was sent in his room. No better substitute could have been found for the illustrious chief of the Reformation than his distinguished disciple and fellowlabourer. Beza was a native of Burgnndy, of noble birth; learned, eloquent, courtly, and of a dignified presence. We possess a sketch of the personal appearance of this remarkable man by the traveller Fynes Moryson, who chanced to pass through
Geneva in the end of that century. “Here,” says he, “I had great contentment to speak and converse with the reverend Father Theodore Beza, who was of stature something tall and corpulent, or big-boned, and had a long thick beard as white as snow. He had a grave senator’s countenance, and was broad-faced, but not fat, and in general, by his comely person, sweet affability, and gravity, he would have extorted reverence from those that least loved him.”
[5]
The Reformed pastors entered, gravely and simply attired. They wore the usual habits of the Geneva Church, which offered a striking contrast to the State robes and clerical vestments in which courtier and cardinal sat arrayed. Unawed by the blaze of stars, crosses, and various insignia of rank and office which met their gaze, the deputies bore themselves with a calm dignity, as men who had come to plead a great cause before a great assembly. They essayed to pass the barrier, and mingle on equal terms with those with whom they were to confer. But, no; their place was outside. The
Huguenot pastor could not sit side by side with the Roman bishop. The Reformation must not come nigh the throne of Charles IX and the hierarchy of the Church. It must be made appear as if it stood at the bar to be judged. The pastors, though they saw, were too magnanimous to complain of this studied affront; nor did they refuse on that account to plead a cause which did not rest on such supports as lofty looks and gorgeous robes.
The moral majesty of Beza asserted its supremacy, and carried it over all the mock magnificence of the men who said to him, “Stand afar off, we are holier than thou.”
Immediately on entering he fell on his knees, the other deputies kneeling around him, and in the presence of the assembly, which remained mute and awed, he offered a
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short but most impressive prayer that Divine assistance might be vouchsafed in the discussions now to commence, and that these discussions might be guided to an issue profitable to the Church of God. Then rising up he made obeisance to the young monarch, thanking him for this opportunity of defending the Reformation; and next, turning to the prelates, he besought them to seek only to arrive at truth. Having thus introduced himself, with a modest yet dignified courteousness, well fitted to disarm prejudice against himself and his cause, he proceeded to unfold the leading doctrines of the Reformation. He took care to dwell on the spirit of loyalty that animated its disciples, well knowing that the Romanists charged it with being the enemy of princes; he touched feelingly on the rigors to which his co-religionists had been subjected, though no fault had been found in them, save in the matters of their God; and then launching out on the great question which had brought the conference together, he proceeded with much clearness and beauty of statement, and also with great depth of argument, to discuss the great outstanding points between the two
Churches. The speech took the Roman portion of the assembly by surprise. Such erudition and eloquence they had not expected to find in the advocates of the Reform; they were not quite the contemptible opponents they had expected to meet, and they felt that they would do well to look to their own armour. Beza, having ended, presented on bended knee a copy of the Confession of the French Protestant Church to the king.
But the orator had not been permitted to pursue uninterruptedly his argument to its close. In dealing with the controverted points, Beza had occasion to touch on the
Sacrament of the Eucharist. It was the centre of the controversy. The doctrine he maintained on this head was, in brief, that Christ is spiritually present in the
Sacrament, and spiritually partaken of by the faith of the recipient; but that his body is not in the elements, but in heaven. If the modest proposal of the Chancellor de l’Hopital, that the Bible should rule in the discussion, had raised a commotion, the words of Beza, asserting the Protestant doctrine on the great point at issue between
Rome and the Reformation, evoked quite a storm. First, murmurs were heard; these speedily grew into a tempest of voices. “He has spoken blasphemy!” cried some.
Cardinal Tournon demanded, anger almost choking his utterance, that the king should instantly silence Beza, and expel from France men whose very presence was polluting its soil and imperilling the faith of the “most Christian king.” All eyes were turned upon Catherine de Medici. She sat unmoved amid the clamour that surrounded her.
Her son, Charles IX, was equally imperturbable. The ruse of the Roman bishops had failed - for nothing else than a ruse could it be, if the Romanists did not expect the
Protestant deputies quietly and without striking a blow to surrender their whole cause to Rome - and the assembly by-and-by subsiding into calm, Beza went on with his speech, which he now pursued without interruption to its close.
The feeling among the bishops was that of discomfiture, though they strove to hide it under an air of affected contempt. Beza had displayed an argumentative power, and a range of learning and eloquence, which convinced them that they had found in him a more formidable opponent than they expected to encounter. They regretted that the conference had ever met; they dreaded, above all things, the effect which the reasonings of Beza might have on the mind of the king. “Would to God,” said the
Cardinal of Lorraine, “that Beza had been dumb, or we deaf.” But regrets were vain.
The conference had met, Beza had spoken, and there was but one course - Beza must be answered. They promised a refutation of all he had advanced, in a few days.
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The onerous task was committed to the hands of the Cardinal of Lorraine. The choice was a happy one. The cardinal was not lacking in ingenuity; he was, moreover, possessed of some little learning, and a master in address. Claude d’Espenee, accounted one of the most learned of their doctors, was appointed to assist him in the way of collecting materials for his answer. On the 16th of September the Colloquy again met, and the cardinal stood forth before the assembly and delivered an eloquent oration. He confined himself to two points - the Church and the Sacrament. “The
Church,” he said, “was infallibly guarded from error by the special promise of Christ.
True,” he said, glancing at the Protestant members of the Colloquy, “individual
Christians might err and fall out of the communion of the Church, but the Church herself can not err, and when any of her children wander they ought to submit themselves to the Pontiff, who can not fail to bring them back to the right path, and never can lose it himself.” In proof of this indefectibility of the Church, the cardinal cast himself upon history, expatiating, as is the wont of Romish controversialists, upon her antiquity and her advance, pari passu, with the ages in power and splendour.
He painted her as surviving all changes, withstanding the shock of all revolutions, outlasting dynasties and nations, triumphing over all her enemies, remaining unbroken by divisions within, unsubdued by violence without, and apparently as imperishable as the throne of her Divine Founder. So spoke the cardinal. The prestige that encompasses Rome has dazzled others besides Romanists, and we may be sure the picture, in the hands of the cardinal, would lose none of its attractions and illusions.
The second point, the Sacrament, did not admit of the same dramatic handling, and the cardinal contented himself with a summary of the usual arguments of his Church in favour of transubstantiation. The orator had not disappointed the expectations formed of him; even a less able speech would have been listened to with applause by all audience so partial; but the cheers that greeted Lorraine when he had ended were deafening. “He has refuted, nay, extinguished Beza,” shouted a dozen voices.
Gathering round the king, “That, sire,” said they, “is the true faith, which has been handed down from Clovis; abide in it.”
When the noise had a little subsided, Beza rose and requested permission to reply on the spot. This renewed the confusion. “The deputies had but one course,” insisted the prelates, “they ought to confess that they were vanquished; and, if they refused, they must be compelled, or banished the kingdom.” But the hour was late; the lay members of the council were in favour of hearing Beza, and the bishops, being resolved at all hazards that he should not be heard, broke up the assembly. This may be said to have been the end of the conferences; for though the sittings were continued, they were held in a small chamber belonging to the prior; the king was not permitted to come any more to them; the lay deputies were also excluded; and the debates degenerated into mere devices on the part of the Romanist clergy to entrap the Protestants into signing articles craftily drafted and embodying the leading tenets of the Roman creed.
Failing in this, the Cardinal of Lorraine attempted a characteristic ruse. He wrote to the Governor of Metz, desiring him to send to him a few divines of the Augsburg
Confession, “holding their opinions with great obstinacy,” his design being to set them a-wrangling with the Calvinists on the points of difference. Arriving at Paris, one of them died of the plague, and the rest could not be presented in public. The cardinal consequently was left to manage his little affair himself as best he could. “Do you,” said he to Beza, “like the Lutherans of Germany, admit consubstantiation?”
“And do you,” rejoined Beza, “like them, deny transubstantiation?” The cardinal thought to create a little bad blood between the Protestants of Germany and the
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Protestants of France, and so deprive the latter of the assistance which he feared might be sent them from their co-religionists of the Fatherland. But his policy of “divide and conquer” did not prosper.
[6]
It was clear that no fair discussion, and no honest adjustment of the controversy on the basis of truth, had from the first been intended. Nevertheless, the Colloquy had prompted the inquiry, “Is Romanism simply a corruption of the Gospel, or rather, has it not changed in the course of the ages into a system alien from and antagonistic to
Christianity, and can there in that case be a possibility of reconciling the two faiths?”
The conference bore fruit also in another direction. It set the great Chancellor de l’Hopital to work to solve the problem, how the two parties could live in one country.
To unite them was impossible; to exterminate one of them - Rome’s short and easy way - was abhorrent to him. There remained but one other device - namely, that each should tolerate the other. Simple as this way seems to us, to the men of the times of
L’Hopital, with a few rare exceptions, it was unthought of and untried, and appeared impossible. But, soon after the breakdown of Poissy, we find the chancellor beginning to air, though in ungenial times, his favourite theory - that men might be loyal subjects of the king, though not of the king’s faith, and good members of the nation, though not of the nation’s Church; in short, that difference of religious opinions ought not to infer exclusion from civil privileges, much less ought it to subject men to civil penalties.
Another important result of the Colloquy at Poissy, was that the Reformation stood higher in public estimation. It had been allowed to justify itself on a very conspicuous stage, and all to whom prejudice had left the power of judging, were beginning to see that it was not the disloyal and immoral System its enemies had accused it of being, nor were its disciples the vicious and monstrous characters which the priests had painted them. A fresh impulse was given to the movement. Some important towns, and hundreds of villages, after the holding of the Colloquy, left the communion of
Rome. Farel was told by a pastor “that 300 parishes in the Agenois had put down the mass.” From all quarters came the cry, “Send us preachers!” Farel made occasional tours into his native France. There arrived from Switzerland another remarkable man to take part in the work which had received so sudden a development. In October,
1561, Pierre Viret came to Nismes. He had been waylaid on the road, and beaten almost to death, by those who guessed on what errand he was travelling; and when he appeared on the scene of his labours, “he seemed,” to use his own words, “to be nothing but a dry skeleton covered with skin, who had brought his bones thither to be buried.” Nevertheless, on the day after his arrival, he preached to 8,000 hearers. When he showed himself in the pulpit, many among his audience asked; “What has this poor man come to do in our country? Is he not come to die?” But when the clear, silvery tones of his voice rang out upon the ear, they forgot the meagre look and diminutive figure of the man before them, and thought only of what he said. There were an unction and sweetness in his address that carried captive their hearts. All over the south of France, and more particularly in the towns of Nismes, Lyons, Montpelier, and Orthez, he preached the Gospel; and the memory of this eloquent evangelist lingers in those parts to this day.
[7]
Nor was Beza in any haste to depart, although the conferences which brought him to
Paris were at an end. Catherine de Medici, on whom his learning, address, and courtly bearing had not failed to make an impression, showed him some countenance, and he
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preached frequently in the neighbourhood of the capital. These gatherings took place outside the walls of Paris; the people, to avoid all confusions, going and returning, going and returning by several gates. In the centre were the women; next came the men, massed in a broad circular column; while a line of sentinels stationed at intervals kept watch on the outside, lest the fanatical mob of Paris should throw itself upon the congregation of worshippers.
It was impossible that a great movement like this, obstructed by so many and so irritating hindrances, should pursue its course without breaking into occasional violences. In those parts of France where the whole population had passed over to
Protestantism, the people took possession of the cathedrals, and, as a matter of course, they cleared out the crucifixes, images, and relics which they contained. In the eyes of the Protestants these things were the symbols of idolatry, and they felt that they had only half renounced Romanism while they retained the signs and symbols of its dogmas. They felt that they had not honestly put away the doctrine while they retained its exponent. A nation of philosophers might have been able to distinguish between the idea and its symbol, and completely to emancipate themselves from the former without destroying the latter.
They might have said, These things are nothing to us but so much wood and metal; it is in the idea that the mischief lies, and we have effectually separated ourselves from it, and the daily sight of these things can not bring it back or restore its dominancy over us. But the great mass of mankind are too little abstract to feel or reason in this way. They can not fully emancipate themselves from the idea till its sign has been put away. The Bible has recognized this feebleness, if one may term it so, of the popular mind, when it condemned, as in the second commandment, worship by an image, as the worship of the image, and joining together the belief and the image of the false gods, stringently commanded that both should be put away. And the distinctive feeling of the masses in all revolutions, political as well as religious, has recognized this principle. Nations, in all such cases, have destroyed the symbols represented. The early Christians broke the idols and demolished the temples of paganism. In the revolution of 1789, and in every succeeding revolution in France, the populace demolished the monuments and tore down the insignia of the former regime. If this is too great a price to pay for Reformation, that is another thing; but we can not have
Reformation without it. We can not have liberty without the loss, not of tyranny only, but its symbols also; nor the Gospel without the loss of idolatry, substance and symbol. Nor can these symbols return without the old ideas returning too. Hence
Ranke tells us that the first indication of a reaction against the Reformation in
Germany was “the wearing of rosaries.” This may enable us to understand the ardour of the French iconoclasts of the sixteenth century. Of that ardour we select, from a multitude of illustrative incidents, the following: - On one occasion, during the first war of religion, news was brought to Conde and Coligny that the great Church of St.
Croix in Orleans was being sacked. Hurrying to the spot, they found a soldier mounted on a ladder, busied in breaking an image. The prince pointed an arquebus at him. “Menseigneur,” said the Huguenot, “have patience till I have knocked down this idol, and then I will die, if you please.”
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The failure of the Colloquy of Poissy was no calamity to either Protestantism or the world. Had the young Reform thrown itself into the arms of the old Papacy, it would have been strangled in the embrace. The great movement of the sixteenth century, like those of preceding ages, after illuminating the horizon for a little while, would again have faded into darkness.
By what means and by what persons the Gospel was spread in France at this era it is difficult to say. A little company of disciples would start up in this town, and in that village, and their numbers would go on increasing, till at last the mass was forsaken, and instead of the priest’s chant there was heard the Huguenot’s psalm. The famous potter, Palissy, has given us in his Memoirs some interesting details concerning the way in which many of these congregations arose. Some poor but honest citizen would learn the way of peace in the Bible; he would tell it to his next neighbour; that neighbour would tell it in his turn; and in a little while a small company of simple but fervent disciples would be formed, who would meet regularly at the midnight hour to pray and converse together. Ere their enemies were aware, half the town had embraced “the religion;” and then, taking courage, they would avow their faith, and hold their worship in public. As the rich verdure spreads over the earth in spring, adding day by day a new brightness to the landscape, and mounting ever higher on the mountain’s side, so, with the same silence, and the same beauty, did the new life diffuse itself throughout France. The sweetness and joy of this new creation, the inspired Idyll alone can adequately depict - “Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone: the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the grape give a good smell.”
Like that balmy morning, so exquisitely painted in these words, that broke on the heathen world after the pagan night, so was the morning that was now opening on
France. Let the words of an eye-witness bear testimony: - “The progress made by us was such,” says Palissy, “that in the course of a few years, by the time that our enemies rose up to pillage and persecute us, lewd plays, dances, ballads, gourmandisings, and superfluities of dress and head-gear had almost entirely ceased.
Scarcely was there any more bad language to be heard on any side, nor were there any more crimes and scandals. Law-suits greatly diminished. Indeed, the Religion made such progress, that even the magistrates began to prohibit things that had grown up under their authority. Thus they forbade innkeepers to permit gambling or dissipation to be carried on within their premises, to the enticement of men away from their own homes and families.
“In those days might be seen on Sundays bands of workpeople walking abroad in the meadows, in the groves, in the fields, singing psalms and spiritual songs, and reading to and instructing one another. They might also be seen girls and maidens seated in groups in the gardens and pleasant places, singing songs or sacred themes; or boys, accompanied by their teachers, the effects of whose instructions had already been so salutary that those young persons not only exhibited a manly bearing, but a manful steadfastness of conduct. Indeed, these various influences, working one with another,
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had already effected so much good that not only had the habits and modes of life of the people been reformed, but their very countenances seemed to be changed and improved.”
[1]
On the 17th of January, 1562, an Assembly of Notables was convened at St.
Germain.
[2]
This gave the Chancellor de l’Hopital another opportunity of ventilating his great idea of toleration, so new to the men of that age. If, said the chancellor, we can not unite the two creeds, does it therefore follow that the adherents of the one must exterminate those of the other? May not both live together on terms of mutual forbearance? An excommunicated man does not cease to be a citizen. The chancellor, unhappily, was not able to persuade the Assembly to adopt his wise principle; but though it did not go all lengths with L’Hopital, it took a step on the road to toleration.
It passed an edict, commonly known as the “Edict of January,” “by which was granted to the Huguenots,” says Davila, “a free exercise of their religion, and the right to assemble at sermons, but unarmed, outside of the cities in open places, the officers of the place being present and assistant.”
[3]
Till this edict was granted the Protestants could build no church within the walls of a city, nor meet for worship in even the open country. Doubtless they sometimes appropriated a deserted Popish chapel, or gathered in the fields in hundreds and thousands to hear sermons, but they could plead no statute for this: it was their numbers solely that made them adventure on what the law did not allow. Now, however, they could worship in public under legal sanction.
But even this small scrap of liberty was bestowed with the worst grace, and was lettered by qualifications and restrictions which were fitted, perhaps intended, to annul the privilege it professed to grant. The Protestants might indeed worship in public, but in order to do so they must go outside the gates of their city. In many towns they were the overwhelming majority: could anything be more absurd than that a whole population should go outside the walls of its own town to worship? The edict, in truth, pleased neither party. It conferred too small a measure of grace to awaken the lively gratitude of the Protestants; and as regards the Romanists, they grudged the
Reformed even this poor crumb of favour.
Nevertheless, paltry though the edict was, it favoured the rapid permeation of France with the Protestant doctrines. The growth of the Reformed Church since the death of
Henry II was prodigious. At the request of Catherine de Medici, Beza addressed circular letters at this time to all the Protestant pastors in France, desiring them to send in returns of the number of their congregations. The report of Beza, founded on these returns, was that there were then upwards of 2,150 congregations of the Reformed faith in the kingdom. Several of these, especially in the great cities, were composed of from 4,000 to 8,000 communicants. The Church at Paris had no less than 20,000 members. As many as 40,000 would at times convene for sermon outside the gates of the capital. This multitude of worshippers would divide itself into three congregations, to which as many ministers preached; with a line of horse and foot, by orders from Catherine de Medici, drawn round the assembly to protect it from the insults of the mob.
[4]
The number of the Reformed in the provincial cities was in proportion to those of Paris. According to contemporary estimates of the respective numbers of the two communions, the Reformed Church had gathered into its bosom from one fourth to one half of the nation - the former is the probable estimate; but that fourth embraced the flower of the population in respect of rank, intelligence, and wealth.
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The chiefs of Romanism beheld, with an alarm that bordered on panic, all France on the point of becoming Lutheran. The secession of so great a kingdom from Rome would tarnish the glory of the Church, dry up her revenues, and paralyse her political arm. Nothing must be left undone that could avert a calamity so overwhelming. The
Pope, Philip II of Spain, and the Triumvirate at Paris took counsel as to the plan to be pursued, and began from this hour to prosecute each his part, in the great task of rolling back the tide of a triumphant Huguenotism. They must do so at all costs, or surrender the battle. The Pope wrote to Catherine de Medici, exhorting her as a daughter of Italy to rekindle her dying zeal - not so near extinction as the Pope feared
- and defend the faith of her country and her house. The wily Catherine replied, thanking her spiritual father, but saying that the Huguenots were, meanwhile, too powerful to permit her to follow his advice, and to break openly with Coligny. The
King of Navarre, the first prince of the blood, was next tampered with. The Romanists knew his weak point, which was all inordinate ambition to be what nature - by denying him the requisite talents - had ordained he should not be, a king in his own right, and not a titular sovereign merely. They offered him a kingdom whose geographical position was a movable one, lying sometimes in Africa, sometimes in the island of Sardinia, seeing the kingdom itself was wholly imaginary. They even flattered him with hopes that he might come to wear the crown of Scotland. The Pope would dissolve his marriage with Jeanne d’Albret, on the ground of heresy, and he would then secure him the hand of the young and beautiful Mary Stuart. Dazzled by these illusions, which he took for realities, the weak, unstable, unprincipled Antoine de Bourbon passed over to the Roman camp, amid the loud vauntings of those who knew how worthless, yet how handy, the prize was.
[5]
The way was thus prepared so far for the execution of bolder measures. The Duke of
Guise, quitting Paris, spent the winter on his family estates in Lorraine, and there, unobserved, began to collect an army, to cooperate with the troops which the King of
Spain had promised to send him. He hoped to take the field in spring with such a force as would enable him to root out Huguenotism from the soil of France, and restore the supremacy of the old faith.
But matters so fell out that the duke was obliged to begin his campaign sooner than he had intended. All that winter (1562) the populace of Paris had been kept in a state of great excitement. The Romanists believed that they were being betrayed. They saw the Queen-mother, whose present policy it was to play off the Huguenots against the
Triumvirate, favouring the “religion.” Then there was the Edict of January, permitting the free exercise of the Protestant worship. In the eyes of every Roman Catholic this edict was abomination - a disgrace to the statute-book - a bulwark to the Huguenots, whom it protected in their psalm-singing and sermonizing.
The pulpits of Paris thundered against the edict. The preachers expatiated on the miseries, temporal and eternal, into which it was dragging down France. They told how they were nightly besieged by souls from purgatory, dolefully lamenting the cruelty of their relations who no longer cared to say mass for their deliverance.
Visions of hell, moreover, had been made to them, and they saw it filled with
Huguenots. They turned their churches into arsenals, and provided the mob with arms.
[6]
The Duke of Guise had been heard to say that he “would cut the knot of the edict with his sword,”
[7]
and when the Parisians saw the Huguenots in thousands, crowding out at the city gates to sermon, and when they heard their psalm borne back
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on the breeze, they said, “Would that the duke were here, we would make these men pipe to another tune.” These were unmistakable signs that the moment for action was come. The duke was sent for.
The message found him at his Chateau of Joinville. He lost no time in obeying the summons. He set out on Saturday, the 28th of February, 1562, accompanied by his brother the cardinal, 200 gentlemen, and a body of horse. Three leagues on the road to
Paris is the town of Vassy. It contained in those days 3,000 inhabitants, about a third of whom had embraced the Reformed faith. It stood on lands which belonged to the duke’s niece, Mary Stuart of Scotland, and its Protestant congregation gave special umbrage to the Dowager-Duchess of Guise, who could not brook the idea that the vassals of her granddaughter should profess a different faith from that of their feudal superior. The duke, on his way to this little town, recruited his troop at one of the villages through which he passed, with a muster of foot-soldiers and archers. “The
Saturday before the slaughter,” says Crespin, “they were seen to make ready their weapons - arquebuses and pistols.”
[8]
On Sunday morning, the 1st of March, the duke, after an early mass, resumed his march. “Urged by the importunities of his mother,” says Thaunus, “he came with intention to dissolve these conventicles by his presence.”
[9]
He was yet a little way from Vassy when a bell began to ring. On inquiring what it meant, seeing the hour was early, he was told that it was the Huguenot bell ringing for sermon. Plucking at his beard, as his wont was when he was choleric, he swore that he would Huguenot them after another fashion,
[10]
Entering the town, he met the provost, the prior, and the curate in the market-place, who entreated him to go to the spot where the
Protestants were assembled.
[11]
The Huguenot meeting-house was a barn, about 100 yards distant, on the city wall. A portion of the duke’s troop marched on before, and arrived at the building. The Protestants were assembled to the number of 1,200; the psalm and the prayer were ended, and the sermon had begun. The congregation were suddenly startled by persons outside throwing stones at the windows, and shouting out, “Heretics! rebels! dogs!” Presently the discharge of fire-arms told them that they were surrounded by armed men. The Protestants endeavoured to close the door, but were unable from the crowd of soldiers pressing in, with oaths and shouts of “Kill, kill!” “Those within,” says Crespin, “were so astonished that they knew not which way to turn them, but running hither and thither fell one upon another, flying as poor sheep before a company of ravening wolves. Some of the murderers shot of their pieces at those that were in the galleries; others cut in pieces such as they lighted upon; others had their heads cleft in twain, their arms and hands cut off, and thus did they what they could to hew them all in pieces, so as many of them gave up the ghost even in the place. The walls and galleries of the said barn were dyed with the blood of those who were everywhere murdered.”
Hearing the tumult, the duke hastened to the spot. On coming up he was hit with a stone in the face. On seeing him bleeding, the rage of his soldiers was redoubled, and the butchery became more horrible. Seeing escape impossible by the door or window, many of the congregation attempted to break through the roof, but they were shot down as they climbed up on the rafters. One soldier savagely boasted that he had brought down a dozen of these pigeons. Some who escaped in this way leaped down from the city walls, and escaped into the woods and vineyards. The pastor, M. Morel, on his knees in the pulpit invoking God, was fired at. Throwing off his gown, he
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attempted to escape, but stumbling over a dead body, he received two sabre-cuts, one on the shoulder, another on the head. A soldier raised his weapon to hough him, but his sword broke at the hilt. Supported by two men the pastor was led before the duke.
“Who made you so bold as to seduce this people?” demanded the duke. “Sir,” replied
M. Morel, “I am no seducer, for I have preached to them the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
“Go,” said the duke to the provost, “and get ready a gibbet, and hang this rogue.”
These orders were not executed. The duke’s soldiers were too busy sabring the unarmed multitude, and collecting the booty, to hang the pastor, and none of the town’s-people had the heart to do so cruel a deed.
[12]
When the dreadful work was over, it was found that from sixty to eighty persons had been killed, and 250 wounded, many of them mortally. The streets were filled with the most piteous spectacles. Women were seen with dishevelled hair, and faces besmeared with blood from their streaming wounds, dragging themselves along, and filling the air with their cries and lamentations. The soldiers signalized their triumph by pulling down the pulpit, burning the Bibles and Psalters, plundering the poor’sbox, spoiling the killed of their raiment; and wrecking the place. The large pulpit
Bible was taken to the duke. He examined the title-page, and his learning enabled him to make out that it had been printed the year before. He carried it to his brother the cardinal, who all the time of the massacre had been loitering by the wall of the churchyard, and presented the Bible to him as a sample of the pestiferous tenets of the
Huguenots. “Why, brother,” said the cardinal, after scanning its title-page a moment,
“there is no harm in this book, for it is the Bible - the Holy Scripture.” “The duke being offended at that answer,” says Crespin, “grew into a greater rage than before, saying, ‘Blood of God! - what! - how now! - the Holy Scripture! It is a thousand and five hundred years ago since Jesus Christ suffered his death and passion, and it is but a year ago since these books were imprinted; how, then, say you that this is the
Gospel?’”
[13]
The massacre at Vassy was the first blow struck in the civil wars of France, and it is important to note that it was the act of the Romanists. Being done in violation of the
Edict of January, which covered the Protestants of Vassy, and never disowned or punished by any constituted authority of the nation, it proclaimed that the rule of law had ceased, and that the reign of force had begun. A few days afterwards the duke entered Paris, more like a conqueror who had routed the enemies of France, than a man dripping with the blood of his fellow-subjects. Right and left of him rode the
Constable and the Marshal St. Andre, the other two members of the Triumvirate, while the nobles, burgesses, and whole populace of the capital turned out to grace his entry, and by their enthusiastic cheers proclaim his welcome. As if he had been king, they shouted, “Long life to Guise!”
[14]
The blood of Vassy, said the mob of Paris, be on us, and on our children.
The Protestants of France had for some time past been revolving the question of taking up arms and standing to their defence, and this deplorable massacre helped to clear their minds. The reverence, approaching to a superstition, which in those days hedged round the person of a king, made the Huguenots shrink with horror from what looked like rebellion. But the question was no longer, Shall we oppose the king? The
Triumvirate had, in effect, set aside both king and regent, and the duke and the mob were masters of the State. The question was, Shall we oppose the Triumvirate which has made itself supreme over throne and Parliament? Long did the Huguenots
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hesitate, most unwilling were they to draw the sword; especially so was the greatest
Huguenot that France then contained, Coligny. Ever as he put his hand upon his sword’s hilt, there would rise before him the long and dismal vista of battle and siege and woe through which France must pass before that sword, once unsheathed, could be returned into its scabbard. He, therefore, long forbore to take the irrevocable step, when one less brave or less foreseeing would have rushed to the battle-field. But even
Coligny was at last convinced that farther delay would be cowardice, and that the curse of liberty would rest on every sword of Huguenot that remained longer in its scabbard.
Had the Edict of January, which gave a qualified permission for the open celebration of the Reformed worship, been maintained, the Protestants of France never would have thought of carrying their appeal to the battle-field. Had argument been the only weapon with which they were assailed, argument would have been the only weapon with which they would have sought to defend themselves; but when a lawless power stood up, which trampled on royal authority, annulled laws, tore up treaties, and massacred Protestant congregations wholesale; when to them there no longer existed a throne, or laws, or tribunals, or rights of citizenship; when their estates were confiscated, their castles burned, the blood of their wives and children spilt, their names branded with infamy, and a price put upon their heads, why, surely, if ever resistance was lawful in the case of any people, and if circumstances could be imagined in which it was dutiful to repel force by force, they were those of the French
Protestants at that hour.
Even when it is the civil liberties only of a nation that are menaced by the tyrant or the invader, it is held the first duty of the subject to gird on his sword, and to maintain them with his blood; and we are altogether unable to understand why it should be less his duty to do so when, in addition to civil liberty, take battle is for the sanctity of home, the freedom of conscience, and the lives and religion of half a nation. So stood the case in France at that hour. Every end for which government is ordained, and society exists, was attacked and overthrown. If the Huguenots had not met their foes on the battle-field, their name, their race, their faith would have been trodden out in
France.
Far and wide over the kingdom flew the news of the Massacre of Vassy. One party whispered the dreadful tale in accents of horror; another party proclaimed it in a tone of exultation and triumph. The impunity, or rather applause, accorded to its author emboldened the Romanists to proceed to even greater excesses. In a few weeks the terrible scenes of Vassy were repeated in many of the towns of France. At Paris, at
Senlis, at Meaux, at Amiens, at Chalons, at Tours, at Toulouse, and many other towns, the fanatic mob rose upon the Protestants and massacred them, pillaging and burning their dwelllings. All the while the cathedral bells would be tolled, and the populace would sing songs of triumph in the streets. At Tours 300 Protestants were shut up in their church, where they were kept three days without food, and then brought out, tied two and two, led to the river’s brink, and butchered like sheep.
Children were sold for a crown a-piece. The President of Tours was tied to two willow-trees, and disembowelled alive.
[15]
At Toulouse the same horrible scenes were enacted on a larger scale. That city contained at this time between 30,000 and
40,000 Protestants - magistrates, students, and men of letters and refinement. The tocsin was rung in all the churches, the peasantry for miles around the city was raised
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en masse; the Huguenots took refuge in the Capitol of Toulouse, where they were besieged, and finally compelled to surrender. Then followed a revolting massacre of from 3,000 to 4,000 Protestants.
[16]
The Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne were dyed with Protestant blood, and ghastly corpses, borne on the bosom of the stream, startled the dwellers in distant cities and castles, and seemed to cry for justice, as they floated away to find burial in the ocean.
The Duke of Guise now repaired to Fontainebleau, whither the King and the Queenmother had fled, and compelled them to return to Paris. Catherine de Medici and her son were now wholly in the hands of the duke, and when they entered the Castle of
Vincennes, about a mile from Paris, “the queen bore a doleful countenance, not able to refrain from tears; and the young king crying like a child, as ff they had been both led into captivity.”
[17]
The Parliament was not less obsequious. Its humble office was to register arrets at the duke’s bidding. These persecuting edicts followed each other with alarming rapidity during the terrible summer of 1562, than which there is no more doleful year in the French annals, not even excepting perhaps the outstanding horror of 1572 - the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. The Popish mob was supplied with arms and formed into regiments. The churches served as club-houses. When the tocsin sounded, 50,000 men would turn out at the summons. All Huguenots were ordered to quit Paris within twenty-four hours;
[18]
after this, any one seen in the streets, and suspected of being a Huguenot, was mobbed and dispatched. Advantage was in some cases taken of this to gratify private revenge. One had only to raise the cry of
Huguenot against those at whom one happened to have a spite, or to whom one owed money, and the bystanders did the rest. On the 8th of June the Parliament passed a law empowering any one who should meet a Huguenot to kill him on the spot. The edict was to be read by the curets every Sunday after the sermon that follows high mass.
[19]
The peasantry provided themselves with scythes, pikes, cutlasses, knives, and other cruel weapons, and scoured the country as if they had been ridding it of wild beasts. The priests facetiously called this “letting slip the big hound.”
[20]
They selected as captain, sometimes a monk, sometimes a brigand; and on one occasion, at least, a bishop was seen marching at their head.
Their progress over the country, especially in the south, where the Protestants were numerous, could be traced in the frightful memorials they left on their track - corpses strewed along the roads, bodies dangling from the trees, mangled victims dyeing the verdure of the fields with their blood, and spending their last breath in cries and supplications to Heaven.
On the 18th of August, 1562, the Parliament issued yet another decree, declaring all the gentlemen of “the religion” traitors to God and the king. From this time the conflict became a war of province against province, and city against city, for the frightful outrages to which the Protestants were subjected provoked them into reprisals. Yet the violence of the Huguenot greatly differed from the violence of the
Romanist. The former gutted Popish cathedrals and churches, broke down the images, and drove away the priests. The latter burned houses, tore up vines and fruit-trees, and slaughtered men and women, often with such diabolical and disgusting cruelty as forbids us to describe their acts. In some places rivulets of Huguenot blood, a foot in depth, were seen flowing. Those who wish to read the details of the crimes and woes that then overwhelmed France will find the dreadful recital, if they have courage to
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peruse it, in the pages of Agrippa d’Aubigne, De Thou, Beza, Crespin, and other historians.
[21]
But before these latter edicts were issued the Huguenots had come to a decision.
While Coligny, shut up in his Castle of Chatilion, was revolving the question of civil war, events were solving that question for him.
Wherever he looked he saw cities sacked, castles in flames, and men and women slaughtered in thousands; what was this but civil war? The tidings of today were ever sadder than those of yesterday, and the tidings of tomorrow would, he but too surely guessed, be sadder than those of today.
The heart of his wife, the magnanimous Charlotte Laval, was torn with anguish at the thought of the sufferings her brethren and sisters in the faith were enduring. One night she awoke her husband from sleep by her tears and sobs. “We lie here softly,” said she, “while our brethren’s bodies, who are flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, are some of them in dungeons, and others lying in the open fields, food for dogs and ravens. This bed is a tomb for me, seeing they are not buried. Can we sleep in peace, without hearing our brethren’s last groanings?” “Are you prepared,” asked the admiral in reply, “to hear of my defeat, to see me dragged to a scaffold and put to death by the common hangman? are you prepared to see our name branded, our estates confiscated, and our children made beggars? I will give you,” he continued, “three weeks to think on these things, and when you have fortified yourself against them, I will go forth to perish with my brethren.” “The three weeks are gone already,” was the prompt and noble reply of Charlotte Laval. “Go in God’s name and he will not suffer you to be defeated.”
[22]
A few mornings only had passed when Admiral Coliguy was seen on his way to open the first campaign of the civil wars.
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The Protestant chiefs having resolved to take up the gage which the Triumvirate had thrown down, the Prince of Conde struck the first blow by dispatching Coligny’s brother D’Andelot, with 5,000 men, to make himself master of Orleans. In a few days thereafter (April 2nd, 1562), the prince himself entered that city, amid the acclamations of the inhabitants, who accompanied him through the streets chanting grandly the 124th Psalm, in Marot’s meter,
[1]
Admiral Coligny, on arriving at headquarters, found a brilliant assemblage gathered round Conde. Among those already arrived or daily expected was Anthony of Croy, Prince of Perclan. Though related to the House of Lorraine, the Prince of Perclan was a firm opponent of the policy of the Guises, and one of the best captains of his time. He was married to
Catherine of Cleves, Countess of Eu, niece to the Prince of Conde, by whom he was greatly beloved for his amiable qualities as well as for his soldierly accomplishments.
And there was also Francis, Count of La Rochefoucault, Prince of Marcillac. He was by birth and dignity the first noble of Guienne, and the richest and most potent man in all Poitou. He could have raised an army among his relations, friends, and vassals alone. He was an experienced soldier: valiant, courageous, generous, and much beloved by Henry II, in whose wars he had greatly distinguished himself. It was his fate to be inhumanly slaughtered, as we shall see, in the St. Bartholomew Massacre.
There was Rene, Viscount of Rohan. He was by the mother’s side related to the family of Navarre, being cousin-german to Jeanne d’Albret. Being by her means instructed in the Reformed faith, that queen made him her lieutenant-general during the minority of her son Henry, afterwards King of France, whom he served with inviolable fidelity. There was Anthony, Count of Grammont, who was in great esteem among the Reformed on account of his valour and his high character. Having embraced the Protestant faith, he opposed uncompromisingly the Guises, and bore himself with great distinction and gallantry among the Huguenot chiefs in the civil wars. No less considerable was Gabriel, Count of Montgomery, also one of the group around the prince. His valour, prudence, and sagacity enabled him, in the absence of large estates or family connections, to uphold the credit of the Protestant party and the lustre of the Protestant arms after the fall of Conde, of Coligny, and of other leaders.
It was from his hand that Henry II had received his death-blow in the fatal tournament
- as fatal in the end to Montgomery as to Henry, for Catherine de Medici never forgave him the unhappy accident of slaying her husband; and when at last
Montgomery fell into her hands, she had him executed on the scaffold. And there was
John, Lord of Soubise, of the illustrious House of Partenay of Poitou, and the last who bore the name and title. Soubise had borne arms under Henry II, being commander-inchief in the army of Tuscany. This gave him an opportunity of visiting the court of
Rene at Ferrara, where he was instructed in the Reformed doctrine. On his return to
France he displayed great zeal in propagating the Protestant faith, and when the civil wars broke out the Prince de Conde sent him to command at Lyons, where, acquitting himself with equal activity and prudence, he fully answered the expectations of his chief. Louis of Vadray, known in history by the name of Lord of Mouy St. Phale, was one of the more considerable of the patriot-heroes that followed the banners of Conde.
Of great intrepidity and daring, his achievements are amongst the most brilliant feats of the civil wars. He was assassinated in 1569 by the same person - Manrevel of Brie - who wounded the Admiral Coligny in Paris in 1572. Nor must we omit to mention
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Anthony Raguier, Lord of Esternay and of La Mothe de Tilly. Not only did he place his own sword at the service of Conde, he brought over to the standard of the prince and the profession of the Protestant faith, his brother-in-law Francis of Bethune,
Baron of Rosny, father of the Duke of Sully. And there was the head of the ancient and illustrious House of Picardy, Adrian de Hangest, Lord of Genlis, who was the father of thirty-two children by his wife Frances du Maz. Like another Hamilcar leading his numerous sons to the altar, he devoted them to the defence of their country’s laws, and the maintenance of its Protestant faith. The enthusiasm and bravery of the sons, as displayed under the banners of Conde, amply rewarded the devotion and patriotism of the father. All of them became distinguished in the campaigns that followed.
[2]
Nothing could more conclusively attest the strength of the position which
Protestantism had conquered for itself in France than this brilliant list. The men whom we see round the Huguenot chief are the flower of a glorious land. They are no needy adventurers, whom the love of excitement, or the hope of spoil, or the thirst for distinction has driven to the battle-field. Their castles adorn the soil, and their names illustrate the annals of their country; yet here we see them coming forward, at this supreme hour, and deliberately staking the honour of their houses, the revenues of their estates, the glory of their names, and even life itself! What could have moved them to this but their loyalty to the Gospel - their deep, thorough, and most intelligent conviction that the Reformed doctrine was based on Scripture, and that it had bound up with it not more their own personal salvation than the order, the prosperity, and the glory of their country?
The Protestant cause had attractions not alone for the patricians of France; it was embraced by the intelligence and furthered by the energy of the middle classes. It is well to remember this. Bankers and men of commerce; lawyers and men of letters; magistrates and artists; in short, the staple of the nation, the guides of its opinion, the creators of its wealth, and the pillars of its order, rallied to the Protestant standard. In every part of France the Reformed faith spread with astonishing rapidity during the reigns of Francis II and Charles IX. It was embraced by the villages scattered along at the foot of the Alps and the base of the Pyrenees. It established itself in the powerful city of Grenoble. The Parliament and magistracy of that prosperous community took special interest in the preaching of the Protestant doctrine in their town; and the example of Grenoble had a great influence on the whole of that rich region of which it was the capital. The city of Marseilles on the Mediterranean shore; the flourishing seaports on the western coast; the fertile and lovely valleys of central France; the vine-clad plains on the east; the rich and populous Picardy and Normandy on the north - all were covered with the churches and congregations of the Reformed faith.
“Climate, custom, prejudice, superstition,” says Gaberel, “seemed to have no power to resist or modify the spread of the Protestant doctrines. No sooner was a church provided with a pastor, than the inhabitants of the villages and towns in the neighbourhood demolished their Popish altars, and flocked to hear the preaching of the Protestant doctrine. The occupants of the castles and rich houses followed the example of their tenantry, and opened their mansions for worship when the church stood at too great a distance.”
[3]
Many of the prelates, even, had perused the writings of Calvin, and were favourable to the Reformed doctrine, although, for obvious reasons, they had to be careful in avowing their convictions and preferences.
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When we turn from the grand phalanx of nobles, warrior’s, jurists, literary men, merchants, and cities around the Protestant standard, to contemplate the opposing ranks which still remained loyal to Rome, and were now challenging the Reformed to do battle for their faith, we are forcibly struck with the vast inferiority, in all the elements of real power, on the Popish side. First on that side came the crown. We say the crown, for apart from it Charles IX had no power. Next to the crown came the
Queen-mother, who, despite certain caprices which at times excited the hopes of the
Protestants and awakened the fears of the Pope, remained staunchly loyal at heart to the cause of Rome - for what else could be expected of the niece of Clement VII?
After the Queen-mother came the Triumvirate. It embraced one grand figure, the bluff, honest, awful Constable, so proud of his ancient blood and his ancient
Christianity! Over against him we may set the weak and wicked St. Andre, who was continually enriching himself with plunder, and continually sinking deeper in debt.
Then came the Guises - truculent, thoroughly able, and as athirst for blood as the
Marshal St. Andre for money. These strangers in France seem to have taken kindly to the soil, if one may judge from the amazing rapidity with which their power and their honours had flourished since their arrival in it. We assign the last place here to the
King of Navarre, though as a prince of the blood he ought to have had the first place after the crown, but for his utter insignificance, which made him be fully more contemned even by the Papists than by the Protestants.
The Popish party were numerically the majority of the nation, but in respect of intelligence and virtue they were by much the smaller portion of it. There was, of course, a moiety of the nobility, of professional men, and of the middle orders still attached to the Roman worship, and more or less zealous in its behalf; but the great strength of the Triumvirate lay in another quarter. The Sorbonne, the secular priests, and the cloistered orders continued unwavering in their attachment to the Pope. And behind was a yet greater force - without which, the zeal of Triumvirate, of cure, and of friar would have effected but little - the rabble, namely, of Paris and many of the great cities. This was a very multifarious host, more formidable in numbers than in power, if names are to be weighed and not counted. Protestantism in France was not merely on the road to victory, morally it had already achieved it.
And further, to form a true estimate of the strength of the position which
Protestantism had now won, we must take account of the situation of the country, and the endowments of the people in which it had so deeply rooted itself. Placed in the centre of Christendom, France acted powerfully on all the nations around it. It was, or till a few years ago had been, the first of the European kingdoms in letters, in arts, in arms. Its people possessed a beautiful genius. Since the intellect of classic days there had appeared, perhaps, no finer mental development than the French mind; none that came so near the old Roman type. Without apparent labour the French genius could lay open with a touch the depths of an abstruse question, or soar to the heights of a sublime one. Protestantism had begun to quicken the French intellect into a marvellous development of strength and beauty, and but for the sudden and unexpected blight that overtook it, its efflorescence would have rivalled, it may be eclipsed, in power and splendour that extraordinary outburst of intellect that followed the Reformation in England, and which has made the era of Elizabeth forever famous.
Nor was it the least of the advantages of French Protestantism that its headquarters were not within, but outside the kingdom. By a marvellous Providence a little
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territory, invisibly yet inviolably guarded, had been called into existence as an asylum where, with the thunders of the mighty tempests resounding on every side of it, the great chief of the movement might watch the execution of his plans in every part of the field, but especially in France. Calvin was sufficiently distant from his native land to be undisturbed by its convulsions, and yet sufficiently near to send daily assistance and succour to it, to commission evangelists, to advise, to encourage - in short, to do whatever could tend to maintain and advance the work. The Reformer was now giving the last touches to his mighty task before retiring from the view of men, but Geneva, through her Church, through her schools, and through her printing-presses, would, it was thought, continue to flood France with those instrumentalities for the regeneration of Christendom, which the prodigious industry and mighty genius of Calvin had prepared.
But the very strength of Protestantism in France at this era awakens doubts touching the step which the Protestants of that country were now about to take, and compels us to pause and review a decision at which we have already arrived. How had
Protestantism come to occupy this position, and what were the weapons which had conquered for it so large a place in the national mind? This question admits of but one answer: it was the teachings of evangelists, the blood of martyrs, and the holy lives of confessors. Then why not permit the same weapons to consummate the victory? Does it not argue a criminal impatience to exchange evangelists for soldiers? Does it not manifest a sinful mistrust of those holy instrumentalities which have already proved their omnipotence by all but converting France, to supersede them by the rude appliances of armies and battle-fields? In truth, so long as the Protestants had it in their power to avoid the dire necessity of taking up arms, so long, in short, as the certain ruin of the cause did not stare them in the face in the way of their sitting still, they were not justified in making their appeal to arms. But they judged, and we think rightly, that they had now no alternative; that the Triumvirate had decided this question for them; and that nothing remained, if the last remnants of conscience and liberty were not to be trodden out, but to take their place on the battle-field. The legitimate rule of the king had been superseded by the usurpation of a junto, the leading spirits of which were foreigners. The Protestants saw treaties torn up, and soldiers enrolled for the work of murder. They saw their brethren slaughtered like sheep, not in hundreds only, but literally in thousands. They saw the smoke of burning cities and castles darkening the firmament, unburied corpses tainting the air, and the blood of men and women dyeing their rivers, and tinting the seas around their coasts.
They saw groups of orphans wandering about, crying for bread, or laying themselves down to die of hunger. The touching words of Charlotte Laval addressed to her husband, which we have already quoted, show us how the noblest minds in France felt and reasoned in the presence of these awful tragedies. To remain in peace in their houses, while these oppressions and crimes were being enacted around them - were being done, so to speak, in their very sight - was not only to act a cowardly part, it was to act an inhuman part. It was to abnegate the right, not of citizens only, but of men. If they should longer refuse to stand to their defence, posterity, they felt, would hold them guilty of their brethren’s blood, and their names would be coupled with those of the persecutors in the cry of that blood for vengeance.
The pre-eminence of France completes the justification of the Huguenots, by completing the necessity for the step to which they now had recourse. Rome could not possibly permit Protestantism to triumph in a country so central, and whose influence
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was so powerfully felt all over Europe. The Pope must needs suppress the
Reformation in France at all costs. The Popish Powers, and especially Spain, felt equally with the Pope the greatness of the crisis, and willingly contributed the aid of their arms to extinguish Huguenotism. Its triumph in France would have revolutionized their kingdoms, and shaken their thrones. It was a life-and-death struggle; and but for the stand which the Protestant chiefs made, the soldiers of the
Triumvirate, and the armies of Spain, would have marched from the Seine to the
Mediterranean, from the frontier of Lorraine to the western seaboard, slaughtering the
Huguenots like sheep, and Protestantism would have been as completely trampled out in France as it was in Spain.
Both sides now began to prepare with rigor for the inevitable conflict. On the
Huguenot banner was inscribed “Liberty of Worship,” and the special grievance which compelled the unfurling of that banner was the flagrant violation of the Edict of
January - which guarantee them that liberty - in the dreadful massacre of the
Protestants as they were worshipping at Vassy under the supposed protection of that edict. This was specially mentioned in the manifesto which the Huguenots now put forth, but neither was regret expressed by the Triumvirate for the violation of the edict, nor promise given that it would be observed in time to come, which made the
Protestant princes conclude that the Massacre of Vassy would be repeated again and again, till not a Huguenot was left to charge the Government with its shameful breach of faith. “To arms!” must therefore be their watchword.
Wars, although styled religious, must be gone about in the ordinary way; soldiers must be enrolled, and money collected, without which it is impossible to fight battles.
The Prince of Conde wrote circular letters to the Reformed Churches in France, craving their aid in men and money to carry on the war about to be commenced.
[4]
Several of the Churches, before voting the desired assistance, sent deputies to Paris to ascertain the real state of matters, and whether any alternative was left them save the grave one of taking up arms. As a consequence, funds and fighting men came in slowly. From La Rochelle came neither men nor money, till after the campaign had been commenced; but that Church, and others, finding on careful inquiry that the state of matters was such as the Huguenot manifesto had set forth, threw themselves afterwards with zeal into the conflict, and liberally supported it.
The Huguenot chiefs, before unsheathing the sword, sat down together and partook of the Lord’s Supper. After communion they subscribed a bond, or “Act of Association,” in which they pledged themselves to fidelity to God and to one another, and obedience to Conde as head of the Protestant League, and promised to assist him with
“money, arms, horses, and all other warlike equipages.” They declared themselves in arms for “the defence of the king’s honour and liberty, the maintenance of the pure worship of God, and the due observance of the edicts.”
[5]
They swore also to promote reformation of manners and true piety among themselves and followers, to punish blasphemy, profanation, and vice, and to maintain the preaching of the Gospel in their camp.
[6]
This deed, by which the Huguenot wars were inaugurated, tended to promote confidence among the confederates, and to keep them united in the presence of a crafty enemy, who continually laboured to sow jealousies and disdains among them; and further, it sanctified and sublimed the war by keeping its sacred and holy object in the eye of those who were in arms.
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Another matter which the Calvinist lords deemed it prudent to arrange before coming to blows, was the important one of succours from abroad. On this point their opponents enjoyed great advantages. Not only could they draw upon the national treasury for the support of the war, having the use of the king’s name, but they had powerful and zealous friends abroad who, they knew, would hasten to their aid. The
Triumvirate had promises of large succours from the then wealthy governments of
Spain, Italy, and Savoy; and they had perfect confidence in these promises being kept, for the cause for which the Triumvirate was in arms was the cause of the Pope and
Philip of Spain quite as much as it was that of the Guises.
The Huguenots, in like manner, cast their eyes abroad, if haply they might find allies and succourers in those countries where the Protestant faith was professed. The war now commencing was not one of race or nationality; it was no war of creed in a narrow sense; it was a war for the great principle of Protestantism in both its Lutheran and Reformed aspects, and which was creating a new commonwealth, which the
Rhine could not divide, nor the Alps bound. That was not a Gallic commonwealth, nor a Teutonic commonwealth, but a great spiritual empire, which was blending in sympathy and in interest every kindred and tribe that entered its holy brotherhood.
Therefore, in the war now beginning neither Germany nor England could, with due regard to themselves, be neutral, for every victory of the Roman Catholic Powers, now confederate for the suppression of the Reformation, not in France only, but in all countries, was a step in the triumphant march of these powers towards the frontiers of the other Reformed countries. The true Policy of England and Germany was clearly to fight the battle at as great a distance as Possible from their own doors.
To Coliguy the project of bringing foreign soldiers into France was one the wisdom of which he extremely doubted. He feared the effect which such a step might have on a people naturally jealous and proud, and to whom he knew it would be distasteful. For every foreign auxiliary he should obtain he might lose a home soldier. But again events decided the matter for him. He saw the Savoyards, the Swiss, and the
Spaniards daily arriving to swell the royalist ranks, and slaughter the children of
France, and if he would meet the enemy, not in equal numbers for he saw no likelihood of being able to bring man for man into the field but if he would meet him at the head of such a force as should enable him to fight with some chance of success, he must do as his opponents were doing, and accept help from those who were willing to give it. Accordingly two ambassadors were dispatched on the errand of foreign aid, the one to Germany and the other to England, and both found a favourable reception for their overtures. The one succeeded in negotiating a treaty for some thousands of
German Reiter, or heavy cavalry - so well known in those days for the execution they did on the field, where often they trampled down whole ranks of the lighter troops of
France; and the other ambassador was able to persuade Queen Elizabeth so careful both of her money and her subjects, for England was not then so rich in either as she long years afterwards became into aid the Huguenots with 140,000 crowns and 6,000 soldiers, in return for which the town of Havre was put in her keeping.
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Unwilling to commit himself irrevocably to war, the Prince of Conde made yet another overture to the court, before unsheathing the sword and joining battle. He was willing to furl his banner and dismiss his soldiers, provided a guarantee were given him that the Edict of January would be observed till the king attained his majority, and if then his majesty should be pleased no longer to grant liberty of conscience to his subjects, the prince and his confederates were to have liberty to retire into some other country, without prejudice to their estates and goods. And further, he demanded that the Triumvirs meanwhile should withdraw from court, adding that if the
Government did not accept these reasonable terms, it would be answerable for all the calamities that might befall the kingdom.
[1]
These terms were not accepted; and all efforts in the interest of peace having now been exhausted, the several provinces and cities of the kingdom made haste to rally, each under its respective standard. Once again France pronounces upon the question of its future; and unhappily it repeats the old answer: it confirms the choice it had made under Francis I. A second time it takes the downward road - that leading to revolution and the abyss. France is not unanimous, however; it is nearly equally divided. Speaking generally, all France south of the Loire declared for the Protestant cause. All the great cities of the Orleanois -
Tours, Poictiers, Bourges, Nismes, Montauban, Valence, Lyons, Toulouse, Bordeaux
- opened their gates to the soldiers of Conde, and cordially joined his standard: as did also the fortified castles of Languedoc and Dauphine. In the north, Normandy, with its towns and castles, declared for the same side.
[2]
The cities and provinces just enumerated were the most populous and flourishing in France. It was in these parts that the Reformation had struck its roots the most deeply, and hence the unanimity and alacrity with which their inhabitants enrolled themselves on the Protestant side.
Coliguy, though serving as Conde’s lieutenant, was the master-genius and director of the campaign. His strength of character, his long training in military affairs, his resource, his prudence, his indomitable resolution, all marked him out as the man preeminently qualified to lead, although the notions of the age required that such an enterprise should be graced by having as its ostensible head a prince of the blood.
Coligny, towering above the other princes and nobles around Conde, inspired the soldiers with confidence, for they knew that he would lead them to victory, or if that were denied, that he could do what may seem more difficult, turn defeat into triumph.
His sagacious eye it was that indicated Orleans as the true centre of the Huguenot strategy. Here, with the broad stream of the Loire rolling in front of their position, and the friendly provinces of the south lying behind it, they would lack neither provisions nor soldiers. Supplies to any amount would be poured into their camp by the great highway of the river, and they could recruit their army from the enthusiastic populations in their rear. But further, the Huguenots made themselves masters of
Rouen in Normandy, which commands the Seine; this enabled them to isolate Paris, the camp of the enemy; they could close the gates of the two main arteries through which the capital procured its supplies, and afflict it with famine: by shutting the
Loire they could cut off from it the wine and fruits of the fertile south; and their command of the Seine enabled them to stop at their pleasure the transportation of the corn and cattle of the north.
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With these two strong positions, the one in the south and the other in the north of the capital, it seemed as if it needed only that the Huguenots should make themselves masters of Paris in order to end the campaign. “Paris,” says Devils, “alone gave more credit to its party than half the kingdom would have done.” It was a stronghold of
Romanism, and its fanatical population furnished an unrivalled recruiting-field for the
Triumvirate. The advantage which the possession of Paris would give the Huguenots, did not escape the sagacious glance of Coligny, and he counselled Conde to march upon it at once, and strike before the Guises had had time to complete their preparations for its defence. The Prince unhappily delayed till the golden opportunity had passed.
[3]
In the end of June, Conde and Coligny set out from Orleans to attack Paris, and almost at the same moment the Triumvirs began their march from Paris to besiege the
Huguenots in Orleans. The two armies, which consisted of about 10,000 each, met half-way between the two cities. A battle was imminent, and if fought at that moment would probably have been advantageous to the Huguenot arms. But the Queenmother, feigning a horror of bloodshed, came forward with a proposal for a conference between the leaders on both sides. Catherine de Medici vaunted that she could do more with her pen than twenty generals with their swords, and her success on this occasion went far to justify her boast. Her proposal entangled the Protestants in the meshes of diplomacy. The expedient which Catherine’s genius had hit upon for securing peace was that the leaders of the two parties should go into exile till the king had attained his majority, and the troubles of the nation had subsided. But the proposed exile was not equal. Coligny and his confederates were to quit France, the
Guises. and their friends were only to retire from court.
[4]
One obvious consequence of this arrangement was that Catherine would remain in sole possession of the field, and would rule without a compeer. The Triumvirs were to remain within call, should the Queen-mother desire their presence; Conde and Coligny, on the other hand, were to remove beyond the frontier; and once gone, a long time would elapse before they should be told that their services were needed, or that the soil of France was able to bear their steps. The trap was too obvious for the Hugmenot chiefs to fall into it. The
Queen had gained her end, however; her adroitness had shielded Paris, and it had wasted time in favour of the Government, for the weeks as they sped past increased the forces of the royalists, and diminished those of the Huguenots.
It was the Triumvirs that made the next move in the campaign, by resolving to attack
Rouen. Masters of this town, the Huguenots, as we have said, held the keys of the
Seine, and having cut off the supplies from Paris, the Triumvirs were greatly alarmed, for it was hard to say how long the fanaticism and loyalty of the Parisians would withstand the sobering influences of starvation. The Seine must be kept open at all costs; the Government, moreover, was not free from fear that the Queen of England would send troops into Normandy, and occupy that province, with the help of the
Huguenots. Should this happen, Paris itself would be in danger. Accordingly the Duke of Guise was dispatched with his army to besiege Rouen. While he is digging his trenches, posting his forces, and preparing the assault, let us observe the state of discipline and sobriety in the camps.
We are all familiar with the pictures of Cromwell’s army. We have read how his camp resounded with the unwonted sounds of psalms and prayers, and how his soldiers were animated by a devotion that made them respond as alertly to a summons to
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sermon, which they knew would be of two hours’ length, as to a summons to scale the breach, or join battle. A century before the great English Puritan, similar pictures might be witnessed in the camp of the French Huguenots. The morale of their armies was high, and the discipline of their camp strict, especially in their early campaigns.
The soldier carried the Bible a-field, and this did more than the strictest code or severest penalty to check disorder and excess.
The Huguenots had written up on their banners, “For God and the Prince,” and they felt bound to live the Gospel as well as fight for it. Their troops were guilty of no acts of pillage, the barn of the farmer and the store of the merchant were perfectly safe in their neighbourhood, and everything which they obtained from the inhabitants they paid for. Cards and dice were banished their camp; oaths and blasphemies were never heard; acts of immorality and lewdness were prohibited under very severe penalties, and were of rare occurrence. One officer of high rank, who brought disgrace upon the
Huguenot army by an act of libertinism, was hanged.
[5]
Inside the town of Rouen, round which there now rose a bristling wall of hostile standards and redoubts, the same beautiful order prevailed. Besides the inhabitants, there were 12,000 choice foot-soldiers from Conde’s army, four squadrons of horse, and 2,000 English in the place, with 100 gentlemen who had volunteered to perish in the defence of the town.
[6]
The theatres were closed. There needed no imaginary drama, when one so real was passing before the inhabitants. The churches were opened, and every day there was sermon in them. In their houses the citizens chanted their daily psalm, just as if battle had been far distant from their gates. On the ramparts, the inspired odes of Hebrew times were thundered forth with a chorus of voices that rose loud above the shouting of the captains, and the booming of the cannon.
The enthusiasm for the defence pervaded all ranks, and both sexes. The daughters and wives of the citizen-soldiers hastened to the walls, and regardless of the deadly shot falling thick around them, they kept their fathers and husbands supplied with ammunition and weapons.
[7]
They would maintain their liberties or die. The town was under the command of the Count Montgomery.
[8]
Pursued by the implacable resentment of Catherine de Medici, he had fled to England, where he embraced the
Reformed religion, and whence he returned to France to aid the Huguenots in their great struggle. He was a skilful and courageous general, and knowing that he would receive no quarter, he was resolved rather than surrender to make Rouen his grave.
Let us turn to the royalist camp. The picture presented to us there is the reverse of that which we have been contemplating. “There,” says Felice, “the grossest licentiousness prevailed.” Catherine de Medici was present with her maids of honour, who did not feel themselves under any necessity to practice severer virtues in the trenches than they usually observed in the Louvre. Games and carousals filled up the leisure hours of the common soldiers, while tournaments and intrigues occupied the captains and knights. These two widely different pictures are parted not by an age, but simply by the city walls of Rouen.
The King of Navarre commanded in the royalist camp. The besiegers assaulted the town not less than six times, and each time were repulsed. At the end of the fifth week a mine was sprung, great part of the wall was laid in ruins, and the soldiers scaling the breach, Rouen was taken. It was the first to drink that bitter cup which so many of the
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cities of France were afterwards called to drain. For a whole week it was given up to the soldiers. They did their pleasure in it, and what that pleasure was can be conceived without our describing it. Permitting the veil to rest on the other horrors, we shall select for description two deaths of very different character. The first is that of Pastor
Augustin Marlorat. Of deep piety and great erudition, he had figured conspicuously in the Colloquy of Poissy, where the Reformation had vindicated itself before the civil and ecclesiastical grandees of France. Present in the city during the five memorable weeks of the siege, his heroic words, daily addressed to the citizens from the pulpit, had been translated by the combatants into heroic deeds on the wall. “You have seduced the people,” said Constable de Montmorency to him, when he was brought before him after the capture of the town. “If so,” calmly replied Marlorat, “God first seduced me, for I have preached nothing to them but the Gospel of his Son.” Placed on a hurdle, he was straightway dragged to the gallows and hanged, sustaining with meekness and Christian courage the indignities and cruelties inflicted on him at the place of execution.
[9]
The other death-scene is that of Antoine de Bourbon, King of Navarre. Ensnared, as we have already said, by the brilliant but altogether delusive promises of the King of
Spain, he had deserted the Protestants, and consented to be the ornamental head of the
Romanist party. He was mortally wounded in the siege, and seeing death approaching, he was visited with a bitter but a late repentance. He implored his physician, who strove in vain to cure his wound, to read to him out of the Scriptures; and he protested, the tears streaming clown his face, that if his life were spared he would cause the Gospel to be preached all throughout his dominions.
[10]
He died at the age ot forty-four, regretted by neither party.
After the fall and sack of Rouen, seven weeks passed away, and then the two armies met (19th December) near the town of Dreux. This was the first pitched battle of the civil wars, and the only regular engagement in the first campaign. The disparity of force was considerable, the Huguenots having only 10,000 of all arms, while the royalists had 20,000, horse and foot, on the field. Battle being joined, the Huguenots had won the day when a stratagem of the Duke of Guise snatched victory from their grasp. All the time that the battle was raging - that is, from noon till five in the afternoon - Guise sat in the rear, surrounded by a chosen body of men-at-arms, intently watching the progress of the action, and at times sending forward the other
Triumvirs with succours. At last the moment he had waited for came. The duke rode out to the front, rose in his stirrups, cast a glance over the field, and bidding his reserves follow, for the day was theirs, dashed forward. The Huguenots had broken their ranks and were pursuing the routed royalists all over the field. The duke was upon them before they had time to reform, and wearied with fighting, and unable, to sustain this onset of fresh troops, they went down before the cavalry of the duke.
[11]
Guise’s stratagem had succeeded. Victory passed over from the Huguenot to the royalist side.
The carnage was great. Eight thousand dead covered the field, among whom was La
Brosse, who had begun the massacre at Vassy. The rank not less than the numbers of the slain gave great political consequence to the battle. The Marshal St. Andre was killed; Montmorency, severely wounded, had surrendered himself prisoner; and thus, of the three Triumvirs, Guise alone remained. The battle of Dreux had crowned him
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with a double victory, for his immediate appointment as lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and commander-in-chief of the army, placed France in his hands.
This battle left its mark on the Huguenot side also. The Prince of Conde was taken prisoner at the very close of the action. Being led to the head-quarters of Guise, the duke and the prince passed the night in the same bed;
[12]
the duke, it is said, sleeping soundly, and Conde lying awake, ruminating on the strange fortune of war which had so suddenly changed him from a conqueror into a captive. The prince being now a prisoner, Coligny was appointed generalissimo of the Huguenots. The two Bourbons were removed, and Guise and Coligny stood face to face. It chanced that a messenger who had left the field at the moment that the battle was going against the Government, brought to the Louvre the news that the Huguenots had won the day. The remark of
Catherine de Medici, who foresaw that the triumph of Coligny would diminish the power of Guise - whose authority had begun to over-shadow her own - was imperturbably cool, and shows how little effort it cost her to be on either side, if only she could retain power. “Well, then,” she said, on hearing the messenger’s report,
“Well, then, we shall have to say our prayers in French.”
[13]
The war went on, although it had to be waged on a frozen earth, and beneath skies often dark with tempest; for it was winter. All France was at this hour a battle-field.
Not a province was there, scarce even a city, in which the Roman Catholics and
Huguenots were not arrayed in arms against each other. We must follow the march of the main army, however, without turning aside to chronicle provincial conflicts. After the defeat at Dreux, Coligny - now commander-in-chief - formed the Huguenot forces into two armies, and with the one he marched into Normandy, and sent his brother
D’Andelot at the head of the other to occupy Orleans - that great centre and stronghold of the Huguenot cause. The Duke of Guise followed close on the steps of the latter, in order to besiege Orleans. Having sat down before the town on the 5th of
February, 1563, the siege was prosecuted with great rigor. The bridge of the Loire was taken. Next two important suburbs fell into the hands of the duke. On the 18th all was ready for the capture of Orleans on the morrow, he wrote to the Queen-mother, telling her that his purpose was to put every man and woman in Orleans to the sword, and sow its foundations with salt.
[14]
This good beginning he would follow up by summoning all the nobles of France, with their retainers, to his standard, and with this mighty host he would pursue the admiral into Normandy, and drive him and all his followers into the sea, and so stamp out the Huguenot insurrection. “Once unearth the foxes,” said he, “and we will hunt them all over France.”
[15]
Such was the brief and terrible program of the duke for purging France of the
Huguenot heresy. Where today stood the fair city of Orleans, tomorrow would be seen only a blackened heap; and wherever this leprosy had spread, thither, all over France, would the duke pursue it with fire and sword, and never rest till it was burned out. A whole hecatomb of cities, provinces, and men would grace the obsequies of
Huguenotism. The duke had gone to the trenches to see that all was ready for the assault that was to give Orleans to him on the morrow. Of all that he had ordered to be done, nothing had been omitted. Well pleased the duke was returning along the road to his chateau in the evening twilight. Behind him was the city of Orleans, the broad and deep Loire rolling beneath its walls, and the peaceful darkness gathering round its towers. Alas! before another sun shall set, there will not be left in that city anything in which is the breath of life. The blood of mother and helpless babe, of stern warrior,
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grey patriarch, and blooming maiden, will be bent in one red torrent, which shall rival the Loire in depth. It is a great sacrifice, but one demanded for the salvation of
France. By the side of the road, partly hidden by two walnut-trees that grow on the spot, sits a figure on horseback, waiting for the approach of some one. He hears the sound of horses’ hoofs. It is the duke that is coming; he knows him by his white plume; he permits him to pass, then slipping up close behind him, discharges his pistol. The ball entered the right shoulder of the duke - for he wore no cuirass - and passed through the chest. The duke bent for a moment upon his horse’s mane, but instantly resuming his erect position in the saddle, he declared his belief that the wound was slight, and added good-humouredly, “They owed me this.” It was soon seen, however, that the wound was mortal, and his attendants crowding round him, carried him to his house, and laid him on the bed from which he was to rise no more.
The assassin was John Poltrot, a petty nobleman of Angoumois, whom the duke’s butcheries, and his own privations, had worked up into a fanaticism as sincere and as criminal as that of the duke himself. The horror of the crime seems to have bewildered him, for instead of making his escape on his fine Spanish horse, he rode round and round the spot where the deed had been done, all night,
[16]
and when morning broke he was apprehended. He at first charged Coligny with being privy to the murder, and afterwards denied it. The admiral indignantly repudiated the accusation, and demanded to be confronted with Poltrot.
[17]
The Government hurried on the execution of the assassin, and thus showed its disbelief in the charge he had advanced against Coligny, by preventing the opportunity of authenticating an allegation which, had they been able to substantiate it, would have done much to bring strength and credit to their cause, and in the same proportion to disgrace and damage that of the
Huguenots.
We return to the duke, who was now fast approaching his latter end. Death set some things in a new light. His belief in Roman Catholicism it did not shake, but it filled him with remorse for the cruel measures by which he had endeavoured to support it.
He forgave his enemies, he asked that his blood might not be revenged, he confessed his infidelities to his duchess,
[18]
who stood beside him dissolved in tears, and he earnestly counselled Catherine de Medici to make peace with the Huguenots, saying
“that it was so necessary, that whoever should oppose it ought to be deemed an impious man, and an enemy to the king and the kingdom.”
[19]
The death of the Duke of Guise redeems somewhat the many dark passages in his life, and the sorrow into which he was melted at his latter end moderates the horror we feel at his bigotry and the cruel excesses into which it hurried him. But it more concerns us to note that he died at the moment when he had attained that proud summit he had long striven to reach. He was sole Triumvir: he was at the head of the army: all the powers of government were gathered into his single hand: Huguenotism was at his feet: his arm was raised to crush it, when, in the words of Pasquier, his “horn was lowered.”
The death of the Duke of Guise threw the government into the hands of Catherine de
Medici. It was now that this woman, whom death seemed ever to serve, reached the summit of her wishes. Her son, Charles IX, reigned, but the mother governed. In presence of the duke’s bier, Catherine was not indisposed to peace with the
Protestants, but it was of her nature to work crookedly in all that she undertook. She had the Prince of Conde in the Louvre with her, and she set herself to weave her toils
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around him. Taken prisoner on the battle-field, as we have already said, “he was breathing,” says Hezeray, “the soft air of the court,” and the Queen-mother made haste to conclude the negotiations for peace before Coligny should arrive, who might not be so pliant as Conde. The prince had a conference with several of the Protestant ministers, who were unanimously of opinion that no peace could be satisfactory or honourable unless it restored, without restriction or modification, the Edict of January, which gave to all the Reformed in France the liberty of public worship. The Queenmother and Conde, however, patched up a Pacification of a different kind. They agreed on a treaty, of which the leading provisions were that the nobles should have liberty to celebrate the Reformed worship in their castles, that the same privilege should be granted to certain of the gentry, and that a place should be set apart in certain only of the towns, where the Protestants might meet for worship.
This arrangement came far short of the Edict of January, which knew no restriction of class or place in the matter of worship, but extended toleration to all the subjects of the realm. This new treaty did nothing for the pastors: it did nothing for the great body of the people, save that it did not hinder them from holding opinions in their own breasts, and celebrating, it might be, their worship at their own firesides. This peace was signed by the king at Ambose on the 19th April, 1563; it was published before the camp at Orleans on the 22nd, amid the murmurs of the soldiers, who gave vent to their displeasure by the demolition of some images which, till that time, had been permitted to repose quietly in their niches.
[20]
This edict was termed the “Pacification of Amboise.” When the Admiral de Coligny was told of it he said indignantly, “This stroke of the pen has ruined more churches than our enemies could have knocked down in ten years.”
[21]
Returning by forced marches to Orleans in the hope of finding better terms, Coligny arrived just the day after the treaty had been signed and sealed.
Such was the issue of the first Huguenot war. If the Protestants had won no victory on the battle-field, their cause nevertheless was in a far stronger position now than when the campaign opened. The Triumvirs were gone; the Roman Catholic armies were without a leader, and the national exchequer was empty; while, on the other side, at the head of the Huguenot host was now the most skilful captain of his age. If the
Huguenot nobles had had the wisdom and the courage to demand full toleration of their worship, the Government would not have dared to refuse it, seeing they were not in circumstances at the time to do so; but the Protestants were not true to themselves at this crisis, and so the hour passed, and with it all the golden opportunities it had brought. New enemies stood up, and new tempests darkened the sky of France.
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The Pacification of Amboise (1563) closed the first Huguenot war. That arrangement was satisfactory to neither party. The Protestants it did not content; for manifestly it was not an advance but a retrogression. That toleration which the previous Edict of
January had extended over the whole kingdom, the Pacification of Amboise restricted to certain bodies, and to particular localities. The Huguenots could not understand the principle on which such an arrangement was based. If liberty of worship was wrong, they reasoned, why permit it in any part of France? but if right, as the edict seemed to grant, it ought to be declared lawful, not in a few cities only, but in all the towns of the kingdom.
Besides, the observance of the Amboise edict was obviously impracticable. Were nine-tenths of the Protestants to abstain altogether from public worship? This they must do under the present law, or undertake a journey of fifty or, it might be, a hundred miles to the nearest privileged city. A law that makes itself ridiculous courts contempt, and provokes to disobedience.
Moreover, the Pacification of Amboise was scarcely more to the taste of the
Romanists. The concessions it made to the Huguenots, although miserable in the extreme, and accompanied by restrictions that made them a mockery, were yet, in the opinion of zealous Papists, far too great to be made to men to whom it was sinful to make any concession at all. On both sides, therefore, the measure was simply unworkable; perhaps it never was intended by its devisers to be anything else. In places where they were numerous, the Protestants altogether disregarded it, assembling in thousands and worshipping openly, just as though no Pacification existed. And the Roman Catholics on their part assailed with violence the assemblies of the Reformed, even in those places which had been set apart by law for the celebration of their worship; thus neither party accepted the arrangement as a final one. Both felt that they must yet look one another in the face on the battle-field; but the Roman Catholics were not ready to un- sheathe the sword, and so for a brief space there was quiet - a suspension of hostilities if not peace.
It was now that the star of Catherine de Medici rose so triumphantly into the ascendant. The clouds which had obscured its lustre hitherto were all dispelled, and it blazed forth in baleful splendour in the firmament of France. It was thirty years since
Catherine, borne over the waters of the Mediterranean in the gaily-decked galleys of
Pisa, entered the port of Marseilles, amid the roar of cannon and the shouts of assembled thousands, to give her hand in marriage to the second son of the King of
France. She was then a girl of sixteen, radiant as the country from which she came, her eyes all fire, her face all smiles, a strange witchery in her every look and movement; but in contrast with these fascinations of person was her soul, which was encompassed with a gloomy superstition, that might more fittingly be styled a necromancy than a faith. She came with a determined purpose of making the proud realm on which she had just stepped bow to her will, and minister to her pleasures, although it should be by sinking it into a gulf of pollution or drowning it in an ocean of blood. Thirty years had she waited, foreseeing the goal afar off, and patiently bending to obstacles she had not the power summarily to annihilate.
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Death had been the steady and faithful ally of this extraordinary woman. Often had he visited the Louvre since the daughter of the House of Medici came to live under its roof; and each visit had advanced the Florentine a stage on her way to power. First, the death of the Dauphin - who left no child - opened her way to the throne. Then the death of her father-in-law, Francis I, placed her on that throne by the side of Henry II.
She had the crown, but not yet the kingdom; for Diana of Poictiers, as the mistress, more than divided the influence which ought to have been Catherine’s as the wife.
The death of her husband took that humiliating impediment out of her way. But Mary
Stuart, the niece of the Guises, and the wife of the weak-minded Francis II, profited by the imbecility through which Catherine had hoped to govern. Death, however, removed this obstacle, as he had done every previous one, by striking down Francis II only seventeen short months after he had ascended the throne. Once more there stood up another rival, and Catherine had still to wait. Now it was that the Triumvirate rose and grasped with powerful hand the direction of France, Was the patience of the
Italian woman to be always baulked? No: Death came again to her help. The fortune of battle and the pistol of the assassin rid her of the Triumvirate.
The Duke of Guise was dead: rival to her power there no longer existed. The way so long barred was open now, and Catherine boldly placed herself at the head of affairs; and this position she continued to hold, with increasing calamity to France and deepening infamy to herself, till almost her last hour. This long delay, although it appeared to be adverse, was in reality in favour of the Queen-mother. If it gave her power late, it gave it her all the more securely. When her hour at last came, it found her in the full maturity of her faculties. She had had time to study, not only individual men, but all the parties into which France was divided. She had a perfect comprehension of the genius and temper of the nation. Consummate mistress of an art not difficult of attainment to an Italian - the art of dissembling - with an admirable intellect for intrigue, with sense enough not to scheme too finely, and with a patience long trained in the school of waiting, and not so likely to hurry on measures till they were fully ripened, it was hardly possible but that the daughter of the Medici would show herself equal to any emergency, and would leave behind her a monument which should tell the France of after times that Catherine de Medici had once governed it.
Standing as she now did on the summit, it was natural that Catherine should look around her, and warily choose the part she was to play. She had outlived all her rivals at court, and the Huguenots were now the only party she had to fear. Should she, after the example of the Guises, continue to pursue them with the sword, or should she hold out to them the olive-branch? Catherine felt that she never could be one with the
Huguenots. That would imply a breach with all the traditions of her house, and a change in the whole habits of her life, which was not to be thought of. Nor could she permit France to embrace the Protestant creed, for the country would thus descend in the scale of nations, and would embroil itself in a war with Italy and Spain. But, on the other side, there were several serious considerations which had to be looked at.
The Huguenots were a powerful party; their faith was spreading in France; their counsels were guided and their armies were led by the men of the greatest character and intellect in the nation. Moreover, they had friends in Germany and England, who were not likely to look quietly on while they were being crushed by arms. To continue the war seemed very unadvisable. Catherine had no general able to cope with
Coligny, and it was uncertain on which side victory might ultimately declare itself.
The Huguenot army was inferior in numbers to that of the Roman Catholics, but it
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surpassed it in bravery, in devotion, and discipline; and the longer the conflict lasted, the more numerous the soldiers that flocked to the Huguenot standard.
It was tolerably clear that Catherine must conciliate the Protestants, yet all the while she must labour to diminish their numbers, to weaken their influence, and curtail their privileges, in the hope that at some convenient moment, which future years might bring, she might be able to fall upon them and cut them off, either by sudden war or by secret massacre. Doubtless what she now sketched was a policy of a general kind: content to fix its great outlines, and leave its details to be filled in afterwards, as circumstances might arise and opportunity offer. Accordingly, the Huguenots had gracious looks and soft words, but no substantial benefits, from the Queen-mother.
There was a truce to open hostilities; but blood was flowing all the time. Private murder stalked through France; and short as the period was since the Pacification had been signed, not fewer than three thousand Huguenots had fallen by the poignard of the assassin. In truth, there was no longer in France only one nation. There were now two nations on its soil. The perfidy and wrong which had marked the whole policy of the court had so deeply parted the Huguenot and Romanist, that not the hope only, but the wish for conciliation had passed away. The part Catherine de Medici had imposed upon herself - of standing well with both, and holding the poise between the two, yet ever making the preponderance of encouragement and favour to fall on the Roman
Catholic side - was an extremely difficult one; but her Italian nature and her discipline of thirty years made the task, which to another would have been impossible, to her comparatively easy.
Her first care was to mould her son, Charles IX, into her own likeness, and fit him for being an instrument, pliant and expert, for her purposes. Intellectually he was superior to his brother Francis II, who during his short reign had been treated by both wife and mother as an imbecile, and when dead was buried like a pauper. Charles IX is said to have discovered something of the literary taste and aesthetic appreciation which were the redeeming features in the character of his grandfather Francis I. In happier circumstances he might have become a patron of the arts, and have found scope for his fitful energy in the hunting-field; but what manly grace or noble quality could flourish in an air so fetid as that of the Louvre? The atmosphere in which he grew up was foul with corruption, impiety, and blood. To fawn on those he mortally disliked, to cover bitter thoughts with sweet smiles and to caress till ready to strike, were the unmanly and un-kingly virtues in which Charles was trained. His mother sent all the way to her own native city of Florence for a man to superintend the education of the prince - Albert Gondi, afterwards created Duke of Retz.
Of this man, the historian Brantome has drawn the following character: - “Cunning, corrupt, a liar, a great dissembler, swearing and denying God like a sergeant.” Under such a teacher, it is not difficult to conceive what the pupil would become; by no chance could he contract the slightest acquaintance with virtue or honour. What a spectacle we are contemplating! At the head of a great nation is a woman without moral principle, without human pity, without shame: a very tigress, and she is rearing her son as the tigress rears her cubs. Unhappy France, what a dark future begins to project its shadow across thee!
In the summer of 1565, Catherine and her son made a royal progress through France.
A brilliant retinue, composed of the princes of the blood, the great officers of state, the lords and ladies of the court - the dimness of their virtues concealed beneath the
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splendour of their robes followed in the train of the Queen-mother and the royal scion.
The wondering provinces sent out their inhabitants in thousands to gaze on the splendid cavalcade, as it swept comet-like past them. This progress enabled Catherine to judge for herself of the relative strength of the two parties in her dominions, and to shape her measures accordingly. Onward she went from province to province, and from city to city, scattering around her prodigally, yet judiciously, smiles, promises, and frowns; and who knew so well as she when to be gracious, and when to affect a stern displeasure? In those places where the Protestants had avenged upon the stone images the outrages which the Roman Catholics had committed upon living men,
Catherine took care to intimate emphatically her disapproval. Her piety was hurt at the sight of the demolition of objects elevated to sacred uses.
She took special care that her son’s attention should be drawn to those affecting mementoes of Huguenot iconoclast zeal. In some parts monasteries demolished, crosses overturned, images mutilated, offered a spectacle exceedingly depressing to pious souls, and over which the devout and tender-hearted daughter of the Medici could scarcely refrain from shedding tears. How detestable the nature of that religion - so was the king taught to view the matter - which could prompt to acts so atrocious and impious! He felt that his kingdom had been polluted, and he trembled - not with a well-reigned terror like his mother, but a real dread lest God, who had been affronted by these daring acts of sacrilege, should smite France with judgment; for in that age stone statues and crosses, and not divine precepts or moral virtues, were religion. The impression made upon the mind of the young king, especially in the southern provinces, where it seemed as if this impiety had reached its climax in a general sack of holy buildings and sacred furniture, was never, it is said, forgotten by him. It is believed to have inspired his policy in after-years.
[1]
The Queen-mother had another object in view in the progress she was now making. It enabled her, without attracting observation, to gather the sentiments of the neighbouring sovereigns on the great question of the age - namely, Protestantism - and to come to a common understanding with them respecting the measures to be adopted for its suppression. The kings of the earth were “plotting against the Lord and his anointed,” and although willingly submitting to the cords with which the chief ruler of the Seven-hilled City had bound them, they were seeking how they might break the bands of that King whom God hath set upon the holy hill of Zion. The great ones of the earth did not understand the Reformation, and trembled before it. A power which the sword could slay would have caused them little uneasiness; but a power which had been smitten with the sword, which had been trodden down by armies, which had been burned at the stake, but which refused to die - a power which the oftener it was defeated the mightier it became, which started up anew to the confusion of its enemies from what appeared to be its grave, was a new thing in the earth. There was a mystery about it which made it a terror to them. They knew not whence it came, nor whereunto it might grow, nor how it was “to be met.” Still the sword was the only weapon they knew to wield, and this caused them to meet often together to consult and plot.
The Council of Trent, which had just closed its sittings, had recommended - indeed enjoined - a league among the Roman Catholic sovereigns and States for the forcible suppression of the Reformed opinions; and Philip II of Spain took the lead in this matter, as became his position. His morose and fanatical genius scarcely needed the
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prompting of the Council. Catherine de Medici was now on her way to meet the envoy of this man, and to agree on a policy which should bind together in a common action the two crowns of Spain and France. Her steps were directed to Bayonne, the south-western extremity of her dominions; but her route thither was circuitous - being so on purpose that she might, under show of mutual congratulations, collect the sentiments of neighbouring rulers. As she skirted along by the Savoy Alps, she had an interview with the ambassador of the Duke of Savoy, who carried back Catherine’s good wishes, and other things besides, to his master. At Avignon, the capital of the
Papacy when Rome was too turbulent to afford safe residence to her Popes, Catherine halted to give audience to the Papal legate. She then pushed forward to Bayonne, where she was to meet the Duke of Alva, who, as the spokesman of the then mightiest monarch in Christendom, was a more important personage than the other ambassadors to whom she had already given audience. There a final decision was to be come to.
The royal cavalcade now drew nigh that quiet spot on the shores of the Bay of Biscay where, amid flourishing plantations and shrubs of almost tropical luxuriance, and lines of strong forts, nestles the little town of Bayonne - the “good bay” - a name its history has sadly belied. A narrow firth, which terminates in a little bay, admits the waters of the Atlantic within the walls of the town, and permits the ships of friendly
Powers to lie under the shelter of its guns. The azure tops of the Pyrenees appearing in the south notify to the traveller that he has almost touched the frontier of Spain. Here, in the chateau which still stands crowning the height on the right of the harbour,
Catherine de Medici met the plenipotentiary of Philip II.
[2]
The King of Spain did not come in person, but sent his wife Elizabeth, the daughter of this same Catherine de
Medici, and sister of Charles IX. Along with his queen came Philip’s general, the well-known Duke of Alva.
This man was inspired with an insane fury against Protestantism, which, meeting a fanaticism equally ferocious on the part of his master, was a link between the two.
Alva was the right hand of Philip; he was his counsellor in all evil; and by the sword of Alva it was that Philip shed those oceans of blood in which he sought to drown
Protestantism. Here, in this chateau, the dark sententious Spaniard met the crafty and eloquent Italian woman. Catherine made a covered gallery be constructed in it, that she might visit the duke whenever it suited her without being observed.
[3]
Their meetings were mostly nocturnal, but as no one was admitted to them, the precise schemes discussed at them, and the plots hatched, must, unless the oaken walls shall speak out, remain secrets till the dread Judgment-day, save in so far as they may be guessed at from the events which flowed from them, and which have found a place on the page of history. It is certain from an expression of Alva’s, caught up by the young son of the Queen of Navarre, the future Henry IV - whose sprightliness had won for him a large place in Catherine’s affections, and whom she at times permitted to go with her to the duke’s apartments, thinking the matters talked of there altogether beyond the boy’s capacity - that massacre was mooted at these interviews, and was relied upon as one of the main methods for cleansing Christendom from the heresy of
Calvin. The expression has been recorded by all historians with slight verbal differences, but substantial identity.
The idea was embodied by the duke in a vulgar but most expressive metaphor - namely, “The head of one salmon is worth that of ten thousand frogs.” This expression, occurring as it did in a conversation in which the names of the Protestant
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leaders figured prominently, explained its meaning sufficiently to the young but precocious Henry of Navarre. He communicated it to the lord who waited upon him.
This nobleman sent it in cipher to the prince’s mother, Jeanne d’Albret, and by her it was communicated to the heads of Protestantism. All the Protestant chiefs, both in
France and Germany, looked upon it as the foreshadowing of some terrible tragedy, hatched in this chateau, between the daughter of the fanatical House of Medici and the sanguinary lieutenant of Philip II.
Retained meanwhile in the darkness of these two bosoms, and it might be of one or two others, the secret was destined to write itself one day on the face of Europe in characters of blood; whispered in the deep stillness of these oaken chambers, it was soon to break in a thunder-crash upon the world, and roll its dread reverberations along history’s page till the end of time. This, in all probability, was what was resolved upon at these conferences at Bayonne. The conspirators did not plan a particular massacre, to come off on a particular day of a particular year; what they agreed upon was rather a policy towards the Protestants of treachery and murder, which however, should circumstances favour, might any day explode in a catastrophe of European dimensions.
“The Queen of Spain,” says Davila, narrating the meeting at Bayonne, “being come to this place, accompanied with the Duke of Alva and the Count de Beneventa, whilst they made show with triumphs, tournaments, and several kinds of pastimes, as if they had in eye nothing but amusement and feasting, there was held a secret conference in order to arrive at a mutual understanding between the two crowns. Their common interest being weighed and considered, they agreed in this, that it was expedient for one king to aid and assist the other in pacifying their States and purging them from diversity of religions. But they were not of the same opinion as to the way that was most expeditious and secure for arriving at this end … The duke said that a prince could not do a thing more unworthy or prejudicial to himself than to permit liberty of conscience to his people, bringing as many varieties of religion into a State as there are fancies in the minds of men; that diversities of opinion never faded to put subjects in arms, and stir up grievous treacheries and rebellions; therefore, he concluded that they ought by severe remedies, no matter whether by fire or sword, to cut away the roots of that evil.”
[4]
The historian says that the Queen-mother was inclined to milder measures, in the first place, being indisposed to imbrue her hands in the blood of the royal family, and of the great lords of the kingdom, and that she would reserve this as the last resort. “Both parties,” says he, “aimed at the destruction of the Huguenots, and the establishment of obedience. Wherefore, at last they came to this conclusion, that the one king should aid the other either covertly or openly, as might be thought most conducive to the execution of so difficult and so weighty an enterprise, but that both of them should be free to work by such means and counsels as appeared to them most proper and seasonable.”
[5]
Tavannes, whose testimony is above suspicion, confirms the statement of Davila.
“The Kings of France and Spain at Bayonne,” says he in his Memoires, “through the instrumentality of the Duke of Alva, resolved on the destruction of the Huguenots of
France and Spain.”
[6]
Maimbourg reiterates the same thing. “The two kings came to an agreement,” says he, “to exterminate all the Protestants in their dominions.”
[7]
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The massacre, it is now believed, was to have been executed in the year following
(1566) at the Assembly of Notables at Moulins. But meanwhile the dark secret of
Bayonne had oozed out in so many quarters, that Conde and Coligny could not with prudence disregard it, and though they came, with their confederates, to Moulins, in obedience to the royal summons, they were so well armed that Catherine de Medici durst not attempt her grand stroke.
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We return to the consideration of the condition of the Protestants of France. The
Pacification of Amboise, imperfect from the first, was now flagrantly violated. The worshipping assemblies of the Protestants were dispersed, their persons murdered, their ministers banished or silenced; and for these wrongs they could obtain no redress. The iron circle was continually narrowing around them. Were they to sit still until they were inextricably enfolded and crushed? No; they must again draw the sword. The court brought matters to extremity by hiring 6,000 Swiss mercenaries.
On hearing of this, the Prince de Conde held a consultation with the Huguenot chiefs.
Opinions were divided. Coligny advised a little longer delay. “I see perfectly well,” said he, “how we may light the fire, but I do not see the water to put it out.” His brother D’Andelot counselled instant action. “If you wait,” he exclaimed, “till you are driven into banishment in foreign countries, bound in prisons, hunted doom by the mob, of what avail, will our patience be? Those who have brought 6,000 foreign soldiers to our very hearths have thereby declared war already.” Conde and Coligny went to the Queen to entreat that justice might be done the Reformed. Catherine was deaf to their appeal. They next - acting on a precedent set them by the Duke of Guise five years before - attempted to seize the persons of the King and Queen-mother, at their Castle of Monceaux, in Brie. The plot being discovered, the court saved itself by a hasty flight. The Swiss had not yet arrived, and Catherine, safe again in Paris, amused the Protestants with negotiations. “The free exercise of their religion” was the one ever-reiterated demand of the Huguenots. At last the Swiss arrived, the negotiations were broken off, and now nothing remained but all appeal to arms.
This brings us to the second civil war, which we shall dispatch in a few sentences.
The second Huguenot war was a campaign of but one battle, which lasted barely an hour. This affair, styled the Battle of St. Denis, was fought under the walls of Paris, and the field was left in possession of the Huguenots,
[1]
who offered the royalists battle on the following day, but they declined it, so giving the Protestants the right of claiming the victory.
The veteran Montmorency, who had held the high office of Constable of France during four reigns, was among the slain. The Duke of Anjou, the favourite son of
Catherine, succeeded him as generalissimo of the French army, and thus the chief authority was still more completely centred in the hands of the Queen-mother. The winter months passed without fighting. When the spring opened, the Protestant forces were so greatly reinforced by auxiliaries from Germany, that the court judged it the wiser part to come to terms with them, and on March 20th, 1568, the short-lived
Peace of Longjumeau was signed. “This peace,” says Mezeray, “left the Huguenots at the mercy of their enemies, with no other security than the word of an Italian woman.”
[2]
The army under Conde melted away, and then Catherine forgot her promise. All the while the peace lasted, which was only six short months, the Protestants had to endure even greater miseries than if they had been in the field with arms in their hands. Again the pulpits thundered against heresy, again the passions of the mob broke out, again the dagger of the assassin was set to work, and the blood of the Huguenots ceased not
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to flow in all the cities and provinces of France. It is estimated that not fewer than ten thousand persons perished during this short period. The court did nothing to restrain, but much, it is believed, to instigate to these murders.
One gets weary of writing so monotonous a recital of outrage and massacre. This bloodshed, it must be acknowledged, was not all confined to one side. Some two hundred Roman Catholics, including several priests, were massacred by the
Protestants. This is to be deplored, but it need surprise no one. Of the hundreds of thousands of Huguenots in France, all were not pious men; and further, while these two hundred or so of Romanists were murdered, the Huguenots were perishing in tens of thousands by every variety of cruel death, and of shocking and shameful outrage.
There was no justice in the land. The crew that occupied the Louvre, and styled themselves the Government, were there, as the Thug is in his den, to entrap and dispatch his victim. There were men in France doubtless who reasoned that, although the laws of society had fallen, the laws of nature were still in force.
Matters were brought to a head by the discovery of a plot which was to be immediately executed. At a council in the Louvre, it was resolved to seize the two
Protestant chiefs, the Prince of Conde and Admiral Coligny - and put them out of the way, by consigning the first to a dungeon for life, and sending the second to the scaffold. The moment they were informed of the plot, the prince and the admiral fled with their wives and children to La Rochelle. The road was long and the journey toilsome. They had to traverse three hundred miles of rough country, obstructed by rivers, and beset by the worse dangers of numerous foes. An incident which befell them by the way touched their hearts deeply, as showing the hand of God. Before them was the Loire - a broad and rapid river. The bridges were watched. How were they to cross? A friendly guide, to whom the by-paths and fords were known, conducted them to the river’s banks opposite Sancerre, and at that point the company, amounting to nearly two hundred persons, crossed without inconvenience or risk.
They all went over singing the psalm, When Israel went out of Egypt. Two hours after, the heavens blackened, and the rain falling in torrents, the waters of the Loire, which a little before had risen only to their horses’ knees, were now swollen, and had become impassable. In a little while they saw their pursuers arrive on the further side of the river; but their progress was stayed by the deep and angry flood, to which they dared not commit themselves. “Escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers,” the company of Coligny exchanged looks of silent gratitude with one another.
[3]
What remained of their way was gone with lighter heart and nimbler foot; they felt, although they could not see, the Almighty escort that covered them; and so, journeying on, they came at last safely to La Rochelle.
La Rochelle was at this period a great mark of trade. Its inhabitants shared the independence of sentiment which commerce commonly brings in its train, having early embraced the Reformation, the bulk of its inhabitants were by this time
Protestants. An impression was abroad that another great crisis impended; and under this belief, too well founded, all the chiefs and captains of the army were repairing with their followers to this stronghold of Huguenotism. We have seen Conde and
Coligny arrive here; and soon thereafter came another illustrious visitor - Jeanne d’Albret. The Queen of Navarre did not come alone; she brought with her, her son
Henry, Prince of Bearn, whose heroic character was just then beginning to open, and whom his mother, in that dark hour, dedicated to the service of the Protestant cause.
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This arrival awakened the utmost enthusiasm in La Rochelle among both citizens and soldiers. Conde laid his command of the Huguenot army at the feet of the young
Prince of Bearn - magnanimously performing an act which the conventional notions of the age exacted of him, for Henry was nearer the throne than himself. The magnanimity of Conde evoked an equal magnanimity. “No,” said Jeanne d’Albret; “I and my son are here to promote the success of this great enterprise, or to share its disaster. We will joyfully unite beneath the standard of Conde. The cause of God is dearer to me than my son.”
At this juncture the Queen-mother published an edict, revoking the Edict of January, forbidding, on pain of death, the profession of Protestantism, and commanding all ministers to leave the kingdom within a fortnight.
[4]
If anything was wanting to complete the justification of the Protestants, in this their third war, it was now supplied. During the winter of 1569, the two armies were frequently in presence of one another; but as often as they essayed to join battle, storms of unprecedented violence broke out, and the assailants had to bow to the superior force of the elements.
At last, on the 15th March, they met on the field of Jarnac. The day was a disastrous one for the Protestants. Taken at unawares, the Huguenot regiments arrived one after the other on the field, and were butchered in detail, the enemy assailing in overwhelming numbers. The Prince of Conde, after performing prodigies of valour, wounded, unhorsed, and fighting desperately on his knees, was slain.
[5]
Coligny, judging it hopeless to prolong the carnage, retired with his soldiers from the field; and the result of the day as much elated the court and the Roman Catholics, as it engendered despondency and despair in the hearts of the Protestants. While the
Huguenot army was in this mood - beaten by their adversaries, and in danger of being worse beaten by their fears - the Queen of Navarre suddenly appeared amongst them.
Attended by Coligny, she rode along their ranks, having on one hand her son, the
Prince of Bearn, and on the other her nephew, Henry, son of the fallen Conde.
“Children of God and of France,” said she, addressing the soldiers, “Conde is dead; but is all therefore lost? No; the God who gave him courage and strength to fight for this cause, has raised up others worthy to succeed him. To those brave warriors I add my son. Make proof of his valour: Soldiers! I offer you everything I have to give - my dominions, my treasures, my life, and what is dearer to me than all, my children. I swear to defend to my last sigh the holy cause that now unites us!” With these heroic words she breathed her own spirit into the soldiers. They looked up; they stood erect; the fire returned to their eyes. Henry of Navarre was proclaimed general of the army, amid the plaudits of the soldiers; and Coligny and the other chiefs were the first to swear fidelity to the hero, to whom the whole realm was one day to vow allegiance.
Thus the disaster of Jarnac was so far repaired; but a yet deeper reverse awaited the
Huguenot arms. The summer which opened so ominously passed without any affair of consequence till the 3rd of October, and then came the fatal battle of Montcontour. It was an inconvenient moment for Coligny to fight, for his German auxiliaries had just mutinied; but no alternative was left him. The Huguenots rushed with fury into action; but their ranks were broken by the firm phalanxes on which they threw themselves, and before they could rally, a tremendous slaughter had begun, which caused something like a panic amongst them. Coligny was wounded at the very commencement; his lower jaw was broken, and the blood, oozing from the wound and trickling down his throat, all but choked him. Being unable to give the word of command, he was carried out of the battle. A short hour only did the fight rage; but
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what disasters were crowded into that space of time! Of the 25,000 men whom
Coligny had led into action, only 8,000 stood around their standards when it was ended. Ammunition, cannon, baggage, and numerous colours were lost. Again the dark night was closing in around French Protestantism.
As Coligny was being carried out of the field, another litter in which lay a wounded soldier passed him by. The occupant of that other litter was Lestrange, an old gentleman, and one of the admiral’s chief counsellors. Lestrange, happening to draw aside the curtains and look out, recognised his general. “Yes,” said he, brushing away a tear that dimmed his eye - “Yes, God is very sweet.” This was all he spoke. It was as if a Divine hand had dropped a cordial into the soul of Coligny. Speaking afterwards to his friends of the incident, he said that these words were as balm to his spirit, then more bruised than his body. There is here a lesson for us - nay, many lessons, though we can particularize only one. We are apt to suppose that those exemplify the highest style of piety, and enjoy most of the Spirit’s presence, who are oftenest in the closet engaged in acts of devotion, and that controversy and fighting belong to a lower type of Christianity. There are exceptions, of course; but the rule, we believe, is the opposite. We must distinguish between a contentious lot and a contentious spirit; the former has been assigned to some of the most loving natures, and the most spiritual of men. That is the healthiest piety that best endures the wear and tear of hard work, just as those are the healthiest plants which, in no danger of pining away without the shelter of a hot-house, flourish in the outer air, and grow tall, and strong, and beautiful amid the rains and tempests of the open firmament. So now: breaking through the clouds and dust of the battle-field, a ray from heaven shot into the soul of Coligny.
The admiral had now touched the lowest point of his misfortunes. We have seen him borne out of the battle, vanquished and wounded almost to death. His army lay stretched on the field. The few who had escaped the fate of their comrades were dispirited and mutinous. Death had narrowed the circle of his friends, and of those who remained, some forsook him, and others even blamed him. To crown these multiplied calamities, Catherine de Medici came forward to deal him the coup de grace. At her direction the Parliament of Paris proclaimed him an outlaw, and set a price of 30,000 crowns upon his head. His estates were confiscated, his Castle of
Chatillon was burned to the ground, and he was driven forth homeless and friendless.
Were his miseries now complete? Not yet. Pius V cursed him as “all infamous, execrable man, if indeed he deserved the name of man.” It was now that Coligny appeared greatest. Furious tempests assailed him from all quarters at once, but he did not bow to their violence. In the presence of defeat, desertion, outlawry, and the bitter taunts and curses of his enemies, his magnanimity remained unsubdued, and his confidence in God unshaken. A glorious triumph yet awaited the cause that was now so low. Perish it could not, and with it he knew would revive his now sore-tarnished name and fame.
He stood upon a rock, and the serenity of soul which he enjoyed, while these tempests were raging at his feet, is finely shown in the letters which at that time he addressed to his children for his wife, the heroic Charlotte Laval, was dead two years, and saw not the evil that came upon her house. “We must follow Jesus Christ,” wrote Coligny
(October 16th, 1569), “our Captain, who has marched before us. Men have stripped us of all they could; and if this is still the will of God, we shall be happy, and our condition good, seeing this loss has not happened through any injury we have done to
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those who have inflicted it, but solely through the hatred they bear toward me, because it has pleased God to make use of me to aid his Church. For the present, it suffices that I admonish and conjure you, in the name of God, to persevere courageously in the study of virtue.”
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We left Protestantism in France, and its greatest champion, Admiral de Coligny, reeling under what seemed to be a mortal blow. The Prince of Conde was dead; the battle of Montcontour had been lost; the army mostly lay rotting on the field; and a mere handful of soldiers only remained around the standard of their chief. Many who had befriended the cause till now abandoned it in despair, and such as still remained faithful were greatly disheartened, and counselled submission. Catherine de Medici, as we have seen, thinking that now was the hour of opportunity, hastened to deal what she did not doubt would be the finishing blow to the Protestant cause, and to the man who was pre-eminently its chief. It was now, in the midst of these misfortunes, that
Coligny towered up, and reached the full stature of his moral greatness; and with him, rising from its ashes, soared up anew the Protestant cause.
Success in the eye of the world is one thing; success in the eye of God is another and a different thing. When men are winning battles, and every day adding to the number of their friends, and the greatness of their honoured - “These men,” says the world,
“are marching on to victory.” But when to a cause or to a party there comes defeat after defeat, when friends forsake, and calamities thicken, the world sees nothing but disaster, and prognosticates only ruin. Yet these thing may be but the necessary steps to success.
Chastened by these sore dispensations, they who are engaged in the work of God are compelled to turn from man, and to fortify themselves by a yet more entire and exclusive reliance on the Almighty. They cleanse themselves from the vitiating stains of flattery and human praise; they purge out the remaining leaven of selfishness;
God’s Spirit descends in richer influences upon them; the calm of a celestial power fills their souls; they find that they have been cast down in order that they may be lifted up, and that, instead of ruin, which the world’s wise men and their own fears had foretold, they are now nearing the goal, and that it is triumph that awaits them. So was it with Protestantism in France at this hour. The disaster which had overtaken it, and in which its enemies saw only ruin, was but the prelude to its vindicating for itself a higher position than it had ever before attained in that nation.
The heads of the Protestant cause and the captains of the army gathered round
Admiral de Coligny, after the battle, but with looks so crestfallen, and speaking in tones so desponding, that it was plain they had given up all as lost. Not so Coligny.
The last to unsheathe the sword, he would be the last to return it to its scabbard, nor would he abandon the enterprise so long as a single friend was by his side.
“No,” said Coligny, in answer to the desponding utterances of the men around him,
“all is not lost; nothing is lost; we have lost a battle, it is true; but the burial trenches of Montcontour do not contain all the Huguenots; the Protestants of France have not been conquered; those provinces of the kingdom in which Protestantism has taken the deepest root, and which have but slightly felt the recent reverses, will give us another army.” The Protestants of Germany and England, he reminded them, were their friends, and would send them succours; they must not confine their eye to one point, nor permit their imagination to dwell on one defeat; they must embrace in their survey the whole field; they must not count the soldiers of Protestantism, they must weigh its
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moral and spiritual forces, and, when they had done so, they would see that there was no cause to despair of its triumph. By these magnanimous words Coligny raised the spirit of his friends, and they resolved to continue the struggle.
[1]
The result justified the wisdom as well as the courage of the admiral. He made his appeal to the provinces beyond the Loire, where the friends of Protestantism were the most numerous. Kindling into enthusiasm at his call, there flocked to his standard from the mountains of Bearn, from the cities of Dauphine, and the region of the
Cevennes, young and stalwart warriors, who promised to defend their faith and liberties till death.
[2]
When the spring opened the brave patriot-chief had another army, more numerous and better disciplined than the one he had lost, ready to take the field and strike another blow. The fatal fields of Jarnac and Montcontour were not to be the grave of French Huguenotism.
When the winter had passed, and after some encounters with the enemy, which tested the spirit of his army, Coligny judged it best to march direct on Paris, and make terms under the walls of the capital. The bold project was put in instant execution. The tidings that Coligny was approaching struck the Government with consternation. The court, surrendering itself to the pleasant dream that Protestantism lay buried in the gory mounds of its recent battle-fields, had given itself up to those pleasures which ruin, body and soul, those who indulge in them. The court was at its wits’ end. Not only was the redoubtable Huguenot chief again in the field, he was on his road to
Paris, to demand a reckoning for so many Pacifications broken, and so much blood spilt. The measure which the court adopted to ward off the impending danger was a weak one. They sent the Duke of Anjou - the third son of Catherine de Medici, the same who afterwards ascended the throne under the title of Henry III - with an army of gallants, to stop Coligny’s march. The stern faces and heavy blows of the mountain
Huguenots drove back the emasculated recruits of Anjou. Coligny continued his advance. A few days more and Paris, surrounded by his Huguenots, would be enduring siege. A council of war was immediately held, attended by the King, the
Queen-mother, the Duke of Anjou, and the Cardinal of Lorraine. It was resolved, says
Davila, to have recourse to the old shift, that namely of offering peace to the
Huguenots.
The peace was granted, Davila tells us - and he well knew the secrets of the court - in the hope “that the foreign troops would be sent out of France, and that artifice and opportunity would enable them to take off the heads of the Protestant faction, when the common people would yield, and return to their obedience.”
[3]
This ending of the matter, by “artifice and opportunity,” the historian goes on to remark, had been long kept in view. Catherine de Medici now came to terms with Coligny, the man whom a little time ago she had proclaimed an outlaw, setting a price upon his head; and on the
8th of August, 1570, the Peace of St. Germain-en-Laye was signed.
The terms of that treaty were unexpectedly favourable. Its general basis was an amnesty for all past offences; the right of the Huguenots to reside in any part of
France without being called in question for their religious opinions; liberty of worship in the suburbs of two towns in each province; admissibility of the Protestants to most of the offices of state, and the restoration of all confiscated property. As a guarantee for the faithful execution of the treaty, four cities were put into the hands of the
Protestants - La Rochelle, La Charite, Cognac, and Montauban. The torn country had now a little rest; sweet it was for the Huguenots to exchange camps and battle-fields
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for their peaceful homes. There was one drawback, however, the remembrance of the many Pacifications that had been made only to be broken. This was the third in the space of seven years. Meanwhile the daughter of the Medici held out the olive-branch: but so little was she trusted that none of the Huguenot chiefs presented themselves at court, nor did they even deem themselves secure in their own castles; they retired in a body within the strongly fortified city of La Rochelle.
Davila admits that the Protestants had good grounds for these suspicions. The peace was the gift of the Trojans; and from this time the shadow of the St. Bartholomew massacre begins to darken the historian’s page. “The peace having been concluded and established,” says he, “the stratagem formed in the minds of the king and queen for bringing the principal Huguenots into the net began now to be carried out, and they sought to compass by policy that which had so often been attempted by war, but which had been always found fruitless and dangerous.”
[4]
Davila favours us with a glimpse of that policy, which it was hoped would gain what force had not effected.
The king “being now come to the age of two-and-twenty, of a resolute nature, a spirit full of resentment, and above all, an absolute dissembler,” scrupulously observed the treaty, and punished the Roman Catholic mobs for their infractions of it in various places, and strove by “other artifices to lull to sleep the suspicions of Coligny and his friends, to gain their entire confidence, and so draw them to court.” Maimbourg’s testimony, which on this head may be entirely trusted, is to the same effect. “But not to dissemble,” says he, “as the queen did in this treaty, there is every appearance that a peace of this kind was not made in good faith on the part of this princess, who had her concealed design, and who granted such things to the Huguenots only to disarm them, and afterwards to surprise those upon whom she wished to be revenged, and especially the admiral, at the first favourable opportunity she should have for it.”
[5]
When from the stormy era at which we are now arrived - the eighth year of the civil wars - we look back to the calm day-break under Lefevre, we are touched with a tender sorrow, and recall, with the din of battle in our ears, the psalms that the reapers, as they rested at mid-day, were wont to sing on the harvest-fields of Meaux. The light of that day-break continued to wax till the morning had passed into almost noon-day.
But with the war came an arrest of this most auspicious progress. Piety decayed on the battle-field, and the evangelization began to retrograde. “Before the wars” says Felice,
“proselytism was conducted on a large scale, and embraced whole cities and provinces; peace and freedom allowed of this; afterwards proselytes were few in number, and obtained with difficulty, now many corpses were there heaped up as barriers between the two communions; how many bitter enemies, and cruel remembrances, watched around the two camps to forbid approach.”
[6]
Still, if the root of that once noble vine which stretched its branches on the one side to the Pyrenees, and on the other to the English sea, is still in the soil of France, we owe it to the heroes of the Huguenot wars. Different circumstances demand the display of different graces. Psalms and hymns became the first Protestants of France. Strong cries to God, trust in his arm, and strivings unto blood formed the worship of the Huguenots. They were martyrs, though they died in armour. The former is the lovelier picture, the latter is the grander. In truth, times like those in which Coligny lived, act on the spiritual constitution much as a stern climate acts on the physical. The sickly are dwarfed by it, the robust are nourished into yet greater robustness. The oak that battles with the winds, shows its boughs sorely gnarled, and its trunk sheathed in a bark of iron, but within there flows a current of living sap, which enables it to live and ripen its acorns
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through a thousand years. And so of the Christian who is exposed to such tempests as those amid which Coligny moved; what his piety loses in point of external grace, it acquires In respect of an internal strength, which is put forth in acts of faith in God, and in deeds of sacrifice and service to man.
Meanwhile the great winds were held that they might not blow on the vine of France, and during these two tranquil years a synod of the Reformed Church was held at La
Rochelle (1571). This synod marks the acme of Protestantism in France. To borrow a figure from classic times, the doors of the temple of Janus were closed; war’s banner was furled; and the Huguenots went up to their strong city of La Rochelle, and held their great convocation within its gates. The synod was presided over by Theodore
Beza. Calvin was dead, having gone to the grave just as these troubles were darkening over France; but his place was not unworthily filled by his great successor, the learned and eloquent Beza. The synod was attended by the Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, who was accompanied by her son, the Prince of Bearn, the future Henry IV.
There were present also Henry, the young Prince of Conde; Gaspard de Coligny,
Admiral of France; the Count of Nassau; the flower of the French noblesse; the pastors, now a numerous body; the captains of the army, a great many lay deputies, together with a miscellaneous assemblage composed of the city burghers, the vinedressers of the plains, and the herdsmen of the hills. They sat day by day to receive accounts of the state of Protestantism in the various provinces, and to concert measures for the building up of the Reformed Church in their native land.
We have already related the meeting of the first synod of the French Protestant
Church at Paris, in 1559. At that synod were laid the foundations of the Church’s polity; her confession of faith was compiled, and her whole order and organization were settled. Five national synods had assembled in the interval, and this at La
Rochelle was the seventh; but neither at this, nor at the five that preceded it, had any alteration of the least importance been made in the creed or in the constitution of the
French Church, as agreed on at its first national synod, in 1559. This assembly, so illustrious for the learning, the rank, and the numbers of its members, set the seal of its approval on what the eleven pastors had done at Paris twelve years before. There is no synod like this at La Rochelle, before or since, in the history of the French
Protestant Church. It was a breathing-time, short, but beyond measure refreshing.
“The French Church,” says one, “now sat under the apple-tree; God spread a table for her in the presence of her enemies.”
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The ever-memorable Synod of La Rochelle has closed its sittings; the noon of
Protestantism in France has been reached; and now we have sadly to chronicle the premature decline of a day that promised to be long and brilliant. Already we are within the dark shadow of a great coming catastrophe.
The springs and causes of the St. Bartholomew Massacre are to be sought for outside the limits of the country in which it was enacted. A great conjunction of principles and politics conspired to give birth to a tragedy which yields in horror to no crime that ever startled the world. The first and primary root of this, as of all similar massacres in Christendom, is the divine vicegerency of the Pope. So long as Christendom is held to be a theocracy, rebellion against the law of its divine monarch, in other words heresy, is and must be justly punishable with death.
But, over and above, action in this special direction had been plotted and solemnly enjoined by the Council of Trent. “Roman Catholic Europe,” says Gaberel, “was to erase Reformed Europe, and proclaim the two principles - the sovereign authority of the kings in political affairs, and the infallibility of the Pope in religious questions.
The right of resisting the temporal, and the right of inquiring into the spiritual, were held to be detestable crimes, which the League wished to banish from the world.”
[1]
At the head of the League was Philip II; and the sanguinary ferocity of the King of
Spain made the vast zeal of the French court look but as lukewarmness. A massacre was then in progress in the Low Countries, which took doubtless the form of war, but yielded its heaps of corpses almost daily, and which thrills us less than the St.
Bartholomew only because, instead of consummating its horrors in one terrible week, it extended them over many dismal years. Philip never ceased to urge on Catherine de
Medici and Charles IX to do in France as he was doing in Flanders. These reiterated exhortations were doubtless the more effectual inasmuch as they entirely coincided with what Catherine doubted her truest policy. The hopelessness of overcoming the
Huguenots in the field was now becoming very apparent. Three campaigns had been fought, and the position of the Protestants was stronger than at the beginning of the war. No sooner was one Huguenot army defeated and dispersed, than another and a more powerful took the field. The Prince of Conde had fallen, but his place was filled by a chief of equal rank. The court of France had indulged the hope that if the leaders were cut off the people would grow disheartened, and the contest would languish and die out; but the rapidity with which vacancies were supplied, and disasters repaired, at last convinced the King and Queen-mother that these hopes were futile. They must lay their account with a Huguenot ascendency at an early day, unless they followed the counsels of Philip of Spain, and by a sudden and sweeping stroke cut off the whole
Huguenot race. But the time and the way, as Catherine told Philip, must be left to herself.
At this great crisis of the Papal affairs - for if Huguenotism had triumphed in France it would have carried its victorious arms over Spain and Italy - a higher authority than even Philip of Spain came forward to counsel the steps to be taken - nay, not to counsel only, but to teach authoritatively what was Duty in the matter, and enjoin the performance of that duty under the highest sanctions, This brings the reigning Pontiff
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upon the scene, and we shall try and make clear Pope Pius V’s connection with the terrible event we are approaching. It will assist us in understanding this part of history, if we permit his biographers to bring before us the man who bore no inconspicuous part in it.
The St. Bartholomew Massacre was plotted under the Pontificate of Pius V, and enacted under that of his immediate successor, Gregory XIII. Michael Ghislisri (Pius
V) was born in the little town of Bosco, on the plain of Piedmont, in the year 1504.
His parents were in humble station. “The genius of the son,” says his biographer
Gabutius, “fitted him for higher things than the manual labours that occupied his parents. The spirit of God excited him to that mode of life by which he might the more signally serve God and, escaping the snares of earth, attain the heavenly felicity.”
[2]
He was marked from his earliest years by an austere piety.
Making St. Dominic, the founder of the Inquisition, his model, and having, it would seem, a natural predilection for this terrible business, he entered a Dominican convent at the age of fourteen. He obeyed, body and soul, the laws of his order. The poverty which his vow enjoined he rigidly practiced. Of the alms which he collected he did not retain so much as would buy him a cloak for the winter; and he fortified himself against the heats of summer by practising a severe abstinence. He laboured to make his fellow-monks renounce their slothful habits, their luxurious meals, and their gay attire, and follow the same severe, mortified, and pious life with himself. If not very successful with them, he continued nevertheless to pursue these austerities himself, and soon his fame spread far and near. He was appointed confessor to the Governor of
Milan, and this necessitated an occasional journey of twenty miles, which was always performed on foot, with his wallet on his back.
[3]
On the road he seldom spoke to his companions, “employing his time,” says his biographer, “in reciting prayers or meditating on holy things.”
[4]
His devotion to the Roman See, and the zeal with which he combated Protestantism, recommended him to his superiors, and his advancement was rapid. Of several offices which were now in his choice, he gave his decided preference to that of inquisitor, “from his ardent desire,” his biographer tells us, “to exterminate heretics, and extend the Roman Catholic faith.” The district including Como and the neighbouring towns was committed to his care, and he discharged the duties of this fearful office with such indefatigable, and indeed ferocious zeal, as often to imperil his own life. The Duchy of Milan was then being inoculated with “the pernicious and diabolical doctrines,” as Gabutius styles them, of
Protestantism; and Michael Ghislieri was pitched upon as the only man fit to cope with the evil. Day and night he perambulated his diocese on the quest for heretics.
This was judged too narrow a sphere for an activity so prodigious, and Paul IV, himself one of the greatest of persecutors, nominated Ghislieri to the office of supreme inquisitor. This brought him to Rome; and here, at last, he found a sphere commensurate with the greatness of his zeal. He continued to serve under Pius IV, adding to the congenial office of inquisitor, the scarlet of the cardinalate.
[5]
On the death of Pius IV, Ghislieri was elevated to the Popedom, his chief recommendation in the eyes of his supporters, including Cardinal Borromeo and Philip II, being his inextinguishable zeal for the suppression of heresy. Rome was then in the thick of her battle, and Ghislieri was selected as the fittest man to preside over and infuse new rigor into that institution on which she mainly relied for victory. The future life of
Pius V justified his elevation. His daily fare was as humble, his clothing as mean, his fasts as frequent, and his household arrangements as economical, now that he wore
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the tiara, as when he was a simple monk. He rose with the first light, he kneeled long in prayer, and often would he mingle his tears with his supplications; he abounded in alms, he forgot injuries, he was kind to his domestics; he might often be seen with naked feet, and head uncovered, his white beard sweeping his breast, walking in procession, and receiving the reverence of the populace as one of the holiest Popes that had ever trodden the streets of Rome.
[6]
But one formidable quality did Pius V conjoin with all this - even an intense, unmitigated detestation of Protestantism, and a fixed, inexorable determination to root it out. In his rapid ascent from post to post, he saw the hand of God conducting him to the summit, that there, wielding all the arms, temporal and spiritual, of Christendom, he might discharge, in one terrible stroke, the concentrated vengeance of the Popedom on the hydra of heresy. Every hour of every day he occupied in the execution of what he believed to be his predestined work. He sent money and soldiers to France to carry on the war against the Huguenots; he addressed continual letters to the kings and bishops of the Popish world, inciting them to yet greater zeal in the slaughter of heretics; ever and anon the cry “To massacre!” was sounded forth from the Vatican; but not a doubt had Pius V that this butchery was well-pleasing to God, and that he himself was the appointed instrument for emptying the vials of wrath upon a system which he regarded as accursed, and believed to be doomed to destruction.
Such was the man who at this era filled the Papal throne. But let us permit Pius V himself to speak. In 1569, the Pope, despairing of overcoming the French heretics in open war, darkly suggests a way more secret and more sure. “Our zeal,” says he, in his letter to the Cardinal of Lorraine, “gives us the right of earnestly exhorting and exciting you to use all your influence for procuring a definite and serious adoption of the measure most proper for bringing about the destruction of the implacable enemies of God and the king.”
[7]
After the victory of Jarnac the French Government acknowledged the help the Pope had given them in winning it, by sending to Rome some Huguenot standards taken on the field, to be displayed in the Lateran. Pius V replied in a strain of exultation, and laboured to stimulate the court to immediate and remorseless massacre. “The more the Lord has treated you and me with kindness,” so wrote he to Charles IX, “the more you ought to take advantage of the opportunity this victory offers to you, for pursuing and destroying all the enemies that still remain; for tearing up entirely all the roots, and even the smallest fibres of the roots, of so terrible and continued an evil. For unless they are radically extirpated, they will be found to shoot up again; and, as it has already happened several times, the mischief will reappear when your majesty least expects it. You will bring this about if no consideration for persons, or worldly things, induces you to spare the enemies of God
- who have never spared yourself. For you will not succeed in turning away the wrath of God, except by avenging him rigorously on the wretches who have offended him, by inflicting on them the punishment they have deserved.”
[8]
These advices, coming from such a quarter were commands, and they could take no practical shape but that of massacre; and to make it unmistakable that this was the shape the Pope meant his counsels to take, he proceeds to cite a case in point from
Old Testament history.
“Let your majesty take for example, and never lose sight of, what happened to Saul,
King of Israel. He had received the orders of God, by the mouth of the prophet
Samuel, to fight and to exterminate the infidel Amalekites, in such a way that he
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should not spare one in any case, or under any pretext. But he did not obey the will and the voice of God … therefore he was deprived of his throne and his life.” If for
Saul we read Charles IX, and for the prophet Samuel we substitute Pius V, as the writer clearly intended should be done, what is this but a command addressed to the
King of France, on peril of his throne, to massacre all the Huguenots in his realm, without sparing even one? “By this example,” continues the Pope, “God has wished to teach all kings that to neglect the vengeance of outrages done to him is to provoke his wrath and indignation against themselves.”
To Catherine de Medici, Pius V writes in still plainer terms, as if he knew her wolfish nature, as well as her power over her son, promising her the assistance of Heaven if she would pursue the enemies of the Roman Catholic religion “till they are all massacred,
[9]
for it is only by the entire extermination of heretics
[10]
that the Roman
Catholic worship can be restored.”
[11]
There follow letters to the Duke of Anjou, and the Cardinal of Lorraine, and another to the king, all breathing the same sanguinary spirit, and enjoining the same inexorability towards the vanquished heretics.
[12]
At Bayonne, in 1565, Catherine met the Duke of Alva, as we have already seen, to consult as to the means of ridding France of heretics. “They agreed at last,” says the contemporary historian Adriani, “in the opinion of the Catholic king, that this great blessing could not have accomplishment save by the death of all the chiefs of the
Huguenots, and by a new edition, as the saying was, of the Sicilian Vespers.”
[13]
“They decided,” says Guizot, “that the deed should be done at Moulins, in
Bourbonnes, whither the king was to return. The execution of it was afterwards deferred to the date of the St. Bartholomew, in 1572, at Paris, because of certain suspicions which had been manifested by the Huguenots, and because it was considered easier and more certain to get them all together at Paris than at Moulins.”
This is confirmed by Tavannes, who says: “The Kings of France and of Spain, at
Bayonne, assisted by the Duke of Alva, resolved on the destruction of the heretics in
France and Flanders.”
[14]
La Noue in his Memoires bears witness to the “resolution taken at Bayonne with the Duke of Alva, to extirpate the Huguenots of France and the beggars of Flanders, which was brought to light by intercepted letters coming from
Rome to Spain.”
[15]
“Catherine de Medici,” says Guizot, “charged Cardinal Santa Croce to assure Pope
Pius V ‘that she and her son had nothing more at heart than to get the admiral and all his confidants together some day, and make a massacre [un macello] of them; but the matter,’ she said, ‘was so difficult, that there was no possibility of promising to do it at one time more than at another.’” “De Thou,” adds the historian, “regards all these facts as certain, and after having added some details, he sums them all up in the words, ‘This is what passed at Bayonne in 1565.’”
[16]
We have it, thus, under the Pope’s own hand, that he enjoined on Charles IX and
Catherine de Medici the entire extermination of the French Protestants, on the battlefield if possible; if not, by means more secret and more sure; we have it on contemporary testimony, Popish and Protestant, that this was what was agreed on between Catherine and Alva at Bayonne; and we also find the Queen-mother, through
Santa Croce, promising to the Pope, for herself and for her son, to make a massacre of the Huguenots, although, for obvious reasons, she refuses to bind herself to a day.
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From this time that policy was entered on which was designed to lead up to the grand denouement so unmistakably shadowed forth in the letters of the Pope, and in the agreement between Alva and Catherine.
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Great difficulties, however, lay in the path of the policy arranged between the Queenmother and Alva. The first was the deep mistrust which the Protestants cherished of
Catherine and Charles IX. Not one honest peace had the French court ever made with them. Far more Protestants had perished by massacre during the currency of the various Pacifications, than had fallen by the sword in times of war. Accordingly, when the Peace of St. Germain-en-Laye was made, the Huguenot chiefs, instead of repairing to court, retired within the strongly fortified town of La Rochelle. They must be drawn out; their suspicions must be lulled to sleep, and their chief men assembled in Paris. This was the point to be first effected, and nothing but patience and consummate craft could achieve it.
No ordinary illusion could blind men who had been so often and so deeply duped already. This the French court saw. A new and grander style of stratagem than any heretofore employed was adopted. Professions, promises, and dignities were profusely lavished upon the Huguenots, but, over and above, great schemes of national policy were projected, reaching into the future, embracing the aggrandisement of France, coinciding with the views of the Huguenot chiefs, and requiring their cooperation in order to their successful execution. This gave an air of sincerity to the professions of the court which nothing else could have done, for it was thought impossible that men who were cogitating plans so enlightened, were merely contriving a cunning scheme, and weaving a web of guile. But Catherine was aware that she was too well known for anything less astute to deceive the Huguenot leaders. The proposal of the court was that the young King of Navarre should marry Margaret de Valois, the sister of Charles
IX, and that an armed intervention should be made in the Low Countries in aid of the
Prince of Orange against Philip of Spain, and that Coligny should be placed at the head of the expedition. These were not new ideas. The marriage had been talked of in
Henry II’s time, while Margaret and Henry of Navarre were yet children; and as regards the intervention in behalf of the Protestants of the Low Countries, that was a project which the Liberal party, which had been forming at the Louvre, headed by
Chancellor l’Hopital, had thrown out. They were revived by Catherine as by far her best stratagem: “the King and Queen-mother,” says Davila, “imparting their private thoughts only to the Duke of Anjou, the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Duke of Guise, and
Alberto Gondi, Count of Retz.”
[1]
Charles IX instantly dispatched Marshal de Biron to La Rochelle, to negotiate the marriage of his sister with the Prince of Bearn, and to induce his mother, the Queen of
Navarre, to repair to court, that the matter might be concluded. The king sent at the same time the Marshal de Cosse to La Rochelle, to broach the project of the Flanders expedition to the Admiral de Coligny, “but in reality,” says Sully, “to observe the proceedings of the Calvinists, to sound their thoughts, and to beget in them that confidence which was absolutely necessary for his own designs.”
[2]
After the repeated violations of treaties, Pacifications, and oaths on the part of Catherine and her son, it was no easy matter to overcome the deeply-rooted suspicions of men who had so often smarted from the perfidy of the king and his mother. But Catherine and
Charles dissembled on this occasion with an adroitness which even they had never shown before. Admiral de Coligny was the first to be won. He was proverbial for his
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wariness, but, as sometimes happens, he was now conquered on the point where he was strongest. Setting out from La Rochelle, in despite of the tears and entreaties of his wife, he repaired to Blois (September, 1571), where the court was then residing.
On entering the presence of the king, Coligny went on his knee, but Charles raised and embraced him, calling him his father. The return of the warrior to court put him into a transport of joy. “I hold you now,” exclaimed the king; “yes, I hold you, and you shall not leave me again; this is the happiest day of my life.” “It is remarkable,” says the Popish historian Davila, after relating this, “that a king so young should know so perfectly how to dissemble.”
[3]
The Queen-mother, the Dukes of Anjou and
Alencon, and all the chief nobles of the court, testified the same joy at the admiral’s return. The king restored him to his pensions and dignities, admitted him of his council, and on each succeeding visit to the Louvre, loaded him with new and more condescending caresses and flatteries.
Charles IX was at this time often closeted with the admiral. The topic discussed was the expedition to Flanders in aid of William of Orange in his war with Spain. The king listened with great seeming respect to the admiral, and this deference to his sentiments and views, in a matter that lay so near his heart, inspired Coligny doubtless with the confidence he now began to feel in Charles, and the hopes he cherished that the king was beginning to see that there was something nobler for himself than the profligacies in which his mother, for her own vile ends, had reared him, and nobler for
France than to be dragged, for the Pope’s pleasure, at the chariot-wheel of Spain. The admiral would thus be able to render signal service to Protestantism in all the countries of Europe, as well as rescue France from the gulf into which it was fast descending; and this hope made him deaf to the warnings, which every day he was receiving from friends, that a great treachery was meditated. And when these warnings were reiterated, louder and plainer, they only drew forth from Coligny, who longed for peace as they only long for it who have often gazed upon the horrors of the stricken field, protestations that rather would he risk massacre - rather would he be dragged as a corpse through the streets of Paris, than rekindle the flames of civil war, and forego the hope of detaching his country from the Spanish alliance.
The admiral, having been completely gained over, used his influence to win Jeanne d’Albret to a like confidence. Ever as the marriage of her son to the daughter of
Catherine de Medici was spoken of, a vague but dreadful foreboding oppressed her.
She knew how brilliant was the match, and what important consequences might flow from it.
It might lead her son up the steps of the throne of France, and that would be tantamount to the establishment of Protestantism in that great kingdom; nevertheless she could not conquer her instinctive recoil from the union. It was a dreadful family to marry into, and she trembled for the principles and the morals of her son. Perefixe, afterwards Archbishop of Paris, who can not be suspected of having made the picture darker than the reality, paints the condition of the French court in one brief but terrible sentence. He says that “impiety, atheism, necromancy, most horrible pollutions, black cowardice, perfidy, poisonings, and assassinations reigned there in a supreme degree.”
But Catherine de Medici urged and re-urged her invitations. “Satisfy,” she wrote to the Queen of Navarre, “the extreme desire we have to see you in this company; you will be loved and honoured therein as accords with reason, and what you are.” At last
Jeanne d’Albret gave her consent to the marriage, and visited the court at Blois in
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March, l572, to arrange preliminaries. The Queen-mother but trifled with and insulted her after she did come. Jeanne wrote to her son that she could make no progress in the affair which had brought her to court. She returned to Paris in the beginning of June.
She had not been more than ten days at court, when she sickened and died. The general belief, in which Davila and other Popish historians concur, was that she died of subtle poison, which acted on the brain alone, and which exuded from certain gloves that had been presented to her. This suspicion was but natural, nevertheless we are inclined to think that a more likely cause was the anxiety and agitation of mind she was then enduring, and which brought on a fever, of which she died on the fifth day.
[4]
She was but little cared for during her illness, and after death her corpse was treated with studied neglect.
“This,” says Davila, “was the first thunderbolt of the great tempest.” The king was dissembling so perfectly that he awakened the suspicions of the Papists. Profound secrecy was absolutely necessary to the success of the plot, and accordingly it was disclosed, in its details, to only two or three whose help was essential to its execution.
Meanwhile the admirable acting of the king stumbled the Romanists: it was so like sincerity that they thought it not impossible that it might turn out to be so, and that themselves and not the Huguenots would be the victims of the drama now in progress.
The courtiers murmured, the priests were indignant, the populace expected every day to see Charles go over to the “religion;” and neither the Pope nor the King of Spain could comprehend why the king was so bent on marrying his sister to the son of the
Protestant Queen of Navarre. That, said the direct and terrible Pius V, was to unite light and darkness, and to join in concord God and Belial. Meanwhile, Charles IX, who could not drop the mask but at the risk of spoiling all, contemplated with a certain pride the perfection of his own dissimulation. “Ah, well,” said he one evening to his mother, “do I not play my role well?” “Yes, very well, my son,” replied
Catherine, “but it is nothing if it is not maintained to the end.”
[5]
And Charles did maintain it to the end, and even after the St. Bartholomew, for he was fond of saying with a laugh, “My big sister Margot caught all these Huguenot rebels in the birdcatching style. What has grieved me most is being obliged to dissimulate so long.”
[6]
The marriage, we have said, was the hinge on which the whole plot turned; for ordinary artifices would never have enabled Catherine and Charles to deceive on a great scale. But Pius V either did not quite comprehend this, or he disapproved of it as a means of bringing about the massacre, for he sent his legate, Cardinal Alexandrino, to Paris to protest against the union.
At his interview with the legate, Charles IX pleaded the distractions of his kingdom, and the exhaustion of his treasury, as his reasons for resorting to the marriage rather than continuing the civil wars. But these excuses the legate would not accept as sufficient. “You are in the right,” replied Charles. “And if I had any other means of taking vengeance on my enemies, I would never consent to this marriage; but I can find no other way.” And he concluded by bidding the legate assure the Pope that all he was doing was with the best intention, and for the aggrandizement of the Roman
Catholic religion; and taking a valuable ring from his finger he offered it to
Alexandrino as “a pledge of his indefectible obedience to the ‘Holy See,’ and his resolution to implement whatever he had promised to do in opposition to the impiety of these wicked men.”
[7]
The legate declined the ring on the pretext that the word of so great a king was enough. Nevertheless, after the massacre, Charles IX sent the ring
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to Rome, with the words ne pietas possit mea sanguine salvi engraved upon it.
Clement VIII, who was auditor and companion to Alexandrino on his mission to
France, afterwards told Cardinal d’Ossat that when the news of the St. Bartholomew
Massacre reached Rome, the cardinal exclaimed in transport of joy, “Praise be to God, the King of France has kept his word with me!”
[8]
Action was at the same time taken in the matter of supporting the Protestant war in the
Low Countries, for the dissimulation had to be maintained in both its branches. A body of Huguenot soldiers, in which a few Papists were mingled, was raised, placed under Senlis, a comrade of Coligny’s in faith and arms, and dispatched to the aid of
William of Orange. Senlis had an interview with Charles IX before setting out, and received from him money and encouragement. But the same court that sent this regiment to fight against the Duke of Alva, sent secret information to the duke which enabled him to surprise the Protestant soldiers on the march, and cut them in pieces.
“I have in my hands,” wrote the Duke of Alva to his master, Philip II, “a letter from the King of France, which would strike you dumb if you were to see it; for the moment it is expedient to say nothing about it.”
[9]
Another piece of equal dissimulation did Charles IX practice about this time. The little Party at the French court which was opposed to the Spanish alliance, and in the same measure favoured the success of William of Orange in Flanders, was headed by the Chancellor l’Hopital. At the very time that Charles IX was making Coligny believe that he had become a convert to that plan, Chancellor l’Hopital was deprived of the seals, and banished from court.
[10]
The inconsistencies and doublings of Charles IX. are just enough to give some little colour to a theory which has found some advocates - namely, that the St.
Bartholomew Massacre was unpremeditated, and that it was a sudden and violent resolve on the part of Catherine de Medici and the Guises, to prevent the king yielding to the influence of Admiral de Coligny, and putting himself at the head of a Huguenot crusade in favour of Protestantism.
[11]
Verily there never was much danger of this; but though the hesitations of Charles impart some feasibility to the theory, they give it no solid weight whatever. All the historians, Popish and Protestant, who lived nearest the time, and who took every care to inform themselves, with one consent declare that the massacre was premeditated and arranged. It had its origination in the courts of
Paris, Madrid, and the Vatican. A chain of well-established facts conducts us to this conclusion. Most of these have already come before us, but some of them yet remain to be told. But even irrespective of these facts, looking at the age, at Charles IX., and at the state of Christendom, can any man believe that the King of France should have seriously contemplated, as he must have done if his professions to the Huguenots were sincere, not only proclaiming toleration in France, but becoming the head of an armed European confederation in behalf of Protestantism? This is wholly inconceivable.
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The Queen of Navarre, the magnanimous Jeanne d’Albret, was dead; moreover, news had reached Paris that the Protestant troop which had set out to assist the Prince of
Orange had been overpowered and slain on the road; and further, the great advocate of toleration, L’Hopital, dismissed from office, had been banished to his country-seat of Vignay. All was going amiss, save the promises and protests of the King and the
Queen-mother, and these were growing louder and more emphatic every day.
Some of the Huguenots, alarmed by these suspicious occurrences, were escaping from the city, others were giving expression to their fears in prognostications of evil. The
Baron de Rosny, father of the celebrated Duke of Sully, said that “if the marriage took place at Paris the wedding farourn would be crimson.”
[1]
In the midst of all this the preparations for the marriage went rapidly on.
The King of Navarre lived in Paris in deep mourning, “attended by eight hundred gentlemen all likewise in mourning.” “But,” says Margaret de Valois herself, “the nuptials took place a few days afterwards, with such triumph and magnificence as none others of my quality; the King of Navarre and his troop having changed their mourning for very rich and fine clothes, and I being dressed royally, with crown and corset of tufted ermine, all blazing with crown jewels, and the grand blue mantle with a train four ells long, borne by three princesses, the people choking one another down below to see us pass.”
[2]
The marriage was celebrated on the 18th of August by the
Cardinal of Bourbon, in a pavilion erected in front of the principal entrance of Notre
Dame. When asked if she accepted Henry of Navarre as her husband, Margaret, it is said, remained silent;
[3]
whereupon the king, putting his hand upon her head, bent it downward, which being interpreted as consent, the ceremony went on. When it was over, the bride and her party entered Notre Dame, and heard mass; meanwhile the bridegroom with Coligny and other friends amused themselves by strolling through the aisles of the cathedral. Gazing up at the flags suspended from the roof, the admiral remarked that one day soon these would be replaced by others more appropriate; he referred, of course, to the Spanish standards to be taken, as he hoped, in the approaching war. The four following days all Paris was occupied with fetes, ballets, and other public rejoicings. It was during these festivities that the final arrangements were made for striking the great meditated blow.
Before this, however, one of the chief actors passed away, and saw not the work completed which he had so largely helped to bring to pass. On the 5th of May, 1572,
Pope Pius V died. There was scarcely a stormier Pontificate in the history of the
Popes than that of the man who descended into the tomb at the very moment when he most wished to live. From the day he ascended the Papal throne till he breathed his last, neither Asia nor Europe had rest. His Pontificate of seven years was spent in raising armaments, organizing expeditions, giving orders for battles, and writing letters to sovereigns inciting them to slay to the last man those whom he was pleased to account the enemies of God and of himself. Now it was against the Turk that he hurled his armed legionaries, and now it was against the Lutherans of Germany, the
Huguenots of France, and the Calvinists of England and Scotland that he thundered in his character of Vicar of God. Well was it for Christendom that so much of the
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military furore of Pius was discharged in all eastern direction. The Turk became the conducting-rod that drew off the lightning of the Vatican and helped to shield Europe.
Pius’ exit from the world was a dreadful one, and bore a striking resemblance to the
Moody malady of which the King of France expired so soon there-after.
[4]
The
Pontiff, however, bore up wonderfully under his disease, which was as painful as it was loathsome.
The death of the Pope opened a free path to the marriage which we have just seen take place. The dispensation from Rome, which Pius V had refused, his successor Gregory
XIII conceded. Four days after the ceremony - Friday, the 22nd of August - as
Coligny was returning on foot from the Louvre, occupied in reading a letter, he was fired at from the window of a house in the Rue des Fosses, St. Germain. One of the three balls with which the assassin had loaded his piece, to make sure of his victim, smashed the two fore-fingers of his right hand, while another lodged in his left arm.
The admiral, raising his wounded hand, pointed to the house whence the shot had come. It belonged to an old canon, who had been tutor to Henry, Duke of Guise; but before it could be entered, the assassin had escaped on a horse from the king’s stables. which was waiting for him by the cloisters of the Church of L’Auxerrois.
[5]
It was
Maurevel who had fired the shot, the same who was known as the king’s assassin. He had posted himself in one of the lower rooms of the house, and covering the iron bars of the window with an old cloak, he waited three days for his victim.
The king was playing tennis with the Duke of Guise and Coligny, the admiral’s sonin-law, when told of what had happened; Charles threw down his stick, and exclaiming with all oath, “Am I never to have peace?” rushed to his apartment. Guise slunk away, and Co1igny went straight to the admiral’s house in the adjacent Rue de
Betizy.
Meanwhile Ambrose Pare had amputated the two broken fingers of Coligny. Turning to Merlin, his chaplain, who stood by his bedside, the admiral said, “Pray that God may grant me the gift of patience.” Seeing Merlin and other friends in tears, he said,
“Why do you weep for me, my friends? I reckon myself happy to have received these wounds in the cause of God.” Toward midday Marshals de Damville and de Cosse came to see him. To them he protested, “Death affrights me not; but I should like very much to see the king before I die.” Damville went to inform his majesty.
About two of the afternoon the King, the Queen-mother, the Duke of Anjou, and a number of the gentlemen of the court entered the apartments of the wounded man.
“My dear father,” exclaimed Charles, “the hurt is yours, the grief and the outrage mine; but,” added he, with his usual oaths, “I will take such vengeance that it shall never be effaced from the memory of man.” Coligny drew the king towards him, and commenced an earnest conversation with him, in a low voice, urging the policy he had so often recommended to Charles, that namely of assisting the Prince of Orange, and so lowering Spain and elevating France in the domicils of Europe.
Catherine de Medici, who did not hear what the admiral was saying to the king, abruptly terminated the interview on pretence that to prolong it would be to exhaust the strength and endanger the life of Coligny. The King and Queen-mother now returned to the Louvre at so rapid a pace that they were unobservant of the salutations of the populace, and even omitted the usual devotions to the Virgin at the corners of the streets. On arriving at the palace a secret consultation was held, after which the
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king was busied in giving orders, and making up dispatches, with which couriers were sent off to the provinces. When Charles and his suite had left Coligny’s hotel, the admiral’s friends expressed their surprise and pleasure at the king’s affability, and the desire he showed to bring the criminal to justice. “But all these fine appearances,” says Brantome, “afterwards turned to ill, which amazed every one very much how their majesties could perform so counterfeit a part, unless they had previously resolved on this massacre.”
[6]
They began with the admiral, says Davila, “from the apprehension they had of his fierceness, wisdom, and power, fearing that were he alive he would concert some means for the safety of himself and his confederates.”
[7]
But as the Popish historian goes on to explain, there was a deeper design in selecting Coligny as the first victim.
The Huguenots, they reasoned, would impute the murder of the admiral to the Duke of Guise and his faction, and so would avenge it upon the Guises. This attack upon the
Guises would, in its turn, excite the fury of the Roman Catholic mob against the
Huguenots. The populace would rise en masse, and slaughter the Protestants; and in this saturnalia of blood the enemies of Charles and Catherine would be got rid of, and yet the hand of the court would not be seen in the affair. The notorious Retz, the
Florentine tutor of Charles, is credited with the authorship of this diabolically ingenious plan. But the matter had not gone as it was calculated it would. Coligny lived, and so the general melee of assassination did not come off. The train had been fired, but the mine did not explode.
The king had already given orders to close all the gates of Paris, save two, which were left open to admit provisions. The pretence was to cut off the escape of Maurevel. If this order could not arrest the flight of the assassin, who was already far away on his fleet steed, it effectually prevented the departure of the Huguenots. Troops were now introduced into the city. The admiral had earnestly asked leave to retire to Chatilion, in the quiet of which place he hoped sooner to recover from his wounds; but the king would not hear of his leaving Paris. He feared the irritation of the wounds that might arise from the journey; he would take care that neither Coligny nor his friends should suffer molestation from the populace. Accordingly, bidding the Protestants lodge all together in Coligny’s quarter,
[8]
he appointed a regiment of the Duke of Anjou to guard that part of Paris.
[9]
Thus closely was the net drawn round the Huguenots.
These soldiers were afterwards the most zealous and cruel of their murderers.
[10]
Friday night and Saturday were spent in consultations on both sides. To a few of the
Protestants the designs of the court were now transparent, and they advised an instant and forcible departure from Paris, carrying with them their wounded chief. Their advice was over-ruled mainly through the over-confidence of Coligny in the king’s honour, and only a few of the Huguenots left the city. The deliberations in the Louvre were more anxious still. The blow, it was considered, should be struck immediately, else the Huguenots would escape, or they would betake them to arms. But as the hour drew near the king appears to have wavered. Nature or conscience momentarily awoke. Now that he stood on the precincts of the colossal crime, he seems to have felt a shudder at the thought of going on; as well he might, fierce, cruel, vindictive though he was. To wade through a sea of blood so deep as that which was about to flow, might well appal even one who had been trained, as Charles had been, to look on blood. It is possible even that the nobleness of Coligny had not been without its effect upon him. The Queen-mother, who had doubtless foreseen this moment of
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irresolution on the part of her son when the crisis should arrive, was prepared for it.
She instantly combated the indecision of Charles with the arguments most fitted to influence his weak mind. She told him that it was now too late to retreat; that the attempt on the admiral’s life had aroused the Protestants, that the plans of the court were known to them, and that already messengers from the Huguenots were on their way to Switzerland and Germany, for assistance, and that to hesitate was to be lost. If he had a care for his throne and house he must act; and with a well-reigned dread of the calamities she had so vividly depicted, she is said to have craved leave for herself and her son, the Duke of Anjou, to retire to some place of safety before the storm should burst. This was enough. The idea of being left alone in the midst of all these dangers, without his mother’s strong arm to lean upon, was frightful to Charles. He forgot the greatness of the crime in the imminence of his own danger. His vulpine and cowardly nature, incapable of a brave course, was yet capable of a sudden and deadly spring. “He was seized with an eager desire,” says Maimbourg, “to execute the resolution already taken in the secret council to massacre all the Huguenots.”
[11]
“Then let Coligny be killed,” said Charles, with an oath, “and let not one Huguenot in all France be left to reproach me with the deed.”
One other point yet occasioned keen debates in the council. Shall the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde be slain with the rest of the Huguenots? “The Duke of
Guise,” says Davila, “was urgent for their death; but the King and the Queen-mother had a horror at imbruing their hands in royal blood;”
[12]
but it would seem that the resolution of the council was for putting them to death. The Archbishop of Paris,
Perefixe, and Brantome inform us that “they were down on the red list” on the ground of its being necessary “to dig up the roots,” but were afterwards saved, “as by miracle.” Queen Margaret, the newly-married wife of Navarre, throwing herself on her knees before the king and earnestly begging the life of her husband, “the King granted it to her with great difficulty, although she was his good sister.”
[13]
Meanwhile, to keep up the delusion to the last, the king rode out on horseback in the afternoon, and the queen had her court circle as usual.
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It was now eleven o’clock of Saturday night, and the massacre was to begin at daybreak. Tavannes was sent to bid the Mayor of Paris assemble the citizens, who for some days before had been provided with arms, which they had stored in their houses.
To exasperate them, and put them in a mood for this unlimited butchery of their countrymen, in which at first they were somewhat reluctant to engage, they were told that a horrible conspiracy had been discovered, on the part of the Huguenots, to cut off the king and the royal family, and destroy the monarchy and the Roman Catholic religion.
[1]
The signal for the massacre was to be the tolling of the great bell of the
Palace of Justice.
As soon as the tocsin should have flung its ominous peal upon the city, they were to hasten to draw chains across the streets, place pickets in the open spaces, and sentinels on the bridges. Orders were also given that at the first sound of the bell torches should be placed in all the windows, and that the Roman Catholics, for distinction, should wear a white scarf on the left arm, and affix a white cross on their hats.
“All was now arranged,” says Maimbourg, “for the carnage;” and they waited with impatience for the break of day, when the tocsin was to sound. In the royal chamber sat Charles IX, the Queen-mother, and the Duke of Anjou. Catherine’s fears lest the king should change his mind at the last minute would not permit her to leave him for one moment. Few words, we may well believe, would pass between the royal personages. The great event that impended could not but weigh heavily upon them. A deep stillness reigned in the apartment; the hours wore wearily away; and the Queenmother feeling the suspense unbearable, or else afraid, as Maimbourg suggests, that
Charles, “greatly disturbed by the idea of the horrible butcher, would revoke the order he had given for it,” anticipated the signal by sending one at two o’clock of the morning to ring the bell of St. Ger-main l’Auxerois,
[2]
which was nearer than that of the Palace of Justice. Scarcely had its first peal startled the silence of the night when a pistol shot was heard. The king started to his feet, and summoning an attendant he bade him go and stop the massacre.
[3]
It was too late; the bloody work had begun.
The great bell of the Palace had now begun to toll; another moment and every steeple in Paris was sending forth its peal; a hundred tocsins sounded at once; and with the tempest of their clamour there mingled the shouts, oaths, and howlings of the assassins. “I was awakened,” says Sully, “three hours after midnight with the ringing of all the bells, and the contimed cries of the populace.”
[4]
Above all were heard the terrible words, “Kill, kill!”
The massacre was to begin with the assassination of Coligny, and that part of the dreadful work had been assigned to the Duke of Guise. The moment he heard the signal, the duke mounted his horse and, accompanied by his brother and 300 gentlemen and soldiers, galloped off for the admiral’s lodging. He found Anjou’s guards with their red cloaks, and their lighted matches, posted round it; they gave the duke with his armed retinue instant admission into the court-yard. To slaughter the halberdiers of Navarre, and force open the inner entrance of the admiral’s lodgings, was the work of but a few minutes. They next mounted the stairs, while the duke and his gentlemen remained below. Awakened by the noise, the admiral got out of bed, and wrapping his dressing-gown round him and leaning against the wall, he bade
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Merlin, his minister, join with him in prayer. One of his gentlemen at that moment rushed into the room. “My lord,” said he, “God calls us to himself!” “I am prepared to die,” replied the admiral; “I need no more the help of men; therefore, farewell, my friends; save yourselves, if it is still possible.” They all left him and escaped by the roof of the house. Co1igny, his son-in-law, fleeing in this way was shot, and rolled into the street. A German servant alone remained behind with his master. The door of the chamber was now forced open, and seven of the murderers entered, headed by
Behme of Lorraine, and Achille Petrucci of Sienna, creatures of the Duke of Guise.
“Art thou Coligny?” said Behme, presenting himself before his victim, and awed by the perfect composure and venerable aspect of the admiral. “I am,” replied Coligny;
“young man, you ought to respect my grey hairs; but do what you will, you can shorten my life only by a few days.” The villain replied by plunging his weapon into the admiral’s breast; the rest closing round struck their daggers into him. “Behme,” shouted the duke from below, “hast done?” “Tis all over,” cried the assassin from the window. “But M. d’Angouleme,” replied the duke, “will not believe it till he see him at his feet.” Taking up the corpse, Behme threw it over the window, and as it fell on the pavement, the blood spurted on the faces and clothes of the two lords. The duke, taking out his handkerchief and wiping the face of the murdered man, said, “Tis he sure enough,” and kicked the corpse in its face. A servant of the Duke of Nevers cut off the head, and carried it to Catherine de Medici and the king. The trunk was exposed for some days to disgusting indignities; the head was embalmed, to be sent to
Rome; the bloody trophy was carried as far as Lyons, but there all trace of it disappears.
[5]
The authors of the plot having respect to the maxim attributed to Alaric, that “thick grass is more easily mown than thin,” had gathered the leading Protestants that night, as we have already narrated, into the same quarter where Coligny lodged. The Duke of Guise had kept this quarter as his special preserve; and now, the admiral being dispatched, the guards of Anjou, with a creature of the duke’s for their captain, were let loose upon this battue of ensnared Huguenots. Their work was done with a summary vengeance, to which the flooded state of the kennels, and the piles of corpses, growing ever larger, bore terrible witness. Over all Paris did the work of massacre by this time extend. Furious bands, armed with guns, pistols, swords, pikes, knives, and all kinds of cruel weapons, rushed through the streets, murdering all they met. They began to thunder at the doors of Protestants, and the terrified inmates, stunned by the uproar, came forth in their night-clothes, and were murdered on their own thresholds. Those who were too frightened to come abroad, were slaughtered in their bed-rooms and closets, the assassins bursting open all places of concealment, and massacring all who opposed their entrance, and throwing their mangled bodies into the street. The darkness would have been a cover to some, but the lights that blazed in the windows denied even this poor chance of escape to the miserable victims. The Huguenot as he fled through the street, with agonized features, and lacking the protection of the white scarf, was easily recognised, and dispatched without mercy.
The Louvre was that night the scene of a great butchery. Some 200 Protestant noblemen and gentlemen from the provinces had been accommodated with beds in the palace; and although the guests of the king, they had no exemption, but were doomed that night to die with others. They were aroused after midnight, taken out one by one, and made to pass between two rows of halberdiers, who were stationed in the
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underground galleries. They were hacked in pieces or poniarded on their way, and their corpses being carried forth were horrible to relate, piled in heaps at the gates of the Louvre. Among those who thus perished were the Count de la Rochefoucault, the
Marquis de Renel, the brave Piles - who had so gallantly defended St. Jean D’Angely
- Francourt, chancellor to the King of Navarre, and others of nearly equal distinction.
An appeal to the God of Justice was their only protest against their fate.
[6]
By-and-by the sun rose; but, alas! who can describe the horrors which the broad light of day disclosed to view? The entire population of the French capital was seen maddened with rage, or aghast with terror. On its wretched streets what tragedies of horror and crime were being enacted! Some were fleeing, others were pursuing; some were supplicating for life, others were responding by the murderous blow, which, if it silenced the cry for mercy, awoke the cry for justice. Old men, and infants in their swaddling clothes, were alike butchered on that awful night. Our very page would weep, were we to record all the atrocities now enacted. Corpses were being precipitated from the roofs and windows, others were being dragged through the streets by the feet, or were piled up in carts, and driven away to be shot into the river.
The kennels were running with blood. Guise, Tavannes, and D’Angoul~me - traversing the streets on horseback, and raising their voices to their highest pitch, to be audible above the tolling of the bells, the yells of the murderers, and the cries and moanings of the wounded and the dying - were inciting to yet greater fury those whom hate and blood had already transformed into demons. “It is the king’s orders!” cried Guise. “Blood, blood!” shouted out Tavannes. Blood! every kennel was full; the
Seine as it rolled through Paris seemed but a river of blood; and the corpses which it was bearing to the ocean were so numerous that the bridges had difficulty in giving them passage, and were in some danger of becoming choked and turning back the stream, and drowning Paris in the blood of its own shedding. Such was the gigantic horror on which the sun of that Sunday morning, the 24th of August, 1572 - St.
Bartholomew’s Day - looked down.
We have seen how Charles IX stood shuddering for some moments on the brink of his great crime, and that, had it not been for the stronger will and more daring wickedness of his mother, he might after all have turned back. But when the massacre had commenced, and he had tasted of blood, Charles shuddered no longer he became as ravenous for slaughter as the lowest of the mob. He and his mother, when it was day, went out on the palace balcony to feast their eyes upon the scene. Some Huguenots were seen struggling in the river, in their efforts to swim across, the boats having been removed. Seizing an arquebus, the king fired on them. “Kill, kill!” he shouted; and making a page sit beside him and load his piece,
[7]
he continued the horrible pastime of murdering his subjects, who were attempting to escape across the Seine, or were seeking refuge at the pitiless gates of his palace.
[8]
The same night, while the massacres were in progress, Charles sent for the King of
Navarre and the Prince de Conde. Receiving them in great anger, he commanded them with oaths to renounce the Protestant faith, threatening them with death as the alternative of refusal. They demurred: whereupon the king gave them three days to make their choice.
[9]
His physician, Ambrose Pare, a Protestant, he kept all night in his cabinet, so selfishly careful was he of his own miserable life at the very moment that he was murdering in thousands the flower of his subjects. Pare he also attempted to terrify by oaths and threats into embracing Romanism, telling him that the time was
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now come when every man in France must become Roman Catholic. So apparent was it that the leading motive of Charles IX in these great crimes was the dominancy of the Roman faith and the entire extinction of Protestantism.
For seven days the massacres were continued in Paris, and the first three especially with unabating fury. Nor were they confined within the walls of the city. In pursuance of orders sent from the court,
[10]
they were extended to all provinces and cities where
Protestants were found. Even villages and chateaux became scenes of carnage. For two months these butcheries were continued throughout the kingdom. Every day during that fearful time the poniard reaped a fresh harvest of victims, and the rivers bore to the sea a new and ghastly burden of corpses. In Rouen above 6,000 perished; at Toulouse some hundreds were hewn to pieces with axes; at Orleans the Papists themselves confessed that they had destroyed 12,000; some said 18,000; and at Lyons not a Protestant escaped. After the gates were closed they fell upon them without mercy; 150 of them were shut up in the archbishop’s house, and were cut to pieces in the space of one hour and a half. Some Roman Catholic, more humane than the rest, when he saw the heaps of corpses, exclaimed, “They surely were not men, but devils in the shape of men, who had done this.”
The whole number that perished in the massacre can not be precisely ascertained.
According to De Thou there were 2,000 victims in Paris the first day; Agrippa d’Aubigne says 3,000. Brantome speaks of 4.000 bodies that Charles IX might have seen floating down the Seine. La Popeliniere reduces them to 1,000. “There is to be found, in the account-books of the city of Paris, a payment to the grave-diggers of the
Cemetery of the Innocents, for having inferred 1,100 dead bodies stranded at the turns of the Seine near Chaillot, Antenil, and St. Cloud; it is probable that many corpses were carried still further, and the corpses were not all thrown into the river.”
[11]
There is a still greater uncertainty touching the number of victims throughout the whole of France. Mezeray computes it at 25,000; De Thou at 30,000; Sully at 70,000; and Perefixe, Archbishop of Paris in the seventeenth century, raises it to 100,000;
Davila reduces it to 10,000. Sully, from his access to official documents, and his unimpeachable honour, has been commonly reckoned the highest authority. Not a few municipalities and governors, to their honour, refused to execute the orders of the king. The reply of the Vicompte d’Orte has become famous. “Sire,” wrote he to
Charles IX, “among the citizens and garrison of Bayonne, you have many brave soldiers, and loyal subjects, but not one hangman.”
[12]
Blood and falsehood are never far apart. The great crime had been acted and could not be recalled; how was it to be justified? The poor unhappy king had recourse to one dodge after another, verifying the French saying that “to excuse is to accuse one’s self.” On the evening of the first day of the massacre, he dispatched messengers to the provinces to announce the death of Coligny, and the slaughters in Paris, attributing everything to the feud which had so long subsisted between Guise and the admiral. A day’s reflection convinced the king that the duke would force him to acknowledge his own share in the massacre, and he saw that he must concoct another excuse; he would plead a political necessity. Putting his lie in the form of an appeal to the Almighty, he went, attended by the whole court, to mass, solemnly to thank God for having delivered him from the Protestants; and on his return, holding “a bed of justice,” he professed to unveil to the Parliament a terrible plot which Coligny and the Huguenots had contrived for destroying the king and the royal house, which had left him no
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alternative but to order the massacre. Although the king’s story was not supported by one atom of solid truth, but on the other hand was contradicted by a hundred facts, of which the Parliament was cognisant, the obsequious members sustained the king’s accusation, and branded with outlawry and forfeiture the name, the titles, the family, and the estates of Admiral de Coligny. The notorious and brazen-faced Retz was instructed to tell England yet another falsehood, namely, that Coligny was meditating playing the part of Pepin, mayor of the palace, and that the king did a wise and politic thing in nipping the admiral’s treason in the bud. To the court of Poland, Charles sent, by his ambassador Montluc, another version of the affair; and to the Swiss yet another; in short, the inconsistencies, prevarications, and contradictions of the unhappy monarch were endless, and attest his guilt not less conclusively than if he had confessed the deed. Meanwhile, the tidings were travelling over Europe, petrifying some nations with horror, awakening others into delirious and savage joy.
When the news of the massacre reached the Spanish army in the Netherlands the exultation was great. The skies resounded with salvoes of cannon; the drums were beat, the trumpets blared, and at night bonfires blazed all round the camp. The reception which England gave the French ambassador was dignified and most significant. Fenelon’s description of his first audience after the news of the massacre had arrived is striking. “A gloomy sorrow,” says he, “sat on every face; silence, as in the dead of night, reigned through all the chambers of the royal residence. The ladies and courtiers, clad in deep mourning, were ranged on each side; and as I passed by them, in my approach to the queen, not one bestowed on me a favourable look, or made the least return to my salutations.”
[13]
Thus did England show that she held those whom the King of France had barbarously murdered as her brethren.
We turn to Geneva. Geneva was yet more tenderly related to the seventy thousand victims whose bodies covered the plains of France, or lay stranded on the banks of its rivers. It is the 30th of August, 1572. Certain merchants have just arrived at Geneva from Lyons; leaving their pack-horses and bales in charge of the master of their hotel, they mount with all speed the street leading to the Hotel de Ville, anxiety and grief painted on their faces; “Messieurs,” said they to the counsellors, “a horrible massacre of our brethren has just taken place at Lyons. In all the villages on our route we have seen the gibbets erected, and blood flowing; it seems that it is the same all over
France. Tomorrow, or the day after, you will see those who have escaped the butchery arrive on your frontier.” The distressing news spread like lightning through the town; the shops were closed, and the citizens met in companies in the squares. Their experience of the past had taught them the demands which this sad occurrence would make on their benevolence. Indoors the women busied themselves providing clothes, medicines, and abundance of viands for those whom they expected soon to see arrive in hunger and sickness. The magistrates dispatched carriages and litters to the villages in the Pays de Gex; the peasants and the pastors were on the outlook on the frontier to obtain news, and to be ready to succour the first arrivals. Nor had they long to wait.
On the 1st of September they beheld certain travellers approaching, pale, exhausted by fatigue, and responding with difficulty to the caresses with which they were overwhelmed. They could hardly believe ‘their own safety, seeing that days before, in every village through which they passed, they had been in imminent danger of death.
The number of these arrivals rapidly increased; they now showed their wounds, which they had carefully concealed, lest they should thereby be known to belong to the
Reformed.
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They declared that since the 26th of August the fields and villages had been deluged with the blood of their brethren. All of them gave thanks to God that they had been permitted to reach a “land of liberty.” Their hearts were full of heaviness, for not one family was complete; when they mustered on the frontier, alas! how many parents, children, and friends were missing! By-and-by this sorrowful group reached the gates of Geneva, and as they advanced along the streets, the citizens contended with each other for the privilege of entertaining those of the travellers who appeared the greatest sufferers. The wounded were conveyed to the houses of the best families, where they were nursed with the most tender care. So ample was the hospitality of the citizens, that the magistrates found it unnecessary to make any public distribution of clothes or victuals.
[14]
On the suggestion of Theodore Beza, a day of general fasting was observed, and appointed to be repeated every year on St. Bartholomew’s Day. On the arrival of the news in Scotland, Knox, now old and worn out with labours, made himself be borne to his pulpit, and “summoning up the remainder of his strength,” says McCrie, “he thundered the vengeance of Heaven against ‘that cruel murderer and false traitor, the
King of France,’ and desired Le Croc, the French ambassador, to tell his master that sentence was pronounced against him in Scotland; that the Divine vengeance would never depart from him, nor from his house, if repentance did not ensue; but his name would remain an execration to posterity, and none proceeding from his loins would enjoy his kingdom in peace.”
[15]
At Rome, when the news arrived, the joy was boundless. The messenger who carried the despatch was rewarded like one who brings tidings of some great victory,
[16]
and the triumph that followed was such as old pagan Rome might have been proud to celebrate. The news was thundered forth to the inhabitants of the Seven-hilled City by the cannon of St. Angelo, and at night bonfires blazed on the street. Before this great day, Pius V, as we have already seen, slept with the Popes of former times, and his ashes, consigned to the vaults of St. Peter’s, waited the more gorgeous tomb that was preparing for them in Santa Maria Maggiore; but Gregory XIII conducted the rejoicings with even greater splendour than the austere Pius would probably have done. Through the streets of the Eternal City swept, in the full blaze of Pontifical pomp, Gregory and his attendant train of cardinals, bishops, and monks, to the Church of St. Mark, there to offer up prayers and thanksgivings to the God of heaven for this great blessing to the See of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church. Over the portico of the church was hung a cloth of purple, on which was a Latin inscription most elegantly embroidered in letters of gold, in which it was distinctly stated that the massacre had occurred after “counsels had been given.”
[17]
On the following day the Pontiff went in procession to the Church of Minerva, where, after mass, a jubilee was published to all Christendom, “that they might thank God for the slaughter of the enemies of the Church, lately executed in France.” A third time did the Pope go in procession, with his cardinals and all the foreign ambassador then resident at his court, and after mass in the Church of St. Louis, he accepted homage from the Cardinal of Lorraine, and thanks in the name of the King of France, “for the counsel and help he had given him by his prayers, of which he had found the most wonderful effects.”
But as if all this had not been enough, the Pope caused certain more enduring monuments of the St. Bartholomew to be set up, that not only might the event be held
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in everlasting remembrance, but his own approval of it be proclaimed to the ages to come. The Pope, says Bonanni, “gave orders for a painting, descriptive of the slaughter of the admiral and his companions, to be made in the hall of the Vatican by
Georgio Vasari, as a monument of vindicated religion, and a trophy of exterminated heresy.” These representations form three different frescoes.
[18]
The first, in which the admiral is represented as wounded by Maurevel, and carried home, has this inscription - Gaspar Colignius Amirallius accepto vulnere domura refertur. Greg.
XIII, Pontif. Max., 1572.
[19]
The second, which exhibits Coligny murdered in his own house, with Teligny and others, has these words below it - Coedes Colignii et sociorum ejus.
[20]
The third, in which the king is represented as hearing the news, is thus entitled - Rex netera Colignii Frobat.
[21]
The better to perpetuate the memory of the massacre, Gregory caused a medal to be struck, the device on which, as Bonanni interprets it, inculcates that the St.
Bartholomew was the joint result of the Papal counsel and God’s instrumentality. On the one side is a profile of the Pope, surrounded by the words - Gregorius XIII, Pont.
Max., an. I. On the obverse is seen an angel bearing in the one hand a cross, in the other a drawn sword, with which he is smiting a prostrate host of Protestants; and to make all clear, above is the motto - Ugonot-toturn strages, 1572.
[22]
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When the terrible storm of the St. Bartholomew Day had passed, men expected to open their eyes on only ruins. The noble vine that had struck its roots so deep in the soil of France, and with a growth so marvellous was sending out its boughs on every side, and promising to fill the land, had been felled to the earth by a cruel and sudden blow, and never again would it lift its branches on high. So thought Charles IX and the court of France. They had closed the civil wars in the blood of Coligny and his
70,000 fellow-victims. The governments of Spain and Rome did not doubt that
Huguenotism had received its death-blow. Congratulations were exchanged between the courts of the Louvre, the Escorial, and the Vatican on the success which had crowned their projects. The Pope, to give enduring expression to these felicitations, struck, as we have seen, a commemorative medal. That medal said, in effect, that
Protestantism had been! No second medal, of like import, would Gregory XIII, or any of his successors, ever need to issue; for the work had been done once for all; the revolt of Wittemberg and Geneva had been quelled in a common overthrow, and a new era of splendour had dawned on the Popedom.
In proportion to the joy that reigned in the Romanist camp, so was the despondency that weighed upon the spirits of the Reformed. They too, in the first access of their consternation and grief, believed that Protestantism had been fatally smitten. Indeed, the loss which the cause had sustained was tremendous, and seemed irretrievable. The wise counsellors, the valiant warriors, the learned and pious pastors - in short, that whole array of genius, and learning, and influence that adorned Protestantism in
France, and which, humanly speaking, were the bulwarks around it - had been swept away by this one terrible blow.
And truly, had French Protestantism been a mere political association, with only earthly bonds to hold its members together, and only earthly motives to inspire them with hope and urge them to action, the St. Bartholomew Massacre would have terminated its career. But the cause was Divine; it drew its life from hidden sources, and so, flourishing from what both friend and foe believed to be its grave, it stood up anew, prepared to fight ever so many battles and mount ever so many scaffolds, in the faith that it would yet triumph in that land which had been so profusely watered with its blood.
The massacre swept the cities and villages on the plains of France with so unsparing a fury, that in many of these not a Protestant was left breathing; but the mountainous districts were less terribly visited, and these now became the stronghold of
Huguenotism. Some fifty towns situated in these parts closed their gates, and stood to their defence. Their inhabitants knew that to admit the agents of the government was simply to offer their throats to the assassins of Charles; and rather than court wholesale butchery, or ignominiously yield, they resolved to fight like men. Some of these cities were hard put to it in the carrying out of this resolution. The sieges of La
Rochelle and Sancerre have a terribly tragic interest. The latter, though a small town, held out against the royal forces for more than ten months. Greatly inferior to the enemy in numbers, the citizens laboured under the further disadvantage of lacking arms. They appeared on the ramparts with slings instead of fire-arms; but, unlike their
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assailants, they defended their cause with hands unstained with murder. “We light here,” was the withering taunt which they flung down upon the myrmidons of
Catherine - “We fight here: go and assassinate elsewhere.” Famine was more fatal to them than the sword; for while the battle slew only eighty- four of their number, the famine killed not fewer than 500. The straits now endured by the inhabitants of
Sancerre recall the miseries of the siege of Jerusalem, or the horrors of Paris in the winter of 1870-71. An eye-witness, Pastor Jean de Lery, has recorded in his Journal the incidents of the siege, and his tale is truly a harrowing one. “The poor people had to feed on dogs, cats, mice, snails, moles, grass, bread made of straw, ground into powder and mixed with pounded slate; they had to consume harness, leather, the parchment of old books, title-deeds, and letters, which they softened by soaking in water.” These were the revolting horrors of their cuisine. “I have seen on a table,” says Lery, “food on which the printed characters were still legible, and you might even read from the pieces lying on the dishes ready to be eaten.” The mortality of the young by the famine was frightful; scarce a child under twelve years survived. Their faces grew to be like parchment; their skeleton figures and withered limbs; their glazed eye and dried tongue, which could not even wail, were too horrible for the mother to look on, and thankful she was when death came to terminate the sufferings of her offspring. Even grown men were reduced to skeletons, and wandered like phantoms in the street, where often they dropped down and expired of sheer hunger.
[1]
Yet that famine could not subdue their resolution. The defence of the town went on, the inhabitants choosing to brave the horrors which they knew rather than, by surrendering to such a foe, expose themselves to horrors which they knew not. A helping hand was at length stretched out to them from the distant Poland. The
Protestantism of that country was then in its most flourishing condition, and the Duke of Anjou, Catherine’s third son, being a candidate for the vacant throne, the Poles made it a condition that he should ameliorate the state of the French Huguenots, and accordingly the siege of Sancerre was raised.
It was around La Rochelle that the main body of the royal army was drawn. The town was the capital of French Protestantism, and the usual rendezvous of its chiefs. It was a large and opulent city, “fortified after the modern way with moats, walls, bulwarks, and ramparts.”
[2]
It was open to the sea, and the crowd of ships that filled its harbour, and which rivalled in numbers the royal navy, gave token of the enriching commerce of which it was the seat. Its citizens were distinguished by their intelligence, their liberality, and above all, their public spirit. When the massacre broke out, crowds of
Protestant gentlemen, as well as of peasants, together with some fifty pastors, fleeing from the sword of the murderers, found refuge within its walls. Thither did the royal forces follow them, shutting in La Rochelle on the land side, while the navy blockaded it by the sea. Nothing dismayed, the citizens closed their gates, hoisted the flag of defiance on their walls, and gave Anjou, who conducted the siege, to understand that the task he had now on hand would not be of so easy execution as a cowardly massacre planned in darkness, like that which had so recently crimsoned all
France, and of which he had the credit of being one of the chief instigators. Here he must fight in open day, and with men who were determined that he should enter their city only when it was a mass of ruins. He began to thunder against it with his cannon; the Rochellese were not slow to reply. Devout as well as heroic, before forming on the ramparts they kneeled before the God of battles in their churches, and then with a firm step, and singing the Psalms of David as they marched onward, they mounted the wall, and looked down with faces undismayed upon the long lines of the enemy. The
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ships thundered from the sea, the troops assailed on land; but despite this double tempest, there was the flag of defiance still waving on the walls of the beleaguered city. They might have capitulated to brave men and soldiers, but to sue for peace from an army of assassins, from the train-bands of a monarch who knew not how to reward men who were the glory of his realm, save by devoting them to the dagger, rather would they die a hundred times. Four long months the battle raged; innumerable mines were dug and exploded; portions of the wall fell in and the soldiers of Anjou hurried to the breach in the hope of taking the city. It was now only that they realized the full extent of the difficulty. The forest of pikes on which they were received, and the deadly volleys poured into them, sent them staggering down the breach and back to the camp. Not fewer than twenty-nine times did the besiegers attempt to carry La
Rochelle by storm; but each time they were repulsed,
[3]
and forced to retreat, leaving a thick trail of dead and wounded to mark their track. Thus did this single town heroically withstand the entire military power of the government. The Duke of Anjou saw his army dwindling away. Twenty-nine fatal repulses had greatly thinned its ranks. The siege made no progress. The Rochellese still scowled defiance from the summit of their ruined defences. What was to be done?
At that moment a messenger arrived in the camp with tidings that the Duke of Anjou had been elected to the throne of Poland. One can not but wonder that a nation so brave, and so favourably disposed as the Poles then were towards Protestantism, should have made choice of a creature so paltry, cowardly, and vicious to reign over them. But the occurrence furnished the duke with a pretext of which he was but too glad to avail himself for quitting a city which he was now convinced he never would be able to take. Thus did deliverance, come to La Rochelle. The blood spilt in its defence had not been shed in vain. The Rochellese had maintained their independence; they had rendered a service to the Protestantism of Europe; they had avenged in part the St. Bartholomew; they had raised the renown of the Huguenot arms; and now that the besiegers were gone, they set about rebuilding their fallen ramparts, and repairing the injuries their city had sustained; and they had the satisfaction of seeing the flow of political and commercial prosperity, which had been so rudely interrupted, gradually return.
By the time these transactions were terminated, a year wellnigh had elapsed since the great massacre. Catherine and Charles could now calculate what they had gained by this enormous crime. Much had France lost abroad, for though Catherine strove by enormous lying to persuade the world that she had not done the deed, or at least that the government had been forced in self-defence to do it, she could get no one to believe her. To compensate for the loss of prestige and influence abroad, what had she gained at home? Literally nothing. The Huguenots in all parts of France were coming forth from their hiding-places; important towns were defying the royal arms; whole districts were Protestant; and the denlands of the Huguenots were once more beginning to be heard, loud and firm as ever. What did all this mean? Had not Alva and Catherine dug the grave of Huguenotism? Had not Charles assisted at its burial? and had not the Pope set up its gravestone? What right then had the Huguenots to be seen any more in France? Had Coligny risen from the dead, with his mountain
Huguenots, who had chased Anjou back to Paris, and compelled Charles to sign the
Peace of St. Germain? Verily it seemed as if it were so. A yet greater humiliation awaited the court. When the 24th of August, 1573 - the anniversary of the massacre -
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came round, the Huguenots selected the day to meet and draw up new demands, which they were to present to the government.
Obtaining an interview with Charles and his mother, the delegates boldly demanded, in the name of the whole body of the Protestants, to be replaced in the position they occupied before St. Bartholomew’s Day, and to have back all the privileges of the
Pacification of 1570. The king listened in mute stupefaction. Catherine, pale with anger, made answer with a haughtiness that ill became her position. “What!” said she,
“although the Prince of Conde had been still alive, and in the field with 20,000 horse and 50,000 foot, he would not have dared to ask half of what you now demand.” But the Queen-mother had to digest her mortification as best she could. Her troops had been worsted; her kingdom was full of anarchy; discord reigned in the very palace; her third son, the only one she loved, was on the point of leaving her for Poland; there were none around her whom she could trust; and certainly there was no one who trusted her; the only policy open to her, therefore, was one of conciliation. Hedged in, she was made to feel that her way was a hard one. The St. Bartholomew Massacre was becoming bitter even to its authors, and Catherine now saw that she would have to repeat it not once, but many times, before she could erase the “religion,” restore the glories of the Roman Catholic worship in France, and feel herself firmly seated in the government of the country.
To the still further dismay of the court, the Protestants took a step in advance.
Portentous theories of a social kind began at this time to lift up their heads in France.
The infatuated daughter of the Medici thought that, could she extirpate Protestantism,
Roman Catholicism would be left in quiet possession of the land; little did she foresee the strange doctrines foreshadowings of those of 1789, and of the Commune of still later days - that were so soon to start up and fiercely claim to share supremacy with the Church.
The Huguenots of the sixteenth century did not indeed espouse the new opinions which struck at the basis of government as it was then settled, but they acted upon them so far as to set up a distinct politico-ecclesiastical confederation. The objects aimed at in this new association were those of self-government and mutual defence. A certain number of citizens were selected in each of the Huguenot towns. These formed a governing body in all matters appertaining to the Protestants. They were, in short, so many distinct Protestant municipalities, analogous to those cities of the Middle Ages which, although subject to the sway of the feudal lord, had their own independent municipal government. Every six months, delegates from these several municipalities met together, and constituted a supreme council. This council had power to impose taxes, to administer justice, and, when threatened with violence by the government, to raise soldiers and carry on war. This was a State within a State. The propriety of the step is open to question, but it is not to be hastily condemned. The French
Government had abdicated its functions. It neither respected the property nor defended the lives of the Huguenots. It neither executed the laws of the State in their behalf, nor fulfilled a moment longer than it had the power to break them the special treaties into which it had entered. So far from redressing their wrongs, it was the foremost party to inflict wrong and outrage upon them. In short, society in that unhappy country was dissolved, and in so unusual a state of things, it were hard to deny the Protestants the fight to make the best arrangements they could for the defence of their natural and social rights.
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At the court even there now arose a party that threw its shield over the Huguenots.
That party was known as the Politiques or Tiers Parti.
[4]
It was composed mostly of men who were the disciples of the great Chancellor de l’Hopital, whose views were so far in advance of the age in which he lived, and whose reforms in law and the administration of justice made him one of the pioneers of better and more tolerant times. The chancellor was now dead - happily for himself, before the extinction of so many names which were the glory of his country - but his liberal opinions survived in a small party which was headed by the three sons of the Constable Montmorency, and the Marshals Cose and Biron. These men were not Huguenots; on the contrary, they were Romanists, but they abhorred the policy of extermination pursued toward the
Protestants, and they lamented the strifes which were wasting the strength, lowering the character, and extinguishing the glory of France.
Though living in an age not by any means fastidious, the spectacle of the court - now become a horde of poisoners, murderers, and harlots - filled them with disgust. They wished to bring back something like national feeling and decency of manners to their country. Casting about if haply there were any left who might aid them in their schemes, they offered their alliance to the Huguenots. They meant to make a beginning by expelling the swarm of foreigners which Catherine had gathered round her. Italians and Spaniards filled the offices at court, and in return for their rich pensions rendered no service but flattery, and taught no arts but those of magic and assassination. The leaders of the
Tiers Parti hoped by the assistance of the Huguenots to expel these creatures from the government which they had monopolized, and to restore a national regime, liberal and tolerant, and such as might heal the deep wounds of their country, and recover for
France the place she had lost in Europe. The existence of this party was known to
Catherine, and she had divined, too, the cleansing they meant to make in the Augean stable of the Louvre. Such a reformation not being at all to her taste, she began again to draw toward the Huguenots. Thus wonderfully were they shielded.
There followed a few years of dubious policy on the part of Catherine, of fruitless schemes on the part of the Politiques, and of uncertain prospects to all parties. While matters were hanging thus in the balance, Charles IX died.
[5]
His life had been full of excitement, of base pleasures, and of bloody crimes, and his death was full of horrors.
But as the curtain is about to drop, a ray - a solitary ray - is seen to shoot across the darkness. No long time after the perpetration of the massacre, Charles IX began to be visited with remorse. The awful scene would not quit his memory. By day, whether engaged in business or mingling in the gaieties of the court, the sights and sounds of the massacre would rise unbidden before his imagination; and at night its terrors would return in his dreams. As he lay in his bed, he would start up from broken slumber, crying out, “Blood, blood!” Not many days after the massacre, there came a flock of ravens and alighted upon the roof of the Louvre. As they flitted to and fro they filled the air with their dismal croakings. This would have given no uneasiness to most people; but the occupants of the Louvre had guilty consciences. The impieties and witchcrafts in which they lived had made them extremely superstitious, and they saw in the ravens other creatures than they seemed, and heard in their screams more terrible sounds than merely earthly ones. The ravens were driven away; the next day, at the same hour, they returned, and so did they for many days in succession.
There, duly at the appointed time, were the sable visitants of the Louvre, performing their gyrations round the roofs and chimneys of the ill-omened palace, and making its
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courts resound with the echoes of their horrid cawings. This did not tend to lighten the melancholy of the king.
One night he awoke with fearful sounds in his ears. It seemed - so he thought - that a dreadful fight was going on in the city. There were shoutings and shrieks and curses, and mingling with these were the tocsin’s knell and the sharp ring of fire-arms - in short, all those dismal noises which had filled Paris on the night of the massacre. A messenger was dispatched to ascertain the cause of the uproar. He returned to say that all was at peace in the city, and that the sounds which had so terrified the king were wholly imaginary. These incessant apprehensions brought on at last an illness. The king’s constitution, sickly from the first, had been drained of any original vigour it ever possessed by the vicious indulgences in which he lived, and into which his mother, for her own vile ends, had drawn him; and now his decline was accelerated by the agonies of remorse - thee Nemesis of the St. Bartholomew. Charles was rapidly approaching the grave. It was now that a malady of a strange and frightful kind seized upon him. Blood began to ooze from all the pores of his body. On awakening in the morning his person would be wet all over with what appeared a sweat of blood, and a crimson mark on the bed-clothes would show where he had lain. Mignet and other historians have given us most affecting accounts of the king’s last hours, but we content ourselves with an extract from the old historian Estoile. And be it known that the man who stipulated orders for the St. Bartholomew Massacre that not a single
Huguenot should be left alive to reproach him with the deed, was waited upon on his death-bed by a Huguenot nurse! “As she seated herself on a chest,” says Estoile, “and was beginning to doze, she heard the king moan and weep and sigh. She came gently to his bedside, and adjusting the bed-clothes, the king began to speak to her; and heaving a deep sigh, and while the tears poured down, and sobs choked his utterance, he said, ‘Ah, nurse, dear nurse, what blood, what murders! Ah, I have followed bad advice.
Oh, my God, forgive me! Have pity on me, if it please thee. I do not know what will become of me. What shall I do? I am lost; I see it plainly.’ Then the nurse said to him,
‘Sire, may the murders be on those who made you do them; and since you do not consent to them, and are sorry for them, believe that God will not impute them to you, but will cover them with the robe of his Son’s justice. To him alone you must address yourself.’” Charles IX died on the 30th of May, 1574, just twenty-one months after the St. Bartholomew Massacre, having lived twenty-five years and reigned fourteen.
[6]
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The Duke of Anjou, the heir to the throne, was in Poland when Charles IX died. He had been elected king of that country, as we have stated, but he had already brought it to the brink of civil war by the violations of his coronation oath. When he heard that his brother was dead, he stole out of Poland, hurried back to Paris, and became King of France under the title of Henry III. This prince was shamelessly vicious, and beyond measure effeminate. Neglecting business, he would shut himself up for days together with a select band of youths, debauchers like himself, and pass the time in orgies which shocked even the men of that age. He was the tyrant and the bigot, as well as the voluptuary, and the ascetic fit usually alternated at short intervals with the sensual one. He passed from the beast to the monk, and from the monk to the beast, but never by any chance was he the man. It is true we find no St. Bartholomew in this reign, but that was because the first had made a second impossible. That the will was not wanting is attested by the edict with which Henry opened his reign, and which commanded all his subjects to conform to the religion of Rome or quit the kingdom.
His mother, Catherine de Medici, still held the regency; and we trace her hand in this tyrannous decree, which happily the government had not the power to enforce. Its impolicy was great, and it instantly recoiled upon the king, for it advertised the
Huguenots that the dagger of the St. Bartholomew was still suspended above their heads, and that they should commit a great mistake if they did not take effectual measures against a second surprise. Accordingly, they were careful not to let the hour of weakness to the court pass without strengthening their own position.
Coligny had fallen, but Henry of Navarre now came to the front. He lacked the ripened wisdom, the steady persistency, and deep religious convictions of the great admiral; but he was young, chivalrous, heartily with the Protestants, and full of dash in the field. His soldiers never feared to follow wherever they saw his white plume waving “amidst the ranks of war.” The Protestants were further reinforced by the accession of the Politiques. These men cared nothing for the “religion,” but they cared something for the honour of France, and they were resolved to spare no pains to lift it out of the mire into which Catherine and her allies had dragged it. At the head of this party was the Duke of Alencon, the youngest brother of the king. This combination of parties, formed in the spring of 1575, brought fresh courage to the Huguenots. They now saw their cause espoused by two princes of the blood, and their attitude was such as thoroughly to intimidate the King and Queen-mother. Never before had the
Protestants presented a bolder front or made larger demands, and bitter as the mortification must have been, the court had nothing for it but to grant all the concessions asked. Passing over certain matters of a political nature, it was agreed that the public exercise of the Reformed religion should be authorized throughout the kingdom; that the provincial Parliaments should consist of an equal number of Roman
Catholics and Protestants; that all sentences passed against the Huguenots should be annulled; that eight towns should be placed in their hands as a material guarantee; that they should have a right to open schools, and to hold synods; and that the States-
General should meet within six months to ratify this agreement. This treaty was signed May 6th, 1576. Thus within four years after the St. Bartholomew Massacre,
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the Protestants, whom it was supposed that that massacre had exterminated, had all their former rights conceded to them, and in ampler measure.
The Roman Catholics opened their eyes in astonishment. Protestant schools;
Protestant congregations; Protestant synods! They already saw all France Protestant.
Taking the alarm, they promptly formed themselves into an organisation, which has since become famous in history under the name of “The League.” The immediate aim of the League was the prevention of the treaty just signed; its ulterior and main object was the extirpation, root and branch, of the Huguenots. Those who were enrolled in it bound themselves by oath to support it with their goods and lives. Its foremost man was the Duke of Guise; its back-bone was the ferocious rabble of Paris; it found zealous and powerful advocates in the numerous Jesuit fraternities of France; the duty of adhesion to it was vociferously preached from the Roman Catholic pulpits, and still more persuasively, if less noisily, urged in all the confessionals; and we do not wonder that, with such a variety of agency to give it importance, the League before many months had passed numbered not fewer than 30,000 members, and from being restricted to one province, as at the beginning, it extended over all the kingdom. A clause was afterwards added to the effect that no one should be suffered to ascend the throne of France who professed or tolerated the detestable opinions of the Huguenots, and that they should have recourse to arms to carry out the ends of the League. Thus were the flames of war again lighted in France.
The north and east of the kingdom declared in favour of the League, the towns in the south and west ranged themselves beneath the standard of Navarre. The king was uncertain which of the two parties he should join. Roused suddenly from his sensualities, craven in spirit, clouded in understanding, and fallen in popular esteem, the unhappy Henry saw but few followers around him. Navarre offered to rally the
Huguenots round him, and support the crown, would he only declare on their side.
Henry hesitated; at last he threw himself into the arms of the League, and, to cement the union between himself and them, he revoked all the privileges of the Protestants, and commanded them to abjure their religion or leave the kingdom. The treaty so recently framed was swept away. The war was resumed with more bitterness than ever. It was now that the brilliant military genius of Navarre, “Henry of the White
Plume,” began to blaze forth. Skilful to plan, cool and prompt to execute, never hesitating to carry his white plume into the thick of the fight, and never failing to bring it out victoriously, Henry held his own in the presence of the armies of the king and Guise. The war watered afresh with blood the soil so often and so profusely watered before, but it was without decisive results on either side. One thing it made evident, namely, that the main object of the League was to wrest the sceptre from the hands of Henry III, to bar the succession of Henry of Navarre, the next heir, and place the Duke of Guise upon the throne, and so grasp the destinies of France.
The unhappy country did not yet know rest; for if there was now a cessation of hostilities between the Roman Catholics and the Huguenots, a bitter strife broke out between the king and Guise. The duke aspired to the crown. He was the popular idol; the mob and the army were on his side, and knowing this, he was demeaning himself with great haughtiness. The contempt he felt for the effeminacy and essential baseness of Henry III, he did not fail to express. The king was every day losing ground, and the prospects of the duke were in the same proportion brightening. The duke at last ventured to come to Paris with an army, and Henry narrowly escaped being
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imprisoned and slain in his own capital. Delaying the entrance of the duke’s soldiers by barricades, the first ever seen in Paris, he found time to flee, and taking refuge in the Castle of Blois, he left Guise in possession of the capital. The duke did not at once proclaim himself king; he thought good to do the thing by halves; he got himself made lieutenant of the kingdom, holding himself, at the same time, on excellent terms of friendship with Henry. Henry on his part met the duke’s hypocrisy with cool premeditated treachery. He pressed him warmly to visit him at his Castle of Blois. His friends told him that if he went he would never return; but he made light of all warnings, saying, with an air that expressed his opinion of the king’s courage, “He dare not.” To the Castle of Blois he went.
The king had summoned a council at the early hour of eight o’clock to meet the duke.
While the members were assembling, Guise had arrived, and was sauntering carelessly in the hall, when a servant entered with a message that the king wished to see him in his bedroom. To reach the apartment in question the duke had to pass through an ante-chamber. In this apartment had previously been posted a strong body of men-at-arms. The duke started when his eye fell on the glittering halberds and the scowling faces of the men; but disdaining retreat he passed on. His hand was already on the curtain which separated the antechamber from the royal bed-room, with intent to draw it aside and enter, when a soldier struck his dagger into him. The duke sharply faced his assailants, but only to receive another and another stroke. He grappled with the men, and so great was his strength that he bore them with himself to the floor, where, after struggling a few minutes, he extricated himself, though covered with wounds. He was able to lift the curtain, and stagger into the room, where, falling at the foot of the bed, he expired in the presence of the king. Henry, getting up, looked at the corpse, and kicked it with his foot.
The Queen-mother was also at the Castle of Blois. Sick and dying, she lay in one of the lower apartments. The king instantly descended to visit her. “Madam,” he said,
“congratulate me, for I am again King of France, seeing I have this morning slain the
King of Paris.” The tidings pleased Catherine, but she reminded her son that the old fox, the uncle of the duke, still lived, and that the morning’s work could not be considered complete till he too was dispatched. The Cardinal of Lorraine, who had lived through all these bloody transactions, was by the royal orders speedily apprehended and slain. To prevent the superstitious respect of the populace to the bodies of the cardinal and the duke, their corpses were tied by a rope, let down through a window into a heap of quicklime, and when consumed, their ashes were scattered to the winds. Such was the end of these ambitious men.
[1]
Father, son, and uncle had been bloody men, and their grey hairs were brought down to the grave with blood.
These deeds brought no stability to Henry’s power. Calamity after calamity came upon him in rapid succession. The news of his crime spread horror through France.
The Roman Catholic population of the towns rose in insurrection, enraged at the death of their favourite, and the League took care to fan their fury. The Sorbonne released the subjects of the kingdom from allegiance to Henry. The Parliament of Paris declared him deposed from the throne. The Pope, dealing him the unkindest cut of all, excommunicated him. Within a year of the duke’s death a provisional government, with a younger brother of Guise’s at its head, was installed at the Hotel de Ville.
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Henry, appalled by this outburst of indignation, fled to Tours, where such of the nobility as adhered to the royalist cause, with 2,000 soldiers, gathered round him.
This force was not at all adequate to cope with the army of the League, and the king had nothing for it but to accept the hand which Henry of Navarre held out to him, and which he had afore-time rejected., Considering that Henry, as Duke of Anjou, had been one of the chief instigators of the St. Bartholomew Massacre, it must have cost him, one would imagine, a severe struggle of feeling to accept the aid of the
Huguenots; and not less must they have felt it, we should think, unseemly and anomalous to ally their cause with that of the murderer of their brethren. But the flower of the Huguenots were in their grave; the King of Navarre was not the highminded hero that Coligny had been. We find now a lower type of Huguenotism than before the St. Bartholomew Massacre; so the alliance was struck, and the two armies, the royalist and the Huguenot, were now under the same standard. Here was a new and strange arrangement of parties in France. The League had become the champion of the democracy against the throne, and the Huguenots rallied for the throne against the democracy. The united army, with the two Henries at its head, now began its march upon Paris; the forces of the League, now inferior to the enemy, retreating before them. While on their march the king and Navarre learned that the Pope had fulminated excommunication against them, designating them “the two sons of wrath,” and consigning them, “in the name of the Eternal King,” to “the company of Korah,
Dathan, and Abiram,” and “to the devil and his angels.” The weak superstitious Henry
III was so terrified that for two days he ate no food. “Cheer up, brother,” said the more valorous Henry of Navarre, “Rome’s bolts don’t hurt kings when they conquer.”
Despite the Papal bull, the march to Paris was continued. King Henry, with his soldiers, was now encamped at St. Cloud; and Navarre, with his Huguenots, had taken up his position at Meudon. It seemed as if the last hour of the League had come, and that Paris must surrender. The Protestants were overjoyed. But the alliance between the royalist and Huguenot arms was not to prosper. The bull of the Pope was, after all, destined to bear fruit. It awoke all the pulpits in Paris, which began to thunder against excommunicated tyrants, and to urge the sacred duty of taking them off; and not in vain, for a monk of the name of Jacques Clement offered himself to perform the holy yet perilous deed. Having prepared himself by fasting and absolution, this man, under pretence of carrying a letter, which he would give into no hands but those of the king himself, penetrated into the royal tent, and plunged his dagger into Henry. The League was saved, the illusions of the Huguenots were dispelled, and there followed a sudden shifting of the scenes in France. With Henry III the line of Valois became extinct. The race had given thirteen sovereigns to France, and filled the throne during 261 years.
The last Valois has fallen by the dagger. Only seventeen years have elapsed since the
St. Bartholomew Massacre, and yet the authors of that terrible tragedy are all dead, and all of them, with one exception, have died by violence. Charles IX, smitten with a strange and fearful malady, expired in torments. The Duke of Guise was massacred in the Castle of Blois, the king kicking his dead body as he had done the corpse of
Coligny. The Cardinal of Lorraine was assassinated in prison; and Henry III met his death in his own tent as we have just narrated, by the hand of a monk. The two greatest criminals in this band of great criminals were the last to be overtaken by vengeance. Catherine de Medici died at the Castle of Blois twelve days after the murder of the Duke of Guise, as little cared for in her last hours as if she had been the poorest peasant in all France; and when she had breathed her last, “they took no more
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heed of her,” says Estelle, “than of a dead goat.” She lived to witness the failure of all her schemes, the punishment of all her partners in guilt, and to see her dynasty, which she had laboured to prop up by so many dark intrigues and bloody crimes, on the eve of extinction. And when at last she went to the grave, it was amid the execrations of all parties. “We are in a great strait about this bad woman,” said a Romanist preacher when announcing her death to his congregation; “if any of you by chance wish, out of charity, to give her a pater or an ave, it may perhaps do her some good.” Catherine de
Medici died in the seventieth year of her age; during thirty of which she held the regency of France. Her estates and legacies were all swallowed up by her debts.
[2]
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The dagger of Jacques Clement had transferred the crown of France from the House of Valois to that of Bourbon. Henry III being now dead, Henry of Navarre, the Knight of the White Plume, ascended the throne by succession. The French historians paint in glowing colours the manly grace of his person, his feats of valour in the field, and his acts of statesmanship in the cabinet. They pronounce him the greatest of their monarchs, and his reign the most glorious in their annals. We must advance a little further into our subject before we can explain the difficulty we feel in accepting this eulogium as fully warranted.
Henry was born in the old Castle of Pau, in Bearn, and was descended in a direct line from Robert, the sixth son of Saint Louis. The boy, the instant of his birth, was carried to his grandfather, who rubbed his lips with a clove of garlic, and made him drink a little wine; and the rearing begun thus was continued in the same hardy fashion.
The young Henry lived on the plainest food, and wore the homeliest dress; he differed little or nothing, in these particulars, from the peasant boys who were his associates in his hours of play. His delight was to climb the great rocks of the Pyrenees around his birth-place, and in these sports he hardened his constitution, familiarized himself with peril and toil, and nurtured that love of adventure which characterized him all his days. But especially was his education attended to. It was conducted under the eye of his mother, one of the first women of her age, or indeed of any age. He was carefully instructed in the doctrines of Protestantism, that in after-life his religion might be not an ancestral tradition, but a living faith. In the example of his mother he had a pattern of the loftiest virtue. Her prayers seemed the sacred pledges that the virtues of the mother would flourish in the son, and that after she was gone he would follow with the same devotion, and defend with a yet stronger arm, the cause for which she had lived. As Henry grew up he displayed a character in many points corresponding to these advantages of birth and training. To a robust and manly frame he added a vigorous mind. His judgment was sound, his wit was quick, his resource was ready. In disposition he was brave, generous, confiding. He despised danger; he courted toil; he was fired with the love of glory. But with these great qualities he blended an inconvenient waywardness, and a decided inclination to sensual pleasures.
The king had breathed his last but a few moments, when Henry entered the royal apartment to receive the homage of the lords who were there in waiting. The
Huguenot chiefs readily hailed him as their sovereign, but the Roman Catholic lords demanded, beware swearing the oath of allegiance, that he should declare himself of the communion of the Church of Rome. “Would it be more agreeable to you,” asked
Henry of those who were demanding of him a renunciation of his Protestantism upon the spot, “Would it be more agreeable to you to have a godless king? Could you confide in the faith of an atheist? And in the day of battle would it add to your courage to think that you followed the banner of a perjured apostate?”
Brave words spoken like a man who had made up his mind to ascend the throne with a good conscience or not at all. But these words were not followed up by a conduct equally brave and high-principled. The Roman Catholic lords were obstinate. Henry’s difficulties increased. The dissentients were withdrawing from his camp; his army
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was melting away, and every new day appeared to be putting the throne beyond his reach. Now was the crisis of his fate. Had Henry of Navarre esteemed the reproach of being a Huguenot greater riches than the crown of France, he would have worn that crown, and worn it with honour. His mother’s God, who, by a marvellous course of
Providence, had brought him to the foot of the throne, was able to place him upon it, had he had faith in him. But Henry’s faith began to fail. He temporized. He neither renounced Protestantism nor embraced Romanism, but aimed at being both Protestant and Romanist at once. He concluded an arrangement with the Roman Catholics, the main stipulation in which was that he would submit to a six months’ instruction in the two creeds - just as if he were or could be in doubt - and at the end of that period he would make his choice, and his subjects would then know whether they had a
Protestant or a Roman Catholic for their sovereign. Henry, doubtless, deemed his policy a masterly one; but his mother would not have adopted it. She had risked her kingdom for her religion, and God gave her back her kingdom after it was as good as lost. What the son risked was his religion, that he might secure his throne. The throne he did secure in the first instance, but at the cost of losing in the end all that made it worth having. “There is a way that seemeth right in a man’s own eyes, but the end thereof is death.”
Henry had tided over the initial difficulty, but at what a cost! - a virtual betrayal of his great cause. Was his way now smooth? The Roman Catholics he had not really conciliated, and the Protestants stood in doubt of him. He had two manner of peoples around his standard, but neither was enthusiastic in his support, nor could strike other than feeble blows. He had assumed the crown, but had to conquer the kingdom. The
League, whose soldiers were in possession of Paris, still held out against him. To have gained the capital and displayed his standard on its walls would have been a great matter, but with an army dwindled down to a few thousands, and the Roman Catholic portion but half-hearted in his cause, Henry dared not venture on the siege of Paris.
Making up his mind to go without the prestige of the capital meanwhile, he retreated with his little host into Normandy, the army of the League in overwhelming numbers pressing on his steps and hemming him in, so that he was compelled to give battle to them in the neighbourhood of Dieppe. Here, with the waters of the English Channel behind him, into which the foe hoped to drive him, God wrought a great deliverance for him. With only 6,000 soldiers, Henry discomfited the entire army of the League,
30,000 strong, and won a great victory. This affair brought substantial advantages to
Henry. It added to his renown in arms, already great. Soldiers began to flock to his standard, and he now saw himself at the head of 20,000 men. Many of the provinces of France which had hung back till this time recognized him as king. The Protestant
States abroad did the same thing; and thus strengthened, Henry led his army southward, crossed the Loire, and took up his winter quarters at Tours, the old capital of Clovis.
Early next spring (1590) the king was again in the field. Many of the old Huguenot chiefs, who had left him when he entered into engagements with the Roman
Catholics, now returned, attracted by the vigour of his administration and the success of his arms. With this accession he deemed himself strong enough to take Paris, the possession of which would probably decide the contest. He began his march upon the capital, but was met by the army of the League (March 14, 1590) on the plains of
Ivry.
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His opponents were in greatly superior numbers, having been reinforced by Spanish auxiliaries and German reiter. Here a second great victory crowned the cause of
Henry of Navarre; in fact, the battle of Ivry is one of the most brilliant on record.
Before going into action, Henry made a solemn appeal to Heaven touching the justice of his cause. “If thou seest,” said he, “that I shall be one of those kings whom thou givest in thine anger, take from me my life and crown together, and may my blood be the last that shall be shed in this quarrel.” The battle was now to be joined, but first the Huguenots kneeled in prayer. “They are begging for mercy,” cried some one.
“No,” it was answered, “they never fight so terribly as after they have prayed.” A few moments, and the soldiers arose, and Henry ad dressed some stirring words to them.
“Yonder,” said he, as he fastened on his helmet, over which waved his white plume,
“Yonder is the enemy: here is your king. God is on our side. Should you lose your standards in the battle, rally round my plume; you will always find it on the path of victory and honour.” Into the midst of the enemy advanced that white plume; where raged the thickest of the fight, there was it seen to wave, and thither did the soldiers follow. After a terrible combat of two hours, the day declared decisively in favour of the king. The army of the League was totally routed, and fled from the field, leaving its cannon and standards behind it to become the trophies of the victors.
[1]
This victory, won over great odds, was a second lesson to Henry of the same import as the first. But he was trying to profess two creeds, and “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” This fatal instability caused Henry to falter when he was on the point of winning all. Had he marched direct on Paris, the League, stunned by the blow he had just dealt it, would have been easily crushed; the fall of the capital would have followed, and, with Paris as the seat of his government, his cause would have been completely triumphant. He hesitated - he halted; his enthusiasm seemed to have spent itself on the battlefield. He had won a victory, but his indecision permitted its fruits to escape him. All that year was spent in small affairs - in the sieges of towns which contributed nothing to his main object. The League had time to recruit itself.
The Duke of Parma - the most illustrious general of the age - came to its help. Henry’s affairs made no progress; and thus the following year (1591)was as uselessly spent as its predecessor. Meanwhile, the unhappy country of France - divided into factions, traversed by armies, devastated by battles - groaned under a combination of miseries.
Henry’s great qualities remained with him; his bravery and dash were shown on many a bloody field; victories crowded in upon him; fame gathered round the white plume; nevertheless, his cause stood still. An eclipse seemed to rest upon the king, and a
Nemesis appeared to dog his triumphal car.
With a professed Protestant upon the throne, one would have expected the condition of the Huguenots to be greatly alleviated; but it was not so. The concessions which might have been expected from even a Roman Catholic sovereign were withheld by one who was professedly a Protestant. The Huguenots as yet had no legal security for their civil and religious liberties. The laws denouncing confiscation and death for the profession of the Protestant religion, re-enacted by Henry III, remained unrepealed, and were at times put in force by country magistrates and provincial Parliaments. It sometimes happened that while in the camp of the king the Protestant worship was celebrated, a few leagues off the same worship was forbidden to a Huguenot congregation under severe penalties. The celebrated Mornay Duplessis well described the situation of the Protestants in these few words: “They had the halter always about their necks.” Stung by the temporizing and heartless policy of Henry, the Huguenots
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proposed to disown him as their chief, and to elect another protector of their
Churches. Had they abandoned him, his cause would have been ruined. To the
Protestants the safety of the Reformed faith was the first thing. To Henry the possession of the throne was the first thing, and the Huguenots and their cause must wait. The question was, How long?
It was now four years since Henry after a sort had been King of France; but the peaceful possession of the throne was becoming less likely than ever. Every day the difficulties around him, instead of diminishing, were thickening. Even the success which had formerly attended his arms appeared to be deserting him. Shorn of his locks, like Samson, he was winning brilliant victories no longer. What was to be done? this had now come to be the question with the king. Henry, to use a familiar expression, was “falling between two stools.” The time had come for him to declare himself, and say whether he was to be a Roman Catholic, or whether he was to be a
Protestant, There were not wanting weighty reasons, as they seemed, why the king should be the former. The bulk of his subjects were Roman Catholics, and by being of their religion he would conciliate the majority, put an end to the wars between the two rival parties, and relieve the country from all its troubles. By this step only could he ever hope to make himself King of all France. So did many around him counsel. His recantation would, to, a large extent, be a matter of form, and by that form how many great ends of State would be served!
But on the other side there were sacred memories which Henry could not erase, and deep convictions which he could not smother. The instructions and prayers of a mother, the ripened beliefs of a lifetime, the obligations he owed to the Protestants, all must have presented themselves in opposition to the step he now meditated. Were all these pledges to be profaned? were all these hallowed bonds to be rent asunder? With the Huguenots how often had he deliberated in council; how often worshipped in the same sanctuary; how often fought on the same battle-field; their arms mainly it was that raised him to the throne; was he now to forsake them? Great must have been the conflict in the mind of the king. But the fatal step had been taken four years before, when, in the hope of disarming the hostility of the Roman Catholic lords, he consented to receive instruction in the Romish faith. To hesitate in a matter of this importance was to surrender - was to be lost; and the choice which Henry now made is just the choice which it was to be expected he would make. There is reason to fear that he had never felt the power of the Gospel upon his heart. His hours of leisure were often spent in adulterous pleasures. One of his mistresses was among the chief advisers of the step he was now revolving. What good would this Huguenotism do him? Would he be so great a fool as to sacrifice a kingdom for it? Listening to such counsels as these, he laid his birth-right, where so many kings before and since have laid theirs, at the feet of Rome.
It had been arranged that a conference composed of an equal number of Roman
Catholic bishops and Protestant pastors should be held, and that the point of difference between the two Churches should be debated in the presence of the king.
This was simply a device to save appearances, for Henry’s mind was already made up. When the day came, the king forbade the attendance of the Protestants, assigning as a reason that he would not put it in the power of the bishops to say that they had vanquished them in the argument. The king’s conduct throughout was marked by consummate duplicity. He invited the Reformed to fast, in prospect of the coming
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conference, and pray for a blessing upon it; and only three months before his abjuration, he wrote to the pastors assembled at Samur, saying that he would die rather than renounce his religion; and when the conference was about to be held, we find him speaking of it to Gabrielle d’Estrees, with whom he spent the soft hours of dalliance, as an ecclesiastical tilt from which he expected no little amusement, and the denouement of which was fixed already. “This morning I begin talking with the bishops. On Sunday I am to take the perilous leap.”
[2]
Henry IV had the happiness to possess as counsellors two men of commanding talent.
The first was the Baron Rosny, better known as the illustrious Sully. He was a statesman of rare genius. Like Henry, he was a Protestant; and he bore this further resemblance to his royal master, that his Protestantism was purely political. The other,
Mornay Duplessis, was the equal of Sully in talent, but his superior in character. He was inflexibly upright. These two men were much about the king at this hour; both felt the gravity of the crisis, but differed widely in the advice which they gave.
“I can find,” said Sully, addressing the king, “but two ways out of your present embarrassments. By the one you may pass through a million of difficulties, fatigues, pains, perils, and labours. You must be always in the saddle; you must always have the corselet on your back, the helmet on your head, and the sword in your hand. Nay, what is more, farewell to repose, to pleasure, to love, to mistresses, to games, to dogs, to hawking, to building; for you can not come out through these affairs but by a multitude of combats, taking of cities, great victories, a great shedding of blood.
Instead of all this, by the other way - that is, changing your religion - you escape all those pains and difficulties in this world,” said the courtier with a smile, to which the king responded by a laugh: “as for the other world, I can not answer for that.”
Mornay Duplessis counselled after another fashion. The side at which Sully refused to look - the other world - was the side which Duplessis mainly considered. He charged the king to serve God with a good conscience; to keep Him before his eyes in all his actions; to attempt the union of the kingdom by the Reformation of the Church, and so to set an example to all Christendom and posterity. “With what conscience,” said he,
“can I advise you to go to mass if I do not first go myself? and what kind of religion can that be which is taken off as easily as one’s coat?” So did this great patriot and
Christian advise.
But Henry was only playing with both his counsellors. His course was already irrevocably taken; he had set his face towards Rome. On Thursday, July 22, 1593, he met the bishops, with whom he was to confer on the points of difference between the two religions. With a half-malicious humour he would occasionally interrupt their harangues with a few puzzling questions. On the following Sunday morning, the 25th, he repaired with a sumptuous following of men-at-arms to the Church of St. Denis.
On the king’s knocking the cathedral door was immediately opened.
The Bishop of Bourges met him at the head of a train of prelates and priests, and demanded to know the errand on which the king had come. Henry made answer, “To be admitted into the Church of Rome.” He was straightway led to the altar, and kneeling on its steps, he swore to live and die in the Romish faith. The organ pealed, the cannon thundered, the warriors that thronged nave and aisle clashed their arms; high mass was performed, the king, as he partook, bowing down till his brow touched the floor; and a solemn Te Deum concluded and crowned this grand jubilation.
[3]
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The abjuration of Henry was viewed by the Protestants with mingled sorrow, astonishment, and apprehension. The son of Jeanne d’Albret, the foremost of the
Huguenot chiefs, the Knight of the White Plume, to renounce his faith and go to mass! How fallen! But Protestantism could survive apostasies as well as defeats on the battle-field; and the Huguenots felt that they must look higher than the throne of
Henry IV, and trusting in God, they took measures for the protection and advancement of their great cause. From their former compatriot and co-religionist, ever since, by the help of their arms, he had come to the throne, they had received little save promises. Their religion was proscribed, their worship was in many instances forbidden, their children were often compulsorily educated in the Romish faith, their last wills made void, and even their corpses dug out of the grave and thrown like carrion on the fields. When they craved redress, they were bidden be patient till Henry should be stronger on the throne. His apostasy had brought matters to a head, and convinced the Huguenots that they must look to themselves. The bishops had made Henry swear, “I will endeavour to the utmost of my power, and in good faith, to drive out of my jurisdiction, and from the lands under my sway, all heretics denounced by the Church.” Thus the sword was again hung over their heads; and can we blame them if now they formed themselves into a political organization, with a General Council, or Parliament, which met every year to concert measures of safety, promote unity of action, and keep watch over the affairs of the general body?
To Henry’s honour it must be acknowledged that he secretly encouraged this
Protestant League. An apostate, he yet escaped the infamy of the persecutor.
The Huguenot council applied to Henry’s government for the redress of their wrongs, and the restoration of Protestant rights and privileges. Four years passed away in these negotiations, which often degenerated into acrimonious disputes, and the course of which was marked (1595) by an atrocious massacre - a repetition, in short, of the affair at Vassy. At length Henry, sore pressed in his war with Spain, and much needing the swords of the Huguenots, granted an edict in their favour, styled, from the town from which it was issued, the Edict of Nantes, which was the glory of his reign.
It was a tardy concession to justice, and a late response to complaints long and most touchingly urged. “And yet, sire,” so their remonstrances ran, “among us we have neither Jacobins nor Jesuits who aim at your life, nor Leagues who aim at your crown.
We have never presented the points of our swords instead of petitions. We are paid with considerations of State policy. It is not time yet, we are told, grant us an edict, - yet, O merciful God, after thirty-five years of persecution, ten years of banishment by the edicts of the League, eight years of the present king’s reign, and four of persecutions. We ask your majesty for an edict by which we may enjoy that which is common to all your subjects. The glory of God alone, liberty of conscience, repose to the State, security for our lives and property - this is the summit of our wishes, and the end of our requests.”
The king still thought to temporize; but new successes on the part of the Spaniards admonished him that he had done so too long, and that the policy of delay was exhausted. The League hailed the Spanish advances, and the throne which Henry had secured by his abjuration he must save by Protestant swords. Accordingly, on the 15th
April, 1598, was this famous decree, the Edict of Nantes, styled “perpetual and irrevocable,” issued.
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“This Magna CAarta,” says Felice, “of the French Reformation, under the ancient regime, granted the following concessions in brief: - Full liberty of conscience to all; the public exercise of the ‘religion’ in all those places in which it was established in
1577, and in the suburbs of cities; permission to the lords’ high justiciary to celebrate
Divine worship in their castles, and to the inferior gentry to admit thirty persons to their domestic worship; admission of the Reformed to office in the State, their children to be received into the schools, their sick into the hospitals, and their poor to share in the alms; and the concession of a right to print their books in certain cities.”
This edict further provided for the erection of courts composed of an equal number of
Protestants and Roman Catholics for the protection of Protestant interests, four
Protestant colleges or institutions, and the right of holding a National Synod, according to the rules of the Reformed faith, once every three years.
[4]
The State was charged with the duty of providing the salaries of the Protestant ministers and rectors, and a sum of 165,000 livres of those times (495,000 francs of the present day) was appropriated to that purpose. The edict does not come fully up to our idea of liberty of conscience, but it was a liberal measure for the time. As a guarantee it put 200 towns into the hands of the Protestants. It was the Edict of Nantes much more than the abjuration of Henry which conciliated the two parties in the kingdom, and gave him the peaceful possession of the throne during the few years he was yet to occupy it.
The signing of this edict inaugurated an era of tranquillity and great prosperity to
France. The twelve years that followed are perhaps the most glorious in the annals of that country since the opening of the sixteenth century. Spain immediately offered terms of peace, and France, weary of civil war, sheathed the sword with joy.
Now that Henry had rest from war, he gave himself to the not less glorious and more fruitful labours of peace. France in all departments of her organization was in a state of frightful disorder - was, in fact, on the verge of ruin. Castles burned to the ground, cities half in ruins, lands reverting into a desert, roads unused, marts and harbours forsaken, were the melancholy memorials which presented themselves to one’s eye wherever one journeyed. The national exchequer was empty; the inhabitants were becoming few, for those who should have enriched their country with their labour, or adorned it with their intellect, were watering its soil with their blood. Some two millions of lives had perished since the breaking out of the civil wars. Summoning all his powers, Henry set himself to repair this vast ruin. In this arduous labour he displayed talents of a higher order and a more valuable kind than any he had shown in war, and proved himself not less great as a statesman than he was as a soldier. There was a debt of three hundred millions of francs pressing on the kingdom. The annual expenditure exceeded the revenue by upwards of one hundred millions of francs. The taxes paid by the people amounted to two hundred millions of francs; but, owing to the abuses of collection, not more than thirty millions found their way into the treasury. Calling Sully to his aid, the king set himself to grapple with these gigantic evils, and displayed in the cabinet no less fertility of resource and comprehensiveness of genius than in the field. He cleared off the national debt in ten years. He found means of making the income not only balance the expenditure, but of exceeding it by many millions. He accomplished all this without adding to the burdens of the people.
He understood the springs of the nation’s prosperity, and taught them to flow again.
He encouraged agriculture, promoted industry and commerce, constructed roads, bridges, and canals. The lands were tilled, herds were reared, the silkworm was introduced, the ports were opened for the free export of corn and wine, commercial
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treaties were framed with foreign countries; and France, during these ten years, showed as conclusively as it did after the war of 1870-71, how speedily it can recover from the effects of the most terrible disasters, when the passions of its children permit the boundless resources which nature has stored up in its soil and climate to develop themselves.
Henry’s views in the field of foreign politics were equally comprehensive. He clearly saw that the great menace to the peace of Europe, and the independence of its several nations, was the Austrian power in its two branches - the German and Spanish. Philip
II was dead; Spain was waning; nevertheless that ambitious Power waited an opportunity to employ the one half of Christendom of which she was still mistress, in crushing the other half. Henry’s project, formed in concert with Elizabeth of England, for humbling that Power was a vast one, and he had made such progress in it that twenty European States had promised to take part in the campaign which Henry was to lead against Austria. The moment for launching that great force was come, and
Henry’s contingent had been sent off, and was already on German soil. He was to follow his soldiers in a few days and open the campaign. But this deliverance for
Christendom he was fated not to achieve. His queen, Marie de Medici, to whom he was recently married, importuned him for a public coronation, and Henry resolved to gratify her. The ceremony, which was gone about with great splendour, was over, and he was now ready to set out, when a melancholy seized him, which he could neither account for nor shake off. This pensiveness was all the more remarkable that his disposition was naturally gay and sprightly. In the words of Schiller, in his drama of
“Wallenstein” -
“The king
Felt in his heart the phantom of the knife
Long ere Ravaillac armed himself therewith.
His quiet mind forsook him; the phanasma
Startled him in his Louvre, chased him forth Into the open air: like funeral knells
Sounded that coronation festival;
And still, with boding sense, he heard the tread
Of those feet that even then were seeking him
Throughout the streets of Paris.”
When the coming campaign was referred to, he told the queen and the nobles of his court that Germany he would never see - that he would die soon, and in a carriage.
They tried to laugh away these gloomy fancies, as they accounted them. “Go to
Germany instantly,” said his minister, Sully, “and go on horseback.” The 19th of
May, 1610, was fixed for the departure of the king. On the 16th, Henry was so distressed as to move the compassion of his attendants. After dinner he retired to his cabinet, but could not write; he threw himself on his bed, but could not sleep. He was overheard in prayer. He asked, “What o’clock is it?” and was answered, “Four of the afternoon. Would not your Majesty be the better of a little fresh air?” The king ordered his carriage, and, kissing the queen, he set out, accompanied by two of his nobles, to go to the arsenal.
[5]
He was talking with one of them, the Duke d’Epernon, his left hand resting upon the shoulder of the other, and thus leaving his side exposed. The carriage, after traversing the Rue St. Honoure, turned into the narrow Rue de la Ferroniere, where it was met by
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a cart, which compelled it to pass at a slow pace, close to the kerbstone. A monk,
Francois Ravaillac, who had followed the royal cortege unobserved, stole up, and mounting on the wheel, and leaning over the carriage, struck his knife into the side of
Henry, which it only grazed. The monk struck again, and this time the dagger took the direction of the heart. The king fell forward in his carriage, and uttered a low cry.
“What is the matter, sire?” asked one of his lords. “It is nothing,” replied the king twice, but the second time so low as to be barely audible. Dark blood began to ooze from the wound, and also from the mouth. The carriage was instantly turned in the direction of the Louvre. As he was being carried into the palace, Sieur de Cerisy raised his head; his eyes moved, but he spoke not. The king closed his eyes to open them not again any more. He was carried upstairs, and laid on his bed in his closet, where he expired.
[6]
Ravaillac made no attempt to escape: he stood with his bloody knife in his hand till he was apprehended; and when brought before his judges and subjected to the torture he justified the deed, saying that the king was too favourable to heretics, and that he purposed making war on the Pope, which was to make war on God.
[7]
Years before,
Rome had launched her excommunication against the “two Henries,” and now both had fallen by her dagger.
On the character of Henry IV we can not dwell. It was a combination of great qualities and great faults. He was a brave soldier and an able ruler; but we must not confound military brilliance or political genius with moral greatness. Entire devotion to a noble cause the corner-stone of greatness - he lacked. France - in other words, the glory and dominion of himself and house - was the supreme aim and end of all his toils, talents, and manoeuvrings. The great error of his life was his abjuration. The
Roman Catholics it did not conciliate, and the Protestants it alienated. It was the Edict of Nantes that made him strong, and gave to France almost the only ten years of real prosperity and glory which it has seen since the reign of Francis I. Had Henry nobly resolved to ascend the throne with a good conscience, or not at all had he not paltered with the Jesuits - had he said, “I will give toleration to all, but will myself abide in the faith my mother taught me” - his own heart would have been stronger, his life purer, his course less vacillating and halting; the Huguenots, the flower of French valour and intelligence, would have rallied round him and borne him to the throne, and kept him on it, in spite of all his enemies. On what different foundations would his throne in that case have rested, and what a different glory would have encircled his memory!
He set up a throne by abjuration in 1593, to be cast down on the scaffold of 1793!
We have traced the great drama of the sixteenth century to its culmination, first in
Germany, and next in Geneva and France, and we now propose to follow it to its new stage in other countries of Europe.
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CHAPTER 1
[1]
Millot, Elements of History, volume 4, p. 317; Lond., 1779.
[2]
Felice, History of the Protestants of France, volume 1, p. 61; Lond., 1853.
[3]
Fe1ice, volume 1, p. 45.
[4]
Ibid., volume 1, p. 44.
[5]
Millot, volume 4, pp. 317,318.
[6]
Abbe Anquetil, Histoire de France, Tom. 3, pp. 246 - 249; Paris. 1835.
[7]
Sleidan, book 19, p. 429. Beza, Hist. Ecclesiastes des Eglises Reformdes du
Royaume de France, livr. 1, p. 30; Lille, 1841. Laval, Hist. of the Reformation in
France, volume 1, book 1, page 55; Lond., 1737.
[8]
Davila, Historia delle Guerre Civili di Francia, livr. 1, p. 9; Lyons, 1641.
Maimbourg, Hist. de Calvinisme, livr. 2, p. 118; Paris, 1682.
[9]
Davila, p. 14.
[10]
Laval, volume 1, pp. 70,71.
[11]
Thaunus, Hist., lib. 3. Laval, volume 1, p. 71.
[12]
Davila, lib.1, pp. 13,14.
[13]
Laval, volume 1, p. 73.
CHAPTER 2
[1]
Laval, volume 1, p. 73.
[2]
Beza. tom. 1, livr. 2, p. 50.
[3]
Beza, tom. 1, livr. 2, p. 51. Laval, volume 1, p. 76.
[4]
Laval, volume 1, p. 78.
[5]
Beza, tom. 1, pp. 51,52.
[6]
Ibid, tom. 1, p. 52.
[7]
Maimbourg, Hist. Calv., livr. 2, p. 94; Paris, 1682.
[8]
Ibid., livr. 2, pp. 94,95. Laval, volume 1, p. 80.
[9]
Laval, volume 1, p. 81.
226

[10]
Laval, volume 1, p. 82. Beza, tom. 1, p. 59.
[11]
Beza, tom. 1, p. 59.
[12]
Maimbourg, 1ivr. 2, p. 95.
[13]
Beza, tom. 1, pp. 62-64.
[14]
Laval, volume 1, pp. 83,84.
[15]
Beza, tom. 1, p. 72. Laval, volume 1, pp. 85,86
[16]
Havila, Hist. delle Guerre Civili di Francia, lib. 1, p. 13.
[17]
Laval, volume 2, p. 107.
[18]
Mezeray. Abr. Chr., tom. 4, p. 720. Laval, volume 1, p. 107.
[19]
Lava1, volume 1, pp. 109,110.
[20]
Beza, tom. 1, pp. 122,123.
[21]
Daytin, lib. 1, pp. 17,18. Laval, volume 1, p. 142.
[22]
Beza, tom. 1, p. 124.
CHAPTER 3
[1]
Flor. de Reemond, Hist. de la Naissance, etc., de l’Heresie de ce Siecle, lib. 7, p.
931.
[2]
Flor. de Raemond, lib. 7, p. 864.
[3]
Beta, tom. 1, p. 124.
[4]
Laval, volume 1, p. 146. Beza, tom. i., p. 125.
[5]
Beza, tom. 1, p. 135.
[6]
Beza, tom. 1, p. 108.
[7]
Lava,l, volume 1, p. 149.
[8]
Laval, volume 1, pp. 150-152 - ex Vincent, Recherchos sur les Commencements de la Ref a< la Rochelle.
[9]
Beza, tom. 1, p. 109.
[10]
Felice, volume 1, p. 70.
[11]
Beza, tom. 1, pp. 109-118. Laval, volume 1, pp. 118-132.
[12]
Beza, tom. 1, pp. 118-121. Laval, volume 1, pp. 132-139.
227

[13]
Synodicon in Gallia Reformata, Introduction, 5, 6; Lond., 1692.
CHAPTER 4
[1]
Davilaj Hist. del. Guer. Civ. Franc., p. 20.
[2]
Davila, p. 19.
[3]
Davila, pp. 7,8.
[4]
Maimbourg, livr. 2, p. 123. Laval, volume 1, p. 170.
[5]
Ibid., livr. 2, p. 124. Laval, volume 1, p. 171.
[6]
Fe1ice, volume 1, p. 83.
[7]
Brantome, tom. 3, p. 204.
CHAPTER 5
[1]
Beza, livr. 3, p. 133.
[2]
Maimbourg, livr. 2, p. 121.
[3]
Beza, livr. 3, p. 156. Laval, volume 1, pp. 176-181.
[4]
Laval, volume 1, pp. 194,195.
[5]
Laval, volume 1, pp. 193,194.
[6]
Felice, volume 1, p. 91.
[7]
Beza, livr. 1, p. 145.
[8]
Ibid., livr. 1, p. 146. Laval, volume 1, p. 198.
[9]
Beza, livr. 1, p. 147.
[10]
Laval, volume 1, p. 200. Fe1ice, volume 1, p. 91.
[11]
Fe1ice, volume 1, p. 91.
[12]
Davila, livr. 1, p. 33. With Davila on this point agree Pasquier, De Thou, and
D’Aubigne.
[13]
Bungener, Calvin’s Life, etc., p. 304; Calvin’s Letters, 4. 107.
[14]
Davila, livr. 1, p. 35.
[15]
Ibid., livr. 1, p. 36. Laval, volume 1, p. 223.
[16]
Laval, volume 1, p. 222.
228

[17]
Laval, volume 1, p. 226.
[18]
Guizot, volume 3, pp. 302,303.
[19]
Laval, volume 1, p. 234. Davila, lib. 1, p. 40.
[20]
Beza, livr. 3, pp. 162-166. Laval, volume 1, p. 236.
[21]
Revelation 16.
[22]
Beza, livr. 3, pp. 183,184.
[23]
Davila, livr. 2, pp. 47,48.
[24]
Beza, livr. 3, pp. 220-222.
[25]
Laval, volume 1, pp. 318,319.
[26]
Beza, livr. 3, p. 249.
[27]
Laval, volume 1, p. 338.
CHAPTER 6
[1]
The origin of this word has been much discussed and variously determined. In both France and Geneva the Protestants were called Huguenots. Laval tells us that each city in France had a word to denominate a bugbear, or hobgoblin. At Tours they had their King Hugo, who used, they said, every night to ride through the uninhabited places within and without the walls, and carry off those he met. And as the Protestants of Tours used to resort to these places at night to hold their meetings, they were here first of all in France called Huguenots. Beza, De Thou, and Pasquier agree in this etymology of the word. Others, and with more probability, derive it from the German word Eidgenossen, which the French corrupt into Eignots, and which signifies sworn confederates. It strengthens this supposition that the term was first of all applied to the sworn confederates of liberty in Geneva. Of this opinion are Maimbourg and Voltaire.
[2]
See Laval, for report of the speeches in the States-General (volume 1, pp. 384-
424).
[3]
Laval, volume 1, p. 482.
[4]
Ibid. volume 1, pp. 484,485.
[5]
Fynes Moryson, Itinerary, part 1, p. 181: Lond., 1617.
[6]
See very lengthened accounts of the debates and whole proceedings of this
Conference in Beza’s Histoire des Eglises Reformees au Royaume de France, tom. 1, pp. 308-390; Lille, 1841; and Laval’s History of the Reformation in France, volume 1, pp. 482-587; Lond., 1737.
[7]
The important part played by colporteurs in the evangelization of France is attested by an edict of Francis II, 1559, in which he attributes the troubles of his
229

kingdom to “certain preachers from Geneva,” and also to “the malicious dispersion of condemned books brought from thence, which had infected those of the populace who, through want of knowledge and judgment, were unable to discern doctrines.”
(Memoires de Conde, tom. 1, p. 9; Londres, 1743.)
CHAPTER 7
[1]
(Ewvres Completes de Bernard Palissy, par Paul-Antoine, Recepte Veritable, p.
108; Paris, 1844.
[2]
Lava1, volume 1, p. 604.
[3]
Davila, lib. 2, p. 78.
[4]
Laval, volume 1, p. 623. Fe1ice, volume 1, pp. 139,140. Bayle, Dict., art. Hopital, note 45.
[5]
Davila, lib. 2, p. 80. Felice, volume 2, p. 146.
[6]
Laval, volume 1, p. 625.
[7]
Davila, lib. 3, p. 86.
[8]
Crespin, Hist. des Martyrs, livr. 8, p. 615; Geneve, 1619.
[9]
Thaunus, Hist., lib. 29, p. 78.
[10]
Fe1ice, volume 1, p. 151.
[11]
Thaunus, Hist., lib. 29, p. 78.
[12]
Crespin, livr., 8, p. 616.
[13]
Fe1ice, volume 1, p. 153.
[14]
Laval, volume 1, p. 34.
[15]
Laval, volume 2, pp. 57,58.
[16]
Felice, volume 1, pp. 174-176.
[17]
Laval, volume 2, p. 42.
[18]
Memoires de Conde, tom. 1, p. 89.
[19]
Felice, volume 1, p. 163.
[20]
Ibid.
[21]
The terrible array of these edicts and outrages may be seen in Memoires de
Conde, tom. 1, pp. 70-100.
[22]
Agrippa d’Aubigne, Univ. Hist., tom. 1, lib. 3, cap. 2.
230

CHAPTER 8
[1]
Laval, volume 2. p. 49.
[2]
Memoirs of Castlenau; Le Labereaur’s Additions-apud Laval, volume 2, pp. 59-
64.
[3]
Gaberel, Histoire de l’Eglise de Geneve, tom. 1, pp. 352-354.
[4]
Laval, volume 1, p. 64.
[5]
Davila, lib. 3, p. 93. Mem. de Conde volume 3, pp. 222,319.
[6]
Laval, volume 2, pp. 71,72.
CHAPTER 9
[1]
Laval, volume 2, pp. 77,86.
[2]
It is a curious fact that the Franco-German war of 1870 divided France almost exactly as the first Huguenot war had done. The Loire became the boundary of the
German conquests to the south, and the region of France beyond that river remained almost untouched by the German armies: the provinces that rallied round the
Triumvirate in 1562, to fight the battle of Romanism, were exactly those that bore the brunt of the German arms in the campaign of 1870.
[3]
Felice, volume 1, p. 161.
[4]
Ibid. p. 162. Laval, volume 2, pp. 114,115.
[5]
Fe1ice, volume 1, p. 172.
[6]
Davila, lib. 3, p. 105.
[7]
Laval, volume 2, p. 171.
[8]
Mem. de Conde, tom. 1, p. 97.
[9]
Laval, volume 2, p. 194. Fe1ice, volume 1, p. 165.
[10]
Laval, volume 2, p. 182.
[11]
Brantome, volume 3, p. 112. Laval,volume 2, p. 221. Brown-ing, Hist. of the
Huguenots, volume 1, p. 151; Lond., 1829.
[12]
Laval, volume 2, p. 225.
[13]
Ibid., volume 2, p. 224. Guizot, volume 3, p. 335.
[14]
Laval, volume 2, p. 234.
[15]
Felice, volume 1, p. 166.
231

[16]
Laval, volume 2, pp. 237, 238.
[17]
Mem. de Conde, tom. 1, p. 125.
[18]
Guizot, volume 3, p. 339.
[19]
Thaun., Hist., lib. 34, p. 234. Laval, volume 2, p. 235.
[20]
Laval, volume 2, p. 255.
[21]
Fe1ice, volume 1. p. 169.
CHAPTER 10
[1]
Davila, lib. 3, p. 147.
[2]
This chateau has a special and dreadful interest, and as the Author had an opportunity on his way to Spain, in 1869, to examine it, he may here be permitted to sketch the appearance of its exterior. It is situated on a low mound immediately adjoining the city ramparts, hard by the little harbour on which it looks down. The basement storey is loopholed for cannon and musketry, and the upper part is simply a two-story house in the style of the French chateau of the period, with two rows of small windows, with their white jalousies, and a roof of rusty brown tiles. The front is ornamented with two terminating round towers: the whole edifice being what doubtless Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, was in the days of Queen Mary Stuart - that is, a quadrangular building with a castellated front. The place is now a barrack, but the
French sentinel at the gate kindly gives permission for the visitor to inspect the interior. It is a small paved court, having a well in the centre, shaded by two tall trees, while portions of the wall are clothed with a vine and a few flowering shrubs. Such is the aspect of this old house, neglected now, and abandoned to the occupancy of soldiers, but which in its time has received many a crowned head, and whose chief claim to glory or infamy must lie in this - that it is linked for ever with one of the greatest crimes of an age of great crimes.
[3]
De Thou, livr. 37 (volume 5, p. 35).
[4]
Davila, lib. 3, p. 145.
[5]
Ibid., lib. 3, p. 146.
[6]
Mem. de Tavannes, p. 282.
[7]
Maimbourg, Hist. du Calvinisme, livr. 5, p. 354.
CHAPTER 11
[1]
Davila, lib. 4, p. 168.
[2]
Ibid, lib. 4, pp. 173-175. Mezeray, tom. 5, p. 104.
[3]
Vie de Coliqny, p. 346. Davila, lib. 4, p. 193. Guizot, tom. 3, p. 353.
232

[4]
Davila, lib. 4, p. 196.
[5]
Ibid., lib. 4, p. 211.
CHAPTER 12
[1]
Davila, lib. 5, pp. 243,244.
[2]
Fe1ice, volume 1, p. 193.
[3]
Davila, lib. v., p. 253.
[4]
Cominciarono ad adoporarsi le machine destinate nell’ animo del Re, e della Reina condurre nella fete i principali Ugonotti.” (Davila, lib. 5, p. 254.)
[5]
Maimbourg, Hist. du Calvinisme, lib. 6, p. 453.
[6]
Felice, volume 1, pp. 195,196.
CHAPTER 13
[1]
Gaberel, volume 2, p. 311.
[2]
De Vita et Rebus Gestis Pii V, Pont. Maz. Auctore Io Antonio Gabutio,
Novariensi Presbytero Congregationis Clericorum Regularium S. Pauli. Lib. 1, p. 5;
Rome, 1605.
[3]
Ibid., lib. 1, p. 7.
[4]
Ibid., lib. 1, p. 8.
[5]
Gabutius, Vita Pii V, lib. 1, cap. 5.
[6]
Ibid., lib. 6, cap. 13-17.
[7]
Epp. Pii V a Goubau. The letters of Pius V were published at Antwerp in 1640, by
Francis Goubau, Secretary to the Spanish Embassy at Rome.
[8]
Epp. Pii V a Goubau. This letter is dated 28th March, 1569.
[9]
“Ad internecionem usque.”
[10]
“Deletis omnibus.”
[11]
Edit. Goubau, livr. 3, p. 136.
[12]
These letters are dated 13th April, 1569.
[13]
Adriani (continuator of Guicciardini) drew his information from the Journal of
Cosmo de Medici, who died in 1574. (Guizot, volume 3, p. 376.)
[14]
Memoires de Tavannes, p. 282.
233

[15]
Guizot, volume 3, p. 376. Noue, Discours Polit. et Milit., p. 65.
[16]
Guizot, volume 3, pp. 376,377.
CHAPTER 14
[1]
Davila, lib. 5, p. 254.
[2]
Memoires de Sully, tom. 1, livr. 1, p. 28; Londres, 1752.
[3]
Davila, lib. 5, p. 262.
[4]
Davila, lib. 5, p. 266. Davila says that she died on the fourth day. Sully says, “le cinquieme jour de sa maladie,” and that the reputed poisoner was a Florentine named
Rene. perfumer to the Queen-mother. (Memoires, tom. 1, livr. 1, p. 53.)
[5]
Sully, tom. 1, livr. 1, p. 36.
[6]
Guizot, volume 3, p. 380.
[7]
Gabutius, Vita Pii V, lib. 4, cap. 10, p. 150; Romae, 1605.
[8]
Lettr. d’Ossat a Roma, 1599. Besides the letters of Cardinal d’Ossat, ambassador of Henry IV at Rome, which place the facts given in the text beyond all reasonable doubt, there is also the work of Camillo Capilupi, published at Rome in October,
1572, entitled, Lo Stratagema di Carolo IX, Re di Francia, contra gli Ugonotti rebelli di Dio et suoi: descritto dal Signor Camillo Capilupi. See also Mendham. Life of Pius
V, pp. 184-187; Lond., 1832.
[9]
Guizot, volume 3, p. 383.
[10]
Sully, tom. 1, livr. 1, pp. 37,38.
[11]
The Abbe Anquetil was the first, or among the first, to propound this theory of the massacre in the interests of the Church of Rome. He lays the blame entirely on
Catherine, who was alarmed at the confidence her son placed in the admiral. The same theory has since been elaborately set forth by others, especially by the historian
Lingard. The main evidence on which it rests is the statement of the Duke of Anjou to his physician Miron, on his journey to Poland, which first appeared in the Memoires d’Etat de Villeroy. That statement is exceedingly apocryphal. There is no proof that it ever was made by Anjou. The same is to be said of the reported conversation of
Charles IX with his mother on their return from visiting Coligny. It is so improbable that we can not believe it. Opposed to these we have the clear and decided testimony of all contemporary historians, Popish and Protestant, confirmed by a hundred facts.
The interior mechanism of the plot is shrouded in mystery, but the result establishes premeditation. The several parts of this plan all coincide: each piece falls into its place, each actor does his part, and the one end aimed at is effected, so that we no more can doubt pre-arrangement than, to use Paley’s illustration, we can doubt design when we see a watch. If farther it is asked, Who is the arranger in this case? the argument of Cui bono? leaves only one answer possible.
234

CHAPTER 15
[1]
Sully, tom. 1, livr. 1, p. 43.
[2]
Gulzot, volume 3, p. 378.
[3]
Margaret is thought to have had a preference for the young Duke of Guise.
[4]
Platina, Vit. Sore. Pont., p. 300; Venetia, 1600. Both Platina and Gabutius have given us lives of Pius V; they are little else than a record of battles and bloodshed.
[5]
Sully, tom. 1, livr. 1, p. 54.
[6]
Brantome, volume 8, p. 184.
[7]
Davila, lib. 5, p. 269.
[8]
Maimbourg says that the former occupants were turned out to make room for the new-comers. (Hist. de Calvinisme, livr. 6, p. 469.)
[9]
Davila, livr. 5, p. 270. Mezeray.
[10]
Ag. d’Aubigne, Mem., p. 30.
[11]
Maimbourg, Livr. 6, p. 471
[12]
Davila, lib. 5, p. 271.
[13]
Perefixe, Hist. de Henri le Grand - Brantome, volume 1, p. 261.
CHAPTER 16
[1]
Maimbourg, livr. 6, p. 472.
[2]
De Thou, livr. 52.
[3]
Villeroy, volume 2, p. 88.
[4]
Sully, Memoires. tom. 1, livr. 1, p. 62.
[5]
Davila, Maimbourg, De Thou, and others, all agree in these facts. - “After having been subjected, in the course of three centuries, at one time to oblivion, and at others to diverse transferences, these sad relics of a great man, a great Christian, and a great patriot have been resting for the last two-and-twenty years in the very Castle of
Chatillon-sur-Loing, his ancestors’ own domain having once more become the propertyof a relative of his family, the Duke of Luxembourg.” (Guizot, volume 3, p.
398; Lond., 1874.)
[6]
Davila, lib. 5, pp. 272,273.
[7]
Voltaire states in one of the notes to the Henriade, that he heard the Marquis de
Tesse say that he had known an old man of ninety, who in his youth had acted as page to Charles IX, and Ioaded the carbine with which he shot his Protestant subjects.
235

[8]
Maimbourg, livr. 6, p. 478. Brantome, livr. 9, p. 427. - The arquebus is preserved in the museum of the Louvre. Two hundred and twenty years after the St.
Bartholomew, Mirabeau brought it out and pointed it at the throne of Louis XVI -
“visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children.”
[9]
Sully, tom. 1, livr,
[10]
Maimtmurg, livr. 6, p. 485.
[11]
Guizot, vol. 3, p. 405.
[12]
Sully, livr. 1, p. 74. De Thou, livr. 52,55.
[13]
Fenelon’s Despatches - apud Carte.
[14]
Gaberel, tom. 2, pp, 321,322.
[15]
McCrie, Life of Knox, vol. 2, p. 217.
[16]
De Thou informs us that the Cardinal of Lorraine, at that time in Rome, gave the messenger a thousand gold crowns.
[17]
Consiliorum ad rem datorum. The Author’s authority for this statement is a book in the Bodleian Library which contains an official account of the “Order of Solemn
Procession made by the Sovereign Pontiff in the Eternal City of Rome, for the most happy destruction of the Huguenot party.” The book was printed “At Rome by the heirs of Antonio Blado, printers to the Chamber, 1572.”
[18]
When the Author was in the Library of the Vatican a few years ago, he observed that the inscriptions below Vasari’s frescoes had been removed. Other travellers have observed the same thing. On that account, the Author has thought right to give them in the text.
[19]
“Gaspar Coligny, the Admiral, is carried home wounded. In the Pontificate of
Gregory XIII, 1572.”
[20]
“The slaughter of Coligny and his companions.”
[21]
“The king approves Coligny’s slaughter.”
[22]
“The slaughter of the Huguenots, 1572.” - The group before the exterminating angel consists of six figures; of which two are dead warriors, the third is dying, the fourth is trying to make his escape, a woman in the background is holding up her hands in an attitude of horror, and a figure draped as a priest is looking on. The letters
F.P. are probably the initials of the artist, Frederic Bonzagna, called “Parmanensis,” from his being a native of Parma.
CHAPTER 17
[1]
See Laval, vol. 3, pp. 479-481.
[2]
Davila, lib. 5.
236

[3]
Maimbourg, lib. 6, p. 489.
[4]
Davila, lib, 5.
[5]
EXPLANATION OF THE MEDALS.
1. St. Bartholomew Medal. (Described in text, p. 606.) 2. Hercules and the Hydra.
Hercules, who represents Charles IX, says, Ne ferrum temnat simul ignibus obstoviz., “If he does not fear the sword I will meet him with fire.” The hydra symbolises heresy, which, condemning the sword of justice, is to be assailed by war and the stake. 3. Hercules and the Columns. Hercules bore two columns plucked from the ground to be carried farther, even to the Indies; hence the words, Plus ultra - “Yet farther.” Hence the medal in honour of Charles IX with the motto, “He shall be greater than Hercules.” 4. Charles IX is seen on his throne; in his left hand the scepter of justice, in his right a sword twined round with palm, in sign of victory. Some heads and bodies lie at his feet. Around is the motto, “Valor against rebels.”
Copies of these medals are in the possession of C. P. Stewart, Esq, M.A., who has kindly permitted engravings to be made of them for this work.
[6]
“Mourut de chagrin et de langueur en la fleur de son age.” (Maimbourg, lib. 6, p.
490.)
CHAPTER 18
[1]
Laval, vol. 4, p. 530.
[2]
Inventaire des Meubles de Catherine de Medicis. Par Edmond Bonnaffe Pages 3,4.
Paris, 1874. (From old MS. in Bib. Nationale.)
CHAPTER 19
[1]
It is scarcely necessary to remind our readers that this battle formed the subject of
Lord Macaulay’s well-known ballad-song of the Huguenots.
[2]
“Le saut perilleux.” (Mem. de Sully, tom. 2, livr. 5, p. 234, footnote.)
[3]
Mem. de Sully, tom. 2, livr. 5, p. 239.
[4]
Mem. de Sully, tom. 3, livr. 10, pp. 204,353.
[5]
P. de L’Estoile, apud Mem. de Sully, tom. 7, pp. 406,407.
[6]
L’Estoile, Mathieu, Perefixe, etc. - apud Mem. de Sully, tom. 7, pp, 404-412.
Malherbe, apud Guizot, vol. 3, pp. 623,624.
[7]
Mem. de Sully, tom. 7, p. 418.
237