CATHARINE DE MEDICI AND THE GUISES.

257 of sending her back to Italy. She had to pay assiduous court to the mistresses of her father-in-law and her husband. Even after the birth of her children and after her husband ascended the throne, she did not escape from her humiliating position. She was dependent upon the good offices of Diana of Poitiers, Henry's mistress, for the maintenance of relations with her husband, whose repugnance to her was partly founded on physical peculiarities, which were derived from her profligate father and which entailed a diseased constitution upon her children.1 Accustomed from early childhood to hide her thoughts and feelings; without conscience and almost without a heart; caring little for religion except to hate its restraints, Catharine had nursed her dream of ambition in secret.2 But the fact that Francis was legally of age, though practically in his minority, disappointed her hope. It immediately appeared that the young King was entirely under the control of the family of Guise. Claude of Guise had been a wealthy and prominent nobleman of Lorraine, who had distinguished himself at Marignano, and in the subsequent contests with Charles V. Two of his sons, Francis, Duke of Guise, and Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, had acquired great power under Henry II.: the Duke as a military leader, especially by the successful defense of Metz and the taking of Calais; and the Cardinal as Confessor of the King, whose conscience, Beza says, he carried in his sleeve. Their sister had married James V. of Scotland; and her daughter, Mary Stuart, who was to play so prominent a part in the history of the age, was wedded to the youthful King, Francis II. He was weak in mind and body, and it was not difficult for the Cardinal and the Duke, both of them aspiring and adroit

1 Michelet, Guerres de Religion, p. 43.

2 Anquetil strives to paint Catharine, in some points, in a less unfavorable light. L'Esprit de la Ligue, i. 54. She is characterized by the Duc d'Aumale as being "without affections, without principles, and without scruples." History of the Princes of Condé, i. 86.

men, with the aid of the vigorous and beautiful young Queen, to maintain a complete ascendency over him. The Cardinal was supreme in the affairs of State, the Duke in the military department. It was an association of the soldier and the diplomatist, the lion and the fox, for their common aggrandizement. The Guises set themselves up as the champions of the old religion, although they at first adopted the policy of withstanding Charles V. through an alliance with the Pope. They had large hopes of acquiring power in Italy, and assumed to inherit the claim of the house of Anjou to Naples. On the accession of Francis their first step was to induce the King to give a courteous dismissal to the Grand Constable, Montmorenci, who, with his numerous relatives, had been the rivals of the Guises and had shared with them the offices and honors of the kingdom. It was by the support of Diana of Poitiers, one of whose daughters had married their brother, that the Guises were enabled first to make themselves the equals and then the superiors of Montmorenci, whom they greatly outstripped in political sagacity.1

It was not to be expected that the great nobles of France would quietly see the control of the government practically usurped by persons whom they considered upstarts, who had seized on places that did not belong to them by the laws and customs of the realm. The opposition to the Guises centered in two families, the houses of Bourbon and Chatillon. The three brothers of the former house were princes of the blood, being descended by a collateral line from Louis IX. Anthony of Vendome, the eldest, who by his marriage with Jeanne d'Albret, the daughter of Margaret, wore the title of King of Navarre, had been moved to take the side of the Protestants, but was a man of weak and vacillating character. He had no loftier hope than to get back from Spain his

1 Henri Martin, viii. 362.

THE HUGUENOTS A POLITICAL PARTY.

259

principality of Navarre, or to provide himself with an equivalent dominion elsewhere. The second brother, Charles, the Cardinal of Rouen, was of a similar temperament. The third, Louis, Prince of Condé, was a brave man, not without noble qualities, but rash in counsel, and not proof against the enticements of sensual pleasure. The Protestant wives of these men, the Queen of Navarre and the Princess of Condé, a niece of the Constable, had more firmness of religious conviction than their husbands. The three brothers of the house of Chatillon, sons of Louisa of Montmorenci, the sister of the Constable, were men of a nobler make. These were Odet, Cardinal of Chatillon, Admiral Coligny, and Dandelot, Colonel of the Cisalpine infantry. Coligny had acquired great credit by introducing strict discipline into the French infantry, and by valor at St. Quentin and elsewhere. In all the qualities of mind and character that constitute human greatness, he was without a peer. His attachment to the Protestant cause was sincere and immovable.

That the Bourbons and the great nobles who were connected with them should seek the support of the persecuted Calvinists, and that the latter, in turn, should seek for deliverance through them, was natural. The Guises were virtual usurpers, who had taken the station that belonged to the princes of the blood, and, at the same time, were persecutors. The nobles, their antagonists, and their Protestant co-religionists had a common cause. There was a union of political and religious motives to bind them all together. If political considerations had a governing weight with Anthony of Navarre and some other leaders, this was the misfortune, and a heavy misfortune it proved, of the Huguenots; but it was not their fault. While it is vain to ignore the influence of political aspirations, it is a greater error of some writers, like Davila, to ascribe the whole movement of the Huguenot 1 Ranke, i. 154.

leaders to motives of this character. There was on their part a thorough opposition to the cruel persecution of the Calvinists, and an attachment to their cause, which, if it was inconstant in some cases, proved in others a profound and growing conviction, such as no terrors and no sacrifices could weaken.

2

Calvin, like the Lutheran reformers, preached the doctrine of obedience to rulers, and uncomplaining submission to suffering and death. For forty years the unoffending Huguenots had acted on this principle and submitted to indescribable indignities and cruelties, inflicted often by men who in their own daily lives violated every commandment of the decalogue. But even Calvin held that Christians might lawfully take up arms, under authorized leaders, to overthrow usurpation. We shall see, moreover, that it was the unchecked atrocities, not of magistrates, but of their subjects, acting without color of law, that kindled the flames of civil war. But in France, as in Germany, during this period, the reluctance of the Protestants to abandon the ground of passive resistance and to rise against their oppressors, the indecision of the Protestants on this question, more than once cost them dear.

The conspiracy of Amboise was a plot, of which a French gentleman, La Renaudie, was the most active contriver, to dispossess the Guises of their position by force and to

1 Davila (Storia delle Guerre Civili di Francia) describes a formal meeting in Vendome, at which Condé and others advocated an open war, but Coligny persuaded them to adopt a more crafty policy. Davila makes the conspiracy of Amboise the result of this conference. But it is not credible that such a conference was ever held. See the searching criticism of Davila by Ranke,

Franz. Geschichte, v. 3 seq.

2 See Henry, iii. 548, and Beil., p. 154 seq. Speaking of the counsel which he gave in reference to the Amboise conspiracy, Calvin says: "Cependant les lamentations estoyent grandes de l'inhumanité quon exerçoit pour abolir la religion: mesme d'heure en heure on attendoit une horrible boucherie, pour exterminer tous les povres fideles." He says, that he replied, that if a single drop of blood were shed, rivers of blood would flow over Europe; moreover, that it is better "for us all to perish a hundred times, than that the name of the adherents of the Gospel should be exposed to such opprobrium."

THE EDICT OF ROMORANTIN.

261

place the control of the government in the hands of the princes of the blood. Condé appears to have been privy to it. Coligny refused to take part in it; Calvin tried to dissuade La Renaudie from executing his project, which the Reformer sternly disapproved, unless the princes of the blood, not Condé alone, but the first of them in rank, were to sanction it, and Parliament were to join with them. The Guises were forewarned and forearmed, and took a savage revenge, not only upon the conspirators, but upon a great number of innocent Protestants, whom the conspirators had invited to the court to present their petitions, but who had no further complicity in the undertaking (1560).

The commotion of which this abortive scheme was an impressive sign, had the effect to moderate for the moment the policy of the Cardinal. The prisons were opened and the Protestants set at liberty. The Edict of Romorantin, in 1560, still forbade all Protestant assemblies for worship, but proceedings against individuals on account of their faith were to be dropped. The tares, it was said, had become too strong to be eradicated from the field. The Protestants made an appeal for liberty to meet together for worship. Their petition was boldly

1 See Calvin's letter, cited above, on the subject (April 16, 1561), in Henry, iii. 21; Beil., p. 153. There can be no doubt that La Renaudie represented Condé to be the silent leader of the enterprise. That he was is generally assumed, and probably with truth. Henri Martin, viii. 34 seq. Sismondi, Histoire des Français, xviii. 132. Duc d'Aumale, History of the Princes of Condé. i. 56. It is so stated by Beza, Histoire d'Églises Réf., i. 250. Ranke says: "Mit historischer Bestimmtheit lässt sich selbst nicht sagen ob La Renaudie sich mit Condé verabredet hatte." (i. 147.) Ranke adverts to the denial of Condé; but he only denied that he had been a party in any enterprise against the King or the State. He would not have admitted that the Conspiracy of Amboise was directed against either. See Mrs. Marsh's interesting work, The Prot. Ref. in France (London, 1847), i. 142, n. Brantôme, who rises to something like enthusiasm in praising the virtues of Coligny, says that the conspirators were prevented by his known probity and sense of honor from imparting to him their Les Hommes Illustres, l. III. xx. (M. l'Admiral de Chastillon). Brantome compares Coligny and Guise, as lapidaries (he says) place together two diamonds of exquisite beauty.

secret.