THE COLLOQUY AT POISSY.

265 of Saint André, formed the Triumvirate with which the feeble King of Navarre was unequally matched. Strife arose in the Council, between the two parties. It was arranged, much to the joy of the Protestants, that a great religious conference should be held at Poissy to see if the two parties could come to an agreement. In this measure the Cardinal of Lorraine concurred, in the expectation that he should be able to bring out the differences between the Calvinists and the Lutherans, and deprive the former of their natural allies in the event of a religious war, which he probably anticipated. The elections from the nobility and the third estate for the States General, which first assembled, in 1561, at Pontoise, and afterwards adjourned to Poissy, were extremely unfavorable to the Guise faction. This meeting was really a crisis in the history of France. The noblesse and the commonalty were united against the clergy, and presented measures of constitutional reform of a startling character, such, had they been carried through, as would have brought the French system of government into a striking resemblance to that of England, would have carried the nation along in one path, and prevented the civil wars. The Pope, the clergy, and the King of Spain, united in efforts to stem the prevailing current towards compromise or peace between the opposing confessions. But the religious colloquy was held. It was in the autumn of 1561. In the great Refectory of the Benedictines at Poissy, the young King sat in the midst of the aristocracy of France Catharine de Medici, the King of Navarre, and the Prince of Condé, the great lords and ladies of the Court, cardinals, bishops, and abbots, doctors of the Sorbonne, and a numerous company of lesser nobles, with their wives and daughters. In this brilliant concourse, Theodore Beza appeared at the head of the preachers and elders deputed by the Huguenots to represent their cause, and

1 Ranke, i. 164, 165. Henri Martin, ix. 93.

eloquently set forth the doctrines of the party of reform. Beza was a man of high birth, of prepossessing appearance, of graceful and polished manners, who was at his ease in the society of the court, and, prior to the public conference, won the respect and favor of many of his auditors by his attractiveness in social intercourse.1 It was something gained for Protestantism, when such a man, with whom there could be no reluctance to associate on equal terms, was seen to come forward in its defense. But Beza, besides being an impressive speaker, was an erudite scholar, with his learning so perfectly at command, that he could not be perplexed by his adversaries. one time there was some prospect of an agreement, even in a general definition of the Eucharist. The final result of the interviews, public and private, that took place in connection with the conference, was to convince both parties that no compromise on the points of theological difference was practicable.

At

On the 17th of January, 1562, was issued the important Edict of St. Germain. It gave up the policy, which had been pursued for forty years, of extirpating religious dissent. It granted measure of toleration. The Protestants were to surrender churches of which they had taken possession and were to build no more. On the other hand, they might, until further order should be taken, hold their religious meetings outside of the walls of cities, by daylight, without arms in their hands; and their meetings were to be protected by the police. They were to pay regard to the festival days of the Catholic Church, were to assemble no consistories or synods without permission, were not to enter into any military organization or levy taxes upon one another, and were to teach according to the Scriptures, without insulting the mass and other Catholic institutions. It was a restricted toleration,

1 Beza's letter to Calvin (August 25, 1561), describing his introduction to the Court, is given by the Duc d'Aumale, i. App. p. 271.

BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WARS.

267

but the practice had been to give to edicts of this nature some latitude of construction. Calvin rejoiced in it, and the Calvinists felt that under it they could convert the nation to the Protestant faith. But the edict was not long observed. The papal legate and the Catholic chiefs succeeded in inducing the King of Navarre to abandon the Protestant cause. He was told that the Pope would annul his marriage, and that he could then wed Mary, the young Queen of Scotland. He was not base enough to countenance this proposal. The throne of Sardinia was held out to him as a compensation for the loss of Navarre. The only hope for the success of the tolerant policy of L'Hospital had rested in the union of the Queen Mother with the princes of the blood; and this union was now broken.

The leaders of the Catholic party were resolved not to acquiesce in a policy of toleration, not to give up the idea of obtaining uniformity by coercion. The massacre of Vassy was the event that occasioned war. On Sunday morning, the first of March, 1562, the Duke of Guise arrived at the village of Vassy on his way to Paris, at the head of a retinue of several hundred nobles and soldiers. The Protestants were holding their religious service in a spacious barn. Thither he sent some of his men, who provoked a conflict. The rest of the troop came to the spot, tore off the door, and with guns and sabres slaughtered and wounded a large number of the unarmed, defenseless congregation, and plundered their houses. Guise looked on and did not hinder the work. In fact, he had come to the town with the design of putting an end to the Huguenot worship there.2 Their preacher, bleeding from his wounds, he carried off as a prisoner. The Duke was received, especially in Paris, with acclamations. The Protestants throughout France justly considered his deed a wanton and atrocious violation of the Religious Peace, 1 Duc d'Aumale, i. 88. 2 Henri Martin, ix. 113.

and flew to arms. In every parish a crusade was preached against the Huguenots, and the scenes of cruelty that followed have been styled, by a French historian, the St. Bartholomew of 1562. The Triumvirs seized the persons of the Queen Mother and the King, and, either with or without their consent, conveyed them to Paris, where the whole population were full of hatred to the heretics. Another massacre at Sens, even more cruel than that of Vassy, was the signal for an outburst of iconoclastic fury on the side of the Huguenots, which was attended with a great destruction of monuments of art and the profanation of sepulchres. It was true of the Huguenots that, “less barbarous, in general, than their adversaries, toward men, their rage was implacable against things"- against whatever they considered objects or signs of idolatry.1

Thus began the series of terrible wars, which only terminated with the accession of Henry IV. to the throne. In the devastation which they caused they may be compared to the Thirty Years' War in Germany. France was a prey to religious and political fanaticism. The passions that are always kindled in civil wars were made the more fierce from the religious consecration which was imparted to them. Other nations, as was inevitable, mingled in the frightful contest, and France had well-nigh lost its independence. It must be admitted that the Huguenots acted in self-defense. As we have said, their connection with a political party, whatever evils were incidental to it, was the unavoidable result of the course taken by their antagonists, who attacked at once the Protestant religion and the rights of the princes who professed it. But it was private violence countenanced by the authorities, against which the Huguenots rose in arms. Agrippa d'Aubigné, the Huguenot historian of the sixteenth century, says: "It is to be forever observed, that as long as they put the reformed to death under the forms of

1 Henri Martin, ix. 124.

THE EDICT OF AMBOISE.

269

justice, however iniquitous and cruel it was, they stretched out their necks, but not their hands; but when the public authority, the magistrates, weary of their burnings, threw the knife into the hands of the crowd, and by tumults and great massacres took away the venerable face of justice, and caused neighbor to be slain by neighbor to the sound of trumpets and drums, who could prevent the miserable victims from opposing arm to arm, steel to steel, and from taking the contagion of a just fury from a fury without justice? . . . . Let foreign nations judge whether we or our enemies have the guilt of war upon the forehead." 1

Rouen was captured by the Catholics and sacked. There the King of Navarre, fighting on the Catholic side, received a mortal wound. In the battle of Dreux, the Protestants, led by Coligny and Condé, were worsted, but their power was not broken. Shortly after, the Duke of Guise, who was endeavoring to take Orléans, was assassinated by a Huguenot nobleman. The act was condemned by Calvin, nor had it the sanction of any of the Protestant leaders, however they may have refrained from exerting themselves to hinder it. Coligny declared that he had prevented the execution of similar plots before, that he had no agency in this, but that for the six months. previous, from the time when he had heard that the Duke and his brother, the Cardinal, had formed the design to destroy him and his family, he had ceased to exert himself to save the Duke. A year after the massacre of Vassy, the Edict of Amboise reëstablished peace on terms more favorable to the high nobles on the Protestant side than the preceding edict, but less favorable to the smaller gentry and to the towns, inasmuch as they were allowed but a single place of worship in a district or bailliage. Paris was excepted: there Protestant worship was not to be tolerated. The capital became more and more a

1 Agrippa d'Aubigné. Hist. Universelle (1616-18). G. de Félice, Hist. des Protestants de France, p. 160.