stronghold of Catholic fanaticism. The settlement was negotiated by Condé, but Coligny refused to give his sanction to its provisions, which were most unacceptable to the body of the Protestants, who were confident that better terms might have been made.

This pacification could not be of long endurance. The Huguenots saw from the threatening attitude of the court and the hostile movements of their adversaries that there was no intention to observe it. They anticipated the attack by themselves resorting to arms; a measure which the leaders felt obliged to adopt, though not without grave misgivings. They extorted the Peace of Longjumeau (1568), which, however, reëstablished substantially the Edict of Pacification. Condé's lack of judgment was hardly less conspicuous than his valor in the field.1

Charles IX. was filled with chagrin and indignation at being driven to make an accommodation with his subjects in arms. The bitter animosity of the Catholics through the country was stirred up against the Huguenots. But a few months before, the Duke of Alva had executed Egmont and Horn in the Netherlands. At Bayonne, where Alva had met the Queen Mother and her daughter, Elizabeth of Spain, he had spared no pains to induce the French court to proceed to extreme measures against the Huguenots. But the young King was then averse to the renewal of the war and to a resort to cruel persecution, and the Queen Mother refused to give way to Alva's persuasions. Her aim was to balance the parties against each other, so that neither of them could be in a position to endanger her own power. The words of Alva, however, made a stronger impression on Montpensier, Montluc, and other Catholic nobles. The last conflict, which the Huguenots had begun, had exasperated all who were

1 The Duc d'Aumale, who defends the Edict of Amboise, admits that in this last treaty Condé made a false step, and adds: "It must be allowed that his heart was larger than his intellect." i. 264.

The usual opposite representation is corrected by Ranke, i. 193.

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not of their party. The Catholic counter-reformation was in progress, and Jesuit preachers inflamed the anger of the Catholic population. Philip and Alva renewed their efforts, which were seconded by the Cardinal of Lorraine in the Council. The Huguenots, the king was told, were rebels; if they were not subdued he could not be the ruler of the land. Thus war was once more renewed, under Spanish influence and coöperation. The Huguenots were now in arms to defend their liberties against a perfidious conspiracy. The Prince of Condé and the Admiral Coligny had found safety in Rochelle, the town which often proved the bulwark of the Protestant cause, and more than once saved it from fatal disaster. The Edict of Pacification was annulled. The Huguenots were beaten at Jarnac in 1569, where Condé fell, leaving his name to his eldest son Henry, a youth of seventeen; and the same year they were defeated again at Moncontour. Now Rochelle proved its value to the Protestants, who, under Coligny, successfully defended the city against the victorious enemy.

The

It seems strange that the court should have been inclined to make peace at this time. But the war was not like the former contests, a local one. It was a general war, in which foreign nations were concerned. Huguenots were aided by money from England and troops from Germany. When they had been shut up in Rochelle, where the Queen of Navarre held her court, they fitted out a small fleet which they used with much effect along the coast. It was a characteristic of Coligny that, though often beaten in the field, he was able, after defeat, to keep together his forces and resume hostilities. He was soon strong enough to sally forth from Rochelle and to traverse France at the head of a body of three thousand horse, the most of whom were Germans, and whose progress, especially as it was known that the young princes, Navarre and Condé, were among them, awakened enthu

siasm wherever they appeared. The perseverance of the Huguenots and their continued strength, unexhausted by defeat, constituted one of the arguments for peace. Jealousy of Spain was the other. The ambition of Philip excited alarm among the French. He had a scheme for effecting the liberation of Mary Queen of Scots and of marrying her to Don John of Austria, his half-brother, by which he hoped to bring Scotland, and ultimately England, under Spanish control. He proposed to marry his sister to the young King of France. If these plans should be carried out, England, Scotland, France, and the Netherlands might, like Italy, be made subordinate to Spain. It was felt, moreover, that he was taking part in the war against the Huguenots mainly to promote his selfish interest, and that he rendered less assistance than the enemy gained from their German allies. The court, in 1570, agreed to the treaty of St. Germain, by which the provisions of the Edict of Pacification were revived, and four fortified towns, of which Rochelle was one, were put for two years into the hands of the Huguenots, as a guarantee for their safety and for the fulfillment of the stipulations.

Thus the obstinate refusal to grant a moderate degree of religious liberty led to the necessity of a vastly greater concession, through which the kingdom was divided against itself— another kingdom being, as it were, established within it. Yet it was a measure which the Huguenots, after their experience of the perfidy of the Court, had no alternative but to demand.

The conclusion of this peace with the Huguenots brought upon the European states a political crisis of great moment. It seemed likely that France would take part in a coalition against Philip II. The state of things in the Netherlands at this juncture was favorable for such an alliance. The union of Philip with Venice and with the Pope, and the victory of Lepanto, increased the jealousy with which France and England looked on his ambitious

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designs. It was proposed that the Duke of Anjou, the heir of the French crown, should marry Queen Elizabeth, and, when this negotiation was broken off, that his younger brother, the Duke d'Alençon, should marry her. The Queen Mother was in apparent, and probably, sincere accord with this new policy. The sons of the Constable Montmorenci were then powerful at court, and it was one of them, the Marshal Francis, who suggested the marriage of the youngest daughter of Catharine, Margaret of Valois, to Henry of Navarre. The Queen Mother fell in with the proposal, and the Huguenots were not averse to it. At about the same time Condé was married to a princess of the house of Cleve. So ardent were the hopes of the Protestants that Coligny himself came to the court and was warmly received by Catharine.

He was a man of the purest and loftiest character. On his own estate, he punctually attended, with his family and dependents, the Calvinistic worship; and at each recurrence of the Lord's Supper, he was at pains to heal all quarrels and differences among his people. He entered into the civil wars with the utmost reluctance and sorrow, in obedience to the imperative call of duty, and in compliance with the counsels of his wife, who equaled him in piety and in nobleness of soul. He did not allow the spirit of a patriot to sink in that of a partisan. Notwithstanding that he stood at the head of a powerful · party, and, though a subject, was able to make peace or war, he was broad and disinterested in all his plans. Grave in his deportment, inflexible in his principles, blameless in his morals, with an immutable trust in God, he presents a commanding figure in the midst of the confusion and corruption of the times. It was the hatred of Catharine de Medici to Coligny that led to the massacre of St. Bartholomew. She saw how deeply the King was impressed with his abilities and excellence. Charles IX., sickly in body, like the other sons of Henry II., and

with an unhealthy, unregulated nature-all the bad tendencies of which had been fostered in the base and dissolute society in which he had been reared, and by the influence of his mother, whose supreme purpose was to keep up her own ascendency over him-now felt for the first time the inspiring influence of a man who could awaken in him something of reverence and love. The Queen saw that day by day she was becoming supplanted, simply by the natural impression which Coligny made upon her son. The best hopes were awakened in Coligny's own mind by the almost filial regard with which the King listened to him. He urged most earnestly that war should be declared against Spain, and the King was inclined to take the step. However Catharine might be disposed to prevent Philip from acquiring a power in France that could be dangerous to herself, she was not of a mind to enter into a war against him; a war, too, that must incidentally add to the prosperity of the Huguenots, and confirm the influence of Coligny over the King. Whom would he follow, Catharine or Coligny? Warm words passed between Coligny and the Queen Mother, in the presence of Charles. The Admiral said that the King might be involved in war, even against his will -referring to the conflict in the Netherlands, into which Coligny was urging him to enter. It was pretended afterwards that he had thrown out a threat of rebellion. Catharine determined to destroy him. She called in the aid of the Guises, his implacable enemies, who longed to avenge upon him the assassination of their relative. Her second son, the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry III., on whom she doted and who was equally alarmed at the feeling which the King manifested to Coligny, engaged cordially in the plot. The Duchess of Nemours, the widow of Francis, and the mother of Henry of Guise, willingly aided in devising and carrying out the diabolical scheme. Coligny was wounded by a shot from a