1563. All now set off together to recapture Havre from the English.
The peace, however, satisfied no one; neither Catholics
(because of the rupture of religious unity) nor the parlements;
the pope, the emperor and king of Spain alike protested
against it. Nor yet did it satisfy the Protestants,
who considered its concessions insufficient, above all
Peace of Amboise (1563).
for the people. It was, however, the maximum of
tolerance possible just then, and had to be reverted to; Catherine
and Charles IX. soon saw that the times were not ripe for a
third party, and that to enforce real toleration would require
an absolute power which they did not possess. After three
years the Guises reopened hostilities against Coligny, whom they
accused of having plotted the murder of their chief; while
the Catholics, egged on by the Spaniards, rose against the
Protestants, who had been made uneasy by an interview between
Catherine and her daughter Elizabeth, wife of Philip II. of
Spain, at Bayonne, and by the duke of Alva’s persecutions of
the reformed church of the Netherlands—a daughter-church of
Geneva, like their own. The second civil war began like the
Second civil war.
Peace of Longjumeau.
first with a frustrated attempt to kidnap the king, at
the castle of Montceaux, near Meaux, in September
1567; and with a siege of Paris, the general centre
of Catholicism, in the course of which the constable
de Montmorency was killed at Saint-Denis. Condé, with the
men-at-arms of John Casimir, son of the Count Palatine, tried
to starve out the capital; but once more the defection
of the nobles obliged him to sign a treaty of peace at
Longjumeau on the 23rd of March 1568, by which
the conditions of Amboise were re-established. After
the attempt at Montceaux the Protestants had to be contented
with Charles IX.’s word.
This peace was not of long duration. The fall of Michel de l’Hôpital, who had so often guaranteed the loyalty of the Huguenots, ruined the moderate party (May 1568). Catholic propaganda, revived by the monks and the Jesuits, and backed by the armed confraternities and Third war. by Catherine’s favourite son, the duke of Anjou, now entrusted with a prominent part by the cardinal of Lorraine; Catherine’s complicity in the duke of Alva’s terrible persecution in the Netherlands; and her attempt to capture Coligny and Condé at Noyers all combined to cause a fresh outbreak of hostilities in the west. Thanks to Tavannes, the duke of Anjou gained easy victories at Jarnac over the prince of Condé, who was killed, and at Moncontour over Coligny, who was wounded (March-October 1569); but these successes were rendered fruitless by the jealousy of Charles IX. Allowing the queen of Navarre to shut herself up in La Rochelle, the citadel of the reformers, and the king to loiter over the siege of Saint Jean d’Angély, Coligny pushed boldly forward towards Paris and, having reached Burgundy, defeated the royal army at Arnay-le-duc. Catherine had exhausted all her resources; and having failed in her project of remarrying Philip II. to one of her daughters, and of betrothing Charles IX. to the eldest of the Austrian archduchesses, exasperated also by the presumption of the Lorraine family, who aspired to the marriage of their nephew with Charles IX.’s Peace of St Germain (1570). sister, she signed the peace of St Germain on the 8th of August 1570. This was the culminating point of Protestant liberty; for Coligny exacted and obtained, first, liberty of conscience and of worship, and then, as a guarantee of the king’s word, four fortified places: La Rochelle, a key to the sea; La Charité, in the centre; Cognac and Montauban in the south.
The Guises set aside, Coligny, supported as he was by Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre, now received all Charles IX.’s favour. Catherine de’ Medici, an inveterate matchmaker, and also uneasy at Philip II.’s increasing power, made advances to Jeanne, proposing to marry Coligny and the Netherlands. her own daughter, Marguerite de Valois, to Jeanne’s son, Henry of Navarre, now chief of the Huguenot party. Coligny was a Protestant, but he was a Frenchman before all; and wishing to reconcile all parties in a national struggle, he “trumpeted war” (cornait la guerre) against Spain in the Netherlands—despite the lukewarmness of Elizabeth of England and the Germans, and despite the counter-intrigues of the pope and of Venice. He succeeded in getting French troops sent to the Netherlands, but they suffered defeat. None the less Charles IX. still seemed to see only through the eyes of Coligny; till Catherine, fearing to be supplanted by the latter, dreading the results of the threatened war with Spain, and egged on by a crowd of Italian adventurers in the pay of Spain—men like Gondi and Birague, reared like herself in the political theories and customs of their native land—saw no hope but in the assassination of this rival in her son’s esteem. A murderous attack upon Coligny, who had opposed the candidature of Catherine’s favourite son, the duke of Anjou, for the throne of Poland, having only succeeded in wounding him and in exciting the Calvinist leaders, who were congregated in Paris for the occasion of Marguerite de Valois’ marriage with the king of Navarre, Catherine St Bartholomew, August 24, 1572. and the Guises resolved together to put them all to death. There followed the wholesale massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve, in Paris and in the provinces; a natural consequence of public and private hatreds which had poisoned the entire social organism. This massacre had the effect of preventing the expedition into Flanders, and destroying Francis I.’s policy of alliance with the Protestants against the house of Austria.
Catherine de’ Medici soon perceived that the massacre of St Bartholomew had settled nothing. It had, it is true, dealt a blow to Calvinism just when, owing to the reforms of the council of Trent, the religious ground had been crumbling beneath it. Moreover, within the party The party of the politiques. itself a gulf had been widening between the pastors, supported by the Protestant democracy and the political nobles. The reformers had now no leaders, and their situation seemed as perilous as that of their co-religionists in the Netherlands; while the sieges of La Rochelle and Leiden, the enforced exile of the prince of Orange, and the conversion under pain of death of Henry of Navarre and the prince of Condé, made the common danger more obvious. Salvation came from the very excess of the repressive measures. A third party was once more formed, composed of moderates from the two camps, and it was recruited quite as much by jealousy of the Guises and by ambition as by horror at the massacres. There were the friends of the Montmorency party—Damville at their head; Coligny’s relations; the king of Navarre; Condé; and a prince of the blood, Catherine de’ Medici’s third son, the duke of Alençon, tired of being kept Fourth War. Edict of Boulogne (1573). in the background. This party took shape at the end of the fourth war, followed by the edict of Boulogne (1573), forced from Charles IX. when the Catholics were deprived of their leader by the election of his brother, the duke of Anjou, as king of Poland. A year later the latter succeeded his brother on the throne of France as Henry III. This meant a new lease of power for the queen-mother.
The politiques, as the supporters of religious tolerance and
an energetic repression of faction were called, offered their
alliance to the Huguenots, but these, having formed
themselves, by means of the Protestant Union, into
a sort of republic within the kingdom, hesitated to
Fifth War.
accept. It is, however, easy to bring about an understanding
between people in whom religious fury has been extinguished
either by patriotism or by ambition, like that of the duke of
Alençon, who had now escaped from the Louvre where he had
been confined on account of his intrigues. The compact was
concluded at Millau; Condé becoming a Protestant once more
in order to treat with Damville, Montmorency’s brother. Henry
of Navarre escaped from Paris. The new king, Henry III.,
Henry III.
(1574–1589).
vacillating and vicious, and Catherine herself, eager
for war as she was, had no means of separating the
Protestants and the politiques. Despite the victory
of Guise at Dormans, the agreement between the
duke of Alençon and John Casimir’s German army obliged the
royal party to grant all that the allied forces demanded of them