Henry Martyn Baird

“ All France would be seen armed by two great parties, over which he would have no command, and from which he could exact just as little obedience. But, to ward off so great a danger, a peril impending over him and his entire state, so much ruin, and so many calamities which were in preparation and just at hand, and the murder of so many thousands of men—to avert all these misfortunes, a single thrust of the sword would suffice—the admiral, the head and author of all the civil wars, alone need be put to death. The designs and enterprises of the Huguenots would perish with him ”

“ Tu fais mourir ceux qui conspirent contre toy: et tu vis encore, qui as conspiré contre la couronne de France, contre les biens des veuves et des orphelins, contre le sang des tristes et des innocens! Tu fais profession de prescher de sainteté, toy qui ne connois Dieu que de parole; qui ne tiens la religion chrétienne que comme un masque pour te déguiser; qui fais ordinaire trafic, banque et marchandise d'éveschés et de bénéfices: qui ne vois rien de saint que tu ne souilles, rien de chaste que tu ne violes, rien de bon que tu ne gâtes!... ”

“ So perished a prince even more illustrious for his courage and intrepidity than for his exalted rank—a prince who had conscientiously espoused the reformed faith, and had felt himself constrained by his duty to his God and to his fellow-believers to assert the rights of the oppressed Huguenots against illegal persecution. "Our consolation," wrote Jeanne d'Albret a few weeks later, "is that he died on the true bed of honor, both for body and soul, for the service of his God and his king, and the quiet of his fatherland." ”

“ Doth he suffer himself to be eaten of mice and spiders? He who is the bread of angels and of all the children of God, is he given to us to become the food of animals? Will ye make him who is incorruptible at the right hand of God to be the prey of worms and corruption? Were there no other error than this in your infernal theology, well would ye deserve the fagot! Light then your fires to burn yourselves, not us who refuse to believe in your idols, your new gods, and new Christs that suffer themselves to be eaten indifferently by animals and by you who are no better than animals! ”

“ But Admiral Coligny, rather than the Prince of Condé, was the type of the Huguenot of the sixteenth century—Coligny, the heroic figure that looms up through the mist of the ages and from among the host of meaner men, invested with all the attributes of essential greatness—pious, loyal, truthful, brave, averse to war and bloodshed, slow to accept provocation, resolute only in the purpose to secure for himself and his children the most important among the inalienable prerogatives of manhood, the freedom of professing and practising his religious faith. ”

“ Under Leo the Tenth Germany was lost to the papacy, under Clement the Eighth England had apostatized, and now under Pius the Fourth, a third Pope of the same ill-starred race, France was on the brink of ruin. The king was a boy, without experience and without authority, the council full of discord, the supreme power in the hands of the queen, who, though sagacious, was yet only a woman, and both timid and irresolute. The King of Navarre, while noble and gracious, was a prince of little constancy and limited practice in government. The people were in disorder and manifest division. ”

“ The Guises—even that cruel and cowardly cardinal with hands dripping with the blood of the martyrs of a score of years—were nothing to them, except as impersonations of the spirit of intolerance and persecution. Liberty to worship their God in good conscience was their demand alike after defeats and after successes, under Louis de Bourbon or under Gaspard de Coligny. They did, indeed, sympathize with the first family of the blood, deprived of the position near the throne to which immemorial custom entitled it—and what true Frenchman did not? ”

“ Is it politic, the orator proceeded to ask, for the king to introduce an edict standing in direct contradiction to that by which he has given to his own courts exclusive jurisdiction in the trial of the laity and simple clerks, and thus initiate a conflict of laws? Or has the monarch—by whose authority, as supreme head of justice, the decisions of parliament are rendered, whose name stands at the beginning, and whose seal is affixed to the termination of every writ—the right to cut off an appeal to himself, which his subjects, by reason of their paying tribute, can justly claim in return? ”

“ The prince was no coward. Turning to his little company of followers, he exclaimed: "My friends, true noblesse of France, here is the opportunity we have long wished for in vain! Our God is the God of Battles. He loves to be so called. He always declares Himself for the right, and never fails to succor those who serve Him. He will infallibly protect us, if, after having taken up arms for the liberty of our consciences, we put all our hope in Him. ”

“ The king's three sons—the dauphin, and the Dukes of Orleans and Angoulême—with a fourth prince of the blood—the Duke of Bourbon Vendôme—held the supports of a magnificent canopy of velvet, sprinkled with golden fleurs-de-lis, above the bishop and his sacred charge. Francis himself walked behind him, with a retinue of nobles, officers of government, judges of parliament, and other civilians closing the line. The king was naturally the object of universal observation. ”

“ Excluded from the luxurious capital, the Huguenots were, during a long series of years, to draw their inspiration from a city at the foot of the Alps—a city whose invigorating climate was no less adapted to harden the intellectual and moral constitution than the bodily frame, and where rugged Nature, if she bestowed wealth with no lavish hand, manifested her impartiality by more liberal endowments conferred upon man himself. Geneva henceforth becomes the centre of reformatory activity, of which fact we need no stronger evidence than the severe legislation of France to destroy its influence ”

“ But Navarre, being present, seemed eager to display a neophyte's zeal, and retorted by blaming the Huguenots for going in arms to their places of worship. "True," said Beza, "but arms in the hands of the wise are instruments of peace, and the massacre of Vassy has shown the necessity under which the Protestants were laid." When Navarre exclaimed: "Whoever touches my brother of Guise with the tip of his finger, touches my whole body!" the reformer reminded him, as one whom Antoine had himself brought to France, that the way of justice is God's way, and that kings owe justice to their subjects. ”

“ He assured Francis that the book contained nothing more nor less than the creed for the profession of which so many Frenchmen were being visited with imprisonment, banishment, outlawry, and even fire, and which it was sought to exterminate from the earth. He drew a fearful picture of the calumnies laid to the charge of this devoted people, and of the wretched church of France, already half destroyed, yet still a butt for the rage of its enemies. It was the part of a true king, as the vicegerent of God, to administer justice in a cause so worthy of his consideration. ”

“ Such was the disinterested patriot whom, in the infatuation of their lying fabrications, the murderers of Paris, their hands still reeking with the blood of thousands of women and children incontestably innocent of any crime laid to the charge of their husbands or fathers, pictured as plotting the wholesale assassination of the royal family—even to the very Henry of Navarre whose wedding he had come to honor by his presence—that he might place upon the throne of France that stubborn heretic, the Prince of Condé! ”

“ France the foremost kingdom of Christendom.
The same pursuit of territorial aggrandizement under successive kings extended the domain of the crown, in spite of disaster and temporary losses, until in the sixteenth century France was second to no other country in Europe for power and material resources. United under a single head, and no longer disturbed by the insubordination of the turbulent nobles, lately humbled by the craft of Louis the Eleventh, this kingdom awakened the warm admiration of political judges so shrewd as the diplomatic envoys of the Venetian Republic. ”

“ It is immaterial to the question of the responsibility of the Papal Church, whether the queen mother and the king's ministers were honest, or were Roman Catholics, or, indeed, Christians only in name. If the Pope had for years, by letter and by his accredited agents, been insinuating that the life of a heretic was a thing of little value; if he systematically advocated a war of extermination, and opposed every negotiation for peace, every truce, every edict of pacification that did not look to the annihilation of the Huguenots ”

“ When Francis, in his irritation at the Pope, suggested, on one occasion, to the Nuncio, that he might be compelled to follow the example Henry the Eighth, of England, had set him, and permit the spread of the "Lutheran" religion in France, the astute prelate replied: "Sire, to speak with all frankness, you would be the first to repent your rash step. Your loss would be greater than the Pope's; for a new religion established in the midst of a people involves nothing short of a change of prince." ”

“ It is true that the Huguenots of France were not now in actual warfare with the government; but, that their time would come to be attacked, there was every reason to apprehend. Hence, when the Duke of Alva, in the memorable summer of 1567, set out from Piedmont at the head of ten thousand veterans, to thread his way over the Alps and along the eastern frontiers of France, through Burgundy and Lorraine, to the fated scene of his bloody task in the Netherlands, the Protestants of France saw in this neighboring demonstration a new peril to themselves. ”

“ No, no, none shall be able to separate us from Christ, whatever snares are laid for us, whatever ills our bodies may endure. We know that we have long been like lambs led to the slaughter. Let them, therefore, slay us, let them break us in pieces; for all that, the Lord's dead will not cease to live, and we shall rise in a common resurrection. I am a Christian, yes, I am a Christian. I will cry yet louder, when I die, for the glory of my Lord Jesus Christ! ”

“ Peace was yet far distant—peace, which Coligny preferred a thousand times to his own life, but would not purchase dishonorably by the sacrifice of civil liberty and of the right to worship his God according to the convictions of his heart and conscience. The burden of the defence of the Protestants had appeared sufficiently heavy when Condé, a prince of the blood, was alive to share it with him. ”

“ The grains of truth long since lodged in an arid soil, and apparently destitute of all vitality, had suddenly developed all the energy of life. France to the reformers, whose longing eyes were at length permitted to see this day, was "white unto the harvest," and only the reapers were needed to put forth the sickle and gather the wheat into the garner. There was not a corner of the kingdom where the number of incipient Protestant churches was not considerable. Provence alone contained sixty, whose delegates this year met in a synod at the blood-stained village of Mérindol. ”

“ If my prince wishes to slay me, he can accomplish his will in any part of the realm. As a royal officer, I cannot in honor refuse to comply with the summons of the king, meantime committing myself to the providence of Him who holds in his hand the hearts of kings and princes, and has numbered my years—nay, the very hairs of my head. If I succeed in going in arms to the Low Countries, I hope that I may do signal service, and change hatred into good-will. ”

“ It was not astonishing that the church itself did little to remove the barbarism prevailing among the common people, for, in point of fact, buffoonery, immodesty, and cruelty had intruded into the very ceremonial of religion. Never were there more disgusting exhibitions of the low state of the public morals than when the occurrence of pestilence, drought, or some other signal visitation of the displeasure of heaven induced a clergy scarcely less rude than the laity to institute propitiatory processions. ”

“ Was it at all likely that private citizens would bury in oblivion their former dissensions and abstain from mutual insults, when the monarch officially reminded them that there was one class of his subjects whose past conduct made them objects of grave suspicion? While, therefore, the Huguenots professed themselves ready to give the king all possible assurances of their loyal devotion, they declined to swear to a form that bore on its face the proof that it was composed, not in accordance with Charles's own ideas, but by an enemy of the crown and of public tranquillity. ”

“ Its advocates in vain urged that they had received from a prince of the blood (entitled, by the immemorial custom of the realm, to the first place in the council, in the absence of his brother, the King of Navarre) the promise to present their confession of faith to the young monarch of France, and that thousands would espouse his defence if he were assailed. The reformer saw more clearly than they the rising of the clouds of civil war portending ruin to his native land. "Let but a single drop of blood be shed," said Calvin, "and streams will flow that must inundate France." ”

“ No wonder that the Huguenots, on their side, warned her, with friendly sincerity and frankness, that, should she refuse to [Pg 373] entertain their just demands, the present peace would be only a brief truce, the prelude to a relentless civil war. "We will all die," was their language, "rather than forsake our God and our religion, which we can no more sustain without public exercise than could a body live without food and drink." ”

“ Du Bourg's martyrdom was the most terrible blow the established church had ever received in France. Never had a more disastrous blunder been committed by the Guises, than when they stirred Henry to imprison and try, and Francis to execute, the most virtuous member of the Parisian senate. Such strength of principle in the midst of affliction, such fortitude upon the brink of death, had never been seen before. The witnesses of the execution never forgot the scene. ”

“ In vain did the royalists assure them that the king was ready to grant the Protestants complete liberty of conscience and protection against their enemies, but could not give them what they demanded. In vain did they repeat in substance the famous exclamation of Catharine de' Medici, and say, among other arguments: "You could make no greater demands if the king had nothing ready, and you had a large and powerful army, with all the advantages you could desire; whereas, we know full well that you are feeble in every direction, and that the king has great forces, as you yourselves must be aware." ”

“ Scarcely more encouraging to the advocates of persecution was the scene in the area in front of Notre-Dame de Paris, when, at the sound of the great cathedral bell, an immense crowd was gathered to witness the execution of an obscure person, known to us only as "the hermit of Livry"—a hamlet on the road to Meaux. With such unshaken fortitude did he encounter the flames, that the astonished spectators were confidently assured by their spiritual advisers that he was one of the damned who was being led to the fires of hell. ”

“ The hand of death was upon the throat of every survivor. At length, too feeble to man their works, despairing of timely succor, unable to sustain at the same moment the assault of their opponents and the fearful visitation of the Almighty, the English consented to surrender; and, on the twenty-eighth of July, a capitulation was signed, in accordance with which, on the next day, Havre, with all its fortifications and the ships of war in its harbor, fell once more into the hands of the French. ”