Guzman by name; and in return Queen Elizabeth sent the Dean of CAMEO III. There was a great desire that Elizabeth should marry into the house of Austria, and the Archduke Charles, brother to the Emperor Maximilian, was proposed to her, backed by Sussex, together with Hunsdon and all her Boleyn connections. Charles was a man of high qualities, brave and accomplished, and speaking many languages. The only ostensible difficulty was the religious one, and he went so far as to promise that he would accompany the Queen to church, and that if he were allowed a private chapel where Mass could be celebrated, no Englishman should ever be present at it. However, Leicester, who had not utterly resigned all hopes for himself, contrived to whisper to the Queen that the Archduke had an illicit love of his own in Germany, and she refused him on the score of religion. Sussex wrote, "He knew who was at work in the vineyard at home, but if Heaven should ever put it into his dear mistress's heart to divide the weeds from the grain, she would reap a better harvest here." The fact was that Elizabeth was resolved against marriage, unless she should be absolutely forced to exclude Mary of Scotland from the succession, and as she never knew whether this might not happen at any time, it was convenient to have a suitor to bring forward, as well as congenial to her own delight in a courtship. Proposed marriage with Archduke Charles. CAMEO IV. Convention at Moulins. 1566. AFTER the deaths of the King of Navarre and the Duke of Guise, there was a certain exhaustion of strength and spirit between the two great parties that rent France. In this interval, the Chancellor de l'Hôpital completed his revision of the laws respecting the administration of justice and promotion of magistrates; and after being registered (not without opposition) by the Parliament of Paris, they were presented to an assembly of Notables, convoked at Moulins, in December, 1566. This assembly was presided over by the young King, Charles IX., then sixteen, a thin, pale, dark-eyed lad. Almost all the persons of any consequence of royal or noble blood were there, and Queen Catherine took the opportunity of bringing about a general reconciliation between the hostile parties. The Constable de Montmorency and the Cardinal of Lorraine embraced, Coligny purged himself by oath of the murder of Guise, and exchanged the kiss of peace with the widow and the brothers; but the young Duke Henri, who, though hardly sixteen, had been serving against the Turks in Hungary, would not come to the meeting, reserving to himself the right of vengeance. His mother, Anne of Este, soon after married the Duke of Nemours, Jacques of Savoy, who was released from his engagements to Françoise de Rohan, of the great old house of Rohan in Brittany, because she was a Huguenot. Such "love days," as they were called in England, were too apt to be the prelude to fresh outbreaks. There were sure to be vexations on either side, and the Huguenots lived in a state of continual distrust, well knowing that they were barely tolerated, and continually expecting fresh attacks. The privileges they had gained by the last war were gradually being straitened. They were forbidden to keep open shop on festival Reconcilia days, they might make, no collections for the poor in remote places, CAMEO IV. their ministers were forbidden to hold synods, to keep school, or to change their residence, and the offices of the magistracy were closed against them. All this time Catherine was treating the Prince of Condé with such studied courtesy, that he thought himself in the highest possible favour, Old Montmorency was talking of resigning the Constable's sword, and Condé actually requested that it might be given to him. Young Henri, Duke of Anjou, the King's next brother, a boy of fifteen, on this uttered such hot and disdainful words, that Condé asked whether they were prompted by the Queen? Catherine avoided giving a direct answer, and Condé then demanded the meaning of the 6,000 Swiss who had been levied, ostensibly to guard the frontier towards the Low Countries, but who were kept in Champagne. "We know very well what we are going to do with them," haughtily replied Monsieur, as the King's next brother was always called, a custom apparently dating from this time. Condé took alarm, left the Court, and held meetings with the Chatillon brothers. By and by, with what truth or not is uncertain, reports came that the Swiss were being called into Paris, and that the persons of Condé and Coligny were to be secured, and the edict of Amboise repealed, so that persecution might begin again. Thereupon it was decided to begin a fresh civil war at once. The Court was living in security at the little Castle of Monceaux, and it was decided that the Huguenot gentlemen should collect their retainers secretly in haste, seize the King, to give a legal colour to their proceedings, and imprison the Cardinal of Lorraine. It was impossible to collect the forces so secretly but that intelligence should be carried to the Court. A council was held in the sick chamber of the old Constable, who had the gout, and who flew into a passion at the notion that there could be movements of troops in the kingdom without his knowing it. However, it was decided to move from this little unfortified place to Meaux with all speed, and send for the Swiss to meet the King there, while the Queen sent off François de Montmorency to see Condé, and demand of him the meaning of this concentration of armed men, who were coming together at Rosoy en Brie. While Montmorency and Coligny were thus parleying, the Swiss were advancing; but the Queen decided on moving at once into Paris, about thirty miles off, the very night after the Swiss arrived, when they had had but three hours' rest. At midnight the cavalcade set forth. Nine hundred gentlemen were there, but with no weapon save their swords; and in the midst was the young King, his brothers, their mother and her ladies. At break of day, on the 28th of December, the Huguenot troops were seen, when the party had only gone twelve miles. The Constable, with some of the Swiss, remained to occupy them by skirmishing, while 200 of the tion. 1566. CAMEO IV. Battle of St. Denis. 1566. Death of Montmorency. 1566. best armed and mounted escorted the King through bye-lanes to Paris, which he did not reach till nightfall! The Cardinal of Lorraine was very nearly captured, and only owed his safety to the fleetness of his Spanish gennet. Montmorency kept the enemy in check all day, and then entered Paris. The Huguenots then blockaded the roads, and Condé and Coligny fixed their head-quarters at St. Denis; but Condé had only 2,000 men, and there were 10,000 troops now in Paris, so that the joke went that a fly was besieging an elephant. His colleagues were all gone in different directions to collect their troops, and he had not a single piece of artillery. At first the Constable did not believe how ill-provided the Huguenots were, and, only when convinced, set out on the 10th of November to dislodge them. Condé drew up his little army on the heights in a half-moon. Montmorency, whom his eighty years could not make a wise general, had spread his line to a great extent, and put the Paris burgesses in front of the Swiss. These worthy citizens were splendid to look at in gilded armour and rich garments, but they had never been under fire; and at the first volley they took fright, and choked up the roads in front of the Swiss, who were thus unable to advance. Meanwhile, the horse on each side had a desperate encounter. Condé and Coligny charged at full speed on the men-at-arms where the Constable commanded. The old man's horse fell, and Robert Stewart, a Scot, bade him surrender. His answer was a blow with the pommel of his sword, which knocked out three of the man's teeth; but another Scot, at the same moment, shot him through the body from behind, His eldest son, François, was charging the Huguenots in flank, and forced them back; Condé's horse just carried him out of the fray, and then fell dead. The bridle of Coligny's horse was severed, and it dashed right through the enemy; but he was not recognised, and escaped. François de Montmorency had decided the victory, and found his father dying of six wounds. The old warrior wished to die on the battle-field, but was taken into Paris. To one of the priests who was comforting him, he said-"Do you think I have lived fourscore years without being able to bear dying for a quarter of an hour?" The Huguenots called him Captain Brûlebanc, because of the havoc he made in their conventicles. He was devout after his own fashion, but also very stern, and it was said that he would, in the midst of a battle or foray, go on repeating his rosary, interspersed with such orders as, "Burn that village !-Shoot down that fellow!" So that it was a saying, "Deliver us from the Aves of M. le Connétâble." had survived a good deal of intrigue, and the days into which he had lived were so much worse than those of his youth, that he had come to pass for a type of old honour and loyalty. He Charles IX. would make no new Constable. "Young as I am," he said, "I can carry my own sword." In fact his brother Henri wanted it, but this would have made him too powerful, and neither Condé nor Guise could be trusted with it, even had the latter been old enough. Monsieur was, however, made Lieutenant-General, with a council to assist him chosen by the Queen. The battle of St. Denis had been a defeat, but so few Huguenots had been engaged that it left their strength unbroken, and Coligny and Condé, gathering the rest of their men, fell back towards Lorraine. They had sent entreaties for help to the German Protestants, and as the house of Austria was always ready to annoy the crown of France, the Emperior Maximilian put no hindrance in the way of the raising a body of Landsknechts, who were under the command of Johann Casimir, son to the Elector-Palatine, Friedrich III., a strong Calvinist, but it was long before they could arrive, and some of the Huguenots grew impatient. "Where are you taking us?" one of them asked of Condé. "To meet our German allies." "And if we do not meet them?" "Then we must blow our fingers, for it is very cold." However, after four months, they did meet, at Pont à Mousson, but the Landsknechts declared that they would not stir till they were paid the 100,000 crowns that had been promised them, and for which most cared a good deal more than for the cause of the Reformed. Condé had only 2,000, but a general contribution was made of plate, jewels, and gold chains, in which Johann Casimir himself joined, and 80,000 crowns were raised, with which the Germans were partially appeased. They then marched to besiege Chartres, though their whole artillery consisted only of nine small cannon. In the meantime the Huguenots in the south, where they were much more numerous than in the north, had risen, and seized no less than forty cities, of which Montpellier, Nismes, and Montauban were the most important. Wherever they went they drove out the priests, ransacked the convents, and sacrilegiously stripped the churches; nor did they stop there. At Nismes, after pillaging the Bishop's palace, they there collected a number of Catholic prisoners, killed seventy-two that night, and threw their corpses down a well, and forty-eight more the next morning. At Alais, they killed seven canons, two Franciscans, and several other monks. Troops were sent to repress them, and there were various skirmishes, but the strength of the parties was nearly equally balanced in Languedoc. In Guienne they were beaten by Blaise de Montluc, but they gained one important advantage. The city of La Rochelle was exceedingly strong, and was a great seaport with a considerable commerce. The citizens were rich and brave, and had many privileges, such as that of electing their own magistrates. They were 18,0co in number, and almost all Calvinists, but in all the wars they had observed strict neutrality until their Mayor, Trucharès, on the defeat of the Huguenots by Montluc, opened the gates to them, and swore fidelity to Condé as Lieutenant-Governor. CAMEO IV. Retreat of 1566. |