LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 245.-27 JANUARY, 1849. From the English Review. 66 The Protestant Reformation in France; or, The THE sixteenth century may be considered as the opening of modern improvement in religion, government, and civilization; three hundred years ago, the great states of the world presented a very different picture from what we see at present; but the seed sown by the invention of printing, and the diffusion of knowledge, was even then beginning to show itself as a vigorous plant, from which future centuries were to reap the maturer fruits. Our object in considering the works before us, is to examine the state of religion in France at the period, and from a short view of the prominent characters, to inquire into the reasons why France rejected those truths, which England and other nations eagerly received. and as long as her ministers served her purpose, she never betrayed them or consulted their opponents. Catherine, however, was exactly the reverse; she had no fixed principle, and no definite object; "divide and govern" was her motto; she was like the man in the Gospel, out of whom the evil spirit was departed, "empty, swept and garnished," and so, ever ready for the occupancy of any power of evil, who should seize upon the first possession. Her love of pleasure was unbounded; she invented side-saddles, to enable her to accompany her husband in hunting; she delighted in tournaments, processions, masquerades, and all the gayeties of a dissipated court. Her young ladies, about two hundred in number, called "the queen's daughters," added much to the splendor of her train, and were a special object of her care; she attended to their education, chastised them if they displeased her, and was extremely strict in repressing scandalous conversation or writings. She considered herself a warrior as well as a queen; she attended several sieges, and loved to see a battle; when the English reinforcements were allowed to enter Rouen, she got into a violent passion, and swore at the French officers, saying, that had she been in command it should not have happened; and that she had the courage, if not the strength, of a man. Though a good French woman, (says Brantôme,) she discouraged duelling. (Brantôme has written largely on duels, and is one of the best authorities on the subject.) "For," he adds, During the middle and end of the sixteenth century, the two greatest countries of the world were governed by women-England by Queen Elizabeth, and France by Catherine de Medicis; their reigns commenced about the same period, if we date Catherine's accession from the death of her husband Henry II. in 1559, and consider her as the real ruler of the kingdom during the lives" when one of my cousins challenged an officer, of her unfortunate sons, Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III. The history before us includes only the reigns of the two former of these princes, from 1559 to 1574, a period when events were crowded into a space almost incredibly small; a violent persecution, three civil wars, several sieges, murders of the chiefs on both sides, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew, succeeded each other with frightful rapidity. France became the arena on which the world's great contending parties tried their strength; liberty of conscience struggled for existence against papal tyranny and the superstition of ages, and the Hugonots, after severe trials and several victories, were at last driven from the field. she sent him to the Bastile; and suspecting that I was engaged as his second, she sent for me and reprimanded me severely, saying, that whatever excuse might be made for the folly of a young man, there was none for me, as being older I ought to have been wiser." But with all her physical courage, she was evidently deficient in moral courage; and for her cruelty she had not even the pretext of religious enthusiasm; after the battle of Dreux, when the Hugonots were supposed to have gained a victory, her only remark was, "Then for the future we must say our prayers in French." The predominant party was of course Roman Catholic; these, represented by the Constable de Montmorenci, the Duke of Guise, and the MaréIn examining the characters presented to our chal de St. André, who are known as the triumview, the first which deserves our attention is virate, held possession of Paris and the king's Catherine herself; with as much ambition as Eliz-person. As Catherine disliked all authority exabeth, and with the same desire of personal au- cept her own, she feared and hated these nobles; thority, she fell far short of her great contemporary to check their power she encouraged the Hugoin the art of acquiring and retaining power. Elizabeth had a certain object; she was determined to advance the reformation, and to improve England, and by both these means to increase her own power; she chose her instruments judiciously, nots, at the head of whom were Anthony, King of Navarre, the father of Henry IV., his brother the Prince of Condé, and the Admiral Coligny. These generally seemed Catherine's favorites, except when they were in arms against the king, of men; and of course, as a cardinal, he was bound to wield this power in the service of the pope. Though learned, eloquent, and polite, the cardinal was essentially vicious; he was a persecuting bigot, without the excuse of religious zeal. A Roman Catholic writer tells us, that he used his religion chiefly as a means to build up his greatness; he often spoke highly of the confession of Augsburg, and at times almost preached it to please the Germans; his own party accused him of extreme haughtiness in prosperity; and when he once spoke more graciously than usual to some of the young ladies of the court, one of them replied, flippantly enough, but with some truth, “Pray, Monsieur le Cardinal, what reverse of fortune has befallen you that you condescend to speak to us?" yet this was the party afterwards massacred by her orders. In order, therefore, to gain a true view of the times, we must consider Catherine as vacillating in her intentions, the creature of those around her, always wishing to advance her own power, but never hesitating to take the advice of the most depraved religionist who should promise her her object, even by the most unworthy means. Let us recollect that the Roman Catholic Church had not been idle in its opposition to Luther; a vast and irresponsible power had now been created, ready to espouse the cause of Rome, and bound to advance the spiritual empire of the church by every art, whether lawful or unlawful. Ignatius Loyola had received the sanction of the pope for the incorporation of the Jesuits in 1543. Now the secret influence of their crafty policy, in The cardinal, though outwardly a strict memwhich the end sanctifies the means, and all things ber of the Church of Rome, was equally anxious expedient are considered lawful, had already be- for the independence of the French Church. At gun to exert its influence upon the councils of the Council of Trent (says Ranké) he demanded nations. The Cardinal of Lorraine, brother to the the cup for the laity, the administration of the Duke of Guise, had returned from the Council of sacraments in the vulgar tongue, the accompaniTrent with a full determination to uphold catholi- ment of the mass with instruction and preaching, cism; the duke was the first warrior or his day, and permission to sing psalms in French in full and though so ignorant that he swore a New congregation; besides, in conjunction with the Testament could be worth nothing because it was other French bishops, he maintained the authority only a year printed, and our Lord died 1500 years of a council as above the pope. In these matters, ago, yet, as he said himself, he understood the however, he was overruled; the Spaniards did trade of chopping off heads, and that was enough to not concur in his demands, and the Italian bishgive him the greatest influence in a barbarous age. ops gave the pope an overwhelming preponderWith these men, the near relations of Francis ance. Lorraine seems to have considered himself II. and his beautiful bride, (the unfortunate Mary bound by the decision of the council, and was all Queen of Scots,) nothing was more easy than to his life a most unrelenting persecutor. Two years obtain the ascendant over a weak-minded and deli- before, he had revived a confession of faith which cate boy of thirteen. Francis had obtained his had been used in the reign of Francis I.; he inlegal majority at that age when some children are duced the king to issue an order that any person almost too young for a public school. The duke's who should refuse to sign it should be deprived habits of business were such, that he seldom com- of all offices, and burnt alive without further trial. manded his officers to do what could be done by He also added a declaration, that all persons who himself; he was in the habit of examining the should sign the confession should solemnly engage enemy's fortifications with his own eyes, attending to pursue all recusants as public criminals, withto the most minute details, and then sitting up out regard to their nearest relations. The chanduring the whole night to write his own despatch- cellor was bound to require the signature of the es; one of his officers inquiring for him at the officers of state; the bishops were to present it to siege of Thornville, was told that he was writing; the inferior clergy; the curés were obliged to he replied by cursing his writings, and added, carry it from house to house; and the queens "What a pity he was not brought up to be a were enjoined to require the signatures of their clerk !" "Well, Montluc," said the duke, over-respective households. This scheme the cardinal hearing him, "do you think I am the right stuff | called his rat-trap. Supported by his rank, his to make a clerk?" and then, coming out of his tent, he gave his orders with his customary decision and authority. He was killed by Poltrot, an assassin, at the siege of Orleans, in 1563. While the Duke of Guise was the pope's temporal agent, his brother the cardinal was no less useful in spiritual matters; like his brother, he had great talents for business, and was besides an excellent courtier and a fluent speaker. He spared no expense to have the earliest intelligence from all parts of Christendom; and thus, by his paid agents, he enacted the part which Eugène Sue attributes to the superior of the Jesuits; he organ- of Deloraine, they seem to have partaken of the ized a sort of spiritual police, who could inform nature of a border foray. His soldiers used to say, him of the secret intentions, as well as the actions"The Lord deliver us from the pater-nosters of connections, his brother's authority, and his own secret intelligence, we can easily imagine how dangerous an opponent the cardinal must have been to the Hugonots, and how powerful a rivalry he must have presented to the views and ambition of Catherine de Medicis. The colleagues of the Duke of Guise in the triumvirate were Montmorenci, generally known as the Constable, and the Maréchal St. André. The former, like the duke, was a warrior, with little idea of religion. He was scrupulously exact in saying his prayers; but, like those of William Monsieur le Connétable!" He would turn about than any of his fellow ministers; but the sentiments between his beads, and say, "Hang such a one of a single individual, however noble and enlightfor disobedience!" "Burn three villages on yon- ened, were easily overborne by a host of persecutder hill!" "Let another be run through the ing courtiers; and the pope offered Charles 100,000 pikes!" He was inferior to the Duke of Guise crowns of church property, if he would “only in talent; but by a gravity of manner, and a cer- confine the chancellor within four walls." De tain degree of reserve, he could often, like Sol- L'Hôpital was suspected of being a Hugonot at omon's fool, pass for a wise man by holding his heart, though he never showed any tendency to tongue. He was killed at the age of seventy-nine, their doctrines; and some of the Romanists were at the battle of St. Denys, where he commanded heard to say, "The Lord deliver us from the chanthe king's army; after several successful charges, cellor's mass!" his squadron of cavalry was routed by the Prince At the head of all these various powers, Charles de Condé, and having received several wounds, he IX. found himself the nominal King of France, at was retiring from the field, when a Scottish ad- the age of eleven years, with the expectation of venturer, Robert Stewart, levelled his piece, and obtaining his legal majority at thirteen. Few Montmorenci exclaimed, "I am the constable !" princes received a worse education in childhood; "Therefore," said Stewart, "I present you with and few kings have ever been called upon to rule this." Though severely wounded, the courageous a more corrupt court even in the prime of manold man dashed the broken hilt of his sword into hood. His early education was entrusted to Du the face of his adversary with so much force that Perron, from whom, among other accomplishhe broke several of his teeth, and felled him to the ments, he learned to swear outrageously; "not ground. The constable's wound proved mortal; like a gentleman," says Brantôme, who occasiona priest was sent for, but the old man told him not ally lets fall an oath, “but like a catchpole, when to molest him, as it would be a vile and unworthy he seizes his victim." To this habit of profane thing if he had lived for nearly eighty years with- swearing we may attribute the disregard of solemn out learning to die for half an hour. This anec-engagements, and the tendency to break his faith, dote proves that zeal for a cause, loyalty to a king, which characterized the life of Charles. He was and the desire of military glory, were his ruling principles, rather than any preference of his own religion above Protestantism, or any mistaken zeal in thinking that he was doing God service by the extirpation of heresy. less dissipated and more inclined to manly amusements than might have been expected from his circumstances; but his temper was violent, and he was easily led by his mother and her associates; he ought to be considered rather as the instrument of a party, than their leader; and as he only lived to the age of twenty-five, we cannot suppose that his au responsible for the atrocities committed in his name. The constable and the Duke of Guise had long been jealous of each other; each thought himself entitled to be prime minister, and each looked up-thority was much felt, or that he is the person really on the other as a dangerous rival. After the death of Francis II., the Maréchal de St. André under- While the destinies of France seemed to fluctutook to reconcile these differences, and seems to ate between the two contending parties, a foreigner have been admitted to the triumvirate as a sort of appeared upon the scene, who was the real mover mediator between the two contending parties. At of the greatest enormities, and the evil genius of Easter, 1561, the constable and the duke, by St. Catherine; we mean the Duke of Alva. Till long André's advice, partook together of the sacrament, after the death of Francis II., the queen seemed and dined at the same table. St. André did not undecided between two opinions; she appeared to long survive his union with these great men, as balance Condé against Guise, and Beza against he was killed the next year at the battle of Dreux; Lorraine: both circumstances, in an evil hour for he seems to have had a presentiment of his ap- France, brought her under the influence of the dark, proaching end on the morning of the battle, he designing, treacherous, and bloodthirsty Spaniard, came to the tent of the Duke of Guise, much de- who seemed, like some brilliant but poisonous serjected, and seeing the duke's confessor going out, pent, to fascinate his victim to the destruction of he said, "that the duke was much happier than her principles and the perversion of her conscience. himself in having heard mass that day, as a prep- Elizabeth, the daughter of Catherine, had been enaration for what might occur." He hated Cath-gaged to Don Carlos of Spain, but had afterwards erine de Medicis, and said, on one occasion, that the best thing he could do for France would be to throw her into the sea in a sack; and he might probably have fulfilled his purpose, had it not been for the opposition of the Duke of Guise. The Chancellor de L'Hôpital was the man of the highest principle and most liberal views among the Roman Catholic party. Brantôme calls him the Cato of his age, and compares him with Sir Thomas More. He upheld the divine right of kings, in its strongest sense, yet made more advances towards toleration and liberty of conscience married his father, Philip II. The court of France, with Catherine at its head, visited the court of Spain at Bayonne, in the month of June, 1565. Here was a grand opportunity for the display of all the pomp and splendor in which Catherine so much delighted. The queen travelled from town to town, accompanied by forty or fifty of her young ladies, mounted on beautiful haquenées with splendid trappings. "To imagine these scenes,' says Brantôme, one must have seen this lovely troop, one more richly and bravely attired than another, shining in those magnificent assemblies, 66 is only to open a door to confusion and treason; that religious controversy is only another name for popular insurrection; and that all indulgence only increases the disorder. The queen, it appears, was averse to sanguinary measures; she was desirous of restoring her subjects to the bosom of the church, but wished to do it by fair means. She spoke of the strength of the principles of the Hugonots, admitted the inconvenience of conflicting opinions, but declared her intention of reaching her object by a circuitous route; she said the port was distant and the sea difficult of navigation, she must therefore be satisfied not to steer a straight course; that it is safer to weaken the opposing power by degrees, than to attempt to stifle a flame too suddenly, as it may then burst out into a violent conflagration. These sentiments it was Alva's business to combat. He had received absolution for making war upon the pope, and was of course anxious to give a compensation for his late sins. The pope had recommended a repetition of the Sicilian vespers, and while the queen was cautious, Alva pressed her to proceed boldly and make away with the chiefs; he said, in the hearing of Henry IV., (then a child of eleven years old,) that “ one salmon was well worth a hundred frogs." It seems, then, from the best contemporary authority, which is quoted at large by our author, that the plan of a general massacre was now considered advisable if opportunity should offer; that Alva persuaded the queen, contrary to her better judgment, that de like stars in the clear azure of heaven; for the human mind; and that to give them free license queen expected them to appear in full dress, though she herself was attired as a widow, and in silk of the gravest colors; still she was elegant and enchanting, ever appearing the queen of all; she rode with extreme grace, the ladies following with plumes floating in the air, so that Virgil, when he describes Queen Dido going to the chase, has never imagined anything comparable to Queen Catherine and her attendants." This graphic writer minutely describes the beauties of the court, but gives the highest praise to Margaret of Valois, the future queen of Henry IV. The brilliant cavalcade arrived at Bayonne, and was entertained by Elizabeth and the Duke of Alva. The King of Spain was absent, but Alva attended, ostensibly for the purpose of presenting the order of the Golden Fleece to Charles IX., but really with the intention of establishing a secret influence over the mind of Catherine, and with the determination to induce her to renew in France the persecutions of the late reign, and to imitate the cruelty which Philip had countenanced in England, and which he himself afterwards devised and executed in his sanguinary persecution of the Protestants of Holland. The connection of Philip with England has already too well fixed his history in our minds; his object was to exterminate heresy by fire and sword, and to extinguish political and religious liberty in his own dominions and in the rest of the world. Alva was an agent singularly well qualified to carry out the designs of his master; he was barbarously cruel, but cold and dispassionate, not the less dan-struction of heretics was both lawful and politic; gerous because alike incapable of tenderness or rage; he seized his victim like some vast machine, and crushed him to pieces with the certainty and coldness of a complicated series of wheels and pulleys, breaking his limbs with remorseless power, and insensible to his cries and indifferent to his resistance. Living in an age of dissimulation, the Duke of Alva was certainly not a hypocrite; he openly avowed his belief that no toleration ought to be extended to those who should dissent from the religion of the king; he stated his determination to spare neither age nor sex, and, like some political economists, coolly argued on his right to exterminate as if he were demonstrating an abstract proposition, quite distinct from human rights or the sufferings of mankind. In the midst of feasts, tournaments, processions, dancing parties, and illuminations, the wily Spaniard managed to spend a certain portion of every night in the apartments of the Queen of Spain. Thither Catherine used to repair to meet him, through a private gallery; and while the rest of the gay party of courtiers were sleeping after the fatigues of a day of pleasure, the queen and the duke were consulting upon the best method of governing France. The wily Spaniard laid it down as a principle that two religions cannot coëxist in the same state; that no prince could do a more pernicious thing as regarded himself than to permit his people to live according to their consciences; that there are as many religions in the world as there are caprices in the and that while she herself might have been contented with indirect persecution, double taxation, legal restraint, and the occasional execution of a troublesome leader on feigned pretexts, nothing less than final extirpation was sufficient to satisfy the agent of the pope. The young king was not exempt from the temptations of the Duke of Alva; he seems at this meeting to have been familiarized with notions from which in his better moments he must have shrunk with horror. The Queen of Navarre, the most zealous Hugonot of her day, perceived the change in Charles during the return of the expedition. It is hard to ascertain that any definite plan was arranged for the destruction of the Hugonots; the massacre of St. Bartholomew must have arisen out of circumstances; but this much seems clear, that the Duke of Alva prepared the minds of Catherine and Charles to betray and murder the most innocent portion of their subjects, as soon as a convenient opportunity should offer; and having thus broken down the barrier of conscience in the rulers of France, he himself repaired to Holland, where his fierce persecution of the Protestants has handed down his name to us as one of the most cruel and unrelenting agents of the Church of Rome. Let us now consider the party opposed to the court, the Hugonots, and their leaders. Here we may easily trace one of the great causes of the failure of the cause of Protestantism in France. The whole history presents us with a narrative of a 149 political scheme rather than a religious movement. | minds, did more to ruin France than all the loftier We believe true religion was never yet propagated errors of the rest united; so true is it, that states and families may perish as surely, through the by the sword. "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal," though they are mighty. God has timidity, meanness, and want of spirit in their leaders, as through the greatest excesses of illappointed a way in which his cause is to be ad-directed energy. Vol. i., p. 81. vanced, and that way he will bless, and no other. After lending his name to the Hugonot party, The Hugonots certainly fought for liberty; they only drew the sword when they were attacked; and supporting them by his right to approach and but there seems a sad want of religious zeal even advise the king as first prince of the blood, he alamong those in whom we ought the most to expect lowed himself to be drawn into a league with it. The reformation in England was strictly reli- their enemies; and, in 1562, he is found united gious; Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Hall, Davenant, with the cardinal and the Duke of Guise, the and a host of writers and preachers, laid hold first most powerful and the most insidious of the eneon the intellects and then on the feelings of the mies of his party. His wife remonstrated, but nation. John Knox, like Luther, was a zealot of he only answered her by sending her home to the most ardent class, sometimes intemperate, but Navarre, and placing his son under the care of a Roman Catholic. Shortly after, new troubles always sincere. We look in vain for such men among the French Hugonots. Religion-by the broke out, and we find the King of Navarre on word we mean a conscientious desire of serving the side of the Duke of Guise. At the siege of God according to his will-has always been the Rouen, in the same year, he was mortally woundprime moving cause of every great change in Eng-ed, but though he suffered great pain, he was not His land. Oliver Cromwell was a zealot; if he was at first considered in a dangerous state. not, his party thought him so, and followed his amusements at this time were dances, which he orders because they felt anxiety in the same cause. gave in his bed-chamber to the young people of James II. lost his crown because he interfered with the camp; and his mistress, La Belle Rouet, was He continued to boast of all the religion of England, represented by the seven seated by his side. bishops. Radicals, chartists, and various disturb- he was to do, and talked much of the riches and When the town was taken, ers, have in all periods endeavored to overturn our beauty of Sardinia. institutions; but the strength of the people has he insisted on being carried through it in a litter, always been attached to Protestantism and the which inflamed his wound, and caused serious apestablished church, because they consider them the prehensions of danger. The terrors of conscience proper means of serving God. Nothing, therefore, now succeeded to the levity of his former occupahas ever shaken the throne of England but a reli- tions, but he does not seem to have known whether gious movement, and to be religious a movement he were a Protestant or a Roman Catholic. He must depend upon its leaders; we may fairly form began to examine his past life, and, like Cardinal a conjecture as to the character of any class of men Wolsey, regretted, when too late, that he had from the persons whom they obey, and whom they sacrificed his religion to the aggrandizement of his put forward as their spokesmen when liberty and kingdom. life are at stake. Here, as in the present day, France presents a strong contrast with England; there seems a strange want of all religion among the people, the power of God seems to be forgotten, his name is never mentioned, and last Easter Sunday was fixed for a general election. We regret that even among the martyrs of the sixteenth century, there is a great deficiency in evangelical principles and virtue. Let us consider the character of some of the leading Hugonots. The first, in point of rank, as first prince of the His wife, Jeanne blood, is Anthony of Navarre. D'Albret, was well fitted, as far as a woman can Her letters be, to take the lead in a religious war. all express zeal for God, and devotion to the cause of Protestantism; and to her early care may be traced the formation of the character of her celebrated son, Henry IV As long, however, as her husband lived, her powers seem to have been shackled, and her influence lost. When his brother, the Prince de Condé, sent to inquire for him, he returned an answer, that, if his life were spared, he should make the establishment of reform his great object. His last hours were spent in the miserable remorse of a troubled conscience: he was attended by two physicians of opposite persuasions; and a contemporary writer describes him as receiving extreme unction from a priest, and listening to portions of the Book of Job, to which his attention was drawn by a Protestant minister. seems altogether to have been one of the most contemptible of men; in private his propensity for thieving was so great, that his attendants were obliged to empty his pockets after he was asleep. and restore the plunder of the day to its lawful owners. He We turn with pleasure from the contemplation of a character like the King of Navarre, to that of his younger brother, Louis Bourbon, Prince of Condé. In him were united several of the noble traits which constitute the hero of the world's adAnthony (says our author) is a striking instance miration:-a skilful warrior, a generous adverof the evils which arise, when second-rate ability, combined with weakness of moral principle and in- sary, the admiration of the ladies at the court, stability of temper, is elevated to influential situa- the most scientific knight in the tournament, and tions. The vacillations of his selfish fears and the champion of the cause of civil and religious calculations, aided by jealousy, that demon of weak liberty. Who is there that does not admire the |