LITTELL'S LIVING AGE. -No. 245.-27 JANUARY, 1849. From the English Review. The Protestant Reformation in France; or, The History of the Hugonots, by the Author of "Father Darcy," "Emilia Wyndham," "Old Men's Tales," &c. 2 vols. Bentley. 1847. The History of the Popes in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, by LEOPOLD RANKE. Translated from the German by WALTER KEATING KELLY, Esq., B. A., of Trinity College, Dublin. 1 vol. Whittaker & Co. 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. 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 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. In examining the characters presented to our view, the first which deserves our attention is Catherine herself; with as much ambition as Elizabeth, and with the same desire of personal authority, she fell far short of her great contemporary in 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 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, "when one of my cousins challenged an officer, 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 Maréchal de St. André, who are known as the triumvirate, held possession of Paris and the king's person. As Catherine disliked all authority except her own, she feared and hated these nobles; to check their power she encouraged the Hugonots, 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, ex power; she chose her instruments judiciously, cept when they were in arms against the king, yet this was the party afterwards massacred by of men; and of course, as a cardinal, he was 10 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 which the end sanctifies the means, and all things expedient are considered lawful, had already begun to exert its influence upon the councils of nations. The Cardinal of Lorraine, brother to the Duke of Guise, had returned from the Council of Trent with a full determination to uphold catholicism; the duke was the first warrior or his day, and though so ignorant that he swore a New Testament could be worth nothing because it was only a year printed, and our Lord died 1500 years ago, yet, as he said himself, he understood the trade of chopping off heads, and that was enough to give him the greatest influence in a barbarous age. With these men, the near relations of Francis II. and his beautiful bride, (the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots,) nothing was more easy than to obtain the ascendant over a weak-minded and delicate boy of thirteen. Francis had obtained his legal majority at that age when some children are almost too young for a public school. The duke's habits of business were such, that he seldom commanded his officers to do what could be done by himself; he was in the habit of examining the enemy's fortifications with his own eyes, attending to the most minute details, and then sitting up during the whole night to write his own despatches; one of his officers inquiring for him at the siege of Thornville, was told that he was writing; he replied by cursing his writings, and added, "What a pity he was not brought up to be a clerk!" "Well, Montluc," said the duke, overhearing him, "do you think I am the right stuff 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 little idea of religion. He was scrupulously exact agents, he enacted the part which Eugène Sue in saying his prayers; but, like those of William 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?" The cardinal, though outwardly a strict member of the Church of Rome, was equally anxious for the independence of the French Church. At the Council of Trent (says Ranké) he demanded the cup for the laity, the administration of the sacraments in the vulgar tongue, the accompaniment of the mass with instruction and preaching, and permission to sing psalms in French in full congregation; besides, in conjunction with the other French bishops, he maintained the authority of a council as above the pope. In these matters, however, he was overruled; the Spaniards did not concur in his demands, and the Italian bishops gave the pope an overwhelming preponderance. Lorraine seems to have considered himself bound by the decision of the council, and was all his life a most unrelenting persecutor. Two years before, he had revived a confession of faith which had been used in the reign of Francis I.; he induced the king to issue an order that any person who should refuse to sign it should be deprived of all offices, and burnt alive without further trial. He also added a declaration, that all persons who should sign the confession should solemnly engage to pursue all recusants as public criminals, without regard to their nearest relations. The chancellor was bound to require the signature of the officers of state; the bishops were to present it to the inferior clergy; the cures were obliged to carry it from house to house; and the queens were enjoined to require the signatures of their respective households. This scheme the cardinal called his rat-trap. Supported by his rank, his 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 attributes to the superior of the Jesuits; he organized a sort of spiritual police, who could inform him of the secret intentions, as well as the actions of Deloraine, they seem to have partaken of the nature of a border foray. His soldiers used to say, "The Lord deliver us from the pater-nosters of 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 the king's army; after several successful charges, his squadron of cavalry was routed by the Prince de Condé, and having received several wounds, he was retiring from the field, when a Scottish adventurer, Robert Stewart, levelled his piece, and heard to say, "The Lord deliver us from the chancellor's mass!" At the head of all these various powers, Charles IX. found himself the nominal King of France, at the age of eleven years, with the expectation of 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 without learning to die for half an hour. This anecdote proves that zeal for a cause, loyalty to a king, 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. 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 upon the other as a dangerous rival. After the death of Francis II., the Maréchal de St. André undertook to reconcile these differences, and seems to have been admitted to the triumvirate as a sort of mediator between the two contending parties. At Easter, 1561, the constable and the duke, by St. André's advice, partook together of the sacrament, and dined at the same table. St. André did not long survive his union with these great men, as he was killed the next year at the battle of Dreux; he seems to have had a presentiment of his approaching end: on the morning of the battle, he came to the tent of the Duke of Guise, much dejected, and seeing the duke's confessor going out, he said, "that the duke was much happier than himself in having heard mass that day, as a prep swearing we may attribute the disregard of solemn engagements, and the tendency to break his faith, which characterized the life of Charles. He was 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 authority was much felt, or that he is the person really responsible for the atrocities committed in his name. While the destinies of France seemed to fluctuate between the two contending parties, a foreigner appeared upon the scene, who was the real mover of the greatest enormities, and the evil genius of Catherine; we mean the Duke of Alva. Till long after the death of Francis II., the queen seemed undecided between two opinions; she appeared to balance Condé against Guise, and Beza against Lorraine: both circumstances, in an evil hour for France, brought her under the influence of the dark, designing, treacherous, and bloodthirsty Spaniard, who seemed, like some brilliant but poisonous serpent, to fascinate his victim to the destruction of her principles and the perversion of her conscience. Elizabeth, the daughter of Catherine, had been en aration 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 married his father, Philip II. The court of best thing he could do for France would be to France, with Catherine at its head, visited the throw her into the sea in a sack; and he might court of Spain at Bayonne, in the month of June, 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 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, She human mind; and that to give them free license like stars in the clear azure of heaven; for the 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 dangerous 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 The young king was not exempt from the tempDuke of Alva was certainly not a hypocrite; he tations of the Duke of Alva; he seems at this meetopenly avowed his belief that no toleration ought ing to have been familiarized with notions from to be extended to those who should dissent from which in his better moments he must have shrunk the religion of the king; he stated his determina- with horror. The Queen of Navarre, the most tion to spare neither age nor sex, and, like some zealous Hugonot of her day, perceived the change political economists, coolly argued on his right to in Charles during the return of the expedition. It exterminate as if he were demonstrating an abstract is hard to ascertain that any definite plan was arproposition, quite distinct from human rights or the ranged for the destruction of the Hugonots; the sufferings of mankind. In the midst of feasts, massacre of St. Bartholomew must have arisen out tournaments, processions, dancing parties, and il- of circumstances; but this much seems clear, that luminations, the wily Spaniard managed to spend the Duke of Alva prepared the minds of Catherine a certain portion of every night in the apartments and Charles to betray and murder the most innoof the Queen of Spain. Thither Catherine used cent portion of their subjects, as soon as a conveto repair to meet him, through a private gallery; nient opportunity should offer; and having thus and while the rest of the gay party of courtiers | broken down the barrier of conscience in the rulers 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 coexist 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 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 and families may perish as surely, through the timidity, meanness, and want of spirit in their leaders, as through the greatest excesses of illdirected energy. Vol. i., p. 81. 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 by the sword. "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal," though they are mighty. God has appointed a way in which his cause is to be advanced, 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 always sincere. We look in vain for such men Roman Catholic. Shortly after, new troubles 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 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 the religion of England, represented by the seven seated by his side. He continued to boast of all bishops. Radicals, chartists, and various disturb- he was to do, and talked much of the riches and ers, have in all periods endeavored to overturn our beauty of Sardinia. When the town was taken, 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 put forward as their spokesmen when liberty and 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 His sacrificed his religion to the aggrandizement of his kingdom. 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. the people, the power of God seems to be forgotten, His last hours were spent in the miserable rehis name is never mentioned, and last Easter Sun- morse of a troubled conscience: he was attended day was fixed for a general election. We regret by two physicians of opposite persuasions; and a 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 blood, is Anthony of Navarre. His wife, Jeanne D'Albret, was well fitted, as far as a woman can be, to take the lead in a religious war. Her letters 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. Anthony (says our author) is a striking instance of the evils which arise, when second-rate ability, combined with weakness of moral principle and in 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. He 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. 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 ad miration:-a skilful warrior, a generous adversary, 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 |