XXIII.

CHAP. interference for the present to securing the appointment of able and moderate men. Such were De Tournon* and Olivier. The latter she made chancellor instead of Bertrandi, who was a creature of Diana of Poitiers†, and he began early to anticipate the policy of De l'Hôpital, in seeking to repair injustice and mitigate persecution. Recent chancellors, especially Poyet, had withdrawn whatever causes interested them from parliament to the Great Council. Olivier at once abolished that practice, and prohibited the Great Council from trying questions between private persons.‡

The picture drawn of Catherine of Medicis by her cotemporaries is not prepossessing. With an olive complexion, an aquiline nose, large prominent eyes, and projecting lips, she had, after her son's accession, being about forty years of age, grown fat and unwieldy. This she increased by excesses of the table, which she subsequently counteracted by exercise, hunting the stag with her son, Charles the Ninth, or sharing in the fatigues of the siege of Rouen.

Although the religion of the day as taught and practised at the papal and other courts, had been brought to such a pass, that one might be devout whilst indulging in all kinds of immorality and crime§, Catherine does not seem to have had even this devotion. Her sole thought, her exclusive ambition, was to reign, and religious considerations were thus with her altogether subservient to political ones. But perceiving how rotten was the

* Suriano says, Catherine esteemed De Tournon for his talent, but suspected his too great leaning to the Pope.

† La Planche, Etat de la France. Pasquier, Recherches, liv. ii. There needs no other proof than the difficult cases, stated by the Jesuit confessors in their books, and exposed by Pascal. "Dices an qui malo fine laboraret, ut ad aliquem occidendum, vel ad insequendam

amicam, vel quid simile, teneatur ad jejunium." "Call to mind," says St. Beuve (Histoire du Port Royal), commenting on this, "that the age offered examples of strange penitents, such as Louis the Eleventh, Philip the Second, or Henry th This, for whom it was a very ser affair to fast the day after a mtler committed by them, or a licentious adventure indulged in."

XXIII.

Church, how gross its abuses, and how repugnant CHAP. much of what it clung to, was to the awakened reason and even religious sense of the age, she looked upon Protestantism as likely to prevail, at least in its mildest forms.

Catherine leaned to Protestantism, not only from this belief in its probable success, but from the desire of finding in it and in its partisans a counterbalance to the ultra Catholics, who, headed by the Guises, and supported by the King of Spain, monopolised power during the reign of Francis the Second, and disputed it afterwards. But her conduct to both parties was dictated by no feeling or conviction deeper than those of political expediency, which prompted her to use the one and resist the other, by those arts of dissimulation and intrigue, which had been taught and perfected in the Italian school.

Although the political authority of Catherine was frequently questioned, and even at times set aside, she still remained during her sons' reigns mistress of the court, which she sought to enliven and adorn by the patronage of music and the drama, as well as by the beauty of her maids of honour. She did not scruple to use their charms to the profit of her political designs, thus lowering the standard of female virtue. Indeed, she ignored the chivalrous honour of the gentleman as much as the corresponding one of her own sex. Bred in Florence after the extinction of its freedom, Catherine neither knew the civic virtues of the republic, nor those incident to feudal and highborn pride. In this epoch of transition from the traditional chivalry and unquestioned religion of the ancient knight, to the more enlightened honour and more educated convictions of the modern gentleman, the court of France, instead of being a bridge to connect them, became, under Catherine and her sons, a morass or quicksand between them, in which aught like principle in religion or morals was

XXIII.

CHAP. drowned, and from which Catherine herself was unable to extricate or save the only wisdom she conceived, that of moderation amidst the fury of extreme factions. The natural rivals to both the Guises and Catherine were the Bourbon brothers. Francis the First had given the heiress of the D'Albrets to the Duc de Vendome, but with little more than the county of Bearn and the empty title of King of Navarre. Francis and Henry alike shrank from aiding him to recover any portion of his Spanish provinces; and Antoine had then endeavoured to obtain them, or Milan in exchange, with large promises of allegiance and attachment from Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second. Such intrigues, of which Philip did not probably preserve the secret, increased the alienation of the French court from Antoine. But still he was the first prince of the blood, and as such more entitled to the guardianship of the young king than the Guises. Montmorency wrote to him to come to Paris, and uphold his claim. But the King of Navarre, angry with the constable for abandoning his interests in the late treaty with Spain, delayed his journey, and seemed more anxious to make terms with the Guises than oppose them.*

The King of Navarre was formidable not only from his rank, but as the most illustrious person that had embraced in France the tenets of the Reformers. He was always attended by one of their clergy, had lent them the great hall of his palace at Nerac to preach in, and on more than one occasion had shown himself their champion and friend.† His wife, Jeanne D'Albret, had inherited from her mother a strong disgust of Rome, and though Brantome says she loved gaiety more than religion, the mother of the future Henry the Fourth became not the less a staunch Protestant. The King

The Granvelle Papers. D'Aubigny. De Thou.

† De Bèze. La Place, Commentaires. Castelnau.

of Navarre was far from being endowed with his wife's constancy. Self-indulgent and irresolute, ambitious to recover either his position at the French court, or his wife's inheritance in Spain, without knowing how to set about either, Antoine was carried away by every caprice and every breeze, treacherous to his friends, and only innocuous to the enemies of his house.*

His next brother, the Prince of Condé, also professed the Protestant creed. The constable had given him in marriage his niece Eleanor, daughter of Louise de Montmorency, Countess of Roye, one of those strong minded women who maintained the superiority of the reformed doctrines, not only in her family, but at court, where she even influenced the opinions of Catherine. The Countess of Roye, mother of the Princess of Condé by her first husband, had three sons by her second marriage, the Admiral Coligny, Lord of Chatillon, D'Andelot, and Odet, Cardinal of Chatillon. She instilled into all her strong persuasions, which they did not shrink from avowing. The fit leader of the Protestants was unquestionably Coligny. He was a man of those deep convictions of which the Bourbons were incapable. Brave as a soldier, and skilled as a commander, Coligny, on more than one occasion, showed himself the military rival of Guise.† Austere in habits,

* Calvin characterises Navarre as a liberal maker of promises, but without constancy or faith. Adde, quod totus venereus est.

+ It was Coligny who, in 1550, made the first serious attempt to organise the French infantry, of which he and D'Andelot took the command, as a service which the gentry declined. What the infantry previously were may be gathered from the ordinances which Coligny drew up, and which Henry the Second sanctioned. It forbade the captains enticing soldiers one from the other,

or soldiers forsaking one captain for
another. The soldier who deserted
his post, and was not ready when
called on, was to be passed through
'the pikes.' Captains were bound
to obey sergeant-majors in their
duty as well as soldiers. The object
of the ordinance was to render the
French infantry permanent, like the
cavalry. Brantome says, that Co-
ligny's reformation of the foot soldier
saved a million of lives, as they were
nothing better than Arabs before it.
See the Regulations in Histoire de la
Maison de Coligny, vol. ii. Preuves.

CHAP. XXIII.

XXIII.

CHAP. pure in life, Coligny was strongly imbued with the spirit of the patriot. The policy he recommended to Catherine and to her government was to show forbearance and mildness to the Protestants, and thus avoiding civil discord, direct the resources and armies of France to drive the House of Austria from the Low Countries. Catherine was struck by the grandeur of his views, and prized Coligny as one of those frank characters which were never actuated by private ambition.*

Coligny knew well that he could not pretend to lead a party in which the princes of the House of Bourbon numbered themselves. He saw that the weak nature of the King of Navarre, who was ever the dupe of his own ambition, or of some designing favourite, was not to be depended on. But the Prince of Condé was of a more generous and chivalric nature. He was connected with Coligny by marriage, and the admiral himself undertook to make this prince be considered the chief of the party, and to endow him with the sagacity and purpose required for the task.†

Coligny, however, was far from foreseeing thus early the necessity of an appeal to arms. Indeed, the admiral, as well as Calvin, entertained doubts of the righteousness of upholding the cause of religion by the sword. When, therefore, the prince and the nobles who professed the reformed doctrines met at Vendome, which the King of Navarre had reached on his way to court; and when the Prince of Condé, the Vidame de Chartres, and D'Andelot proposed at once raising forces and attacking the Guises, the admiral, with the King of Navarre and the Prince of Porcien, deprecated any such extremity. In lieu of it, Coligny advised that the King of Navarre should proceed to court and claim the authority due to his rank. Antoine de Bourbon had not the address or courage to perform such a part.

* Regnier de la Planche.

† Brantome.

Davila.