CHAP. was to be given the command of the Catholic league against the Turk. Charles, who was jealous of the Catholic league, evaded rather than declined the offer. He threatened to make a Huguenot alliance to counterbalance the Catholic league; and he kept his word. Yet he informed the Pope, through the Cardinal Alexandrini, that, notwithstanding the present appearance to the contrary, he would find this policy most favourable to papal interests. His holiness might safely grant the dispensation for the marriage, for he would have ample cause of final satisfaction. Cardinal D'Ossat has recorded the confession of the Pope himself at a later period, which fully agrees with other assurances given by the king to the Guises in the midst of their apparent disgrace. As far back as the spring of 1571, Charles bade the Cardinal of Guise tell his nephew, the duke, "To be discontented with nothing that he should see or hear, as the king esteemed no man more than he did the duke."* In the following year, when he induced the Guises to come to Paris, and made them become publicly reconciled to the admiral, he warned them to make their reconciliation no deeper than it pleased them, telling the Duc D'Aumale, about the same time, to have patience, and he would soon see a good trick played.† But, perhaps, the strongest indication of foul play being meditated exists in the demand of the king that the fortresses of security accorded for two years to the Huguenots, should be given up to him: a desire which the admiral and his friends readily complied with. These circumstances prove that the desertion of the policy, and the destruction of the persons of the Huguenots, was at least contemplated by the monarch as an alternative, if not a probability, however in better * Simancas papers quoted by Bouillé, t. ii. p. 494. + Histoire du Duc de Guise. The same work contains, t. ii. p. 497, a remarkable instance of the deep dissimulation of Charles. moments he may have shrunk from it. In either case it was expedient to accomplish the marriage of Navarre. This young prince, in case of rupture with the Protestants, being thus in the power of the Catholic court, and unable to resist its mingled threats and solicitations, the Huguenots would lose the future chief whom they looked to, whilst Coligny might be saved or sacrificed. Such were the conflicting opinions, not merely started in private intercourse, but discussed in the regular councils of the state during the spring of 1572. The Duke of Anjou was for not breaking with Spain. Tavannes supported him. Coligny, with his usual energy, maintained the contrary opinion, and pressed Alencon's marriage with Elizabeth, however embarrassed by her exigencies. The king was en couraged in his war projects by the capture of Brill and Flushing, and the insurrection of Rotterdam in April; and Louis of Nassau left Paris on the 19th of May to commence operations. Valenciennes was surprised by his partisans on the 24th, and Mons on the following day. The confederates pressed Charles to lend the aid he had promised, and to order the expedition, prepared at Brouage, near La Rochelle, to sail. The king still hesitated. He, however, furnished Genlis, a follower of Coligny, with money; and allowed him to conduct a large body of volunteers to the support of Mons, which was menaced by Alva. Valenciennes had been already recaptured. But even whilst despatching Genlis, Charles sought to preserve appearances with Spain by a proclamation, forbidding the French gens-d'armes of the northern provinces from taking any part in the war.* The Duke of Alva directed all his efforts to the recapture of Mons. He had taken, in Valenciennes, papers revealing the projects of France.† His friends * La Mothe Fenelon, letter of June 9. VOL. III. K † Gachard, Correspondance de Philip II. The letters between CHAP. XXIV. CHAP. at the latter court revealed to him all particulars of the march of Genlis*, so that the duke was able to surprise that partisan near Quievrain, on the 19th of June, disperse his band, and make himself a prisoner. This event, which augured too ill for the success of any French attempt upon Flanders, struck a chill into the king. The Prince of Orange passed the Rhine early in July, but with insufficient force, and the Emperor Maximilian, instead of supporting, ordered him to desist. Elizabeth was far from zealous. Her counsellors disliked a French conquest of Flanders; and on the news of the defeat of Genlis, she kept back the English reinforcements intended for Flushing, and, indeed, spoke of recalling those already there. Charles still hesitated. Coligny pressed his demands with the peremptory tone of a master, rather than with the persuasive one of a courtier. He sought less to incite the young king by the promise of glory and success than to intimidate him by the fearful consequences of drawing back, when "troubles more terrible than any that had yet been must assail the kingdom." The admiral spoke almost like an independent potentate. He demanded permission to send 2,000 horse and 4,000 foot to the aid of the Prince of Orange, "which should cost his majesty nothing, and not embroil him with Spain more than he was," for Coligny would take it all on himself. He the King and St. Goard, his envoy *Ludovic of Nassau at this Simancas Papers. They (B. 31) contain a letter of Ludovic to Olivier, dated Paris, Dec. 30, 1571, as well as one from Olivier to the Spanish envoy, Alava, giving information and an account of his movements and plans. + Letter to Vulcob. MSS. Bethune, 3821, f. 23. Walsingham's letter of Aug. 10, in Digges. Elizabeth makes a similar accusation against the French Court under same date. S. P. France, 53. merely required that the government of the frontier provinces should not impede the march of these troops. Whilst Charles was displeased with this tone of arrogance and independence, he was discouraged by the arguments employed to intimidate him. He was not only menaced by the hostility of Alva and the turbulence of the Huguenots, if disappointed, but the Protestants told him plainly that he would not be able to maintain his own edicts of tolerance were the Duke of Alva to prove triumphant. The Catholic party would then be too strong for him.† When such was the language of the Huguenots, what must have been that of Catherine, who had for a long time deprecated the attack on Flanders. She asked the king with tears, whether, with the fate of Genlis before him, he would persist in attacking Spain without even the support of England. She entreated him to pause, and at least suspend the sailing of the expedition from Brouage. Charles did pause. He sent (August 10) to beg of Elizabeth to declare war against Spain, and promised to support her views, whatever they might be, upon Flushing. The king was torn by irresolution and the magnitude of the crisis, for it was evident he must break with his mother, his brother, and the Catholics on one side, with the risk of seeing them in arms against him, or he must sacrifice not only his projects upon Flanders but the freedom or life of the admiral to them. They demanded no less. To revolve this alternative Charles betook himself, towards the close of July§, to * A letter from the Duc de Montpensier to the Count Palatine, written in March 1573, relates the proceedings and demands of the Admiral. MSS. Bethune, 8702. + Walsingham's letters of July. But Elizabeth knew that the French envoys held a very different language, and made far different proposals and promises, at Rome § Walsingham writes CHAP. XXIV. CHAP. the solitude and distractions of the chase, whilst Coligny repaired to his chateau of Chatillon sur Loing. Catherine seized the opportunity to bring her son to a determination. She hurried after him, found him at Montpipeau, and there with tears and great excitement represented to him once more the perils of the path he was pursuing. If he persisted, she avowed her determination not to share the responsibility, but to withdraw to Auvergne, and there abide the decision of events.* This meant, that if Charles was resolved to risk his crown in a contest with Spain and the Catholics, Catherine would try to secure it and its rights for her other sons. Charles comprehended the threat, yet allowed Catherine to depart without succumbing to it. She had not, however, been long gone than he was impressed with the danger of allowing her to follow up her resolutions. He hastened after his mother, overtook her at Chenonceaux, and the result of renewed conversation there was that Charles became a convert to the views of Catherine, promised her to abandon the war upon Flanders and the policy of the admiral. That he as yet consented to the latter's death is uncertain, but the unfortunate monarch certainly began to contemplate the necessity of the fearful alternative of putting it out of the power of the Huguenots to hurt or resist him now that he had determined to forsake their counsels. There came little either from events or from abroad to encourage Charles to persevere in his honourable plans, or wean him from the cowardly and wicked counsels of his mother and brother. The Duke of Alva was preparing to besiege Mons, and the Prince of Orange not in force to prevent him. Elizabeth, far *Le Tocsin. This and other contemporary accounts of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the Réveille-matin, Capilupi's Strata gema and Henry the Third's Narrative to Miron, are all collected in vol. vii. of the first series of Cimber and Danjou's Archives curieuses. |