XXV. CHAP. tempt. As remedies for this universal discord he proposed a concile for the settlement of religious disputes, and the states-general as the only means of putting an end to political abuses.* Such menacing demands the court eluded rather than resisted. Damville was successful in Provence; whilst the Duke of Montpensier in the west merely performed the feat of rasing the castle of Lusignan, celebrated for its architectural grandeur and fabulous renown. As the southerners, however, were contented to remain for the most part on the defensive, Henry did not see the necessity of active war until he was roused by the flight of his brother Alençon in Sep tember 1575. This prince, by the death of Charles the Ninth, succeeded to the position of his brother Henry, but not to his favour with Catherine. There had been enmity between them which almost came to blows during the siege of La Rochelle. And the younger was little satisfied with his brother's reception of him at Lyons. This even drove him into hasty conspiracies against the new king, which were discovered, Alençon betraying that he had large offers of pecuniary and military aid from English agents if he would declare himself for the Huguenots. Catherine appeased Henry, whose suspicions were awakened by a severe pain in the ear. This he attributed to some design of his brother against his life; and he sought to persuade the King of Navarre to kill Alençon, and thus remove a rival between him and the throne. But this prince, however he acquiesced, and even joined, in the licentiousness of the court, declared that neither greatness nor prosperity were to be attained by crime. Although *Declaration from Montpellier, MSS. Fontanieu, 335. + Michele. He represents Alençon as strong, though small, and tutto massaccio. La Mothe Fenelon, tom. vii, p. 472. § Matthieu. XXV. the king forgave his brother, he still refused him the CHAP. post which he sought of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Alençon remained in constant communication with Damville*, and at last, in September, he managed to escape from court to Dreux, whence he sent forth a manifesto very much resembling in spirit that published by the marshal. The apparition of a prince of the blood at the head of the malcontents of the kingdom instantly magnified the importance of these in the minds of foreign potentates, and Condé found no difficulty in persuading the Count Palatine and other German princes to send a body of reistres to the service of Alençon.† The court had no army to oppose to their march, save such as might be feudally raised. And this the Duke of Guise, as governor of Champagne, and as personally influential, could alone perform. He accordingly received the commission and gave his whole energies to execute itt; whilst Catherine, dreading alike the successes of the malcontents and those of Guise, hurried after Alençon to offer him the most advantageous terms and win him back to loyalty and peace. The duke refused to meet his mother until he was behind the Loire. And he at last only consented to an interview, when his sanguine hopes were somewhat dashed by a defeat, which the Duke of Guise had inflicted on the reistres near Attigny, on the 10th of October.§ He put them completely to the rout, but being severely wounded, as his father had been, in the eye, a wound from which he acquired the name of Le Balafré, he was obliged to be carried off the field, Thoré and Condé succeeding to bring 4,000 of the reistres safe to Damville. Catherine His letters to Damville are copied into Fontanieu, 335-6-7-8. † Capitulations of Condé with Casimir; second document in MSS. Colbert, 29. Guise's total want of money is depicted in his letters. MSS. Gagnières, 354. § Same vol. of MSS. Gagnières. XXV. CHAP. was not encouraged by Guise's success to inflict harder terms upon Alençon. She, on the contrary, wrote to the king, "that if he did not make peace he was lost. And that for her part, she had rather see him dead than vanquished, or a fugitive."* Henry gave her full power. She made offer to the Duke of Anjou and Touraine in appanage. He, at the suggestion of Damville, insisted, as a preliminary, on the liberation of Marshals Montmorency and Cossé, to which Catherine not only assented, but urged Henry to load Montmorency with kindness in order to induce him to further the work of peace (October). This the marshal not only promised but accomplished. The southerns consented to a truce in November (1575).† Five towns-namely, Angoulême, Niort, Saumur, Bourges, and La Charité — were to be given up to Alençon, and Mezières to Condé, in addition to what the Huguenots already held, whilst the German troops were to be paid 500,000 livres, and dismissed by the court. The conditions which were granted to the Huguenots were, perhaps not in the intention, but at least not in the power, of Henry to fulfil. Ruffec, the governor of Angoulême, refused to surrender it; and the court was obliged to give Cognac and St. Jean d'Angely in its place. Mezières, in the hands of Condé, would not only give him a fortress in the north, on the borders of Lorraine, but facilitate his introducing his Protestant allies from Germany into the kingdom. The Guises, of course, opposed the conditions of the truce, and their power nullified it. Neither could the court find money to pay the reistres, whose demands far exceeded the 500,000 livres, even had these been forthcoming.‡ *Copied in Fontanieu, p. 338, from MSS. Rothelin. + Walsingham at the time warned Condé how much preferable open war was to a deceitful peace. MSS. Colbert, 299. But Alençon declared that a total want of funds to satisfy the reistres compelled him to make peace. MS. Bethune, 8714, fol. 85. See Mémoires de Nevers. The 8th vol. of MSS. Colbert, V.C., is filled with a mass of letters Alençon complained, that instead of the conditions of the truce being observed, attempts were made to poison him; and he wrote in January to Duke Casimir not to withdraw his reistres from France till the king had performed his promise.* During three months of suspense and inaction, the Huguenot cause received a greater accession of strength and consideration than the sons of Catherine could bring them, by the escape from court of the King of Navarre. The queen mother had employed her utmost ingenuity to captivate or neutralise this young monarch. She sowed rivalry between him and Alençon by promising him the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom; and she instructed one of her beautiful attendants, Madame de Sauve, to coquet with both. Henry of Navarre had apparently resigned himself to court captivity and to Catholic orthodoxy. He sought relief in gallantry and pleasure. He even lived on terms of intimacy with the Duke of Guise, who, on one occasion, offered him his sword to support his eventual right to the succession. From despair or dissimulation he seemed so completely to have abandoned all ideas of embracing the cause of the Huguenots, that most of his friends of that persuasion suspected his fidelity to them. D'Aubigné and Armagnac were indeed about to leave his service, when, one night that the King of Navarre was suffering from fever, they heard him murmur a stanza of the 88th Psalm, in which the desertion of friends is complained of as the most poignant of griefs. Hearing this, one of them broke forth, saying: "Is it then true, sire, that the spirit of God still lives and works in you; and that you sigh relative to the payment of these reistres, and fully shows the penury of the court. There was an independent body of these troops under Mansfeldt, that the king desired to take into his pay; but he was to- vance. * MSS. Colbert, V.C. viii. СНАР. XXV. XXV. CHAP. for the absence of friends, who, like us, are labourers for your deliverance? You vent your sorrow in tears: they their resentment in arms. They worship God, and you adore women. And you are contented to play the valet here, instead of living a master in your own dominions." These faithful followers associated others, such as Fervaques and Laverdet in a plot, not only for Henry's escape, but for the simultaneous seizure of Le Mans, Chartres, and Cherbourg. A hunting party at St. Germains was fixed upon as the best opportunity for escaping to join Alençon in the west. But the court was suspicious, and Henry went to enjoy his sport at Senlis, ill situated for escape. Here, however, he learned that he was betrayed, and that Fervaques had revealed the whole plan to the king. Henry took at once his resolve, rode off at full speed, passed the Seine at Poissy towards daybreak next morning, and succeeded in reaching Alençon and Saumur. It was Fervaques who betrayed him, yet who, on second thoughts, warned him to escape. The same Fervaques followed him, and though every way a traitor (for he remained in communication with Catherine), he still continued to retain so much influence with Henry that he dissuaded him from declaring himself a Protestant, and represented how much better for his interests, and even for those of his party, that he should continue to conform to Catholicism. Hence, says D'Aubigné, the little court of Saumur remained without any religion whatever for the space of three months. The incertitude of his attitude and his conduct rendered the King of Navarre of little influence in the affairs of the war, which consisted merely of a successful march of Condé, with his German allies, through Burgundy to meet Damville; whilst the Duke of Mayenne, without money and without the foreign troops promised him, was unable to fight or intercept |