CHAP. am fellow-religionist of all those who are brave and honest."* Whilst the Huguenot chiefs were thus reluctant to wage violent war with the king, the latter was equally unwilling and unable to crush them. He could not muster funds wherewith to keep his army on foot; and it disbanded of its own accord so fast after the capture of Brouage, that he was obliged to recall its diminished numbers to Angoulême.† Under these circumstances, the negotiations of a peace could not be difficult. Negotiators on both sides met at Bergerac. The King of Navarre summoned the Protestant ministers to be present. They demanded complete toleration for their worship in every town. This the king could not grant; it would resuscitate the League at once. They then required fifty new places of surety. The Prince of Condé, too, was most recalcitrant; and he at one time threatened to go into Languedoc, and place himself at the head of the malcontents.‡ At length, on the 17th of September, the peace was signed at Bergerac. It considerably curtailed the advantages granted to the Reformers by the Peace of Monsieur in the preceding year. Instead of freedom of worship in a multitude of towns, it was again restrained to certain places in each bailliage, except in such towns as the Reformers held up to the end of September. In and around Paris it was also forbidden. In matters of marriages, fêtes, ceremonies, and tithes, the Huguenots were obliged to conform. Towns of surety were given them for six years. Aigues Mortes, and Montpellier in Languedoc; in Provence, Dauphiné and Guienne, the same towns as in the Letter to De Batz, 1577. Lettres du Roi de Navarre, t. i. p. 120. † Henry's letter to the Duke of Nevers. MSS. Bethune, 8860, f. 100. Henry's letter to Damville. MSS. Bethune, 8836. previous pacification. Issoire and Beaucaire were no longer amongst these given. In addition to the places for six years, the King of Navarre was to keep for a twelvemonth (till August 1578) sixteen important towns, and to receive 36,000 livres and the pay of their garrison. The court, however, recovered one hundred and fifty places in Languedoc. Amongst the secret articles was the regulation of mixed courts for the trial of causes in which Protestants were concerned. The Peace of Bergerac granted to the Huguenots, in despite of the intrigues and menaces of the League, and even of the victories to which it had mainly contributed, was, for the moment, a complete triumph over the party of intolerance and Guise. The king recovered an authority in the provinces which he had not previously enjoyed, and a fair amount of revenue, could he have economised, or have been contented with it. All, indeed, that was required to maintain his position was that degree of prudence, dignity, and consistency, which command respect. What the humbler classes asked was, peace and protection from the license of the soldiers and the rapaciousness of the taxman. What the aristocracy desired was a patron to whom they might look for emolument and advancement, honour and employ. The king, the national dispenser of these in an absolute monarchy, unfortunately shared his mother's aversion for men of birth and its pretensions. He preferred a few impotent favourites and low dependants, who could divest themselves of all dignity, restraint, and of even morality and decorum, in their intercourse with him. Henry's tastes were puerile and flagitious. Report or calumny exaggerated them into the bestial. And the noblesse of claims and talents hurried in Colbert, 16. See La Popelinière Dupuy, 428. Secret Articles, and De Thou. * Treaty of Bergerac. See MS. CHAP. XXV. CHAP. disgust from his service, to take up that of the Guises, of Henry of Navarre, or of Montmorency in Languedoc. XXV. Purely religious fanaticism was on the decline. Montaigne told De Thou* that such a sentiment animated Guise no more than it did Navarre. And religious indifference, undoubtedly the creed of Catherine, was that into which the minds of the higher and educated classes lapsed after years of ill-directed fervour and bigot crime. Controversy had worn itself out; doctrinal disputes and colloquies were no longer held. Religious dogma ceased to be thrust forward. And although Roman Catholicism was the banner of the League, it was more as the Shibboleth of Spain and the Guises, of despotism and authority, than as abstract conviction or truth. The arguments employed by those who remonstrated with the monarch, or appealed to the people, became more political than polemic. The leaguers themselves, instead of exclusively insisting on the dangers which threatened the Church, complained of the capricious despotism, which set aside the noblesse, sought to raise taxes of its own authority, and debased the coin. They clamoured for the Estates, whilst the Normans especially demanded the fulfilment of the conditions of their ancient charter. But the traditions of right and the principles of freedom had been so long stifled and forgotten, that mere incoherent fragments of them floated to the surface, to serve as the plaything of argument, not the motive of action. In the absence of political, and the decay of religious principle, what chiefly survived, attracted, and commanded, was personality. Men looked no longer to the cause, but to the man who was its leader. When the chiefs shrunk into inaction or repose, as they did after the Peace of Bergerac, the country enjoyed some tranquillity. But when, after * Mémoires de F. A. De Thou, liv. iii. XXV. a few years, the death of the Duke of Anjou left the СНАР. King of Navarre and his race heir presumptive to Henry the Third and the Valois, the jealousies and hopes of the Guises and their partisans awakened, and the intensity of personal antagonism gave birth to a struggle more fierce than that which the novelty or the scandal of religious dissent had previously excited. becile, part taken in the The six or seven years which elapsed from the Peace of Bergerac to the death of Anjou, and the consequent resuscitation of the League, might be treated as forming a blank in French history. The interest and action of the religious drama, the struggle between Protestantism and freedom on the one hand, Catholicism and despotism on the other, were transferred to the soil of Belgium and the court of Spain. The prominent, though imstrife by the Duke of Anjou may have affected the cause in France, but did not implicate parties there. Henry the Third, and even Catherine, held aloof, however much the latter was interested for the success of her younger son. The brothers regarded each other with puerile hatred, and their inhabiting the same court or palace led to the most absurd rivalry between themselves, and the most ignoble squabbles amongst their followers. Each bestowed their favour and time, and lavished their resources on a band of young, handsome, swaggering gallants, to whom the king especially set the example of great extravagance, and, at the same time, effeminacy of dress. Their cheeks were painted, their necks adorned with starched frills of enormous dimensions, and their hair curled with a care exceeding male pretensions. Henry the Third carried this so far as to appeared accoutred in a female garb. These acts of *The history of this struggle is so fully depicted in the pages of Motley and Prescott, that the writer of purely French annals may be con- XXV. CHAP. idiotcy the people construed to be indicative not merely of perverted taste, but of degrading crime; and the king's mignons were the object of such universal execration, that when they perished by the hands of each other or of more insidious foes, and when Henry consoled himself for their loss by the performance of splendid funeral rites, and the erection of superb mausoleums, the public applauded the acts of vengeance by which these base parasites were slain. Strange to say, personal courage, inherent in the French gentleman, did not deteriorate even in this court world of dissoluteness. Frequent and fierce duelling attested that the minions flung away their lives as recklessly as they misused them. The followers of Anjou fought in encounters of six or eight of a side, with as many of Henry's favourites. Those around Guise, of more decorum and orthodox pretensions, preferred assassination, which to the hero of St. Bartholomew seemed no crime. It was in the midst of this sink of dissoluteness that Henry the Third bethought of founding one of those great institutions of knighthood, which in other countries preserved the spirit of chivalry, even then upon the wane. In emulation of the Garter and the Golden Fleece, Henry founded the Order of the Saint Esprit one blushes to translate the profanation. Aware that he had alienated the great magnates of his kingdom, he thought at once to rally and gratify them by this new order of exclusive knighthood, which was to be richly endowed out of ecclesiastical property.* It gave him the opportunity of binding the new knights by an oath of allegiance and fraternity to himself, which might counteract and replace that of the League. If chivalry and loyalty were mere luxurious plants, to grow best from a dung-heap, Henry's order of the Saint Esprit might have flourished. * Which the Pope refused to sanction. |