XXV. CHAP. rine the opportunity to interfere. With some difficulty* she induced the King of Navarre to consent to a meeting, which took place in December, at Cognac. The encounter of their wits has been preserved.† The queen began by asking what Henry desired. "Nothing that I see here," was the reply of the monarch, as he surveyed the ladies who accompanied Catherine. As he remained obstinately silent, the queen asked if he was determined to prolong the ruin and misery of the kingdom. "Be it ruined, as you will, Madame, I shall always be able to keep my little corner of it."-" Will you not obey the king?" "For the last eighteen months I have ceased to obey him."-" How say you, my son?" "Madame, the king, who ought to be a father to me, has made war upon me like a wolf, yea, has fought me like a lion."—"These are mere words," said Catherine, "surely you will never allow me to lose all my time and trouble in coming here!" "Alas, Madame, I am not the cause of your trouble; I do not prevent you sleeping in your bed. It is you who keep me from reposing in mine. You feed on trouble and agitation; you could not live without it."-"How you are changed; you used to be good and tractable." "Tis true; the way I have been treated has changed my character." "Let us, at any rate, make a truce." "As you will." "You'll get no reistres from Germany, I promise you." "Madame, it is not from you that I come to seek information." The king and his mother were both piqued by the obstinacy of the King of Navarre, their public negotiations with whom brought upon them the obloquy of Rome and of the Catholics; whilst that prince, refusing even to mention, much less accept, terms, looked merely to obtain German succours, and thus reduce the court to accept his conditions. Henry the Third, therefore, *Her letter of October to Cheverny from Chenonceaux. Bethune, 8715. † MSS. Dupuy, 317. XXV. exerted himself to muster an army capable of obstructing CHAP. his junction with the Germans. He issued orders for the gendarmerie to assemble; summoned the Parisians and the provincial towns to amass supplies; obtained a bull for raising money on church property; seized upon three-fourths of the confiscated property of the Huguenots*; and again commanding Guise and Mayenne to defend Champagne and Burgundy, entrusted to Joyeuse the army which was to combat the King of Navarre in Poitou. It was late in the summer, however, ere the Germans were ready, and the King of Navarre remained at La Rochelle; Joyeuse, whose orders were exclusively to watch him, could accomplish little save the capture of a few towns. These he sacked and most cruelly treated, in order to provoke Navarre, or to manifest his zeal; for Joyeuse came forward as a zealous partisan of the Church and of the League, and sought to be friendly with the Guises. He thus not a little annoyed and estranged the king, and even seized an interval to repair to Paris, where he was better received by the League and the fanatic citizens than by the monarch himself. The latter, however, gave him permission to fight a battle, and the courtiers all flocked back with him to the seat of war, in order to share in the honour of the triumph. During the absence at court of the commander opposed to him, the King of Navarre had left La Rochelle and advanced to the Loire, driving the Catholics before him. One of his objects was to receive the Count of Soissons, brother of Condé, who was escaping from the court and the League to join the Huguenots, and who, at the same time, was bringing a supply of money from Queen Elizabeth.† When on the Loire, the plan was mooted of marching straight to join the Germans as they advanced across Lorraine. But the return of Joyeuse with large reinforcements, and the news that Vie de Nicholas Pithou, MSS. † Walsingham's letters to Burleigh, Sep. 12, 1587. VOL. III. P XXV. But CHAP. Guise had mustered a large army in Champagne, made the Huguenot prince resolve to imitate the march of Coligny, who went round by Gascony and Languedoc to meet the auxiliary army which he expected from Germany.* It was Joyeuse's charge, both from the king and the League, to prevent this; and whilst the Huguenots mustered at St. Jean d'Angely, Henry the Third's lieutenant ordered the gendarmes and Catholic gentry of the surrounding provinces to join him at Ruffec. Both armies being completed, in the middle of September, marched parallel with each other towards the Dordogne, Joyeuse with the intention of seizing upon the Castle of Coutras, situated at the junction of two rivers, the Isle and the Drome, not far from where they both unite with the Dordogne. At Coutras, Joyeuse would have been well posted to prevent Navarre crossing either of these two rivers, or the Dordogne itself. as the Albanian light horse of Joyeuse entered Coutras on the evening of the 19th September 1587, the light cavalry of the enemy appeared in line, to drive them back and defeat their purpose. Joyeuse, who was at Chalais, on learning this, gave orders to his troops to march at midnight. He had 8000 arquebusiers, a large body of gendarmes, and all the Catholic country gentry in their feudal array. The King of Navarre had but 4000 arquebusiers and 2000 horse. It was proposed to him to retreat, the enemy being so superior in number, but Henry resolved to fight. He knew Coutras well, the castle having been his frequent residence. In a wood adjoining it, which sunk down to the plain and was intrenched, Henry placed the greater part of his arquebusiers, and divided his horse into four squadrons, some sixty paces distant from each other. Joyeuse, in delight that the enemy awaited him, gathered together four hundred of his bravest and most attached cavaliers, *Duplessis-Mornay XXV. and made the rest extend in double line on either side, CHAP. flanking them by his infantry in two bodies. At the moment the Huguenot pastors gave forth the wellknown psalm of This is the long desired day, repeating which each soldier in the army bent his knee, "They are afraid, they confess!" exclaimed some of the royalists. The more experienced observed that, on the contrary, the Huguenot prayer was the sign of determined resistance. The battle was opened by the King of Navarre's artillery, which was well served, while that of Joyeuse was masked by a hillock and prevented from replying with effect. At last, one of his best commanders, St. Sulpice, being killed by a cannon shot*, and his ranks thinned, Joyeuse gave orders to charge, and advanced himself with his whole line. The arquebusiers of Navarre were commanded to direct their fire on the central mass as they advanced, and it was fatal; the horse of Joyeuse being shot and many of his followers' horses wounded. At the same time the Huguenots charged in squadrons against the Catholics as they advanced in line, so that the latter were easily broken. The long lances of Catholic gendarmes were of no effect. And after an hour's intermingled and hand to hand fight, Joyeuse's army was destroyed, he himself, his brother, and the greater part of his officers and nobles having perished.† The King of Navarre displayed at Coutras all the brilliant qualities of the general, as of the soldier, signalising himself in several personal encounters, and telling the princes of the house of Condé and of Soissons, "he would show them that he was their elder." But most of the results of the victory both to his character and his cause, were thrown away by his lightness of euse. * Discours de la Defaite de JoyMS. Dupuy, 317, f. 33. † D'Aubigné, Sully, DuplessisMornay, De Thou, Mathieu, Rela tions de la bataille de Coutras in CHAP. purpose. Difficulties and jealousies no doubt arose. His army was disposed to disband, as all armies of the day were after victory. The Prince of Condé was jealous and anxious to set up an independent command, and being supported by the Counts of Turenne and La Tremouille, they separated their troops from the King of Navarre.* Disgusted with this, and seeing the impossibility of pursuing his march to join the Germans, Henry gathered the standards which had been taken from the enemy, and hurried off to lay them at the feet of his mistress, the Duchess of Grammont, in the distant province of Béarn.† The Duke of Guise was far more active to redeem the defeat of the Catholics, than Henry to profit by Protestant victory. The German army under the Duke of Bouillon and Count D'Ohna marched through Champagne by Chaumont and Chatillon. They were more uncertain in their movements from the circumstance of an officer whom they had sent to Henry, having been shot whilst delivering, but ere he had finished, the message which he brought. Henry the Third, not willing to give too large an army to Guise, took himself the command of the forces, which he led to the Loire; whilst the Germans approached that river to effect the passage over it, which the Huguenots had promised to facilitate. Instead of a Huguenot army, an envoy from the King of Navarre arrived with excuses. And the Germans, finding neither an open bridge nor a friendly army at La Charité, as they were led to expect, encountered the royal forces in occupation of the town. They accordingly turned north towards Gien. The court was in terror lest they should march on Paris, and Henry knew not whether to direct his army to * Sully. † D'Aubigné. Henry's letter to Nevers, Oct. 15th. His correspondence, MSS. Bethune. |