XXVI. civil war, and without employing in the suppression of CHAP. resistance and disaffection an amount of cruelty not to be contemplated by a character like Henry's, that cruelty, too, assuming in his despite the colour of religious persecution. The failure of Protestantism in France was chiefly owing to the supineness of the middle class, whose cause it essentially had been, and to the depression of the labouring population. A rustic middle class, like our yeomanry, did not exist, and the civic population which proved favourable to the reformation had either been terrified into the external adoption and observance of Catholicism,* or driven away altogether from the towns of the north, including the capital. In the south, indeed, the towns for the greater part held firm, but even there they did not take up the cause with zeal, nor fling out from their numbers energetic men to lead them. Amidst all these soldiers of fortune the Huguenots engendered no Cromwell. They never raised their thoughts to war and resistance on their own account, nor to organisation after their own fashion; they trusted to princes to lead, to German or Swiss infantry to fight for them. In fact they wanted, what the middle class in France has always wanted-the perspicacity, energy, skill, and courage to divine and maintain their true interests and carry their cause through triumphantly. Even the great and gallant Coligny, it has been before observed, was not the leader to accomplish this. He had the purity and sincerity requisite for a religious chief, but he was a noble with small sympathy for the middle or the lower class, over which he gained no influence and exercised no control. Henry of Navarre was even still more unfit and unequal to the part, for *Those Protestants conforming to Catholicism were so numerous, that Calvin addressed and stigma tised them by the name of Nico- XXVI. CHAP. which indeed his rank as a prince totally incapacitated him. To Coligny's want of sympathy with the vulgar Henry joined that religious indifference which was gaining fast upon the age and upon its eminent men, and which is the usual consequence of religious enthu siasm without solidity, and fanatic efforts without policy or without aim. Henry the Fourth came to bury the religious struggle, not continue it. The king, therefore, there is little doubt, made known to the assembled chiefs of the Catholics in their camp that, however rejecting the demand of immediate conversion, he would listen to Catholic persuasion and se faire instruire. For him to take at once the step which they required would alienate the Huguenots, whilst it might not satisfy the Pope or conciliate those Catholics who took their policy as well as their creed from Rome. The king demanded six months' respite, which would afford time for assurance and information on those points. At their expiration he would summon a council of ecclesiastics and abide by their decision. The proposals of Henry were accepted. The greater number of the Catholic nobles, foremost amongst them the Princes of Conti and Montpensier, the Dukes of Longueville and Luxemburg, recognised Henry as king, he in turn issuing a declaration, that during the six months he would remove no Catholic from office, and appoint none but Catholics to be governors, except of the one town in each bailiwick, in which Protestant worship was to be allowed. Henry, moreover, promised to respect the privileges of the nobility, and to summon the states-general. The Catholic chiefs despatched one of their body-the Duke of Luxemburg-to the Pope to inform him of the grounds of their recognising a king, who was excommunicated, and to pray his Holiness to accept Henry as a son of the Church.* * De Thou, Isambert's collection of French Law, D'Aubigné, &c. the' Infor fo ot The adhesion of Marshal Biron to this compact was not obtained without the promise to him of the county of Perigord. Epernon declined affixing his signature under pretext that he would not do so after Biron and D'Aumont, and marched off with his division of 6000 and 1200 horse to his government of the Angouis. La Tremouille, the Protestant chief of Poitou, who maintained Condé's old rivalry to the King of Navarre, followed his example, having the better pretext that Henry was about to abandon Protestantism and its cause.* Vitry and some others went over to the League. The Duke of Nevers hesitated. m With his diminished army, Henry could not hope to force his way into the capital. To retreat with it behind the Loire was to abandon the north, of which 80 many of the gentry had just rallied to his standard. Obedient, no doubt, to the desire and to the suggestion of D'Aumont and D'Humières, he resolved to divide his army, giving the former a portion of it, and another portion to the Duke of Longueville to reduce the towns of Picardy and Champagne, or at least to harass them and destroy their crops. From this we may judge that it was the civic population of the north which alone held for the League. With the rest Henry determined on marching to the sea-coast of Normandy, in order to secure the money and troops which Queen Elizabeth was to send.† Whilst the camp of the two kings was flung into consternation and distraction by Henry the Third's assassination, that event excited in Paris a burst of * La Force (Mémoires) says they withdrew from their resources being exhausted. None of course but the foreign troops were paid, and as Henry stipulated to give no commands to the Huguenots, they were in a worse position than even the Catholic soldiers. † Cecil writes to Hickes, that the King of Navarre had promised under hand and seal not to change his religion, no doubt in the hopes of obtaining this succour. (Wright's Queen Elizabeth.) Henry sent De Beauvoir to England to demand succour, August 19. CHAP. XXVI. XXVI. CHAP. uncontrolled joy. The mother and sister of the late Duke of Guise, the Duchesses of Nemours and Montpensier, went forth themselves into the streets first, distributing green scarfs, and then to the altar, to announce the death of the tyrant and the martyrdom of St. Jacques Clement. The clergy echoed the joy and the panegyrism, and the mother of the assassin, brought hastily to Paris, was addressed by them in the language reserved for the Virgin Mary. The general satisfaction at Henry's death was troubled by the difficult necessity of naming a successor. The Cardinal of Bourbon, uncle of Henry the Fourth, and declared presumptive heir by the League, was in the hands of the opposite party. The Duke of Mayenne was urged at once to assume the crown, to which he was well inclined; but the more violent of the Parisians were opposed to him, and, receiving money and counsel direct from the Spanish agents, they would hear of no king but Philip the Second, whilst the more moderate leaguers preferred the cardinal. Mendoza, the Spanish envoy, not prepared or instructed for the catastrophe of the vacant throne, recommended the Cardinal of Bourbon as the best choice for the moment, and Mayenne could not oppose his being proclaimed. Henry the Fourth tried to negotiate with the duke, whose replies were polite but evasive. Mayenne saw, justly enough, that the only path to the throne was victory, and applied himself to collect forces and crush the diminished army of his rival.* Henry effected the division of his army at Compiegne, whither he had brought the remains of the late king. He then, with some 5000 Huguenots and not so many Catholics, struck across Normandy to Dieppe, and returned to threaten Rouen on the 24th (August, 1589). Mayenne had mustered nearly 30,000 infantry, Walloons, Lansquenets, and Lorrainers, under the Duke of * L'Estoile, Palma Cayet, De Thou, &c. de and Diet ite XXVI. Lorraine's son, the Marquis del Pont; 500 horse joined CHAP. * The Duc d'Angoulême and the Duc de la Force, in their Memoirs, have left accounts descriptive of Arques and its engagement. There are, besides, Henry's official account in the "Discours de ce qui s'est pasVOL. III. S sé, &c.," in Mémoires de la Ligue, † Leaguers' account in MSS. |