CHAP. and at the installation of the order of the St. Esprit, that he would join them in extirpating the Protestants! XXVII. Facts had corresponded to words. In every part of the kingdom, except in the towns where they armed and "could show their teeth," the attempts of Protestants to perform their worship were met by outrage and by massacre. But recently, the Huguenots of La Chataignerie, deprived of their arms, were ruthlessly massacred by the garrison of Rochefort, the scenes of Vassy and St Bartholomew's Eve being thus resuscitated under the reign of Henry of Bearn. As to the execution of the edict of 1577, it was a mockery. Instead of fit places being appointed for Protestant worship, such spots were fixed as were too far or too dangerous for them to attend. In all Burgundy, Provence, and Picardy, there was not a town left them. And even in such as Caen, Alençon, Dieppe, Sancerre, where the great majority of the inhabitants were Protestants, none dare preach within the walls. The parliaments everywhere mocked the law of toleration. That of Bordeaux had burned the Bible by the hands of the executioner; and magistrates, instead of maintaining the edict, were foremost in forcing the religionists to adoration of relics, or the attendance at mass, or in the carrying off their children to be baptized. Nowhere were they admitted, as the edict directed, to any functions, save a few high nobles whom the king took by the hand. Their gentry and citizens were allowed neither schools nor the right of burial. The mixed tribunals promised them were everywhere refused. In conclusion, the Huguenots demanded a law, which would impart to them the common rights of subjects. They asked not the treasures heaped upon the leaguers, or the monopolies accorded them, but simply justice, toleration, and security. The force and truth of these complaints had probably less influence than the fact of the Huguenots abstaining from any zealous aid in the siege of Amiens. They were separating their cause from that of the king, and looking out for a new leader either in the Duc de Bouillon or La Tremouille. And it was alleged that a difference between the clergy and the lay chiefs, as to which of them should have the control of the funds, alone prevented the Huguenots assuming an attitude of rebellion. At the same time the king's chief reason for remaining deaf to their demands was about to be removed. The Duke of Mercœur, supported in Britanny by the Spaniards, pretended to represent the orthodoxy of the League, and the cause of the Catholic noblesse. But when the Breton towns fell off from him, and he himself began seriously to offer submission, Henry considered that he might make public concessions to the Huguenots, without increasing the power or exciting the resentment of their antagonists. The religionists too were rendered more placable and pliable by learning that Mercœur had submitted, and that Spain had consented to negotiate for peace. They besought the king to come to an agreement with them first, and to issue the promised edicts of toleration before the treaty with Spain was concluded. The negotiations with the deputies were completed by the time that the king entered Nantes in April, after having received the promised submission of Mercœur. In this town Henry signed on the 15th of April, 1598, the edict, known as that of Nantes, which became the rule of Protestant rights and existence in France. It was agreed at the time that the treaty should be kept secret until the Pope's legate had departed. And the king in his letters even to his principal officers passed the matter over in silence. The Protestants on their side demanded that the assembly of Vendome should continue its sittings until the publication and registering of the new law.* * Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, De Thou, Mémoires et Corre CHAP. XXVII. СНАР. XXVII. The edict of Nantes answers little to the idea that almost every one might conceive of an act of toleration. Instead of bestowing equal rights and liberty of conscience to the Protestants of the realm, it merely granted them full liberty of worship in certain towns, about 200, chiefly of the south, where the reformed religion had preserved its domination. In other districts the Huguenots were to select one town in each bailliage or judicial district, in the suburbs of which they might build and hold a prêche. By the secret articles appended to the edict, the number was extended to two towns in certain provinces, except in such places as were mentioned in the treaties with the noblesse of the League. This exception banished Protestantism from almost the entire north of France, the region nearest to the Protestants of England, of Holland, and of Germany. They were to be banished from the country of the Guises. They were to have but two places of worship in all Picardy. A special clause allowed them to worship in the suburb of Dieppe. In Lyons and Toulouse, in Dijon and Chalons, Agen, Perigueux, Sens, as well as Nantes itself, and Besançon, they were expressly forbidden. One place of worship five leagues from Paris was allowed for the Huguenots of the country around the capital. The right of public worship to the Protestants in the suburbs of towns, granted by Henry the Third, was thus limited to less than one half of the kingdom by Henry the Fourth. The private worship in chateaux and residences, sanctioned by the former monarch, was renewed in the edict of Nantes. In return for these concessions the Protestants were obliged to pay tithes, but not rates for the reparation of churches. They were to spondance de Duplessis-Mornay, lement de Normandie, Mém. de Groulart, D'Aubigné, Lettres de Henri IV., Sully, Letters and Documents in S. P. XXVII. conform to the laws enjoined by Catholicism respecting CHAP. marriages, and to observe the fêtes of that church, even to permitting their windows to be furnished with hangings during processions, and allowing Catholic officers to do this. Wherever Protestants had purchased ecclesiastical property without the express ordonnance or permission of the sovereign, the Church might recover the property without paying indemnity or restoring purchase money. The Protestants were henceforth to be eligible to all offices and employments, and schools and hospitals were to be opened to them. An important and difficult question was how justice was to be administered to the Huguenots. This the edict of Nantes sought to secure to them by establishing mixed tribunals in the south, half Protestant half Catholic. As this was impossible at Toulouse, the seat of the parliament, where Huguenots were prohibited, the mixed court was established at Castres. In like manner the mixed court for Provence and for Burgundy was established in Dauphiné. There was also one at Bordeaux. In Paris was formed a Chambre de l'Edit, in which there was to be one Protestant judge, but the choice of Catholic judges was to have the approbation of the Protestants. Such were the chief provisions of the edict of Nantes, for the guarantee or observance of which Henry permitted the Protestant garrisons to be maintained in 100 of the towns, called towns of surety.* He was to appoint governors, but not such as they would object to. These garrisons amounted to about 4000 men. He promised to allow them 180,000 crowns annually to maintain them. And he at the same time promised 45,000 crowns annually for the payment of their ministers, and for education.† These promises were, A full list of the towns and garrisons is the last document in S. P. France, 119. It was this clause, and that establishing the Chambre de l'Edit de Paris, which occasioned most CHAP. however, made in secret articles, and were only to last eight years, though eventually they were maintained XXVII. till 1611. Such was the edict of Nantes, which has more the appearance of the capitulations which the Sultan of Turkey was in the habit of granting to his semi-subject provinces, than of peace and accord between two Christian sects. Nothing could be more unsatisfactory and more dangerous than this kind of treaty between a king and his subjects, they being allowed to keep arms in their hands to maintain it. Such a concession evidently contemplated the possibility of the king's being succeeded by a prince more unfavourable to the Protestants, and less likely to uphold toleration. It was not without reason that the Huguenots insisted on such guarantees, seeing, as the Duc de Bouillon expressed it to Sully, "that they and their children would not fail to be regarded as pests, gangrenes, and unwholesome tumours in the state, if God should afflict them with the loss of their king." It tells but ill for the political wisdom of Henry, and, indeed, of the religionists, that they could arrive at no more satisfactory settlement, one more promising of duration, less productive of mistrust and irritation between the two religions, and better calculated to ensure their living at peace. Even the state of things which prevailed in England, where the Catholics were kept down by penal laws, was, perhaps, preferable to the state of legal independence enjoyed by the French Huguenots: since the condition of the recusants naturally excited the commiseration and awakened the interest of the sovereign in their favour; whilst in France an edict so incompatible with an absolute difficulty. The entretien or payment lors such as Villeroy, strongly opposing it. The Huguenots demanded six judges in the Paris parliament. They obtained four in all. Memoirs of Madame Duplessis-Mornay. |