play of learning and a force of logic which these began CHAP. to want.* No adequate cause has been assigned for the great decrease of Protestantism, and the diminution of its numbers, which took place in the last years of the sixteenth and the early portion of the seventeenth century. The sweeping persecution in Germany, or the insidious oppression practised in France, even when eked out by the learning and logic of the Jesuits, are not sufficient. It was probably the same cause, that brought the affluence to it at first, which half a century later led to its being deserted. A great portion of those who became converted to Protestantism at its rise, were so as much from a belief in its success, as from a conviction of its truth. It was this feeling which had prevailed with Catherine de Medicis. She at one time thought the Reformation to be progress and Catholicism a creed going out of favour and fashion. This opinion, soon refuted and effaced from her mind, still widely prevailed, and the victories of Henry the Fourth greatly served to corroborate it. His conversion, however, had a disastrously contrary effect. The act unmistakably implied his disbelief in the power or duration. of Protestantism. He evidently deserted it from a belief, not of its falsehood, but of its being a weak and sinking cause. He followed it up by a peace with Spain, and an apparent abandonment of Holland, while almost similar results were produced in England by James succeeding to Elizabeth. In the great struggle which commenced in Germany, even Saxony, the native land of Luther, deserted the cause of the Reformation. The truce granted by Spain to Holland seemed but a respite till the great monarchy recovered strength to • Haag (France Protestante) admits, that when the controversialists of his creed abandoned the Bible as their chief mainstay, to dispute with the Catholics what might be the XXVIII. CHAP. swallow up the miscreant province. XXVIII. Such was the cloud which overcame Protestantism in the first years of the seventeenth century. Religious controversy, moreover, then assumed an altogether different shape and colour. It had previously been abstract, been confined to dogma, and looked merely to exercise its power over the domain of conscience. Wearied with the futility of disputes, the European world, as the seventeenth century opened, looked more to the practical results of the creed, than to its metaphysical foundation. Luther commenced by questioning the omniscience of the popes. Paolo Sarpi, an hundred years later, disputed their omnipotence. Under the cover and power of the religious fanaticism which was awakened by the Reformation, the popes and their party had exhumed and put forth their old pretensions to not merely not merely spiritual but temporal supremacy, which Philip the Fair had contested and crushed. The right of deposing and slaying kings was more boldly claimed by the pope in 1600 than in 1100, and the spirit of Gregory the Seventh, without his power, was revived in Paul the Fifth. Against such principles and against Bellarmin, their expounder, the Paris parliament protested. And Marie de Medicis, who sought to stand well with both pope and Paris magistrates, had some difficulty in quelling the storm. Spiritual independence in France thus assumed the form of Gallicanism rather than Protestantism. Men grew indifferent to dogma, but resisted the absurd pretensions of Rome. And that long contest commenced between Jesuits and Jansenists, which lasted for more than a century. The quarrel, indeed, was not of great importance. Under an absolute king, the assertion of national independence in ecclesiastical affairs does not establish a lighter yoke or a more enlightened despotism. And the high priesthood of France weighed not the less heavily and stupidly upon French intellect for Bossuet's declaring CHAP. the national Church independent of the pope. Although diminished in numbers, the Huguenots were not less a source of alarm and disquietude to the queen. The death of Henry had naturally filled them with fear, which all the protestations of the regent did not suffice to appease. The Duke de Bouillon, from his rank and fortune of great influence with his coreligionists, far from seeking to quiet, encouraged their mistrust, and stirred their zealots not only to demand a general assembly, but to seek to gain the fresh security they required, by terrifying rather than supplicating the queen. The Duc de Sully, on the other hand, as long as he held his high office and influence, counteracted these violent counsels; and, with Duplessis-Mornay, sought to act the moderator. But the revolution at the commencement of 1611, which flung Sully into disgrace, and brought Bouillon back to court, changed the views and tendencies of the magnates. Sully, or at least his son-in-law, the Duc de Rohan, animated the ardent Huguenots, whilst De Bouillon undertook, in return for the queen's favour, to appease them and remove all difficulties. The assembly which met at Saumur in 1611 was thus agitated by the factions of its grandees, rather than guided by the honest aim of safeguarding and advancing their interests. De Bouillon looked to be supreme at Saumur, and to have been rewarded for his safe management by the transfer of the government of Poitou from Sully to himself. He was defeated in his attempts to acquire influence over the assembly, the attitude of which filled the queen with alarm too great to allow her to exercise any further vengeance upon Sully. She, however, refused to accede to the demands of the Huguenot assembly, or even give them an answer till they should * Mémoires de Rohan, De Richelieu, Correspondence of Duplessis Mornay, t. xi., and Fontenay-Ma- XXVIII. XXVIII. CHAP. consent to elect the deputies which were to reside at her court, and then immediately separate. By dint of persuasion, corruption and intrigue, Bouillon at last succeeded in getting the assembly to acquiesce, and it was thus broken up without attaining any of its desires : the court, at De Bouillon's suggestion, laid a plot for depriving De Rohan of the government of St. Jean D'Angely, one of the principal fortresses of surety. De Rohan indignant, hurried thither, defeated the design, summoned the deputies of Xaintonge and the surrounding cercles or a district to meet at La Rochelle in 1612. The Rochellois drove away with ignominy, a commissary whom the court sent thither, and the assembly proceeded to vote a union, and enter upon strong and menacing resolves. The regent immediately took the alarm. She foresaw an uprising of the Reformers, similar to that which Condé and Coligny had led, and she precipitately granted to the threats from La Rochelle, all that she had refused to the supplications from Saumur.* The envoys whom the regent had sent to the court of Spain, sped well in their mission. The Duke of Lerma, as well as his sovereign Philip the Third, were moderate in their views and politics.† They pardoned the Duke of Savoy and consented to the French marriages. Louis the Thirteenth engaged to espouse the Infanta Anne of Austria, and Prince Philip of Spain Madame, as the eldest daughter of the late king was called. The regent allowed the Moors of Valencia, who had leagued to aid Henry the Fourth, and whom the Spanish government expelled to the number of many thousands, to traverse the Pyrenees and embark from French ports for Africa. An offensive and defensive alliance completed the treaties of marriage, which were concluded in the spring of 1612 and celebrated by the brilliant CHAP. carrousel in the Place Royale, of which Marshal XXVIII, Bassompierre has left the description. The regent and the country had soon the opportunity of appreciating all they had lost by the abandonment of Henry's independent attitude, and the acceptance of the Spanish alliance. The English court manifested ill humour, and protested, notwithstanding an embassy which De Bouillon undertook to propitiate it. The Duke of Savoy, baulked of his desire to possess the Milanese, revived his project of seizing Geneva, and later proceeded to appropriate the Montserrat―part of the succession of the Gonzaga's, Dukes of Mantua, old allies of France. There appeared no mode of preventing it but by reassembling the army of Dauphiné under Lesdiguières. When this was collected and menaced the Alps, Spain, in order to preclude the necessity of its marching, compelled the Duke of Savoy to yield, at least for the time. Notwithstanding the marriage treaties and solemnities, the parties were too young to be brought together; and an interval and opportunity seemed thus left to the efforts of those inimical to the queen-mother, and to her policy. In spite of the weakness of that princess, and the extravagant folly of her Florentine favourites, the jealous grandees were quieted by the abundance of money still at the royal command, and by the united influence and sagacity of the barbons, as the veteran statesmen Sillery, Villeroy, and Jeannin were called. The two first, somewhat inclined to rivalry, cemented their interest by a marriage between the families. Death about this time dissolved the tie, and Concini, contriving to separate Sillery from his aged colleague, was enabled to get the better of all. The most remarkable of the three was Villeroy. *MSS. Brienne, 34. |