CHAP. In general the civic class and the small gentry, especially where there happened to be a focus of instruction near, a celebrated school or university, were Huguenots. The legist, sacerdotal, and functionary class leaned on the contrary to the old order of things. And the great seats of prelacies and jurisdiction contained leaders even of the better class attached to the old religion. In such countries, too, where there were numbers of the very lower classes dependent upon these establishments and generally in penury and ignorance, there was always a population ready to be the instrument of persecution and sanguinary excess. The artisan class, which universally embraced Protestantism, was not so sanguinary, at least at first. But they were as fierce and uncontrollable in their determination to ravage churches, destroy images, deface ornaments, and desecrate those monuments which were the pride, not merely of the bigot, but of the pacific and tolerant Catholic. This iconoclastic fury displayed itself chiefly in the towns on the Loire and of Normandy, the churches of which were devastated with unrelenting barbarity. Blois, Poitiers, Tours, Angers, Bourges, Rouen, and Caen; even Orleans itself was perfectly ravaged, and their churches reduced to the bare walls, by the Huguenots who treated every ornament as idolatrous. When the church of St. Croix at Orleans was attacked, the chiefs rushed forth to resist the marauders and save the monuments of religion and art. It was all in vain; the destroyers would listen to no voice. Condé seized an arquebus to shoot a fellow who was striking down a statue. "Wait," said the man, "till I have cast down this idol; I shall then be ready to die if you please." From Orleans the devastators went to Clery, where they broke in pieces the bronze statue of Louis the Eleventh, and threw the royal remains into the Loire. The tomb of Count John of Angoulême, the king's ancestor, was likewise destroyed, as well as those XXIII. at Vendome, in hatred to the King of Navarre.* The CHAP. tomb of William the Conqueror at Caen was demolished at the same time. The sepulchres of the saints obtained even less respect than those of kings and heroes. There was little destruction left for infidel 1792 that fanatic 1562 had not already accomplished.† In the first outburst of 1562 the Protestants had everywhere the advantage, with the exception of the Isle of France, Burgundy, and Picardy. The Huguenot gentlemen of the latter province accompanied the Prince of Condé to Orleans, and left their co-religionists of Amiens and Abbeville to be crushed and massacred by the population. If Rouen, Bordeaux, and Lyons, on the contrary, fell into the hands of the Protestants, this was due more to the activity of the Reformers than to their numbers. In the South, indeed, where they predominated, their organisation was complete. But in the North they had to make any such arrangement in the face of a population at first indifferent and afterwards hostile. The general disgust of Rome and of the priesthood was far from extending, especially in the North, to the rejection of essential dogmas. Their protest against Rome was Gallican, not Zwinglian, and more the disapprobation of citizens and men of the world than of zealous religionists, who considered the Pope as Antichrist, or the mass as idolatry. We are apt to regard with stern condemnation the political indifference of Catherine de Medicis, the tergiversation of Antoine de Bourbon, and the weakness or treachery of the Cardinal of Lorraine. Yet indifference at least was the dominant characteristic of the French mind, compris *The devastation of the tombs of the nobles greatly exasperated the gentry. Ronsard the poet put himself at the head of a band of the Vendomois to avenge these outrages. To be sure he was also the lay holder of an ecclesiastical benefice, an abuse which the Reformers loudly de- + Saccagement des Eglises Catho- XXIII. CHAP. ing its noblest spirits as well as its deceitful and trimming politicians.* To establish a fair sample of French judgment, and even uprightness at that epoch, one has but to look into the author who sums up its wisdom, Montaigne, who asks how a man can be so audacious as to openly question religious laws when he knows that he must not raise objections to civil ones. Was the creed of De l'Hôpital himself very different from that of Montaigne? And do not both, joined with Pasquier, fully represent that characteristic nonchalance which marks the French mind of the 19th, the 18th, and 17th, as well as of the 16th century? A great cause of French indifference was the extreme and abrupt form in which Protestantism was presented. To the Germans, the reformed doctrines had been offered gradually. Luther questioned indulgences first, then the Papal supremacy, and only later ventured to touch upon the sacraments. Upon France, all this, and more than this, was flung crudely, the proposed change, not merely in dogma, but in ritual and church government, being of the broadest kind. Not only were ancient rites proscribed, but the whole of the higher clergy, all the pomps and ceremonies of worship or of station. And instead of that ecclesiastical hierarchy, which was analogous to the existing organisation of sovereignty and civil government, the Calvinists purposed substituting the complete supremacy of the middle orders, and not even the most wealthy and enlightened of those orders. Their clergy, often improvised from the lower and even uneducated ranks, dominated not only in the synod or in ecclesiastical assemblies, but in councils exercising financial, * Buckle (Hist. of Civilisation, chap. viii.) seems to think the French in the 16th century far less indifferent to theology than the English. I question the truth of the remark. The leading men of France, much as Dering charges Cecil with doing (Forbes' Elizabeth), looked upon religion eminus. XXIII. political, and even military power. When this came CHAP. into full play, and was clearly seen, especially in provinces where the gentry had not time and opportunity to master the movement and acquire influence over it, speedy revulsion took place. Protestantism in 1562 overran Normandy like a tide, so great was the reigning disgust then for Rome. But no sooner was Protestantism seen there for what it really was, than it was rejected, and the tide rolled back with even greater violence and celerity than had marked its advance. Catholicism always possessed superior numbers. It now hastened to employ organisation, activity, intelligence, education, to combat the Protestants with their own arms. These efforts satisfied many of the wavering and indifferent, whom the excesses of the Protestants, and their devastations caused by the predominance of the most violent amongst them, had disgusted; and a more equal struggle commenced between the churches. In war the Protestants possessed a great many advantages which secured their triumph in other countries. Their strength lay in the civic and the wealthy as well as the enlightened populations. From these not only might ample funds be procured, but soldiers, animated with the spirit of their religion and their class, and determined to shake off the double yoke of civil and religious tyranny. Unfortunately, the French Protestants did not take up the struggle in that earnest and universal spirit, nor did they select chiefs calculated to call forth the true energies and resources of their party. The Huguenots did not, like the English Protestants, employ merely at first the Essexes and the Fairfaxes, to supersede them later by chiefs born and bred of the industrious classes which they led. From first to last the French Protestants trusted the entire * The press was now freely used by both parties. Every document was printed and distributed, and XXIII. one. CHAP. conduct of their cause to a prince, if he could be found, or to a noble, like Coligny, who was the guardian of And these, instead of adapting the mode of warfare and the organisation of armies to the class and the cause which furnished and inspired them, continued the old routine of trusting to the mounted gentry for a cavalry force, and to foreign levies for infantry, thus setting aside altogether the true force of the Protestant party. Nothing, indeed, more fully illustrated the narrow and defective view which the French chiefs took of the real strength of their country and of the parties in it, than that neither durst take the field, or venture war, until they received troops from Spain on the one hand, or from Germany on the other. The French peasant, whose arm had driven the English from France, had been, after that glorious event, consigned once more to a like desuetude of arms and of rights. His degradation had brutalised him, and it was impossible to trust to him for courage in the field, or for common forbearance or humanity in the hour of victory. The stuff of the man was, however, still the same, and Coligny was a chief to appreciate and turn it to use. But even he was too strict a disciplinarian to tolerate the licence inevitable on first employing such soldiers, nor would he hear of any warfare save that of a regular army. He thus disgusted instead of attaching the most valuable partisans of his cause. Besides, the Prince of Conde's influence predominated, and thus a war, essentially one of the middle class against the court, its high priests, and its high functionaries, was undertaken and carried on, not by its own civic force, but by that of a prince, the gentry attached to him, and their immediate retainers. This mistrust of the native soldier was, indeed, disapproved of by Coligny, who condemned Condé's inaction within the walls of Orleans, as well as the |