XXIV. minister was hanged. In Languedoc the Maréchal CHAP. Damville, who afterwards became the chief of the moderate party, was then so full of the military intolerance of the period, that he denied the Protestants most of the rights and indulgences promised them. The parliaments were even more hostile; that of Dijon, prompted by the Duc d'Aumale, governor of the province, refused to register or observe the treaty. And as late as December, the king was obliged to send letters to Damville, insisting on its being registered at Toulouse.* Even in the provinces near the capital, the execution of the edict was obstructed. In Touraine, the Huguenots could not continue to celebrate their rites without danger. At Vendome, the Protestant governor for the Queen of Navarre was assassinated. Governors almost universally evaded the edict, by either refusing to appoint places for the reformed worship, or fixing upon such as, from remoteness, or the bigot antagonism of the inhabitants, were impossible for the Huguenots to frequent.† In the upper regions of politics the difficulties in the way of toleration were no less great. On former occasions Catherine could meet Catholic remonstrance by appealing to a future council. Such pretext was no longer available, the national council having failed, and the general Assembly of Trent had come to conclusions which prohibited alike moderation or tolerance. The Cardinal of Lorraine had now but the one banner, the one tenet of policy, the adoption and enforcement of the Decrees of Trent. The chancellor De L'Hôpital withstood in the royal council all such demands, which amounted to no less then tearing asunder the late treaty, and recommencing the civil war. When the * MS. Bethune, copied in MS. Fontanieu, 307-308. + Mem. of De Thou, D'Aubigné, Mém. de Castelnau, with additions of Laboureur, Tavannes, Letters of XXIV. CHAP. chancellor charged the cardinal with thus wilfully seeking to supersede peace by bloodshed, the latter retorted with abuse, calling his antagonist a belître. Whilst the Catholics were thus urgent, the Prince of Condé was no less so for the realisation of the hopes held out to him by Catherine. He expected to be appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and to be invested with the political influence of his brother. To frustrate his ambition, as well as to assume authority for resisting the cardinal, Catherine had caused her son, Charles the Ninth, to be declared of age by the parliament of Rouen in August, 1563, that of Paris being too froward and hostile to make such a proclamation, against which, indeed, it did not fail to protest. The Cardinal of Lorraine and his family took the opportunity of once more pressing for the acceptance of the decrees of Trent, and, being again refused, they made it the pretext of withdrawing from court. Catherine, anxious to conciliate, conferred the office of grand master of the palace upon the young Duke of Guise, as, indeed, she had promised to the expiring duke Francis. The result of this was to offend the constable, who had originally held the office, and who, on his redemanding it in vain, retired in dudgeon to Chantilly.* The court was deserted, and although the admiral sought permission to pay his respects, the king was obliged to decline receiving him, till the accusation directed against him by the Guises had been disposed of. To fill the seats at the council table, from whence the magnates had either withdrawn or were eliminated, Catherine appointed men unconnected with the aristocracy, De Retz, Lansac, and Crussol, as functionaries not likely to cabal against her, or to aim at undue influence over the young monarch. Tavannes, in whose memoirs this policy * Catherine's letter to St. Sulpice, May 1563, MSS. Dupuy, 523, fol. 21. is explained, was the general on whom she counted to uphold it.* In the capital, as in the royal castles upon the Loire, this isolation of the king and court might have produced a bad effect. Catherine determined to bring the young king on a kind of progress through his southern provinces, where he might appease sedition and put down usurped authority by his presence, and where some judgment might be formed of the aims and character of party leaders, and some estimate of the strength which they might wield, for good or for evil. It was at first arranged that the court should go to Lorraine, and by the royal visit compliment and conciliate the Guises; but these took advantage of the king's coming to propose a meeting at Nancy of the princes and statesmen most zealous in the Catholic cause. Catherine deprecated such a congress, the chief aim of which would have been to compel her to recommence persecution in obedience to the decrees of Trent. The Spanish and Papal envoys came to Fontainebleau to press this advice. The queen gave them fair words, and the court proceeded to Champagne in March, 1564. It at once fell amongst the strife of the contending sects. The place of worship for the Huguenots of Troyes had been fixed at Ceans, seven leagues distant, in a wild forest. D'Andelot, whose château and estate lay at Tanlay, in this vicinity, had asked permission for his co-religionists to have their prêche in the suburbs of Troyes. This was refused by the Duke * It was at this time, that Catherine caused the palace of the Tournelles to be destroyed, and the building of the Thuilleries commenced. Her eagerness for the completion of this new palace is evinced in a letter to the provost of the Merchants, of December, 1564, in which the queen entreats the Pa- CHAP. XXIV. XXIV. CHAP. D'Aumale, one of the Guise brothers, governor of the province. Advantage was taken of the king and queen mother's visit to renew the demand. "What is the number of Huguenots in Troyes ?" asked the queen of the deputies. "Five thousand," replied Pithou. "You lie, paillard," exclaimed Aumale, "and I shall hang you up to this window." "It can be easily proved by the register of the tallage," was the only rejoinder of Pithou. Catherine durst not grant so fair and moderate a request; and Aumale persisted in executing the edict so rigidly, that he would not permit Protestant pastors to enter the town, either to instruct the young, or attend the sick and the dying.* Catherine saw, as she advanced into the provinces, that the Catholics were the stronger party, and that it was not politic to brave them. She gave orders in consequence to change the preceptors charged with the education of her children, substituting more orthodox ones. Soon after an edict was issued from Roussillon in Dauphiné, ordering governors of provinces no longer to delay fixing places for Huguenot worship. To these the edict strictly confined the permission. Synods were forbidden, whilst monks and nuns who had quitted their convents and married, were enjoined to return to their cells.† Catherine had another motive for favouring the Catholics at this time. She feared the enmity of Philip the Second, and hoped so far to conciliate him in an interview, which she besought him and his queen to hold with her court at Bayonne, as to obtain the hand of a Spanish princess with an appanage for her second son, the Duke of Anjou. Philip, however, was in no good *Vie de N. Pithou. † Edict in Fontanon. Claude Haiton (t. i. p. 380) tells how much the royal progress encouraged the Catholics and intimidated the Protestants in Dauphiné, Provence, and Languedoc. Catherine writes in May to Damville in fear lest the maritime preparations of Spain might be directed against France. MSS. Bethune, 8703. XXIV. humour with the Court of France, which refused to adopt CHAP. and carry out the decrees of Trent, and whose envoys assumed precedence at Rome over those of Spain.* Moreover, the late peace which left the French Huguenots leisure to excite and succour their brethren of the Low Countries, was highly inimical to Spanish interests. Philip, therefore, did not accompany his queen, Elizabeth, Catherine's daughter, to Bayonne, but sent the Duke of Alva in his stead. The Protestants suspected at the time, and have never ceased to assert since, that Catherine and Alva agreed at Bayonne upon a joint plan for the extirpation of themselves and their religion. Alva's own account to his sovereign of this interview† attests, on the contrary, that both Charles the Ninth and his mother declined engaging in any policy which would reopen the war, and that even when Alva concentrated his demands upon the removal of the Chancellor De l'Hôpital, that great aim of the Cardinal of Lorraine, Catherine refused to accede to it. Alva at the same time evaded the demand of a Spanish princess for the Duke of Anjou. He appealed from what he considered the lukewarmness of Catherine to the zeal of several of her courtiers, some of whom recommended the cutting off of five or six heads as the only remedy for the anarchy of the country. But Catherine was far, as yet, from sympathising with the political morality of the half Jesuit, half executioner.‡ * The Duke of Alva prayed Philip to pardon the Pope for sanctioning this. He feared to give any pretext to Charles the Ninth for shaking off the authority of the Holy See. Gachard, Corresp. de Philip II., tom. ii. p. 315. The Pope's envoy prayed Philip to go to meet Catherine; the king evaded the demand, saying he knew the French king's council to be con trary to religion. Dépêches du † Papiers de Granvelle, tom ix. p. 281. + "As to those," writes Alva to Philip, "whose heads it is advisable |