abolished throughout the kingdom, as it had been in England, and Catholics be subjected to the same frightful tortures which they were experiencing there. New men, admitted to the confidence of the crown, clothed with the highest honours, and laden with enormous emoluments, had excluded the ancient and honoured functionaries of the state, who had been obliged to sell out their offices to these upstart successors. These new favourites had seized the finances of the kingdom, all of which were now collected into the private coffers of the King, and shared by him with his courtiers. The people were groaning under new taxes invented every day, yet they knew nothing of the distribution of the public treasure, while the King himself was so impoverished as to be unable to discharge his daily debts. Meantime these new advisers of the crown had renewed to the Protestants of the kingdom the religious privileges of which they had so justly been deprived, yet the religious peace which had followed had not brought with it the promised diminution of the popular burthens. Never had the nation been so heavily taxed or reduced to such profound misery. For these reasons, he, Cardinal Bourbon, with other princes of the blood, peers, gentlemen, cities, and universities, had solemnly bound themselves by oath to extirpate heresy down to the last root, and to save the people from the dreadful load under which they were languishing. It was for this that they had taken up arms, and till that purpose was accomplished they would never lay them down. The paper concluded with the hope that his Majesty would not take these warlike demonstrations amiss; and a copy of the document was placed in the royal hands.1 It was very obvious to the most superficial observer, that the manifesto was directed almost as much against the reigning sovereign as against Henry of Navarre. The adherents of the Guise faction, and especially certain theologians in their employ, had taken very bold grounds upon the relations between king and subjects, and had made the public very 'De Thou, ix. 284, seq. 1585. ATTITUDE OF HENRY III. AND OF NAVARRE. 121 familiar with their doctrines. It was a duty, they said, "to depose a prince who did not discharge his duty. Authority ill regulated was robbery, and it was as absurd to call him a king who knew not how to govern, as it was to take a blind man for a guide, or to believe that a statue could influence the movements of living men."1 if Yet to the faction, inspired by such rebellious sentiments, and which was thundering in his face such tremendous denunciations, the unhappy Henry could not find a single royal or manly word of reply. He threw himself on his knees, when, ever, he should have assumed an attitude of command. He answered the insolence of the men, who were parading their contempt for his authority, by humble excuses and supplications for pardon. He threw his crown in the dust before their feet, as if such humility would induce them to place it again upon his head. He abandoned the minions who had been his pride, his joy, and his defence, and deprecated, with an abject whimper, all responsibility for the unmeasured ambition and the insatiable rapacity of a few private individuals. He conjured the party-leaders, who had hurled defiance in his face, to lay down their arms, and promised that they should find in his wisdom and bounty more than all the advantages which they were seeking to obtain by war.2 Henry of Navarre answered in a different strain. The gauntlet had at last been thrown down to him, and he came forward to take it up; not insolently nor carelessly, but with the cold courtesy of a Christian knight and valiant gentleman. He denied the charge of heresy. He avowed detestation of all doctrines contrary to the Word of God, to the decrees of the Fathers of the Church, or condemned by the Councils. The errors and abuses which had from time to time crept into the church, had long demanded, in the opinion of all pious persons, some measures of reform. After many bloody wars, no better remedy had been discovered to arrest the cause of these dire religious troubles, whether in France or Germany, than to permit all men to obey the dictates of their own con receive instruction, and to be were indeed unworthy of the science. The Protestants had thus obtained in France many edicts by which the peace of the kingdom had been secured. He could not himself be denounced as a heretic, for he had always held himself ready to set right where he had erred. an outrage. Were it true, he crown, but the world knew that his change at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew had been made under duresse, and that he had returned to the reformed faith when he had recovered his liberty, Religious toleration had been the object of his life. In what the tyranny of the popes and the violence of the Spaniards had left him of his kingdom of Navarre, Catholics and Protestants enjoyed a perfect religious liberty. No man had the right, therefore, to denounce him as an enemy of the church, or a disturber of the public repose, for he had ever been willing to accept all propositions of peace which left the rights of conscience protected. He was a Frenchman, a prince of France, a living member of the kingdom, feeling with its pains, and bleeding with its wounds. They who denounced him were alien to France, factitious portions of her body, feeling no suffering, even should she be consuming with living fire. The Leaguers were the friends and the servants of the Spaniards, while he had been born the enemy, and with too good reason, of the whole Spanish race. "Let the name of Papist and of Huguenot," he said, "be heard no more among us. Those terms were buried in the edict of peace. Let us speak only of Frenchmen and of Spaniards. It is the counter-league which we must all unite to form, the natural union of the head with all its members." Finally, to save the shedding of so much innocent blood, to spare all the countless miseries of civil war, he implored the royal permission to terminate this quarrel in person, by single combat with the Duke of Guise, one to one, two to two, or in as large a number as might be desired, and upon any spot within or without the kingdom that should be assigned. "The Duke of Guise," said Henry of Navarre, 1585. THE LEAGUE DEMANDS A ROYAL DECREE. 123 "cannot but accept my challenge as an honour, coming as it does from a prince infinitely his superior in rank; and thus, may God defend the right." This paper, drawn up by the illustrious Duplessis-Mornay, who was to have been the second of the King of Navarre in the proposed duel, was signed 10 June 1585.1 The unfortunate Henry III., not so dull as to doubt that the true object of the Guise party was to reduce him to insignificance, and to open their own way to the throne, was too impotent of purpose to follow the dictates which his wisest counsellors urged and his own reason approved. His choice had lain between open hostility with his Spanish enemy and a more terrible combat with that implacable foe wearing the mask of friendship. He had refused to annex to his crown the rich and powerful Netherlands, from dread of a foreign war; and he was now about to accept for himself and kingdom all the horrors of a civil contest, in which his avowed antagonist was the first captain of the age, and his nominal allies the stipendiaries of Philip II. Villeroy, his prime minister, and Catharine de' Medici, his mother, had both devoted him to disgrace and ruin. The deputies from the Netherlands had been dismissed, and now, notwithstanding the festivities and exuberant demonstrations of friendship with which the Earl of Derby's splendid embassy had been greeted, it became necessary to bind Henry hand and foot to the conspirators, who had sworn the destruction of that Queen, as well as his own, and the extirpation of heresy and heretics in every realm of Christendom. On the 9th June the league demanded a royal decree, forbidding the practice of all religion but the Roman Catholic, on pain of death. In vain had the clear-sighted Bishop of Acqs uttered his eloquent warnings. Despite such timely counsels, which he was capable at once of appreciating and of neglecting, Henry followed slavishly the advice of those whom 1 Declaration du Roy de Navarre contre les calomnies de la Ligue. In Duplessis-Mornay, 'Mémoires et Cor respondance,' ed. 1824, vol. iii. 94 seq. De Thou, ix. 320, seq. he knew in his heart to be his foes, and authorised the great conspiracy against Elizabeth, against Protestantism, and against himself. On the 5th June Villeroy had expressed a wish for a very secret interview with Mendoza, on the subject of the invasion of England. "It needed not this overture," said that magniloquent Spaniard, "to engender in a person of my talents, and with the heart of a Mendoza, venom enough for vengeance. I could not more desire than I did already to assist in so holy a work; nor could I aspire to greater honour than would be gained in uniting those crowns (of France and Spain) in strict friendship, for the purpose of extirpating heresy throughout Europe, and of chastising the Queen of England—whose abominations I am never likely to forget, having had them so long before my eyes-and of satisfying my just resentment for the injuries she has inflicted on myself. It was on this subject," continued the ambassador, "that Monsieur de Villeroy wished a secret interview with me, pledging himselfif your Majesty would deign to unite yourself with this King, and to aid him with your forces-to a successful result."' Mendoza accordingly expressed a willingness to meet the ingenuous Secretary of State-who had so recently been assisting at the banquets and rejoicings with Lord Derby and his companions, which had so much enlivened the French capital-and assured him that his most Catholic Majesty would be only too glad to draw closer the bonds of friendship 1 "La abertura que estos reyes me havian hecho no havia de engendrar en una persona de mis prendas y coraçon de un Mendoza veneno para procurar venganças, y no antes desseo de ayudar obra tan santa, pues que me podria redundar mayor honra que de otra ninguna, siendo instrumento para unir estas coronas con firme amistad, debaxo de lo qual pudiesse extirpar las heregias de Europa, dando privilegio a esto, con castigar a la reyna de Ingaltierra, cuyas abominaciones creya que yo no tendria olvida das, como persona que las havia tenido tantos años adelante los ojos, y causa de justo resentimiento por lo que havia hecho a la propria mia. Sobre esta materia dessara el Señor Villeroy vene secretamente conmigo, y entender suyo, me asegurara, si V. M. holgaria de ayudar con sus fuerças y juntarse con este rey, para el efeto." Don Berndine de Mendoza a Su Caica R .Magd. (de çifrada), Paris, 7 June, 1585. Arch. de Simancas, in the 'Archives de l'Empire' at Paris, B. 56. 220. 223, MS. |