Vassy, one of the accidental meetings of lowed up by faction and ambition. The parties resolved on each other's destruction, maxims of tyrannicide began to steal into foreboded more surely the approach of civil the minds of both parties. Poltrot, a Prowar. Guise, on his march at the head of a testant, put Guise to death, at the siege of great armed retinue, had stopped at Vassy, Orleans; probably actuated more by a faa small town on the borders of Champagne, natical hatred of the oppressor of his faith, where a considerable congregation of the than yielding to the supposed suggestions reformers were assembled for the purpose of the admiral Coligny, as Catholic writers of worship. The insolent and bigoted fol- are prone to believe. In a case where eslowers of the prince appear to have taken cape was nearly impossible, it is not easy fire at the Calvinistic worship. An armed to conceive how such a deed could be proscuffle ensued, which terminated in a cruel posed; and if there were any human virtues slaughter of the undisciplined and ill-armed which could resist the violent passions of Huguenots; and which all French Protest- civil dissensions, the accounts of Coligny, ants, with an exaggeration inevitable in a transmitted to us by those who were not moment of such violence, considered as an his friends, might authorize us to conclude assault on their worship, and a foretaste of that he could not be the man. "He was," the doom which awaited themselves. says Brantôme, "prudent, deliberate, adIn the summer of 1562 the first civil war dicted to mature counsels, brave, weighing burst forth. The Protestants were most every circumstance, and loving honor and formidable in the opulent and maritime virtue above all things besides." province of Normandy, where the new The atrocity of the warfare sprung partopinions had struck a deep root. As a re- ly from the object of the contending parvolt against a regent, though directed ties, which were so irreconcilable as long as against the royal authority, could hardly toleration was unknown, that neither could be aimed at the royal person, it became aim at any thing short of the destruction easy to represent this war, in which both of the other; partly from the circumstance parties called themselves royalists, as a that legal authority was altogether on the contest between the prince of Condé and side of one faction; in some degree, perthe duke of Guise. Hence arose the plausi-haps, from the proneness of the French nability of Elizabeth's interference in support tion to enter into the feelings and to catch of her fellow religionists.* By this treaty, the passions of their fellows, to which, as which professed to be for the defence of they owe many amiable and shining qualithe faithful subjects of the king of France ties, their urbanity and pleasantry, their against the Guisian faction, Havre was sur- quickness and vivacity, their flexibility and rendered to Elizabeth, who was to garrison good-humor, their companionable ease and it with 3000 men, and to supply 3000 more brilliant enterprise; so, it must be owned, for the defence of Rouen and Dieppe. The that they also owe a more than usual suswar was short. It was closed, in March, ceptibility of those epidemic passions which 1563, by a convention at Amboise, which left the Huguenot party in a worse condition than that in which they had been under the former edicts. often hurry on multitudes to counsels and deeds abhorrent from the ordinary tenor of the temper and conduct of the individuals who compose them. The most powerful The English were expelled from Havre agent of all was the peculiar malignity of in autumn, 1563, by the Protestants to wars of religion, in which one party must whose aid they had come; and a definitive ever regard with the greatest disgust and treaty of peace was concluded, at Troyes, detestation all that is most dear and venerin April, 1569, between Elizabeth and able in the eyes of their opponents. The Charles IX., in which the negotiators on Protestants regarded as idolatrous the honor the part of England, Sir Thomas Smith paid by their forefathers to the remains and and Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, deserve a the likenesses of men accounted eminent higher rank than history has allotted to for piety and virtue. They destroyed these them among the statesmen of that extraor-monuments of supposed idolatry with undinary age. sparing rage. They profaned them in The most memorable event which oc- other modes more insulting and offensive curred during these hostilities was the as- than destruction itself. Nothing could be sassination of the duc de Guise; a hero and more natural than the fierce resentment a renowned captain; who seems to have kindled in the breasts of pious Catholics been sincere in his religion, and whose by such outrages offered to the objects of sense of public duty was not entirely swal * Traité entre Eliz. Reine d'Angleterre, le Prince de Condé, et la Ligue des Réformés, Septembre 20 1562. Hampton Court. Dum. Corps Diplom.v. 1-94. † Dumont, v. 1. 126. Cuvres de Brant. viii. 168. The language of Brantôme himself conveys most strongly the estimation in which Coligny was held:-"Un seigneur d'honneur, homme de bien, sage, mür, avisé, politique, brave, pesant les choses, et aimant l'honneur et la vertu." their most affectionate veneration. In this head of the Huguenot forces, and afterand in other cases, shocking indignities and wards put to death in cold blood on the cruel retaliations were most practised by field of battle. Though the Huguenots those members of both communions who were defeated at the battle of Moncontera, were most influenced by the religious feel- they obtained favorable terms by a treaty ings, which are naturally allied to every concluded in 1570 at St. Germains. kind affection and to every moral princi- At this point it seems convenient to reple. The army of the reformed was so view the projects discussed at Bayonne, powerfully controlled by religion, as to ex- which we have considered only collaterally, hibit a perfect model of voluntary disci- as they affect the occurrences in the intepline, of austere morality, and of abstinence rior of Britain, and to examine the progress from the ordinary vices of soldiers. But the towards their execution in the important same spirit of religion, inflamed to an in- points of either exterminating the Calvintensity necessary, perhaps, to sustain them ists of France and Flanders, or at least through wars of extermination, was so dis- placing them at the mercy of their invetetorted by this application, that, instead of rate and irreconcilable oppressors. At this inspiring that love of enemies which was new point of view, it may be proper here to its original glory, it refused to include them recapitulate some parts of what for other within the bounds of natural pity, and cast purposes has been scattered over various them off as unworthy of the universal passages of the preceding narrative. offices of humanity. The atrocities perpe- At the opening of the Lutheran reformatrated by the mareschal de Monluc,* tion, Francis I., though he patronized the coolly, or rather gaily, related by himself, rising arts and the revived learning of his -sufficiently characterize the war on the age, declared the religious novelties "to side of the Catholics; whose bigotry was tend to the overthrow of all monarchy, lashed into activity by laws which author-human as well as divine." Sir T. More ized them, "at the first sound of the alarm- himself attributed the excesses of the peasbell, to fall on the Huguenots, and destroy ants to the pestilential doctrines of Luther.T them with as little mercy as if they were Adrian VI., a reformer of gross abuses, was beasts of prey, or mad dogs."+ Des Adrets, earnestly dissuaded by cardinal Soderini a Protestant, rivalled the cruelties of his from suffering the fundamental principles opponents; directing, among other enormi- of the papal monarchy to be brought into ties, a garrison, who had surrendered on question in a general council. "Governterms, to be thrown from the summit of ments," said the cardinal, "perish when high towers, where they were frequently they change. The only security is to folreceived on the pikes of his soldiers; on low the examples of those holy pontiffs, pretence that the like perfidious cruelty who, not making vain attempts to satisfy had been practised by his opponents on the heretics by reforms, extinguished the AlProtestant garrison of Orange: a principle bigeois and the Vaudois by proclaiming of revenge which would perpetuate every crusades against them, by exciting princes horrible expedient once used in war. He and nations to take arms for their exterafterwards became a Catholic, but the sense mination, and by drowning all memory of of his desertion subdued his military abil- their blasphemous dogmas in torrents of ities, though it did not soften his fierceness. blood."** The pope instructed his nuncio It was not till there was some approach in Germany, whom he empowered to grant to a general conviction that toleration, if moderate reforms, at the same time to renot justifiable on principles of religion, was mind the German princes that disobedience become at least politically necessary, that to the laws of the church would bring a peace between the two factions was pos- those of the state into utter contempt; that sible. But the truce of 1563 continued dis- those who had laid their hands on the propturbed by terrific rumors of the designs of erty of churchmen would feel still less rethe Catholic monarchs. pugnance to the seizure of lay estates; and, The second civil war lasted during the finally, that the professions of the Lutheryears 1567 and 1568, and the truce which ans, that they respected secular powers, followed was observed only for six months. were only lures to ensnare civil authorities In the third civil war the Protestant princes to destruction.†† of Germany took a share. It is chiefly Impregnated as the Italian statesmen memorable as that in which Henry, prince were with these principles, it is extremely of Bearn, signalized his youthful prowess. The prince of Condé was defeated at the | Brantôme, Vie de Francis I. vii. 257. T Life of Sir T. More, in Lives of British Statesmen, vol. i. Cab. Cyc. ** Fra Paolo, Istoria de Conc. Trident. lib. i. A. D. 1522. tt Ibid. probable that they were discussed, though concert of Catholic princes against rebelperhaps secretly, at the first convention of lious heretics. After such a letter to so the council of Trent.* Cardinal Pole pro- numerous a body of important men of every moted peace between France and Spain, nation, it was impossible that the general avowedly that they might combine their existence of an understanding between counsels and their power to restore the Catholic princes on this subject should not union of the church. In 1559, Perrenot, be universally believed. bishop of Arras, whose historical name is Pius IV., weary of the slow steps by cardinal Granvelle, persuaded Charles, car-which the holy alliesT advanced to the dinal of Lorraine, at secret interviews be- verge of an exterminating war, earnestly tween them, that it was the duty and in- urged a personal interview between Cathterest of all Catholic princes to suspend erine de Medicis and Philip II. Philip their worldly differences in order to unite evaded the journey, alleging his infirm for the sacred purpose of healing the breach health, which, with the habits of inaction in Christian union which had been caused and seclusion, in which he resembled his by the German heresy.† "The chief motive model, Tiberius, and with the convenience of the peace of Câteau-Cambresis," says a of gaining time, by his distance, for the well-informed contemporary, "was that the consideration of every suggestion, was seeds of the Saxon heresy were springing probably among his real motives. Catherine up throughout France." It was the opinion was attended by her son, Charles IX., with of the two cardinals, that, "without a a splendid retinue of French, whose gaiety peace between the crowns of France and and brilliancy presented a striking conSpain, the Catholic_religion could not long trast with the Castilian grandees who continue either in France or Flanders;- -so formed the train of the queen of Spain and great was the increase of Protestants, who the duke of Alva, over the gravity of whose could only be suppressed by establishing an national manners the temper of Philip had inquisition in both countries." Immedi- spread a deeper shade of melancholy digately after the conclusion of the treaty, the nity. The pretext for this assembly was secret project to exterminate Protestants that of an interview of the young queen was betrayed to William I., prince of of Spain with her mother the queen-dowaOrange, by Henry II., who mistakenly sup-ger of France. Had this been the sole or posed that the prince was a papal bigot, the main object, it seemed singular that the enjoying the same favor under Philip II., conductor of the young queen should have as he possessed under Charles V. Symp- been Alva, a cold, stern, unbending vetetoms of the concert for the suppression of ran of sixty, justly renowned for military the impious and seditious opinions of the genius, who had been employed from his age broke out in various parts of Europe. earliest youth against the German innovaPaul IV. (Caraffa) issued his tremendous tors, the slaughter and extirpation of whom bull for the excommunication and deposition he regarded as his most sacred duty to God of all princes tainted with heresy, mani- or man. Military sports and courtly amusefestly and principally aimed at the head of ments occupied during the earlier part of Elizabeth, whom he had not yet the auda- the day the knights of both nations. Fescity to proscribe by name. On the 10th of tivity, jollity, and gallantry were blended May, 1563, the cardinal of Lorraine read a with the dance and the song. Even the letter to the council of Trent from his liberal pleasures of literature sometimes niece, the queen of Scots, "submitting her- diversified the orgies of the licentious noself to the council, and promising that bles who attended the two most dissolute when she succeeded to the crown of Eng- and refined of the great courts of Europe. land she would subject both her kingdoms At the dead hour of midnight, when they, to the obedience due to the apostolic see." ." exhausted by the tournament, the table, The cardinal excused his royal niece for and the dance, retired to repose, the queennot having sent prelates to the council by mother held secret conferences with Alva the cruel necessity of keeping terms with in the apartments of her probably unconher heretical counsellors. The council scious daughter Elizabeth. The British returned solemn thanks to the queen for a minister at Madrid announced these conletter which, thus read in the representa- ferences to his court with evident alarm. tive assembly of Christendom, they doubt-"A post from Bayonne brings news of the less regarded as the first-fruits of a pious *December, 1545. †Thuan, lib. xx. c. 9. Adriani, Istor. di suoi Tempi, lib. xi. Firenze, 1583. meeting of the two queens. There are T." Sacrum fœdus."-Thuanus. ** Phaer to Cecil, June 22. 1665. MSS. State Paper Office. 2 Y ister's inference from the presence of these monarchs to root out heresy, the date of grave personages was reasonable. which was only a few months after the These conferences undoubtedly related conferences at Bayonne. It is not likely, to the most effectual means of subduing the however it might be expressed, that it Protestants in France and Flanders. Mutual should have been understood by the parties succor was stipulated; and, in pursuance as containing obligations less extensive of the stipulation, actually afforded. It than those which Mary had voluntarily would be altogether incredible that, if they imposed on herself by her letter to the had been successful to this point, they could council of Trent.* there have checked their course. The The war of Spain against the Netherqueen-mother and the duke of Alva were lands, one of the most memorable conflicts agreed in the necessity of the designs, both of modern times, which so soon followed pious and political, for destroying the here- the conference of Bayonne, had its source tics. Alva declared for immediate exter- in more general and more remote causes. mination. He blamed the faint-hearted The provinces of Lower Germany, which propositions of France, which he treated are watered by the Rhine, the Meuse, and as treason to the cause of God. All the the Scheldt, had been united under Charles Huguenot leaders must, he said, be taken V.; whose power was, however, circumoff. To this he added, that there must also scribed by constitutional boundaries, and be a massacre of the whole pestilential sect, balanced by the extensive authority of the as general as that massacre of the French provincial states, composed of the clergy, in Italy, known by the name of "The Sicil- the nobility, and the representatives of the ian Vespers." Catherine ventured to re- people chosen by the towns. The great present that measures so extreme were un- and opulent cities of the southern provinces suitable to the reduced state of the royal had been the ancient seats of popular libpower in France. She preferred the wiles erty, and of those commotions which often of an Italian woman, and expressed a wish expose it to destruction. Of them alone, that while she was busied in alluring the Antwerp, by its commercial enterprise, princes and lords into the ancient church, kept alive some sparks of the sacred fire she should, at the same time, make prepa- of the northern and maritime provinces, rations for chastising by arms the contu- where the people, a daring and robust race macy of the heretical populace. She had, of mariners, inured to hardship, to suffershortly before, answered in the same man- ing, to dreadful danger, and to daring enner proposals like those of Alva, which terprise, from behind their dikes and had been made to her at Avignon by the canals smiled on the fruitless advances of pope's legate. The queen and the duke, invaders. That the mouths as well as the however, agreeing in their object, and dif- sources of the Rhine became the sole fering only about the option of fraud or asylum of Germanic liberty on the contiforce as the best immediate means, it was nent of Europe, will appear unaccountable not difficult to effect a compromise. It was to those who have not reflected that causes finally determined to adopt the general almost the same may bestow on the dwellprinciple of destroying the incorrigible ers amidst mountains, and along shores, the ringleaders of the heretical factions. Each exalted spirit which belongs to the consovereign was to select the opportunities sciousness of secure independence. The and modes of execution which should best three provinces of Holland, Friesland, and suit the circumstances of his own domin-Zealand were the most deeply imbued with ions. In France, where the parties were the Lutheran doctrine of no implicit submingled, and in some degree balanced, the mission to human power, which flowed on considerations of time and expediency were them from northern Germany; and they evidently more complicated. In suppress- might also have caught additional boldness ing the Belgic disorders, where a Catholic and jealousy from the example and opinions army was to be sent from Spain and Italy *The greater part of the suinmary rests on the against a heretical nation, the same per- testimony of Adriani (Ist. di suoi Tempi, Firenze, plexities did not exist, and immediate exe-1584), who wrote from materials furnished by Cosm cution appeared more practicable. There is some reason to believe that the outlines of this project, though couched in the smooth and soft language of courts, were reduced to writing, and subscribed by the Sovereigns. In this point the dispatch of Phaer concurs with the account already given of the queen of Scots having sent back a messenger to Paris, in the spring of 1566, with the "bond" of the Catholic depended on his information of the designs of the first duke of Tuscany,-a prince whose safety much great courts. His narrative is adopted by De Thou. The declaration of the eloquent jesuit, Strada, who wrote at Rome from the papers of the house of Parma, that he will neither affirm nor deny these imputed designs, must be regarded as a confirmation of Thuanus and Adriani. "Two voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains; each a mighty voice: In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen music-Liberty!" Wordsworth's Sonnet on the Subjugation of Switzer land, vol. ii. 216. of England, with which they maintained an established, with an abolition of the jurisalmost daily intercourse. The earliest of diction of the foreign prelates in the neighmodern sufferers for religion were the Pro-borhood, in whose dioceses or provinces the testants of these Burgundian provinces. greater part of the Belgic territory had Charles V. began to proscribe that body of formerly been included; with the purpose, his subjects in the summer of 1521, after as the Netherlanders believed, of substihe had holden an imperial diet at Worms tuting an oppressive and persecuting preon the subject of suppressing the new her- lacy in the room of those who were enesy. He issued an edict not only for the feebled and restrained by distance and nagovernment of the empire, but for that of tional difference. These new prelates his hereditary dominions, particularly in- were also naturally dreaded, as likely to cluding the Netherlands; in which, after convert the provincial states into mere inreciting the condemnation of Lutheran struments of the government. The abbots, heresies by the church, he denounced the whose vast domains and princely dignity punishment of death against all who devi- had maintained the independence of the ated from the doctrines of the apostolic see, clergy, were loud in their complaints or who possessed Lutheran books, or har- against these new slaves of the crown and bored the heretics themselves. All men oppressors of the people, whose recently. were commanded to discover those who created sees were enriched by the spoils of were suspected of heresy. Solicitation for the ancient and magnificent monasteries. fugitives was prohibited: not excepting The contrast of Charles V., a native Flemfathers, sons, or brothers. Even by recanta- ing, with the Spanish manners and temper tion of heresy, no farther grace could be of Philip, was very unfavorable to the latearned than that the men were beheaded ter, who was suspected of seriously enterand the women buried alive,* while the taining the monstrous project, which, if his contumacious expiated their obstinacy in father ever harbored, he had been obliged the flames. These tremendous denuncia- by experience to renounce, that of retions were speedily carried into effect. ducing his various diminions, and the still Blood began to be spilt in 1523. "From more various nations who dwelt in them, to that time," says father Paul, "to the peace one uniform model of Spanish rule and beof Câteau-Cambresis in 1558, there were lief. The mind of Charles V. was adapted fifty thousand Protestants hanged, behead- to a variety of institutions and manners, by ed, buried alive, or burnt in the Nether- the diversity of races over whom he had lands." Grotius, in writing of a later pe- long ruled. Philip II., whose Spanish eduriod, estimates the number at a hundred cation had fortified his natural qualities, thousand.‡ early betrayed an impatience which some Slaughter like this was of itself sufficient times broke through his dissimulation, of to render any people irreconcilable whose the constitutional resistance to his power spirit it had not extinguished. Such was from the Flemings, who were among the the strength of the reforming spirit in the most anciently free of European nations. Low Countries, that every execution mul- He embarked at Flushing, for Spain, on tiplied heretics. The mighty agency of re- the 26th of August, 1559, prophesying, as ligion was aided by many minor griev- the event showed truly, that he should ances. Spanish troops were kept up in time never again see the Low Countries; a preof peace, in contradiction to the Belgic diction probably inspired by hatred to a laws. A new ecclesiastical hierarchy of free people. At the moment of his sailthree archbishops and twelve bishops) was ing, he is said to have betrayed his secret thoughts in an angry conversation with the * Van Meteren, Hist. des Pays Bas, liv. i. anno prince of Orange, whom he reproached as 1521. Wagen. Vaderland Hist. iv. "Qui de literis the prompter of the addresses for the redivinis dissertassent, privates cœtibus sacrorum causa interfuissent, in viros gladius, in fœminas moval of the Spanish troops with which the sub terram defossio statuitur, ita tamen si prius states of the Flemish provinces had lately culpam agnoscerent; nam in pervicaces flammis vindicabatur."-Grot. Ann. lib. i. importuned him. The prince answered humbly, that these addresses flowed from † Fra Paolo, lib. v. Opp. ii. p. 33. Grot. Ann. lib. i. The reference of the two great the spontaneous feelings of the states. writers to different periods affords the most reason- Philip, in a transport of rage, replied, "Not able explanation of the apparent contradiction. Grotius had the best means of information, and the the states, but thou, thou, thou!"|| smaller number is as good a proof of cruelty as the larger. ingen in the small provinces of Overyssel and § Archbishoprics of Cambray, Mechlin, and Groningen. Utrecht; bishoprics of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres, in Mémoires de la Hollande, par Aubrey DumauFlanders; of St. Omer in Artois; of Antwerp and rier, 9. Paris, 1668. Vander Wynkt, Troubles des Bois le Duc in Brabant; of Ruremonde in Guelder- Pays Bas, i. 102. I find no mention of this converland; of Namur, in the province so called; of Haar-sation in Van Meteren, Wagenaar, or Grotius. It lem in Holland; of Middleburg in Zealand; of has not, however, the appearance of forgery. The Leuwerden in Friesland; of Deventer and Gron- English language has no corresponding pronoun of |