The work which Calvin did for his co-religionists in France was immense.

He carried on a constant correspondence with them; he sustained their courage; he gave their faith a sublime exaltation. When he heard of a French Romanist who had begun to hesitate, he wrote to him combining persuasion with instruction. He pleaded the cause of the Reformation with its nominal supporters. He encouraged the weak. He sent letters to the persecuted. He forwarded short theological treatises to a.s.sist those who had got into controversies concerning their faith. He advised the organisation of congregations. He recommended energetic pastors. He warned slothful ministers.

"We must not think," he says, "that our work is confined within such narrow limits that our task is ended when we have preached sermons ... it is our part to maintain a vigilant oversight of those committed to our care, and take the greatest pains to guard from evil those whose blood will one day be demanded from us if they are lost through our negligence."[189]

He answered question after question about the difficulty of reconciling the demands of the Christian life with what was required by the world around--a matter which pressed hard on the consciences of men and women who belonged to a religious minority in a great Roman Catholic kingdom.

He was no casuist. He wrote to Madame de Cany, the sister of the d.u.c.h.ess d'etampes, that "no one, great or small, ought to believe themselves exempt from suffering for the sake of our sovereign King." He was listened to with reverence; for he was not a counsellor who advised others to do what he was not prepared to do himself. He could say, "Be ye followers of me, as I am of the Lord Jesus Christ." Frenchmen and Frenchwomen knew that the master whom they obeyed, the director they consulted, to whom they whispered the secrets of their souls, lived the hardest and most ascetic life of any man in Europe,--scarcely eating, drinking, or sleeping; that his frail body was kept alive by the energy of his indomitable soul.

Frenchmen of varying schools of thought have not been slow to recognise the secret of the power of their great countryman. Jules Michelet says:

"Among the martyrs, with whom Calvin constantly conversed in spirit, he became a martyr himself; he lived and felt like a man before whom the whole earth disappears, and who tunes his last Psalm his whole eye fixed upon the eye of G.o.d, because he knows that on the following morning he may have to ascend the pyre."

Ernest Renan is no less emphatic:

"It is surprising that a man who appears to us in his life and writings so unsympathetic should have been the centre of an immense movement in his generation, and that this harsh and severe tone should have exercised so great an influence on the minds of his contemporaries. How was it, for example, that one of the most distinguished women of her time, Renee of France, in her Court at Ferrara, surrounded by the flower of European wits, was captivated by that stern master, and by him drawn into a course that must have been so thickly strewn with thorns? This kind of austere seduction is exercised only by those who work with real conviction. Lacking that vivid, deep, sympathetic ardour which was one of the secrets of Luther's success, lacking the charm, the perilous, languishing tenderness of Francis de Sales, Calvin succeeded, in an age and in a country which called for a reaction towards Christianity, simply because _he was the most Christian man of his generation_."

Thus it was that all those in France who felt the need of intimate fellowship with G.o.d, all to whom a religion, which was at once inflexible in matters of moral living and which appealed to their reasoning faculties, was a necessity, hailed the _Christian Inst.i.tution_ as the clearest manifesto of their faith, and grouped themselves round the young author (Calvin was barely twenty-six when he wrote it) as their leader. Those also who suffered under the pressure of a despotic government, and felt the evils of a society const.i.tuted to uphold the privileges of an aristocracy, learnt that in a neighbouring country there was a city which had placed itself under the rule of the Word of G.o.d; where everyone joined in a common worship attractive from its severe simplicity; where the morals, public and private, were pure; where the believers selected their pastors and the people their rulers; where there were neither masters nor subjects; where the ministers of religion lived the lives of simple laymen, and were distinguished from them only by the exercise of their sacred service. They indulged in the dream that all France might be fashioned after the model of Geneva.

Many a Frenchman who was dissatisfied with the condition of things in France, but had come to no personal decision to leave the mediaeval Church, could not help contrasting what he saw around him with the life and aspiration of those "of the religion,"[190] as the French Protestants began to be called. They saw themselves confronted by a religion full of mysteries inaccessible to reason, expressing itself even in public worship in a language unintelligible to most of the worshippers, full of pomp, of luxury, of ceremonies whose symbolical meaning had been forgotten. They saw a clergy commonplace and ignorant, or aristocratic and indifferent; a n.o.bility greedy and restless; a Court whose luxurious display and scandals were notorious; royal mistresses and faithless husbands and wives. Almost everywhere we find a growing tendency to contrast the purity of Protestantism and the corruption of Roman Catholicism. It found outcome in the famous scene in the _Parlement_ of Paris (1559), when Antoine de Bourg, son of a former Chancellor, advocated the total suspension of the persecution against those "who were called heretics," and enforced his opinion by contrasting the blasphemies and scandals of the Court with the morality and the purity of the lives of those who were being sent to the stake,--a speech for which he afterwards lost his life.[191]

It was this growing united Protestantism which Henry II. and his advisers had determined to crush by the action of the legislative authority.

-- 5. _Persecution under Henry II._[192]

The repressive legal measures introduced by Francis I. were retained, and a new law against blasphemy (prepared, no doubt, during the last days of Francis) was published five days after the King's death (April 5th, 1547). But more was believed to be necessary. So a series of edicts, culminating in the Edict of Chateaubriand, were published, which aimed at uniting all the forces of the kingdom to extirpate the Reformed faith.

On October 8th, 1547, a second criminal court was added to the _Parlement_ of Paris, to deal solely with cases of heresy. This was the famous _Chambre Ardente_. It was ordered to sit continuously, even during the ordinary Parliamentary vacancies in August and September; and its first session lasted from Dec. 1547 to Jan. 1550, during which time it must have pa.s.sed more than five hundred judgments. The clergy felt that this special court took from them one of their privileges, the right of trying all cases of heresy. They pet.i.tioned against it. A compromise was arranged (Edict of Nov. 19th, 1549), by which all cases of simple heresy (_cas communes_) were to be sent to the ecclesiastical courts, while cases of heresy accompanied by public scandal (_cas privilegies_) were to be judged in the civil courts. In practice it usually happened that all cases of heresy went first before the ecclesiastical courts and, after judgment there, those which were believed to be attended by public scandal (the largest number) were sent on to the civil courts. These measures were not thought sufficient, and the Edict of Chateaubriand (June 27th, 1551) codified and extended all the various legal measures taken for the defence of the Roman Catholic faith.

The edict was lengthy, and began with a long preamble, which declared that in spite of all measures of repression, heresy was increasing; that it was a pestilence "so contagious that it had infected most of the inhabitants, men, women, and even little children, in many of the towns and districts of the kingdom," and asked every loyal subject to aid the Government in extirpating the plague. It provided that, as before, all cases of simple heresy should be judged in the ecclesiastical courts, and that heresy accompanied with public scandal should be sent to the civil courts of the _Parlements_. It issued stringent regulations about the publication and sale of books; forbidding the introduction into France of volumes from Protestant countries; forbidding the printing of books which had not pa.s.sed the censor of the Faculty of Theology, and all books published anonymously; and ordering an examination of all printing houses and bookshops twice in the year. Private persons who did not inform against heretics were liable to be considered heretics themselves, and punished as such; and when they did denounce them they were to receive one-third of the possessions of the persons condemned.

Parents were charged "by the pity, love, and charity which they owed to their children," not to engage any teachers who might be "suspect"; no one was permitted to teach in school or college who was not certified to be orthodox; and masters were made responsible for their servants.

Intercourse with those who had taken refuge in Geneva was prohibited, and the goods of the refugees were confiscated. All Catholics, and more especially persons of rank and in authority, were required to give the earnest example of attending carefully to outward observances of religion, and in particular to kneel in adoration of the Host.

The edict was registered on Sept. 3rd, 1551, and immediately put in force. Six years later, the King had to confess that its stringent provisions had failed to arrest the spread of the Protestant faith. He proposed to establish the Inquisition in France, moved thereto by the Cardinal of Lorraine and Pope Paul IV.; and was prevented only by the strenuous opposition of his _Parlement_.[193] He had to content himself with issuing the Edict of Compiegne (1557), which, while nominally leaving trials for heresy in the hands of the ecclesiastical courts, practically handed them over to the civil courts, where the judges were not allowed to inflict any lesser punishment than death. They were permitted to increase the penalty by inflicting torture, or to mitigate it by strangling the victims before burning them.

Armed with this legislation, the work of hunting out the Reformed was strenuously carried on. Certain prisons were specially reserved for the Protestant martyrs--the Conciergerie, which was part of the building of the Palace, and the Grand Chatelet, which faced it on the opposite bank of the Seine. They soon overflowed, and suspects were confined in the Bastille, in the Pet.i.t Chatelet, and in episcopal prisons. The cells of the Conciergerie were below the level of the river, and water oozed from the walls; the Grand Chatelet was noted for its terrible dungeons, so small that the prisoner could neither stand upright nor lie at full length on the floor. Diseases decimated the victims; the plague slew sixty who were waiting for trial in the Grand Chatelet in 1547. Few were acquitted; almost all, once arrested, suffered death and torture.[194]

-- 6. _The Organisation of the French Protestant Church._

It was during these years of terrible persecution that the Protestant Church of France organised itself--feeling the need for unity the better to sustain the conflict in which it was engaged, and to a.s.sist its weaker members. Calvin was unwearied in urging on this work of organisation. With the fire of a prophet and the foresight of a statesman he insisted on the necessity of unity during the storm and strain of a time of persecution. He had already shown what form the ecclesiastical organisation ought to take.[195] He proposed to revive the simple threefold ministry of the Church of the early centuries--a congregation ruled by a bishop or pastor, a session of elders, and a body of deacons. This was adopted by the French Protestants. A group of believers, a minister, a "consistory" of elders and deacons, regular preaching, and the sacraments duly administered, made a Church properly const.i.tuted. The minister was the chief; he preached; he administered the sacraments; he presided at the "consistory." The "consistory" was composed of elders charged with the spiritual oversight of the community, and of deacons who looked after the poor and the sick. The elders and the deacons were chosen by the members of the congregation; and the minister by the elders and the deacons. An organised Church did not come into existence all at once as a rule, and a distinction was drawn between an _eglise plantee_, and an _eglise dressee_. The former was in an embryonic state, with a pastor, it might be, but no consistory; or it might be only a group of people who welcomed the occasional services of a wandering missioner, or held simple services without any definite leader.

The year 1555 may be taken as the date when French Protestantism began to organise Churches. It is true that a few had been established earlier--at Meaux in 1546 and at Nimes in 1547, but the congregations had been dispersed by persecution. Before 1555 the Protestants of France had been for the most part solitary Bible students, or little companies meeting together for common worship without any organisation.

Paris set the example. A small company of believers had been accustomed to meet in the lodging of the Sieur de la Ferriere, near the Pre-aux-Clercs. The birth of a child hastened matters. The father explained that he could not go outside France to seek a pure baptism, and that his conscience would not permit his child to be baptized according to the rites of the Roman Church. After prayer the company resolved to const.i.tute themselves into a Church. Jean le Macon was called to be the minister or pastor; elders and deacons were chosen; and the organisation was complete.[196] It seemed as if all Protestant France had been waiting for the signal, and organised Churches sprang up everywhere.

Crespin names thirteen Churches, completely organised in the manner of the Church of Paris, founded between 1555 and 1557--Meaux, Poitiers, Angers, les Iles de Saintonge, Agen, Bourges, Issoudun, Aubigny, Blois, Tours, Lyon, Orleans, and Rouen. He adds that there were others.

Doc.u.mentary evidence now available enables us to give thirty-six more, all _dressees_, or completely organised, with a consistory or kirk-session, before 1560. One hundred and twenty pastors were sent to France from Geneva before 1567. The history of these congregations during the reign of Henry II. was full of tragic and dramatic incidents.[197] They existed in the midst of a population which was for the most part fanatically Romanist, easily excited by priests and monks, who poured forth violent addresses from the pulpits of neighbouring churches. Law-courts, whether in the capital or in the provinces, the public officials, all loyal subjects of the King, were invited, commanded by the Edict of Chateaubriand, to ferret out and hunt down those suspected of Protestant sympathies. To fail to make a reverence when pa.s.sing a crucifix, to speak unguardedly against an ecclesiastical ceremony, to exhibit the slightest sympathy for a Protestant martyr, to be found in possession of a book printed in Geneva, was sufficient to provoke a denunciation, an arrest, a trial which must end in torture and death. Protestants were compelled to worship in cellars, to creep stealthily to their united devotions; like the early Christians during the persecutions under Decius or Diocletian, they had to meet at midnight; and these midnight a.s.semblies gave rise to the same infamous reports about their character which the Jews spread abroad regarding the secret meetings of the Christians of the first three centuries.[198]

Every now and then they were discovered, as in the incident of the Rue Saint Jacques in Paris, and wholesale arrests and martyrdoms followed.

The organisation of the faithful into Churches had done much for French Protestantism in bestowing upon them the power which a.s.sociation gives; but more was needed to weld them into one. In 1558, doctrinal differences arose in the congregation at Poitiers. The Church in Paris was appealed to, and its minister, Antoine de Chandieu, went to Poitiers to a.s.sist at the celebration of the Holy Supper, and to heal the dispute. There, it is said, the idea of a Confession of Faith for the whole Church was suggested. Calvin was consulted, but did not approve.

Notwithstanding, on May 25th, 1559, a number of ministers and elders, coming from all parts of France, and representing, according to a contemporary doc.u.ment whose authority is somewhat doubtful, sixty-six Churches,[199] met in Paris for conference. Three days were spent in deliberations, under the presidency of Morel, one of the Parisian ministers. This was the _First National Synod_ of the French Protestant Church. It compiled a Confession of Faith and a Book of Discipline.

The Confession of Faith[200] (_Confession de Foi faite d'un commun accord par les Francois, qui desirent vivre selon la purete de l'evangile de notre Seigneur Jesus Christ_) consists of forty articles.

It was revised more than once by subsequent Synods, but may still be called the Confession of the French Protestant Church. It was based on a short Confession drafted by Calvin in 1557, and embodied in a letter to the King on behalf of his persecuted subjects. "It seemed useful," one of the members of the Synod wrote to Calvin, "to add some articles to your Confession, and to modify it slightly on some points." Probably out of deference to Calvin's objection to a creed for the whole Church, it was resolved to keep it secret for some time. The resolution was in vain. The Confession was in print, and known before the end of 1559.

The Book of Discipline (_Discipline ecclesiastique des eglises reformees de France_) regulated the organisation and the discipline of the Churches. It was that kind of ecclesiastical polity which has become known as Presbyterian, but which might be better called Conciliar. A council called the _Consistory_, consisting of the minister or ministers, elders, and deacons, ruled the congregation. Congregations were formed into groups, over which was the _Colloquy_, composed of representatives from the Consistories; over the _Colloquies_ were the _Provincial Synods_; and over all the _General_ or _National Synod_.

Rules were laid down about how discipline was to be exercised. It was stated clearly that no Church could claim a primacy over the others. All ministers were required to sign the Confession of Faith, and to acknowledge and submit to the ecclesiastical discipline.[201]

It is interesting to see how in a country whose civil rule was becoming gradually more absolutist, this "Church under the Cross" framed for itself a government which reconciled, more thoroughly perhaps than has ever been done since, the two principles of popular rights and supreme central control. Its const.i.tution has spread to Holland, Scotland, and to the great American Churches. Their ecclesiastical polity came much more from Paris than from Geneva.

-- 7. _Reaction against Persecution._

An attentive study of the sources of the history of the period shows that the excessive severity of King and Court towards Protestants had excited a fairly widespread reaction in favour of the persecuted, and had also impelled the King to action which was felt by many to be unconst.i.tutional. This sympathy with the persecuted and repugnance to the arbitrary exercise of kingship did much to mould the Huguenot movement which lay in the immediate future.

The protests against the inst.i.tution of the _Chambre Ardente_, the refusal of the _Parlement_ of Paris to register the edict establishing the Inquisition in France, and the hesitancy to put in execution extraordinary powers bestowed on French Cardinals for the punishing of heretics by the Bull of Pope Paul IV. (Feb. 26th, 1557), may all be ascribed to the jealousy with which the Courts, ecclesiastical and civil, viewed any interference with their privileged jurisdiction. But the Edict of Chateaubriand (1551), with its articles declaring the unwillingness or negligence shown by public officials in finding out and punishing heretics, making provisions against this, and ordaining that none but persons of well-known orthodoxy were to be appointed magistrates (Arts. 23, 28, 24), confessed that there were many even among those in office who disliked the policy of persecution.

Contemporary official doc.u.ments confirm this unwillingness. We hear of munic.i.p.al magistrates intervening to protect their Protestant fellow-citizens from punishment in the ecclesiastical courts; of town's police conniving at the escape of heretics; of a procurator at law who was suspended from office for a year for such connivance;[202] and of civil courts who could not be persuaded to pa.s.s sentences except merely nominal ones.

The growing discontent at the severe treatment of the persecuted Protestants made itself manifest, even within the _Parlement_ of Paris, so long notorious for its persecuting zeal. This became evident when the criminal court of the _Parlement_ (la Tournelle, 1559) commuted a sentence of death pa.s.sed on three Protestants into one of banishment.

The violent Romanists protested against this, and demanded a meeting of the whole _Parlement_ to fix its mode of judicial action. At this meeting some of the members--Antoine Fumee, du Faur, Viole, and Antoine du Bourg (the son of a Chancellor in the days of Francis I.)--spoke strongly on behalf of the Protestants. They pleaded that a s.p.a.ce of six months after trial should be given to the accused to reconsider their position, and that, if they resolve to stand fast in the faith, they should be allowed to withdraw from the kingdom. Their boldness encouraged others. The Cardinal Lorraine and the Constable Montmorency dreaded the consequences of prolonged discussion, and communicated their fears to the King. Henry, accompanied by the Cardinals of Lorraine and of Guise, the Constable, and Francis, Duke de Guise, entered the hall where _Parlement_ sat, and ordered the discussion to be continued in his presence. The minority were not intimidated. Du Faur and Viole demanded a total cessation of the persecution pending the summoning of a Council.

Du Bourg went further. He contrasted the pure lives and earnest piety of the persecuted with the scandals which disgraced the Roman Church and the Court. "It is no light matter," he said, "to condemn to the stake men who invoke the name of Jesus in the midst of the flames." The King was furious. He ordered the arrest of du Bourg and du Faur on the spot, and shortly afterwards Fumee and La Porte were also sent to the Bastille. This arbitrary seizure of members of the _Parlement_ of Paris may be said to mark the time when the Protestants of France began to a.s.sume the form of a political as well as of a religious party. At this anxious juncture Henry II. met his death, on June 30th, by the accidental thrust of a lance at a tournament held in honour of the approaching marriage of his daughter Elizabeth with Philip of Spain. He lingered till July 10th, 1559.

-- 8. _The higher Aristocracy won for the Reformation._

When the lists of Protestants who suffered for their faith in France or who were compelled to take refuge in Geneva and other Protestant towns are examined and a.n.a.lysed, as they have been by French archaeologists, it is found that the great number of martyrs and refugees were artisans, tradesmen, farmers, and the like.[203] A few names of "notables"--a general, a member of the _Parlement_ of Toulouse, a "gentleman" of Limousin--are found among the martyrs, and a much larger proportion among the fugitives. The names of members of n.o.ble houses of France are conspicuous by their absence. This does not necessarily mean that the new teaching had not found acceptance among men and women in the upper cla.s.ses of French society. The n.o.ble of the sixteenth century, so long as he remained within his own territory and in his chateau, was almost independent. He was not subject to the provincial tribunals.

Protestantism had been spreading among such. We hear of several high-born ladies present in the congregation of three or four hundred Protestants who were surrounded in a large house in the Rue St. Jacques (Sept. 4th, 1558), and who were released. Renee, daughter of Louis XII., d.u.c.h.ess of Ferrara, had declared herself a Protestant, and had been visited by Calvin as early as 1535.[204] Francis d'Andelot, the youngest of the three Chatillons, became a convert during his imprisonment at Melun (1551-56). His more celebrated brother, Gaspard de Coligny, the Admiral of France, became a Protestant during his imprisonment after the fall of St. Quentin (1558).[205] De Beze (Beza) tells us that as early as 1555, Antoine de Bourbon, t.i.tular King of Navarre in right of his wife Jeanne d'Albret, and next in succession to King Henri II. and his sons, had the new faith preached in the chapel at Nerac, and that he asked a minister to be sent to him from Geneva. His brother Louis, Prince of Conde, also declared himself on the Protestant side. The wives of the brothers Bourbon, Jeanne d'Albret and Eleanor de Roye, were more determined and consistent Protestants than their husbands. The two brothers were among those present at the a.s.semblies in the Pre-aux-Clercs, where for five successive evenings (May 13-17) more than five thousand persons met to sing Clement Marot's Psalms.[206]

Calvin wrote energetically to all these great n.o.bles, urging them to declare openly on the side of the Gospel, and protect their brethren in the faith less able to defend themselves.

-- 9. _France ruled by the Guises._[207]

The successor of Henry II. was his son Francis II., who was fifteen years of age, and therefore ent.i.tled by French law to rule in his own name. He was a youth feeble in mind and in body, and devotedly attached to his young and accomplished wife, Mary Queen of Scots. She believed naturally that her husband could not do better than entrust the government of the kingdom to her uncles, Charles the Cardinal of Lorraine, and Francis the Duke de Guise. The Cardinal had been Henry II.'s most trusted Minister; and his brother was esteemed to be the best soldier in France. When the _Parlement_ of Paris, according to ancient custom, came to congratulate the King on his succession, and to ask to whom they were to apply in affairs of State, they were told by the King that they were to obey the Cardinal and the Duke "as himself." The Constable de Montmorency and the favourite, Diane de Poitiers, were sent from the Court, and the Queen-Mother, Catherine de' Medici, that "shopkeeper's daughter," as the young Queen called her, found herself as devoid of influence as she had been during the lifetime of her husband.

The Cardinal of Lorraine had been the chief adviser of that policy of extirpating the Protestants to which the late King had devoted himself, and it was soon apparent that it would be continued by the new government. The process against Antoine du Bourg and his fellow-members of the _Parlement_ of Paris who had dared to remonstrate against the persecution, was pushed forward with all speed. They were condemned to the stake, and the only mitigation of sentence was that Du Bourg was to be strangled before he was burnt. His fate provoked much sympathy. As he was led to the place of execution the crowd pleaded with him to recant.

His resolute, dignified bearing made a great impression; and his dying speech, according to one eye-witness, "did more harm to the Roman Church than a hundred ministers could have done," and, according to another, "made more converts among the French students than all the books of Calvin." The persecutions of Protestants of lower rank increased rather than diminished. Police made descents on the houses in the Rue de Marais-Saint-Germain and neighbouring streets.[208] Spies were hired to insinuate themselves into the confidence of the suspected for the purpose of denouncing them. The _Parlement_ of Paris inst.i.tuted four separate criminal courts for the sole purpose of trying heretics brought before them. The prisons were no sooner filled than they were emptied by sentences which sent the condemned to the galleys or to death. The government incited to persecution by new declarations and edicts. It declared that houses in which conventicles were held were to be razed to the ground (Sept. 4th, 1559); that all who organised unlawful a.s.semblies were to be punished by death (Nov. 9th, 1559); that n.o.bles who had justiciary courts were to act according to law in the matter of heresy, or to be deprived of their justiciary rights (Feb. 1560). In spite of all this stern repression, the numbers of the Protestants increased, and Calvin could declare that there were at least 300,000 in France.

The character of Protestantism in France had been changing. In the earlier years of the persecution they had submitted meekly without thought of revolt, resigned to their fate, rejoicing to suffer in the cause of Christ. But under this rule of the Guises the question of resistance was discussed. It could be said that revolt did not mean revenge for injuries done to themselves. A foreign family had overawed their King and imposed themselves on France. The Princes of the Blood, Antoine de Bourbon and his brother Louis de Conde, in whose veins ran the blood of Saint Louis, who were the natural leaders of the people, were flouted by the Guises. The inviolability of _Parlement_ had been attacked in the execution of Antoine du Bourg, and the justiciary rights of great n.o.bles were threatened simply in order to extirpate "those of the religion." They believed that France was full of men who had no good will to the tyranny of the "foreigners." They consulted their brethren in exile, and Calvin himself, on the lawfulness and expediency of an armed insurrection. The refugees favoured the plan. Calvin denounced it.

"If one drop of blood is shed in such a revolt, rivers will flow; it is better that we all perish than cause such a scandal to the cause of Christ and His Evangel." Some of the Protestants were not to be convinced. They only needed a leader. Their natural head was the King of Navarre; but Antoine de Bourbon was too unstable. Louis de Conde, his brother, was sounded.[209] It is said that he promised to come forward if the enterprise was confined to the seizure of the Guises, and if it was successful in effecting this. A Protestant gentleman, G.o.defroy de Barry, Seigneur de la Renaudie, became temporary leader. He had wrongs to avenge. He had been condemned by the _Parlement_ of Dijon (Burgundy), had escaped to Geneva, and had been converted there; his brother-in-law, Gaspard de Heu, of Metz, had been strangled by the Guises in the castle of Vincennes without form of trial. A number of gentlemen and n.o.bles promised their a.s.sistance. The conspirators swore to undertake nothing against the King; the enterprise was limited to the arrest of the Guises. News of the project began to leak out. Every information went to show that the Guises were the objects of attack. The Court was moved from Blois to Amboise, which was a fortified city. More precise information filtered to headquarters. The Duke of Guise captured some small bands of conspirators, and de la Renaudie himself was slain in a skirmish. The Guises took summary vengeance. Their prisoners were often slaughtered when caught; or were tied hand and foot and thrown into the Loire. Others were hurried through a form of trial. So many gallows were needed that there was not wood enough, and the prisoners were hung from the doors and battlements of the castle of Amboise. The young King and Queen, with their ladies, walked out after dinner to feast their eyes on the dead bodies.

Even before the Conspiracy of Amboise had run its length, members of the Court had begun to protest against the religious policy of the Guises.

Catherine de' Medici had talked the matter over with the Admiral Coligny, had been told by him that the religious persecutions were at the bottom of the troubles in the kingdom, and had listened to his proposal that all such should be suspended until the meeting of a Council. The result was that government decided to pardon those accused of heresy if they would promise for the future to live as good Catholics. The brutalities of the methods by which the sharers in the foolishly planned and feebly executed Conspiracy of Amboise were punished increased the state of disorder in the kingdom, and the hatred against the Guises found vent in an _Epistle sent to the Tiger of France_, in which the Duke is addressed as a "mad tiger, a venomous viper, a sepulchre of abominations."

Catherine de' Medici deemed the opportunity favourable for exercising her influence. She contrived to get Michel de l'Hopital appointed as Chancellor, knowing that he was opposed to the sanguinary policy pursued. He was able to inspire the Edict of Romorantin (May 18th, 1560), which made the Bishops judges of the crime of heresy, imposed penalties on false accusers, and left the punishment to be bestowed on attendance at conventicles in the hands of the presidents of the tribunals. Then, with the help of the Chancellor, Catherine managed to get an _a.s.sembly of the Notables_ summoned to meet at Fontainebleau.

There, many of the members advocated a cessation of the religious persecution. One Archbishop, Marillac of Vienne, and the Bishops of Orleans and Valence, a.s.serted boldly that the religious disorders were really caused by the scandals in the Church; spoke against severe repression until a Council, national or general, had been held; and hinted that the services of the Guises were not indispensable. At the beginning of the second session Coligny spoke. He had the courage to make himself the representative of the Huguenots, as the Protestants now began to be nicknamed. He attacked boldly the religious policy of the Guises, charged them with standing between the King and loyal subjects, and declared that the persecuted were Christians who asked for nothing but to be allowed to worship G.o.d as the Gospel taught them. He presented a pet.i.tion to the King from the Protestants a.s.serting their loyalty, begging that the persecution should cease, and asking that "temples"

might be a.s.signed for their worship. The pet.i.tion was unsigned, but Coligny declared that fifty thousand names could be obtained in Normandy alone. The Duke of Guise spoke with great violence, but the more politic Cardinal induced him to agree with the other members to call a meeting of the States General of France, to be held on the 10th of December 1560.

Shortly after the Notables had dispersed, word came of another conspiracy, in which not only the Bourbon Princes, but also the Constable Montmorency were said to be implicated. Disturbances broke out in Provence and Dauphine. The Guises went back to their old policy of violence. The King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde were summoned by the King to appear before him to justify themselves. Although well warned of what might happen, they obeyed the summons, and presented themselves unattended by armed men. Conde was seized and imprisoned. He was condemned to death, and his execution was fixed for the 10th of December. The King of Navarre was left at liberty, but was closely watched; and more than one attempt was made to a.s.sa.s.sinate him. It was vaguely believed that the Cardinal of Lorraine had resolved to get rid of all the leaders of the Huguenots by death or imprisonment.