VIEW IN LA ROCHELLE: THE STREET OF THE BISHOPRIC AND ST. BARTHOLOMEW BELFRY, endowed these from the national property, and soon her little kingdom, in point of intelligence and wealth, became one of the most flourishing spots in all Christendom. Under her son (Henry IV.) this kingdom became virtually a part of the French monarchy; but now (1617) it was wished more thoroughly to incorporate it with France. Of its inhabitants, two-thirds-some say nine-tenths— were Protestants. This appeared no obstacle what testants. "These estates," so reasoned the Jesuit Arnoux, a disciple of the school of Escobar, "belong to God, who is the Proprietor of them, and may not be lawfully held by any save his priests."1 Consternation reigned in Béarn; all classes united in remonstrating against this tyran 1 Félice, History of the Protestants of France, vol. i., p. 809. nical decree, which swept away at once their consciences and their property. Their remonstrance was unheeded, and the king put himself at the head of an army to compel the Béarnese to submission. The soldiers led against this heretical territory, which they burned with zeal to purge and convert, were not very scrupulous as to the means. They broke open the doors of the churches, they burned the Protestant books, compelled the citizens to kneel when the Host passed, and drove them to mass with the cudgel. They dealt the more obstinate a thrust with the sabre; the women dared not show themselves in the street, dreading worse violences.1 In this manner was the Popish religion re-established in Béarn. This was the first of the dragonnades. Louis XIV. was afterwards to repeat on the greater theatre of France the bloody tragedy now enacted on the little stage of Béarn. The This was what even now the Protestants feared. Accordingly, at a political assembly held in La Rochelle, 1621, they made preparations for the worst. They divided Protestant France into eight departments or circles; they appointed a governor over each, with power to impose taxes, raise soldiers, and engage in battle. The supreme military power was lodged in the Duke de Bouillon, the assembly reserving to itself the power of making war or concluding peace. question was put to the several circles, whether they should declare war, or wait the measures of the court? The majority were averse to hostilities. They felt the feeble tenure on which hung their rights, and even their lives; but they shuddered when they remembered the miseries which previous wars had brought in their train. They counselled, therefore, that the sword should not be drawn till they were compelled to unsheathe it in selfdefence. This necessity had, in fact, already arisen. The king was advancing against them at the head of his army, his Jesuit confessor, Arnoux, having removed all moral impediments from his path. "The king's promises," said his confessor, "are either matters of conscience or matters of State. Those made to the Huguenots are not promises of conscience, for they are contrary to the precepts of the Church; and if they are promises of State they ought to be referred to the Privy Council, which is of opinion they ought not to be kept." The Pope and cardinals united to smooth 1 Elie Benoit, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, tom. ii., p. 295. This is a work in five volumes, filled with the acts of violence and persecution which befell the Protestants from the reign of Henry IV. to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 2 Félice, vol. i., p. 315. the king's way financially, by contributing between them 400,000 crowns, while the other clergy offered not less than a million of crowns to defray the war expenses. The royal army crossed the Loire and opened the campaign, which they prosecuted with various but, on the whole, successful fortune. Some places surrendered, others were taken by siege, and the inhabitants, men and women, were often put to the sword. The Castle of Saumur, of which DuplessisMornay was governor, and which he held as one of the cautionary fortresses granted by the edicts, was taken by perfidy. The king pledged his word that, if Mornay would admit the royal troops, the immunities of the place should be maintained. No sooner had the king entered than he declared that he took definite possession of the castle. To give this act of ill-faith the semblance of an amicable arrangement, the king offered Mornay, in addition to the arrears of his salary, 100,000 crowns and a marshal's bâton. "I cannot," replied the patriot, "in conscience or in honour sell the liberty and security of others;" adding that, "as to dig nities, he had ever been more desirous to render himself worthy of them, than to obtain them." This great man died two years afterwards. His end was like his life. "We saw him," says Jean Daille, his private chaplain, "in the midst of death firmly laying hold on life, and enjoying full satisfaction where men are generally terrified.” He was the last representative of that noble generation which had been moulded by the instructions of Calvin and the example of Beza. The next exploit of the king's arms was the taking of St. Jean d'Angely. The besiegers were in great force around the walls, their shot was falling in an incessant shower upon the city, and the inhabitants, when not on duty on the ramparts, were forced to seek refuge in the cellars of their houses. Provisions were beginning to fail, and the citizens were now worn out by the fatigue of fighting night and day on the walls. In these circumstances, they sent a deputation to Mr. John Welsh, a Scottish minister, who had been exiled from his native land, and was now acting as pastor of the Protestant congregation in St. Jean d'Angely. They told him that one in particular of the enemy's guns, which was of great size, and moreover was very advantageously placed, being mounted on a rising ground, was sweeping that entire portion of the walls which was most essential to the defence, and had silenced their guns. What were they to do? they asked. Welsh exhorted them to defend the city to the last, and to encourage them he accompanied them through the streets, "in which the ATTITUDE OF THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS. bullets were falling as plentifully as hail," and mounted the ramparts. Going up to one of the silent guns, he bade the cannonier resume firing; but the man had no powder. Welsh, seizing a ladle, hastened to the magazine and filled it with powder. As he was returning, a shot tore it out of his hand. Using his hat instead of a ladle, he filled it with powder, and going up to the gunner, made him load his piece. "Level well," said Welsh, "and God will direct the shot." The man fired, and the first shot dismounted the gun which had inflicted so much damage upon the defenders. The incident revived the courage of the citizens, and they resumed the defence, and continued it till they had extorted from their besiegers favourable terms of capitulation.2 315 appeared to them the only means left them of defending their natural rights. We are disposed to think, however, that it would have been well had the French Protestants drawn more strongly the line which separated their action as citizens from their action as church members-in other words, given more prominence to their church organisation. The theory which they had received from Calvin, and on which they professed to act, was that while society is one, it is divided into the two great spheres of Church and State; that as members of the first-that is, of the Church-they formed an organisation distinct from that of the State; that this organisation was constituted upon a distinct basis, that of Revelation; that it was placed under a distinct Head, namely, Christ; that it had distinct rights and laws given it by God; and that in the exercise of these rights and laws, for its own proper ends, it was not dependent upon, or accountable to, the State. This view of the Church's origin and constitution makes her claims and jurisdiction perfectly intelligible; and gives, as the French style it, her raison d'être. It may not be assented to by all, but even where it is not admitted it can be understood, and the independent jurisdiction of the Church, whether right or wrong in fact, on which we are here pronouncing no opinion, will be seen to be in logical consistency with at least this theory of her constitution. This theory was embraced in Scotland as well as in France, but in the former country it was more consistently carried out than in the latter. While the French Protestants were "the Religion," the Scots were "the Church ;" while the former demanded "freedom of worship," the latter claimed "liberty to administer their ecclesiastical constitution." The weakness of the French Protestants was that they failed to put prominently before the nation their rights as a divinely chartered society, and in their action largely blended things civil and things ecclesiastical. The idea of " Headship," which is but a summary phrase for their whole conception of a Church, enabled the Scots to keep the two more completely separate than perhaps anywhere else in Christendom. In Germany the magistrate has continued to be the chief bishop; in Geneva the Church tended towards being the supreme magistrate; the Scots have aimed at keeping in the middle path between Erastianism and a theocracy. Yet, as a proof that the higher law will always rule, while nowhere has the action of the Church been so little directly political as in Scotland, nowhere has the Church so deeply moulded the genius of the people, or so strongly influenced the action of the State, 1 Montauban withstood the royal arms, despite the prophecy of a Carmelite monk, who had come from Bohemia, with the reputation of working miracles, and who assured the king that the city would, without doubt, fall on the firing of the four-hundredth gun. The mystic number had long since been completed, but Montauban still stood, and at the end of two months and a half, the king, with tears in his eyes, retired from before its walls. It is related that the besieged were apprised of the approaching departure of the army by a soldier of the Reformed religion, who, on the evening before the siege was raised, was playing on his flute the beginning of the sixtyeighth Psalm, "Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered, and let them also that hate him flee before him," &c.3 The king had better success at Montpellier, on the taking of which he judged it prudent to close the campaign by signing terms of peace on the 19th October, 1622. The peace indicated a loss of position on the part of the Protestants. The Edict of Nantes was confirmed, but of the cautionary towns which that edict had put into the hands of the Protestants, only two were now left them Montauban and La Rochelle. The French Protestants at this stage of their history are seen withdrawing to a certain extent from the rest of the nation, constituting themselves into a distinct civil community, and taking independent political and military action. This was a strong step, but the attitude of the Government, and its whole procedure towards them for a century previous, may perhaps be held as justifying it. It Elie Benoit, tom. ii., p. 377. 1 Serres, Gen. Hist. of France, continued by Grimston, pp. 256, 257. Ibid. Young, Life of John Welsh, pp. 396, 397; Edin., 1866. CHAPTER II. FALL OF LA ROCHELLE, AND END OF THE WARS OF RELIGION. Cardinal Richelieu-His Genius-His Schemes-Resolves to Crush the Huguenots-Siege of La Rochelle-Importance of the Town-English Fleet Sent to Succour it-Treachery of Charles I.-The Fleet Returns-A Second and Third Fleet-Famine in La Rochelle-Fall of the City-End of the Religious Wars-Despotism Established in FranceFruitless Efforts of Rohan to Rouse the Huguenots-Policy of Richelieu-His Death-Louis XIII. Dies. THERE was now about to appear on the scene a man who was destined to act a great part in the affairs of Europe. The Bishop of Luçon was a member of the States-General which, as we have already said, assembled in 1614; and there he first showed that aptitude for business which gave him such unrivalled influence and unbounded fame as Cardinal Richelieu. He was a man of profound penetration, of versatile genius, and of unconquerable activity. The queen-mother introduced him to the counciltable of her son Louis XIII., and there the force of his character soon raised him to the first place. He put down every rival, became the master of his sovereign, and governed France as he pleased. It was about this time (1624) that his power blossomed. He was continually revolving great schemes, but, great as they were, his genius and activity were equal to the execution of them. Although a churchman, the aim of his ambition was rather to aggrandise France than to serve Rome. The Roman purple was to him a garment, and nothing more; or, if he valued it in any degree, it was because of the aid it brought him in the accomplishment of his political projects. Once and again in the pursuit of these projects he crossed the Pope's path, without paying much regard to the anger or alarm his policy might awaken in the Vatican. His projects were mainly three. He found the throne weak-in fact contemned-and he wished to raise it up, and make it a power in France. He found the nobles turbulent, and all but ungovernable, and he wished to break their power and curb their pride. In the third place, he revived the policy of Henry IV., which sought to reduce the power of Austria, in both the Imperial and Spanish branches, and with this view the cardinal courted alliances with England and the German States. So far well, as regarded the great cause of Protestantism; but, unfortunately, Richelieu accounted it a necessary step toward the accomplishment of these three leading objects of his ambition, that he should first subdue the Huguenots. They had come to be a powerful political body in the State, with a government of their own, thus dividing the kingdom, and weakening the throne, which it was one of his main objects to strengthen. The Protestants, on the other hand, regarded their political organisation as their only safeguard-the bulwark behind which they fought for their religious liberties. How feeble a defence were royal promises and oaths, was a matter on which they had but too ample an experience; and, provided their political combinations were broken up, and their cautionary towns wrested from them, they would be entirely, they felt, at the mercy of their enemies. But this was what the powerful cardinal had resolved upon. The political rights of the Huguenots were an obstacle in his path, which, postponing every other project, he now turned the whole resources of the crown, and the whole might of his genius, to sweep away. About this time an incident happened at court which is worth recording. One day Father Arnoux, the king's confessor, was preaching before his Majesty and courtiers. The Jesuit pronounced a strong condemnation on regicide, and affirmed solemnly that the Order of Jesus allowed no such practice, but, on the contrary, repudiated it. Louis XIII., in whose memory the murder of his father was still fresh, felt this doctrine to be reassuring, and expressed his satisfaction with it. A Scottish minister of the name of Primrose chanced on that day to be among the auditors of Father Arnoux, and easily saw through the sophism with which he was befooling the king. Primrose made the Jesuit be asked if Jacques Clement had killed his king, or even a king, when he stabbed a prince excommunicated by the Pope? and further, in the event of the Pope excommunicating Louis XIII., would the Jesuits then acknowledge him as their king, or even as a king? and, finally, were they disposed to condemn their disciple Ravaillac as guilty of high treason? These were embarrassing questions, and the only response which they drew forth from Arnoux was an order of banishment against the man who had put them.1 1 Félice, pp. 326, 327. |