CHAPTER VII.

CHAOS.

[1562-1533.]

Nature of the Struggle-Montluc-His Barbarity-Des Adrets-His Ferocity-Murders at Gaillac-The Reform in Provence and LanguedocScenes at Orange-Revolt at Valence-Disturbances at Lyons-Compromise-La Rochelle-Massacre at Toulouse-Exodus of Sisteron-Sauteries of Macon-Limoux-Palm Sunday at Castelnaudary-The Monks of St. Calais-Violence in Berry-The Chatelaine of Avallon-The Proctor of Bar-Atrocities of the Bishop of Le Mans and his Lieutenant-Hugue. not Cruelties at Dieppe and Bayeux-Angoulême-Quarrels at CourtSiege of Havre-Duplicity of English Government-Charles Proclaimed of Age-His Character-Council of Trent.

WHILE the events we have described in the preceding chapter were taking place in the north and west of France, the rest of that beautiful land was a prey to anarchy and all the direst evils of civil war. In our favored country, where internecine strife has been so long unknown, and where, even in its worst days, Englishmen never forgot that they were brothers, we can hardly picture to ourselves the frightful condition of France during the whole reign of Charles IX. A few scattered incidents must be taken as a sample of the hideous mass of horrors: to repeat a tenth part of them would sicken and disgust the least sensitive of readers.

Foremost among the blood-stained heroes of these cruel scenes are two personages, distinct yet alike, to whom no parallel can be found except in the sanguinary butchers of the Revolution of 1789. They are Montluc and Des Adrets.

Blaise de Montluc had distinguished himself in the Italian wars of Francis I. He had been made prisoner at Pavia, and had decided the wavering fortunes of Cerisoles. As lieuten

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ant of Guyenne he was ordered to reduce that province to submission, and he did it in a very characteristic manner, putting his Huguenot prisoners to death without permitting them to say a word, "for they have golden tongues." Terror was his great weapon, and he used to boast that any one could know which way he had passed by the "marks" he left upon the trees by the roadside, adding, with a grim smile, that 'one man hanging frightens more than a hundred slain." His "Commentaries," an autobiographical sketch, which he composed when years and disease prevented his using the sword any longer, are a curious illustration of the state of mind to which a man can be brought who makes mere military discipline the principle of his actions. Reform was insubordination; "obedience to the king's edict or death"-he allowed no middle course. One day he hanged six prisoners without a minute's delay. "Why," said the terrified neighbors when they heard of it, "he puts men to death without trial." What need of trial? he would have replied; you are in arms against the king. At St. Mezard four prisoners were brought before him as he stood in the church-yard, his two executioners behind him with their swords drawn; they always accompanied him, with cords and other implements of their office. One of the prisoners was charged with seditious language. Montluc caught him violently by the throat: "Rascal, how dare you insult the king with your ribald tongue?" "Mercy, mercy!" cried the man. "What! expect me to spare you when you have not spared your king!" And, in a towering passion, Montluc threw the poor wretch to the ground, his head falling on a broken monument. "Strike, scoundrel!" roared Blaise to one of his executioners; and at the word the sword fell, decapitating the man, and chipping a fragment of stone from the slab. Two others were hanged on a tree hard by, and the fourth was scourged so severely that he died a few days after. Montluc complacently adds, "And this was the first execution I ordered after starting from home, without trial or sentence, for I have heard say

that in these matters you should hang first. . . . It shut the mouths of many seditious people." He avenged M. Fumel's murder by hanging or breaking on the wheel in one day between thirty and forty persons, innocent as well as guilty. The hot-headed Huguenots of the south retaliated at Cahors by hanging as many Catholics as they could catch, fourteen or fifteen in number, who had assisted Montluc in his atrocities. At Gironde he made a capture of some eighty Huguenots, of whom he hanged seventy to the pillars of the market-house "sans autre cérémonie." Describing his doings at the village of Feugaroles, he says: "We were so few that we were not able to kill all: the bandoliers shot them down like game." In one of his expeditions he fell in with the Queen of Navarre, who received him very badly, and to his great surprise "called him a tyrant," and otherwise reproached him. His ferocity he considered a virtue, and justified his cruelty as necessary to get the better of his enemies. "God," he adds, "must be very merciful to us, considering the evils we commit."* He was thankful not without reason, for at the end of the war he was richer by 100,000 crowns.

Still more ferocious, and, if possible, with still fewer redeeming qualities, was François de Beaumont, baron des Adrets, whose name is still used in the south to scare naughty children. Ostensibly he was a Protestant, but in reality a mere agent of the queen-mother against the Lorraine party. He would sometimes amuse himself by making his prisoners leap from the top of a tower, or from a high window, on the pikes of his soldiers stationed below. On one occasion-it was at

*Blaise de Montluc: Commentaires (Panthéon Littéraire, Paris, 1836). His shattered monument may still be seen at Estillac near Agen. The warrior, armed from head to foot, lies bare-headed on a marble slab, his arms crossed over his breast; his features are coarse and bold, his beard and mustache thick and long.

+ The Abbé Caveyrac in his Apology for Louis XIV. (note, p. 7) says of the subsequent recantation of this blood-thirsty renegade, that “he returned sincerely to God." Let us hope he did, but on better grounds than Caveyrac's word for it.

The

Montbrison, in August, 1562-a prisoner hesitated, upon which Des Adrets reproached him with cowardice. other retorted: "I dare you to do it in ten times," which caused his life to be spared. The slaughter in that little town was fearful: more than eight hundred men, women, and children were murdered; the streets were strewn with corpses, and "the gutters looked as if it had rained blood," says a contemporary. At. another time, though this belongs to a different period of his history-the baron marched to besiege Valence, where (as we shall see presently) the Reformed had revolted and seized upon the Grey Friars' Church. In defiance of his threats, they publicly celebrated the Lord's Supperin the appropriated church, as many as 5000 partaking of the sacrament. They afterward came to terms with him, agreeing to open their gates and restore the church; but Des Adrets had no sooner entered than he seized a number of Protestants and sentenced them to lose their heads. They were taken to punishment with their mouths gagged; and after being dismembered, their limbs were fastened to the doors of the church they had profaned.* Strange to say, however, the baron professed to deplore the cruel necessities of war, and excused his barbarities by pleading that it was not cruelty to retaliate. "The first acts are cruelties," he said, "the second mere justice." De Thou, who saw him at Grenoble, describes his green and vigorous old age, his fierce eyes, and thin, fleshless features, marked, like Sylla's, with red spots, as of blood.t

The ferocity of Des Adrets was exceeded by the atrocities. committed under the eyes of Cardinal Strozzi, Bishop of Albi, who excited the populace of Gaillac to massacre their Protestant brethren, with whom they had hitherto lived on friendly terms. About seventy Huguenots were seized as they were

*Le Baron de Chapuys-Montlaville: Hist. de Dauphiné, ii. p. 358 (8vo. Paris, 1829).

+"Ruboribus interfusa, ut lutum sanguine maceratum." Vita sua, lib. i. p. 1165.

Thuanus: De

attending divine worship, and thrust into a dungeon of the abbey of St. Michael, situated on a precipitous rock above the river Tarn. A laborer, wearing the judicial cap and robe of a magistrate whom he had killed, went through the farce of trying the prisoners and condemning them to be thrown from the wall into the river. Boatmen were stationed on the banks of the stream to brain such as were not killed by the fall.

In the south of France, the Reformed doctrines had extended more widely and struck deeper root than in other parts of that kingdom. This difference was owing to a combination of many causes. The great cities of Provence and Languedoc still retained many of their municipal privileges, dating from the time of the Roman dominion, which made them almost republican. This begat the spirit of independence which always accompanies self-government. Moreover, the Albigensian crusade of the thirteenth century had not exterminated heresy: the opinions that had been so bitterly persecuted fastened their roots deep in the hearts of the southern population, where they lay, generation after generation, waiting for the opportunity of displaying themselves. It came at last, and with it a desire to revenge themselves on the descendants of those who had devastated the fair south with fire and sword. It was an oppressed nation rising against their oppressors, the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children. At the first outbreak of hostilities, the Huguenots seized upon the churches, which they purified of all marks of idolatry, destroying the relics and making a jest of the consecrated wafer. In some towns they entirely forbade the Catholic worship, turned the nuns from their convents, and even compelled them to marry. Beza, in a letter to the Queen of Navarre, expressed himself plainly, though not very strongly, upon the matter: "About this destruction of images I can say nothing more than what I have always felt and preached, that such a mode of procedure does not at all please me." The violation of sepulture he declared to be utterly without excuse, and that Condé was determined to punish it.