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Marot's Psalms at Court; the distinctive heritage of the Huguenots ; the power of the Psalms in the public and private lives of the Huguenots�Palissy the potter, Calvin, Theodore de Beza, Robert Estienne, Casaubon, Jean Rous- seau; traces in modern France of the struggle between Roman Catholics and Huguenots; beginning of the perse- cution of Protestants�Jean Leclerc (1524), Wolfgang Schuch (1525); indecision of Francis I; the Huguenot martyrs of Meaux�Jean Rabec, massacre of Vassy; commencement of the Wars of Religion (1562); Coligny at Noyers and Moncontour; Massacre of St Bartholomew (1572); Henry of Navarre, flight from Paris to Alencon, battles of Courtras and Chateau d^Arques; Edict of Nantes (1598).
WHEN Marot's Psalms first appeared, they were sung to popular airs alike by Roman Catholics and Calvinists. No one delighted in the sanctes chansonnettes more passionately than the Dauphin, afterwards Henry II. He sang them him- self, set them to music, and surrounded himself with musicians who accompanied his voice on the viol or the lute. To win his favour, the gentlemen of the Court begged him to choose for each a psalm. Courtiers adopted their special psalms, just as they adopted their particular arms, mottoes, or liveries. Henry, as yet without an heir, sang to his own music Ps. cxxviii., which promises to the God-fearing man a wife (< as the fruitful vine," and children " like the olive-branches." Catherine de Medicis, then a childless wife, repeated Ps. vi. (" 0 Lord, rebuke me not in Thine indignation.") Anthony, King of Navarre, chose Ps. xliii. (" Give sentence with me, 0 God "). Diane de Poitiers sang the -De Profundis (Ps. cxxx.) to the tune of a dance. In after years, when Catherine had borne her husband ten children. Henry carolled Ps. xlii. (" Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks") as he hunted the stag in the Forest of Fontainebleau, riding by the side of Diane, for the motto of whose portrait as a huntress he chose the first verse of his favourite psalm.
But with the Huguenot, love of the Psalms was more than a passing fashion ; they became in a peculiar sense his special inheritance. "When the Catholics," says Florimond de Remond, <( saw simple women seek torments in order to mam-
126 THE HUGUENOTS, 1524-98
fest their faith, and meet death, crying only on Christ their Saviour, or singing a psalm; when they saw young virgins go to the scaffold as gaily as they would go to the bridal couch; when they saw the men rejoice at the sight of the horrible preparations and instruments of death, and, half- burned and roasted, contemplate from the stake their impend- ing tortures, standing firm as rocks among the billows of grief�in a word, dying with a smile�their hearts wept as well as their eyes."
With the Psalms is bound up the history of French Pro- testantism. Their translation into verse and their setting to music were, says Strada, among the chief causes of the Reformation in the Low Countries. So in France the metrical version of the Psalter, in the vulgar tongue, set to popular music, was one of the principal instruments in the success of the Reformed Church. The Psalms were identified with the everyday life of the Huguenots. Children were taught to learn them by heart; they were sung at every meal in house- holds like that of Coligny; to chant psalms meant, in popular language, to turn Protestant. On the battlefield, and in the discipline of the camp, the Psalms held their place. A psalm, as has been already mentioned, was the war-cry of the Britons at Mold, of the Knights Templars, of Demetrius of the Don;
a verse from the Psalms had floated on the banner of the Spanish Armada; the battle-song of John Sobieski at Choczin in 1663, when the tide of Mahomedan invasion was finally checked, was Ps. cxv. So now, in the French Wars of Re- ligion, the Psalms became the Huguenot Marseillaise. With a psalm they repelled the charge or delivered the assault. In Cond6's army so La Noue has recorded, the sentries were posted and relieved to the chant of psalms. Ps. iii. (<( Lord, how are they increased that trouble me ") gave the signal of danger. Day after day, the hymn of thanksgiving for victory was raised in Ps. cxxii. (" I was glad when they said unto me," etc.) from the walls of Huguenot strongholds, like Montauban or La Rochelle, as the soldiers of the League drew off their beaten forces.
Nor was it only in the shock of battle, or the glow of victory, that the power of the Psalms was exercised. Other songs, from the days of Tyrtseus to those of Komer, have warmed the blood and fired enthusiasm. But the Psalms alone have been equally powerful in defeat, disaster, or humiliation. In vain was the chanting of the Psalms proscribed. Equally in vain was it to burn the books by the hands of executioners, or to thrust the pages into the gaping wounds of the dying. Colporteurs risked their lives in carrying to the remotest comers of Protestant France copies of Marot's version of the Psalms, printed so small that they could be readily concealed in the clothes of refugees. Thus it was that the Psalms
THE PSALMS OF DAVID 127
sustained the courage of the martyrs in the midst of torture, and of the Formats de la Foi who were condemned to the living death of the galleys. The meetings of the proscribed and persecuted Huguenots were summoned by the singing of a Psalm; in woods and caverns, in dungeons, in exile in America, the Psalms still sounded from the lips of the sturdy Protestants. In the language of psalms was commemorated the escape of those who fled from the country; and an old seal is in existence, once the property of a Huguenot refugee, which bears as its device a net below; and above, a bird soar- ing upwards; and, as its motto, the words," My soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler " (Ps. cxxiv., verse 6). To sing the Psalms of David, men left their native land, and sought remote recesses of the earth. Fran9ois Leguat and six companions made their home on the Island of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean, in order that there, without hindrance, they might indulge in the consolation of singing praise to God. The spectacle of these seven fugitives gathered together to chant the Psalms of David, in an otherwise uninhabited island, is at once a strange scene to conjure up with the imagination, and a striking commentary on the enduring power of the Hebrew hymns.
Scarcely less impressive, perhaps, are the more peaceful associations which made the Psalms not only the banner and the symbol, but also the synonym of the Reformed Churches, and connect them with the industries, the private lives, the learning, or the arts of the Huguenots.
" Palissy ware," with its lustrous glaze and lifelike repro- ductions of natural objects, was the invention of Bernard Palissy, the Huguenot potter, <( ouvrier en terre et inventeur de rustiques figures." In his indomitable efforts to solve the mystery of enamel, he had stripped his dwelling bare of furniture, and had beggared himself, his wife, and his children. Worn out with watching his furnace, shrunk to a skeleton, mocked by his neighbours, bitterly reproached by his family, he found consolation in the Psalms. As he wandered through the fields round Saintes, observing the beauty and variety of that nature, which he learned to imitate with such marvellous skill, he compared the infinite power and wisdom and goodness of God with his own petty cares and trials. " I have fallen on my face," he says, ft and adoring God, cried unto Him in spirit, * What is man that Thou art mindful of him' (Ps. viii., verse 4); and * Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us, but to Thy Name give the praise * " (Ps. cxv., verse i).
To John Calvin, the theologian of the French Protestants, belongs the honour of editing the first printed edition of metrical psalms for church worship. Marot's translation of thirty Psalms had received the royal license on November 3oth, 1541. Three years before, Calvin had become the pastor
i28 THE HUGUENOTS, 1524-98
of the French Protestant Church at Strasburg. There, in 1539, he had caused to be printed one Psalm in prose (cxiii.), and seventeen in verse, set to music. Of these metrical trans- lations, twelve were by Marot; the remaining five were by Calvin himself, in whom the genius of philosophy had not destroyed the natural taste for poetry. At Geneva, it was one of Calvin's first acts to introduce the chanting of psalms into the public worship of the Reformed Church (Nov. 1541). In his preface to the Genevan edition of Marot's Fifty Psalms, together with a liturgy and a catechism, June loth, 1543, he says that, for the worship of God, "Nous ne trouverons meilleures chansons ne plus propres pour ce faire, que les pseaumes de David, lesquels Ie sainct Esprit luy a dictez et faits." It was to the Psalms that he himself turned in mental troubles, as well as in the throes of pain and death. In any anxiety of mind, he repeated the words of Psalm vi., verse 3, " My soul is sore troubled : but, Lord, how long wilt Thou punish me ? " In the agony of mortal pain, he groaned out, " I became dumb, and opened not my mouth; for it was Thy doing" (Ps. xxxix., verse 10). It was fully enough, for him, he said, to know that it was God's hand. Almost his last words were a fragment from the Psalm,<f How long, 0 Lord? " (Ps. xiii., verse i); but even the cry of weariness rather ex- pressed his lament for the calamities of the Huguenots, than his own impatience of spirit.
In his later years, Calvin's colleague at Geneva was Theodore de Beza (1519-1605), the writer of the metrical version of Psalm Ixviii., which was the battle-song of the Huguenots. Taste for the culture of the Renaissance, passion for poetry, worldly success and fame, had weakened the im- pression of the religious training of his youth. A dangerous illness revived his former feelings. Escaping from the bondage of Egypt, as he called his previous life, he took refuge with Calvin at Geneva. In 1548, when he, for the first time, attended the service of the Reformed Assembly, the congregation was singing Psalm xci.,ft Whoso dwelleth under the defence of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." He never forgot the effect of the words. They supported him in all the difficulties of his subsequent life ; they conquered his fears, and gave him courage to meet every danger. To the work of translating the Psalms into French verse, and into Latin prose and Latin verse, Beza devoted the best years of his life. His translation into French verse, completing that of Marot, was published at Lyons in 1562. During sleepless nights, Beza used to repeat to himself the morning hymn of Eastern Christians, the favourite psalm of St. Chrysostom, <c 0 God, thou art my God; early will I seek Thee," etc. (Ps. Ixiii.) When this veteran of the Re-' formation died (Oct. i3th, 1605), it was with a text from the
CASAUBON 129
Psalms upon his lips, " If Thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, 0 Lord, who may abide it ? " (Ps. cxxx., verse 3).
By a text from the Psalms, Robert Estienne, the famous printer, was sustained throughout his long struggle with the theologians of the Sorbonne, who proscribed his editions of the Bible in the vulgar tongue. "Whenever," he said, <<! recall to mind the war that I have waged with the Sorbonne, these twenty years and more, I have been astonished that so small and frail a person as myself could have had strength to continue the struggle. Yet every time that memory reminds me of my deliverance, that voice which in Psalm cxxvi. cele- brates the redemption of the Church, strikes an echo in my heart: *When the Lord turned again the captivity of Sion, then were we like unto them that dream'" (verse i).
On August aoth, 1608, the great scholar, Casaubon, was going with his wife to the Huguenot worship at Charenton in an open boat on the Seine, singing psalms as they went. They had finished Psalm xci., and had reached verse 7 of Psalm xcii., when a heavy barge struck the stem of his boat and threw his wife into the river. Casaubon saved her, after almost losing his own life in the effort. But, in doing so, he dropped into the river his Book of Psalms, given to him by his wife as a wedding-present, and for twenty-two years the constant companion of his travels. They reached the Temple, and were present at the services. When the chant of the Psalms began, Casaubon put his hand into his pocket for his book, and for the first time discovered his loss. He did not recover himself till the congregation had finished more than half the 86th Psalm. The verse at which he was able to join in the singing was the end of the i3th: " and thou hast delivered my soul from the nethermost hell." "I could not but remember," says Casaubon in his journal, " that place of Ambrose where he says, * This is the peculiarity of the Psalter, that every one can use its words as if they were completely and individually his own.*"
A story which illustrates his love of the Psalms, is told of Jean Rousseau, the Huguenot painter (1630 93), who, for his religious opinions, was shut out from the Royal Academy of painting, and died an exile in London. The Duchess of Orleans, who had been compelled to leave her home in the Palatinate, to abjure the Protestant faith, and to marry the brother of Louis XIV., wrote to her sister: " You must not think that I never sing the Psalms or Lutheran hymns. I sing them constantly, and find in them the greatest comfort. I must tell you what happened to me in connection with them. I did not know that M. Rousseau, who has painted the Orangery at Versailles, belonged to the Reformed Religion;
he was at work on a scaffolding, and I, thinking myself alone �
130 THE HUGUENOTS, 1524-98
in the gallery, began to sing the i6th Psalm. I had hardly finished the first verse, when I saw some one come hurriedly down from the scaffolding and fall at my feet. It was Rousseau. I thought he had gone mad. (Good God! Rousseau,' said I, (what is the matter ? ' * Is it possible, Madame/ he answered, * that you still remember your Psalms and sing them ? May God bless you, and confirm you in these good feelings!' His eyes were full of tears."
Upon France of to-day the history of the Reformed Churches has left its lasting mark. Memories of this struggle for existence linger round the ruins of castles, churches, and towns. They are preserved in caves, like those of Loz^re, which were the refuges and the storehouses of the Huguenots. New cathedrals, like those of Orleans or Uzes, are monuments of the religious bigotry which destroyed the older edifices;
new towns, such as Privas, record the atrocities of a religious war which did not hesitate to turn cities into deserts. Places, like the Place du Murier at Angouleme, or the bridge of Orthez, are traditionally associated with deeds of atrocity, when the Huguenots, goaded to desperation by persecution and massacre, turned, with the Psalms on their lips, to destroy their oppressors. The poetry of the Huguenots, partly religious, partly polemical, partly warlike, is still sung in country districts, where it enshrines the hopes of the Protestants, long since dispelled, as in the stanza:
" Nostre Dieu renversera
Vous et vostre loy romaine,
Et du tout se moquera
De vostre entreprise value. Han, Han, Papegots! Faites place aux Huguenots."
In the Angoumois, to this day, covered utensils of earthen- ware are called Huguenotes, because they were used by the Protestants to cook meat on jours maigres, Inscriptions over the doors of houses still indicate the homes of the Huguenots;
at Xainton (Dept. des Deux Sevres), for example, is the mottor from Psalm cxxvii., verse i :
(( On a beau sa maison batir, Si Ie Seigneur n^y met la main, Cela n'est que batir en vain."
The Rue du Renard, no uncommon name in street nomen- clature, commemorates the times when Protestants hunted Catholic priests with cries of ^Renard/* t{ Le Roi Hugon," with whose midnight depredations children are frightened at Tours, is wrongly supposed to have given his name to the Huguenots, who glided through the city in the shelter of the darkness to attend their places of worship. In Bas-Poitou wolves were popularly called Soubises, in memory of the
'KEOaO^^'WJM^ TO CTJ^Oi. 131
terrible leader of the Protestants; and many of the Druidic stones, which are scattered over the country, are indifferently known as Pierres du Diable and Pierres de Soubise. Even the nicknames of the Huguenots suggest the desperate character of the strife. Soubise was called Ie roi des Parpaillaux (the patois for papillons), because he and his followers fluttered round the fire and the stake. The word mouchard is supposed to be derived from Antoine de Mouchy, the most zealous ferreter-out of heretics. Proverbs like riche comme un Huguenot, or honnete comme un Huguenot, recall the envy which was roused by the virtues and wealth of the Protestants. Deepest of all is the mark which the suppression of French Protestantism has left on the political, industrial, and intellectual life of the nation. It paved the way for the absolute despotism of the Crown and the consequent reaction of the Revolution. It robbed France of the hands and brains, arts and industries, of the best educated, the most laborious, frugal, and conscientious of her sons. It encouraged, by its repression of liberty of thought, the scepticism of the eighteenth century and the anti-clerical feeling of the late Republic.
From the martyrology of Crespin, and other writers, might be cited almost innumerable instances, in which the Psalms sustained the courage of French Protestants in the midst of mortal agony. In 1524, when the Psalter had not been versified, and was hardly known in the prose translation of Lefevre d'Etaples, Jean Leclerc, the wool-comber of Meaux,. was burned alive at Metz. Before the fires were lighted, he was subjected to horrible tortures; but his constancy never wavered as he repeated the same words which had encouraged the martyrs of the early Christian era; "Their idols are silver and gold: even the work of men's hands . . . They that make them are like unto them; and so are all such as put their trust in them." (Ps. cxv., verses 4-8). A year later, in the same year (1525) in which the Inquisition was established in France, Wolfgang Schuch, the Lutheran preacher in Lorraine, was burned alive at Nancy, repeating at the stake the words of Psalm li.
The persecution of the Protestants had begun while Francis I. was engaged in
war with Charles V., or detained a prisoner in Spain, and while Louise of Savoy
was Regent of France. Taken captive at the battle of Pavia (1525), Francis had
been brought under a guard to the Church of the Certosa. When he entered the
building, the monks were singing Psalm cxix., verses 65-70. At verse 71 the king
recovered himself sufficiently to join in the words, "It is good for me that I
have been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes." Strong hopes were
entertained that Francis, for love of his sister Marguerite, from political
rivalry, or from personal sympathy, might place himself at the head of the
Reformed
132 THE HUGUENOTS, 1524-98
movement. The policy of the Crown was indeed, for a time, more tolerant. Francis had delayed to execute the decree of the Sorbonne against Marot's versions. Though he ultimately forbade their publication, he was often heard humming the airs, and, on his deathbed, he ordered the book to be read aloud for his consolation. " Knowing that his last hour was come, he set the affairs of his house in order, commanded that the Psalms of Clement Marot should be brought to him, caused some to be read aloud to him, and, commending his people and his servants to the Dauphin," died March 3ist, 1547. But the general policy was not reversed, and Leclerc and Schuch head the long list of Protestant martyrs, who, from 1542 onwards, chanted the Psalms in Marot*s version as they were led to the scaffold or the stake. Their song was taken up by the bystanders in the street. It was thus that at Meaux, in 1546, the fifty-seven prisoners, and their friends in the crowd, joined in Psalm txxix. as they were led to prison; and it was the same Psalm which the fourteen who were condemned to death sang on their way to the scaffold:
(< Les gens entrez sont en ton her tage, Us ont pollu� seigneur, par leur outrage. Ton temple sainct, Jerusalem destruite, Si qu^en monceaux de pierres Font reduite�
Us ont baille les corps
De tes seruiteurs morts
Aux corbeaux pour les paistre
Le chair des bien-viuans
Aux animaux suyuans
Bois et pleine champestre."
This is the Psalm which was used by the Jews every Friday, in lamentation over the ruins of Jerusalem. The same Psalm was applied alike to the zealous excesses of the Huguenots or the Puritans, and to the profane outrages of the French Revolution. It was used by the Carthusians of Woburn Abbey at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, when Abbot Hobbs called the brethren together, and bade them, ft for the reverence of God," to pray devoutly, and recite the Psalm Deus venerunt gentes. Verse 2 of the same Psalm was the motto chosen by the Jesuit Parsons for his book, De persecutione Anglicana (1581). The same words were suggested to Luisa de Carvajal by the sight of those Roman Catholics who were executed in London in 1608. "We can hardly go out to walk without seeing the heads and limbs of our dear and holy ones stuck up on the gates that divide the streets, and the birds of the air perching on them; which makes me think of the verse in the Psalms, * The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the air ' " (Psalm Ixxix., verse 2).
MAROT'S PSALMS 133
In vain the Catholic priests, attending at he executions of the Huguenots, tried to drown the thunder of Marot's Psalms with their Latin chants. The words lacked the savage energy of the vernacular French; the unknown tongue awakened no response from the crowd. Many victims were gagged before being burned: but the fire severed the cords which held the instruments in their place, and, with charred lips, the sufferers raised the Psalms. Others, whose tongues had been cut out, uttered sounds in which, though barely articulate, bystanders recognised the familiar words. So it was at Angers, in 1556, that Jean Rabec at the stake, while he was being alternately raised and lowered into the flames, continued to sing Psalm Ixxix., half choked with blood, till his end arrived. It was while a Protestant congregation was singing psalms in the grange at Vassy, in 1562, that Guise gave the signal for the massacres of the Huguenots which finally provoked the Wars of Religion. When once the sword was drawn, the Psalms became the war-songs of the Huguenots. On the battlefields of Coligny or Henry of Navarre were heard such chants as Psalms Ixxvi. or cxviii., or, above all, Beza's version of Psalm Ixviii.:
" Que Dieu se monstre seulement, Et on verra soudainement Abandonner la place Le camp des ennemis espars, Et ses haineux, de toutes pars, Fuir deuant sa face."
In the early periods of the civil wars of the sixteenth century, the Huguenots moved as one man; their union was their strength. The central figure is Gaspard de Coligny, as Henry IV. is the leader of their later stages. Throughout the struggle, the royal family gave chieftains to Roman Catholics and Protestants alike; both sides fought under princes of the blood. On both sides were arrayed the heads of powerful families, who led their feudal levies to the field. Politics and religion were mingled ; the Roman Catholics represented the influence of Spain: the Protestants raised the cry of " France for the French." Though the Roman Catholics showed but little religious enthusiasm, and all the zeal was to be found among the Huguenots, yet the ultimate triumph of toleration was effected by the triumph of a political party, which placed its chief upon the throne in the person of Henry of Navarre.
In March 1568, the Treaty of Longjumeau gave the Huguenots a breathing space. Their leaders retired to their homes in the country; their followers -were disbanded, their mercenaries dismissed. Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, returned to his gardens on the terraced slopes of Chatillon-sur- Loing, and, clad in farmers dress, pruned his fruit trees. But
134 THE HUGUENOTS, 1524-98
the treacherous calm only half concealed the coming storm. Catherine de Medicis merely sought to gain time. The peace was unreal. No effort was made to restrain the violence of the Roman Catholics. Coligny's treasures had been seized, and he could obtain no redress. Shots were fired at him;
he was ordered to reduce his retinue; one of his gentlemen was murdered. He retired to the castle of his brother Andelot, at Tanlay, near Tonnerre, so that he might be close to Cond6 at Noyers. There the stem, reserved Coligny, whose thought- ful serious face, with its square, high forehead, firm mouth and melancholy grey eyes, looks down from among the portraits of the Grands Amiraux of France, held frequent counsel with his colleague. No two men could be more different from each other than the two leaders of the Huguenot cause. The one was the Washington, the other the Rupert, of the Huguenots. Coligny, cold in manner, severe in demeanour, slow in the expression of his opinions, pitiless towards himself, inflexible in his judgment towards others, was most formidable in defeat, and won his greatest successes in retrieving disasters. Upon this distinctive feature in the Admiral*s greatness Voltaire has seized, in the Henriade:
t1 Savant dans les combats, savant dans les retraites, Plus grand, plus glorieux, plus craint dans des defaites,
�ue Dunois ni Gaston ne Font jamais ete ans Ie cours triomphant de leur prosperite."
Cond6 was a dashing cavalry officer, whose charge was irresistible. Chivalrously courageous, fond of pleasure, with nothing of the Puritan in his nature; loving other peopled wives, so Brant6me says, as much as his own; excelling, in spite of his slight figure and round shoulders, in all manly exercises; he was the darling of the people of Paris, and disputed their favour with the Due de Guise. On these two men, each so different, depended the fortune of the Huguenot cause. To destroy them was the aim of Catherine. Had not the Duke of Alva said, that the head of one salmon was worth a thousand frogs ?
. In the summer months of 1568 the royal troops were collected in the neighbourhood of Tanlay and Noyers. Royal guards held the gatehouses, fords, and bridges. A warning reached Cond6 and Coligny. A horseman galloped past Noyers, sounding his horn, and crying out, "The stag is in the snare! The hunt is up!" Instant flight was necessary. At midnight, on August 35th, 1568, the Huguenot leaders, with their families and fifty followers, left Noyers to run the gauntlet of their enemies, and traverse the many hundred miles which lay between them and their refuge at Rochelle. The pursuit was hot. Led by a huntsman who knew the fords and forest paths, they reached the Loire at a spot above Cosne,
HENRY OF NAVARRE 135
near Sancerre. They crossed the river, their horses wading only to their girths. As day broke, the river rose in flood. The fugitives were saved. They had placed a barrier between themselves and their pursuers. Rochelle could yet be reached in safety. They fell on their knees on the farther bank and gave thanks, singing the ii4th Psalm, <( What ailed thee, 0 thou sea," etc.
The war was renewed. At Jarnac (1569) the Roman Catholics gained a victory, in which Conde was killed. At Moncontour, in the same year, Coligny himself was dis- astrously defeated. Wounded in three places, he was carried from the field in a litter. As Lestrange, one of his old com- panions in arms, also severely wounded, was being carried past him, he thrust his head into the Admiral's litter, and without strength for more, whispered, fi Si, est-ce que Dieu est tres doux." (" Truly God is loving unto Israel, even unto such as are of a clean heart," Ps. Ixxiii., verse i). The words, as Coligny told a friend, revived his failing courage. His firm- ness returned, and he set himself to restore the fortunes of his cause. From all the mountain districts of the Vivarais, the Cevennes, and the Forez, the Huguenots flocked to his standard. A new spirit animated his followers. They sang, as they passed through a hostile country and deserted villages, " Le prince de Conde
II a este tue.
Mats monsieur PAmiral
Est encore a cheval
Pour chasser les papaux, papaux." Coligny*s name overshadowed that of the king. (< De FAmiral de France," says Brantome, (< il etait plus parle que du roi de France." At the head of his army he had, within a year, extorted from Catherine de Medicis, and the unhappy red- haired youth, who bears the sinister title of Charles IX. the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye (1570).
Coligny was the chief victim of the Massacre of St Bartholomew, August 24th, 1572. The same event introduces the hero of the second period of the Civil Wars. A prisoner at the court of Charles IX., surrounded in Paris by the murderers of his friends, tempted by all the sensual allure- ments which Catherine de Medicis had thrown in his way, Henry of Navarre seemed to have forgotten ambition, and to welcome inaction. Only two of his former attendants remained faithful to the young king�his squire, d*Aubigne, and his valet, Armagnac. Even they were weary of the task, and on the eve of quitting so unworthy a master. But one evening, when Henry was in bed, ill, feverish and depressed, they heard him singing softly to himself the words of Psalm Ixxxviii. (verses 7-10, i8), sf Thou hast put mine acquaintance far from me, and made me to be abhorred of them. I am so
� ��^-^ - �� .
136 THE HUGUENOTS, 1524-98
fast in prison that I cannot get forth.. . Dost Thou shew wonders among the dead; or shall the dead rise up again and praise Thee ? . . . My lovers and friends hast Thou put away from me, and hid mine acquaintance out of my sight/' The squire felt that the young king's chivalrous spirit was not wholly extinct. He urged him to throw in his lot with the faithful adherents who were fighting that enemy whom Henry himself was serving. A few months later, the king escaped from Paris, crossed the Seine at Poissy, traversed a country held by the forces of the Guises, and at Alencon placed him- self at the head of the Huguenots. The next morning when he attended service, the psalm which was appointed to be sung was Psalm xxi., ts The king shall rejoice in thy strength, 0 Lord," etc. The omen seemed so propitious that Henry asked whether the psalm had been selected to welcome him to the camp. But it had come in its natural course. Henry remembered, so d*Aubigne tells the story, that this was the same psalm which the companion of his passage across the Seine at Poissy had sung, as, with their bridles on their arms they walked their horses to and fro by the side of the river, waiting for the rest of the party.
Already Rochelle had repulsed the triumphant Roman Catholics. The town had preserved its municipal indepen- dence since it was surrendered by the English at the Peace of Bretigny. Taxing itself, electing its own magistrates, pro- tected on the land by impregnable walls, opening or closing its port at its own pleasure, sweeping the seas with its own powerful navies, Rochelle was the Venice or Amsterdam of France. It was also its Geneva, the city of refuge to which fled Protestants from all parts of the country. But for the moment its fate trembled in the balance. Outside the walls of the Huguenot stronghold were encamped the royal armies, in which Brant6me held a command. Within the city were crowded the citizens and refugees. After five weeks of batter- ing and skirmishes, a general assault was delivered. Four times the besiegers were driven back, and, as they recoiled, the battle-song of the Huguenots, Que Dieu se monstre settlement (Ps. Ixviii.), rose in triumph from the ramparts. The siege was raised (1573), and thus the claim of the citizens was vindicated that Rochelle was founded on an impregnable rock.
In the years that followed, the interest of the Wars of Religion centres round Henry of Navarre. With two at least of his victories, the Psalms are strikingly associated. At the battle ofCourtras, October 2oth, 1587, before the fight began, the Huguenots knelt in prayer, and chanted Ps. cxviii., verses 24,25:
" La void l^heureuse iournee Que Dieu a faite a plein desir, Par nous soit ioye demenee Et prenons en elle plaisir.
EDICT OF NANTES i3�
0 Dieu etemel, ie te prie, Ie te prie� ton Roy maintien:
0 Dieu, ie te prie et reprie, Sauue ton Roy et Pentretien."
^Sdeath,*' cried a young courtier to the Due de Joyeuse^ who commanded the Roman Catholics, "the cowards are afraid; they are confessing themselves." "Sire," said a scarred veteran, " when the Huguenots behave thus, they are ready to fight to the death." The battle ended Ih the triumph of Henry. The Due de Joyeuse was killed, and his army utterly routed. More than forty years afterwards (1630), d'Aubign6 lay on his deathbed. Perhaps the memory of the victory returned at his last moments to the dying man. " Two hours before his death," so wrote his widow, <( with a glad countenance, and with a peaceful contented mind," he repeated the Psalm, " La voici Fheureuse iournee," etc., and so passed to his rest.
In 1589 Henry gained another victory under the walls of the Chateau d'Arques, the picturesque ruins of which are still standing in the neighbourhood of Dieppe. There the king and his Huguenot followers were threatened with destruction by the Due de Mayenne and the army of the League. His forces were but few compared with the number of those arrayed against them; his reinforcements had failed him; the courage of his men was crushed by the weight of superior numbers. " Come, M. Ie Ministre," cried the king to Pastor Damour, " lift the psalm. It is full time." Then, above the din of the marching armies, rose the austere melody of the 68th Psalm, set to the words of Beza, and swinging with the march of the Huguenot companies. Pressing onwards, the men of Dieppe forced themselves like an iron wedge through the lines of the League, and split them asunder. The sea fog cleared away;
Henry*s artillerymen in the castle could see to take aim ; the roll of cannon marked the time of the psalm; and the Leaguers were scattered.
The triumph of Henry IV. in 1598 restored the Psalter to the Court of France. Once more the Psalms, which Francis I. had hummed so gaily, were sung at the Louvre. By the Edict of Nantes, peace was for a time imposed upon France. It was the Magna Charta of the Reformed churches, guaranteeing to the Huguenots freedom of worship in specified places, admit- ting them to civil rights, offices, and dignities, providing for the trial of Protestant causes by mixed benches of judges, and securing enjoyment of these privileges by the possession of fortified towns. During the life of Henry IV., the son of Jeanne d'Albret, pupil of Coligny, and hero of a hundred fights against the Catholic League, the king^s personal influence maintained the. compact. Yet, at the best, the Edict of Nantes proclaimed a truce rather than a lasting peace.
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