Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe (25 page)

Meanwhile, Condé kept up appearances so as not to arouse suspicion. Remaining at Amboise, where the mutilated and stinking cadavers of his accomplices had been exposed, he denounced in front of the whole court the ‘scum’ who accused him of complicity. When the court moved to the Queen Mother’s château at Chenonceau he called the rumour-mongers ‘liars’, the worst insult a gentlemen could proffer, and challenged anyone who accused him to single combat. The king and his mother accepted his denials. The Duke of Guise supported him too—for good soldiers never reveal themselves to their enemies. The Cardinal of Lorraine was unable to hide his feelings; standing behind the throne, he kept his eyes fixed to the ground ‘without making the slightest sign of agreement with what they said’. 22 They were certain of his guilt, but lacked proof. On 18 April, while he was present at the king’s lever, the Queen Mother had a thorough search of his apartments conducted. Nothing was found. A few days later he slipped away from court and headed south to join his brother at Bordeaux.

* * * *

The Guise controlled the court and they were safe here, but the Conspiracy of Amboise seriously weakened their control in many provinces. The final eight months of Francis II’s sickly existence were to witness desperate attempts to reimpose authority in those parts of the kingdom where conspiracy and sectarian clashes were taking place in an atmosphere of increasing paranoia. The threat to stability was not only internal. Spain sought to take advantage of their troubles to rid them once and for all from the international scene. The Queen Mother was urged to take power. The brothers were so incensed at the intrigues of Chantonnay that they lodged a formal complaint. Elizabeth too wanted rid of them and she did little to disabuse their suspicions that she had bankrolled the Conspiracy.

Shortly after she issued a proclamation simultaneously in English and French urging their overthrow.

The deepening crisis in France and Scotland created tensions between the Guise brothers. As a soldier, François’s solution was simple: force had to met with force. At Amboise he had revealed his ruthlessness. Charles, the diplomat and scholar, disagreed. Since the beginning of the year he had had his doubts about the policy of repression and argued that dialogue and temporization were a better means of achieving their political objectives. Family disagreements were kept behind closed doors and the brothers were careful to maintain a united front in public. Mary Stuart complained to her uncles that their policy was responsible for the loss of Scotland. The brothers wrote to their sister Mary explaining that the insurgents in France were using the cloak of religion as mask for political ends ‘almost in the same fashion as your rebels’. 23

The cardinal’s reasoning was that if the religious pretext for sedition were removed order would be restored. Already, during the height of the Conspiracy, the decision was taken to treat religious and political dissidents as distinct categories. The general pardon issued on 8 March was a remarkable document. The king stated baldly that the policy of persecution had been a gross mistake, which caused ‘a marvellous shedding of the blood of men, women, girls and boys, a thing which comes as a perpetual regret, is against our nature and not appropriate to our [young] age’. 24 Henceforth Huguenots were tolerated if they worshipped ‘secretly and without scandal’. Only preachers and conspirators were exempt. The distinction between matters of faith, which required Christian understanding, debate, and even compromise; and sedition, which required punishment, remained the cornerstone of policy for the second half of Francis II’s reign. The new policy was most immediately felt in Scotland. On 2 April 1560 the cardinal wrote to his sister to commend it, distinguishing between political (bad) dissidents and religious (reasonable) dissidents: ‘the best way to break this fury is to come to an agreement with the rebels letting them live as they are, so long as they remain in the obedience of the king and the queen your daughter’. 25

This essentially politique view of religion was in most respects wishful thinking. The difference between religion and sedition depended on one’s point of view: the Calvinist who sang Psalms and listened to sermons did not consider himself or herself a rebel, while the Catholic viewed these acts as challenge to his or her precious notion of a universal Church and the sacredness of the community united under one faith. The Conspiracy of Amboise had thrown policymaking into confusion: even the Spanish were approached for assistance in Scotland, but Philip II persisted in his view that Scotland should be ruled by the Scots. Marie de Guise complained at the lack of consistency and clarity: ‘they were so diverted over there at that time that did not know what they were doing’. 26 The debate between moderates and hardliners among the Guise and their counsellors was continued in the British Isles. In April, the Cardinal of Lorraine sent one of his most trusted counsellors and a leading moderate, Jean de Monluc, Bishop of Valence, to negotiate a peaceful end to the rebellion in Scotland. But his announcement in London that Mary Stuart was prepared to renounce her claim to England came too late. The arrival of 6,000 English troops bolstered the Lords of the Congregation in their belief that their cause was a matter of conscience and they were in no mood to compromise. They demanded the evacuation of all French troops, leaving Marie under their control.

Ultra-Catholic opinion was represented by Jacques de la Brosse, the man the Earl of Arran, leader of the Congregation, called the ‘throat cutter’.

La Brosse wanted action not dialogue. He knew Scotland well, having first campaigned there in 1543. He was shocked to see on his arrival that churches and monasteries burned during his previous visit remained destroyed, ‘acts so notorious’, he wrote, ‘that it is not possible [to do] worse’. 27 Since his arrival he had set about compiling reports of iconolasm and a dossier of treasonable acts committed by the Congregation.

Following the failure of Monluc’s mission he had to endure a renewed Anglo-Scots bombardment with little prospect of help: by June the Leith garrison was reduced to eating rats. It is hard not to feel that la Brosse’s humiliation at the hands of heretics in Scotland was at the back of his mind on the road to Wassy eighteen months later.

Reinforcements were hurriedly prepared and, in the need to confront the Royal Navy, financial caution thrown to the wind: 500,000 livres was placed at the disposal of the Channel fleet. 28 In a clear signal that the Guise would henceforth distinguish between ‘religious’ and ‘political’ Huguenots, Admiral Coligny, who had remained loyal during the Conspiracy, was sent to Normandy to prepare twenty-four vessels and gather victuals for 10,000 men. Ten galleys from the Mediterranean fleet, under the command of the Grand Prior, were ordered to sail to the Channel. The English knew all about these preparations because, with the aid of local Protestant sympathizers, they were building a formidable network of informants to keep them informed of affairs on the Channel coast. This spy network was unprecedented in its sophistication and over the next thirty years would give Elizabeth’s ministers a better knowledge of events in Normandy than the French government itself. Their agent in Dieppe reported in March 1560 that the town had passed over to the Reform and was uneasy about the presence of the Marquis of Elbeuf and his troops: ‘the Captain of Dieppe...proclaimed that no one should call the people there Lutherans on pain of death. The people of Dieppe every night in the market-place and afterwards, going through the streets, sing the Psalms of David and some days have sermons preached to them in the fields.’29 Protestants articulated opposition to the war openly and the Governor of Normandy, a Protestant loyalist, the Duke of Bouillon, was sent to put their minds at rest. Protestants drew sympathy from their Catholic neighbours worried about the disruption to trade and resentful of having rowdy soldiers billeted on them: an English spy wrote with satisfaction that ‘the people and the mariners are so evil satisfied that the [Guise] dare not trust them’. Even worse for the Guise: the English spymasters had cracked their codes and they knew that there was no possibility of any reinforcement before August. The death of Marie de Guise on 10 June 1560, undoubtedly weakened by the isolation she felt and the immense pressure she was under, signalled the end of French resistance. In death, her brother Charles showed more attentiveness: he arranged for the transfer of her remains to their sister Renée’s convent of Saint-Pierre in Reims, where they were interred beneath a magnificent tomb in the middle of the nave of the church. By the treaty of Edinburgh, signed on 6 July, Mary Stuart renounced her coat of arms officially and French and English troops withdrew from Scotland. The French commissioners had left Mary and Francis with only nominal sovereignty. Cardinal Charles was furious and accepted it ‘only in order to get them out of the wolf’s mouth’. The treaty was never ratified in France. The Guise did not give up their dynastic claims in the British Isles. Within three years Duke François was full of ‘beautiful plans’ for an invasion of England. But before the Guise definitively replaced Philip II with Elizabeth I as their chief external enemy, they faced one more challenge at home.

* * * *

The crushing of the Conspiracy of Amboise and the de facto end of persecution did not bring an end to opposition. In the aftermath of the Conspiracy, the brothers continued to be assassination targets. For the rest of his life the cardinal would everywhere be escorted by a squadron of dragoons. Arsonists targeted Guise properties in the vicinity of Paris. In the city itself an effigy of the cardinal was hung in broad daylight and there were arson attacks on four of his Paris residences. An attack on the Hôtel de Guise was repulsed with musketry which left two dead. No doubt these attacks were inspired by the various pamphlets, of which there were more than a score, denouncing their tyrannical rule.

In many provinces order collapsed completely in the wake of the Conspiracy. In the south-east in particular—Dauphiné, Provence, the Lyonnais—forces raised by the Protestants were never intended to go to Amboise and they now formed the nucleus of a highly effective guerrilla army. Order also collapsed because of the incertitude created by the new policy. Many Catholics agreed with Philip II that no distinction between heresy and sedition could be made; they were one and the same thing. The new policy relied much on the discretion and common sense of local officials, who were often simply confused and lacking in resources. They found the distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘political’ dissent almost impossible to make. Many simply preferred to turn a blind eye with the result that the Protestant movement, which had no intention of worshipping in secret like the detested Nicodemites, grew at a faster rate than ever and became ever bolder. From all over France in the summer of 1560 reports flooded in of Protestants worshipping openly under the protection of armed guards. And they did not stop there. Normandy was said to resemble a ‘mini-Germany’. During the great summer horse fair near Falaise, excited crowds proclaimed the abolition of the Mass and conducted their own popular reformation, running priests, sellers of papal indulgences, and prostitutes out of town. In Montauban the church of Saint-Jacques and in Montpellier the church of Saint-Mathieu were seized, their interiors cleansed of the trappings of popery ready for services on the Genevan model. Catholics who tried to stem the tide received little assistance from the centre. In Rouen, the governor drew up a list of those who had failed to do their Easter observances and when he attempted to make participation in the June Corpus Christi processions compulsory there were riots and a demonstration against him by 2,000 citizens. The Cardinal of Lorraine wrote to the governor to complain ‘accusing him of too much zeal and inquisitiveness in having thus caused such great turmoil, and that he ought rather to have dissembled and pretended not to see what did not please him, than to proceed to such extremities for the discovery of what was kept hidden, whereby he has done nothing but place all his Majesty’s ministers in danger and anxiety’. 30 One accusation levelled at the cardinal by his detractors was that he was a coward. The similarities with the situation in Scotland were obvious to contemporaries, where the absence of a clear and consistent policy, either for toleration or for outright repression, had spelt failure in the face of a determined and well-organized movement.

* * * *

Historians and contemporaries rarely have a good word to say about Antoine de Navarre. The Venetian ambassador complained that he was ‘very weak’, a dilettante who had spent too much time in pleasure and comfort; a man who was easily led by the opinions of others and, even worse, listened to the opinions of his wife, Jeanne Albret, such that he attached ‘himself now to one party, now to another, favouring today the Catholics, in order to court the pope, and tomorrow the Huguenots to be assured of their support’. 31 In fact, we should consider his flexibility shrewd politics: the ability to change religion when necessary was something he transmitted to his son Henry—it was a lesson that would eventually help Henry win the French crown. Initially, Antoine had cooperated with the Guise regime and was chosen to conduct the king’s sister to Madrid for her marriage to Philip II. He had gone with unrealistic expectations of receiving compensation for the loss of Navarre. He was disillusioned by Philip’s attitude and on his return home was prepared to listen to the Protestants once more. In the summer of 1560, at the request of him and his wife, Calvin sent François Hotman, who had already made his name as a political propagandist, and Théodore Beza, his most trusted theological lieutenant, to the Bourbon court at Nérac in the Pyrenees ‘to teach them the word of God’.

The success of the Congregation in Scotland had given the French Protestants fresh heart. They viewed their plight in identical terms to their Scottish brethren: they were patriots resisting foreigners, who had usurped the ancient laws and custom of the kingdom and were preventing a return to a purer form of religion. In order to enlist Navarre as the French leader of a Congregation, Hotman deployed arguments using a new science developed by the humanists: History. He compared the genealogy and history of the Guise family unfavourably with that of the Bourbon. But the most serious charges he made were racial in origin: the Guise were simply not French. It was said that Claude, Duke of Guise spoke ‘French with a German accent’. 32 The duchy of Lorraine was just a lot of forest whose princes ‘told Germans they were great in France and the French that they were great in Germany’. The Guise were tin-pot German princes who had usurped the rights of the true-born French princes of the blood.