As François II was a sickly boy of 15, his mother
Catherine de’ Medici (as the French called her) ruled
just as she had as regent during Henri II’s campaigns.
She dismissed his mistress Diane de Poitiers and Constable
Montmorency as she relied on the Guise brothers,
Duke François and Cardinal Charles of Lorraine,
uncles of Mary Stuart who had married
François II and was now queen.
Catherine promised the Huguenots (French Protestants)
she would not persecute them if they
did not assemble or cause a scandal.
However, she let Du Bourg be burned for heresy,
and the Huguenots became more aggressive.
French and German jurists advised them they needed
a prince of the blood for a violent coup against the Guises,
and they approached Louis de Bourbon-Vendome Condé.
Jean du Barry de la Renaudie was a Protestant and met
with them in Paris and then traveled for five months
in France and Switzerland to arouse support.
From Geneva more than sixty exiled nobles returned to France.
Men disguised as litigants and merchants met in Nantes
on February 1, 1560, claiming to be an Estates-General.
La Renaudie denounced the Guise government
and emphasized loyalty to the King.
By March 2 reports of the planned coup reached François II,
who issued the Edict of Amboise that granted amnesty
to religious prisoners except pastors and conspirators.
Michel de L’Hôpital was appointed chancellor in April and
royal troops attacked 500 men in the woods around Amboise.
La Renaudie was killed in the fighting, and at least 300
were arrested, tortured, and executed including 56 nobles
who were beheaded in public on March 30.
Cardinal Charles of Lorraine proposed a national council
and wrote to Pope Pius IV on March 21, 1560.
Pius replied on May 12 that he opposed a French council,
but he sent Cardinal François de Tournon as a legate.
Public demonstrations erupted in Paris against the Guises;
the Cardinal of Lorraine was hanged and burned in effigy,
and attempts were made to burn his properties.
On May 18 the Edict of Romorantin moved the prosecution
of heresy from royal courts to ecclesiastical tribunals
while punishing illegal assemblies and
seditious acts was left to presidial courts.
Chancellor L’Hôpital believed that two different religions
could not coexist in the same kingdom.
He considered force and violence pertinent only to beasts
and not humans, and he argued
that justice is determined by reason.
To achieve national unity he summoned an
Assembly of Notables to Fontainebleau on August 20.
Bishop Jean de Monluc of Valence opposed the persecution
of religious dissenters who were loyal to the crown,
and he advised toleration and a council to reform the clergy.
Charles de Marillac, Archbishop of Vienne, complained
about burdensome taxes and the abuses of the Church.
Since the Pope would not call a General Council,
he advised calling a national council.
Admiral Coligny supported the demand for the Estates-General,
and the King summoned one at Meaux on December 10.
Meanwhile the Huguenots were resorting to arms,
and Edme de Ferrieres of Maligny captured Lyon,
though King Antoine of Navarre persuaded him to withdraw.
On October 31 Louis de Condé, was arrested
for treason in Orléans and put in prison.
François II became ill and died on December 5, 1560.
His 10-year-old brother became Charles IX.
Antoine of Navarre was the first prince of blood,
but he was rejected.
The Estates-General began at Orléans on December 13,
and L’Hôpital asked for their help.
The Conseil privé appointed
Catherine de’ Medici regent on December 21.
Although on January 13, 1561 L’Hôpital informed the deputies
that the public debt of 43 million livres was four times the
annual revenue, they refused to grant any money to the crown.
Regent Catherine confirmed and modified the
Edict of Romorantin, releasing all religious prisoners
and suspending all heresy cases.
On March 9 Condé was acquitted and released from prison,
and on the 25th Antoine of Navarre renounced his claim to the
regency and was confirmed as lieutenant-general of France.
On April 7 Cardinal Tournon persuaded the Guises to form
an alliance with Montmorency to defend the Catholic faith.
Catherine responded by allying herself with Navarre.
On the 19th the government banned
the terms “Huguenot” and “papist.”
On May 15 Charles IX was crowned at Reims.
The Cardinal of Lorraine urged Regent Catherine to summon
an Assembly of Notables to prohibit Protestant assemblies.
On June 11 the seigneur d’Esternay petitioned the King
for the Huguenots so that they could recall
foreign exiles under safe conduct.
Catherine met with princes and the royal council,
and a new edict banned all Protestant worship while
denying Parlement authority to judge heresy cases.
Banishment became the maximum punishment for heresy,
and all religious and seditious offenders
since Henri II’s death were pardoned.
Meanwhile on March 10, 1561 the second Calvinist national
synod met at Poitiers and recommended that the next
Estates-General establish a royal council to enforce edicts.
In the spring Calvinists held open-air services despite attempts
to stop them in Troyes, Etampes, Melun, Meaux, and Chartres.
Mobs sacked Catholic churches in Normandy and Agen.
Calvinists went into churches and destroyed statues
of saints, crucifixes, and altarpieces.
The Parlement of Toulouse complained
of armed assemblies in four towns.
The Parlement of Paris ordered places used for
Protestant services and meetings destroyed.
On July 31, 1561 Charles IX opened the national council
at Poissy, and a colloquy began on religious issues.
On August 27 the Estates-General
met at Saint-German-en-Laye.
Then the lay estates met at Pontoise
while the clergy convened at Poissy.
The secular estates proposed selling church property that
could bring in 120 million livres to pay the national debt
and then the annual expenses of the clergy and for trade.
On September 15 the prelates at Poissy formally
approved the Society of Jesus in France.
One week later the government allowed twelve Calvinists
to debate as many Catholics in private.
The national council was dissolved on October 13.
Eleven days later Catherine asked Pope Pius IV to sanction
communion in both kinds by the laity to no avail.
When the Council of Trent reconvened
on January 18, 1562 not one French prelate attended.
On January 17 Catherine issued the Edict of Saint-German
that allowed Huguenots to worship
unarmed outside of walled towns.
King Antoine of Navarre announced
that he had become a Catholic.
By the end of 1561 Rouen had about 15,000 Huguenots.
In October hundreds of Protestants
held public meetings in Dijon.
In 1561 and early 1562 Geneva, Neuchatel, and Berne
sent 150 Calvinist missionaries to France.
The four Guise brothers (François, Charles, Claude, and Louis)
met with Duke Christoph of Württemberg and four Lutheran
theologians on February 15, 1562, and the latter Protestants
urged the Catholic brothers to tolerate French Calvinists.
They came to an understanding, and the Guises promised
not to persecute Protestants for the sake of Christian unity.
On his way to Paris on March 1 Duke François de Guise
stopped at Vassy in his duchy to attend mass.
He learned that about 500 Calvinists were worshipping
nearby in a barn, and he went to talk with them.
He and his companions became angry and were
thrown out and had stones thrown at them.
They began shooting Calvinists with arquebuses, went back in,
and massacred about thirty people, wounding about a hundred.
Regent Catherine de Medici was with the court at Montceaux,
and she tried to keep Paris peaceful.
Marshal Montmorency ordered the Reformed churches to
suspend services; but the pastors refused
because they were protected by a recent edict.
Louis de Bourbon, the Prince of Condé, met with Protestant
nobles in Paris, and they warned the Reformed churches.
Condé’s manifesto urged Protestant nobles
to prepare with arms and horses.
Huguenots demanded that Guise be arrested,
and Catherine ordered him not to march to Paris
and appointed a formal inquiry into the Vassy atrocity.
Montmorency and Jacques Dalbon,
the seigneur de Saint-André,
persuaded Guise to go to Paris,
and they arrived on March 16 with about 2,500 troops.
Catherine appointed Cardinal Charles de Condé
to govern Paris as a neutral, and the next day
he and the leaders of Parlement urged Guise
and Louis de Condé to leave Paris; but they remained.
A riot broke out on March 20.
King Antoine of Navarre arrived, and two days later
on Palm Sunday he joined the Triumvirs
(Guise, Montmorency, and Saint-André)
in a Catholic procession.
Catherine at Fontainebleau had written four letters to
Louis de Condé, asking him to protect her and her son.
The Triumvirs came to her, and on March 13 they forced
her and her children to go with them to Paris.
Later she denied they were prisoners.
On April 2, 1562 Louis de Condé’s
Protestant rebels seized Orléans.
He issued a manifesto declaring that they had taken up arms
to liberate young King Charles IX and his mother Catherine
and to make sure the edict protecting
religious liberty was enforced.
He recruited 3,000 reiters and 4,000 landsknechts
from Protestant principalities in Germany.
Since the 1550s the reiters
had been effectively using handguns.
By the end of April the rebels captured
Angers, Tours, Blois, Valence, and Lyon.
Catherine went back to Montceaux
and negotiated with the Huguenots.
Blaise de Monluc recorded how he tried to preserve
law and order in the next few months by
hanging Protestants at Fumel, Villefranche-en-Rouergue,
Gironde, Monségur, and Terraube.
He believed that hanging one man was more
effective than killing a hundred in battle.
On July 13 the Parlement of Paris outlawed Protestants
and decreed that anyone could kill them with impunity.
Huguenots were smashing images
and stripping churches of their valuables.
Catherine appealed to Pope Pius IV,
Duke Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy, and Felipe II of Spain.
She recruited 6,000 Swiss infantry
and some Catholic Germans.
The Huguenots turned to England’s Queen Elizabeth
who was being challenged by the Guises’ niece Mary Stuart.
On September 2 Condé’s envoys promised Elizabeth
the port of Le Havre for 100,000 crowns and 6,000 troops.
This treaty offended patriotic Frenchmen.
The Catholics recaptured Blois in the Loire valley
while the Huguenots seized towns in Languedoc
and Guyenne but failed to take Toulouse.
On August 31 the Catholic army crossed the Loire
and took Bourges to cut off supplies to Orléans.
Meanwhile on May 13 fighting broke out in Toulouse,
and three days later the Protestants
were allowed to leave the city.
Their safe conduct was violated, and outside the walls
about 3,500 Protestants were killed.
The conflict was also fierce in Rouen which was besieged
by Aumale and the royalists on May 28.
In the city authorities persecuted Catholics.
In a treaty on September 20 the Protestants gave Le Havre
to Elizabeth for 6,000 troops to relieve Rouen and Dieppe.
The Catholics’ siege of Rouen had 30,000 troops,
but the royals’ general, King Antoine of Navarre,
was mortally wounded on October 15.
Eleven days later the royal troops broke
into the city and plundered it for three days.
After her husband Antoine died on November 17, 1562,
Queen Jeanne d’Albret made Calvinism the religion of Navarre.
Condé proclaimed himself lieutenant-general of his kingdom;
but Catherine sent the Cardinal of Bourbon to govern,
and they set up a new town council without any Protestants.
Louis de Condé left Orléans to march on Paris;
but Guise got there first, and on December 9
Condé headed toward Normandy.
His 20,000 men included 2,400 horsemen with pistols,
and on the 19th south of Dreux they met the army
of 19,000 led by Constable Montmorency.
The Protestants had 2,000 more cavalry than the royalists.
In the battle Montmorency was captured
as his army was routed.
However, Guise and Saint-André
fought back and captured Condé.
Coligny’s Protestant cavalry attacked.
Saint-André was captured and killed
by Bobigny exacting revenge.
Both sides suffered heavy casualties
with about 6,000 men killed.
A few days later the Huguenots had only
an army of 1,000 French, 900 landsknechts,
and 700 of their 4,500 horsemen.
About 1,500 landsknechts had surrendered to Guise,
and several hundred reiters had escorted
the captured Constable to Orléans.
Guise with the royal army pursued Coligny’s force
and besieged Orléans on February 5, 1563,
but thirteen days later while inspecting the camp
he was mortally wounded by a shot
from the Huguenot Poltrot de Méré.
Before the assassin was executed on March 18,
he accused Coligny of aiding in the murder.
The prisoners Montmorency and Condé negotiated
the peace of Amboise on March 19 which protected
freedom of religion but gave nobles wider rights than others.
Protestants were permitted to worship in towns
where they had before March 7
and in one town in each bailliage.
Property stolen from Catholic churches was to be restored.
The poet Pierre de Ronsard protested this war with poems
published under the title
Discours des misères de ce temps in 1567.
After Queen Elizabeth sent her a message that the English took
Le Havre to get revenge and to trade it to get back Calais
sooner, Regent Catherine gathered troops of both religions
to besiege Le Havre on July 28, 1563.
Elizabeth delayed the peace talks for eight months before
agreeing to let France keep Calais for 120,000 crowns.
Even though he was barely 13 years old, Charles IX was
proclaimed of age on August 17
during a lit de justice in the Parlement of Rouen.
Then he commanded that the peace be kept and that
no one should seek any military
or financial assistance from other countries.
He assured his mother Catherine
that she would rule more than ever.
A proclamation ordered his subjects
to lay down their weapons.
Only nobles could keep them at home,
but they were not allowed to have firearms.
Royal soldiers were the only exceptions
as a few were assigned to guard the King.
The Parlement of Paris refused to register the declaration.
After Charles IX reproached them,
they complied on September 28.
Chancellor Michel de L’Hôpital reminded them that their role
was judicial, not to question the laws made by the monarch.
Many Parisians refused to give up their weapons.
As Condé’s wife was leaving the capital, hundreds
of armed men attacked her coach and killed an escort.
Condé wanted to leave the court,
but Catherine persuaded him to stay.
The royal officer Charry while crossing a bridge in Paris
was murdered by three men for vengeance,
but Catholics blamed Coligny and François de Chatillon,
the seigneur d’Andelot.
The Guises demanded justice and began arming,
but Charles IX put off the case for three years by ordering
both parties to refrain from any judicial or armed action.
On February 18, 1562 Admiral Coligny sent Jean Ribault
with 500 soldiers to found a Huguenot colony in Florida,
and they were welcomed by friendly Indians on April 29.
Coligny sent a second expedition under Goulaine de
Laudonniere that reached Florida
on June 25, 1564 and built Fort Caroline.
Ribault arrived with the third expedition
on August 28 with artisans and peasants.
However, Felipe II of Spain sent Pedro Menéndez
in ten ships with 2,600 men, and they destroyed
the “heresy” at La Caroline on September 20.
Meanwhile Protestant nobles continued to pillage churches
while Catholics attacked Huguenots returning home.
Charles IX sent four marshals on inspection tours,
and to assist them he appointed 28 commissioners
from his privy council and the Parlement of Paris.
They were to enforce the amnesty, restore confiscated property,
and find sites where Protestants could worship in each baillage.
Complaints about such sites often led to difficult lawsuits.
During the four years of peace from 1563 to 1567
the royal councilors included 20 moderates
as well as 16 Catholics and 6 Protestants.
Cardinal Charles of Lorraine led the 34 French prelates
who attended the Council of Trent.
On November 23, 1562 he told the Council
that the moral corruption of the Church
was to blame for the conflict in France.
On January 2, 1563 the French delegation proposed
suppressing papal dispensations that were granted for money.
When they returned to France, Lorraine wanted the Tridentine
decrees published there; but Chancellor L’Hôpital opposed this
so strongly that the Cardinal accused him of being a Protestant.
When Pope Pius IV summoned seven French bishops to Rome
for suspected heresy, the French government objected to their
being removed from the justice system in their own country.
When Pius tried to depose Queen Jeanne d’Albret of Navarre,
Catherine reminded him he had
no authority over kings and queens.
On June 14 the Edict of Vincennes prohibited Protestants
from trading on Catholic feast days.
On December 14 monks and nuns were ordered
to return to their religious houses or leave France
even if they had married.
Huguenots were also upset when on January 13, 1564
Catherine decreed that heads of households
in Paris could keep their weapons.
Catherine had eighty ladies-in-waiting at court,
and many young noblemen were given mistresses
to introduce them into high society.
Entertainment included military parades, jousting at tournaments,
lavish banquets, music by women in the palace gardens,
hearing Ronsard’s Eclogues, and witnessing the tragicomedy
Beautiful Ginevra based on Orlando Furioso.
On March 13, 1564 Catherine and Charles IX
began a two-year tour of France with their government
that included more than 10,000 people.
The purpose was to inspect local situations and instruct officials.
Leaving Fontainebleau they went east to Sens, Troyes, Chalons,
and Bar-le-Duc before turning south to visit Dijon, Lyon,
Crémieu, Vienne, Valence, Orange, Avignon, Aix, and Toulon.
They left Lyon to avoid a plague that
was believed to have killed 25,000 people.
At Roussillon on August 4 Charles IX ruled that Protestants
could be fined and have their property confiscated
for worshipping beyond the limits
prescribed by the Edict of Amboise.
Married priests had to leave their wives or go into exile.
Charles suspended the Parlement of Aix for refusing to
register the Edict of Amboise
and replaced them with Parisian parlementaires.
From Toulon they moved west to Montpellier, Béziers,
Carcassonne, Toulouse, Agen, and Bordeaux.
During the tour Catherine wrote 413 letters
including 110 to Paris.
While they were in Toulouse for 46 days, she learned
of a confrontation in Paris between Governor
François de Montmorency and the Cardinal of Lorraine.
When the Guises gathered forces, Coligny arrived
with 500 Protestant cavalry to back the Governor.
Catherine ordered both sides to leave the capital,
but only the Protestants complied.
After turning south to stay at Bayonne, they moved north
to Bergerac, Angouléme, La Rochelle, and Nantes.
Bypassing Brittany and Normandy, they went east to Angers,
Saumur, Tours, Amboise, Blois, Bourges, and Moulins
where Catherine summoned an Assembly of Notables
to meet on January 24, 1566.
The Ordinance they passed in February had
86 articles on laws, administration, hospitals,
ecclesiastical benefices, and trade guilds.
The main purpose was to increase royal authority,
and parlements were forbidden to remonstrate more than
once against registering a new law ordered by the King.
Towns maintained criminal jurisdiction,
but civil jurisdiction was taken over by royal judges.
Governors who had increased their powers
during the civil war had them cut back.
Gratuities, nepotism, and holding
multiple offices were banned.
In the summer of 1566 Spain’s Felipe II decided to send
the Duke of Alba with an army to punish the Netherlands
by way of Provence, Dauphiné, and Burgundy.
France’s Catherine responded by increasing the garrisons
in Piedmont, Picardy, Metz, Toul, and Verdun.
Charles IX hired 6,000 Swiss mercenaries
to help defend his kingdom.
Huguenot leaders expected another campaign of persecution
and alerted their forces to gather at Rosay-en-Brie.
Catherine and Charles IX fled from
Montceaux to Meaux on September 26.
When they moved on from there,
they were followed by Huguenot cavalry.
Charles IX made it to Paris, but on October 1 he began
investing the capital and burned
at least a dozen windmills outside Paris.
On September 30 Protestants had killed about eighty people
at Nimes, and they also seized Orléans.
Catherine sent L’Hôpital and envoys to Louis de Condé
at Saint-Denis, offering a royal pardon if they would put
down their arms, but Condé demanded that the King
disband the Swiss troops, expel the Guises from his court,
allow Protestants freedom of religion, reduce taxes,
dismiss Italian bankers, and summon the Estates-General.
Condé appealed to all the people
to revolt regardless of their religion.
Pope Pius V sent Catherine 25,000 écus
and offered her 6,000 soldiers.
In 1567 she persuaded Charles IX to name her
6-year-old son Henri of Anjou commander of the royal army.
The Huguenots planned to starve Parisians into submission.
The 74-year-old Constable Montmorency led a force
out of Paris to attack Saint-Denis
where he was shot by a pistol.
After Condé retreated, the royal forces returned to Paris
where Montmorency died on November 12.
On January 16, 1568 Condé welcomed 6,000
German reiters and then besieged Chartres.
By February both sides were bankrupt
and could not pay their troops.
On March 28 the Huguenots agreed to the
Peace of Longjumeau which confirmed the
Edict of Amboise with some restrictions.
Charles IX agreed to pay the reiters if they left his kingdom.
The Huguenots disbanded most of their forces,
but the Catholics did not.
In April the Brotherhood of the Catholics was formed
at Chalon-sur-Saone, and in May a league was organized
to defend the Catholic Church and the royal house of Valois
under 17-year-old Duke Henri of Guise.
Catherine ordered Governor Tavannes of Burgundy to besiege
Noyers in order to capture Condé, but he and Coligny
escaped from Noyers on August 23, 1568 with 150 soldiers.
They went to La Rochelle and were joined by many Huguenots.
On September 25 Charles IX banned the Reformed religion,
banished their pastors, and excluded Protestants
from public offices and universities.
The Protestant army of 25,000 men marched on Poitou
and on October 26 fought a royal force at Poitiers
where Captain Mouvans was killed.
A much larger battle was fought along the Charente River
where Tavannes surprised the Huguenots with the
royal army near Jarnac on March 16, 1569.
Prince Condé led a charge, suffered a broken leg,
and surrendered, but he was murdered
by Henri of Anjou’s guard Montesquiou.
In January 1569 Philippe and Richard Gastines were
arrested for holding a Protestant service in their home.
A riot erupted, and about fifty people were killed.
The Gastines were hanged in July,
and their property was confiscated.
After their house was demolished, a cross on a stone
pyramid was erected to represent Catholic opposition.
Admiral Coligny led the Huguenots, and in early August
the Parlement ordered the property
of Huguenot leaders confiscated.
Coligny was sentenced to death in September,
and a reward of 50,000 écus was offered for his head.
Coligny was joined by Germans, and they defeated
a small royalist force near La Roch l’Abelle,
capturing Colonel-general Strozzi.
They took few prisoners and
slaughtered hundreds of peasants.
Next Coligny besieged Poitiers
from July 24 to September 7.
The royalists were reinforced by Pope Pius V, Florence,
and Spain so that by June they had
16,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry.
The Protestants had about
12,000 foot soldiers and 6,000 horsemen.
Both sides had hired many foreign mercenaries.
They met on October 3, 1569 at Moncontour.
The Huguenots lost about 10,000 men while
the royalists suffered less than 600 casualties.
Coligny recovered from a wound and invaded Guyenne
to join Montgomery who had conquered Béarn.
After the winter Coligny’s army ravaged the regions of
Toulousain, Narbonne, Roussilon, and Montpellier.
In the spring of 1570 they marched into Burgundy
and sacked the abbey of Cluny on June 18.
Coligny’s army defeated the royalists at Arnay-le-Duc
but avoided a major battle with the royal army
and marched on Paris, hoping to make peace.
They agreed to end the third civil war
at Saint-Germain on August 8, 1570.
The Protestants were granted security for two years in the
towns of La Rochelle, Montauban, La Charité, and Cognac.
They were allowed to worship wherever they had before
the war and could be admitted
to all the universities, schools, and hospitals.
Offices and property taken from Huguenots
were to be returned to them.
Blaise de Monluc and other Catholics
objected to these concessions.
The Golden Hammer house demanded that the cross
at the Gastines be removed according to the treaty,
but a mob attacked that house and its neighbor.
Charles IX asked Paris for 600,000 livres to pay the
mercenaries who had fought for the Huguenots,
and the King responded to objections
by offering to accept half.
Also in 1570 Jean-Antoine de Baif founded the first
French Academy in his father’s home,
and Charles IX approved.
Their purpose was to revive poetry and music
in order to improve morals.
On September 12, 1571 Charles IX welcomed Coligny
back to court because he favored a war
against Spain in the Netherlands.
In late May 1572 Count Louis of Nassau and some
Huguenots seized Valenciennes and Mons, but on June 7
Charles prohibited his subjects from helping Nassau.
Yet in July the King allowed 3,000 Huguenot infantry
and about 350 cavalry to relieve Mons;
but they were defeated on July 17
before they reached Mons.
Coligny gathered 12,000 arquebusiers and 2,000 cavalry.
The wedding of Henri of Navarre and the King’s sister
Marguerite of Valois was held at Notre-Dame cathedral
on August 18 and was followed by four days of festivities.
On August 22 Coligny was shot in the arm
with an arquebus while walking home.
The next day a judicial inquiry implicated Duke Henri de Guise,
and the King gave Coligny a bodyguard of fifty arquebusiers.
Catholics feared a Huguenot uprising, and on August 23
Charles IX ordered Swiss and French guards
to attack Huguenot leaders.
Before dawn the Duke of Guise led the royal guards
to the Hotel de Béthisy and murdered Coligny,
tossing his body out the window.
His head was taken to the royal palace, and the corpse
was dragged through the streets for three days.
On St. Bartholomew’s Day (August 24) the King
commanded that the pillaging and murdering stop,
but the slaughter continued for nearly a week in the capital.
Thomas Crozier bragged of killing more than
400 men by himself on that day.
About 3,000 people were killed in Paris.
Charles IX issued written instructions on
August 24, 27, and 28 warning officials that the Huguenots
might rise up in response to the Parisian massacre.
The King’s brother Duke Henri of Anjou wrote a letter
arguing that Huguenots everywhere should suffer
the same fate as those killed in Paris.
The slaughter spread to La Charité, Meaux, Bourges,
Saumur, Angers, Lyon, Troyes, Rouen, Bordeaux,
Toulouse, and Galliac, and it lasted into the
first week in October, killing about 7,000 Huguenots.
In Rouen about 3,000 Protestants became Catholics,
and the Reformed community there was reduced
from 16,500 to less than 3,000.
Charles IX once again banned Calvinists from royal offices.
Charles IX appointed Marshal Biron to govern La Rochelle,
but the people refused to let him in the city.
The King sent the Huguenot captain François de La Noue,
but the rebels made him their governor.
Biron was ordered to besiege La Rochelle in February 1573,
and an army of 28,000 commanded by Henri of Anjou arrived.
La Noue joined that army on March 12, and after eight
royalist assaults he finally negotiated an agreement in July.
By then the royalists had lost about 12,000 men,
many to illness and desertion.
The casualties included 73% of the officers.
All the refugees and most of the Huguenot army
of 1,500 had been killed.
The miserable siege of Sancerre from November 9, 1572
to August 25, 1573 was described by the
Calvinist minister Jean de Léry.
About 500 people in the city died in the famine.
Meanwhile on May 29, 1573 Henri of Anjou learned
he had been elected King of Poland.
He returned to the Louvre and agreed to the conditions
of the Polish ambassadors in late August.
He swore an oath at Notre-Dame on September 10
and left on December 2.
He ruled in Krakow until June 1574 when he learned that
his brother had died and that he was now King of France.
The Huguenots still flourished in southern France,
and in December 1573 they adopted a constitution.
Delegates at Milau in July 1574 proclaimed that
they still served the King of France.
Within the Huguenot state the Catholic cities of Toulouse,
Bordeaux, Marseille, Avignon, Aix, and Agen
were beyond their control.
In November 1573 Charles IX sent a subsidy to covertly
assist Dutch rebels led by Willem of Orange’s brother,
Louis of Nassau, against imperial Spain.
In January 1574 Charles IX promised to appoint his brother
François, the Duke of Alençon, to replace their brother
Henri of Anjou as lieutenant-general, but the Guises
discredited him and Marshal François de Montmorency.
In the Louvre on February 15 Duke Henri de Guise
attacked Alençon’s man Ventabren and claimed that
Ventabren had been hired to assassinate him
by Montmorency who then left the court.
Then the King did not appoint Alençon but Duke
Charles of Lorraine instead
at the behest of queen mother Catherine.
With Protestant troops nearby on the night of February 27
the court quickly left Saint-Germain-en-Laye
to take refuge in Paris.
Alençon admitted that the plot was intended to attack
the Guises and free himself and Henri of Navarre.
Chancellor Birague wanted them executed as traitors,
but Charles IX only made them
take a loyalty oath on March 24.
A second plot was discovered in April, and fifty suspected
conspirators were arrested; La Mole and the
comte de Coconas were tried and executed on April 30.
Also in April Languedoc’s governor, Marshal Henri Damville,
allied himself with the Huguenots of Midi.
Young Prince Henri de Bourbon-Condé had escaped
the court in May and arrived in Germany
to raise mercenaries for the Protestants.
That month the marshals François de Montmorency
(Damville’s brother) and Artus de Cossé were suspected
of plotting with Alençon and were imprisoned
in the Bastille for 18 months.
Rebels had seized towns in Lower Normandy, Poitou,
and the Rhone valley, and in response
the crown sent three small armies.
The Count of Montgomery had landed in Normandy
in March 1574 and took over Saint-Lo and Carentan,
but the army led by Matignon trapped him
in the fortress of Domfront in May.
Montgomery surrendered and was
taken to Paris for execution.
Catherine wanted vengeance because he had been
involved in the jousting death of her husband Henri II.
Matignon’s army of 7,500 men attacked Saint-Lo
on June 10, and Carentan soon opened its gates.
Montpensier’s siege of Fontenay failed in May;
but reinforcements from Normandy increased
his army to 8,600, and after a three-week siege
Fontenay surrendered on September 22.
Montpensier’s army then besieged Lusignan
which capitulated on January 26, 1575.
King Charles IX had been ill and died on May 30, 1574.
His mother Catherine acted as regent until his brother
Henri III returned from Poland to Lyon on September 6.
He was persuaded to use force against the Huguenots,
and armies were organized in Poitou,
Provence, and the Rhone valley.
France’s new Marshal Bellegarde with an army of 17,000
besieged Pouzin, and they suffered many casualties.
Henri III led another army against Henri Damville
who was ordered to disband his army
and go to Lyon or Savoy.
Instead he issued a manifesto on November 13
blaming the foreigners in the King’s Council,
and he bombarded Saint-Gilles.
Protestants and some Catholics met at Nimes
to set up a state in southern France.
During the winter Johann Casimir was given money
by his father, the Elector-Palatine Friedrich III,
to hire mercenaries for Henri de Bourbon Condé.
Bellegarde’s siege of Livron from December 17
to January 24, 1575 resulted in desertions and mutinies.
Henri III moved from Avignon to northern France
in January 1575, and he was crowned
at Reims on February 13.
The next day he married Louise de Vaudémont,
a princess from Lorraine.
Meanwhile forces of a few thousand led by
captains were fighting at various places in France,
pillaging, raping, and demanding ransoms.
Captain Montbrun had even plundered Henri III’s
baggage train on its way to Avignon.
Later he was captured, tried, and executed
by the Parlement of Grenoble.
On September 15 Alençon escaped
from the court at Paris and fled to Dreux.
Condé provided 16,000 troops to invade France
as he formed an alliance with Johann Casimir.
Guillaume Thoré led 2,000 German reiters
into Champagne in early October.
On November 22 Catherine agreed to a truce with Alençon
at Champigny for seven months, and he was given
Angouleme, Niort, Saumur, Bourges, and La Charité.
The reiters were to be paid off with 500,000 livres
and were not to cross the Rhine.
However, Condé and Casimir with 20,000 men
crossed the Meuse at Neufchateau on January 9, 1576
to plunder Burgundy and move into the Loire valley.
Alençon in December had accused Birague
of trying to poison him and repudiated the truce.
On February 5 Henri of Navarre escaped from the court
and abjured Catholicism to return to his original Calvinism.
He, Alençon, Condé, and Damville sent a delegation
to Henri III with 93 articles demanding freedom of religion,
bipartisan courts in all parlements, secure towns,
and payment of the reiters.
On April 9 Alençon declared that they intended to win
by force the peace they could not attain by reason.
Henri III sent his mother Catherine to negotiate with them,
and she accepted most of their demands;
but they would not let Protestants
worship within two leagues of Paris.
The Peace of Monsieur was signed on May 2.
Parlement registered it a week later and published it
as the Edict of Beaulieu on May 14.
Protestants were promised religious freedom and two
secure places each in Languedoc, Guyenne, Dauphiny,
and Provence; tribunals were to have
equal numbers of Catholics and Protestants.
Henri promised to summon the Estates-General
within six months, and Alençon was given the duchies
of Anjou, Touraine, and Berry
with an annual pension of 100,000 écus.
Casimir wanted 1,700,000 livres, and Henri asked for loans
of 300,000 livres from Emmanuel-Philibert of Savoy,
two million livres from Charles III of Lorraine,
and one million florins from Cardinal de Guise.
Many Catholics believed that the French government
had sold out to the Huguenots, and the Catholic League
formed in Picardy and spread throughout France.
Catholics led by friars and Jesuits supported Henri de Guise.
During the French civil wars
many military memoirs were written.
In 1576 Jean Bodin (1530-96) published his
Six Books of the Republic, arguing that all power
comes from God and that kings are responsible to God.
Yet the state needs a senate or council to advise
the monarch and magistrates with jurisdiction
to mediate between the sovereign and his subjects.
He believed the king should have the power to prevent
religious zealots from disrupting the government by
forcing them to obey the law, but the source
of the royal power must not be religious.
Many Protestant pamphlets also appeared.
The most revolutionary treatise was the Discours politiques
des diverses puissances establies de Dieu au monde which
advocated that a tyrant must be resisted and killed.
The dialog has a woman contending that a king and his laws
should not be obeyed if they are unjust
and that no law is just which forces people to be impious.
Many pamphlets, treatises, and excerpts were collected
and published in three volumes by Pastor Simon Goulart
of Geneva in 1576 as
Mémoires de l’estat de France sous Charles IX.
His three main purposes were: first, to chronicle the
massacres of St. Bartholmew’s Day; second, to persuade
moderate Catholics as well as Protestants that they were being
oppressed by a conspiracy which included Pope Gregory XIII,
Felipe II, and the French monarchy; and third,
to challenge absolute monarchies which had become
tyrannical and replace them with governments
that protected the rights of the people.
The most popular treatise was
Le reveille-matin des François et de leurs voisins
(“Call to awakening for Frenchmen and their neighbors”)
which had been first published at Basel in early 1573.
Bernhard Jobin printed several editions of the
Reveille-matin in German.
In 1576 Innocent Gentillet wrote Anti-Machiavel,
arguing that Machiavelli’s immoral influence was ruining
the French monarchy, and he warned against Italians.
In September 1574, August 1578, in 1582, and again in 1585
Henri III made changes in his court that alienated many nobles.
From February 1576 to September 1579 he encouraged
philosophy and attended the meetings of the French Academy
with the poets Ronsard, Philippe Desportes, Amydus Jamyn,
Pontus de Tyard, and Jacques Davy du Perron;
intelligent and well educated women were also included.
Henri III summoned the Estates-General,
and on December 2, 1576 at Blois he ordered
armed leagues organized throughout his kingdom.
Catholics who refused to join would be considered enemies.
Four days later he promised to end abuses and to restore order,
and his chancellor appealed for funds so that they could keep
the peace and make the reforms work.
The third estate with 187 delegates elected the lawyer
Le Tourneur; 110 clergy selected Pierre d’Espinac,
Archbishop of Lyon; and 86 nobles
named the Baron de Sennecy.
The first two supported the Guises.
On December 19 the nobles decided to advocate religious
unity with laws against Protestant pastors and their supporters.
Three days later the clergy voted unanimously to suppress
Protestants; the third estate was divided but went along
with suppressing Protestant worship.
The Protestants were fighting in Provence and Guyenne,
and Henri III persuaded the Estates to send diplomats to
Condé, Navarre, and Damville, inviting them to Blois.
They each declined, and the Duke of Montpensier,
after hearing Damville, returned
and pleaded for peace with religious toleration.
The Estates refused to fund the King’s program,
though the clergy offered him 450,000 livres.
Facing another civil war, the King’s Council reconsidered
religious unity on March 2, 1577, and Catherine
persuaded her son Henri they needed peace.
He hoped to keep the war brief and wrote Marshall Damville
on March 6, offering him the marquisate of Saluzzo.
Catherine convinced his wife Antoinette de La Marck,
and Damville left the Huguenots to support the King.
Henri III could only pay his troops for a month;
but his brother François of Alençon, now Duke of Anjou,
besieged La Charité on April 25,
and it surrendered a week later and was sacked.
Anjou also punished Issoire in Auvergne
after it capitulated on June 12.
The royal army was reduced to less than 2,000 men.
Navarre and Condé captured Brouage for
the Huguenots and got aid from England.
On August 6 Henri III told Montpensier to make peace.
The Peace of Bergerac signed on September 14 was
confirmed three days later by the Edict of Poitiers.
Protestant worship was restricted; half the bipartisan
courts were abolished, and the others reduced
the Huguenot magistrates to a third.
They were to keep their eight secure towns
but only for six years.
All leagues and confraternities that
divided the religious were banned.
By 1578 Paris had about 1,800 tennis courts to play
jeu de paume which began by using the palm of one’s hand,
then later gloves before they devised rackets.
In 1578 peasants called Razats in Provence who were
Catholics and Protestants revolted against the Catholic Count
of Carces and his soldiers, and in April 1579 peasants,
angry at nobles who were exempt from taxes,
massacred 600 of his noble clients.
Peasants in Callas sacked their seigneur’s chateau,
and the uprising spread.
In February the lawyer Jean La Rouviere had written
a petition to the King on behalf of the poor people of Vivarais.
During carnival on February 16, 1580 Antoine Guérin was
elected “king” and drove the armed peasants out of Romans.
The peasant bands led by Jean Serve, who was called Paumier,
retreated to Moirans where more than a thousand people
were massacred by royal forces on March 26.
Guérin then arrested and executed the
remaining rebels in Romans, ending the uprising.
Henri III forbade his subjects to support the Dutch revolt,
but Alençon de Anjou escaped from the court
on February 14, 1578 and raised troops at Angers.
On April 27 three mignons loyal to Henri III fought duels
against Guise’s followers, and two on each side were killed.
The Duke of Anjou arrived at Mons on July 12 to help
Willem of Orange; but the Dutch mistrusted the French,
and Anjou’s unpaid troops began deserting
and pillaging on their way home.
Catherine signed a treaty with Henri de Navarre
and Damville at Nérac on February 28, 1579.
Condé seized La Fere on the border in November,
and fighting erupted in the south.
Navarre led an assault on Cahors in May 1580.
Anjou opposed the civil war so that he could help the Dutch,
and in November he negotiated the Peace of Fleix
which gave the Huguenots secure towns for another
six years except they had to give back Cahors.
Anjou seized Cambrai in August 1581, and he formed
an alliance with England’s Elizabeth in October,
though she declined to marry him.
His attempt to take Antwerp failed in January 1583,
and he returned to France in October.
Henri III had founded the Order of the Holy Spirit in 1578.
In 1583 he established the confraternity of White Penitents
at an Augustinian house and in December
inaugurated retreats of Hieronymites at Vincennes.
He also promoted charitable institutions such as hospitals,
pharmacies, schools, and orphanages, and the Congrégation
de l’Oratoire de Notre Dame de Vie Saine began in 1584.
Orators included the humanist Jacques Amyot,
the poet Desportes, the King’s Jesuit confessor
Edmond Auger who translated The Imitation of Christ
into French, and the controversial Bishop Guillaume Rose
who later preached so aggressively against
the King for the Catholic League.
At the funeral of Ronsard on February 24, 1586
Jacques Davy du Perron gave an impressive
oration that influenced generations.
This era ended later that year when Henri fled from Paris,
and a mob sacked the royal oratory.
Henri III’s brother François, Duke of Anjou and Alençon,
suffered from tuberculosis and died on June 10, 1584,
leaving the Huguenot Henri de Navarre
as crown prince according to Salic law.
The King invited him to court to abjure his faith,
but Navarre declined.
Duke Henri de Guise and his brothers tried to exclude
him from the succession in September
by founding an association at Nancy.
Pope Gregory XIII declined to oppose
Henry III, but Spain’s Felipe II sent his agents to sign
the treaty of Joinville with the Guise party on December 31.
They promised to defend the Catholic faith and eliminate
the Protestant faith from France and the Netherlands,
and they recognized Navarre’s uncle,
the Cardinal de Bourbon, as heir to the throne.
Felipe promised to fund the revolt
of the League with 600,000 écus.
The Duke of Guise took over Chalon while
Charles de Lorraine, the Duke of Mayenne,
seized Dijon, Macon, and Auxonne.
They governed Champagne and Burgundy
where they began recruiting.
Other Guises organized in Brittany, Normandy, and Picardy.
On March 31, 1585 Guise published a manifesto at Péronne
explaining why the Cardinal de Bourbon and others were
opposing those who would undermine
the Catholic faith and the kingdom.
They advocated abolishing taxes and subsidies begun since
Charles IX and proposed triennial meetings
of the Estates-General.
Henri III hired Swiss mercenaries to help defend Paris
and sent his mother Catherine to negotiate with the
Catholic League at Epernay on April 9.
They signed the treaty of Nemours on July 7 which humiliated
Henri III by paying troops raised to fight against him.
They also ceded surety towns to Henri de Guise
who was made commander of the royal armies.
Catherine betrayed her previous policy of national unity
with religious freedom, and an edict based on the treaty
banned Protestant worship in France and banished all pastors.
Protestants were banned from public offices,
and the Salic law was set aside in order to
prevent Navarre from becoming king.
On July 18 Henri reluctantly held
a lit de justice to register the edict.
Navarre was appalled and met with Condé and Damville
near Lavaur, and on August 10 they renewed the alliance
of the Protestants with the “united Catholics.”
Their manifesto accused the house of Lorraine of trying
to supplant the royal house of France.
They promised to respect Catholics because
they “always believed that consciences should be free.”
Navarre had agents in England and Germany
but could only offer land for aid.
The reforms in the Ordinance of Blois in 1579
had not been effective, and by 1586
the price of bread had doubled since 1578.
The Parisian League was organized in late 1584
by Charles Hotman de La Rocheblond and three clerics.
On August 11, 1585 Henri III asked the city of Paris for
200,000 écus for the war the Catholics expected him to fight,
and he said he would no longer pay their judges.
On September 9 Pope Sixtus V issued a bull to deprive
Henri de Navarre and the Prince of Condé of their rights;
but Henri III refused to publish it because it violated Salic law.
On October 1 Damville’s manifesto declared that their policy
was to keep the peace and uphold the laws.
The Huguenots were strong in Guyenne and Languedoc,
and Constable Lesdiguieres regained towns in Dauphiné.
Condé stopped an invasion of Poitou by Mercoeur
and then besieged Brouage; but he was defeated
by Henri de Joyeuse and fled to Guernsey.
On October 7 Henri III issued an edict that named Huguenots
traitors whose property could by confiscated by the King,
giving them six months to abjure or leave France.
Condé’s followers were already condemned.
Navarre reacted on November 30 with an order
to confiscate the goods of nobles and clergy
who joined “enemies of the state.”
In a letter he warned Catherine
that Henri III might be deposed.
Navarre also wrote to the three estates on January 1, 1586
reminding the clergy to keep the peace, the nobles to protect
the nation’s honor, and the third estate to be compassionate.
League co-founder Louis Dorléans replied with his
Avertissment des catholiques anglais
aux François catholiques in which an English Catholic
warns the French they might suffer
what Elizabeth did to Catholics in England.
The clergy met in October 1586, and Henri III
argued that four armies fighting the Huguenots
needed two million livres per month.
The clerics promised to sell church lands
to raise 50,000 écus per year.
Henri III sent the Bishop of Paris to Rome to get
the Pope’s approval for selling church property.
Sixtus V promised 100,000 écus in two installments,
but this made the clergy angry.
In December 1586 about twenty Norman villages
refused to pay taxes.
The King gave Henri de Guise command of the
royal army in March while Marshal d’Aumont
led an army to Auvergne and Languedoc.
On June 16 Henri III asked Parlement to register 27 edicts.
Queen Elizabeth sent 100,000 crowns to support Navarre;
but the money was sent to Johann Casmir who also
received a subsidy from King Frederik II of Denmark.
He used it to raise an army of 8,000 reiters
to help the Huguenots.
Towns in France suffered a major plague in 1586 and 1587.
In February 1587 Henri III learned of a plot to abduct him,
and he enclosed himself in the Louvre.
The Sixteen leaders of the League offered Henry
a paid army of 24,000 men under his commanders
to defend against German reiters.
The Guises were controlling more of France than Henry III,
and they refused his suggestion that
they make concessions to the Huguenots.
In the “War of the Three Henris” France’s King Henri III
left Paris on September 12, 1587 to lead his army to the Loire
to prevent the relief army of Protestant foreigners from uniting
with the Huguenot forces led by Henri of Navarre.
The relief army with about 20,000 Swiss,
10,000 German reiters, and 2,500 French under
Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, the Duke of Bouillon,
invaded France and marched south
toward the farms of Beauce and Poitou.
Henri III sent Admiral Anne de Joyeuse with a force that
confronted Navarre on October 18 at the Dronne River.
In the battle of Coutras two days later the more experienced
Protestants lost only about 500 men compared to some
2,500 Catholic casualties, and Joyeuse was killed by a pistol.
The reiters moved on their own and were defeated by
a force led by Duke Henri of Guise at Vimory on October 26
and at Aumeau on November 24.
Henri III persuaded the Swiss to go home in exchange
for four-months’ pay and supplies
and equipment valued at 50,000 écus.
On December 8 the Germans also promised Henri III
they would leave for cash and the protection of an escort.
King Henri III returned to Paris on December 23;
but he angered many Catholic Leaguers when he gave
Joyeuse’s offices to his favorite Nogaret de La Valette,
the Duke of Epernon, who became wealthy so quickly
that they accused him of robbing the kingdom.
Several attempts were made to assassinate
Epernon in the spring of 1588.
In August so many poor people in the countryside
were starving that gangs cut and ate
half-ripened grain in the fields.
The previous summer there had been
an uprising against bakers.
Also in the spring of 1588 the King’s attempt to regulate
guilds provoked a revolt in Troyes
where they pillaged the houses of Italian merchants.
At night on May 11 Henri III posted troops in the capital.
Parisians resented this infringement
on their right to self-defense.
Crowds erected barricades in the streets,
and mobs attacked the royal soldiers.
Henri III secretly left Paris on May 13 and went to Chartres.
The next day Parisians asserted their independence
by liberating the Bastille, and Henri of Guise
appointed Bussy-Leclerc governor.
Elections were held by voice votes that favored the League.
The Sixteen’s leader La Chapelle-Marreau was elected
prévot des marchands and swore his loyalty to Guise
and Cardinal de Bourbon as heir to the throne.
The League also elected four merchants as échevins.
Henri III conceded the League’s demands in the
Edict of Union by dismissing Epernon, recognizing
Cardinal de Bourbon as heir, making Guises governors,
and appointing Henri de Guise lieutenant-general of France.
Yet Paris prepared to defend itself
against royal attack by purging the militia.
On August 12 the Chambre des Comptes demanded
the King appoint new ministers
and eliminate financial corruption.
On September 8 Henri III dismissed his ministers
and replaced them with younger men
who were not bound to Catherine.
Then on December 19 he established a financial tribunal
(chamber de justice) of 24 members chosen
from one hundred elected by the Estates.
On December 23 Henri III’s 45 bodyguards murdered
Duke Henri de Guise in the King’s chamber
at the chateau of Blois.
The next day the Duke’s brother Cardinal de Guise was
also killed while several members of their family
and many from the Catholic League were imprisoned.
The Guise’s younger brother, Duke Charles of Mayenne,
became the leader of the League’s aristocrats,
and the Paris assembly appointed as governor
their cousin, the Duke d’Aumale.
In the early 1540s George Buchanan wrote the plays
Jephthah or the Vow (expanding on the Biblical story in
Judges 11:30-40) and John the Baptist.
On November 17, 1548 the Parlement of Paris
banned the performance of all religious mystery plays.
Catholics did not want to encourage people to read the Bible,
and Protestants ignored the Catholic saints.
The Calvinist Theodore Beza published
the play Abraham’s Sacrifice in 1550.
Etienne Jodelle satirized superior priests in Eugene in 1552,
and his tragedy Cleopatra Captured depicting
the last day of her life was performed in 1553.
Jacques Grévin wrote a tragedy about Julius Caesar
and the comedy Les Esbahis in 1560.
Henri III patronized Jean de La Taille
who published his play Saul’s Madness in 1572.
The next year he translated a play
by Ariosto as The Necromancer.
La Taille also wrote L’art de la tragédie to explain
how a play can influence the audience’s emotions.
For comedy Antoine de Baif translated
Miles Gloriosus by Plautus as Le Brave in 1567
and adapted Terence’s Eunuchus in 1573.
Italian comedies were also popular in the second half
of the century, and many were adapted by Pierre Larivey.
Robert Garnier wrote a tragicomedy
called Bradamante in 1582 and Les Juifives in 1583.
Joachim du Bellay (1522-60) was a notable member
of La Pleiade brigade along with
Pierre de Ronsard and Jean-Antoine de Baif.
He went to Paris with Ronsard in 1547, and with his help
in 1549 Du Bellay published Defense and Illustration
of the French Language, arguing that French
could be as good as Greek and Latin for poetry.
Ronsard and Baif were influenced by Greek classics
while Du Bellay was a Latinist.
In his Olive he wrote love sonnets in the style of Petrarch.
He worked in Rome as a secretary to his cousin,
Cardinal Jean du Bellay.
His 47 sonnets in Antiquités de Rome were translated
into English and published by Edmund Spenser in 1591.
Du Bellay returned to Paris in 1557 and published his
Divers Jeux Rustiques (Various Rustic Games)
and 191 sonnets in Regrets.
Pierre de Ronsard was born
on September 11, 1524 in Vendomois.
His father Louis de Ronsard
served François I as maître d’hotel.
After the King was captured and exchanged following
defeat at Pavia, Louis spent four years with the princes
as hostages at the imperial court in Madrid.
At age 9 Pierre attended the College de Navarre in Paris,
and at 12 he joined his father at the French court in Avignon.
When Princess Madeleine of France married James V
of Scotland, Pierre Ronsard went with her as a page
to Edinburgh in May 1537.
She died on July 7, but he returned a year later.
He joined the household of Charles d’Orléans
and traveled to Flanders and Holland.
He accompanied Antoine de Baif at the Diet of Speyer.
Ronsard’s father died in 1544, and Pierre returned to Paris
to study in the home of Lazare de Baif where he and Antoine
were tutored by Jean Dorat, a student of Guillaume Budé.
Ronsard wrote love poetry to various women
and published his Odes in 1550.
In 1555 he dedicated his Hymns to Marguerite de Valois.
Queen Mary Stuart urged him to publish
his Complete Works in 1560.
Ronsard wrote a patriotic exhortation to the royal troops
in 1559, and the next year he published his
Exhortation for Peace in which
he criticized the use of fire-arms.
He warned kings that after death
they will be no greater than a peasant.
In 1562 Ronsard published his
Discours des Miseres de ce temps
and his Continuation of the same.
In the latter he began by addressing
Queen Catherine de’ Medici
that he must recount to future generations
the suffering and extreme misfortune in France.
He described how the arrogant challenge their master
to a battle, not realizing that God wants to save every person.
With swords and fire like mad-men they burn houses,
plunder, pillage, kill, and dominate by force,
no longer obeying kings.
He asks if this is reforming churches.
Jesus never acted like this and has shown the way.
“Armed with patience, we must follow his path,
not raise an army and enrich ourselves with spoils.”1
Ronsard in his Discours a G. Des-Autels argued that
kings do not need to protect their realms with arms
but rather with books and laws that can pacify hearts
and soothe mutinous mobs.
In the future they must defend their homes
with vigorous reasoning and valiant hearts.
They must correct a hundred thousand abuses
of the Church committed by avaricious priests.
In 1563 Ronsard wrote his
Remonstrance to the People of France.
The poet is embarrassed and ashamed of Christians
with their cruel wars and admits that if he did not have
unshakeable faith in God, he would become a pagan
like the first men; but he is not willing to exchange
the holy Gospel of Jesus Christ.
He wrote,
Opinion of itself makes men take up weapons,
and sets brother against brother in battle;
it causes the downfall of religion,
it overthrows large towns,
the crowns of Kings and civic government;
and after the people are subjugated to it,
then vice and horror triumph over virtue.2
In 1565 his Elégies came out along with his influential
Abrégé de l’art poétique français.
Charles IX asked Ronsard to write a national epic;
but he wrote only four books of the Franciade by 1572,
and it is not considered one of his major works.
The last line of the unfinished epic poem is:
“Virtue is this world’s only certain value!”3
Ronsard died on December 28, 1585,
and the 7th collected edition of his works was published
in 1587 with a biography of him by Claude Binet.
Michel de Montaigne was born on February 28, 1533.
His father Pierre Eyquem fought for François I in Italy
and was made lord and squire of Montaigne.
His mother was from a family of Spanish Jews,
though she was baptized a Catholic.
His father gave Michel a German tutor
who spoke only Latin to him for his first six years.
Then Michel attended the College of Guienne
for seven years before studying law in 1546.
His father purchased an office in the Cour des Aides
of Périgueux to handle tax cases and the sale of new offices.
Pierre was then elected mayor of Bordeaux
and gave his counselor position to his son Michel.
This new court was unpopular, and in 1557 King Henri II
incorporated its officers into the Parlement of Bordeaux.
Michel spent his next thirteen years
as a counselor in the Chambre des Enquetes.
While serving in the municipal court,
Etienne de La Boétie became his best friend.
La Boétie was an idealist and wrote his
Discours sur la servitude volontaire
to oppose tyranny by monarchs.
Before he died of a plague at Bordeaux in 1563,
he gave his unpublished manuscript to Montaigne
who did not publish it until 1576
after a pirated edition had appeared.
After not getting a position in the Grand’ Chambr
in 1569, Michel resigned a year later.
In 1568 his father died, and Michel inherited the Montaigne
estate and had promised that he would translate the Latin
Book of Creatures, or Natural Theology
by the 15th-century Spaniard Raymond Sebond.
The purpose of this book was to demonstrate the existence
and nature of God, and it was put on the Index of
Prohibited Books by 1558,
though it was removed in 1564 except for its preface.
Montaigne’s translation is considered accurate except
that the preface moderated the author’s claims.
Years later Montaigne wrote his
“Apology for Raymond Sebond”
as the only book-length chapter in his Essays.
In 1570 Montaigne began writing what he called in French
“Essais,” for a word meaning “attempts” to describe
his short pieces of writing that are less thematic
and logically organized than discourses.
In 1571 he was made a gentleman-in-ordinary to Henri III, and
after his death he served Henri de Navarre in the same way.
After the Massacre on Saint Bartholmew’s Day in 1572
Montaigne mediated between
Henri de Guise and Henri of Navarre.
By 1578 Michel was suffering from kidney stones,
the disease that had killed his father.
After publishing his first two books of Essays in 1580,
he traveled to Lorraine, Switzerland, Bavaria,
and Italy to use mineral baths.
He kept a Travel Journal partly in Italian
which was not published until 1774.
While he was in Rome, the papal censors condemned him
for his defense of the pagan Emperor Julian the Apostate
and for his objecting to cruel punishments.
Montaigne made minor changes in his Essays
but restored them after 1588.
At Lucca on September 7, 1581 he learned that
he had been elected mayor of Bordeaux.
He returned in November and served two terms until July 1585.
On October 23, 1587 Henri de Navarre visited Montaigne
after his victory at Coutras; many were surprised
when he did not counter-attack after a rebellion.
Montaigne went to Paris in 1588 to publish the
first edition of his Essays with three books.
He also represented Henri de Navarre in negotiations
with Henri III and was detained in the Bastille on July 10
but was released that evening
because of Catherine de’ Medici’s intercession.
He stayed at court and attended
the Estates-General at Blois in October.
In 1587 the 20-year-old Marie de Gournay had become
devoted to Montaigne, and he later adopted her as his daughter.
He wrote two letters to Henri de Navarre in 1590
offering to serve him, but his ill health prevented that.
He died on September 13, 1592, and Marie edited his
additions and corrections into the first
complete edition of his Essays in 1595.
Montaigne began his Essays with a note to the reader
explaining that his purpose was to portray himself for the
convenience of his relatives and friends.
His first essay begins,
The commonest way of softening the hearts
of those we have offended,
when, vengeance in hand,
they hold us at their mercy,
is by submission to move them
to commiseration and pity.
However, audacity and steadfastness—
entirely contrary means—
have sometimes served
to produce the same effect.4
Then he gave several examples from European history.
He admitted that he is inclined toward “mercy and gentleness.”
In his essay “Our feelings reach out beyond us”
he cited Plato’s precept, “Do thy job and know thyself”
because “He who would do his job would see that his
first lesson is to know what he is and what is proper for him.”5
Montaigne wrote about liars, prognostications, how the taste
of good and evil depends on our opinions,
whether philosophy helps one learn to die,
and the power of the imagination.
He acknowledged being much influenced by imagination
and explained that his art is to escape it, not resist it.
He discussed habit and how social customs
are difficult to change even with laws.
He mocked pedants and considers actions
more important than words, calling knowledge a good drug.
He had much to say on the education of children
and as usual drew from Plutarch.
The most valuable art is living well.
Because of his experience with La Boétie,
Montaigne placed much value on friendship.
As a Stoic and an Epicurean
he knew the importance of moderation.
He warned against judging divine ordinances because
unknown things are not subject to ordinary reasoning.
What is least known is often most firmly believed.
Perceiving the divine and bringing it down to earth is difficult.
In his later years Montaigne enjoyed leisure and solitude,
and he wrote,
“The greatest thing in the world is to know
how to belong to oneself.”6
Socrates advised learning while young,
doing good when grown,
and withdrawing from civil and military occupations when old.
Montaigne warned against “communicating one’s glory”
which is difficult even for philosophers.
He was wary of trying to rule others
“since in ruling ourselves so many difficulties occur.”
He found it easier to follow.
One’s character shapes one’s fortune.
He discussed sumptuary laws and recommended
contempt for gold and silk as useless things
rather than honoring them.
Judgment is often uncertain.
He observed the vanity of words.
In discussing prayer he noted Plato’s comment that
neither gods nor men accept a present from a wicked person.
Book 2 of Montaigne’s Essays begins with
“Of the inconsistency of our actions”
and then discusses drunkenness.
He wrote, “The worst condition of man is when
he loses knowledge and control of himself.”7
At least a generation before Descartes,
Montaigne believed that “to philosophize is to doubt.”
In “Of Conscience” he quoted Ovid that our inmost conscience
may be clear or troubled, causing us to feel hope or fear.
“Of practice” notes how we must go beyond reasoning and
education into action by practicing what we believe.
Practicing is what makes skilled artists, musicians, athletes,
scientists, writers, business people or anything else.
Montaigne also wrote about the affection of fathers.
In “Of books” he noted how he loved
to read Cicero’s Letters to Atticus.
Montaigne read the classics and had nearly a thousand books
in his library, giving us relevant history
and ancient insights in his topical essays.
He tried to explain human cruelty.
Montaigne’s famous motto is “Que sçay-je?”
(What do I know?).
As he aged, he tended to become more skeptical.
He spent few pages of his 140-page
“Apology for Raymond Sebond”
defending the thesis that
we can learn about God by studying nature.
He dismissed atheism because it is arrogant,
and he even questioned agnosticism by asking
how one knows that one will never know.
Montaigne was writing amid the terrible civil wars in France
between the Catholics and the Huguenots
and had this to say about the folly of war:
As for war,
which is the greatest and most pompous
of human actions,
I should be glad to know whether we want to
use it as an argument for some preeminence,
or, on the contrary,
as testimony of our imbecility and imperfection;
as indeed the science of undoing
and killing one another,
of ruining and destroying our own species,
seems to have little to make it alluring
to the beasts who do not have it.8
Next he took up the topic of death and observed that
many fear dying more than death itself.
Another quote that Montaigne had inscribed on the ceiling
of his library was from Pliny the Elder who wrote,
“There is nothing certain but uncertainty,
and nothing more miserable and arrogant than man.”9
Then he described how our desires
are increased by difficulties.
He noted that both want and abundance can pain us
because one is not having enough,
and the other is having too much.
He believed that glory and honor belong to God alone,
and in “Of presumption” he described the vainglory
which comes from having too high
an opinion of our own worth.
He regretted losing his memory skills and wondered
whether living too long would cause him to forget
his own name, as has happened to others.
He came to believe that our morals are extremely corrupt
and incline toward the worse while many of our laws
and customs are barbarous and monstrous.
Improving the human condition seems so difficult that
he wondered if preventing destruction may require putting
“a spoke in the wheel” of progress to stop it.
Montaigne wrote that it is easy to criticize the government,
but trying to create a better state from the one ruined
usually achieves nothing.
He wrote another essay on lies and quoted the ancient poet
Pindar’s view that banishing truth
is the first stage in the corruption of morals.
Montaigne considered dissimulation one
of the most notable qualities of his century.
He began “Of freedom of conscience” by observing that
“good intentions, if they are carried out without moderation,
push men to very vicious acts.”10
In this essay he showed how the intelligent Julian
was one of the better Roman emperors.
Montaigne discussed whether an evil means
can lead to a good end.
He diagnosed cowardice as the mother of cruelty.
In “Of anger” he wrote,
“There is no passion that so shakes the clarity
of our judgment as anger.”11
He advised never laying a hand on one’s servant
as long as one’s anger lasts.
Diogenes observed that hiding anger only incorporates
it by drawing it inside, and Seneca wrote,
“All vices are less weighty in the open,
and most pernicious when they hide
under an appearance of soundness.”12
Montaigne defended Seneca and Plutarch,
two of his favorite authors.
In discussing good women Montaigne noted that a
good marriage depends on “how long the association lasts
and whether it has been constantly
pleasant, loyal, and agreeable.”13
The three men he most admired are
Homer, Alexander the Great, and Epaminondas.
He found health most precious because
life without it becomes painful and oppressive.
At the beginning of Book 3 Montaigne noted that
nothing is useless in nature.
He wrote, “The way of truth is one and simple;
that of private profit and the advantage of one’s
personal business is double, uneven, and random.”14
Justice is natural and universal, and it is regulated more nobly
than the “special, national justice,
constrained to the need of our governments.”
Seneca during the Roman Empire observed,
“There are crimes committed as a result of decrees
of the senate and of popular votes.”15
In “Of Repentance” Montaigne wrote,
“God must touch our hearts.
Our conscience must reform by itself through the
strengthening of reasoning,
not through the weakening of our appetites.”16
Montaigne’s views on sex and bodily pleasure
are found in his long essay entitled “On some verses of Virgil.”
He wrote,
There is nothing in us during this earthly imprisonment
that is purely either corporeal or spiritual,
and that we do wrong to tear apart a living man,
and that it seems somewhat reasonable
that we should behave as favorably at least
toward the use of pleasure as we do toward pain.17
He concluded,
I say that males and females are cast in the same mold;
except for education and custom, the difference is not great.
Plato invites both without discrimination to the fellowship of all
studies, exercises, functions, warlike and peaceful occupations,
in his commonwealth.18
Montaigne began “Of the art of discussion” with the following:
It is a practice of our justice
to condemn some as a warning to others.
To condemn them because they have done wrong
would be stupidity, as Plato says;
for what is done cannot be undone.
But they are condemned
so that they may not do the same wrong again,
or so that others may avoid
the example of their wrongdoing.19
Cicero found that there can be no discussion
without contradiction.
Socrates welcomed contradiction to his arguments
since he knew the advantage would fall on his side.
In “Of vanity” Montaigne agreed with Cicero that wealth
should not be calculated by your income
but rather by your manner of living and your culture.
In “Of husbanding your will” he quoted Seneca’s idea
that nature supplies what it demands.
Montaigne’s last essay “Of experience” is also long and begins,
“There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.
We try all the ways that can lead us to it.
When reason fails us, we use experience.”20
Montaigne complained about how many laws
France had in his time, and he agreed with Tacitus who wrote
that they formerly suffered from crimes
but now they suffer from laws.
Montaigne liked the old Spanish saying,
“God defend me from myself.”
He agreed with Cicero that young men lose their lives
by violence, but old men do so by ripeness.
Finally Montaigne comes back once again
to the value of self-knowledge.
It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine
to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
We seek other conditions
because we do not understand the use of our own,
and go outside of ourselves
because we do not know what it is like inside.21
The Catholic Church placed Montaigne’s Essays
on the Index in 1676.
In the opinion of many, including this author,
he is one of our greatest writers.
1. Continuation du Discours des Miseres de ce temps 59-60 by Pierre Ronsard
in Selected Poems tr. Malcolm Quainton and Elizabeth Vinestock, p. 226.
2. Remonstrance au peuple de France by Pierre Ronsard in Selected Poems, p. 252.
3. The Franciad (1572) by Pierre de Ronsard tr. Phillip John Usher, p. 236.
4. The Complete Essays of Montaigne tr. Donald M. Frame, 1:1, p. 3.
5. Ibid., 1:3, p. 8-9.
6. Ibid., 1:39, p. 178.
7. Ibid., 2:2, p. 245.
8. Ibid., 2:12, p. 347-348.
9. Ibid., 2:15, p. 463.
10. Ibid., 2:19, p. 506.
11. Ibid., 2:31, p. 540.
12. Ibid., p. 543.
13. Ibid., 2:35, p. 563.
14. Ibid., 3:1, p. 603.
15. Ibid., p. 604.
16. Ibid., 3:2, p. 620.
17. Ibid., 3:5, p. 681.
18. Ibid., p. 685.
19. Ibid., 3:8, p. 703.
20. Ibid., 3:13, p. 815.
21. Ibid., p. 857.