In this break in the line of succession, England saw an opportunity. The mother of Edward III., King of England, was Isabella, daughter of Philip IV. Edward claimed that he, as grandson of the French king, had a claim superior to that of the nephew. A strict interpretation of the Salic Law certainly vitiated his claim of heirship through the female line. But Edward did not stand upon such a trifle as that. The stake was great, and so was the opportunity. Now England might not alone recover her lost possessions in France, but might establish a legitimate claim to the whole.
So it was that an English army was once more upon French soil, and in 1346 Edward, with his toy cannon, had won the battle of Crécy, followed by the siege and capture of Calais, which for two hundred years was to remain an English port—a thorn in the side of France.
A part of the old kingdom of Burgundy, which was called Dauphiny, dropped into the lap of Philip, this first Valois king, during his reign. The old duke, being without an heir, offered to sell this bit of territory to the King of France upon the condition that it should be kept as the personal possession of the eldest sons of the kings of France. Thenceforth the title ofDauphinwas worn by the heir to the throne, until it became extinct with the son of Louis XVI. And when the feeble Philip VI. died in 1350, his son John, the first dauphin, assumed the crown of France.
John, this second Valois king, was an anachronism. A man intended for the eleventh century had been set down in the fourteenth. The restoration of knightly ceremonial, tournaments at the Louvre, the details of a new Crusade which he was planning, and the distribution of new titles, these were the things occupying the mind of the king, while his kingdom, rent by factions within, was in a death-struggle with foes from without.
A fantastic Don Quixote, on a tottering throne, was fighting the most practical statesman and the strongest-armed warrior Europe held at the time.
With this weakness at the centre, France was again falling into fragments. There was even a resumption of private wars between nobles; and, most paralyzing of all, an empty treasury. Such time as he could spare from his main projects John gave to the affairs of the kingdom. First of all, taxes must be levied; and when the first tax was upon salt, King Edward condescended to make an historic witticism, saying "he had at last discovered who was the author of theSalic Law!"
In the various plans for raising money, it was important that the taxes should be levied so that the burden would fall upon those who could, and who would, pay. This meant the dwellers in the towns and cities; the bourgeoisie. They were the capitalists. But what if they should refuse? In order to secure the success of the measure, it was considered wise to obtain their consent in advance.
When King John asked permission of the States-General to tax them, a critical line was passed. That body for the first time realized its power. It might make its own terms. It demanded that the moneys collected, and their expenditure, should be under the direction of its officers. Then, growing bolder, it demanded reforms: Private wars must cease; the meetings of the States-General must be at appointed intervals, without being summoned by the king.
These meetings at Paris grew stormy. Gradually re-enforced with a vicious element, they were soon led by demagogues, became violent and revolutionary, and finally red caps and barricades, characteristic of Parisian mobs of a later period, brought the whole movement into the hands of the agents of "Charles the Bad," evil genius of his time, who saw his opportunity to use it in his own ambitious designs upon the throne. But France was to hear from theTiers Étatagain!
In 1356, Edward's son, the Black Prince, won a still greater victory than Crécy, atPoitiers, in which king John was captured and carried to London.
But Edward found that, while victories were comparatively easy, conquest was difficult. A generation had passed since the war began. So in 1360 both kingdoms were ready to consider terms of peace. By the treaty of Bretigny, Edward renounced the claim to the French throne, and received in full sovereignty the great inheritance Queen Eleanor had brought to Henry II. King John was to be released and his son held as hostage until the enormous ransom was paid. Of course the money could not be paid by impoverished France, for such a doubtful benefit, at least; and so the son and hostage made his escape. Then King John, faithful to his chivalrous creed, returned to London and captivity, dying in 1364.
The dauphin, who had now become Charles V., came to the throne with the determination of restoring France to herself. His attention had been drawn to the military talents of a Breton youth—Bertrand du Guesclin. Poor, diminutive in stature, deformed, he had raised himself to military positions usually reserved as a reward for sons of nobles. In the reopening of a war with England, which Charles was planning, du Guesclin was to be the sword and he the brain.
The Black Prince had gone to Spain to fight the battles of Peter the Cruel, in a civil war in which the Prince was involved by inheritance, and was levying taxes for this Castilian war upon his new subjects in Aquitaine. The people in this province turned to Charles to deliver them from this oppression. He immediately summoned Prince Edward before the Court of Peers; to which the Black Prince replied that he would accept the invitation, but would come with his helmet on his head and sixty thousand men in his party.
So successfully did Charles and du Guesclin meet this renewal of the war that Prince Edward and his sixty thousand men were gradually driven north until the English possessions were reduced to a few towns upon the coast. The Black Prince, under the weight of responsibility and defeat, succumbed to disease, and died, 1377. The death of Edward III. occurred soon after that of his son, and Richard II. was King of England.
The expulsion of the English was not the only benefit bestowed by Charles V. The revolting States-General were restrained and were firmly held in the king's hand. Still more important was the reorganization of the military system, by placing it under the command of officers appointed by the Crown, who might or might not belong to the order of nobility. No more effective blow could have been aimed at feudalism, which was nothing if not militant. Indeed, every act of this brief reign was a protest against the purposes and ideals of his father, King John, who was the embodiment of the ancient spirit. It was a needed breathing-spell between a half-century of disaster behind and another half-century of still greater disaster before.
The death of Charles V. (1380) left the throne to a delicate boy of twelve years, who was to reign under the successive regencies of three uncles. These brothers of Charles, and sons of the romantic King John, seem to represent all the traits and passions which can degrade humanity. The oldest, the Duke of Anjou, was driven from the regency after stealing everything which was movable in the king's palace and vaults. The Duke of Burgundy, who succeeded him, had nobler objects, and needed a larger field for his ambitious soul. He had an eye on the throne itself. And when he and the Duke Berri, at the instigation of the archbishop, were compelled to resign the reins to the young King Charles VI., they carried with them to their own castles all that Anjou had left. Of course the archbishop was mysteriously murdered, and then the boy king was married to Isabella of Bavaria, said to be the most beautiful and the wickedest woman in Europe.
Charles had always been a frail, delicate boy. As he was riding one evening, a strange, wild-looking being sprang out of the darkness and seized the bridle of his horse, crying, "Fly, fly! you are betrayed." The astonished youth after the shock, became melancholy; then was suddenly seized with a fit of frenzy, in which he killed four of his pages. A mad king was on the throne of France, the worst woman in Europe regent, and three uncles waiting like vultures around a dying man, ready to seize anything from a golden candlestick to a throne!
In the chaos of misrule and villainy into which France was falling, the determining factor was the deadly feud which existed between the house of Burgundy and that of Orleans. Upon the death of the first Duke of Burgundy, his son John seized the regency for himself, snatching it from the Duke of Orleans, the king's brother. At this point started the feud which was to tear France asunder from end to end. While the Orleanists were gathering their adherents to drive him out, John was intrenching himself in Paris. Like many another villain, this Duke of Burgundy posed as the friend of the people. He could doff his cap and speak smilingly to starving men. He knew how to work upon their passions, and to please by torturing and executing those they believed had wronged them. He told them how he pitied them for the extortions of the Duke of Orleans and Queen Isabella, kindly giving them pikes to defend themselves, and iron chains to barricade their streets, if they should be needed. Then, extending his hand to his enemy of Orleans, brother of the king, they were reconciled: the past was to be buried.
Then it is a pleasant picture we behold of the period: the two friends partaking together of communion, and dining, and then embracing at parting with effusive words and promises to meet at a dance on the morrow, the unsuspecting Duke of Orleans going out into the dark, where hired assassins were waiting to hack him in pieces. Then a court of justice trying and acquitting this confessed murderer of the king's brother, upon the ground that tyrannicide is a duty; the sad, crazed wraith of a king saying the words he had been taught: "Fair cousin, we pardon you all." And the tragedy and comedy were over!
There was now no check upon the Burgundian power. In the worst days of English occupation of her land, France had been in less danger from Edward III. than she now was from the Duke of Burgundy, champion and defender of the people! The immediate object of the Burgundian or people's party, and the Orleans and aristocratic party, was the possession of the person of the king, and control of his acts during his few lucid moments.
There was civil war in a land divested of every vestige of government. England would have been blind had she not seen her opportunity; but, too much occupied with her own revolution, she had to wait. And when Henry IV., the first Lancastrian, was king, he needed both hands to hold his crown firmly on his head. But when the young Henry V. came to the throne, with the energy and ambition of youth, the time was ripe for the recovery of the lost possessions in France.
The battle of Agincourt (1415) reopened the war with a great defeat for the French chivalry, which represented the Orleanist party. The wholesale slaughter of princes, bishops, and knights on this fatal day was clear gain for the traitor Burgundy, the champion of the people! The climax of his villainy was at hand.
Henry V., at Rouen, was openly holding his court as King of France. John, Duke of Burgundy, accompanied by Queen Isabella, presented himself to the invading king, and formally pledged his support and that of his followers to the cause of the English!
The infamous treaty of Troyes was signed, 1420. It provided that Henry should act as regent to Charles VI. while he lived; that upon the death of that unhappy being he should be Henry V. of England and Henry II. of France; and that the two kingdoms should thereafter exist under one crown. The romantic marriage of Henry with the Princess Katharine, daughter of Charles and Isabella, which was part of the agreement, was solemnized in that old palace on the island in the Seine. And the same vaulted ceilings which we may see to-day, looked down upon this historic marriage, as they also did upon the condemnation of Marie Antoinette, three and a half centuries later. We know of this union of Henry and the fair Katharine chiefly through the pen of Shakespeare, in his play of Henry V.
But Henry was destined never to wear the crown of France, nor even to see his own land again. There were only two more years of life for him. His death occurred in his palace of the Louvre, a few weeks before that of Charles VI., and the crown he expected to wear upon this event passed to his infant son, who was by the Burgundian party recognized as King of France.
A careless, pleasure-loving dauphin, just twenty, apparently indifferent to the loss of a kingdom, was a frail support at such a time. Only a fragment of the country was held by his followers, the Orleanists; Scotland had come to his aid with a few thousand men, but what did this avail with the greater part of the kingdom held by the Burgundians, while town after town was declaring its allegiance to the English Duke of Bedford, whom his dying brother, Henry V., had named as regent for his infant son.
The city of Orleans, held by the dauphin's adherents, was besieged. It was the key to the situation. Its fall meant the fall of the kingdom, the conquest of France. When this happened, that infant at the Louvre would really be the wearer of the crown. So hopeless was the situation that the spiritless Charles was only in doubt whether to take refuge in Scotland or in Spain.
But although towns and cities had deserted him, the heart of the people had not. Patriotism, dead everywhere else, still lived in the heart of that forgotten multitude lying silent and humble under the feet of its masters. The monarchy had been their friend, their only friend. The Church had deserted them, and joined their enemies the nobles. But to the people, the name King expressed gratitude and hope; and they loved it.
If a great spreading tree full of verdure had arisen in a day out of the barren breast of Mother Earth, it would scarcely have been a greater miracle that what really happened when a child of the soil, a girl, rising triumphant over the disabilities of age, sex, birth, and condition, saved France from destruction. Summoned by celestial voices, by angels whom she not only heard but saw, Joan of Arc started upon her mission of rescue for France!
When this daughter of the people, this peasant from Domremy, was admitted to the presence of the dauphin, it is said that in amusement and in order to test the reality of her mission, Charles exchanged dress with one of his courtiers. But the maid going straight to him, said: "Gentle dauphin, I come to restore to you the crown of France. Orleans shall be saved by me. And you, by the help of God and my Lady St. Catharine, shall be crowned at Rheims."
On the 29th of April the maid did enter the fainting city. And she did lead the dauphin to Rheims for his coronation. And then, kneeling at his feet, asked the "Gentle King" to let her go back to her sheep at Domremy. "For," she said, "they love me more than these thousands of people I have seen."
Unhappily, she did not return to her sheep, but remained among those wolves, and was captured and a prisoner of the English.
What should they do with this strange being, claiming supernatural powers? The Regent Duke of Bedford denounced her as a rebel against the infant king; and the Bishop of Beauvais as a blasphemer and child of the devil. Nothing could be clearer than her guilt upon both of these charges! And on the 13th of May, 1431, this mysteriously inspired child was burnt by a slow fire in the market-place of Rouen. And the "Gentle King," where was he while this was happening?
It must ever remain a mystery that a peasant girl, a child in years and in experience, should have believed herself called to such a mission; that conferring only with her heavenly guides, or "voices," she should have sought the king, inspired him with faith in her, and in himself and his cause, reanimated the courage of the army, and led it herself to victory absolute and complete; and then, have compelled the half-reluctant, half-doubting Charles to go with her to Rheims, there to be anointed and consecrated; this simple child in that day bestowing upon him a kingdom, and upon France a king!
Was there ever a stranger chapter in history! Alas, if it could have ended here, and she could have gone back to her mother and her spinning and her simple pleasures, as she was always longing to do when her work should be done. But no! we see her falling into the hands of the defeated and revengeful English—this child, who had wrested from them a kingdom already in their grasp. She was turned over to the French ecclesiastical court to be tried. A sorceress and a blasphemer they pronounce her, and pass her on to the secular authorities, and her sentence is—death.
We see the poor defenceless girl, bewildered, terrified, wringing her hands and declaring her innocence as she rides to execution. God and man had abandoned her. No heavenly voice spoke, no miracle intervened as her young limbs were tied to the stake and the fagots and straw piled up about her. The torch was applied, and her pure soul mounted heavenward in a column of flames.
Rugged men wept. A Burgundian general said, as he turned gloomily away, "We have murdered a saint."
Burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen, May 30, 1431.[Illustration: Burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen, May 30, 1431.From the painting by Lenepveu.]
Burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen, May 30, 1431.[Illustration: Burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen, May 30, 1431.From the painting by Lenepveu.]
And Charles, sitting upon the throne she had rescued for him, what was he doing to save her? Nothing—to his everlasting shame be it said, nothing. He might not have succeeded; the effort at rescue, or to stay the event, might have been unavailing. But where was his knighthood, where his manhood, that he did not try, or utter passionate protest against her fate?
Twenty-five years later we see him erecting statues to her memory, and "rehabilitating" her desecrated name. And to-day, the Church which condemned her for blasphemy is placing her upon the calendar of saints.
CHARLES VII. in creating a standing army struck feudalism a deadly blow. His son, Louis XI., with cold-blooded brutality finished the work. This man's powerful and crafty intelligence saw in an alliance with the common people a means of absorbing to himself supreme power. Not since Tiberius had there been a more blood-thirsty monster on a throne. But he demolished the political structure of mediaevalism in his kingdom; and when his cruel reign was ended the Middle Ages had passed away, and modern life had begun in France.
There was no longer even the pretence of knightly virtues in France. It was time for the high-born robbers and ruffians in steel helmets to give place to men with hearts and brains. It is said that of those thousands, that chivalric host, which was slaughtered at Agincourt, not one in twenty could write his name. All alike were cruel and had the instincts of barbarians. While the Duke of Burgundy, the richest prince in Europe, was starving his enemies in secret dungeons in the Bastille, his Orleans rival, Count of Armagnac, not having access to the Bastille, was decapitating Burgundians till his executioners fainted from fatigue.
It is almost with relief that we read of the slaughter of these knightly savages at Agincourt. If the shipwreck of a mighty kingdom was to be averted, two things must be done. The decaying corpse of feudalism must be thrown overboard, and the Church must be purified. Both had fallen from the ideals which created them; the ideal of truth, justice, and spotless honor, and the ideal of divine love and mercy. Even the semblance of truth and justice and honor had departed from the one; and unspeakable corruption had crept into the other. From the day of the Albigensian cruelties, the heart of the Church had turned to stone, and the spark of life divine within seemed extinguished. Once the guardian of the helpless, it had deserted the people and made common cause with their oppressors. One pope at Rome, and another at Avignon, was a heavy burden to carry. But whenthreeinfallible beings were hurling anathemas at each other, the University of Paris led Christendom in rejecting them all.
So the two great classes for which the State existed were overweighting the ship at a time when it was being torn and tossed by a storm of gigantic proportions.
Well was it for France that Charles VII., as king, developed unexpected firmness and ability. The creation of a standing army, and the disbanding of all military organizations existing without the king's commission, at one sweeping blow completed the wreck of feudalism. It only remained for Charles's cold-blooded son, Louis XI., to finish the work, and mediaevalism was a thing of the past in France.
The reign of Charles was imbittered by the conduct of this unnatural son, whose undisguised impatience to assume the crown so alarmed him that it is said he shortened his own life by abstaining from food in the fear that the dauphin might lay the guilt of parricide upon his soul.
This heart-broken, desolate old man died in 1461. And Louis XI. was King of France.
The son of Charles VII. was a composite of the wisest and the worst of his predecessors. Indeed, it is to the Roman emperors we must look for a parallel to this monster on a throne. And yet, to no other king does France owe such a debt of gratitude. His remorseless hand placed a great gulf between the new and the old, in which were forever buried the men and the system which had fed upon her life.
The antagonism between the son and the father aroused great hopes of a reversal of policy and a rehabilitation of feudalism. These hopes were soon undeceived. So inscrutable and so tortuous was the policy of this strange being, so unexpected his changes of direction, so false and inconsistent his words and acts, and so unspeakably cruel the means to his ends, that a cowed and bewildered nation was soon crouching at his feet, not knowing whither he was leading them.
Warfare played no part in this reign. Invasion was met by diplomacy, and slaughter and bloodshed were relegated to the executioner. Incredible as it seems, it is said that from his windows this king could look out upon an avenue of gibbets upon which hung the bodies of his enemies. The humorous spirit in which he disposed of obstructive nobles is illustrated by a note to an unsuspecting victim. "Fair cousin, come and give us your advice. We have need of so wise a head as yours." And in the morning the fair cousin's wise head was in a basket filled with sawdust!
When all was done, a town council meant more than the "Order of the Golden Fleece"; and,pari passu, with the humiliation of the noble came the elevation of the bourgeois. A nameless adventurer would be admitted to confidential intimacy when a Montmorenci could not get beyond his antechamber.
In fact, this levelling up and levelling down was the object of all this king's odious crimes and the central purpose of his cold-blooded reign. If a patent of nobility was a pretty good passport to the scaffold, good service in a town council was an open door to elevation.
So, judged by results, Louis XI. was a better king than many a better man had been. He buried the ideals of the past fathoms deep and then stamped them down with remorseless feet. He demolished the political structure of mediaevalism in his kingdom, and when his terrible reign was ended, in 1483, the Middle Ages had passed away and modern life had begun in France.
Almost any reign would have seemed colorless after that of Louis XI. But that of his son, Charles VIII., was made memorable by one event, an invasion of Italy, which brought to France a long train of disastrous consequences.
It will be remembered that in the thirteenth century, Charles, Duke of Anjou, of Sicilian fame, or infamy, and brother of Louis the Saint, occupied the throne of Naples by invitation of the pope.
The family of Anjou having recently become extinct, Charles was now the rightful heir to that throne. So as there was nothing in especial for him to do at home, and as his new army, created and equipped by his father, was a very splendid affair for that day, and as Charles was young and ambitious of a name, he determined to take forcible possession of his inheritance in Italy.
The success of the enterprise was quite dazzling. Milan, Florence, Rome, were successively occupied, and finally Charles was actually seated upon the throne in Naples (1495).
But the seat was not comfortable. The Neapolitans did not want him; and, what was more important, Spain, England, and Austria talked of uniting to drive him out. And so he and his army returned to France, and all that had been gained by the enterprise was a wide-open door between France and Italy at the very time when it might better have been kept closed, and the discovery by Europe that the Italian peninsula was an easy prey to any ambitious European power. What Charles had done might also, and more effectually, be done by England, Spain, or Austria. All of which bore bitter fruit in the next century.
But for France the fruit was of a more deadly kind. The princely and noble blood of Italy began to be mingled with hers, bringing a vicious and corrupt strain at a critical period.
Old as she was in centuries, France was but a child in civilization. An uncouth, untutored child, just emerging from barbarism, was suddenly brought under the influence of a fascinating, highly developed civilization, old in wickedness. A nation in which the ruling class had only recently learned to read and write was naturally dazzled by this sister nation, saturated with the learning and culture of the ages, mistress of every brilliant art and accomplishment; who after having run the whole gamut of human experience, drunk at every known fountain, had arrived at the code summed up by Machiavelli as the best by which to live! It was an easy task for the Medici to control the policy, as they did for generations, of such simple barbarians.
Italy presents a strange spectacle in this closing fifteenth century: All the concentrated splendor from the fall of Byzantium hanging over her like a luminous cloud before dispersing as the Renaissance; Lorenzo de' Medici, at Florence, directing the intellectual currents of Europe; Angelo and Raphael creating the world's sublimest masterpieces in art; her great Genoese son uncovering another hemisphere; Savonarola, like an inspired prophet of old, calling upon men to "repent, repent, while there is yet time"; Machiavelli instructing the nations of the earth in villainy as a fine art; and Alexander VI., the basest man in Europe, poisoner, father of every crime, claiming to be Vicegerent of Christ upon earth!
But the currents were moving swiftly toward a crisis which was to change all this. One more pope, that magnificent patron of art, Julius II., creator of the Vatican Museum, with the recently found Apollo Belvedere, and the Laocoön as a splendid nucleus, and projector and builder of St. Peter's. And then Leo X. (Medicean Pope) and Luther!
The year 1492 contained three important events: the discovery of a new world, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and the death of Lorenzo de' Medici. Spain's crusade of seven hundred years was over. We must search in vain for any struggle to match this in singleness and persistence of purpose. Commencing one hundred years before Charlemagne created a Holy Roman Empire, it ended triumphantly under a king and queen who were to play a leading part in theReformation.
The stage was making ready, and the characters were assembling for the great modern drama, in a century even more significant than the one then closing.
The reign of Charles VIII. ended in 1498. And as he left no son, the succession once more passed to a collateral branch: Louis XII., of the House of Orleans, wore the crown of France. It is interesting to recall that these two kings, Charles and Louis, were respectively grandsons of those two ambitious dukes whose personal feud brought France to the verge of ruin a few decades earlier: Louis XII. being the descendant of that Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI., the reigning king, who was murdered in the streets of Paris; while Charles VIII. was the descendant of his slayer, the terrible Duke of Burgundy, evil genius of France at that time.
The principal event in the reign of the new king was the reopening of the Italian War by the combined and successful action of Spain and France. But this proved a barren triumph for Louis, who, when all was done, found that he had been simply aiding that artful diplomatist, Ferdinand, in securing the whole prize for Spain. The disagreement growing out of the distribution of the spoil resulted in a war between the late allies; and it was in this wretched conflict that Bayard,chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, was sacrificed.
Louis died in 1515, also without an heir; and so the crown passed to still another collateral branch of the main Capetian line. The Count of Angoulême, cousin of the dead king, was proclaimed Francis I.
The fall of Constantinople in the East, and the discovery of a new world in the West, were changing the whole aspect of Europe. The art of printing, coming almost simultaneously with these transforming events, sent vitalizing currents reaching even to the humblest. France partook of the general awakening and was throwing off the torpor of centuries. New ambitions were aroused, and her slumbering genius began to be stirred. This was a propitious moment for an ambitious young king who aimed not only at being the greatest of military heroes, but also the splendid patron of art and letters, and wisest of men! The role he had set for himself being, in fact, a Charlemagne and a Lorenzo de' Medici in one. All that was needed for success in this large field was ability. Personal valor Francis certainly possessed. His reign opened brilliantly with a campaign in the Italian peninsula, which left him after the battle of Marignano, master of the Milanese and of northern Italy. He need not trouble himself as had his predecessors about recalcitrant and scheming nobles. They had never been heard from since Louis XI. took them in hand. Neither were the States-General going to annoy him by assertion of rights and demands for reforms. They too had become almost non-existent; it having been well established that only the direst emergency would ever call them into being again. So kingship held sole and undisputed sway, and Francis was looking about to see where he might make it even stronger.
The residence of the popes, at Avignon, during the period of the Great Schism, had led to the establishment by Charles VII. of an ordinance called thePragmatic Sanction; its object being the limitation of the papal power in France. The pope by this ordinance was cut off from certain lucrative sources of income; to offset which the king was deprived of the right of appointing officers for vacant bishoprics and abbeys.
Francis I. and Leo X. came together, and, after conferring, determined that the Pragmatic Sanction should be repudiated; Leo, because he must increase his revenues, and Francis, because he desired to use appointments to rich vacancies as rewards for his friends. Leo's tastes, as we know, were magnificent, and needed much more money than he could command; a fact which led to grave results, and changed the course of events in the world!
In 1516 Ferdinand I., King of Spain, died, leaving his enormous possessions to his grandson, Charles, a youth not yet twenty. The mother of this boy was Joanna, the insane daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, who was married to the son and heir of Maxmilian I., Emperor of Germany.
The young Charles, by the death of his father, had already inherited the Netherlands and Flanders; to which by the death of his maternal grandfather there was now added Spain, the kingdom of Naples, Mexico, and Peru. A heavy enough burden, one would think, for young shoulders. But it was to become still heavier. In 1519 his other grandfather, Maximilian I., died, leaving the throne of the empire vacant.
This office by ancient custom, established by Charlemagne, was elective, and theoretically was open to any prince in Europe. But with the seven princes known as electors, with whom rested choice of the successor, hereditary claim had great weight. Europe saw with dismay the imminent creation of an empire greater than that of Charlemagne—an empire which would cover a large part of the map of Europe and of America. For none was this so alarming as for France, which would in fact be enveloped upon almost every side by this giant among the nations. A French king would indeed have been dull and spiritless not to realize the magnitude of the danger, and Francis was neither. There was only a youth of nineteen standing between him and the greatest dignity in Europe. It was not alone an opportunity to save France from this overshadowing power, but to reunite the crowns of France and the empire as originally designed by Charlemagne. No role could have better pleased Francis I. He announced himself a claimant for the vacant throne (under the clause opening it to European princes), claiming that his ownership of the adjacent territory of Northern Italy made him the natural successor to the imperial throne.
Then another ambitious young king appeared as another rival claimant, Henry VIII. of England, with his astute Minister Woolsey to fight the diplomatic battles for his master. It was a brilliant game, played by great players for a great stake: Francis lavishly bribing and dazzling by theatrical displays of splendor; Henry arrogant, ostentatious, vain, and Charles silent, inscrutable, cold-blooded, and false, whispering to Woolsey that he might make him pope at the next election. From that moment the powerful influence of the Cardinal was used for this sedate youth, this wise youth, who saw that the fitting place for him (Woolsey) was the chair of St. Peter!
The diplomacy of the boy of nineteen won the prize. The electors gave the crown to Charles V. Leo X. died soon after. Woolsey waited in hourly expectation of the summons to Rome. But it never came!
Then Francis resolved to win by force what he had lost by diplomacy. Charles succeeded in winning the pope to his side of the contest with the purpose of driving the French out of Italy. The attempt quickly ended in the defeat of the French, and for Francis capture, and a year's imprisonment in Madrid; his release only obtained by abandoning all claims upon Italy; and in 1547 the showy and ineffectual reign of Francis I. was terminated by his death, which occurred almost immediately after that of Henry VIII. in England.
While these events were taking place, a less conspicuous but vastly more significant conflict had developed. In 1517, Martin Luther, the obscure monk, had hurled defiance at the Church of Rome, arraigning Leo X. for corrupt practices; especially the enrichment of the Church by the sale of indulgences. Germany was shaken to its centre by Protestantism, and the reign of Charles V. was to be spent in ineffectual conflict with the Reformation, which would ultimately tear the Empire asunder.
The new heresy had found congenial soil in France. England was openly and avowedly Protestant, while Spain and Italy remained unchangeably Catholic.
For Francis, destined to spend his life in fruitless contest with the more able, wily, and astute Charles V., the religious question upon which Europe was divided meant nothing except at he could use it in his duel with the emperor. He was in turn the ally of Henry VIII. or the willing tool of Charles V. If he needed the English king's friendship, the Protestants had protection. If he desired to placate Charles V., the roastings and torturings commenced again.
In 1547 Francis and Henry VIII. each went to his reward, and a few years later Charles V. had laid down his crown and carried his weary, unsatisfied heart to St. Yuste. The brilliant pageant was over; but Protestantism was expanding.
The conversion of Henry VIII., because the pope refused to annul his marriage with Catharine, aunt of Charles V., was not the proudest, but one of the most important triumphs of the new faith. Had Catharine's charms been fresher, or Anne Boleyn less alluring, the course of history would have been changed. Henry VIII., as persecutor of heretics, would have found congenial occupation for his ferocious instincts, and the triumph of Protestantism would have been long delayed. But no such cause existed for the success of the Reformation on French soil. The slumbering germs of heresy, left perhaps by Abelard, or by the heretics in Toulouse and Provence, were quickly warmed into life. It may be also that the memory of her desertion by the Church, once her only friend and champion, gave such intensity to the welcome of a "Reformation" by the people. At all events, whatever the explanation, a religious war was at hand which was going to stain the fair name of France more even than the treacheries of her civil war.
The question at issue was deeper than any one knew. Neither Luther nor Leo X. understood the revolution they had precipitated. Protestants and Papists alike failed to comprehend the true nature of the struggle, which was not for supremacy of Romanist or Protestant; not whether this dogma or that was true, and should prevail; but an assertion of the right of every human soul to choose its own faith and form of worship. The great battle for human liberty had commenced; the struggle for religious liberty was but the prelude to what was to follow. There was abundant proof later that Protestants no less than Papists needed only opportunity and power to be as cruel and intolerant as their persecutors had been. Before the Reformation was fifty years old, Servetus, one of the greatest men of his age, a scholar, philosopher, and man of irreproachable character, was burned at Geneva for heretical views concerning the nature of the Trinity; Calvin, the great organizer of Protestant theology, giving, if not the order for this odious crime, at least the nod of approval for its commission.
France had known many tragedies. But when Francis, in pursuance of his Italian policy, secured the hand of Catharine de' Medici for his son and heir, Henry II., he prepared the way for the most tragic event in her history. Powerless to win the affection, or even confidence, of Henry while he lived, Catharine remained unobserved; but, as the event proved, not unobservant. Her astute mind had been studying every current in the kingdom.
Two families had come into prominence during this reign which were to play leading parts in the immediate future: the family of Guise, of the house of Lorraine, represented by Francis, Duke of Guise; and that of Châtillon, of which Admiral Coligny was the head, both of whom Catharine hated and had marked for destruction.
Mary, of the house of Guise, was the wife of James VI. of Scotland; and through the powerful influence of the Guises, the brothers of the Scottish queen, a marriage was arranged between her daughter—her most serene little highness, Marie Stuart—and the dauphin, who would some day be Francis II.
In order to be prepared for this high destiny, the little maid when only five years old was brought to the Court of France to be trained under the direct influence of the accomplished queen-mother, Catharine—undoubtedly, although unsuspected then, the worst woman in Europe! Poor little Marie Stuart, predestined to sin and to tragedy! What could be expected of a woman with the blood of the Guises in her veins, and with Catharine de' Medici as her model and teacher?
In 1559 Henry II. was killed by an accident at a tournament. The marriage of the two children had taken place. The sickly boy, with only a modest portion of intelligence, was Francis II., King of France. Marie, his beautiful and adored queen, controlled him utterly, and was herself in turn controlled by her uncles of the house of Guise. In fact, the family of Guise, which was the head of the Catholic party in the kingdom, ruled France, with the strange result that if Catharine looked for any allies in her fight with this ambitious family, she must make common cause with the Protestants, led by Admiral Coligny, whom she hated only a little less than the uncles of Marie Stuart.
The princes of the house of Bourbon, a remote branch of the royal family, which, next to Francis, were the nearest to the throne, had been extremely jealous of the growing power of the Guises. Now they saw them, as the advisers of the young king, actually usurping the position which was theirs by right of birth.
Two factions grew out of this feud in the court, and there developed a Bourbon party, and the party of the Guises; one identified with the Protestant and the other with the Catholic cause.
Antony de Bourbon, the head of the family of this name, whether from conviction or from antagonism to the Guises, had openly espoused the Protestant side. It was the rich burghers of the towns, in combination with the smaller nobles, which composed the Protestant party in France. And although the impelling cause of the great movement was religious, political wrongs had become a powerful contributing cause; as is always the case, the discontented and aggrieved, for whatever reason, casting in their lot with those who had a deeper grievance and a more sacred purpose.
Whether the conversion of the Bourbon prince was of that nature or not, who can say? But the movement swelled, and France was divided into two hostile camps: one under the Protestant banner of Antony de Bourbon, father of Henry of Navarre, and the other under that of the Catholic, Francis, Duke of Guise; and two children were on the throne of France while the ground was trembling beneath their feet with a coming revolution.
Francis I. had been too much occupied with his own plans to take in hand systematically and seriously the prevailing heresy. Henry II., son of Francis, had also temporized with the religious revolt, probably not realizing the powerful element it contained. Now, with the Guises firmly in power, there would be no more half-way measures.
But a crisis was at hand which would change the whole situation. The discovery of a plot to seize the person of the young king and place a Bourbon prince upon the throne, led to a general slaughter. Fresh relays of executioners in Paris stood ready to relieve each other when exhausted, and the Seine was black with the bodies of the drowned.
During this preliminary storm the frail young king, Francis II., suddenly died. Marie Stuart passed out of French history, and the power of the Guises was at an end. The fates were certainly fighting on the side of Catharine.
There are hints that the fine Italian hand may be seen in this event which at one stroke removed every obstacle from her path! However this may be, Catharine wasted no regrets upon the death of a son which made her queen regent during the minority of her second son, Charles, now ten years of age (1560).
There was no time to lose. Her control over the feeble Charles IX. before he reached his majority must be absolute. Every impulse toward mercy must be extinguished.
What can be said of a mother who seeks to exterminate every germ of truth or virtue in her son; who immerses him in degrading vices in order to deaden his too sensitive conscience and make him a willing tool for her purposes? Inheriting the splendid intelligence as well as genius for statecraft of the Medici, nourished from her infancy upon Machiavellian principles, cold and cruel by nature, this Florentine woman has written her name in blood across the pages of French history.
There were two main ends to be kept in view: the destruction of the Guises, and the extermination of the Huguenots, as the Protestants were now called. These were difficult to reconcile, but both must be accomplished.
Coligny, the splendid old admiral and Huguenot, hero of the nation, he, too, must go. And Henry of Navarre, the adored young leader of the Huguenots, of course was high on the list marked for destruction; but there might be other uses for him before that time.
Never had the Huguenots received such gentle treatment. Disabilities were removed and privileges bestowed. Never was the beautiful queen-mother as smiling, gracious, and witty. A letter to her uncle, Pope Innocent III., written, it is said, between a dinner and a masquerade, asked if men might not be good enough Christians even if they did not believe in transubstantiation, and useful subjects even though they could not accept the Apostolic succession!
Then this excellent woman declared her admiration for the intelligence of the Huguenots, whom until now she had believed were mere fanatical enthusiasts. Then Henry of Navarre, the brave, generous, accomplished Protestant leader, was urgently invited to the court, and finally even offered the hand of Margaret of Valois, her daughter, as a compromise which would heal the rivalry between the two faiths.
And so, on the 18th of August, 1572, Notre Dame, grim but splendid, looked down upon the marriage of Margaret and Henry, in the presence of all the leaders of Huguenot and Catholic in France.
The Protestants wept for joy at the reconciliation accomplished by this union. And all were to remain and partake of the week of festivities which were to follow.
Then, the pageant over, a secret council was held in Catharine's apartment in the Louvre, in which her remaining son, Henry, participated, but from which his brother the king was excluded; some wishing to include the Guises in the approaching massacre, some urging that Henry of Navarre be spared, but all agreeing that Coligny must go; it being, in fact, the influence of this magnetic man over the young king which was the danger-point compelling haste and the uncertainty as to what her son might do endangered the success of the whole plot.