French wars of religion
French wars of religion (1562-98). The wars of religion were much more than a confessional dispute. They embodied dynastic, factional, social, and personal frictions, set against a European financial, political, and religious crisis. The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) ended a long period of Habsburg-Valois rivalry (see Italian wars, French). France already displayed a homogeneity—summed up as ‘une foi, un loi, un roi’ (one faith, one law, one king) —which has encouraged André Corvisier to term it ‘the model of nation-states’. However, the monarchy was not absolute, but relied on the support of a powerful and divided nobility. Its finances had been overburdened by war, causing tax increases which brought growing hardship. The nobility, though exempt from taxation, faced problems of its own: many families had been beggared by the wars, and peace left their sons without employment. Some capitalized on patronage exercised by the crown and high nobility to enter the Church: others joined those already demanding Church reform.
Inspiring Calvinist preachers attracted growing congregations. Calvin's policy of targeting nobles for conversion bore fruit, especially in the south. Calvinism was also attractive to lesser men who saw it as an attack on the old order. The royal commander in Guienne, Blaise de Monluc, wrote that a local Huguenot leader had claimed: ‘We are the kings, and he that you speak of is a little turdy roylet; we'll whip his breech and set him to a trade, to teach him to get his living as others do.’ Huguenot communities placed themselves under the protection of sympathetic noblemen, and by 1560 were organized on quasi-military lines, each church with its captain and each synod with its colonel.
Neither the crown's poverty nor the burgeoning strength of Protestantism need have proved fatal had the monarchy supported its local governors against the Huguenots. And, as N. M. Sutherland has written: ‘The division of France behind religious banners, which played so dangerously into the hands of Spain, would not have been possible without … the old rivalry of the nobility and their new struggle for power upon the death of Henry II.’ Henri II died in 1559 from a wound received in a tournament, and his sickly son François II, 15 when he came to the throne, threw himself into the arms of his wife's relatives, the powerful Guise family. François, Duc de Guise, was a soldier who had defended Metz against Charles V and recaptured Calais from the English; his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine was an accomplished politician. Their rise affronted two other great families, the Montmorencies and the Bourbons, both divided by religion. The constable Anne de Montmorency was Catholic, but his nephew, the admiral Gaspard de Coligny, was a devout Huguenot. Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre through his wife, was Protestant but infirm of purpose, while his brother, Louis, Prince de Condé, was not only a Protestant but had agreed, in 1560, to become the protector of all French Huguenots. The slide to war was gradual. In March 1560 Huguenots botched an attempt to seize the king (the Conspiracy of Amboise), and Condé was imprisoned. He was released when the king died in December, and his family claimed, as first princes of the blood, the guardianship of the young Charles IX. The Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici, refused, and strove to preserve royal authority, balancing the princes against one another and trying to achieve political and religious compromise. She also kept a watchful eye on Philip II of Spain, to whom the religious struggle in France—reflecting his own difficulties in the Netherlands—was a serious political concern. In 1561 she initiated the Colloquy of Poissy, where rival theologians failed to agree, and early in 1562 granted a measure of religious freedom to the Huguenots in the Edict of January.
The Montmorencies and the Guises had already withdrawn from court, and persuaded Antoine de Bourbon to support them. In March 1562 Guise, on his way to his estates in Lorraine, stopped to hear mass at Vassy, south-west of Saint-Dizier, and his servants became involved in a scuffle with Huguenots, about 30 of whom were killed. Open war broke out, with the Huguenots seizing control of many towns in the south and Condé taking the Loire valley to establish his headquarters at Orléans, while Guise and Montmorency secured Paris.
This first war (1562-3) was inconclusive, and its conduct testified to the deep-seated distaste for civil war and the Queen Mother's repeated attempts to broker a negotiated settlement. The Pacification of Amboise granted the Huguenots liberty of conscience and the limited right to worship but was no basis for a lasting peace. Catherine was fortunate in that Antoine de Bourbon had been killed during the war and Guise murdered after it, increasing her room for manoeuvre. The French conflict was already part of a wider dispute, and there were growing Huguenot fears that Spanish troops, who used the ‘Spanish road’ through eastern France to reach the troublesome Netherlands, would be diverted to France. After Catherine met Philip's commander the Duke of Alba at Bayonne in 1565 these fears, though factually groundless, provoked a Huguenot attempt to seize the king at Meaux in September 1567. A second war (1567-8) followed. Like the first it was inconclusive, though the intervention of foreign troops—the Catholics were supported by Alba and Swiss mercenaries, and the Huguenots by German heavy cavalry (reiters) under John Casimir, son of the Protestant Elector Palatine—increased the conflict's ferocity and re-emphasized its international implications. The Treaty of Longjumeau re-established the Amboise terms, but proved short-lived, for the third war (1568-70) broke out almost immediately.
This time there was more serious fighting. Although the Catholics, under the king's younger brother the Duc d'Anjou (later Henri III), beat the Huguenots at Jarnac and Montcontour (1569), Coligny, who succeeded to command of the Huguenots when Condé was killed at Jarnac, kept the war alive by skilful manoeuvre. The crown's chronic shortage of money made it difficult to keep an army in the field, and peace was made at Saint-Germain in August 1570. It marked a return to the status quo, although this time the Huguenots were allowed to garrison four towns—Montauban, La Rochelle, la Charité, and Cognac—as security.
Catherine now did her best to achieve unity, agreeing to marry her daughter Margaret to the young Henri of Navarre (later Henri IV) in an effort to secure a Valois-Bourbon alliance, negotiating for the marriage of Anjou to Elizabeth I of England, and achieving a general, if short-lived, Anglo-French rapprochement. Coligny was readmitted to the king's council, where he urged an anti-Spanish policy and won the affection of the young king.
The odds were against Coligny. Spain's military prestige was restored by Lepanto and Alba's successes in the Netherlands, and neither Elizabeth nor the Protestant German princes could be counted upon to provide serious military support for France. Sharp price rises promoted unease which fuelled Catholic demands to root out heresy. The Guises blamed Coligny of complicity in Duc François's murder nine years before, and Catherine now came to believe that only death would lift his influence from the king, remove the prospect of a disastrous war with Spain, and enable her to maintain a balance of power. Coligny was wounded by an assassin on 22 August 1572. Some time the next day, the feast of St Bartholomew, the decision was taken to finish off Coligny and kill other Huguenot leaders, in Paris for Henri of Navarre's wedding. Early on the morning of 24 August, Coligny was butchered and a massacre of Huguenots within Paris, in which the population and militia played an enthusiastic part, spread, with varying intensity, to the provinces: thousands were killed. Henri and his cousin Henri, Prince de Condé, narrowly escaped with their lives, though both were forced to convert to Catholicism. Elsewhere many other Huguenots abjured their faith, but those that did not, embittered and mistrustful, armed in the expectation that war would be renewed. The fourth war (1572-3) featured the unsuccessful royal siege of La Rochelle, and ended in the peace of the same name.
Although French Protestantism had now passed its zenith, it remained enormously strong in the south. It also gained some support from the rise of a moderate Catholic party, the politiques, its members, prepared, as H. G. Koenigsberger put it, ‘to seek a way out of the horrors of religious and civil strife by sacrificing the religious rather than the political unity of the state’. Hostility to the Guises and, as always, personal ambition, played their parts. Catherine's youngest son, the Duc d'Alençon, was portrayed as an attractive alternative to Charles IX, while Montmorency-Damville, governor of Languedoc, was amongst those prepared to back the Huguenots against the king or vice versa to strengthen his own position.
Charles died in 1574, and his elder brother Anjou, briefly installed as king of Poland, returned to rule as Henri III. Condé escaped from court that year, and Navarre soon followed suit. Both raised troops, and John Casimir brought a large contingent to support the Huguenots. The Peace of Monsieur (Alençon) ended the fifth war (1576) on terms very favourable to both the Huguenots and to Alençon, given the dukedom of Anjou. That year saw the formation of the first Catholic League, with the declared aim of supporting royal authority, but with a powerful local organization and strong links with Spain. It was successful in preventing Huguenots from being elected to the Estates General that met at Blois in 1576, and went on to champion the privileges of the estates and provinces against royal absolutism. The king, well aware of the danger, declared himself head of the League in place of the Duc de Guise, and the Peace of Bergerac, which ended the sixth war in 1577 on terms less favourable to the Huguenots than the previous peace, abolished all leagues and associations. In 1580 a brief seventh war enabled Navarre to strengthen his hold on the south-west. Anjou, meanwhile, intrigued to obtain the sovereignty of the Netherlands in place of Philip II, but died in 1584. Henri III was childless and seemed likely to remain so, leaving Henri of Navarre as heir presumptive to the French throne.
The prospect of a heretic king induced Catholics, led by Guise and his relations, to revive the League. The Cardinal of Bourbon was persuaded to claim the succession in place of his kinsman Navarre. Leaguers replaced royalist governors and garrisons in many towns, and in December 1584 they concluded the Treaty of Joinville with Philip of Spain, who agreed to give them financial and, if need be, military support. Catherine, fearful of the growth of Spanish power, concluded the Treaty of Nemours with Guise, abolishing all previous edicts of pacification with the Huguenots, banning the practice of Protestantism.
The longest of the wars—sometimes called the War of the Three Henries, from Henri III, Henri of Navarre and Henri, Duc de Guise—raged from 1584 to 1589. In 1587 Navarre won a spectacular victory at Coutras and Guise beat John Casimir's Germans. These battles weakened Henri III's authority, which was further reduced when the volatile population of Paris rose, forcing him to flee and welcoming Guise. However, the defeat of the Armada damaged Spanish prestige and imperilled Philip's wider strategy, encouraging Henri III to lure Guise to Blois, where he was murdered in the king's presence: his brother, the Cardinal of Guise, was killed the following day. Catherine died almost immediately, as a wave of Catholic fury saw Henri declared unfit to rule, and the League, now headed by Guise's brother the Duc de Mayenne, became an openly revolutionary party. The king moved against Paris, and was besieging it with Navarre's support when a fanatical friar stabbed him on 1 August 1589. On his deathbed, Henri nominated Navarre as successor provided he converted to Catholi-cism.
The last of the wars, the War of the League (1589-98), began with the League consolidating its grip on many cities. Henri IV beat Mayenne at Arques in September 1589, and even more dramatically, at Ivry in March the following year. He besieged Paris, but Philip sent his ablest commander, the Duke of Parma, to relieve it. In the meantime, the Cardinal of Bourbon had died, and the Estates General, which met in 1593, was asked to consider the succession of the Infanta, Philip II's daughter by the late Henri III's sister. This was a deeply unpopular move, and at the crucial moment Henri IV declared that he was prepared to return to the Catholic Church. Allegedly quipping that ‘Paris is well worth a Mass’, he was received into the church at Saint-Denis in July 1593 and crowned at Chartres—for Rheims, where French kings were traditionally crowned, was in League hands. His conversion removed a major obstacle to peace, and Henri exploited his position with skill. He entered Paris in March 1594, and set about winning the support of towns and commanders by lavish distribution of officers and pensions, joking that loyalty was ‘vendu, pas rendu’ (sold, not given). He declared war on Spain in 1595, and although this helped unite France against an external enemy, the Spaniards had the better of it. The war ended with the Treaty of Vervins in 1598, the year the last of the League's leaders made peace with Henri. The Edict of Nantes, granted that year, gave the Huguenots freedom of conscience and wide rights of worship, and the right to garrison some hundred places of security at royal expense. It was a compromise which permitted the existence of two religions in one body politic, and was to last for the best part of a century.
The wars saw little real change in the military art. Although most soldiers still wore armour and fought with cold steel, firearms were used on a growing scale. This irritated old warriors like Monluc, who complained: ‘Would to heaven that this accursed engine had never been invented, I had not received those wounds I now languish under, neither had so many valiant men been slain for the most part by the most pitiful fellows and greatest cowards’. Battles usually involved the clash of blocks of infantry, their onset prepared by arquebus and cannon fire, with cavalry—many of them pistoleers trained to use the caracole—posted on the flanks. Armies embodied a variety of semi-feudal contingents and mercenaries: assembling 25, 000 men for a major battle was no mean feat. Their cost outstripped the ability of the royal exchequer to pay them, and its attempt to do so by raising taxes further weakened social cohesion. There were some improvements in organization, though nothing the French produced could equal the Spanish tercio. Discipline was uncertain: Condé was beaten and captured at Dreux in 1562 because his hitherto-victorious men got out of hand before the decision was secured. Much depended on brave and skilful leaders—at Ivry Henri led the crucial cavalry counter-attack in person—though they were frequently killed in battle or assassinated subsequently. As conflict became endemic in French society, many men were driven to take up soldiering, for it was better to plunder than be plundered. This helped reduce the previously high proportion of noblemen in French armies, though even at the wars' end perhaps 30 per cent of soldiers were noble. In some cases, where there were local outbursts against great men of any party, violence became democratized. Atrocities were frequent, sometimes reflecting deliberate policy inflamed by religious passions, and sometimes demonstrating the casual brutality of a society at war for too long. Civilians died in large numbers. Perhaps 12, 000 of the inhabitants of Paris starved to death during the siege of 1590, and another 30, 000 died of disease subsequently. In all, some two to four million perished.
Bibliography
- Corvisier, André, ‘Les Guerres de religion’, in Philippe Contamine, Histoire Militaire de La France (Paris, 1992).
- Koenigsberger, H. E., ‘Western Europe and the Power of Spain’, in The New Cambridge Modern History, vol.
3 (Cambridge, 1968). - Pernot, M., Les Guerres de religion en France (Paris, 1987).
- Roy, Ian (ed.), Blaise de Monluc (London, 1971).
- Sutherland, N. M., The Massacre of St Bartholomew and the European Conflict 1559-1572 (London, 1973)
— Richard Holmes
