Wars of Religion

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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

France's recovery from the dismemberment threatened by the Hundred Years War was relatively rapid. By the Renaissance, kings such as François I^er and Henri II ruled a stronger, much more centralized kingdom. The tensions created by the rivalry between the great houses of Montmorency and Guise and by the deteriorating religious and economic climate were released, however, by the premature death of Henri II in 1559. His successor, François II, was a minor and was quickly dominated by the duc de Guise and the cardinal de Lorraine, who were the uncles of his wife (Marie Stuart). In the short term their power was contested not so much by the Montmorency family as by Louis de Condé, brother of Antoine de Navarre, the ineffectual leader of the Bourbon family and prince of the blood [see Amboise, Conjuration De]. Condé was able to use the cloak of the Protestant religion to mask his ambition, thereby setting the tone for a period of over 40 years of civil war, in which religious passions and factional disputes exacerbated French divisions to the point where the continued existence of the French monarchy was actually in doubt. The religious disputes between Protestants and Catholics were rendered much more serious by two factors. First, the conversion to Protestantism of many members of the noblesse d'épée, which provided the already highly organized Calvinist Church with a parallel military structure. Secondly, the clientage system, which enabled great lords—Catholic as well as Protestant—to enrol many nobles in their armies.

The French monarchy at first tried a policy of conciliation: through the Colloque de Poissy (1561), which failed to achieve the hoped-for religious compromises, and then through the Edict of January (1562), which granted a great deal of freedom to the Protestants. The Catholic backlash was immediate. The massacre of Protestant worshippers at Wassy by troops belonging to François de Guise (1562) unleashed a series of increasingly bloody civil wars. Despite several Catholic victories, the Protestants were granted very favourable peace terms in 1570 and appeared to be on the point of winning Charles IX over to their cause when, in 1572, the inevitable Catholic reaction led to the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre. This provoked a hardening of the Protestants' position, since it induced them openly to question the political authority of the French monarchy [see Hotman; Gentillet].

The death of the duc d'Alençon in 1584, however, left the Protestant Henri de Navarre (the future Henri IV) as heir presumptive to the throne. This immediately created a reversal in the relative positions of extremist Protestants and Catholics. The former suddenly became defenders of the royalist tradition, while the latter came to argue that, if the king jeopardized the fate of Catholicism, he could be deposed or even assassinated. Henri III tried to overcome the problem by persuading Henri de Navarre to adjure the Protestant faith. The latter's refusal to comply gave the Catholic Ligue the excuse it needed to arm itself not only against the Protestant heir to the throne, but also against the Catholic king, who, it was felt, was not resolute enough in his defence of Catholicism. It is not clear whether Henri de Guise intended to depose Henri III; but his challenge to the royal authority eventually led to his assassination at the hands of the king's bodyguard in 1588. The reaction of the Ligue was predictably hostile, leading eventually to the assassination of Henri III in 1589. The Ligue declared the cardinal de Bourbon king in Henri de Navarre's place, but he was never king in more than name. The Ligue's position was weakened by its own increasingly revolutionary activities (especially in Paris), and by the fact that its various supporters had their own candidates for the French throne.

In the event, Henri de Navarre cut the ground from beneath their feet by removing the most serious obstacle to his own candidacy: his Protestantism. He converted to Catholicism (almost certainly as a result of political calculations) in 1593 and was finally absolved by the Pope in 1595. (‘Paris vaut bien une messe’ was a contemporary view of this conversion.) He still had to reconquer his kingdom and buy off his enemies. His conversion alienated many of his Protestant followers, but he was sufficiently loyal to them to enforce the Edict of Nantes (1598), which granted them limited but none the less substantial concessions. In the meantime the experience of protracted civil war led many Frenchmen to believe that there was no alternative to a strong monarchy. In this way the Wars of Religions prepared, however paradoxically, the absolutism of Louis XIV. The influence of the Religious Wars on literature is particularly evident in the Tragiques of d'Aubigné, the polemical works of Ronsard, and the Essais of Montaigne. [See Reformation.]

[James Supple]

Bibliography

• J. H. Salmon, Society in Crisis (1975)

The rapid growth of Protestantism in France that began in the 1530s reached a climax around 1560, when roughly one in every twenty French men and women had converted to the new faith. This extraordinary growth resulted in a predictable backlash by French Catholics, whose church and monarchy declared all Protestants—and in France they were overwhelmingly Calvinists, who came to be called Huguenots—to be heretics. For Catholics, Protestants living in their midst not only threatened their eternal souls, but were believed to threaten their earthly existence as well. In an age when every major outbreak of plague, famine, and disease tended to be interpreted as a sign of God's punishment for their sins, most French Catholics believed that heresy within their midst was an open invitation for God's wrath to be visited upon them. Thus, the majority of French Catholics were openly hostile to the Reformation. These popular feelings were reinforced by the French monarchy, as kings Henry II (ruled 1547–1559) and Francis II (ruled 1559–1560) sought to eliminate heresy in their kingdom via both persecution and prosecution. The surge in Protestant growth in the late 1550s, however, meant that the official royal policy of suppression was never likely to succeed. And when the Huguenots seized several major towns by force in 1561–1562, it was clear that suppression had not worked.

Moreover, by 1562 several key members of some prominent noble families such as the Bourbons and the Albrets had converted to the new religion, further exacerbating political tensions and rivalries at court. Their chief rivals, the Guise family, had long championed the Catholic cause; and since the young King Francis II's wife was Mary Stuart of Scotland, whose mother was Mary of Guise, the Guises found themselves in a position of authority during Francis's reign. When the king died of an ear abscess in December 1560, however, his successor was his nine-year-old brother, Charles IX (ruled 1560–1574). The unwritten French constitution required a regent to be appointed until the young king reached his fourteenth year, when he could then govern in his own right. Catherine de Médicis, Henry II's widow, as queen mother of both Francis II and Charles IX, accepted this position, and it was she who had to face the prospect of dealing with the Protestant problem, given that suppression as a policy had simply not worked. Although she was not in favor of religious toleration in principle—indeed, it was very difficult in the sixteenth century even to imagine such a concept—Catherine attempted to work out some kind of limited coexistence. First, she called together leaders of both the Huguenot and Catholic churches at the Colloquy of Poissy in 1561 to see if a compromise were possible. But both the cardinal of Lorraine on the Catholic side and Théodore de Bèze, Calvin's lieutenant from Geneva on the Protestant side, recognized that significant compromise on either the doctrinal or liturgical issues that divided them was impossible. Despite the lack of success at Poissy, however, Catherine went ahead and issued an edict in January 1562, recognizing the legal right of French Protestants to exist and even worship in a few limited areas of the kingdom for the first time. This milestone was far from religious toleration, but it marked a sharp break with the previous royal policies of persecuting Protestants as heretics. French Catholics, however, refused either to accept or enforce the edict. When the prince of Condé, a Protestant member of the Bourbon family, raised troops to enforce the edict on his own, civil war was the result. Over the next thirty-six years, not only did French Huguenots and Catholics raise armies to fight each other on the battlefield, they also fought each other as civilians in towns and cities across the kingdom. Thus, violence in the streets among civilians became a hallmark of the French Wars of Religion for an extended period, imposing on France an experience unmatched by other territories affected by the Reformation: two generations of civil war.

The outbreak of civil war in the spring of 1562 began a long series of armed conflicts, followed by brief periods of siege or battlefield confrontation between the two armies, and concluded by extended peace negotiations and a peace treaty. Each of these successive civil wars followed a similar pattern. While one side might manage to defeat the other's army on the battlefield, there was no way that either could effectively administer a heavy enough defeat to disarm all the civilians and nobles on the other side, much less occupy its opponent's cities and towns. Thus, each successive peace treaty had to be a forced compromise, offering very limited rights and legal guarantees that were never enough to provide complete security and freedom of worship for French Protestants. But even limited rights were far too numerous for French Catholics, and each period of peace was soon followed by another outbreak of war. In all, France was to suffer through eight separate civil wars between 1562 and 1598.

The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacres

The first major turning point in the religious wars came in August 1572 with the massacres in Paris that began in the early morning hours of 24 August, St. Bartholomew's Day. Two days earlier, members of the Guise family, probably with the tacit support of Catherine de Médicis, had come to the decision to assassinate Gaspard de Coligny, admiral of France and the military leader of the Huguenots, because of fears of a Huguenot military reprisal in Paris, where many Protestant nobles had gathered for the royal wedding between the king's sister Margaret and Henry of Navarre, son of the Protestants Anthony de Bourbon and Jeanne d'Albret, king and queen of Navarre. Though there was no Protestant coup being planned by Coligny, the assassination attempt nevertheless took place. Because it failed, however, only seriously wounding Coligny, the many Huguenot nobles in Paris began to fear for their lives. This only exacerbated the fears of the Guise family and the queen mother, who managed to persuade the king, Charles IX, and the rest of his council on 23 August to undertake another murder attempt on Coligny, this time accompanied by the killing of roughly two dozen of the leading Huguenot nobles in Paris. When these murders were duly carried out in the early morning hours of 24 August, the feast day of St. Bartholomew, many Catholics in Paris misunderstood the killings as a sign that the king wished all Huguenots in Paris to be killed. Since there had already been violence between Protestants and Catholics in Paris the previous year, it did not take much to set off widespread attacks against all Huguenots in the capital. Over the next two days Parisian Catholics killed upwards of 2,000 French Protestants. The events in the capital sparked similar massacres in a dozen provincial towns across the kingdom over the next few weeks. By October 1572 as many as six to eight thousand Huguenots had been killed. These massacres marked an end to Protestant growth in France, not so much because of the loss of life, as considerable as it was, but because of the chilling symbolic impact of the massacres. It appeared to many that the crown had returned to a policy of cruel suppression, while many Huguenots saw the massacres as a sign that God had abandoned them. A significant number of them began to abjure their religion and convert to Catholicism as a result. Most Huguenots did not convert, however, and the intermittent cycle of war and peace soon commenced once again.

The Catholic League

The second major watershed in the civil wars occurred in June 1584 when the last surviving Valois heir to the throne, Francis, duke of Anjou, died from tuberculosis at the age of 29. King Henry III (ruled 1574–1589), who had succeeded his brother Charles IX two years after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacres, was childless. The death of his younger brother Anjou, who was the last and youngest of Catherine de Médicis's and Henry II's four sons, meant that the next in line to the throne was Henry of Navarre, a Protestant. This unfortunate consequence resulted in the Guise family's organizing a Holy Catholic League, backed by money and troops from King Philip II of Spain, to pressure the king to disavow Navarre, who, despite his legitimacy as heir by birth, was rendered illegitimate because of his religion. The political pressure mounted by the league was so great, in fact, that in 1585 these militant Catholics even managed to get Henry III to issue an ordinance making it illegal to be Protestant in France, revoking all the limited rights of existence that Huguenots had won since Catherine de Médicis's original edict in January 1562. It certainly appeared that the policies of suppression of the 1550s had returned once again. Moreover, when Henry, duke of Guise, entered Paris against Henry III's will in May 1588, Guise's reception was so warm and his popularity among the Parisian people so great that the king was forced to flee his own capital. He gained his revenge by having Guise and his brother murdered in December 1588. Victory was only temporary, however, as Henry III himself was murdered the following August by a disgruntled Catholic monk. Thus, from August 1589 Henry of Navarre was recognized as the legitimate king of France—as King Henry IV (ruled 1589–1610)—only by French Protestants and a small minority of Catholics who were willing to place his legitimacy by birth above his Calvinist religion. The overwhelming majority of French Catholics, however, urged on by the league, refused to accept Navarre's claim to the throne and held out against him. The cycle of civil war was destined to continue.

The Edict of Nantes

The final watershed in the French Wars of Religion occurred in July 1593, after four long years of indecisive fighting between the armies of King Henry IV and the Catholic League. The city of Paris had been besieged by the royalist forces of the king in 1590, and some Parisians even starved to death in a long, ruinous summer. The turning point came when Henry made the decision to abjure his Protestant religion and take instruction in the Catholic faith. It was certainly not a cynical decision, as his enemies claimed, nor one made lightly. Henry had been a devout Calvinist ever since he was first instructed in the faith by his mother. He was forced to recognize, however, that the French constitution required the king to be Catholic. To resolve the long religious conflict and bring the disorders in the kingdom to an end, Henry publicly converted to Catholicism in the summer of 1593. When the pope formally absolved the king shortly thereafter, the many nobles and towns loyal to the league began to submit to his authority and accept him as their new monarch. But Henry IV still faced the same problem as all his predecessors: how to produce a peace treaty that was acceptable to both sides with a chance of survival. The Edict of Nantes, published in the spring of 1598, looked on paper to be very similar to many of the numerous earlier edicts of pacification, none of which had proved very durable. France had suffered horribly during the wars of the league, however, as increased warfare combined with economic and agrarian crises in the 1590s to create loud demands from within various elements of the population to stop the fighting. Bands of armed peasants in Burgundy, Perigord, and Limousin, some of whom may have been organized by elites, organized to keep soldiers out of their villages whether they were Huguenots or Catholics. Thus, the situation was very different from the earlier peace edicts, as the entire kingdom's resolve to continue to wage war in such dire economic circumstances began to waver.

Another principal difference between the Edict of Nantes and the seven earlier edicts of pacification is that Henry IV explicitly appealed to both sides. To the Catholic majority, he promised in the preamble of the edict that France would forever remain a Catholic country, and that one day God would bless his kingdom by reuniting all French men and women in the one true Catholic faith. The various articles of the edict spelled out that the monarchy, the state, and all French institutions would also remain Catholic, thus ensuring that Catholicism would never be jeopardized as the official religion of the kingdom. The edict also restored the Catholic Mass in all Protestant areas where it had been banned, introducing it into some areas for the first time in forty years. In addition, the edict required all Huguenots to begin paying the ecclesiastical tithe to the Catholic Church, just as their Catholic counterparts had always done, in order to provide for the salaries of parish priests throughout the kingdom. On the surface, then, the Edict of Nantes was meant to appease French Catholics, especially those former members of the league who had opposed the king prior to his conversion.

On the other side, the edict made clear that Huguenots had freedom of conscience in France, meaning they would not be persecuted for simply being Protestant. Their right to freedom of worship, however, was severely restricted, limited to those towns mainly in the south of France already under Huguenot control in August 1597. Moreover, all former Catholic churches in these areas were to be turned back over to the French Catholic Church. The Huguenots would have to build their own churches, or worship in private (meaning largely aristocratic) homes in the towns they controlled. But the king also granted the Huguenots concessions not made public in the edict. First, they were given a special subsidy to pay the salaries of their ministers, offsetting the ecclesiastical tithe required in the edict itself. More importantly, Henry granted the Huguenots the right to garrison troops in the towns they controlled, thereby guaranteeing their own safety and defense. Thus in a variety of ways, while the Edict of Nantes initiated a period of religious coexistence, it was far from a policy of religious toleration. And for most among the French Catholic majority, even this religious coexistence was thought to be only temporary, until those remaining Protestants might be won back to the true faith, following the example set by King Henry IV. For them, the future of France was as a kingdom of Catholic uniformity of religion. The Huguenots, however, recognized that their gains in the edict would last only as long as they were loyal to the crown and only as long as their newly converted king chose to enforce them. Henry's son Louis XIII (ruled 1610–1643) sought to dismantle the subsidies and military protection of the Huguenots, while Henry's grandson Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) revoked the Edict of Nantes altogether in 1685.

Bibliography

Primary Source

Potter, David, ed. and trans. The French Wars of Religion: Selected Documents. New York, 1997.

Secondary Sources

Benedict, Philip. Rouen during the Wars of Religion. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1981.

Davis, Natalie Zemon. Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays. Stanford, 1975.

Diefendorf, Barbara B. Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris. New York, 1991.

Greengrass, Mark. France in the Age of Henri IV: The Struggle for Stability. 2nd ed. London and New York, 1995.

Holt, Mack P. The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1995.

Holt, Mack P., ed. Renaissance and Reformation France, 1500–1648. Oxford, 2002.

Knecht, Robert J. The French Civil Wars, 1559–1598. London, 2000.

Roberts, Penny. A City in Conflict: Troyes during the French Wars of Religion. Manchester, U.K., and New York, 1996.

Salmon, J. H. M. Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century. London and New York, 1975.

—MACK P. HOLT

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The French Wars of Religion (1562–98) is the name given to a period of civil infighting and military operations, primarily fought between French Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots). The conflict involved the factional disputes between the aristocratic houses of France, such as the House of Bourbon and House of Guise (Lorraine), and both sides received foreign aid.

The exact number of wars and their respective dates are the subject of continued debate by historians; some assert that the Edict of Nantes in 1598 concludes the wars, while a resurgence of rebellious activity following this leads some to believe the Peace of Alais in 1629 is the actual conclusion. However, the Massacre of Vassy in 1562 is agreed to begin the Wars of Religion and the Edict of Nantes at least ended this series of conflicts. During this time, complex diplomatic negotiations and agreements of peace were followed by renewed conflict and power struggles.

At the conclusion of the conflict in 1598, Huguenots were granted substantial rights and freedoms by the Edict of Nantes, though it did not end hostility towards them. During the wars it is estimated that the population of France, at between 16 to 18 million people in 1600, fell by 2 to 4 million through a combination of famine, disease and combat. The wars weakened the authority of the monarchy, already fragile under the rule of Francis II and then Charles IX of France, though it later reaffirmed its role under Henry IV.

Contents 1 Background 1.1 Growth of Calvinism 1.2 Growth of faction 1.3 The "Amboise conspiracy", or "Tumult of Amboise" 1.4 Iconoclasm and civic disturbances 1.5 Death of Francis II 1.6 The Colloquy of Poissy and the Edict of Saint-Germain 2 1562–70 2.1 The 'first' war (1562–63) 2.2 The ‘Armed Peace’ (1563–67) and the 'second' war (1567–68) 2.3 The 'third' war (1568–70) 3 St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and after (1572–73) 3.1 The 'fourth' war (1572–73) 4 1574–80 4.1 Death of Charles IX and the 'fifth' war (1574–76) 4.2 The Catholic League and the 'sixth' war (1576–77) 4.3 The 'seventh' war (1579–80) and the Death of Anjou (1584) 5 1585–98 5.1 The "War of the Three Henrys" 5.2 The Estates-General of Blois and Assassination of the Guise (1588) 5.3 The assassination of Henry III (1589) 6 Henry IV’s ‘Conquest of the Kingdom’ (1589-1593) 6.1 War in Brittany 7 Towards peace (1593–98) 7.1 Conversion 7.2 War with Spain (1595–98) 7.3 Resolution of the War in Brittany (1598–99) 8 The Edict of Nantes (1598) 9 17th and 18th centuries 10 Chronology 11 See also 12 Notes 13 References 14 External links

Background

Growth of Calvinism

Francis I's deliberations over heresy allowed the teachings of Martin Luther to circulate for over a year

Main article: Huguenot

Protestant ideas were first introduced to France during the reign of Francis I (1515-47) in the form of Lutheranism, the teachings of Martin Luther. Although Francis firmly opposed heresy, the difficulty was initially in recognising what constituted it; Catholic doctrine and definition of orthodox belief was unclear.^[1] Luther's writings circulated for more than a year around Paris. Despite this, French Protestants began to desire more radical reforms than those taught by Lutheranism; in January 1535 it was observed that all "Lutherans" in France were actually Zwinglians, followers of Huldrych Zwingli.^[2]

The Affair of the Placards in 1534, in which anti-Catholic posters appeared in public places, turned Protestantism into "a religion of rebels". It helped to define heresy, and the attitude of the French monarchy hardened in the wake of the incident.^[3][2] John Calvin, a Frenchman, escaped from the persecution to Basle, where he published the Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536.^[4] In the same year, Calvin visited Geneva, but was forced out for trying to reform the church. When he returned on invitation in 1541, he wrote the Ecclesiastical ordinances, the constitution for a Genevan church, which was passed by the council of Geneva. This theological system, Calvinism, though not begun by Calvin, was influenced most by him.

In the 1550s, Geneva played an important role in influencing the disorganised French Calvinist (Huguenot) church; between 1555 and 1562 it sent eighty-eight missionaries into France.^[5] The 1540s had seen an intensification in the fight against heresy, with an increase in heresy prosecutions and the compilation of an Index of forbidden books.^[6] As a result of this persecution, Protestants gathered in secret to worship.^[7] However, by the middle of the century, the Huguenot population expanded greatly, as the nobility in particular were converted to Calvinism; it is estimated that over half of the nobility were Calvinist in the 1560s, and that there were between 1,200 - 1,250 Calvinist churches and 2 million Calvinists at the outbreak of war in 1562. The inclusion of a substantial number of the nobility gave the church a "military element" in the words of historian Knecht.^[8]

During the reign of Henry II (1547 - 1559), persecution continued intermittently as Calvinism grew, escalating towards the end of his reign with the formation of a new court to trial heresy, labelled la chambre ardente (the "burning chamber") by Protestants^[9]. Calvinism had proved attractive to people from across the social hierarchy and occupational divides, and was highly regionalized with no coherent pattern of geographical spread. In 1559, delegates from 66 Calvinist congregations in France met secretly at Paris in a national synod, which drew up a confession of faith and a book of discipline.

Growth of faction

The accidental death of Henry II in 1559 created a political vacuum that the faction around the powerful, and ultra-Catholic, House of Guise was able to exploit as kinsmen of King Francis II’s wife, Mary, Queen of Scots^[10].

The "Amboise conspiracy", or "Tumult of Amboise"

Main article: Amboise conspiracy

In March 1560 a group of disaffected nobles (led by Jean du Barry, seigneur de la Renaudie) attempted to abduct the young Francis II and eliminate the Guise faction. Their plans became discovered before they could succeed and hundreds of plotters were executed.^[11] The Guise brothers suspected Louis I de Bourbon, prince de Condé of leading the plot. He was arrested but eventually freed for lack of evidence, adding to the tensions of the period. (In the polemics that followed, the label "Huguenot" for France's Protestants came into widespread usage.^[12])

Iconoclasm and civic disturbances

Looting of the Churches of Lyon by the Calvinists, in 1562. Antoine Carot.

Traces of iconoclasm at Eglise Saint Sauveur, in La Rochelle.

The first instances of Protestant destruction of images and statues in Catholic churches occurred in Rouen and La Rochelle in 1560. The following year, these disturbances extended to over twenty cities and towns, and would, in turn, incite Catholic urban groups to bloody reprisals in Sens, Cahors, Carcassonne, Tours and other cities.^[13]

Death of Francis II

In December 1560 Francis II died, and his mother Catherine de' Medici became regent for her second son, Charles IX. Inexperienced and faced with the legacy of debt from the Habsburg-Valois conflict, Catherine felt that she had to steer the throne carefully between the powerful and conflicting interests that surrounded it, embodied by the powerful aristocrats who led essentially private armies. Although she was a sincere Roman Catholic, she was prepared to deal favourably with the Huguenot House of Bourbon in order to have a counterweight against the overmighty Guise. She nominated a moderate chancellor, Michel de l'Hôpital, who urged a number of measures providing for civic peace so that a religious resolution could be sought by a sacred council^[14].

The Colloquy of Poissy and the Edict of Saint-Germain

Main articles: Colloquy of Poissy and Edict of Saint-Germain

This council of clergy was formed in 1561, during the Estates-General of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, when the national council of prelates accepted the crown’s request for Huguenots to be given a hearing. The Protestants were represented by 12 ministers and 20 laymen, led by Théodore de Bèze. Neither party aimed at toleration, but at reaching some form of concord on which a new unity could be based. A meeting between Bèze and the Cardinal of Lorraine, of the House of Guise, seemed promising, both appeared ready to compromise on form, however by the end of the Colloquy in October 1561 it was clear that the divides between Catholic and Protestant's ideas were already too wide ^[15].

In early 1562, the regency government attempted to quell escalating disorder in the provinces, only encouraged by factional feuds at court, by instituting the Edict of Saint-Germain, also known as the Edict of January. The legislation sought to give concessions to the Huguenots in order to avoid their rebellion, and allowed them to worship publicly outside of towns and privately inside of them. On March 1, however, a faction of the Guise family's retainers attacked a Calvinist service in Wassy-sur-Blaise in Champagne and massacred the worshippers. The Huguenot Jean de la Fontaine put it this way:

"The Protestants were engaged in prayer outside the walls, in conformity with the king's edict, when the Duke of Guise approached. Some of his suite insulted the worshippers, and from insults they proceeded to blows, and the Duke himself was accidentally wounded in the cheek. The sight of his blood enraged his followers, and a general massacre of the inhabitants of Vassy ensued."^[16]

1562–70

The 'first' war (1562–63)

The Massacre of Vassy, as this became known, provoked open hostilities between the two religions. The Bourbons, led by the prince of Condé, and proclaiming that they were liberating the king and regent from ‘evil’ councillors, organised a kind of protectorate over the Protestant churches and began to seize and garrison strategic towns along the Loire. Although the Huguenots had begun to mobilise for war before Vassy^[17], Condé used the massacre as evidence that the Edict had been broken lending further weight to his campaign, and as hostilities broke out, the Edict was in fact revoked, under pressure from the Guise faction.

The major engagements of the war occurred at Rouen, Dreux and Orléans. At the Siege of Rouen (May-October 1562), the crown regained the city at the cost of Antoine de Navarre, who died of his wounds. The Battle of Dreux (December 1562), saw the capture of Condé by the Guises and Montmorency, the governor general, by the Bourbons. In February 1563, at the Siege of Orléans, Francis, Duke of Guise was shot and killed by the Huguenot Poltrot de Méré; the Guise considered this an assassination on the orders of the duke’s enemy, Admiral Coligny, as it was outside of direct combat. The popular unrest caused by the 'assassination', coupled with the fact that Orléans was holding out in the siege, led Catherine to mediate a truce and the Edict of Amboise (1563).

The ‘Armed Peace’ (1563–67) and the 'second' war (1567–68)

The Edict of Amboise was generally regarded as unsatisfactory by all concerned, the Guise faction being particularly opposed to what they saw as dangerous concessions to heretics. Nonetheless the crown looked to re-unite the two factions in its efforts to re-capture Le Havre which had been occupied by the English as part of the Treaty of Hampton Court between the Huguenot leaders and Elizabeth I. The English were successfully expelled that July and the next month Charles IX declared his legal majority, ending Catherine de' Medici’s regency. His mother continued to play a principal role in politics, however, and she joined her son on a Grand Tour of the kingdom between 1564 and 1566, designed to reinstate crown authority.

Reports of iconoclasm in Flanders led Charles IX to lend support to the Catholics there, leading to fears among the French Huguenots of a Catholic re-mobilisation against them. Phillip II’s reinforcement of the strategic corridor from Italy north along the Rhine added to these fears and political discontent grew. Protestant troops then made an unsuccessful attempt to capture and take control of King Charles IX in the Surprise of Meaux, a number of cities, such as La Rochelle, declared themselves for the Huguenot cause and Catholics, both laymen and clergy, were massacred the following day in Nîmes in what became known as the Michelade.

This provoked the Second War, the main military engagement of which was the Battle of Saint-Denis where the crown’s commander-in-chief and lieutenant general, the seventy-four year old Anne de Montmorency died. The war was brief, ending in another truce, the Peace of Longjumeau (March 1568), which granted significant religious freedoms and privileges to Protestants.

The 'third' war (1568–70)

In reaction to the Peace, Catholic confraternities and leagues sprang up across the country in defiance of the law throughout the summer of 1568. Huguenot leaders such as Condé and Coligny fled court in fear of their lives, many of their followers were murdered, and in September the Edict of Saint-Maur revoked the Huguenots' freedom to worship. In November William of Orange led an army into France in order to support his fellow Protestants, but the army being poorly paid, he accepted the crown’s offer of money and free passage to leave the country.

Nevertheless the Huguenots gathered together a formidable army under the command of Condé, aided by forces from south-east France, led by Paul de Mouvans, and a contingent of fellow Protestant militias from Germany — including 14,000 mercenary reiters led by the Calvinist Duke of Zweibrücken.^[18] After the Duke was killed in action, his troops remained under the employ of the Huguenots who had raised a loan from England against the security of the queen of Navarre’s crown jewels ^[19]. Much of the Huguenots' financing came from Queen Elizabeth of England, who was likely influenced in the matter by Sir Francis Walsingham.^[18] The Catholics were commanded by the Duke d'Anjou (later King Henry III) and assisted by troops from Spain, the Papal States and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.^[20]

Battle of Moncontour, 1569.

The Protestant army laid siege to several cities in the Poitou and Saintonge regions (to protect La Rochelle), and then Angoulême and Cognac. At the Battle of Jarnac (16 March 1569), the prince of Condé was killed, forcing Admiral de Coligny to take command of the Protestant forces, nominally on behalf of Condé’s 15 year old son, Henry, and the sixteen-year old Henry of Navarre, who were presented by Jeanne d’Albret as the legitimate leaders of the Huguenot cause against royal authority. The Battle of La Roche-l'Abeille was a nominal victory for the Huguenots, but they were unable to seize control of Poitiers and were soundly defeated at the Battle of Moncontour (October 30, 1569). Coligny and his troops retreated to the south-west and regrouped with Gabriel, comte de Montgomery, and in spring of 1570 they pillaged Toulouse, cut a path through the south of France and went up the Rhone valley up to La Charité-sur-Loire.^[21] The staggering royal debt and Charles IX's desire to seek a peaceful solution^[22] led to the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (8 August 1570), which once more allowed some concessions to the Huguenots.

St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and after (1572–73)

Main article: St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

Painting of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre by François Dubois.

Despite this shaky truce, anti-Protestant massacres of Huguenots at the hands of Catholic mobs continued, in cities such as Rouen, Orange and Paris. Matters at Court were further complicated as King Charles IX openly allied himself with the Huguenot leaders — especially Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. Meanwhile, the Queen Mother became increasingly fearful of the unchecked power wielded by Coligny and his supporters, especially once it became clear that Coligny was pursuing an alliance with England and the Dutch rebels.

Coligny, along with many other Calvinist nobles, arrived in Paris for the wedding of the Catholic Princess Marguerite de Valois to the Protestant Henry of Navarre on August 18. On August 22, an assassin made a failed attempt on Coligny's life, shooting him in the street from a window. While historians have suggested a likely identity for the assassin (Charles de Louvier, sieur de Maurevert), the source of the order to assassinate Coligny has never been determined (it is improbable that the order came from Catherine).^[23]

Amidst fears of a Huguenot coup, the Duke of Guise and his supporters acted and, in the early morning of August 24, killed Coligny in his lodgings with several of his men. Coligny's body was thrown from the window into the street, and was subsequently mutilated, castrated, dragged through the mud, thrown in the river, suspended on a gallows and burned by the Parisian crowd.^[24] For the next five days the city erupted into a full-scale massacre of Calvinist men, women and children, and the looting of their houses, which was neither approved of nor predicted by the king.^[25] Over the next few weeks the disorder spread to more than a dozen cities across France. Perhaps 2,000 Huguenots were slaughtered in Paris and, in the days that followed, thousands more in the provinces; in all, perhaps 10,000 people were killed.^[26] Henry of Navarre and his cousin, the young prince of Condé, managed to avoid death by agreeing to convert to Catholicism; both would repudiate their conversions once they managed to escape Paris.

Both Philip II of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII declared themselves pleased with the outcome, which provoked horror and outrage by their religious opponents throughout Europe. In France, Huguenot opposition to the crown was left seriously weakened.

The 'fourth' war (1572–73)

The Siege of La Rochelle (1572-1573).

The massacres set off further military action, which included Catholic sieges of the cities of Sommières (by troops led by Henri I de Montmorency), Sancerre and La Rochelle (by troops led by the duke of Anjou). The end of hostilities was brought on by the election (11 - 15 May 1573) of the Duke of Anjou to the throne of Poland and by the Edict of Boulogne (signed in July 1573) which severely curtailed many of the rights previously granted to French Protestants. Based on the terms of the treaty, all Huguenots were granted amnesty for their past actions and the freedom of belief. However, they were permitted the freedom to worship only within the three towns of La Rochelle, Montauban, and Nîmes, and even then only within their own residences; Protestant aristocrats with the right of high-justice were permitted to celebrate marriages and baptisms, but only before an assembly limited to ten persons outside of their family. ^[27]

1574–80

Death of Charles IX and the 'fifth' war (1574–76)

In the absence of the duke of Anjou disputes between Charles and his youngest brother, the duke of Alençon, led to many Huguenots congregating around Alençon for patronage and support. A failed coup at Saint-Germain (February 1574), allegedly aiming to release Condé and Navarre who had been held at court since St Bartholemew’s, coincided with rather successful Huguenot uprisings in other parts of France such as Lower Normandy, Poitou and the Rhône valley (Knecht p181), which reinitiated hostilities.

Three months after Henry of Anjou's coronation as King of Poland, his brother Charles IX died (May 1574) and his mother declared herself regent until his return. Henry secretly left Poland and returned via Venice to France, where he faced the defection of Montmorency-Damville, ex-commander in the Midi (November 1574). Despite having failed to have established his authority over the Midi, he was crowned King Henry III, at Rheims February 1575, marrying Louise Vaudémont, a kinswoman of the Guise, the following day. By April the crown was already seeking to negotiate ^[28], and the escape of Alençon from court in September prompted the possibility of an overwhelming coalition of forces against the crown, as John Casimir of the Palatinate invaded Champagne. The crown hastily negotiated a truce of seven months with Alençon and promised Casimir’s forces 500,000 livres to stay east of the Rhine ^[29] but neither action secured a peace. By May 1576 the crown was forced to accept the terms of Alençon, and the Huguenots who supported him, in the Edict of Beaulieu, known as the Peace of Monsieur.

The Catholic League and the 'sixth' war (1576–77)

Armed procession of the Catholic League in Paris in 1590, Musée Carnavalet.

The Edict of Beaulieu granted many concessions to the Calvinists, but they were short-lived in the face of the Catholic League which the ultra-Catholic, Henry I, Duke of Guise, had formed in opposition to it. The House of Guise had long been identified with the defense of the Roman Catholic Church and the Duke of Guise and his relations — the Duke of Mayenne, Duke of Aumale, Duke of Elboeuf, Duke of Mercoeur and the Duke of Lorraine — controlled extensive territories that were loyal to the League. The League also had a large following among the urban middle class. The Estates-General of Blois (1576) failed to resolve matters, and by December the Huguenots had already taken up arms in Poitou and Guyenne. While the Guise faction had the unwavering support of the Spanish Crown, the Huguenots had the advantage of a strong power base in the southwest; they were also discreetly supported by foreign Protestant governments, but in practice, England or the German states could provide few troops in the ensuing conflict. After much posturing and negotiations, Henry III rescinded most of the concessions that had been made to the Protestants in the Edict of Beaulieu with the Treaty of Bergerac (September 1577), confirmed in the Edict of Poitiers passed six days later ^[30].

The 'seventh' war (1579–80) and the Death of Anjou (1584)

Despite according his brother the title of Duke of Anjou, the prince and his followers continued to create disorder at court through their involvement in the Dutch Revolt. Meanwhile the regional situation disintegrated into disorder as both Catholics and Protestants armed themselves in 'self defence'. In November 1579 Condé seized the town of La Fère leading to another round of military action which was brought to an end by the Treaty of Fleix (November 1580), negotiated by Anjou.

The fragile compromise came to an end in 1584, when the Duke of Anjou, the King's youngest brother and heir presumptive, died. As Henry III had no son, under Salic Law, the next heir to the throne was the Calvinist Prince Henri of Navarre, a descendant of Louis IX whom Pope Sixtus V had excommunicated along with his cousin, Henri Prince de Condé. When it became clear that Henri of Navarre would not rennounce his Protestantism the Duke of Guise signed the Treaty of Joinville (December 1584), on behalf of the League, with Philip II of Spain, who supplied a considerable annual grant to the League over the following decade to maintain the civil war in France, with the hope of destroying the French Calvinists. Under pressure from the Guise, Henri III reluctantly issued the Treaty of Nemours (July) and an Edict, suppressing Protestantism and annulling Henri of Navarre's right to the throne.

1585–98

The "War of the Three Henrys"

The King at first tried to co-opt the head of the Catholic League and steer it towards a negotiated settlement. This was anathema to the Guise leaders, who wanted to bankrupt the Huguenots and divide their considerable assets with the King. The situation degenerated into open warfare. Henry of Navarre again sought foreign aid from the German princes and Elizabeth I of England. Meanwhile, the solidly Catholic people of Paris, under the influence of the Committee of Sixteen were becoming dissatisfied with Henry III and his failure to defeat the Calvinists. On 12 May 1588, the Day of the Barricades, a popular uprising raised barricades on the streets of Paris to defend the Duke of Guise against the alleged hostility of the king, and Henry III fled the city. The Committee of Sixteen took complete control of the government, while the Guise protected the surrounding supply lines. The mediation of Catherine de'Medici led to the Edict of Union, in which the crown accepted almost all the League's demands; reaffirming the Treaty of Nemours, recognising Cardinal de Bourbon as heir, and making the duke of Guise Lieutenant-General.

The Estates-General of Blois and Assassination of the Guise (1588)

Refusing to return to Paris, Henry III called for an Estates-General at Blois in September of that year. During the Estates-General Henry suspected that the members of the third estate were being manipulated by the League and became convinced that Guise had encouraged the duke of Savoy's invasion of Saluzzo in October. Viewing the House of Guise as a dangerous threat to the power of the Crown, King Henri decided to strike first. On December 23, 1588, at the Château de Blois, Henry of Guise and his brother, the Cardinal de Guise, were lured into a trap by the King's guards. The Duke arrived in the council chamber where his brother the Cardinal waited. The Duke was told that the King wished to see him in the private room adjoining the royal chambers. There guardsmen seized the duke and stabbed him in the heart, while others arrested the Cardinal who later died on the pikes of his escort. To make sure that no contender for the French throne was free to act against him, the King had the Duke's son imprisoned. The Duke of Guise had been highly popular in France, and the Catholic League declared open war against King Henry. The Parlement of Paris instituted criminal charges against the King, who now joined forces with his cousin, the Huguenot, Henry of Navarre, to war against the League.

The assassination of Henry III (1589)

It thus fell upon the younger brother of the Guise, the Duke of Mayenne, to become the leader of the Catholic League. The League presses began printing anti-royalist tracts under a variety of pseudonyms, while the Sorbonne proclaimed that it was just and necessary to depose Henri III, and that any private citizen was morally free to commit regicide. In July 1589, in the royal camp at Saint-Cloud, a Dominican monk named Jacques Clément gained an audience with the King and drove a long knife into his spleen. Clément was killed on the spot, taking with him the information of who, if anyone, had hired him. On his deathbed, Henri III called for Henry of Navarre, and begged him, in the name of Statecraft, to become a Catholic, citing the brutal warfare that would ensue if he refused. In keeping with Salic Law, he named Henri as his heir.

Henry IV’s ‘Conquest of the Kingdom’ (1589-1593)

The situation on the ground in 1589 was that the new Henry IV of France, as Navarre had become, held the south and west, and the Catholic League the north and east. The leadership of the Catholic League had devolved to the Duke de Mayenne, who was appointed Lieutenant-General of the kingdom. He and his troops controlled most of rural Normandy. However, in September 1589, Henry inflicted a severe defeat on the Duke at the Battle of Arques. Henry's army swept through Normandy, taking town after town throughout the winter.

The King knew that he had to take Paris if he stood any chance of ruling all of France. This, however, was no easy task. The Catholic League's presses and supporters continued to spread stories about atrocities committed against Catholic priests and the laity in Protestant England (see Forty Martyrs of England and Wales). The city prepared to fight to the death rather than accept a Calvinist king.

The Battle of Ivry, fought on March 14, 1590, was another decisive victory for Henry against forces led by the Duke of Mayenne. Henry's forces then went on to lay siege to Paris, but the siege was broken by Spanish support (under the command of the Duke of Parma), by the end of August; a situation which was repeated at the Siege of Rouen (November 1591-March 1592).

War in Brittany

Meanwhile Philippe Emmanuel, Duke of Mercoeur, whom Henry III had made governor of Brittany in 1582, was endeavouring to make himself independent in that province. A leader of the Catholic League, he invoked the hereditary rights of his wife, Marie de Luxembourg, who was a descendant of the dukes of Brittany and heiress of the Blois-Brosse claim to the duchy as well as Duchess of Penthievre in Brittany, and organized a government at Nantes. Proclaiming his son "prince and duke of Brittany", he allied with Philip II of Spain, who sought to place his own daughter, infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, on the throne of Brittany. With the aid of the Spanish, Mercoeur defeated Henry IV’s forces under the Duke of Montpensier, at Craon in 1592, but the royal troops, reinforced by English contingents, soon recovered the advantage.

Towards peace (1593–98)

Conversion

Henry IV, as Hercules vanquishing the Lernaean Hydra (i.e. the Catholic League), by Toussaint Dubreuil, circa 1600. Louvre Museum.

Despite the campaigns between 1590 and 1592, Henry IV was "no closer to capturing Paris" ^[31]. Realising that Henry III had been right and that there was no prospect of a Protestant king succeeding in resolutely Catholic Paris, Henry agreed to convert, reputedly stating "Paris vaut bien une messe" ("Paris is well worth a Mass"). He was formally received into the Catholic Church in 1593, and was crowned at Chartres in 1594 as League members maintained control of the Cathedral of Rheims, and, sceptical of Henry's sincerity, continued to oppose him. He was finally received into Paris in March 1594, and 120 League members in the city who refused to submit were banished from the capital^[32]. Paris' capitulation encouraged the same of many other towns, while others returned to support the crown after Pope Clement VIII absolved Henry, revoking his excommunication in return for the publishing of the Tridentine Decrees, the restoration of Catholicism in Béarn, and appointing only Catholics to high office^[33]. Evidently Henry's conversion worried Protestant nobles, many of whom had, until then, hoped to win not just concessions but a complete reformation of the French Church, and their acceptance of Henry was by no means a foregone conclusion.

War with Spain (1595–98)

By the end of 1594 certain League members were still working against him across the country, but all relied on the support of Spain. In January 1595, therefore, Henry declared war on Spain, in order to show Catholics, that Spain was using religion as a cover for an attack on the French state, and Protestants, that he had not become a puppet of Spain through his conversion, while hoping to take the war to Spain and make territorial gain ^[34]. The conflict mostly consisted of military action aimed at League members, such as the Battle of Fontaine-Française, though the Spanish launched a concerted offensive in the spring of 1596 capturing Calais and Ardes by April. Following the capture of Amiens in March 1597 the crown laid siege until its surrender in September. After the Siege of Amiens Henry’s concerns turned to the situation in Brittany, the king sent Bellièvre and Brulart de Sillery to negotiate a peace with Spain. The war was only drawn to an official close, however, after the Edict of Nantes, with the Peace of Vervins in May 1598.

Resolution of the War in Brittany (1598–99)

In early 1598 the king marched against Mercoeur in person, and received his submission at Angers on March 20, 1598. Mercoeur subsequently went to exile in Hungary. Mercoeur's daughter and heiress was married to the Duke of Vendôme, an illegitimate son of Henry IV.

The Edict of Nantes (1598)

Main article: Edict of Nantes

Henry IV was faced with the task of rebuilding a shattered and impoverished Kingdom and uniting it under a single authority. Henry and his advisor, the Duke of Sully saw the essential first step in this to be the negotiation of the Edict of Nantes, which, rather than being a sign of genuine toleration, was in fact a kind of grudging truce between the religions, with guarantees for both sides ^[35]. The Edict can be said to mark the end of the Wars of Religion, though its apparent success was not assured at the time of its publication. Indeed, in January 1599, Henry had to visit the Parlement in person to have the Edict passed. Religious tensions continued to affect politics for many years to come, though never to the same degree, and Henry IV faced many attempts on his life; the last — a Catholic who believed the king had failed in his Christian duty — succeeding in May 1610.

17th and 18th centuries

Main article: Huguenot rebellions

The French fleet captured the Huguenot Île de Ré in the Capture of Ré island.

Although the Edict of Nantes brought the conflicts to a close, the political freedoms it granted to the Huguenots (seen by detractors as "a state within the state") became an increasing source of trouble during the 17th century. The decision of King Louis XIII to reintroduce Catholicism in a portion of southwestern France prompted a Huguenot revolt. By the Peace of Montpellier in 1622, the fortified Protestant towns were reduced to two: La Rochelle and Montauban. Another war followed, which concluded with the Siege of La Rochelle, in which royal forces led by Cardinal Richelieu blockaded the city for fourteen months. Under the 1629 Peace of La Rochelle, the brevets of the Edict (sections of the treaty which dealt with the military and pastoral clauses and which were renewable by letters patent) were entirely withdrawn, though Protestants retained their prewar religious freedoms.

The 1627–28 Siege of La Rochelle was a catastrophe for the Huguenots.

Over the remainder of Louis XIII's reign, and especially during the minority of Louis XIV, the implementation of the Edict varied year by year. In 1661 Louis XIV, who was particularly hostile to the Huguenots, assumed control of the French government and began to disregard some of the provisions of the Edict. In 1681 he instituted the policy of dragonnades, to intimidate Huguenot families to reconvert to Roman Catholicism or emigrate. Finally, in October 1685, Louis issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, which formally revoked the Edict and made the practice of Protestantism illegal in France. The revocation of the Edict had very damaging results for France. While it did not prompt renewed religious warfare, many Protestants chose to leave France rather than convert, with most moving to Great Britain, Prussia, the Dutch Republic and Switzerland.

Protestant engraving representing 'les dragonnades' in France under Louis XIV.

At the dawn of the 18th century, Protestants remained in significant numbers in the remote Cévennes region of the Massif Central. This population, known as the Camisards, revolted against the government in 1702, leading to fighting that continued intermittently until 1715, after which time the Camisards were largely left in peace.

Chronology

• January 17, 1562 - Edict of Saint-Germain, often called the "Edict of January"
• March 1, 1562 - Massacre at Wassy-sur-Blaise
• March 1562 - March 1563 First War, ended by the Edict of Amboise
  • December 19, 1562 - Battle of Dreux
• September 1567 - March 1568 Second War, ended by the Peace of Longjumeau
  • November 10, 1567 - Battle of Saint Denis
• 1568–70 Third War, ended by the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
  • March 1569 - Battle of Jarnac
  • June 1569 - Battle of La Roche-l'Abeille
  • October 1569 - Battle of Moncontour
• 1572 - St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre
• 1572–73 Fourth War, ended by the Edict of Boulogne
  • November 1572 - July 1573 - Siege of La Rochelle
  • May 1573 - Henry d'Anjou elected King of Poland
• 1574 - Death of Charles IX
• 1574–76 Fifth War, ended by the Edict of Beaulieu
• 1576 - Formation of the first Catholic League in France
• 1576–77 Sixth War, ended by the Treaty of Bergerac (also known as the "Edict of Poitiers")
• 1579–80 Seventh War, ended by the Treaty of Fleix
• June 1584 - death of François, Duke of Anjou, heir presumptive
• December 1584 - Treaty of Joinville
• 1585–98 Eighth War, ended by the Peace of Vervins and the Edict of Nantes
  • October 1587 - Battle of Coutras, Battle of Vimory
  • December 1588 - Assassination of the Duke of Guise and his brother
  • August 1589 - Assassination of Henry III
  • September 1589 - Battle of Arques
  • March 1590 - Battle of Ivry, Siege of Paris
  • 1593 - Henry IV abjures Protestantism
  • 1594 - Henry IV crowned in Chartres.
  • June 1595 - Battle of Fontaine-Française
  • April – September 1597 - Siege of Amiens
  • April 1598 - Edict of Nantes issued by Henry IV

See also

• Edict of toleration
• Monarchomachs
• European wars of religion
• Religion in France
• List of wars and disasters by death toll

Notes

1. ^ Knecht 1996, p. 2
2. ^ ^{a b} Knecht 1996, p. 3
3. ^ Holt, p. 20
4. ^ Knecht 1996, p. 4
5. ^ Knecht 1996, p. 6
6. ^ Knecht 2001, pp. 86-7
7. ^ Knecht 1996, pp. 6-7
8. ^ Knecht, p. 10
9. ^ CarterLindberg, 'The European Reformations' (1996) p282
10. ^ Salmon, p.118.
11. ^ Salmon, pp.124–5; the cultural context is explored by N.M. Sutherland, "Calvinism and the conspiracy of Amboise", History 47 (1962:111–38).
12. ^ Salmon, p.125.
13. ^ Salmon, pp.136-7.
14. ^ see his speech to the Estates General at Orleans of 1560
15. ^ Knecht, French Civil Wars, p78-9
16. ^ Rev. James Fontaine and Ann Maury, Memoirs of a Huguenot family (New York) 1853.
17. ^ Knecht, The French Civil Wars, p86
18. ^ ^{a b} Jouanna, p.181.
19. ^ Knecht, French Civil Wars, p151
20. ^ Jouanna, p.182.
21. ^ Jouanna, p.184.
22. ^ Jouanna, pp.184–5.
23. ^ Jouanna, 196.
24. ^ Jouanna, 199.
25. ^ Jouanna, 201.
26. ^ Jouanna, 204.
27. ^ Jouanna, p.213.
28. ^ Knecht, French Civil Wars, p190
29. ^ Knecht, French Civil Wars, p191
30. ^ Knecht, French Civil Wars, p208
31. ^ Knecht French Civil Wars p264
32. ^ Knecht, French Civil Wars, p270
33. ^ Knecht, French Civil Wars, p270
34. ^ Knecht French Civil Wars p272
35. ^ Philip Benedict, ‘Un roi, une loi, deux fois: Parameters for the History of Catholic-Protestant Co-existence in France, 1555-1685’, in O. Grell & B. Scribner (eds), Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (1996), pp. 65-93

References

• H. M. Baird, History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France, v1 (1889), History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France, v2 (1889). New edition, two volumes, New York, 1907.
• H. M. Baird, The Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, (1895).
• Philip Benedict, ‘Un roi, une loi, deux fois: Parameters for the History of Catholic-Protestant Co-existence in France, 1555-1685’, in O. Grell & B. Scribner (eds), Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (1996), pp. 65–93
• Barbara B. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (Oxford, 1991).
• Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France, (Stanford, 1975).
• Mark Greengrass, The French Reformation, (London, 1987).
• Mark Greengrass, France in the Age of Henry IV, (London, 1986).
• Mark Greengrass, Governing Passions: Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576-1585, (Oxford, 2007).
• Mack P. Holt, The French wars of religion, 1562-1629, (Cambridge, 2005). ISBN 052183872X
• E. M. Hulme, The Renaissance, the Protestant Revolution, and the Catholic Reaction in Continental Europe, (New York) 1914
• (French) Arlette Jouanna and Jacqueline Boucher, Dominique Biloghi, Guy Thiec. Histoire et dictionnaire des Guerres de religion. Collection: Bouquins. Paris: Laffont, 1998. ISBN 2-221-07425-4
• Robert J. Knecht, The French Civil Wars (Modern Wars in Perspective) (Harlow, 2000).
• Robert J. Knecht, The French Wars of Religion 1559–1598 (Seminar Studies in History) ISBN 0-582-28533-X
• Robert J. Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France 1483-1610 (Oxford, 2001). ISBN 0631227296
• T. M. Lindsay, A History of the Reformation, V1 (1906). A History of the Reformation, V2 (1907).
• J.H.M. Salmon. Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century. London: Methuen, 1975. ISBN 0-416-73050-7
• N.M. Sutherland, "Calvinism and the conspiracy of Amboise", History 47 (1962:111-38).
• J. W. Thompson, The Wars of Religion in France, 1559-1576, (Chicago, 1909)
• Arthur Augustus Tilley, The French wars of religion, (1919)

External links

• The Wars of Religion, Part I
• The Wars of Religion, Part II
• The Wars of Religion at The Virtual Museum of French Protestantism
• French Religious Wars

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