SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

HISTORY,

The Protestant Reformation in France ; or the History of the lIngonots. By the Author of 's Father Darcy," "Two Old Men's Tales," &a. Volumes I. and II.

Miscxxxssigoue LITERATURE, Batiks, • First Impressions of England and its People. By Hugh Miller, Author of the "Old Red Sandstone." A.. Johnstone. FIcriox,

11111-side and Border Sketches ; with Legends of the Cheviots and the Lammennulr. By W. H. Maxwell, Author of" Wild Sports of the West." "Stories of Waterloo."

In two volumes Bentley. The Life and Adventures of Zamba, an African Negro King ; and his Experience of Slavery in South Carolina. Written by Himself. Corrected and arranged by Peter Neilson. Smith and Elder.

THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION IN FRANCE.

THE author of The Protestant Reformation in France has produced various fictions, of which the best known is the " Two Old Men's Tales." In the work before us he has essayed history, and chosen the same subject that Mr. James treated lately in his Life of Henry the Fourth. The period selected is precisely the game so far as it goes : the chief formal distinction is that Mr. James took three volumes for his entire theme ; in the book before us the author has filled two volumes in coming down to the death of Charles the Ninth, and will require two more on the same scale to close the reign of Henry the Fourth. He, however, contemplates carrying on the narrative to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

As regards literary merit, the advantage is on the side of The Pro- testant Reformation in France. The author may not have such fami- liarity with the times as the reading of Mr. James has given him ; nor, perhaps, the same living knowledge of the country where the events took place. The novelist peeps out disadvantageously in both writers, showing itself in an anxious marking of details which require a happy management to be appropriate to history ; but James has better caught the historical manner. In all other points the writer before us excels. He has given more time to his task and taken greater pains over it; so that his matter is better digested and the results are better displayed. He professes to have gone upon the rather peculiar plan of "relating a domestic story, not undertaking a political history—of displaying the virtues, errors, suf- ferings, and experiences of individual men, rather than the affairs of con- sistories or the intrigues of cabinets." Such a plan could only have produced a sort of hodgepodge, neither history, biography, memoirs, nor ana : but the author has not attempted to carry out his theory, unless it be in the over-detail just alluded to, and a somewhat needless exhibition of individual traits in the quotation of letters and the like. But he had a definite object, which was to portray the religious struggles consequent upon the Reformation in France ; and this gives a purpose to his work, and imparts to it a unity, in which the Lift of Henry the Fourth by Mr. James, was altogether deficient. The author of Two Old Men's Tales also exhibits a more philosophi- cal perception of his subject. He sees that the period of the last sovereigns of the house of Valois was part of the great transition between the feuds- lity of the Freneh Sovereign Princes before Louis the Eleventh, and the absolute power of the Crown under the meridian of Louis the Fourteenth But though he marks clearly enough, in the words of his introductory survey, that the age of independent feudatories was past, and that of the French nobility and gentry in full vigour, he does not attempt to de' scribe the national characteristics—to separate French from the other European feudalities, to delineate its prominent and visible features, and to mark its essential quality. This quality strikes us as being Celtic; and in spirit very similar to Highland chieftainship,—a great man with a tail, not of subjects like the Germans, or vassals like the English, or factious partisans like the Italians, but a real "following." Something of the fact, indeed, we cannot help occasionally seeing in the narrative ; but the author has not seen it himself; or at least presented it. He properly, and well enough, though curso- rily, expounds the functions of the parliaments, municipalities, and other recognized bodies, as well as the condition of the people; but the source of power of the French nobility, the actual authority they possessed, and their means of influence, have escaped him. An analagous remark may be made as to the manners of the age and tge condition of society. They appear in the narrative, especially as the author deals largely in quotation from contemporary authors; but they have too much the air of isolated bits. The reader does not feel him. self in the French atmosphere of the sixteenth century in France. From deficiency of imagination, or from the author's not having his mind suf- ficiently saturated with his subject, we see the things as in a show, rather than feel them as a reality. The book wants that indescribable some- thing which in works of genius makes the reader feel that he is in another age.

Although The Protestant Reformation in France is not his- tory, still it is an able and painstaking account; the result of consider- able reading with a distinct purpose, which has induced a definite mode of treatment, and caused the introduction of more civil and intellectual topics than has usually been the case in books of this kind. The meet- ing of the States-General, and the public disputation between Romanist and Huguenot theologians before the Court in 1560-1561, are exhibited at some length ; the activity of the press during periods of excite- ment, in disseminating the views of the different parties by argument, lampoons, and songs, is clearly indicated. Independently of their inte- rest as mere narratives, these have great value, especially the account of the States-General, for the information furnished, and the glimpses given of the condition of the country and the leaning of opinion by the re- sults of the debates. We say results, because each of the three bodies —the Nobles, the Clergy, and the Tiers Etat, elected their orator, who presented the result of the deliberation in a "cahier," and expressed the opinion of the whole in a single speech. The orator was a practical man addressing the Crown and some sort of public, who knew the truth or falsehood of the facts he was alleging; his representations may therefore be received as verities, with a due allowance for the amplifications of rhetoric. The following summary of the apeech of the representative of the Third Estate is curious as a specimen of French representative oratory of the sixteenth century, as well as interesting for its social indis Cations.

" Upon the 4,st day of January 1561, the King, accompanied as before, came down to the Assembly to listen to the harangue of the Orators. "L'Ange for the Tiers hat spoke first. His speech, though pedantic, contains an animated and affecting picture of the miseries which afflicted his country, uni- ted with sentiments upon the subject of liberty, and the rights of mankind in general, which were just as they were generous. He denied that religious dif- ferences alone occasioned the distraction and decline of the state, attributable in a still higher degree to the vices of the higher and the wretchedness of the lower orders of society. He accused the clergy of ' une ignorance creme et generate'—of avarice which drove a trade even in the sacraments, and devoted to purposes equally profane and scandalous funds destined to feed the poor and maintain un- impir.d the holy edifices—of unbridled luxury, qui changeoit en un palais, rhumble toit galls devoient avoir dans le perm de feur eglise, et leur modest° domestique en tin train et des equipages, qui lea faisoient miens resembler aux anciens batrapes de Perse qu'aux successeurs des Apotres.' "The magistrates he censured for venality, ignorance, and idleness. The no- bility, for a neglect of those duties the discharge of which formed the condition by which they alone held their great possessions and high privileges, more es- pecially that of military service, which they were bound to perform to the exclu- sion of the inferior classes. Whereas, now the people were loaded with taxes to pay foreign mercenaries to supply their place.' effet a ne considerer quo la condaite et les deportemens de Is plus part de cot unire, on seroit tente d croire, quits font consister la noblesse a vivre dans roisivete, d prendre lea places lea plus honorables dans une assemblee, it avoir de plus belles maisons, de plus beaux habits, et une table mieux servie quo lea mitres; et I se croire digne des plus gmades recompenses, s'ils peuvent citer quelque fait glorieux d'un de 'ears an- eitres: He painted their ruinous pomp, their haughty pretensions, their pride, and their shameful idleness, leur hate ruineux, la morgue de Mars pretentious, lens orgueil insultante, at l'oisivete honteuse dens laquelle ils croupissoient: "He concluded with an affecting description of the situation of the people, of their general misery, the depression of the agriculturists—crushed to the earth by the *line fiscal, weighed down by the oppressions of the nobility, and ruined by their hardheartedness (durete)."

Jacques du Tilly Baron de Beaufort, the orator for the Nobility, was less catholic and patriotic than L'Ange for the Tiers Etat; displaying more of the caste exclusiveness of the gentilhomme of the old regime„ with a feeling for his "order" which must have dashed the popular ef- fect of his harangue.

" The orator for the Nobility, in his harangue, justified the accusation of pride at least, which had been preferred by De l'Ange. He claimed for his order, as for the King., a divine right, an origin from God himself—' qui avoit establi une classe pnvilegee an soutien fin trane et I la defense de is societe entiare: He joined, however, with the orator for the Tiers hat in his attack upon the clergy and magistrature; and concluded by presenting fear caldera where, mingled with various suggestions equally wise and benevolent for the relief of all classes, we meet with the following requests= That it might be forbidden, under pain of a fine of five hundred livres, for any man qui n'etoit noble d'extraction to deno- minate himself in any act noble ou ecuyer ; and that any one ennobled, (ennobli,) until the fourth generation might be prohibited from wearing cap, shoes, girdle, or scabbard, of velvet, or any ornament of gold in the hat—nor his wife be suf- fered to entitle herself demoiselle, or wear robe of velvet, or gold border to her chaperon."

It is a singular and not an insignificant fact as regards the times, that the man whose trade was scholarship and preaching succeeded least and fared worst. Jean Quentin, Canon of Notre Dame, after abusing the Huguenots and fawning on those in power, claimed for his "order" a right divine against paying taxes. "When he spoke of those contributions towards relieving the burdens of the country, which, it was expected, would be demanded from the clergy, he thought proper to express himself thus: 'Sire,' said he, we require of you, as something that neither can nor ought to be refuse..d, that you abstain from accepting anything of the clergy, under any name or title whatsoever, be it either as gift, gratuity, benevolence, or otherwise. Certainement semble comme eat la vente quo le Prince no pent (sain et sauve as conscience) les demander; ni les eccleshistiques (la lam aussi sauve) lea accepter. The orator appears, however, to have been a very imperfect interpreter of the sentiments of his order- for the collier of the Clergy was drawn up with singular moderation. The harangue went far beyond what the times would bear, and excited such a torrent of mingled indignation and ridicule, that the unhappy speaker died, it is said, of naortihcation in the course of a few days."

The author has given considerable attention, though not more than it deserves, to the Massacre of St. Bartholomew ; and he seems to approach very nearly to a sound conclusion. He inclines to acquit Charles the Ninth of any knowledge of the plot until shortly before its execution ; and of course absolves his memory from the monstrous hypocrisy with which he has been charged in consequence of his apparent favour to the leaders of the Reformed, especially Admiral de Coligny. Our author holds that Charles was really attached to the Admiral, as much as it was in his capricious, brutal, and possibly insane nature, to be attached to any one ; of the designs of the other parties--the Queen-mother, the Guises, and the Pontifical Legate—the author speaks more doubtfully. The sound- est conclusion probably is, that though the wish and even the purpose were formed of cutting off the chiefs of the Huguenots, and thus getting rid of political enemies, and suppressing, as they fancied, religious differences, no actual plan was determined on when the Protestant chiefs came to fans. The wish, the thought, the resolution to do mischief, were evi- dently there; for some of the more prudent Protestants were alarmed by the indications round them, and withdrew. It is possible that the mode was not settled till after the failure of the attempted assassination of Co- ligny, on the 22d of August (St. Bartholomew's day was the 24th). If the authorities in this mysterious affair are to be relied on, this is evi- dently the truth of the case. Dreading lest the privity of her favourite son, the Duke D'Anjou, to the attack on Coligny should be discovered, and anticipating from the anger and alarm of the Huguenots a renewal of the war, the Queen-mother seems to have plunged into the long medi- tated crime. Inflaming the King against the Huguenots by representing them as preparing an insurrection to revenge the attempted assassination, she then persuaded him to attend a council ; which the writer before us thus describes. " It VMS in this mood that he at last consented to attend the secret cabinet, now assembled for the second time during that eventful day. It was held after dinner, in a summer-house in the garden of the Turneries; and consisted of only six people—the Queen-mother, the Duke d'Anjou, Tavannes, De Rata, Biragne, and the Duke de Nevers.

" The plans in succession proposed, and in succession abandoned, were various; but not one was there found to point out the safe and easy path of good faith and humanity. Some advised to finish the Admiral, others a general arrest of the Hugonot chiefs; violence, treachery, and bloodshed, were the leading features in all their schemes.

" By one counsellor, the Marechal de Retz' it was proposed to shelter the King from the odium which must necessarily attach to any open breach of faith upon his part, by inflaming the animosities of the rival factions of Guise Coligny, and

Montmorency, till they broke out into open conflict, and then to leave them to fight it out and slaughter each other in the streets of Paris. ' During this confused discussion, the King listened in obstinate and gloomy silence, while the Queen-mother, at his ear, was busily employed urging upon him every consideration which could awaken his anger, his jealousy, or his appre- hensions. She represented the ill-suppressed rage and violence of the Hugonots; recalled the terrible days of Amboise and Meaux; assured him that they were at that very moment actually conspiring against the State, and that the Admiral had, as she was well informed, despatched emissaries into Germany and Switzer- land to levy 10,000 reisters and 10,000 of the Swiss infantry. On the other hand, she painted the Catholics alarmed and indignant—resolved to resist the Hugonot ascendancy, and prepared to enter into a league offensive and defensive, and elect a captain and a leader of their own, to defend them upon the slightest suspicion of collusion between the King and the Admiral; and she described him as stand- ing alone, deserted and defenceless, to perish amid contending factious, leaving his family and his kingdom in ruins. The only remedy she could suggest in this dilemma was to cut the Gordian knot of circumstance by a crime; and she ended by declaring, that the sole means of escape from the evils which surrounded them would be to make away with the Admiral at once, saying that with him the de- signs and enterprises of the Hugonots and the jealousies of the Catholics would speedily come to an end.

The King, as Henry III. [then Duke D'Anjou] tells us, at length seemed moved by all this reasoning, but requested, that before deciding upon an affair of this importance, he might hear the opinion of all present. Now those who spoke first were all of opinion that it should be done as was proposed; but when it came to the turn of blarechal de Bets il tromps bien noire espemnce and gave excellent reasons against it; showing that the Admiral's death must infallibly be the occa- sion of new wars, and that treachery like this would cover the King with eternal and indelible infamy.' But no one seconded him; so that, having recovered their countenance and spirits a little from the confusion into which these remarks had, thrownthem, all talking together, they silenced De Bets.

"We may picture to ourselves the gloomy countenance of the wretched Charles, listening with a sort of sarcastic impatience while crimes in their different degrees and consequences were thus.coolly discussed and canvassed before him. Suddenly the blood seemed to mount into his head. "None recogneusmes I 'Instant one soudaine mutation, et merveilleuse et estrange metainorphoseau Roi. It was now. our turn to hold him in: springing suddenly up, shouting with rage and fury, lad swore with a terrible oath, That since they thought it right to kill the Admiral, they might do as they would; but of this he was resolved, that every lingonot in France should perish with him; for not one should be left to reproach him.. with the murder'; and rushing furiously out, he left us in the cabinet; where we employed ourselves the remainder of that day and a good part of the night in arranging the measures we thought advisable for carrying the enterprise into exe- cution.

"There is a very considerable mixture of falsehood thrown into this account; which, it may be said, is a circumstance which will surprise no one, when it is as- cribed to Henry of Anjou. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the project of the massacre did not take its origin from the King. Tavannes gives a more credible relation, and employs the very abuse of words by which it is probable these murderers glossed over the atrocious action to their consciences. The King was made acquainted, he says, by the Council,'quo tout alloit decouvrant—et qua cenx de Guise mesmes, pour se lever, accuseriment la Reyne et M. d'Anjon- [of the assassination of the Admiral] et quo la guerre etoist infaillible; qu'il valoit miens gagner une bataille dans Paris, on tons lea chefs etoient, clue la mettre en flouts en Is campagne et tomber en une daugereuse et incertaine guerre.'" Once decided upon, there was no difficulty in the execution. Setting aside the soldiers Of the King, and the followers of Guise and other Ro-, manists, the municipality of Paris had been so well organized during the civil wars, that they and the Parisian rabble were ready to act on very short notice. The agency of this rabble in the ensuing horrors, the manner in which they passed beyond the intentions of the Court, and even beyond the wishes of the bloodthirsty Guise, into indiscriminate pillage and murder, are well marked by our author. But perhaps neither in this' nor on any other occasion does he allow sufficiently for the effects of political enmity operating upon national character. Though very Anti- Papal, he is not a bigot; but we think he ascribes throughout more to re- ligion than can fairly be attributed to it. The crimes committed during the whole of the drama were, it seems to us, as much those of Frenchmen as of Romanist.a, Religious wars were waged in Germany and Scot- land, or at least political wars, in which religion was prominently mixed up ; the great civil war of England had a strong tincture of religion : but in none of these countries was there any approach to the cold- blooded and systematic massacres that characterized the disputes of the League ; for the atrocities in Germany were those of military licence. Ireland is the only country where the same sort of treachery, cruelty, and cool recklessness in conspiracy and massacre, can be found ; and in France the Celtic blood is very strong, though not predominant. We do not defend the Papal Church from the charge of persecuting on principle, or supporting crime on the, plea that the end justifies the means ; but we have only to glance at the murders and massacres of the French Revolution, by the same people in the same places, to be satisfied that religion had little to do with the St. Bartholomew and other atroci- ties of the same age. It was in the blood as much as in the creed ; though the creed might suit the blood.