(Redirected from Wars of Religion)
The 'French Wars of Religion', (
1562 to
1598) were a series of conflicts fought between
Catholics and
Huguenots (
Protestants) from the middle of the
sixteenth century to the
Edict of Nantes in
1598, including
civil infighting as well as
military operations. In addition to the religious elements, they involved a struggle for control over the ruling of the country between the
Catholic House of Guise (
Lorraine) on the one hand, and the
Calvinist House of Bourbon on the other. In addition, they may also be considered a war by proxy between King
Philip II of Spain and Queen
Elizabeth I of England. Hundreds of thousands were killed as a result.
Protestants in France
Main articles: Huguenot
Lutheranism was introduced in France after about 1520. Initially, King
Francis I was tolerant of religious reformers, but after the
Affair of the Placards in
1534, he was forced to view Protestants as a threat and openly moved against them. One French Protestant,
John Calvin, found refuge in
Geneva, where he came to hold great influence on the reform movement. During the reign of
Henry II (1547 - 1559),
Calvinism gained numerous converts in France among the
French nobility, the middle class, and the
intelligentsia. Although Huguenots accounted for only a small fraction of the French population, the great wealth and influence that many of them possessed began to cause bitterness (see
Market dominant minority)
In
1559, delegates from 66
Calvinist congregations in France met at Paris in a national synod which drew up a confession of faith and a book of discipline. Thus was organized the first national
Protestant church of France. Its members were thereafter commonly known as
Huguenots.
The early conflicts
In
1560,
Catherine de' Medici became regent for her young son
Charles IX. Her inexperience and lack of financial support created a "political vacuum" and Catherine felt that she had to steer the throne carefully between the powerful and conflicting interests that surrounded it. Although she was a sincere
Roman Catholic, she had no problem with playing the
Calvinist House of Bourbon and the Catholic
House of Guise against each other. She nominated a moderate chancellor,
Michel de l'Hôpital, who urged a number of measures providing for toleration of the Huguenots.
She therefore was led to support religious toleration in the shape of the
Edict of Saint-Germain (1562), which allowed the Huguenots 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. As hostilities broke out, the Edict was revoked, under pressure from the Guise faction.
This provoked the 'First War'. The Bourbons, led by
Louis I de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, organised a kind of protectorate over the Protestant churches and began to seize and garrison strategic towns along the
Loire. Here, at
Battle of Dreux and at
Orléans, there were the first major engagements; at Dreux, Condé was captured by the Guises and
Montmorency, the government general, by the Bourbons. In February 1563, at Orléans,
Francis, Duke of Guise was assassinated by Huguenot
death squads, and Catherine's fears that the war might drag on led her to mediate a truce and the
Edict of Amboise (1563).
This was generally regarded as unsatisfactory by all concerned, the Guise faction being particularly opposed to what they saw as dangerous concessions to violently
Anti-Catholic heretics. The political temperature of the surrounding lands was rising, as unrest grew in the
Netherlands. The Huguenots became suspicious of Spanish intentions when
King Philip II of Spain reinforced the strategic corridor from Italy north along the
Rhine and made an unsuccessful attempt at taking control of the King. This provoked a further outburst of hostilities (the 'Second War') which ended in another unsatisfactory truce, the
Peace of Longjumeau (March 1568).
In September of that year, war again broke out (the 'Third War'). Catherine and Charles decided this time to ally themselves with the House of Guise. Religious toleration was once more at an end, and the Huguenot army, under the command of
Louis I de Bourbon, Prince de Condé and aided by forces from south-eastern 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.
[1] After the Duke was killed in action, he was succeeded by the
Count of Mansfeld and the Dutch
William of Orange and his brothers Louis and Henry.
[1] Much of the Huguenots' financing came from Queen
Elizabeth of England, who was likely influenced in the matter by
Sir Francis Walsingham.
[1] 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.
[4]
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 de Condé was killed, forcing
Admiral de Coligny to take command of the Protestant forces. The
Battle of La Roche-l'Abeille was a nominal victory for the Calvinists, 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.
[5] The staggering royal debt and Charles IX's desire to seek a peaceful solution
[6] 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
Main articles: St. Bartholomew's Day massacre
Despite this shaky truce,
Anti-Protestant pogroms erupted in
1571, in cities such as
Rouen,
Orange and Paris. Matters at Court were further complicated thereafter 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. When it became clear that Coligny was bent on forcing an alliance with England and the Dutch rebels, Queen Catherine decided to order his assassination.
Coligny along with many other wealthy and powerful Calvinists arrived in Paris for the wedding of the Catholic Princess
Marguerite de Valois to the Protestant
Henry of Navarre on
August 28. An assassin made a failed attempt on Coligny's life, shooting him in the street from a window. The bullets went astray, causing merely the loss of a finger on his right hand and a broken left arm. Catherine and her supporters believed the Huguenots might stage a
coup, so they decided, with the approval of the King, to make a preemptive strike by assassinating every powerful Huguenot who might organize a counterattack. The city degenerated into anarchy, erupting into full-scale murder of Calvinist men, women and children, and the looting of their houses. Over the next few weeks it spread to cities across France. This event became known as the
St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. On the night of
August 23, perhaps 2,000 Huguenots were slaughtered in Paris and, in the days that followed, thousands more in the provinces.
Both
Philip II of Spain and
Pope Gregory XIII declared themselves pleased with the outcome, which naturally provoked horror and outrage by their religious opponents throughout Europe. In France, it all but decapitated Huguenot opposition to the crown.
The massacres set off the 'Fourth War', which included Catholic
sieges of the cities of
Sommières (by troops led by
Henri I de Montmorency),
Sancerre and the
La Rochelle (by troops led by the Duke d'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 concessions 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
Nimes, 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.
[7]
Henry III
Three months after Henry of Anjou's coronation as King of Poland, his brother Charles IX died (May
1574). Henri secretly left Poland and returned via Venice to France, where he was crowned King Henry III in
1575, at
Rheims, but hostilities – 'Fifth War' – had already flared up again.
Henry soon found himself in the difficult position of trying to maintain royal authority in the face of feuding
warlords who refused to compromise. In
1576, the King signed the
Edict of Beaulieu, granting minor concessions to the Calvinists, but his action resulted in the Catholic
Henry I, Duke of Guise forming the
Catholic League. The Guise faction had the unwavering support of the Spanish Crown and were therefore in a very powerful position throughout the 1580s. The Huguenots, however, had the advantage of a strong power base in the southwest; they were also discretely supported by outside Protestant governments, but in practice, England or the German states could provide no actual troops. At the end of the 'Sixth War' (1576-1577), after much posturing and negotiations, Henry III was forced to rescind most of the concessions that had been made to the Protestants in the Edict of Beaulieu with the
Treaty of Bergerac (also known as the "Edict of Poitiers"). Two years later, further hostilities — the 'Seventh War' (1579-1580) — ended in the stalemate of the
Treaty of Fleix.
The fragile compromise came to an end in
1584, when the King's youngest brother and heir presumptive,
François, Duke of Anjou, 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
St. Louis IX whom
Pope Sixtus V had excommunicated along with his cousin,
Henri Prince de Condé. Under pressure from the Duke of Guise, Henri III reluctantly issued an edict suppressing Protestantism and annulling Henri of Navarre's right to the throne.
In December
1584, the Duke of Guise signed the
Treaty of Joinville on behalf of the League with
Philip II of Spain, who supplied a considerable annual grant to the League over the following decade hoping to destroy the French Calvinists. The
House of Guise had long been identified with the defence of the 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 King at first tried to coopt 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 the 'Eighth War' (1585-1589), which (as the head of the Guise family was also a Henry), is sometimes called the "
War of the Three Henrys".
Henry of Navarre again sought foreign aid from the German princes and
Elizabeth I of England. Meanwhile, the people of Paris, under the influence of the
Committee of Sixteen were becoming dissatisfied with Henriy III and his failure to defeat the Calvinists. On 12 May
1588, a popular uprising raised barricades on the streets of Paris and Henry III fled the city. The Committee of Sixteen took complete control of the government and welcomed the Duke of Guise to Paris. The Guises then proposed a settlement with a cipher as heir and demanded a meeting of the
Estates-General, which was to be held in
Blois.
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 hacked the Duke to death with halberds and dealt the same to the Cardinal. 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 enraged citizens turned against King Henri. The
Parlement instituted criminal charges against the King, who fled Paris to seek asylum with Henri of Navarre.
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 monk named
Jacques Clément gained an audience with the King and drove a long knife into his spleen. Clément was executed on the spot, taking with him the information of who, if anyone, had hired him. On his deathbed, Henri III called for
Henri 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
The situation on the ground in
1589 was that King
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 on 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, Henri inflicted a severe defeat on the Duke at the
Battle of Arques. Henri'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 the very real atrocities 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 Henri against the forces led by the
Duc de Mayenne. Henry's forces went on to lay siege to
Paris, but the siege was broken by Spanish support. Realising that Henri III had been right and that there was no prospect of a Protestant king succeeding in fanatically Catholic Paris, Henry supposedly uttered the famous phrase ''Paris vaut bien une messe'' (Paris is well worth a mass). He was formally received into the
Roman Catholic Church and was crowned at
Chartres in
1594.
War in Brittany
In
1582 Henry III of France, the last living male-line grandson of
Claude, Duchess of Brittany, had made
Philippe Emmanuel, Duke of Mercoeur, a leader of
Catholic League, governor of
Brittany. Mercoeur put himself at the head of the
Catholic League in Brittany, and had himself proclaimed protector of the
Roman Catholic Church in the province in
1588. Invoking 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, he endeavoured to make himself independent in that province, and organized a government at
Nantes, proclaiming his son "prince and duke of Brittany". He allied with
Philip II of Spain, who however sought to put his own daughter, infanta
Isabella Clara Eugenia, to the throne of Brittany. With the aid of the Spaniards, Mercoeur defeated the
duc de Montpensier, whom
Henry IV of France had sent against him, at
Craon in
1592, but the royal troops, reinforced by
English contingents, soon recovered the advantage. 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
César de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme, an illegitimate son of king Henry.
Towards peace
Some members of the League fought on, but enough Catholics were won over by the King's conversion to make the diehards increasingly isolated. The Spanish withdrew from France under the terms of the
Peace of Vervins. Henry was faced with the task of rebuilding a shattered and impoverished Kingdom. The essential first step in this was the negotiation of the
Edict of Nantes, which, rather than being a kind of genuine toleration, was in fact a kind of grudging truce between the religions, with guarantees for both sides. The Edict can be said to mark the end of the Wars of Religion.
Henry IV and his advisor
Sully continued the work of reconstruction and led France into a peaceful and prosperous age.
Chronology
★ January 1562 -
Edict of Saint-Germain, often called the "Edict of January"
★ March 1562 - Massacre at
Wassy-sur-Blaise
★ 1562-1563 'First War', ended by the
Edict of Amboise
★
★ December 1562 -
Battle of Dreux
★ 1567-1568 'Second War', ended by the
Peace of Longjumeau
★
★ November 1567 -
Battle of Saint Denis
★ 1568-1570 '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
★ 1572-1573 '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
★ 1574-1576 'Fifth War', ended by the
Edict of Beaulieu
★ 1576 - Formation of the first
Catholic League in France
★ 1576-1577 'Sixth War', ended by the
Treaty of Bergerac (also known as the "Edict of Poitiers")
★ 1579-1580 'Seventh War', ended by the
Treaty of Fleix
★ December 1584 -
Treaty of Joinville
★ 1585-1598 '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
See also
★
Edict of toleration
★
Monarchomachs
★
Religion in France
Notes
1. Jouanna, p.181.
2. Jouanna, p.181.
3. Jouanna, p.181.
4. Jouanna, p.182.
5. Jouanna, p.184.
6. Jouanna, pp.184-5.
7. Jouanna, p.213.
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).
★ E. M. Hulme,
''The Renaissance, the Protestant Revolution, and the Catholic Reaction in Continental Europe'', (New York) 1914
★ 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
★ R. J. Knecht, ''The French Wars of Religion 1559–1598 (Seminar Studies in History)'' ISBN 0-582-28533-X
★ T. M. Lindsay,
''A History of the Reformation, V1'' (1906).
''A History of the Reformation, V2'' (1907).
★ J. W. Thompson,
''The Wars of Religion in France, 1559-1576'', (Chicago, 1909)
★ Tilley, Arthur Augustus,
''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
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