Notes |
- France is affected by the Reformation in a manner and to an extent
different from any other country. The reason is that the community is
split from top to bottom on the issue; and the sides are so evenly
balanced that a civil war based largely on religion lasts for four
decades.
During the first half of the 16th century the reformed faith
spreads among the ordinary people of France, encouraged by missionary
priests trained in Geneva. The Protestants, who become known in France
as Huguenots, are confident enough to organize in 1559 a national
synod in Paris.
By this time there are powerful aristocrats in the Protestant
camp, among them even members of the great Bourbon dynasty - a branch
of the royal family, by distant descent from Louis IX. Their enemies
are the Guise family, passionately committed to the Catholic cause.
France's wars of religion in the 16th century are also a struggle
between these rival camps.
In 1559, the year of the Protestant synod in Paris, Henry II dies
(he is killed jousting in a tournament). For the next three decades
the throne of France is occupied in succession by three of his sons.
But the first two are in their teens when they inherit. The real power
lies with the Guise family and with Henry's widow, Catherine de
Médicis.
At first, in 1559, the Guises have the upper hand. The young king,
Francis II, is married to Mary Queen of Scots - whose mother is a
Guise. But Francis dies in 1560. With the accession of her second son,
Charles IX, Catherine de Médicis becomes regent.
While sporadic warfare continues in France between Catholic and
Protestant forces, Catherine's main concern is to retain a balance of
power which will keep her family on the throne. To this end she
arranges a marriage between her daughter, Margaret, and Henry of
Navarre - the leading member of the Bourbon family. The wedding takes
place in 1572. It is followed within a week by the atrocities of St
Bartholomew's day.
Many of France's Huguenot nobility are in Paris in August 1572 for
the wedding of the princess Margaret and Henry of Navarre. Four days
after the ceremony there is an assassination attempt on a leading
Protestant, Admiral Coligny. It is probably planned by the regent,
Catherine de Médicis, together with the Guise family. But the admiral
is only wounded.
The bungled plot prompts Catherine to over-react. She orders a
massacre of all the Huguenots in Paris. The killing begins before dawn
on August 24, St Bartholomew's day. Shops are pillaged, families
butchered. By the evening of August 25 the government calls a halt,
but the mob is now out of control.
Other towns follow suit. Estimates of the dead vary, with a likely
total of between 10,000 and 15,000 Huguenots killed. The bridegroom,
Henry of Navarre, is spared - but he has to declare himself a
Catholic.
It is more than three years before Henry escapes from the French
court, resumes his Protestant faith and leads the Huguenot cause
against a Catholic league headed by the Guise family. By now the
stakes have been considerably raised. Catherine's second son, Charles
IX, dies in 1574. Her third son succeeds him, as Henry III. He is
childless, and in 1584 his only remaining brother dies. The Protestant
Henry of Navarre is now heir presumptive to the French throne.
The last few years of the Valois dynasty are the stuff of
melodrama. Henry III breaks his alliance with the Catholic faction in
1588 and has the two leading members of the Guise family assassinated.
He then joins forces with Henry of Navarre. But the king is himself
assassinated in 1589. On his deathbed he names his Protestant and very
distant cousin as his successor - thus bringing the Bourbon dynasty to
the throne of France.
It takes Henry of Navarre, now Henry IV, several years to conquer
his kingdom. Paris, rigorously Catholic and strongly defended, is his
main obstacle. It only yields to him, in 1594, after he has once again
declared himself a Catholic - and this time for good.
It may well be that Henry IV never says the famous remark
attributed to him on this topic ("Paris vaut bien une messe", Paris is
well worth a mass), but the sentiment is true to history. France's
long religious wars are resolved by the simple expedient of making
light of religion.
The compromise leaves Henry morally obliged to introduce religious
toleration. His Edict of Nantes, signed in 1598, gives the Huguenots
full civil rights, freedom of worship (within certain restrictions)
and various agreed places which they can fortify for their protection.
These concessions are violently resented by the Catholic majority.
They will be steadily chipped away at, until the Edict of Nantes is
finally revoked in 1685.
After winning his kingdom in nine years of continuous war, Henry IV
brings France twelve years of very productive peace. The state's
finances are put on a sound footing, industry and commerce are
encouraged (an ambitious scheme for a network of inland waterways
includes the beginning of the Briare canal) and the army is
strengthened.
In his foreign policy Henry takes the same conciliatory approach as
with the bitterly opposed religious factions in France. His aim is to
achieve peace on France's borders. To this end he helps to negotiate
in 1609 the Twelve Years' Truce between Spain and the United
Provinces.
Contrary to this principle, Henry decides to intervene in 1610 in
a dispute over the inheritance of the duchy of Jülich, close to the
sensitive border between the United Provinces and the Spanish
Netherlands. The Habsburg emperor Rudolf II is about to seize the
duchy, and Henry IV is about to march against him, when Henry is
assassinated in a Paris street by François Ravaillac (a Catholic whose
precise motives are unclear).
Henry is one of France's most popular kings. Four years after his
death a bronze statue of him on horseback is erected on the Pont Neuf
- Paris's most famous bridge, completed during Henry's reign in 1604
(and now the oldest in the city, in spite of its name).
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