Henry M. Baird · 288 of 379

CHAPTER XI · A spurious statement.

On Easter day (the sixth of April), the finishing stroke was given to the new compact between the leaders of the anti-reformed party. Anne de Montmorency and François de Guise partook side by side of the sacrament in the chapel of Fontainebleau, and that evening Guise, Joinville, and St. André were invited guests at the table of the constable. To the union now distinctly formed, its opponents, in allusion to the number of the foremost members and to their proscriptive designs, soon applied the name of "Triumvirate"—the designation by which it has ever since been known. What the details of these designs were is not altogether certain. If the document that has come down to us, purporting to be an authoritative statement emanating from the original parties to the scheme, could be depended on as genuine, it would disclose to us an atrocious plot, not only against the Huguenots of France, but for the extirpation of Protestantism throughout the world. The sanguinary project was to be executed under the superintendence of his Catholic Majesty of Spain. The King of Navarre, the support of heresy in France, was first to be seduced by promises or terrified by threats. Should neither course prove successful, Philip was to raise an army in the most secret manner before winter. Should Antoine yield at once, he was to be expelled from the kingdom, with his wife and children. Should he attempt resistance, the Duke of Guise would declare himself the head of the Catholics, and, between him and Philip, the heretical King of Navarre would speedily be crushed. Then were all that had ever professed the reformed faith to be slain. Not one was to be spared. The entire race of the Bourbons was to be exterminated, lest an avenger or a resuscitator of Protestantism should arise from its descendants. The emperor and the Catholic princes of Germany would prevent the Protestants beyond the Rhine from sending succor to their French brethren. The Roman Catholic cantons of Switzerland, with the assistance of the Pope, would engage the Protestant cantons. To the Duke of Savoy, supported by Philip and the Italian dukes, was intrusted the welcome task of destroying utterly the nest of heresy—Geneva. Here should the executioner revel in the blood of his victims. Not an inhabitant was to escape. All, without respect to age or sex, were to be slain with the sword or drowned in the lake, as an evidence that divine retribution had compensated for the delay by the severity of the punishment, causing the children to bear, as an example memorable to all time, the penalty of the wickedness of their fathers. The fruits of the French confiscations would be applied as a loan to the expenses of the crusade in Germany, where the united forces of France, the emperor, and the Catholic princes would subjugate the followers of Luther, as they had already exterminated the disciples of Calvin.

Such are the reported details of a plan almost too gross for belief. It is true that the existence of similar schemes—less extensive, perhaps, but equally sanguinary, and, in the light of history, not much less absurd—formed by the adherents of the papacy during the sixteenth century, is too well attested to admit of doubt. But the historical difficulties surrounding this document have never yet been satisfactorily explained, and the student of the Huguenot annals must still content himself with regarding it as a summary of reports current within the first two years of the reign of Charles the Ninth, respecting the secret designs of the Triumvirs, rather than as an authorized statement of their intentions.