5. Conflict between different religious beliefs—
Impossibility of Tolerance.
I have already stated that intolerance is always an
accompaniment of powerful religious beliefs. Political and
religious revolutions furnish us with numerous proofs of this
fact, and show us also that the mutual intolerance of sectaries
of the same religion is
always much greater than that of the defenders of remote and
alien faiths, such as Islamism and Christianity. In fact, if we
consider the faiths for whose sake France was so long rent
asunder, we shall find that they did not differ on any but
accessory points. Catholics and Protestants adored exactly the
same God, and only differed in their manner of adoring Him. If
reason had played the smallest part in the elaboration of their
belief, it could easily have proved to them that it must be quite
indifferent to God whether He sees men adore Him in this fashion
or in that.
Reason being powerless to affect the brain of the
convinced, Protestants and Catholics continued their ferocious
conflicts. All the efforts of their sovereigns to reconcile them
were in vain. Catherine de Medicis, seeing the party of the
Reformed Church increasing day by day in spite of persecution,
and attracting a considerable number of nobles and magistrates,
thought to disarm them by convoking at Poissy, in 1561, an
assembly of bishops and pastors with the object of fusing the two
doctrines. Such an enterprise indicated that the queen, despite
her subtlety, knew nothing of the laws of mystic logic. Not in
all history can one cite an example of a belief destroyed or
reduced by means of refutation. Catherine did not even know that
although toleration is with difficulty possible between
individuals, it is impossible between collectivities. Her
attempt failed completely. The assembled theologians hurled
texts and insults at one another's heads, but no one was moved.
Catherine thought to succeed better in 1562 by promulgating an
edict according Protestants the
right to unite in the public celebration of their cult.
This tolerance, very admirable from a philosophical point
of view, but not at all wise from the political standpoint, had
no other result beyond exasperating both parties. In the Midi,
where the Protestants were strongest, they persecuted the
Catholics, sought to convert them by violence, cut their throats
if they did not succeed, and sacked their cathedrals. In the
regions where the Catholics were more numerous the Reformers
suffered like persecutions.
Such hostilities as these inevitably engendered civil war.
Thus arose the so-called religious wars, which so long spilled
the blood of France. The cities were ravaged, the inhabitants
massacred, and the struggle rapidly assumed that special quality
of ferocity peculiar to religious or political conflicts, which,
at a later date, was to reappear in the wars of La Vendée.
Old men, women, and children, all were exterminated. A
certain Baron d'Oppede, first president of the Parliament of Aix,
had already set an example by killing 3,000 persons in the space
of ten days, with refinements of cruelty, and destroying three
cities and twenty-two villages. Montluc, a worthy forerunner of
Carrier, had the Calvinists thrown living into the wells until
these were full. The Protestants were no more humane. They did
not spare even the Catholic churches, and treated the tombs and
statues just as the delegates of the Convention were to treat the
royal tombs of Saint Denis.
Under the influence of these conflicts France was
progressively disintegrated, and at the end of the reign of Henri
III. was parcelled out into veritable
little confederated municipal republics, forming so many
sovereign states. The royal power was vanishing. The States of
Blois claimed to dictate their wishes to Henri III., who had fled
from his capital. In 1577 the traveller Lippomano, who traversed
France, saw important cities—Orleans, Tours, Blois, Poitiers—
entirely devastated, the cathedrals and churches in ruins, and
the tombs shattered. This was almost the state of France at the
end of the Directory.
Among the events of this epoch, that which has left the
darkest memory, although it was not perhaps the most murderous,
was the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, ordered, according
to the historians, by Catherine de Medicis and Charles IX.
One does not require a very profound knowledge of
psychology to realise that no sovereign could have ordered such
an event. St. Bartholomew's Day was not a royal but a popular
crime. Catherine de Medicis, believing her existence and that of
the king threatened by a plot directed by four or five Protestant
leaders then in Paris, sent men to kill them in their houses,
according to the summary fashion of the time. The massacre which
followed is very well explained by M. Battifol in the following
terms:—
“At the report of what was afoot the rumour
immediately ran through Paris that the Huguenots were being
massacred; Catholic gentlemen, soldiers of the guard, archers,
men of the people, in short all Paris, rushed into the streets,
arms in hand, in order to participate in the execution, and the
general massacre commenced, to the sound of ferocious
cries of `The Huguenots! Kill, kill!' They were struck down,
they were drowned, they were hanged. All that were known as
heretics were so served. Two thousand persons were killed in
Paris.”
By contagion, the people of the provinces imitated those
of Paris, and six to eight thousand Protestants were slain.
When time had somewhat cooled religious passions, all the
historians, even the Catholics, spoke of St. Bartholomew's Day
with indignation. They thus showed how difficult it is for the
mentality of one epoch to understand that of another.
Far from being criticised, St. Bartholomew's Day provoked
an indescribable enthusiasm throughout the whole of Catholic
Europe. Philip II. was delirious with joy when he heard the
news, and the King of France received more congratulations than
if he had won a great battle.
But it was Pope Gregory XIII. above all who manifested the
keenest satisfaction. He had a medal struck to commemorate the
happy event,2 ordered joy-fires to be lit and
cannon fired, celebrated several masses, and sent for the
painter Vasari to depict on the walls of the Vatican the
principal
scenes of carnage. Further, he sent to the King of France an
ambassador instructed to felicitate that monarch upon his fine
action. It is historical details of this kind that enable us to
comprehend the mind of the believer. The Jacobins of the Terror
had a mentality very like that of Gregory XIII.
Naturally the Protestants were not indifferent to such a
hecatomb, and they made such progress that in 1576 Henri III. was
reduced to granting them, by the Edict of Beaulieu, entire
liberty of worship, eight strong places, and, in the Parliaments,
Chambers composed half of Catholics and half of Huguenots.
These forced concessions did not lead to peace. A
Catholic League was created, having the Duke of Guise at its
head, and the conflict continued. But it could not last for
ever. We know how Henri IV. put an end to it, at least for a
time, by his abjuration in 1593, and by the Edict of Nantes.
The struggle was quieted but not terminated. Under Louis
XIII. the Protestants were still restless, and in 1627 Richelieu
was obliged to besiege La Rochelle, where 15,000 Protestants
perished. Afterwards, possessing more political than religious
feeling, the famous Cardinal proved extremely tolerant toward the
Reformers.
This tolerance could not last. Contrary beliefs cannot
come into contact without seeking to annihilate each other, as
soon as one feels capable of dominating the other. Under Louis
XIV. the Protestants had become by far the weaker, and were
forced to renounce the struggle and live at peace. Their number
was then about 1,200,000, and they possessed more than 600
churches, served by about 700 pastors.
The presence of these heretics on French soil was intolerable to
the Catholic clergy, who endeavoured to persecute them in various
ways. As these persecutions had little result, Louis XIV.
resorted to dragonnading them in 1685, when many individuals
perished, but without further result. Under the pressure of the
clergy, notably of Bossuett, the Edict of Nantes was revoked, and
the Protestants were forced to accept conversion or to leave
France. This disastrous emigration lasted a long time, and is
said to have cost France 400,000 inhabitants, men of notable
energy, since they had the courage to listen to their conscience
rather than their interests.
