36. Henry II.
CHAPTER XXXVI. Henry II. (1547-1559)
The two eldest sons of Francis I. had been prisoners in Spain for three years, as I said in the last chapter. Though they had been well treated there, on the whole, the life had not agreed with them; and the elder and better of the two became delicate before he went back to France, and died young before his father. The second brother, Henry, was the next king. He was a handsome, brave, active young man, but not fit to be king, because he never would take the trouble of thinking for himself. He always had some favourite to think for him and tell him his ideas, with which the king was sure to agree. Henry had for a long time a set of friends of his own, who very much disliked all that Francis did in the country. They all watched anxiously for his death, and as soon as it came, Henry changed all his father's ministers and put his friends into power. The chief of these friends was a lady called Diana of Poitiers, who could make both the king and his wife do whatever she liked, and as Diana thought only about what pleased herself, and not at all about the good of the country and the king's subjects, her power was a misfortune for France. The king also had for friends two brothers — one a soldier, one a cardinal, brave, active, and ambitious, and distant relations of the king, so that they had some hopes, while the king had no children, that the elder, the Duke of Guise, might some day come to be king himself. These men were friends of Diana, and she persuaded Henry to give them places and power, and make them as important as possible. All the king's ministers were so eager for some chance of making themselves rich or grand, that they were said to seize upon every office or abbey or place that was left unfilled, as a swallow does upon flies. The king never had the spirit to resist either the Guises or his Qonstable Montmorency, who was another of his great friends; and no one who did not belong to one of these two great parties could be attended to at the court.
The English king had died at the same time as Francis I., and the new king, who was quite a boy, had wished to be betrothed to the little Queen of Scotland, who was a child of six years old, in order to bring about peace between the two countries, which were very often at war <with each other>(together). But the little girl, Mary Stuart, was a niece of the Guises, and they settled to carry her off into France, that she might be betrothed to the eldest son of the French king, so that whenever France went to war with England, Scotland might be inclined to take the side of the French. Mary and her mother were taken to France, and the child was betrothed to the little Dauphin, and was married to him when they both grew up. This was the Mary Stuart who afterwards went back to her own country, quarrelled with Elizabeth of England, and at last had her head cut off in an English prison. It was very unfortunate for her that she was taken away from her home in this way as a child, and never learned to know her subjects till it was too late. She was brought up with the French princes by their mother, Catherine of Medicis, who was one of the worst women of whom we ever hear; but she had no power while her husband lived, and so people did not yet know of her badness.
In the reign of Henry II. the question had to be settled whether he and his subjects would belong to the reformed religion which Luther had taught, or would stay as they had been, subjects of the Pope. The Emperor Charles was at war with the princes of Germany, who had most of them followed the new ideas, and the princes asked Henry for help. There were three towns on the borders of France and Germany, named Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and called the Three Bishoprics, because they were governed by bishops instead of counts or princes. Henry and other French kings had much wished to have them for their own, because they were so near to other French towns, especially to Paris, that the French kings always felt afraid of the Germans coming through them as enemies into France. Henry saw a good opportunity for making himself master of these towns by becoming the friend of the German princes. He made a treaty with them, and collected a great army with which he marched into Germany.
When the army came to Metz, the nearest of the Three Bishoprics, the magistrates sent out food to the soldiers and invited the king and princes to come into the town. The constable asked leave to take in a few soldiers with him, and when the magistrates had said that he might bring a few, he went in with so great a number, that he was able to make himself master of the town. The people of Metz, when they saw what he was doing, tried to shut the gates of the town upon him, but it was too late. The soldiers were inside and could not be driven out, so that the town had to submit to the king. Toul and Verdun — the two other bishoprics — did the same, as Henry promised not to interfere with their rights and customs, and it made little difference to them whether they belonged to the emperor or to him. Soon after this the emperor and the princes made peace, and the king was able to go back to his own country without having done any great good to his friends, but having won for himself the three towns, which were what he really cared about.
Henry, though he had been fighting to help the Reformers, was himself a Roman Catholic, The Guises, the Constable, and Diana, were all friends of the Pope, and Henry thought as they thought. About this time many of his subjects began to turn from the old beliefs to the new. A Frenchman named Calvin wrote a book about what he believed, which many people thought good and true, and those people called themselves Calvinists after his name, and used to meet together and have a service of their own. Their belief was in some ways different from that of the Lutherans, but much more like them than like the old religion, and both Lutherans and Calvinists called themselves Protestants. Henry set up a council of men in the Parliament, whose special business it was to attend to all questions about heretics, which was the name given by Roman Catholics to all Protestants. This council was called the Burning Council, because it generally ordered all the Protestants brought before it to be burned. But still the number of Protestants, or, as they were called in France, Huguenots, grew larger and larger. Printing had lately been invented, and the Bible and little books of psalms were printed out of France, and then brought into the country by people who disguised themselves and hid the books they carried. The psalms were sometimes set to music, and the poor Huguenots sang them through all their troubles, in their hiding-places, in prison, and often even at the stake. Many of them were burned with the little books in their hands.
The king at one time used to go and look on at these dreadful sights. He once went to see the burning of several heretics together, and among them he found one that he knew. The man was a tailor who had been employed in the palace, and the ladies of the court had, to amuse themselves, asked him what he believed. He had then told them plainly that he was a Huguenot, and for this he was to be burned. When he saw the king come to look on at his death, he fixed his eyes upon him, so that Henry was startled and moved away. But the man still kept on looking at him, even after the fire was lighted and the flames rose up, till Henry at last left the place, and for some time after imagined himself seeing the same sight every night, so that he resolved never to look on at an execution again.
While Henry was king, his father's old enemy, Charles V., ended his reign. By the time he was fifty-six, Charles was so worn out with his long reign and all the troubles and difficulties he had gone through, as well as disappointed and vexed at finding that he could not make the heretics submit to him, as he had hoped to be able to do, that he made up his mind to govern no longer. He gave up the different countries of his empire one by one to his son and to his brother. The brother became Emperor, and the son Philip II., King of Spain and of the Netherlands, Directly after this a war began between Philip and Henry of France, and as Philip had married Mary, who was now Queen of England, the English sent an army to help the Spaniards. Philip won the great battle of St. Quentin, and took the town of the same name in the north of France, but was so long in marching on any farther, or putting his victory to any use, that the French had time to get their men together, and when he did go farther on towards Paris they were ready to resist him.
In this war the man who was afterwards the chief leader of the Huguenots, and one of the best and bravest men of the time, defended the town that Philip besieged, and with scarcely any men fought as long as it was possible, so as to keep the Spanish army from going farther till his friends were ready to resist it. This man was called Coligny. It is said of him that whenever there was a piece of work to be done, specially hard and dull, and that would bring no glory or fame as a reward, Coligny was the man to do it. Often, when some one else had planned some attack or surprise for the enemy, and found some difficulty come in the way and seem likely to spoil everything, Coligny would set to work to get rid of the difficulty, and then let the other carry out his plan and have all the glory of it. He was said to be harsh and stern, but every one trusted and honoured him, and his first thought was always for the good of his friends. He was taken prisoner by Philip, with the constable Montmorency, who had gone to his help, and had not been able to help him in the town where he was besieged.
Henry then put the Duke of Guise at the head of the army, and trusted to him to drive the Spaniards out of the country. The duke <determined>(settled) to do what he knew would please the French better than anything else. He marched against Calais. This town had belonged to the English ever since it had been taken by Edward I., two hundred years before, and it had always been a great vexation to the French to see a town so near Paris belonging to their enemies. There was always a body of soldiers there and a governor to protect the place; but it was the custom in winter for the number of soldiers to be made a good deal smaller than usual, because at this time the marshes round Calais were so deep and wet that it was supposed no one could pass through them. The English had also become careless about guarding the ramparts or walls round the town, and Queen Mary was so much taken up in trying to make all her people Roman Catholics that she had not much time to attend to anything else.
The Duke of Guise had observed the place carefully, and knew where to pass the marsh, and how to attack it. The English were taken by surprise, and after an attack which lasted three days, the French took the castle, and soon afterwards the town. It was the last bit of land that had belonged to the English in France, and the French were so much delighted at seeing their country free again from all strangers that they were comforted for having been so lately defeated by Philip. The Duke of Guise was almost worshipped by the people. The English, on the other hand, were very angry at their loss. Queen Mary was made so unhappy by it that she said that when she died the word "Calais" would be found written on her heart. There was one other battle between the French and Spaniards at a place called Gravelines. It was fought by the sea-side, on the sands at low tide. Just when the battle was at its height ten English ships came sailing up with a good breeze, and coming close to the shore, fired at the French, They could not resist the two enemies at once, and were beaten. Soon after this Philip and Henry made peace, and also France and England. The French lost a great deal of land by this peace, and it was gained by Philip, which much displeased some of Henry's soldiers; among other things he gave up all that had been his in Italy. He and the Spanish king were both anxious for peace with each other, in order that they might give all their time to stopping heresy among their subjects.
In France many even of Henry's ministers and of the chief people in the country were becoming Huguenots. The king found that these people were ready to resist his plan of having people put to death for heresy, as if it were the worst of crimes. Henry wished to set up in France the Inquisition — a terrible secret council which the Pope and the King of Spain had invented. Its work was to find out heretics, to ask them questions and see what they really believed, and if they were found to be heretics, to punish them for it by death, or in other ways. People were often tortured by the Inquisition in order to make them speak, if they refused at first to say all that the Inquisitors wished. It was enough that any one person should say of another that he was a heretic, for him to be carried off to the Inquisition. The people were all expected and commanded to give up any of their friends who might be heretics; and they did this so much that no one could trust even their near relations. Children were afraid of their parents; brothers of their sisters; wives of their husbands. All Roman Catholics were taught by their priests that it would be a sin to help a heretic because he happened to be their friend or relation, and also that it was better for the person himself that he should be punished in this life, than that he should die a heretic, which, it was thought, would bring him worse punishment in another life. The king found that most of the chief people in the country refused to have this terrible Inquisition brought into France. He did what he could to persuade them; and had some of the men who had resisted him most boldly thrown into prison.
A few days later he was joining in a tournament which was being held in honour of the marriages of his two daughters. It was held close to the walls of the Bastille, one of the prisons of Paris where these prisoners were shut up. It is even supposed that they might have seen what went on through their windows. The king was very fond of exercises of all sorts; and just as the sports were coming to an end, he asked a Scotch knight to tilt with him. By an accident the end of the knight's spear flew upwards into the king's face, lifted up the vizor which protected it, and went into his eye. The king fell forward on the neck of his horse, and was carried away by his squires. The best doctors in Europe came to attend him, but it was of no use; he died ten days afterwards. The Protestants, both in and out of prison, were glad of his death, though they soon found that they were no better off under his son's rule than they had been under his.
