by Robert Merle
“Monsieur de Burie,” said Caumont, “Monsieur de Montluc has falsely claimed that a minister preaching in my presence at Clairac offended the person of the king.”
“I said as much, and it is no falsehood!” asserted Montluc, striding towards Caumont, his hand on his dagger and followed by fifteen of his gentlemen. “It is a great shame that you tolerated such words from your Huguenot preacher after all the benefits you have received from the king.”
Caumont grew pale with fury and stood his ground: “I have said, and I repeat, that I was not present when this minister gave his sermon, and in any case I am not answerable to you.” Whereupon Montluc took a step towards him, his dagger half drawn from its sheath. Caumont put hand to sword, but could not draw it, for Montluc’s men were on him in a trice and would have killed him had not Burie intervened to push him outside, saving his life.
“And I,” shouted Montluc as Caumont was dragged over the threshold, “I have said, and I repeat, Abbot of Clairac, that you support the Huguenot sedition in Agen and Périgord and the king would be well advised to send you to the tower of Loches!…”
Once Caumont was out of the way, Montluc so terrified the civil commissioners by his insults and threats that they, too, fled from Cahors, leaving him lone judicial officer of the king, Burie no longer daring to oppose him.
The wind was indeed changing. The Duc de Guise (with the Church of France, the Pope and Felipe II of Spain behind him) quickly regained his absolute power. Of the whole cloud of forces now ready to descend on us, Montluc was but the willing and hostile instrument. The Brethren were well aware of this, and though they had had no part in the seditions of Périgord, they began to fortify Mespech.
The news from the north and from Paris was not slow to fan our fears. Accompanied by a large escort, Guise set out on 1st March for Paris from Joinville, where he had been visiting his mother. As it was Sunday and the morning well advanced, he stopped at Vassy to hear Mass. Never did a more brilliant assembly honour this humble church. The victor of Calais, superbly clad in his doublet and his scarlet satin shoes, wearing a red feather in his black velvet cap, was first to enter the nave, assuredly the most handsome and majestic of all the gentlemen in his retinue. He had other reasons too for holding his head so high at Vassy, for he considered himself lord of this city, since it belonged to his niece Mary Stuart.
But no sooner had he taken his seat in his golden chair in the choir than news was brought that some 500 reformers were celebrating their cult in a barn a mere stone’s throw away. “What’s this?” he cried petulantly. “Am I not practically at home here? And since Vassy is a closed city, even the Edict of January does not give these heretics the scandalous right they so presumptuously assume. So this is what their beautiful gospel is all about! They always want to exceed their powers! Let’s go remind these reckless folk that as my subjects they’re badly mistaken to believe that they can offend me so.” So saying, he left the church with his retinue. Unfortunately, two of his impetuous gentlemen, going before him, entered the barn and provoked a tumult.
“Gentlemen,” the Huguenots said politely, “please join us.”
To which the young La Brousse replied, putting hand to sword, “’Sdeath! Let’s kill ’em all!”
At this blasphemy, the Huguenots rose up and threw the intruders out and barricaded the doors. A few, however, were so ill advised as to mount a scaffolding above the door and hurl stones at the duc and his party when they arrived.
These were riddled with bullets; the doors were broken in and any who tried to escape over the roofs were shot like pigeons. When the duc finally put a stop to the carnage, twenty-four Huguenots lay dead, over a hundred others gravely wounded. The political role which the duc had lately assumed gave great weight to this event. He had formed a triumvirate with Montmorency and the Marshal de Saint-André over the head of the regent, whom they judged too indulgent of the reform. Their aim was the eradication of all heresy from the kingdom, and they were seconded in this goal by the frightful counsel of the Pope to the young Charles IX “to spare neither fire nor sword”. And yet in Guise’s mind this was all a bit abstract. A great warrior, he was not innately cruel. He thought himself, on the contrary, good, courteous and chivalric. At Metz and Calais, he had acted with great humanity towards his prisoners. At his death, he mentioned the Vassy massacre in his confession, but denied it was in any way premeditated.
My father, having served under him at Calais, liked and esteemed him, despite his Catholic zeal (which was not without its ambitious side), and always said that if the two sides had not quickly spoilt things at Vassy, the duc would likely have been content to reprimand his “subjects” for having broken the Edict of January, and let it go at that. In truth, my father claimed, events took François de Guise by surprise and their consequences quickly overwhelmed him.
In Cahors, the Orioles massacre had left many more dead than were counted at Vassy. But the man responsible was merely an old canon who had whipped up the zealots in the crowd. Both the canon and his zealots had been seized and executed for their excesses. But a lord more powerful than the king himself had presided over the carnage at Vassy. Guise had struck, and there was no one to call him to account, unless it was a prince like himself who was prepared for armed combat. Condé quickly understood his role, and began recruiting his soldiers.
Feeling that this incident did little for his reputation, Guise returned to Paris deeply troubled. The news of the massacre had preceded him and he was surprised to receive a hero’s welcome in this city, which had been fanaticized by the priests. When the hero appeared in the city—his scarlet satin doublet set off against his black Spanish jennet—the Parisians, massed from all quarters, shouted “Vassy! Vassy!” as if Vassy had been the greatest of his victories. Maids and matrons pressed breathless from all sides, their hearts beating at the sight of the beautiful red archangel, the sword-bearer of the Church against the heretics.
Guise flew from triumph to triumph. At Guise’s residence, the provost of the merchants was waiting, surrounded by his peers. He offered Guise 20,000 men and, more importantly, two million in gold—more than the rich burghers of Paris had offered Henri II to fight the Spaniards. These offerings were made, as the provost put it, “to pacify the kingdom”, in other words to plunge it into the horror of a fratricidal war.
In less than a month, the conflagration lit at Vassy had spread throughout the kingdom. At Sens, on the occasion of a pilgrimage, a pious monk roused the mob against some Protestants, who were beaten, their throats cut and their bodies thrown in the Yonne river. At Tours, 200 Huguenots were bound, beaten and dragged into the Loire. At Angers, the Duc de Montpensier hanged, beheaded or burned every reformer he could lay his hands on. In a single afternoon at Gironde, Montluc, who had been waiting only for such examples from the north to unleash his fury, hanged seventy of our number in the marketplace of the town.
And everywhere the Protestants retaliated. They stormed the towns of Angers, Tours, Blois, Lyons and Orleans. As regent, Catherine de’ Medici, now at Fontainebleau, watched as Charles IX’s throne was rent asunder, unable or unwilling to take sides.
The triumvirs, at the head of a thousand knights, put an end to her indecision. They came and carried her off by force along with her son. Weeping with rage, Catherine de’ Medici was obliged to take up quarters at the Louvre, prisoner of a fanatic people and now the figurehead of the Catholic party.
On 13th July 1562, the parliament of Paris formally outlawed the Protestants. Henceforth, throughout the kingdom, townspeople and field hands were allowed to arm themselves and set upon the reformers without fear of restraint, arrest or action of any kind by the police.
This permission, granted to one half of the kingdom to assassinate the other half, overwhelmed the Brethren. They feared the worst, especially now that Montluc had seized François de Caumont’s chateau and set up a garrison there under Burie.
This done, Montluc headed to Clairac, and not finding Geoffroy de
Caumont, whom he would gladly have humiliated, debated hanging all the apostate monks there but, greed overcoming religious zeal, he contented himself with demanding a ransom of 30,000 écus. Heading next to Périgord, he went to settle an old account, laying waste to the lands of the Baron de Biron, guilty in his eyes for having sheltered a group of seditious Huguenots. Montluc now commanded a troop of 30,000 Spanish infantrymen, and despite the regent’s orders to join forces with Guise’s army in Paris, he pleaded the necessity of pacifying Guyenne in order to resist obeying. Under Guise in Paris he would have been a nobody. Here in Guyenne he reigned alone, giving vent to his life’s two greatest pleasures: hanging and filling his coffers.
When Montluc left the lieutenancy of Guyenne, he was richer by 300,000 livres. And as for the hanged men he’d left in his wake, he cynically justified his actions in his Commentaries with the caustic comment: “The necessities of war force us, against our better nature, to take no more account of the life of a man than of that of a chicken.”
It is not as though our southern Huguenots did not represent a force to be reckoned with, even after they were outlawed. But led by untrained captains athirst for adventure, they were dispersed throughout the countryside in a thousand little actions which better represented the gods of vengeance and pillaging than that of Calvin.
We saw quite nearby a most unfortunate example of this. When our Huguenot neighbours at Montignac seized the chateau in their town, they hanged La Chilaudie, who defended it, then they stripped the church, including its tombs, and their leader Arnaud de Bord extorted a heavy tax on the terrorized Catholics of the place.
Montignac was but a few leagues from Taniès and Marcuays, so Pincers grew much alarmed at the rumours which, in early August, designated his churches and his own person as the next victims of Arnaud de Bord. He came humbly to share his fears with the Brethren.
“Good priest,” said my father, “if you wish to avoid having your churches pillaged, clear them out yourself. Remove all the furniture, chandeliers, chalices, monstrances, sacred ornaments and the rest, and take them to the bishop of Sarlat.”
“But will I ever see them again?” worried Pincers, lowering his eyes. “The bishop has very long teeth.”
“In that case,” smiled Jean de Siorac, “entrust them to the police lieutenant. La Porte is an honest gentleman.”
“I scarcely have the means to transport them so far, nor to protect their journey.”
“Mespech will provide wagons, horses and escort,” said my father, an offer that somewhat displeased Sauveterre, even though he disapproved of Arnaud de Bord’s excesses.
Pincers did as my father suggested, but scarcely had he completed this move than one of Arnaud de Bord’s lieutenants arrived at Taniès with a few horsemen. Jean de Siorac hurried to meet him with his own soldiers. Batifol—the lieutenant in question—was outfitted for war with helmet and armour, and a fierce moustache to boot, thicker and stiffer even than Cabusse’s. He broke out in the most violent rage when he discovered the empty church.
“There is fraud and trickery afoot, from what I’m told,” he raged, putting on great airs, “and if ’tis true, then the curate of Marcuays and his accomplices shall pay for it.”
“And do you count me among their number, my good Batifol?” asked Jean de Siorac, staring him coldly straight in the eye.
“Heavens no, My Lord, heavens no! And yet they tell me that you provided wagons and horses to the priest to help him remove his goods from the church.”
“They tell you the truth.”
“Then you’re but a half-Huguenot, My Lord,” frowned Batifol, “since you protect papist churches.”
“I protect its goods, not its faith. Mine, which is as good as your own, does not admit of pillaging and rapine between countrymen.”
“May I repeat your words to Arnaud de Bord?” said Batifol, curling his moustache.
“You may and you must, Monsieur,” replied my father, remounting his horse.”
“Then your life hangs in the balance, My Lord,” answered Batifol, mounting his own steed.
“Truly, Monsieur?” laughed my father. Batifol stared at my father with an air of false bravado, then turned tail and galloped off with his men. My father and his soldiers watched in silence as their troop rode away, and, on this occasion, Coulondre Iron-arm made one of his rare and lugubrious remarks: “That man smells of the noose,” he said in a hoarse voice.
As this exchange between the Baron de Mespech and Batifol took place in public, it was not long before Pincers learnt of it from some peasants. He rushed to Mespech, his crimson face all gone pale, his great bulbous nose gone limp over lips that trembled so much he could hardly speak: “My Lords,” he stammered, “the Montignac people can only dream of taking revenge on Mespech, but, alas, on me they can easily do it! Especially since Monseigneur the bishop forbids me from leaving my villages. Shall I wait in Marcuays to be hanged by the neck, like poor La Chilaudie?”
To this veiled appeal, Sauveterre, stony-faced as usual, replied not a word, and exchanged looks with my father, already deploring his younger brother’s human foibles.
“Good Curate,” said Jean de Siorac, “would you like to go into hiding for a while at the le Breuil farm with Cabusse?”
“’Tis hardly possible,” replied Pincers, lowering his eyes to fix them on the end of his voluminous nose. “This Cabusse is a very jealous man. Even after his marriage he could not bear me to hear Cathau’s confession.”
This revelation came as no great surprise to my father, but it amused him all the same. He continued in a bemused tone, “Well then, what about Jonas’s cave?”
“With that wolf in there?” cried Pincers, raising his eyes heavenward. “With that sorceress who has bedevilled him?”
“Curate, surely you do not believe this foolishness!” said Sauveterre, his eye gone dark and his tone dry as dust.
But Pincers would answer not a word and kept his eyes on the ground, for he did not wish to affront Sauveterre. As for my father, he too grew sombre, for he suspected Pincers, whether from superstition or partisanship, of having started rumours among his flock which had begun to ruin Jonas’s reputation. He rose from his seat. “My friend, you will wish, no doubt, to pay your respects to Madame de Siorac before you withdraw.”
Pincers went pale on hearing this dismissal, but did not entirely lose hope. He knew the influence Isabelle still enjoyed over my father, especially in her present condition.
And indeed, Pincers had scarcely crossed our three drawbridges before Isabelle had dispatched Alazaïs to the library to request Jean de Siorac’s company in her chambers.
My father found Isabelle dolefully stretched out on the pillows of her bed, her belly already quite large and her breasts loosely displayed beneath a lace nightgown, and yet, despite her condition, all got up and decked out in her finery and baubles, her lips painted and her eyes lined, and her hair done up in curls by the hefty Alazaïs, whose offices were so often deemed frivolous by her mistress, and who had done her work with a Huguenot thoroughness—and even some tenderness for this poor obstinate papist, whom she nightly recommended in her prayers to God. And thus arranged in all her beauty, my mother lay there, as I so often saw her in the last days of her life in this transitory world which hastens us all on to our last judgement—her death so close at hand, though none of us, she least of all, suspected its approach. For she seemed still to be in the prime of her youth, with neither wrinkles, rheumatisms nor infirmities of any sort, beautiful and blonde in her finery, combed and sprayed with her perfumes, sensing all the love my father bore her, and secretly returning it a hundredfold, but restrained by the strictures of her pride.
“My dear,” said my father with a joyful smile, “I am happy you’ve called me. You’re looking so lovely and in such good health as your term approaches.”
“May God grant, then, Monsieur,” said Isabelle, already stiffening, “that you refrain from obstructing my wishes, since I am so near my hour that y
ou might well spoil the unborn child.”
“By my faith, lady!” said Jean de Siorac, laughing, “scarcely have I entered your chambers before you train your artillery on me! And what is this all about?”
“Monsieur…” said Isabelle. But she stopped in mid-sentence for she was somewhat afraid of my father, even in his gay moods, for he had a quick and violent temper.
“Let me say it for you,” said Jean de Siorac, becoming serious. “You wish to shelter the curate of Marcuays for some time within our walls to save him from the gallows Montignac’s band is preparing for him. Well, lady, let me set your mind at rest. I will grant your wish, but only under certain conditions: that he be considered your guest and not mine; that he refrain from appearing in the great hall or seeing our servants; that he sleep in Alazaïs’s chambers, whom we shall lodge with la Maligou for the duration; and finally that he take his meals in your chambers and not below.”
“Oh no, not that,” cried my mother, raising her beautiful hands, so well preserved with ointments and creams, “it cannot be! His feet stink, and most horribly so! Even at Mass I am bothered and distracted from my prayers.”
“Well then,” answered my father, bursting into laughter, “the curate shall eat alone in his room and Alazaïs shall serve him.”
But Alazaïs, present at this interview, drew herself up to her full height and flatly refused.
“With all respect, My Lord, I shall not serve the curate,” she said in her deep voice. “It’s not so much that he’s a priest, but I cannot bear his drunkard’s mug.”
“Between his ugly mug and his smelly feet,” laughed my father, “the poor devil will die of hunger! Well then, la Maligou will bring him his dinner!” he said, with a curt gesture meant to signal an end to the discussion and to dismiss Alazaïs. Then he sat down on the side of Isabelle’s bed, took her hands and gazed adoringly at her in all her maternal splendour.
Following my father’s orders, Pincers came to Mespech without baggage of any kind during the night, having told no one of his destination. He had been scarcely a fortnight within our walls when Monsieur Guillaume de La Porte arrived at the first drawbridge, accompanied by five men-at-arms, and requested to see the Brethren.
