Sv *nry an& l/V I . H >;* A. KOME AND EEFOEM EOME AND BEFOBM BY T. L. KINGTON OLIPHANT OF BALLIOL COLLEGE IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I iLontion MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1902 All rights reserved PEEFACE RANKE'S great work, upon the same subject that I deal With, must ever be regarded by a3T later comers with despairing admiration ; Lord Macaulay's brilliant review of Ranke is even better known to the British public. Still, within the last sixty years, many new worGs bearing upon my subject have been given to the world, works of which I have, as I hope, made good use. I can, moreover, say that I can remember the Pontificate of Pius IX. from beginning to end, _and wHoever has done this has seen a wonderful chapter oTEuropean history. I sometimes fear that I have laid myself open to Lord Beaconsfield's famous sneer at a certain Scotch writer, and that my two volumes seem intended to prove that Providence was on the side of the Protes- tants. All I can answer to this is, that I have striven to Hold the balance fair, to amass a vast number of facts, and upon these alone to build my theories. I have not taken the full advantage I might have done ; thus, who could have blamed me had I begun my account of Italy with Pope Alexander VI., and not with Pope Julius II. ? So far as I have any bias, VI it is towards Moderate Catholics, as distinguished from Ultramontanes ; for instance, in practical politics and morality I set the Catholic Deak high above the Protestant Guizot. It is impossible to please all, and I have little liking for the applause of mere fanatics, by whatever name they may call themselves. But if I win the praise of Protestants of the school of Hallam, of Catholics of the school of De Tocqueville, I shall not have written in vain. In my narrative I give most space to the reli- gious development of the various countries, and much attention to their social condition. I write but little about battles and sieges ; the outset ~oT~the Huguenot wars is the chief exception to this rule. As a general rule I confine myself to Europe, though the temptation is strong to contrast the English with the Spanish colonies in America. ,GASK, 1902. CONTENTS CHAPTER I ROME IN EARLY DAYS Three different ages of the Papacy The Age of Struggle Power of the Franks . The Pagan inroads The Age of Dominion Revival of the nations Four main Principles Valour Freedom ..... Order ..... Embracing Science and Art . Morality ..... Slavery Respect to Woman Celibacy ; the Deposing Power Privileges of Engknd . Degeneracy of the Popes The Renaissance The Age of Debasement Periods of European history Traced down to our day 1 30-1017 2 55 3 833 4 1017-1520 5 55 6 55 7 55 8 55 9 55 10 55 11 12 55 13 55 14 55 15 55 16 1520 17 55 18 55 19 CHAPTER II ITALY Her fate was Disunion Wreck of the Empire . 1250 20 21 Vlll HOME AND KEFOKM Pope Julius II. . Pope Leo X. and Luther Freaks of the Renaissance Pope Adrian VI. Pope Clement VII. Downfall of Florence . And of other towns Alliance with France . Pope Paul III Charles V. at Rome War against the Germans . The Pope fails his ally Pope Julius III. Marcellus II. Paul IV. His hatred of Spain His alliance with France His rage against his enemies His defeat by Alva . His reforms in religion King Philip master of Italy The Reformation in Italy . Contarini and Pole Ochino and Peter Martyr . The Pope's Commission of Reform Caraffa and the Inquisition Flight of the Reformers Resistance of Naples . Persecution at Venice Locarno and the Valteline . Butcheries in Calabria Loyola founds his Order Ability of the Jesuits The Council of Trent Debates on Scripture . Original Sin Justification . Seripando's theory A brawl Predestination Break-up and Renewal of the Council It separates Spira ; Burlamacchi Trial of the Caraffas . Outrage by Saria A.D. PAGE 1503 22 1517 23 55 24 1522 25 1523 26 1530 27 55 28 1533 29 1534 30 1536 31 1546 32 1547 33 1550 34 1555 35 55 36 1556 37 55 38 1557 39 55 40 1559 41 55 42 )5 43 44 1537 45 1542 46 55 47 1547 48 1548 49 55 50 1560 51 1540 52 55 53 1545 54 1546 55 55 56 55 57 55 58 1547-1551 59 1552 60 1560 61 1556 62 CONTENTS Evil state of Lombardy and Tuscany Process against Grimani Pius IV. becomes Pope Revival of the Council of Trent . The Jesuits at the Council . A dark outlook .... Embassy of Morone Desertion of Lorraine . Who is received at Rome End of the Council Its effects ..... Abuses are suppressed Pius V. becomes Pope His severity .... Heretics are put to death . Battle of Lepanto Gregory XIII. becomes Pope The University of Padua The hunt after heretics Training of Bruno Life of Commendoni . His Embassies .... The funds of the Pope The mournful outlook Triumphs of Protestantism . Chances of the Future Sixtus V. becomes Pope His improvements in Rome His hatred of Spain . His love of France His death ..... Clement VIII. becomes Pope Strife about Ferrara . Molina assailed by Dominicans Triumph of the Jesuits SandygVatrCount of Italy His view of the clergy Power of the Inquisition Vices of Italy .... Contrasts in religion . Power of the Jesuits . A.D. 1556 1560 1559 1562 1563 1566 1571 1572 1577 1585 1590 1592 1598 J5 1607 1599 IX PAGE 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 ROME AND EEFOEM Pnouski on this Order What they did in England . State of- Tuscany Italian soldiers Bad state of morals Campanella's plot Paul V. becomes Pope Quarrel with Venice . Venice is excommunicated . Attempt to murder Sarpi Superstition at Venice Diodati's mission Jesuit Colleges . Their mistakes . Plot against Venice State of Italy . Gregory XV. becomes Pope . Urban VIII. becomes Pope . War of Mantua . The Plague in the North . Triumph of the Jesuits Disasters of the Protestants . Scene with Cardinal Borgia Wrangles with the Emperor Urbino falls in . Innocent X. becomes Pope . Destruction of Castro . He condemns the Jansenists State of Southern Italy Revolt of Naples State of Lombardy Decay in Italy . Pomp of Rome . Alexander VII. becomes Pope Southern Europe is weakened Causes of this Faults of the Jesuits . Galileo The Inquisition . Attractions of Rome . Its bad government . Decay of learning A.D. 1599 1605 1608 5) ? 1618 1621 1623 1627 1630 1632 1644 1649 1647 1655 PAGE 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 CONTENTS xi A. D. PAOE The Pope outraged by France .... 1660 145 Innocent XI. becomes Pope . .... 1676 146 French treachery to the Messinese . . . 1678 147 Genoa is bombarded ...... 1684 148 The Pope's opinions ...... ,, 149 he Jansenists and Galileans . . . . 150 Innocent's riatred*0f the Jesuits . . . . 151 Their evil influence on England . . . . 1688 152 Italy described by Burnet ..... 153 Alexander VIII. becomes Pope . . . . 1689 154 Innocent XII. becomes Pope . . . . 1691 155 War in Northern Italy . . . . . 156 Evil state of Tuscany . . . . . 157 The Opera at Venice . . . . . . 158 Burnet's observations . . . . . . 159 Labat's view of Italy 1700 160 And of the Papal States . ... 161 Good Estate of Bologna 162 Clement XI. becomes Pope . . . . . 163 Spain loses Italy 1707 164 Changes in its masters . . . . . 1713 165 Benedict XIII. becomes Pope .... 1724 166 State of Piedmont 1730 167 And of Milan 168 Of Naples and Loretto 169 And of Venice 170 The Farnesi and Medici fail . . . . 1737 171 Bold rising of Genoa 1746 172 State of Malta 173 De Brosses and Pope Clement XII. . . . 1739 174 Benedict XIV. becomes Pope .... 1740 175 His enlightened tolerance . . . . . 176 Rome is losing ground . . . . . 1758 177 Clement XIII. becomes Pope .... 178 Struggle over the Jesuits . . . . . 179 Clement XIV. becomes Pope . . . . 1769 180 The Jesuits are abolished . . . . . 181 Improvement in Italy 182 Leopold in Tuscany 1785 183 Ricci and his Synods 1786 184 Genoa in decay . . . . . . 185 Xll EOME AND EEFOEM Gorani on the South . Pius VI. becomes Pope StatJfof things at Rome Bad state of Venice . Good state of Tuscany Napoleon's great campaign . War at Naples . Cruelties there . Pius VII. becomes Pope Napoleon's sway in Italy His dealings with Pius VII. Murat's rule at Naples Rome retrogrades The Jesuits restored . GregbTyXVT. becomes Pope Questions for the Church Scoffs at Italy . Pius IX. becomes Pope Piedmont alone free . General oppression France delivers the North . Italy is all but united System of Pius IX. Italian superstition The Vatican Council . Its decree of infallibility The Italians take Rome Death of Pius IX. and his foe Prospects of Italy A.I'. 1786 1775 1787 1796 1799 1800 1811 1815 1831 1834 1846 1849 1859 1861 1869 1870 1878 1902 PAGE 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 CHAPTEE III SPAIN Persecution of Jews he Inquisition at work Absurd accusations Many victims Aragon Alleged murder of a child Queen Isabella's system 1481 1485 215 216 217 218 219 220 CONTENTS xiii A.D. PAGE Treachery to Mussulmans . . . . . 1502 221 Treatment of Erasmus . . . . . 222 Punishment of impostors 223 ^Charles V. appears 1517 224 S Civil war in Castile 1520 225 Triumph of the Crown 226 Rising at Valencia 1519 227 Oppression of the Moors ..... 1525 228 Navagero's account of Spain .... 229 Granada, Burgos . . . . . . 230 Petitions against the Inquisition . . . . 1528 231 The last powerful Cortes 1538 232 Philip the Second 1555 233 Spanish reformers . . . . . . 234 Seville and Valladolid 235 The Inquisition awakes . . . . . 1557 236 Many are burnt 1559 237 The stakes at Seville 1560 238 Archbishop Carranza imprisoned ... 239 His end at Rome ...... 240 Emigration to America . . . . . 241 Madrid is made the capital . . . . . 242 The Escorial founded . . . . . . 1563 243 Riches of the Church ...... 244 The Moriscoes in Granada . . . . . 245 They are oppressed by Philip . . . . 246 - The fierce rising 1568 247 It is quenched in blood ..... 1570 248 Beginning of the Dutch war . . . . 1572 249 . The Inquisition in Mexico ..... 250 \[r Complaints of the Cortes . . . . . 1573 251 Conquest of Portugal 1580 252 Philip turns against Perez . . . . . 1582 253 Rising of Saragossa ...... 1591 254 The sore punishment . . . . . . 255 Outcries of the revolters . . . . . 256 Venetian accounts of Spain . . . . 257 Impostures in Granada ..... 1595 258 Madrid described . . . . . . 259 Disasters to Spain . . . . . . 260 The King's debts 261 XIV ROME AND EEFORM Spanish haughtiness . ,th of Philip II. . Philip III. and Lerma Superstition of the people . Campanella's suggestions The Moriscoes in Valencia . Their expulsion . Fearful loss to the country . Bleda's book Deliverance from France The army and finances Multitude of the clergy Character of the Spaniards . Philip IV. and Olivarez Use of the Inquisition Downfall of Spain The Catalan revolt The Portuguese revolt Dispute as to Bishops Outrage upon Penn Olivarez is dismissed . Spain's dealings with the Irish Her influence on Eome Waste of money De Gramont's account Victory of Portugal Charles IV. becomes king . A Spanish penance An Act of Faith Villars's account of Spain . Madame d'Aulnoy Wretched state of the land A new war Insults to the dead .e Inquisition at Mallorca Views of Louis XIV. on Spain The new king, Philip V. Labat's account of Spain Charles the Austrian . Battle of Almanza Fall of Barcelona A.D. PAGE 1595 262 1598 263 264 55 265 1600 266 55 267 1609 268 55 269 55 270 1610 271 55 272 55 273 55 274 1621 275 55 276 1640 277 278 55 279 55 280 1643 281 )5 282 1649 283 55 284 55 285 1659 286 1665 287 55 288 55 289 1680 290 55 291 55 292 55 293 1689 294 1691 295 55 296 1697 297 1700 298 55 299 1705 300 1707 301 1714 302 CONTENTS xv Schemes of Alberoni . A quarrel with Rome Ferdinand VI. becomes king Improvement in the land . Charles III. becomes king . Expulsion of the Jesuits General reforms^ Case of Olavide . Townsend's travels Charles IV. becomes king Wars with France and England Meeting of the Cortes The Inquisition abolished . Reaction under Ferdinand VII. Butcheries in America Revolt at Cadiz . Ten years of reaction . Last death for religion A reign of terror Isabella II. becomes queen . Wholesale slaughter of monks The Carlist war The Spanish marriages Hatred of Britain Military revolt . The slave trade brisk King Alfonso becomes king Torture at Barcelona . Cuba and the Philippines lost Chances for Spain A.D. PACK 1717 303 11 304 1746 305 11 306 1759 307 1767 308 309 1778 310 1786 311 1788 312 1793 313 1810 314 1813 315 1814 316 11 317 1820 318 1823 319 1826 320 1827 321 1833 322 1835 323 11 324 1846 325 11 326 1854 327 1860 328 1874 329 1896 330 1898 331 1902 332 CHAPTER IV FRANCE Greatness of France . Agreement of Pope and Francis I. is in the air . Persecution of heretics Overtures to Germany VOL. T b 1516 1520 1529 1534 333 334 335 336 337 XVI EOME AND KEFORM Calvin's great work . His influence on Europe Butchery of Waldenses Henry II. becomes king Persecution in Paris . Death of King Henry Cruelties at Bordeaux Martyrdoms .... Palissy and Pare French commerce Calvin at Geneva Prospect of reform What France missed . The two parties Francis II. becomes king .f Conspiracy of Amboise The Assembly The Cardinal of Lorraine Charles IX. becomes king . jr Progress of the Huguenots . Conference of Poissy . Numbers of the Huguenots . Toleration is urged Massacre of Vassy Orleans is seized Cruelties on both sides Death of a priest Battle of Dreux Murder of Guise Huguenot outrages Haton's account of this time Wealth set in circulation Havre is retaken A new Huguenot war . Peace is made A new Huguenot war Peace is made Elizabeth plans a French marriage The St. Bartholomew . X Massacres in France Peace is made A.D. 1535 3) 1545 1547 1557 1559 1553 1559 1560 1562 1563 1567 1568 1570 1571 1572 j> 1573 PAGE 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 376 376 377 378 CONTENTS xvii A.D. PAGE Provincial life at this time . . . . 1573 379 _Henry III. becomes king ... . 1574 380 /^ Henry of Navarre comes forward . . . . 1576 381 The University and clergy 1577 382 Navarre becomes heir to the crown . . . 1584 383 The League 384 Victory of Coutras . .... 1587 385 Murder of Guise . ... 1588 386 Henry IV. becomes king 1589 387 Victory of Ivry . . ... 1590 388 The siege of Rouen raised . . . 1592 389 Paris is taken 1594 390 .xHenry IV. abjures Protestantism . . . . 1595 391 r State of Brittany . . 392 The Edict of Nantes . . ... 1598 393 Slow growth of toleration ..... 394 Henry's marriage ...... 1600 395 France as seen by a German .... 1602 396 Trade and the army ... . . 397 Favour shown to the Huguenots .... 398 Manufactures . . . . . . . 399 Great plans for the future 1609 400 Murder of Henry IV. . . 1610 401 X^ Views of moderate Catholics . . . 402 A new States-General 1614 403 France in league with Ultramontanes . . . 1620 404 Howell's account of France ..... 405 Richelieu becomes minister ..... 1624 406 Huguenot troubles 1625 407 Ultramontanism is checked ..... 408 Rochelle is taken . . . 1628 409 The Huguenot wars ended 1629 410 Reform of the French clergy . . . . 411 ^Death of Richelieu . . 1642 412 /^ Victory of Rocroy ... . 1643 413 Vast cost of the war ...... 1656 414 The army and clergy . . . . . . 415 Outbreak of Jansenism . . . . . 416 ^^^ascaTs "masterpiece . . . . . . 417 X**^ Where his party failed . ... 418 /""" Louis XIV. governs . , . . 1661 419 XV111 ROME AND REFORM His taxes . He attacks Holland . His highest pinnacle . Colbert and Louvois . A.D. 1661 1672 1681 PAGE 420 421 422 423 424 Wealth of the nation . jj 425 The Four Gallican Articles . 1682 426 Borne favours Jansenism 11 427 ^S Beginning of persecution 428 Change for the worse . jj 429 The Edict of Nantes abolished 1685 430 Cruelties' . jj 431 Escape of many Huguenots . jj 432 jS Disaster to France jj 433 S Secret assemblies in the South 1699 434 Marteilh's story .... 1700 435 Migault's story . jj 436 A new war begins 1701 437 The Camisard war 1702 438 Its end 1704 439 Glory of the French Church jj 440 The Bull Unigenitus . >^ The Regent and Dubois Persecution of Huguenots 1713 1717 1724 441 442 443 Persecution of Jansenists 1732 444 ^/"""^ Death of Cardinal Fleury . 1743 445 Voltaire and Montesquieu . jj 446 ^'f'- The Encyclopaedia .... The Jesuits are suppressed . 1751 1764 447 448 < Persecution of Huguenots . 449 Cases of Galas and Sirven . jj 450 Louis XVI. becomes king . 1774 451 ^f Corruption of the Church . Number of priests .... 1786 452 453 The States-General meet 1789 454 The Church is mutilated 1790 455 A new oath enforced . 1791 456 The Pope protests jj 457 Wholesale massacre .... 1792 458 Christianity abolished 1793 459 Gregoire's heroism 1795 460 CONTENTS xix A.D. I'AiiE The Church he represented . . 1800 461 Napoleon's new Concordat ..... 1801 462 The reconciliation 1802 463 Disappointment of Pius VII 1804 464 imprisonment ...... 1809 465 uis XVIII. returns . . . . 1814 466 Massacres at Nismes . . . . . . 1815 467 Degenerate Huguenots ..... 468 The new law on sacrilege ..... 1825 469 Violence of the Jesuits . . . . . 1826 470 Louis Philippe reigns . . . . . . 1830 471 Folly of Guizot 1847 472 Veuillot and Ultramontanism . . . . 1858 473 Enslavement of French clergy .... 474 The Mexican folly 1863 475 Garibaldi is checked 1867 476 Obstinacy of Napoleon III 1870 477 His fall 478 Differences in France . . . . . 479 The Dreyfus case 1898 480 Religion in France . . . . . . 481 CHAPTEE V IRELAND Her fate was disunion 482 Two nations ......... 483 The Geraldine revolt 1534 484 Sapping of the old religion .... 1536 485 Abbeys and priories suppressed . . . . 1541 486 Henry VIII. made king ..... 487 Changes under Edward VI. .... 1549 488 Strife among the O'Neills 489 Mary's laws against heresy . . . . . 1557 490 The Prelates under Elizabeth .... 1563 491 Shane O'Neill's artfulness 492 His death Carew's inroad .... 1567 493 Wars in Ulster . 1574 494 /The / ' Pro ^ ^.-C r xx ROME AND REFORM A.D. PAOB The Pope attacks Munster . . 1579 495 Slaughter at Smerwick . . 1580 496 Perrott's good government . . . 1585 497 Tyrone's war . . .... 1595 498 Mountjoy's success ...... 1600 499 His triumph at Kinsale 1602 500 Tyrone submits 1603 501 State of the clergy 502 The Plantation of Ulster 1607 503 First complete Irish Parliament . . . 1613 504 Irish habits . 1619 505 Peace and confiscations . . . . . 506 Charles L, Strafford, and BedeU 507 Irish massacre . . . . . . 1641 508 Protestant reprisals . . . . . . 509 Goldsmith's adventures . . . . . 510 The Kilkenny Assembly 1642 511 Binuccini arrives . . . . . . 1645 512 Peter Walsh . . 513 Many Moderate men . . . . . . 514 Five parties in Ireland . . . . . 1649 515 romwell's vengeance . . . . . 516 Many driven to Connaught . . . . 1652 517 Disunion among the exiles . . . . . 518 Scheme of Charles II. .... 1659 519 His ingratitude to the Irish . . . . 1660 520 The settlement of the land . . . . . 521 Petty's account of Ireland . . . . 1672 522 Dr. Plunkett James II. ... . 1681 523 Breach of the Limerick Treaty . . 1691 524 Irish soldiers abroad . . . . . . 525 The Irish Penal Laws ... 526 Some priests are tolerated .... 527 They repudiate Ultramontanism . . 1757 528 Sufferings of the peasantry . . . . . 529 Breach in the Penal Laws . . .1774 530 Local broils . . 1789 531 The Rebellion . . .. 1798 532 George III. thwarts Pitt . . 1800 533 O'Connell and Dr. Doyle . .. 1829 534 The Protestant Church cut down 1833 635 CONTENTS xxi A.D. PAGE The Irish Famine . . .1846 536 X Growth of Ultramontanism ... 537 _ Hatred of Italian freedom . 1859 538 ^ Priestly sway 1871 539 Mutilation of cattle Parnell . . . 1880 540 Public opinion debased ... . 541 ' P s M CHAPTEK I ROME IN EARLY DAYS THE aim of this chapter is to point out that the action of the Eoman Church upon Europe as to order of time falls into three divisions, and that these three are most dis- tinct from each other. There is an age of Struggle, lasting for about a thousand years after Christ's Ascension ; an age of Dominion, beneficent in the main, lasting for five hundred years longer, down to Luther's time ; an age of Debasement, pressing hard upon Southern Europe, and lasting for three hundred and eighty years longer, down to our own day. It is the height of unwisdom to confound one of these periods with another ; to revile the age of St. Louis because we may happen to dislike the Temporal power of the Popes as it showed itself in 1850, or to wax ecstatic over the feats of the Jesuits in European Courts because we know something of the noble work done by the early Benedictines. We may admire the system of Samuel and Zadok ; does it follow that we are bound to praise the state of things that prevailed under Annas and Caiaphas ? I write from the standpoint of a modern English student, who strives to balance in just scales both the good and the evil deeds of the Church as they are found in history, and who has seen with his own eyes the condition of this Continent under Pius IX. The Eoman Pope, as he acts upon Europe, appears in many a guise ; he is first a warrior, sore wounded, almost overmatched in fight, panting, dripping with sweat, but still full of hope for the future ; he then stands before VOL. I B 2 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. us a mighty King and lawgiver, whose divine authority to set up and to pluck down is meekly acknowledged by the vassal nations hardly out of their childhood ; he lastly appears as the remorseless old man who clings to the neck of the luckless Sindbad. 1 Let us contemplate by turns ..Leo the Great going "forth to meet the barbarian. Innocent IV. pronouncing the awful doom at Lyons, and Pius IX. ex- pounding his too famous Syllabus. Few institutions in the world have undergone such changes as the Western Church ; the age of the earliest Benedictines differs much from that of the earliest Cistercians, and this last age differs much from the age of the Jesuits. I give but a short sketch of the days of Struggle, a rather longer sketch of the days of Dominion ; my main business throughout this book lies with the more ignoble years that followed 1520, when I hope to show how Eome acted upon Southern Europe, how Protestantism acted upon the North. PERIOD I. STRUGGLE Italian sway . . . A.D. 30 A.D. 408 German sway . . A.D. 408 A.D. 833 Barbarian inroads "1 fi _ mi* Conversion of North and East/ I presume that all my readers have a general know- ledge of the early days of Christianity, how the Western Church had to struggle against Paganism, against Arianism, against the tyranny of Greek emperors, against the ravages of Mussulmans, against the inroads of barbarians from the North and East, men far more savage than the followers of Alaric and Alboin. Mighty indeed had been the changes at work; in the year 395 a great Eoman Emperor was ruling the many lands that lay between York and Jerusalem, between the mouths of the Danube and the slopes of Atlas, the heritage of four centuries ; in the year 595 the Visigoths were well settled in Spain, the English in Britain, the Franks in Gaul, the Lombards in Italy. 1 This last comparison refers to the Papal action on Europe alone. Had I been dealing with foreign missions, I should have made a widely different simile. i ROME IN EARLY DAYS 3 Before long it could be well seen that the future life of Western Europe was to be grounded on three great founda- tions, the Creed from Palestine, the Law from Italy, the Manhood from Germany. Of this last country one doughty tribe, the Judah of the new Dispensation, seemed to have been set apart for the leadership of the West. The Franks were the chosen sons of the Church, ready to abjure Paganism at the first call, never polluted by Arianism, never stooping to bow beneath the Mussulman yoke, always obedient to the Papacy. The chief heroes of the new rising civilisation were Teutons, though not all of them Franks Clovis, the conqueror of Gaul, who began the great work of uniting his brother Germans ; Charles, who ended that work, and who influenced the next thousand years of European history by receiving from the Pope the Crown of the Roman Empire, hitherto worn at Constantinople ; Alfred, that all but perfect model of a Christian king; Rollo, whose warriors were to bequeath to Rome her fore- most champions in times to come ; Otho, the winner of the noblest of national victories, the Overlord who fixed the state of the northern half of Italy for many centuries. But the Franks, the chosen seed of Teutonism, found the sceptre departing from their hands after having held it for about four hundred years. The Pagans of the North had begun their ravages even in the days of the great Charles ; these ravages, slight hitherto, became the worst of calamities about the year 833, when the barbarians set about a systematic settlement in Ireland under Thorgils or Turgesius ; a few years later they were to plant colonies in England, and afterwards in France. Their way was made easier by the strife among Charles's grandsons ; the face of Europe was becoming changed ; Germany and Gaul (the latter soon to be known as France) broke asunder in 843 ; the Latin - speaking subjects of Clovis and his Teutonic brethren over the Rhine could never have really coalesced with each other. Italy, unlike Germany and Gaul, was not destined to enjoy a national life of her own ; the interest of Rome, not that of Italy, was to prevail in the Peninsula. 4 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. Those were hideous times ; perhaps we see the worst period of all in the opening years of the Tenth century, when the Hungarians, a new enemy, had just appeared from the East ; when the Northmen, not having as yet made their famous settlement on the Seine, were still bent upon their usual work of havoc ; when the Saracens, fresh from their new conquest of Sicily and Spain, were scouring the southern seas ; when Rome was under the vilest of Popes. England was the one land in the West whence at this particular date a Christian observer could take comfort. But better times came ; first the Northmen, and then the Hungarians, were awed or lured to peace ; the Saracens in Spain could never make abiding conquests to the north of the Douro. The Church was not wholly bad ; there was much in the clergy at large, bent upon the peaceful conversion of the North and East, to atone for the vileness of the Popes ; the head might be rotten, but the limbs were full of sap and pith. If we divide the age between 833 and 1017 into two parts, Otho's great victory in 955 will be the point of de- marcation; before that year Pagan ravages were many and national conversions to Christianity were few ; after that year we find many national conversions to Christianity all over the North and East, while Pagan ravages were limited to Britain and Ireland. The new nations of Europe Moravia, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, Sweden all in turn bowed before the Cross ; these set their faces towards Eome, while a still more powerful convert, yet further to the east, turned to Constantinople ; the difference of the two creeds adopted by Poland and Russia in that barbarous age has borne bitter fruit in our own day. Nearly the whole of Europe (we must except the Prussians, Lithuanians, Finns, and Lapps) was now to be won over to Christ. Germany, called to take the temporal leadership in Europe since the days of Clovis, was the great centre toward which the barbarous kingdoms, newly converted to the Latin faith, looked with awe ; it was Germany's Head who wielded the might of the Holy Roman Empire, a title something more than temporal. i EOME IN EAKLY DAYS 5 It was the German Kaiser who interfered now and then in the interests of morality and deposed wicked Popes. Still an observer of the year 1000 would have thought but little of either Home or Germany if he compared with them the amazing power of Constantinople, then nourishing under the fierce Basil, a realm backed by the newly-converted Northern Empire under Wladimir. Not only the Greeks, the masters of nearly all European trade, but the Moslems seemed in the year 1000 to tower above the subjects of the Pope ; the Caliphs, who dwelt at Cordova, threw into the shade Rome and her rulers, both spiritual and temporal. It was about this time that the mighty Almanzor swept through the whole country between Barce- lona and Compostella, forcing his way into the Spanish Holy of Holies shrouded in the Northern mountains. But this bold feat of arms was never again to be repeated ; henceforth the Mussulman, not less than the Pagan, was to be held in check. The tide of barbarism had now begun everywhere to ebb ; King Brian crushed the Danes in Ireland in 1014; Canute, after having for long made ruthless havoc in England, became her ruler in the im- portant year 10 17, and the converted Pagan founded a vast though short-lived Christian empire in the North ; the ravages of the heathen, which had lasted for nearly two centuries, had at length come to an end. PERIOD II. DOMINION Forward march of Latin Europe ) i m 7 l 1 Q8 Strife between Empire and Papacy J Highest power of the Papacy ) 119g Downfall of the Empire j Degeneracy ; Avignon ; Schism ; ) 13Q4 the Renaissance j We are now in a new period ; Latin Christianity was no longer to stand on the defensive, but was to reconquer her lost ground by the strong hand from Moslem and from Greek alike. The warlike heralds of the coming change stand forward the Pisan sailor, the Norman pilgrim, the Castilian knight. Six weighty events within 6 HOME AND EEFORM CHAP. a few short years followed that great turning-point, King Canute's conversion ; these were, the conquest of Sardinia by the Pisans, urged on by the Pope, in 1 1 7 ; l Canute's Christian empire in the North ; the end of the Ommeyad Caliphate in 1031, and the consequent downfall of the Spanish Moslem ; the mastery over the Southern half of Italy, achieved by the Normans about 1040, casting that rich land out of the Greek into the Latin scale ; the be- ginning of the decay of the Greek Empire, so mighty of late, decay to be dated from the last-mentioned year ; 2 the cleansing of Eome from evil Popes by the strong Emperor, Henry III., in 1046. The purgation was to be lasting; already had Hildebrand begun to make his mark in Church matters ; the different countries of the West were becoming conscious of great changes taking place in one way or another. France was to grasp the fact that her noblest province was Normandy, teeming with scholars and warriors ; the University of Paris was now to begin her task as the great teacher of Christendom. England was to reap more lasting good from a crushing defeat than she has ever done from her most brilliant victories. Christian Spain, crossing the Douro, was to wage the war against the disunited Moslem with some chance of success ; in this age Coimbra and Toledo were won back to the Cross. Italy exulted in the revived Papacy, and in maritime victories such as she had not achieved since the first Punic war ; her three champion states, Queens of the sea, were Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. Germany was to pay a huge price for the Crown of the Holy Eoman Empire ; she was to be torn asunder by civil wars, and was to see her lord lying at the Pope's feet ; she had to go to Canossa, which seems even now to be a bitter remembrance. The severance between the Eastern and Western Churches was made final by the Patriarch Cerularius, who thus completed the work of Photius, begun two hundred years earlier. Widely different indeed had been the theology of the two great divi- sions of Christendom ; the Eastern Church had never given 1 See Muratori's Annals of Italy for the year 1017. 2 See Finlay's Byzantine Empire. i ROME IN EAELY DAYS 7 birth to an Augustine, the man who turned away from specu- lations on the nature of God to set forth the guilt of man and the remedy thereof. He had many followers in the West as the ages rolled on, men who had nothing in com- mon with the dull masses around them ; he was the theo- logian to be most often appealed to by inquiring spirits in the days when North and South were rent apart from each other ; he was to be set higher by Calvin than by Molina. 1 In Augustine we see the stirring, practical West in its most glaring contrast to the dreamy, speculative East ; Roman lawyers have done as much for mankind as have Greek philosophers. And this West was now to make further strides in other things besides theology. How few grand churches built before the year 1017 have come down to our day, if we except those of Rome and Ravenna ! But about that year, or not long afterwards, the workmen were born who were to raise the noble columns of Pisa, and were to behold the still more majestic arches of Durham. There are four main principles without which no civilised nation can hope for a noble life ; these are Valour, Freedom, Order, and Morality. As to the first ofThese, the suBjects ^^ "oTfHeTalin'Chui-ch for the next five hundred years were the foremost warriors and statesmen in the world. None could dispute the palm with them ; the Greek and the Moslem were sinking ; the Protestant had not as yet arisen. Rome hurled Europe upon Asia ; the Crusades lasted for about two hundred years. In the year 1230 (we may contrast it with 1000) the Pope and Emperor, at peace for the moment, seemed together to tower above all rivals ; their knights held not only Rome, but Jerusalem and Constantinople, the three most historic cities in the world. Spain had won back Coimbra and 1 Gibbon says that Augustine's rigid system has been entertained with public applause and secret reluctance by the Latin Church. I suppose that this state of things did not begin before 1520. Calvin (De ceternd Prcedesti- nationc) says, "We follow Augustine alone ; he is ours in all things; so much so, that if one had to write a Confession of Faith, I should easily pro- duce one composed of the Father's own words." Quoted by Rohrbacher, Histoire Universelle de I'figlise Catholique, torn. xiii. 311. 8 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. Toledo in the Eleventh century, Saragossa and Lisbon in the Twelfth ; she was now, in the Thirteenth, to master Valencia and Seville. Sicily had already been reconquered in the days of Hildebrand ; the Greek islands became the prey of Venice. The war against the Prussian and Lithu- anian heathen was waged with vigour ; the Albigensian heretics nearer home were simply stamped out. The great Tartar inroad of 1241 was but slightly felt in Latin Europe, if we compare the momentary havoc in Poland and Hungary with the long-abiding thraldom that Eussia was to undergo at the hands of the barbarians. One of the effects of this inroad was to hand over Western Eussia, a helpless prey, to foreign lords, the Lithuanians and the Poles, whose triumph was to last for many centuries. The great Ottoman invasion, later still, crushed the nations belonging to the Greek Church, but at first did little damage to those of the Latin Church, if we except a minority of the conquered Albanians and Bosnians and the burghers of Otranto. Jerusalem and Constantinople might be lost, but Granada was at last won ; the Portuguese made their way to India, and there founded an empire, under the leadership of the great Albuquerque. Meanwhile the Spaniards were mastering new kingdoms over the Atlantic ; Cortez found foemen worthy of his steel in the Aztecs; he was besieging Mexico in the fateful year 1520, and thus worthily ends the catalogue of great Latin conquerors that had begun with Guiscard and his brethren. 1 Now, if ever, might Eome quote the text, " Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." We have beheld Five centuries of achievements, the work of Western valour ; we may now glance at the fruits of Western Freedom. The Teutons of the Fifth century had breathed a new life into many a decaying province of imperial Eome ; their rude assemblies (such as the famous one that bearded Edward the Confessor) kept alive the sacred fire, that heritage of Europe as distinguished from Asia and Africa, that choice possession, of which we catch 1 Cortez had much to boast of ; not so Pizarro and later Spaniards. i HOME IN EARLY DAYS 9 our earliest glimpse in the two first Iliads. Late in the Twelfth century we light upon something more solid in its results than the momentary blaze of Roman patriotism kindled by Arnold of Brescia. The new scene lay on the Po ; on one side stood the mighty Emperor of the Romans at the head of his levies, German and Italian a Caesar taught by his lawyers to believe that he was the heir of all the rights ever claimed by Augustus or Theodosius. On the other side stood the Lombard States, smarting under the ruin of Milan, yet bent upon the right of self-govern- ment, and capable of efforts to be sustained through many years. The field of Lignano led to the Peace of Constance in 1183, a peace just both to freedom and the throne the noblest achievement of Italian valour and wisdom in all the long two thousand years that sunder the time of Hannibal from that of Radetsky. This achievement, which led to further results sixty years later, was powerfully aided by Alexander III., a statesman who stands in all but the foremost rank of Popes. The same Twelfth century, more- over, beheld the first triumphs of popular representation (a bulwark of freedom unknown to classic antiquity) in the Cortes of Aragon and Castile ; in this path England and Hungary were soon to follow, together with many another European realm. It was in the name of Freedom that the Popes shattered the mighty Empire of the West, triumph- ing over the most brilliant of all the modern Caesars. One of the great champions of Freedom was Aquinas, the oracle of the Dominicans. 1 But Freedom is of little worth unless it be accom- panied by Order. The safest groundwork of this last principle was secured by the rapidly increasing pros- perity of the great cities. Those of the Mediterranean could already boast a long history ; those of the Baltic were struggling into notice in the Twelfth century ; those of the Atlantic had their day yet to come. As Constantinople fell into decay she left the field open to many a youthful Western rival. Not only trade, but manufactures were 1 I have seen sentences, quoted from him by Irish Fenians, clergymen, as I suppose, who are proud to shelter themselves under his authority. 10 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. beginning to flourish. England exported her wool, to be spun in Flanders. More attention was paid to police ; the system of private wars, against which the Church had always set her face, was put down in various countries ; Law was by slow degrees enlarging her sway and sweeping aside many relics of barbarism ; the reign of mere brute force was becoming a thing of the past ; the city was rising- above the castle. Learning and Art were making rapid strides all this time. Many Universities, bulwarks of thought and independence, arose throughout Europe in imitation of the great model at Paris ; studies were promoted by the leading men among the begging friars ; the best Latin classics were often in the mouths of the monastic Chroniclers. The "Western Church, unlike the Eastern, laid great stress on the delivery of sermons to the common folk, and in this way did much to foster the corrupt daughters of the Latin, the new languages now springing to life around Paris, Toulouse, Burgos, Florence. The ripening first-fruits of the new literatures were seen in Villehardouin, in Chaucer, and in the yet mightier bard of 1300. A contemporary of this last known to the world as Giotto gave to "Western art its right direction, and ruled that the old traditional models should be left to the Greek Church, which here was indeed a laggard. In Italy, painter went on improving upon painter, until soon after 1500 the brilliant art set up her noblest trophies. Sculpture was making a parallel advance ; the statues that still adorn the fronts of the cathedrals of Rheims and Wells were heralds of the genius of Donatello and of the great Michael. As to Architecture, the mighty round arches of Durham were followed a hun- dred years later by the more graceful style of Lincoln ; after this, the overpowering internal majesty of Amiens yielded to the more happily-balanced proportions of a certain church at Rouen, perhaps the highest triumph of the Gothic. This pointed style never throve in Italy, and soon after 1500 the noble old Basilica of St. Peter's, dating from the age of Constantine, was by degrees pulled down (a sign of the times) to clear the way for the works of the men of the Renaissance. Change was in the air, and not in Architecture alone. i SOME IN EAELY DAYS 11 More important than all the works of the Italian painters and sculptors was the wonderful craft which the world owes to a few German workmen who brought in a new epoch. Few scenes in history are more striking than the sight of Pope Paul II. (whose stately palace at Home we still admire) bending with delight over the newly- invented Press, as he saw it plied by the Northern handi- craftsmen in the Italian monastery. We know the tale of the man who warmed an adder in his bosom. Far wiser was the old English monk who said, "Either we must root out printing, or printing will root us out." Thanks to the Press, the laity were soon to rise to the level of the clergy in learning ; the Mores and Cecils were to supplant the Wolseys and Gardiners a change already foreshadowed by Frederick II. in Italy and by Philip the Fair in France. Learning, widely diffused, was absolutely needed, if there was to be any wholesome change in Western religion. Melanchthon and Calvin were to appeal to a far more educated body of hearers than Wickliffe and Huss had addressed ; and it was Melanchthon and Calvin, not the fanatics of Munster, who were to be the leaders of the coming Reformation. As to Morality, we should greatly err if we thought that the Western Church in her five hundred years of Dominion could boast a stainless record. Many a blemish in her scutcheon may be marked by the dullest of observers. The barbarous treatment of the Jews, especially in Spain ; the ruthless suppression of the Albigenses in a war that reminds us of Mecca more than of Bethlehem ; the inven- tion of the Inquisition ; the mad fury against witchcraft ; the license given to perjury and fraud by the higher autho- rities ; the gigantic forgeries upon which the Church based her laws ; the traffic in holy things, a traffic which was to prove the deadliest wound of all to the Church these matters are ever in the mouth of the veriest smatterer in Church history. Still, against all these drawbacks, revolt- ing as they may seem, there is a fair set-off; the record of the Latin Church before 1520 is much like that of the British Empire in India; in both the good far 12 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. outweighs the evil, which every apologist must acknow- ledge. The most striking of the reforms wrought by Chris- tianity is the gradual abolition of slavery, that poisonous blight of antiquity, a system cursing alike them that rule and them that serve ; this was got rid of not by violent outbreaks of the San Domingo pattern, but by the steady, noiseless preaching of the New Testament morality. Athens and Florence have often been compared, but Dante had an unspeakable advantage over .tEschylus in escaping all contact with thousands of surrounding bondmen. After slavery came serfdom, which was effaced by degrees in many lands much in the same way as the older curse. Another achieve- ment of these early days was the honour paid to woman, one of the most striking differences between Europe and Asia ; the image of the Maiden Mother was always at hand to forbid anything savouring of that brutal debasement of the weaker sex usual among Mahometans and Pagans. Christianity, teaching the brotherhood of all mankind in Jesus of Nazareth, had a mighty influence in binding to- gether the Teuton conquerors with the Roman provincials, and later, in checking rapacity and outrage all through the days of feudalism. Every soul that came under Christian influence knew that this visible world was not all ; that a day was sooner or later to come when the downtrodden thrall and the outraged maiden should find shelter in Abraham's bosom, while their selfish oppressors should lie howling. Such a truth as this, set forth by thousands of preachers, amply atones for many a juggling miracle and lying legend. Much does the world owe to the Western monks, most different from their Eastern brethren, who dreamed away their lives on the top of pillars. In the Western monas- teries Latin never ceased to be cultivated, and the perish- able manuscripts of the classics were copied and preserved ; in these establishments the best school of tillage was found, and the harassed peasant learned that it was better to live under the crozier than under the lance. Many a writer who has little in common with Rome has offered his meed of thanks at St. Benedict's shrine. From these monasteries i HOME IN EAELY DAYS 13 came forth the statesmen and lawyers who wrought improve- ment after improvement in the body politic ; it was through the Church alone that the lowly in those rough ages could force their way up to eminence. In the monasteries were compiled the legends of saints, the first-fruits of French literature, where hoary Latin forms may still be traced. It was the friars who mainly had the shaping of the modern languages of Europe ; St. Francis was one of the first fathers of the later Italian ; and the wondrous change in English wrought between 1200 and 1300 may safely be set down in a great measure to the harangues of the new preachers, black and gray, ever lifting up their voices in the streets, and studious of French elegance. Even the blemishes thrown in the teeth of the mediaeval Church have been of service to later ages. Thus the celib- acy of the clergy, more especially when enforced under the burning sun of Southern Europe, has always been a great point of attack with the enemies of Home ; we should re- member, on the other hand, that by this means alone the priesthood was saved from sinking into a mere caste, and the bishoprics were prevented from becoming hereditary property in a few favoured families. Moreover, it was this celibacy of the clergy that was to become the best of all recruiting sergeants for the Eeformation, when the fulness ef time should come. We have in our own day welcomed with joy the abolition of the Temporal power of the Pope, but in earlier times it was highly important that the Judge who kept peace among the quarrelsome Kings and States of the Middle Ages should be throned on a lofty seat of his own, whence he could send forth his dooms. The Deposing power, at least between 1076 and 1250, was rather a gain than a loss to mankind ; the balance of the nations in Europe, a priceless boon, was well upheld ; Germany was not to mono- polise the leadership of the West beyond 1291 ; France, England, and Spain were each in turn to have their chance. The Popes spoke out with no faltering voice ; they did not base their jurisdiction upon the appeals of some selfish despot or of some riotous mob ; they went to the fountain- head, quoting over and over again in their Bulls the famous 14 text from Jeremiah, " See, I have this day set thee over the natioiis and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant." There is no apologetic tone here. Power seemed to be settled upon those fittest to wield it. We can hardly think that the clergy were unduly promoted above the laity when we mark the contrast between our English king, William II., a tyrant befouled with every vice, and Archbishop Anselm, one of the purest models of Christianity ; this extreme contrast between the powers of evil and good, here brought into sharp collision, was repeated in many another land. All men saw that there was something higher than mere brute force at work in the world. The mention of England leads to the remark that she has received more from the Latin Church than any other nation has done; her gains from this source were direct before 1520, indirect after that date, when her natural enemies were by degrees dragged down by Eome. Much do we owe to the brethren of Bede and Dunstan. It is well known how in the early days of our Christianity the Archbishop of Canterbury (established long before there was any King of all England) had a share in moulding our many quarrelsome kingdoms south of the Trent into one ; how the Norman Conqueror, sent hither as Eome's special champion, sternly forbade all future disunion on the part of our cities and nobles, otherwise ready to fly apart from each other ; how the Celt of Cornwall, the Saxon of Sussex, the Dane of Lincolnshire, and the all-pervading Frenchman, being alike the children of the Church, were by degrees brought to speak one tongue ; how the clergy, differing from the usage of other realms, turned the Scriptures into English, and in it wrote their homilies and national chronicles ; how Freedom was established by the union of the priests, burghers, and nobles, ever ready to make head in common against Despotism ; how the Bishops were never allowed to stand aloof as a separate body ; how shrewd states- men and able writers abounded, who owed their training to the Church ; how private wars were put down ; how the serfs, thanks to the action of the clergy, were by degrees i HOME IN EAKLY DAYS 15 raised to the rank of free peasants. Compare with all this the four archbishoprics that did little to promote the unity of Ireland ; l the everlasting wars between the various States of Italy, wars often kindled by the Papacy ; the want of union between the various Spanish kingdoms, never properly welded together ; the baleful phantom of the Koman Empire, always dangled before the eyes of the too ambitious Germans, to their ruin ; the sullen resolve of the different races in Hungary to stand aloof from each other, even to our own day ; the sorry part played by the French bishops and nobles, tools of the Crown and oppressors of the com- mons ; the fearful yoke of thraldom that weighed upon the Polish peasantry, robbing them of all interest in their own country. Archbishop Langton did much for England ; no other land was blessed with his counterpart. How few years of civil bloodshed have we had in the last seven cen- turies and a half ! In the happier course taken by English history a fair-minded observer may trace the influence of Home, not always, it may be, of the Papacy, but of the general spirit animating the Latin Church ; Popes might frown upon our budding freedom, and might wring vast sums of money out of our land, but a constant opposition to the Koman court was kept up by our bishops, friars, and chroniclers. England in her childhood needed leading strings, and these we had from the Papacy and the clergy. In the latter half of the period of which we now treat, Rome fell grievously from the lofty position she had main- tained down to 1280. She henceforth seemed not to set Morality on the same pinnacle as she placed Freedom, Order, and warlike training. She countenanced the hideous foreign oppression that led to the Sicilian Vespers ; she overshot the mark when the French King, who set lawyers above priests, defied her, and left behind him a pattern for future monarchs to follow ; she was guilty of the blood of the valiant Templars ; she made herself the tool of France, and barbarously persecuted the poor bewildered Bavarian 1 Happy was it for England that she followed the system of Rome, not that of Armagh, in the early days of her conversion. The two systems had a struggle for our country. 16 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. who sat in the seat of the two great Fredericks ; she became familiar (and no wonder) with those names unmusical in Ultramontane ears Avignon, Schism, Constance, Bohemia, Basle ; she twice practically acted as the ally of the Ottoman conqueror, first by directing crusades against Bohemia, the kingdom that stood as a reserve behind the rampart of Hungary ; afterwards by forming a league to break down the power of Venice. Any man in those days aiming at the lofty part of St. Bernard would have been as one crying in the wilderness. The Fourteenth century is a pitiful affair to any one who knows the history of its noble pre- decessor, and who has marked the begging friars, at the outset of their career, spreading through Europe like a purifying fire, as we see in Salimbene's chronicle ; in them was found a strong contrast, as that chronicler over and over again makes clear, to the average morals of the secular clergy. But the new impulse died out, and the Avignon age was rivalled in wickedness by the succeeding Century ; to this fact we cannot be blinded even by the deep interest that the names of Nicholas V. and Pius II. must always arouse. The Eenaissance was making its conquests, and was unwittingly leading the way to something still better, now not far off'; but the lives of the Popes, as we draw nearer to 1500, were worthy of the Tenth century. The times of Ariosto were most different from the earlier half of Dante's life, when old disciples of St. Francis were still alive. We now find a widespread corruption among the clergy everywhere; the swine seemed to be rushing violently down a steep place into the sea, when suddenly a German friar arose and barred their onward career. The advocates of Home themselves acknowledge so much as this, that the Popes allowed themselves to be carried away by the full-flowing tide of the Eenaissance. The comment upon this is, that the charges against the Popes go some- what deeper than the accusation of patronising a few loose poets and painters. What hold could morality have had upon Eome when Cardinal Cesarini, a most virtuous man in private life, could advise that barefaced perjury which ended in the frightful slaughter of Varna ? We who are i EOME IN EAELY DAYS 17 Northern men may be thankful that Rome was able to stave off the reforms called for at Constance and Basle ; that Luther, not Erasmus, was to grave his mark deepest on the coming age; that a remarkable cleavage was soon to sunder the North and the South of Europe. Even if Morality be left out of sight, a sad change for the worse was coming over European politics ; standing armies, a fruitful source of harm, were beginning to be heard of both in France and Spain ; Germany and Switzer- land were sending forth thousands of their stoutest sons to ply their halberds for foreign gold. Nothing like the furious struggle for Lombardy, waged by many nations soon after 1500, had been heard of in Roman Catholic Europe; this degeneracy cannot well be set down to Protestantism. Freedom had never been a thriving plant for the last 250 years in France or in Southern Italy, still less in Lom- bardy ; but now further losses were threatening. Castile was to lose her old liberties ; Florence, the ancient home of self-government, was to crouch at the feet of the Pope's bastard kinsmen. 1 Not only Freedom, but the power of the sword, the heritage of centuries, was to slip away from Latin Christendom. Hungary, that fine old bulwark of the Western faith, was to go down before the grim Otto- man. The kingdoms of the West were to fight among ..themselves instead of grappling with the Eastern invader. In short, a new and startling epoch was at hand the Sixth that our Western Europe has seen. The former epochs had already made their mark the old Empire of Rome ; Christianity ; the G-erman conquests ; Islam ; the discovery of the way to Asia and America. Now was to come the Sixth epoch, to be followed, nearly three hundred years later, by a Seventh. The age of Debasement was about to begin ; Southern Europe was by slow degrees to sink far below the level of the hitherto despised North. 1 Balmes, in his comparison of Protestantism with Catholicism, imputes to the former the loss of the old liberties of Europe, vol. iii. chap. Ixii. I tell a different story. He waves Holland aside altogether, and seems not to know that Sweden, at the end of the Sixteenth century, achieved what England did in 1688. No one could gather ,from him that Nuremberg had a fate most ditferent from that of Florence. VOL. I C 18 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. Each State, soon after 1517, heard the kindly bidding, " Friend, come up higher " ; some obeyed, others went their own way, and after a short interval were dragged down by Rome. We shall soon see Holland rise above Spain, England above France, Sweden above Poland, Prussia above Austria. The age of Debasement was to bring calamities far worse than those known to the age of Roman Dominion ; the war against the Albigenses caused much less misery than the Thirty Years' War; Bohemia had to bear much suffering after 1420, but she was never crushed altogether until 1620. In view of the coming struggle it is well to take a sur- vey of the state of the nations at some given time, as in 1577, when Protestantism in Europe had reached its highest watermark; in 1630, when the Jesuit reaction had done its utmost; in 1655, when something like abiding religious peace had been enforced upon war -broken Christendom. And whence can we better take such a survey than from the Tower of the Capitol ? PERIOD III. DEBASEMENT Struggle with Protestantism . . . . 1520-1655 Lull between two storms . . . . 1655-1789 Struggle with Eevolution .... 1789-1902 PERIODS OF LATE EUROPEAN HISTORY 1520-1546 The two creeds of Western Europe, as a general rule, do not come to blows in the field except in Switzerland ; Northern Germany, Sweden, Denmark, England, and part of Switzerland break away from Kome. 1546-1577 Protestantism continues to spread ; it masters Scotland and Hol- land, also much of Hungary and Bohemia, and seems likely to overrun all Central Europe. Two vain attempts are made by the friends of the Papacy upon Germany and Holland. 1577-1640 The agents of Rome recover most of Central Europe and make two vain attempts upon England and Sweden ; another attempt, all but successful, is made once more upon Germany. PERIODS OF LATE EUROPEAN HISTORY 19 1640-1683 The Powers subject to the Papacy fall to pieces ; Spain decays pitiably ; Poland begins to yield to Russia, the great Italian bulwark to Turkey, and Ireland to England ; Austria is much weakened. France, as a general rule, takes the side of the Protestants from 1530 to 1672, and so escapes the general doom. Sweden, Holland, Eng- land, and Northern Germany are in full vigour, while Russia and Turkey advance ; the enemies of Rome triumph. 1683-1733 Austria makes a great recovery ; Russia rises in the world, while many of the other Powers, formerly of great weight, decay. Britain and France stand firm. 1733-1789 A new Power, that of Prussia, representing Northern Germany, arises ; Russia and Britain increase amazingly, while Austria under- goes losses and France gains little. The new ideas sapping the Papal Church are widely spread and prepare the way of the Revolution. 1789-1878 The Revolution conquers all Europe, except Russia and a strip of Turkey. Disappearance of Poland, laceration of Sweden, and almost total ruin of Turkey in Europe. Italy becomes united ; Germany does the like. The Southern powers either decay or are not trusted by the Papacy. 1878- ? This period seems as if it would belong to Britain, Germany, and Russia. CHAPTER II ITALY : Strife of Foreigners for Italy . . . 1494-1559 The Spanish Yoke 1559-1707 Austrian Influence 1707-1792 The Revolution Piedmont's Advance . . 1792-1870 Unity and Taxation 1870-1902 STRANGE it is how Italy, answering as she does to Palestine under the old dispensation, seems to have been set apart for the cradle of the Papacy. Her children have been com- pared to the Levites chosen to bear the Ark of the Covenant. First the Conqueror, and then the Martyr of Europe, to this Dne land the priceless boon of Unity was denied for Thirteen 3enturies. If I may alter a well-known phrase of 1268, the death of Italy was of old the life of the Papacy, as in our days the life of Italy has been the death of the old system of Rome. I think it was Mazzini who rather profanely called Italy " the Christ of nations." Her long disease began early ; the Ostrogoth, unlike his brother Germans, was not allowed to root himself fast in his conquered province. After his fall the whole of Italy and Sicily were united for a moment, until the day that Alboin crossed the Alps ; from that day till 1870, a period of Thirteen centuries almost to a year, the hapless land was to be split asunder, much to the advantage of Europe and the Papacy. The 1 In this chapter I follow closely Ranke's book on the Papacy. I keep Rome in the foreground, and do not protend to f,'ive more tnan a glance from time to time at tie many other States of Italy. 20 CHAP. II ITALY 21 Lombard, hated by his subjects far more than the Visigoth or the Frank were by their thralls, could not make a thorough conquest; the great Charles never tamed the South of Italy as he had tamed the North ; Eome, lying between the German lords of the North and the Greek lords of the South, the Lombard's supplanters, well knew how to suck no small advantage out of her situation between the two rival powers. 1 Then came the Norman, who was proud to hold his Apulian, Calabrese, and Sicilian conquests as a fief of the Papacy, a brand-new device, and, moreover, a source of endless future woe to Southern Italy. Guiscard made himself the champion of Hildebrand ; in the next century Eome first leaned upon the German against the Norman ; later she leaned upon the Norman against the German. An unhappy marriage now set the crowns of Germany, Italy, and Sicily upon one head, and the Pope seemed doomed to be nothing more than the lowly chaplain of an overbearing master, the probable reviver, in a great measure, of the old Eoman Empire. Fearful was the strife that followed in the middle of the Thirteenth century ; the Popes have been blamed for their ruthless wars against Frederick II., but it was on their part simply a struggle for life and death ; the whole history of Western Europe must have been altered for the worse had Eome sunk to the level of Constantinople. We English, who can now see farther than good old Matthew Paris could, need not grudge the huge sums of money drained out of our land to keep up the wars against Frederick ; the balance of power in Europe was at stake, and, after all, the great battle was fought on the Ehine and the Po, not on the Thames. The Papacy won the day, and brought the Western Empire down to a mere shadow of its former self. Italy was once more debarred from union ; a line of French princes was settled in the South, while the German Kaiser, soon to become little more than a name, claimed a precarious obedience from the North. The Popes in this age were very different from 1 Draw a line between Ancona and Naples ; it is strange how almost all the great Italians after 1000 came from the parts lying to the north of this line. 22 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. what they had been down to 1198; they were rapidly making their Temporal power a reality and not a phrase, as it had been before that year. Henceforth they were Italian Kings as well as the Fathers of Western Chris- tendom one of the weightiest facts in history. The age that saw the establishment of the Temporal power was an age of wondrous greatness for Italy ; one and the same man might have spoken with Innocent III., with St. Francis, with Frederick II., with St. Thomas Aquinas, and with Dante ; never did Italy, either earlier or later, give birth to so numerous a breed of great men wielding a world-wide influence. The Temporal power soon made Eome one of the five great States of the land, the others being Naples, Florence, Milan, and Venice. They entered into alternate wars and leagues with each other, as they were now released from all fear of the German Overlord, whose power in Italy since 1250 had been rapidly waning away. They saw in 1494 that France, not Germany, was the power to be dreaded as a persistent invader and conqueror. Ever since 1291, when the noble Eudolf died, France had supplanted Germany in the leadership of Europe, though the English bills and bows had, for long intervals of time, abated somewhat the brilliance of French sway. Before long France, already mistress of despot-ridden Lombardy, was grappling with Spain for the possession of Southern Italy. Spain won the day, thanks to the skill of her great Gonsalvo, and for the next hundred years, triumphant Spain and baffled France were ever ready to fly at each other's throats a fact of immeasurable weight in the history of Protestantism. Yet a few years and Spain, victorious in Italy as in America, would without question replace France in the leadership of Europe. A new and commanding figure now arose in Italy, Julius II. (Delia Eovere), the warrior Pope, who himself led on his soldiers, made Eomagna fast to the Papal See, and conquered Parma and Piacenza, cities torn away from the Duchy of Milan. The dreams of the mighty Innocent III. were even surpassed ; the Papal States, much increased II ITALY 23 in size, became a solid fact in the European system ; the petty tyrants were put down, and the cities were not to keep their liberties for long. Only Ferrara and Urbino remained outside, and they might drop in at any time to the feudal Lord at Rome. The Papacy increased her dominions in Italy just at the moment when she was about to lose the vast revenues that had hitherto flowed in from the North. Pope Julius was above the weakness of nepotism, a weakness that had caused his uncle, Sixtus IV., to grant out Papal cities to a nephew as a family pro- vision. By this time the French, the Germans, the Spaniards, and the Swiss had made luckless Italy their wrestling ground ; Pope Julius had called in foreigners for his own ends, but found it hard to drive them out again. The happiest fate for Italy would have been to have flourished as one united Kingdom under the Papacy ; but what was good for Italy would probably have been harmful to the other realms of Europe. Julius II. pulled down great part of old St. Peter's that he might add a new wonder to the world, a work to be carried out by his successors within the next hundred years. When in 1513 he made way for Leo X., it was seen that most of the nations, now rapidly tending to standing armies, and therefore to despotism, were either ruled, or soon to be ruled, by a number of young and warlike kings. Yet it would have much astonished an observer of 1517 could it have been foretold to him that the great leading men of the age now coming in would be found, not in the brilliant courts of Europe or in the halls of the Vatican, but in a Saxon convent and in an old Picard town, where a certain child was creeping not un- willingly to school. This year, 1517, first made the name of Luther known far and wide. Yet good-natured Pope Leo, in the full enjoyment of his hunting and fishing, surrounded by the parasites who drained him of all his cash, never seems to have been troubled by any misgivings as to this Northern Savonarola, who seemed indeed not unlikely to end like the oracle of Florence. At this time all Christian Europe, from 24 EOME AND REFOBM CHAP. Finland to Sicily, bowed in meek submission to the Papacy, the only exceptions being a handful of Piedmontese and Bohemian heretics. But three years passed ; in 1520 Luther, who had long haggled with the Papal envoys, took the step from which there was no going back, and burnt Leo's Bull. In 1520 we are at the threshold of a new epoch'; the decided beginning of the Reformation, the rising that ended in the overthrow of the liberties of Castile, the conquest of Mexico, all belong to this year. Never was seen a greater contrast than there was between the "Hew Northern apostle, bent heart and soul upon the things of the next world, and the gorgeous Pope, delighting in music, painting, Latin improvisation, buffoons, and comedies not the most correct. " Let us enjoy the Papacy," said he, "since God has given it to us." He was ; always in want of money, and died leaving mountains of | debt behind him. He shrank not from wars and blood- shed, shifting from one alliance to another, hoping thus to provide dukedoms, perhaps crowns, for his Florentine kin. He took steps to achieve the reform of the calendar ; but his great feat was the promotion of the sale of Indulgences, to make money for the building of St. Peter's. Guicci- ardini has set before us the ministers of religion gamlSiing away in taverns the right of freeing souls from "Purgatory. Leo was a patron of the infamous Aretino, but did nothing for Ariosto, and seems to have overworked Raphael. 1 His reign was more favourable to art than to religion; the Christian faith was openly called in question. Erasmus, who found a good friend in Leo, was astonished "at the Italian blasphemies that met his Northern ear. At that particular time no one seemed a gentleman or a good courtier unless he held some false and heretical opinion. Erasmus heard a sermon preached on Good Friday by one of tKeTnew school before Julius II. and many Cardinals and Bishops. The Pope was called the almighty Jove, brandishing the trident, casting his thunderbolts, and accomplishing all he 1 I have taken this sketch of Leo mainly from Villari's MacMavelli and his Times, where a chapter is devoted to the Pope. The story about Boscolo is in ui. 171. ii ITALY 25 willed by the mere nod of his head. The deeds done of late in Gaul, Germany, and Spain were but the efforts of his simple will. Then came a hundred times phrases such as " Eome," " Eomans," " Eoman mouth," " Eoman eloquence." Christ was likened to the self-sacrificing Curtius, Decius, and Iphigenia ; also to Socrates and Phocion, to Scipio and Aristides. " If Cicero had lived in our days," asks Erasmus, "would he think the name of the Catholic Church le&f illustrious than that of ' Conscript Fathers,' ' Quirites,' or ' Senate and people of Eome ' ? " l Even the youthful Boscolo at Florence, when about to lose his head, complained thaflie^could^not get Brutus out of his thoughts, and begged his confessor to teach him to die for the love of Christ. The tendency of the Italian mind about 1520 was much like that of the French mind in 1790; the immortality of the soul was openly called in question. Most different from Leo was his successor. Early in 1522 Adrian VI., the last of all the foreign Popes, was chosen against his will as being a saint. He"was at least a theolSgian ; such a being the Holy See had nofseen for very many years. The good Fleming thought more of his olcf housekeeper than of all the Court poets, who seemed to him little better than Pagans. He resolved at first to stand neutral between his old pupil, the Emperor Charles "V., and the French King ; acting in strong contrast to the late Popes, who had turned Italy upside down. Adrian was most frank in acknowledging the abuses that had driven the Germans to revolt, so much so that his frankness has been rebuked by later Ultramontanes, from Cardinal Pallavicini downward. 2 1 I take this from Gasquet, Eve of the Reformation, 204. The spiritual atmosphere of Rome was to be wonderfully altered thirty years later. 2 Cardinal Caraffa is on this point the most trusty of witnesses. He writes tb w RoTTre that there were no brigands or lansquenets more vicious than the clergy ; that the bad quality of the secular priests, and even of the regulars, had inspired the people with disgust for Masses and ecclesiastical authority. Philippson, Origines de la Contre-Revolution Gatholique, 7, 8. Later still a nephew of Pius IV. cried, "The cursed and hateful conduct of the clergy has caused our misfortunes for the most part ; the cause of the storms of our times is in the crimes and the sloth of the clerks." See Adrian's Bull in Raynaldus for the year 1522. 26 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. But his reforms, as was natural, aroused the enmity of the Curia ; the rescue of Germany from heresy seemed likely to draw with it the loss of Italy. Pope Adrian, like the younger Pitt, was the very man for peaceable times ; yet both of them were set to face a fearful revolution, where experience could teach nothing. Jovius, who wrote his life, tells us that this Pope, an old Inquisitor, purposed to take strong measures against the swarms of concealed Jews, who had fled from Spain to Rome as to a harbour of assured safety ; also against blasphemers and atheists, against usurers, and against corruptors of youth, a crime at which the city of Eome and her laws seemed to wink. He thought seriously of destroying the statue of Pasquin, who had treated him roughly. Never was a good man placed in a falser position than Adrian. Eome did not mourn when, in 1523, he made way for Clement VII., Leo's cousin, of the house of Medici ; the new Pope had been a partisan, at least hitherto, of the Emperor's. But Charles would not give up Lombardy, and the Pope feebly wavered between the two mighty monarchs who were struggling for Italy. Before the autumn of 1516 four foreign nations had mingled in the fray ; after 1519 Charles and Francis alone faced each other. The field of Pavia made Charles lord and master of all. Yet this was the moment chosen by the Pope to form an Italian league against the con- queror ; " now was the finest chance in the world to win freedom and glory." Seldom has there been greater trickery than that now practised by the Italian con- federates and their enemies, the Pope being the arch- trickster. But no great Italian captain, no Carmagnola or Spinola, came forward at this fearful crisis. The Duke of Urbino, who had little reason to love the Medici, played a pitiful part at the head of the national army. On the other hand, thousands of German Protestants came over the Alps ; and early in 1527 Bourbon led them, along with his Spaniards and Italians, to the ever-memorable sack of Eome. Other sacks have lasted for a few hours or days ; this one lasted for months. Into Eome the treasures of the world had been flowing for many years ; the booty was II ITALY 27 enormous, and the tortures by which it was extracted were fiendish. More tolerable was the horseplay of the German soldiers, who elected Luther as Pope. The true Pontiff, to whose shifty statesmanship the hideous calamity was mainly owing, took shelter in the castle of San Angelo. A still worse mishap had already befallen him ; Florence had shaken off the yoke of the Medici, and was now a free State. To hand down Florence to his nephews as a family possession was the one darling wish of Clement's heart, and this wish there was but one way of attaining ; it was through close alliance with Charles V., the tyrant of Italy. The new shifting of policy was effected by a treaty in the summer of 1529, after the failure of one more serious effort by France to break the Spanish yoke in Italy. Charles and Clement met at Bologna late in the year, and the first- fruits of their new alliance was the siege of Florence, almost the last refuge of dying Italian freedom. The old city, the hallowed ground where Dante had sung and Savonarola preached, held out right steadfastly, in this the darkest hour of Italy, against the thousands of beleaguering Spaniards, Germans, and Italians. For almost one year did the struggle rage between burghers and trained soldiers ; 14,000 of these last are said to have perished. This doughty defence of Florence has been well commemorated in Azeglio's noble prose epic, due to our own Century. But Clement and Charles triumphed ; the chief champions of freedom, in spite of a guaranteed amnesty, were handed over to torture and death, and a vicious Medicean bastard was made Duke of Florence. No wonder that Pope Clement was willing to crown Charles Emperor at Bologna in 1530, a most mournful date. All Italy now lay crouching beneath the Spanish sword ; no Emperor had ever wielded such unchallenged power to the south of the Alps since Frederick II. beheld the Lombard League at his feet early in 1238. Charles showed himself a ruthless tyrant in Italy, but one exception to his usual policy must be marked. Andrew Doria, driven by the folly of the French Court (like Bourbon earlier) into the arms of Spain, refused to found 28 ROME AND EEFOEM CHAP. a tyranny upon the ruin of Genoa, and prevailed upon the Emperor to recognise the liberties of that State. Well might the great seaman be described on his tomb as " the best of citizens, the most happy avenger and author of public freedom." Henceforth Genoa, differing much from Venice, became for ages a bulwark of the Spanish interest. Without reckoning his Florentine achievement, the Pope was able to make conquests of his own within the States of the Church. Bologna had been mildly dealt with, all things considered, when tamed by the mighty Julius ; it was to be otherwise with Ancona and Perugia. 1 The former of these, a rich mart of trade, showed some impatience of Papal taxation. Clement first built a fortress there, under pretence of Turkish naval inroads ; he then sent in an army, banished sixty-four of the nobles, changed the laws, and farmed out the government of the town for a yearly sum. After this certain nobles, suspected of con- spiracy, were at once beheaded. In the next Pontificate Perugia rose in rebellion on the price of salt being doubled ; she could make but little fight against the Papal army in 1540 ; the houses of the leaders were razed, and a huge fortress was built to overawe the burghers, who had to pay the cost of the whole. The new chief magistrate bore the new title of " the Conservator of Ecclesiastical Obedience." The Pope, as we see, was speedily becoming as absolute a despot as the King of France. Of the five great Italian States Rome alone was advancing ; Venice was slowly going down, and the other three cities were under tyrants. Clement and Charles, the two lords of Italy, had some reason to mistrust each other; the German Protestants were winning ground every day, and Csesar in 1530 thought that they might perhaps give ear to a General Council (it had been petitioned for six years earlier) more willingly than to a Pope. Whatever might come of 1 Adriani, writing in this century, remarks that the same year saw the reconquest of Perugia by the Pope, and that of Ghent by the Emperor. Istoria de' suoi tempi, book ii. See the account of two Perugian eye- witnesses in the ArcMvio Storico Italiano, xvi. Part II. 376-476. n ITALY 29 this, in any case the Imperial Eagle must gain allies. On the other hand, the phrase "General Council" was the most loath- some of all things in Papal ears. The mere rumour of such an assembly sent down the price of all the saleable offices at the Roman Court. Clement set forth all the objections to the proposed Council, and hung back as long as he could ; he haggled with the Protestants as to the place of meeting and as to the principles which were to determine disputed questions. Turning his back on Charles, he crossed the sea to Marseilles and had an interview with Francis I. late in 1533, when the Pope made a most baleful gift to France in the person of his niece, Catherine dei Medici, who was now married to the King's second son. The French King at least was not the man to worry Eome about a Council to pacify heretics. More than this, he was a friend to both Pope and Protestants, the two parties who had the same aim in politics, though not in religion ; who had each a grievance of their own against Charles V. Francis, with the consent of Clement, one year later prompted a blow in Germany against the house of Austria in favour of Pro- testantism, which was now spreading more rapidly than ever. England was about to join in the movement, as Scandinavia had done earlier ; but Clement thought much more of the interests of his Medicean kinsmen, who lorded it at Florence as clients of the Imperial power, than of retain- ing his spiritual sway over England. He gave himself up, in this English business at least, to the commands of Charles V. ; the suit for the famous divorce dragged on for nearly six years ; the English King finished it in his own way, after Gardiner and Bonner, well earning their future bishoprics, had long cajoled and bullied in vain. Clement pronounced the fatal sentence early in 1534, and saw England forthwith break away from the Papacy. Not long after this heavy blow Clement died, leaving behind him Protestantism spreading in the North, the Imperial Court bent on holding a Council, Italy trodden under the feet of foreigners, and his own worthless kinsmen, for whom he had loaded his soul with so much guilt, quarrelling over their Florentine prey. As to his dealings with his countrymen, 30 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. he " had brought want to their boards, infamy to their beds, fire to their roofs, and the knife to their throats." l We sometimes hear it said that the Temporal power of the Popes has been a blessing to Italy ; let those who hold this opinion study the shifty politics of Clement VII., ever dodging between Charles and Francis, bringing on the sack of Home, and overthrowing the freedom of Florence. Whatever this Pope may have thought of his duties as Head of the Church, he assuredly thought much more of his authority as an Italian King, and as a member of the house of Medici. Much did Protestantism gain by this struggle of two opposite tendencies in Clement's breast. The next Pope was Paul III., of the renowned house of Farnese, a sovereign hailed by the Eomans in 1534 as one of themselves. He was a true child of the Eenaissance, able to talk Greek and Latin, blessed with a fine family of his own, a great believer in astrology. He at once gave the Eed Hat to his grandson, a boy of fourteen; after- wards more worthily to some of the best men in Italy, whom he bade to prepare a plan for the reform of the Church. Cardinal Contarini, noblest of all Venetians, who was quite a Lutheran in the matter of Justification by faith, took the lead in the war against simony and other abuses ; he cared not for the reputation of past Popes ; he thought it idolatrous to say, as many did, that the Pope might at will suspend or confirm the positive law and right. Paul even made ready to face the dreaded Council ; some of his new advisers fell afterwards under the suspicion of Protestantism. 2 Never were Eome and Eeform nearer agreement than in 1541, when Contarini appeared as Legate at the Diet of Eatisbon ; the Moderates seemed for the moment to have won the day over the Ultramontanes. But all the foes of Charles V, whether in Germa'ny or in France or in Eome, joined together to wreck Contarini's 1 I have here borrowed a most pithy sentence from Lord Macaulay. 2 Von Ranke, treating of the year 1545, tells us that Contarini's work on Justification was printed without correction so late as 1571 at Paris ; but the Inquisitor at Venice in 1589 corrected the Cardinal's book so as to make it orthodox before he would allow it to be printed. No wonder that Sarpi was bitter against Rome. II ITALY 31 fair work, and the two divisions of Western Christendom broke asunder, as it seems, for ever. Meanwhile hapless Italy was once more torn in two between Charles and Francis. The Duchy of Milan fell into the Emperor's hands by the death of the last of the Sforza dukes ; henceforth it was to belong to Charles and his Spanish descendants for nearly 200 years. "War was staved off for a short while ; this gave Charles the oppor- tunity of seeking an interview with Paul III. early in 1536. We now see the last exhibition of the old mediaeval Empire ; it was a spectacle in which Guelf and Ghibelline seemed to unite ; the Eoman Emperor, the Advocate of the Church, the heir of all the Hapsburgs, after entering his own capital city in triumph, made a long harangue before the Eoman Pope and the Cardinals in full consistory, while the whole of Christendom, in the persons of the ambassadors of the various States, seemed to take a part in the pageant. Never was such a sight to be seen again ; the old memories that clung to the names of Julius Caesar and Charles the Great were speedily to fade away. Shortly after this scene the war broke out ; the Turk came forward as the ally of France and plundered the coasts of Southern Italy, now left defenceless. Venice, much against her will, was dragged into a war with her Eastern foe ; in the course of this she had to complain bitterly of the slackness of her Genoese allies, who threw away a rare chance ; she had later to buy peace by yielding up many of her islands and also towns in the Morea. Among the many woes of Italy at this time not the least was the Ottoman's ever -threatening navy. Again and again did the Infidel, taking advantage of the strife between Charles and Francis, swoop down upon the Italian coasts ; those who resisted were put to the sword, the women borne off to Turkish harems, the boys to a still worse fate. The watch towers, which still stud the shores of Italy, are a striking memorial of these evil times. She was long left to face the Turk alone ; the kingdoms of Europe had learnt to prefer the Atlantic to the Mediter- ranean. 32 HOME AND REFOKM CHAP. Pope Paul in 1538 went to Nice, and there made peace between the two great rivals. He achieved some- thing for his own house, for Charles was induced to promise his natural daughter Margaret to Ottavio Farnese, the Pope's grandson. 1 Paul had even hopes of gaining for the youth the Duchy of Milan. One great cause of discord between the Pope and the Emperor was Paul's desire to settle Parma and Piacenza, late conquests of the Holy See, on his son, Pier Luigi Farnese, perhaps the worst ruffian in Italy. This grant, afterwards made by Paul, is one of the greatest acts of nepotism ever recorded of any Pope. What the great Julius (of a truth rightly named) had fairly won by the sword was to be handed over to a mis- begotten brood, who could boast of a Papal sire. To effect his plan Paul had a conference on this matter with every Cardinal ; some unbending Churchmen he could not bring over to his darling purpose; the Emperor refused to ratify the grant, as he well knew that the Farnesi were now inclining to the French interest. A new war had broken out ; the Turks, conquerors of Hungary, had appeared once more in 1543, had ravaged in Southern Italy, but had spared the Papal territory as being in the interest of Francis. The Turkish fleet had come to water at Ostia, having very good intelligence with the Cardinal, who acted as governor for the Pope. The Lilies and the Crescent had together in vain been borne to the siege of Nice, whicli held out manfully under the Cross of Savoy. 2 Meanwhile, late in 1545, the Council of Trent had held its first meeting, and it had already given fair warning to the Protestants that their views would meet with no toleration from the Fathers now assembled. There being now no other war in hand, in 1546 the Emperor and the Pope undertook to put down the Lutheran heretics by arguments more powerful than those of Trent ; Paul sent across the Alps twelve thousand foot and five hundred horse, under his grandson Ottavio Farnese, besides large sums of 1 Pasquin's jokes on Paul III. were, that Rome had fallen into a phrenesy (Farnese) ; as to the Pope, zelus domus succ comedit ilium. * See Sarpi for these events. II ITALY 33 money. All this gives us some idea of the strength attained by the Temporal power of the Papacy within the last forty years. Another grandson, the renowned Cardinal Farnese, now no longer a boy, was acting as Papal Legate in the Emperor's camp. The Protestants seemed to be stricken down, when in 1547 a fresh shifting of policy occurred, some- times'marking once again the amazing help that the Temporal power of the Papacy has brought to Protestantism. The Pope took alarm at the growing power of the Empire, and recalled his troops from Germany before the work of con- quest was done. Here we see the two opposing tendencies which distracted the breasts of most Popes. In 1546 Paul had acted as became the Head of the Church ; in 1547 he followed the policy best suited to an Italian King. He even stirred up the French Court to help the German heretics, and did his best to mar the Council of Trent. The Faruesi backed the well-known attempt at Genoa to overthrow the Dorias, the ablest rulers of that city, the steady servants of Charles. But a crushing counter-stroke was delivered. Pier Luigi, the Pope's worthless son, was murdered in his town of Piacenza, with the connivance of Gonzaga, who governed Milan for the Empire, and who seized upon the city where the murder was done. Paul uttered loud complaints ; a plot to slay all the Spaniards in Home was suspected ; a fresh league with France was all but concluded, and Henry, her new King, was exhorted by the Pope to let Protestant England alone. Charles now entered the lists against the Roman authorities as a rival theologian, and he took upon him, in 1548, to publish the famous Interim, by which he strove to reconcile the humbled German Protestants to the Church. The new Creed satisfied neither side ; at Rome, Charles was likened to Uzziah, who laid hands on the Ark ; he was, moreover, compared to Henry VIII., a far worse sinner than the Jewish King. Cardinal Farnese declared that he could point out many heresies in the Interim. Neither Pope nor Emperor would abate a jot of their jarring claims to Piacenza, so Paul now struck out a new line of policy ; he resolved to recall his grant of Parma and Piacenza made to VOL. I D 34 EOME AND REFOEM CHAP. the Farnesi, and to re-annex these towns to the Holy See. But his grandson Ottavio refused to give up the lands in question ; he wrote that he would sooner go over to the Emperor's side. Paul was deeply wounded ; but what broke his heart was the discovery that another much- trusted grandson, Cardinal Farnese, was playing him false. The aged Pope, who was now eighty-three, died late in 1549, and was heartily mourned by the Roman people a rare event in the Papal annals. The next Pope was Di Monte, who in 1550 took the name of Julius III. He had been employed by the shrewd Paul as the chief Legate at the Council of Trent, and must therefore have been a man of great learning and knowledge of human nature. But he amazed the world by at once giving a Cardinal's hat to a low-born youth of sixteen, who had been entrusted with the care of an ape in his patron's family. Of course such a choice exposed the new Pope to the imputation of the most infamous passions ; the rebel Protestants proclaimed that the new Head of the Church was a disgrace to the Christian name. Unlike Paul in his later years, Julius took the side of the Empire. Ottavio Farnese regained Parma from the new Pope, but he in vain claimed from the Imperial Court the restoration of Piacenza. In revenge, in 1551 he called the French once more into Italy, and thus began another war that was to rage for eight years. Pope and Einperor united against the invaders ; the Council of Trent met once more in 1551, but the French King, the second Prince in Christendom, protested against the Council, since a war, wantonly kindled by the Pope, made it impossible for French Prelates to come in safety to Trent. The Parmesan country was laid waste ; but a far more startling stroke astonished the world in 1552 ; the German Protestants, backed by the French King, suddenly took up arms, outwitted the wise Emperor of the Romans, and sent him flying over the Alps in shameful rout. All was changed in a moment ; the In- terim was now, of course, dropped for ever, and the Council of Trent was scattered (happily for Pope Julius), not to meet again for ten years. II ITALY 35 In this year, 1552, Sienna, one of the few free cities now left in Italy, rose upon her Spanish garrison and called in the French. Naples, moreover, was all but driven into revolt by Spanish tyranny, and King Henry once more sought the help of the Turkish fleet, which made havoc in Calabria, cast anchor within sight of Mount Vesuvius, and then aided the French to conquer a great part of Corsica. Cosmo, one of the shrewdest statesmen of the Medicean house, a Prince who had long held Florence, offered the Emperor to drive the French from Sienna on certain con- ditions. The Siennese and their French allies made a noble defence, which cost the lives of many thousands of the neighbouring peasantry ; and this defence lasted for ten months; they then yielded in 1555, on the Emperor's undertaking to maintain the old liberties of the city. It is needless to say that Charles paid no regard to his plighted faith, but handed Sienna over to his son Philip and to a Spanish governor. This vile act was almost the last ,one in the Emperor's political life, for his abdica- tion took place late in the same year. Meanwhile Pope Julius III. had wisely stood aside and left the French and Spaniards to fight out their old quarrel. He busied him- self in the more agreeable task of building a palace and laying out gardens to the North of Rome, throwing aside the affairs of Church and State, so far as he could. This laziest of rulers made way, early in 1555, for a far better man, his former brother Legate at Trent, Cardinal Cervini, who became Marcellus II. Like his namesake in Virgil, the new Pope was only shown to the earth ; in three weeks he was dead, leaving the men who had known him to talk mournfully of his worth and incomparable wisdom. Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, one of the most striking figures in the long line of Popes, was elected in May 1555, and took the title of Paul IV. He had already made himself remarkable as the founder of the Order of Theatines, and as the restorer of the Inquisition in Italy. 1 Though he was 1 For this Pope I have consulted .Duruy's admirable work, Le Gardiiial Carlo Carafa, 1882. We here find a good store of original documents. Four Lives of Paul were written by different authors Castaldo, Nores, Bromato, 36 HOME AND BEFOKM CHAP. now on the verge of fourscore, he was described as " all nerve with little flesh ; " he still walked with rapid steps, and his habits were not conformed to any rule or order. He avowed that so unpopular a man as himself could have owed his election to God alone ; he at once promised to begin the work of reforming the Church and the Court. He, who had once spurned all worldly honours for Christ's sake, now claimed to keep up the state of a great Prince ; his ideas as to Papal power were those of Hildebrand. Paul was a thorough Italian, who could well remember Italy in the days before foreign hordes had seized on Milan and Naples ; he often cursed the traitors who half a century earlier had brought ruin on his beloved land. He belonged to the house of Caraffa, one of the noblest in Southern Italy, a house that had no love for Spain. He hated the Emperor, who had treated him with slight courtesy, and who had been guilty of something like toleration of Pro- testantism in Germany. Paul was pushed still further along the war-path by two nephews of his, one of whom now became Governor of Eome, while the other, though guilty of a wanton murder and " dyed in blood to the elbow " (the Pope's own phrase), was made a Cardinal ; yet Paul had of old been the sternest of foes to Papal nepotism, and had made a bold protest, in the face of all Eome, against this weakness when shown by Paul III. It was well known that the kinsmen of late Popes, the Delia Eovere, the Medici, and the Farnesi, had founded Duchies in Italy, to be handed down to their descendants; why should not the high-born Caraffas do the like ? The Pope, spurred on by his ambitious nephews, threw some of the Cardinals of the Imperial faction into the Castle of San Angelo ; he would sit for hours over his native wine of Naples (the fiery Mangiaguerra), and would thunder against the Spaniards, men accursed of God, the evil brood of Jews and Moors. But their day was over ; an old Italian, nearing his grave, should be the man to free Italy from the Spanish grasp. An envoy was at once sent and Caracciolo ; three other men had previously undertaken the task, but dropped it. II ITALY 37 to Paris to propose an alliance between Paul IV. and King Henry; the Florentine republic was to be restored, the Kingdom of Naples was to be given to one of the French Princes, except a portion that was to be added to the Papal States ; the Caraffa nephews were to be endowed with princely establishments. Paul was thrown into a more fiery rage than ever by the news that the Emperor and his brother, beaten in war, had granted full toleration to the Lutherans, and had made over certain revenues of the Church to these heretics. The Pope was in vain asked to remember how the Hapsburg Princes had been unwillingly driven into this policy ; he promised to absolve them from their oaths, and declared that in the business of religion no regard should be paid to worldly interests. About this time, late in 1555, Charles V. abdicated, and left his dominions in Spain, Italy, and the Low Countries to his son Philip II. The Pope sent his nephew to Paris on what might prove a warlike errand, but in the meantime he himself entertained the Spanish envoy with vague, unctuous eloquence, and thus gained time. The Cardinal nephew, in the summer of 1556, persuaded the French Court to break a most advantageous truce between France and Spain ; he produced powers from Eome to absolve the Monarch from his former oath. Queen Catherine, the evil genius of France, was strong on the Caraffa side. Turk, Pope, and Protestants, it was hoped, would all fight in the same interest, France being the common friend that held them all together. 1 The war was at once renewed in Italy. Paul excommunicated the Colonnas, a most stiff- necked generation of rebels ever since 1240, and handed over their possessions to his lay nephews ; the elder was now made a Duke, the younger a Marquis, and they began forthwith to dream of Crowns. King Philip was vexed by scruples as to whether it could be lawful to bear arms against the Papacy ; but his Spanish divines assured him that he had the right to defend himself if attacked. His Viceroy, the Duke of Alva, marched up from Naples in the autumn and took many 1 See Duruy's book, pp. 115, 116. 38 ROME AND REFOEM CHAP. Papal towns ; we may still see at hoary old Anagni the marks of the repairs iu her black walls, repairs made neces- sary by Alva's cannonade. 1 He might have taken Rome at once, but piously held his hand ; a truce was made for forty days. We get a fine picture of Paul's state of mind at this time (November 1556) from a letter of the French envoys at Rome. Before they could open their mouths, on enter- ing his presence the Pope asked when the French army was coming to his aid. " Your King would never fail me, if it were not for certain traitors who aim at a peace ; this is an invention of the Devil to favour schismatical heretics, enemies of God and the Church." He told the envoys, " If I hear that you take part in such measures, I swear to you by the eternal God that I will make your heads fly off your shoulders ; then I shall write to your King and say what I have done. I will send him a hundred heads such as yours. I will have an eye in my back upon you, if I detect you in false Latin. An accursed truce has been once given me, but woe to him who shall bring me a peace the second time." Paul went on with these threats for an hour, in such a rage, that at last he was out of breath and could speak no more. 2 He found but little warlike spirit in his Romans ; his best soldiers were some thousands of German heretics, who scoffed at the Mass and played tricks with the images of Saints in the highways. The Gascons, sent by Henry, were more addicted to rape and robbery, and drew down the curses of the Roman populace upon the Pope, the cause of all the mischief. Here we have the Spanish enemy of Rome showing a most fervent spirit of obedience to the Papacy, while the Pope himself finds his best defenders in scoffing heretics. Paul, like former Popes, seemed to sink the Head of the Church in the Italian King. He had other allies in view ; Caraffa had suggested to the Turks that they should leavo Hungary and pour down upon Southern Italy ; accord- 1 There are few small towns in Italy more interesting to visit than Anagni, the cradle of some of the greatest Popes. - Document in Ribiers's collection, ii. 664. n ITALY 39 ingly, Reggie and Sorrento were sacked a few months later. 1 In the spring of 1557 the Papal troops bestirred them- selves, and their French allies, under Guise, crossed the frontier. But Alva, wary as ever, would not be drawn into a battle ; he seized the treasures of the churches and waited while the invaders were wrangling among themselves, and while sickness was enfeebling the Northern men. "No good thing can be done without an Italian brain," said Caraffa, who held Guise cheap. Ten thousand Swiss defenders of the Holy See were defeated with great loss by Alva's Germans. Guise resolved to hurry home, on the news of the rout at St. Quentin in the summer ; nothing was left to Pope Paul but to make peace with the much- loathed Spaniard ; Alva went to Rome, kissed the Pope's feet, and begged forgiveness for having defended Naples against Papal aggression. Alva was the proudest man of the age, yet he acknowledged that he was so much over- awed by the Pope that his voice failed and his presence of mind left him. Everything was restored to Paul by the conquerors in the late war. Never again did any Pope take up arms to break the harsh Spanish yoke. King Philip had gained Ottavio Farnese by handing over to him Piacenza, and the King was tricked into granting the investiture of Sienna to Cosmo dei Medici ; Italy lay at Philip's feet, bound and defenceless. Rome and Venice alone kept some semblance of power and inde- pendence ; thus Paul in the gloomy year 1558 sternly re- fused to accept Charles's resignation of the Empire, or to acknowledge Ferdinand, Charles's brother, who had made himself a patron of heretics, to be the new Emperor. Philip in vain besought the Pope to be reasonable, as the world had now begun to laugh at the old high Papal prerogatives. Another of Paul's feats was to drive Queen Elizabeth into Protestantism at the outset of her reign ; we have seen how former Popes promoted the new creed in Germany. The unhappy Paul now began to mistrust his nephews, who had brought him to the jaws of ruin ; early in 1559 1 See Giannone for these events. 40 EOME AND KEFOEM CHAP. he was thundering forth his old cry, " Keforni, reform," when a Cardinal broke in, " Holy Father, reform must first begin among ourselves." The Pope was silenced ; further light dawned upon him as to the misdeeds of his kinsmen ; he was thrown into a fever by distress of mind ; he denounced their wickedness in full Consistory, and drove them all, one youth excepted, to a distance from Eome. His stern justice satisfied, he betook himself to his old work the reform of the Papal States and of the Church. The need for reform in Eome was indeed crying. There was an old French proverb, " Neither good horse nor bad man was ever improved by going to Eome." This was true in the case of Guise's soldiers, who left France sound Catholics, and came back more than half heretics. They had expected to see the greatest holiness of life in Eome ; they saw the butchers' shops open in Lent, with meat as usual ; they saw brothels open, whence the Pope drew money every month ; the Jews were intent on their usury, whence also the Pope took toll. 1 Paul IV., the wars being over, set about the works of peace. He transferred every secular office to other hands and effected great economies ; he forbade the clergy to beg, and reformed the way of conducting divine service ; he made the Cardinals preach, and himself set them the example. He would not hear of marriage dispensations, and cut down other abuses profitable to the Curia. Every day witnessed some new edict in behalf of the Church ; he sketched outlines, afterwards filled up by the Council of Trent. Above all, he never missed a Congregation of the Inquisition ; he gave it further powers, and allowed it to torture its victims in order to detect their accomplices. He threw into prison even such a man as Cardinal Morone, the shrewdest statesman in the Sacred College, on suspicion of heresy. 2 Paul sent to Philip, as husband of Queen Mary, 1 Memoires de Claude Haton, a strong Catholic, p. 42. He excuses the meat, since the sick in the hospitals needed it ; he excuses the brothels, since the Italians are prone to a much worse sin. As to the Jews, they must live somewhere. 2 The articles against Morone may be read in Miss Young's Life of Paleario, ii. 310. ii ITALY 41 the process of the Eoman Inquisition against Cardinal Pole, then in England. The old Pope on his deathbed commended this fearful engine to his brethren, and passed away in the summer of 1559. The Eoman nobles and populace could not forgive the woes Paul IV. had brought upon them; they broke his statue, tore down his arms, sacked the house of the Inquisition in the Eipetta, and let loose the prisoners (Craig, the well-known Edinburgh minister, among them) ; the mob was eager to burn the great convent where the Dominicans have their head- quarters. Shortly before Paul's death a well-known treaty put an end to the eight years' war between France and Spain ; the former agreed to give up all that she held in Italy and Corsica, except a few towns in Piedmont. She might have had much better terms three years earlier, had she not listened to the warlike counsels of Paul IV. After this year, 1559, France ceased to meddle in the affairs of Italy, and the Pope thought but little comparatively of his claims to be an Italian Monarch ; the King of Spain was the one lord and master of the hapless land. He was served by many an able Italian lieutenant. The best of them was the banished Duke of Savoy, Emmanuel Philibert, the conqueror of St. Quentin, one of the noblest of his glorious House ; he was soon to recover almost all his dominions, too long torn asunder by anarchy ; and these, in the course of the next twenty years, he brought to a high state of prosperity. A great change in Italian politics had taken place within a short time. Up to 1555 such men as Doria, when doing their utmost for Charles V. by land and sea, might have flattered themselves that they were merely continuing the time-honoured Ghibelline tradition which linked all the Northern Italian States to the Holy Eoman Empire. But for many years after Charles's abdication Italy had nothing more to do with Aachen or Frankfort ; her new master was a Spaniard, and it was for the benefit of Madrid that she was to be drained of her best soldiers and her richest trea- sures. After 1530 no elected ruler of Germany was to be crowned Emperor by the Pope ; we are in a changed world ; 42 KOME AND REFORM CHAI>. Paul IV., Andrew Doria, and Michael Angelo could re- member Italy in very different circumstances. The year 1559 is a decisive epoch in Italian history, when only three States, Venice, Genoa, and Lucca, were left independent, We are now enabled to pause, and to throw a glance back- ward upon four most weighty events the spread of Protestantism to the south of the Alps, the institution of the Jesuits, the foundation of the Roman Inquisition, and the Council of Trent. The ground had been well prepared for the growth of new ideas in Italy. Between the years 1477 and 1516 her press had given to the world the Bible in Hebrew, the Psalter in Arabic and Ethiopic. Erasmus's edition of the Greek Testament, printed at Basle, came forth in the latter year ; this was followed by many Commentaries on the Bible, written by the learned men of Italy ; many of the religious works, to which the Reformers afterwards appealed, were sanctioned by the Popes. Brucioli's Italian version of the New Testament, superseding older and more barbarous translations, appeared in 1530, and was eagerly read throughout Italy. 1 Leo X. was the patron of the Biblical studies of Erasmus, and would not allow the ignorant monks of his day to triumph over such a scholar as Reuchlin. In Leo's time one of the most interesting groups that ever met together, assembling in a church of the Trastevere, to the number of sixty, formed the Oratory of Divine Love, in order to safeguard the laws of God ; they saw that religious rites were sadly maimed in Rome during that half- Pagan age. Among these good men we find one canonised Saint and three priests who afterwards became Cardinals, Sadolet, the Secretary of Leo X., Giberti, and the stern Caraffa, the future Paul IV. 2 A few years passed, Rome was given over to the spoilers, and many of the most learned Italians, driven from their old home, met in safety on Venetian ground. Venice had at first seemed ready to 1 See M'Crie, Reformation in Italy, chapter i. I am much indebted to this work for the fifty years after 1520. 2 His life was written by Caracciolo about 1610, who tells us that he got the facts of the Pope's life from certain aged Theatines. This work is, un- happily, still imprinted. Ranke has made good use of it. ii ITALY 43 welcome Luther's doctrines ; within her territories was the University of Padua, a renowned school of medicine much resorted to by the learned and by foreigners. Here was living Bembo, another Secretary of Leo X., always ready to throw open his house to men of worth. Vicenza, not far off, was a few years later branded as a nest of heresy. Many of the Venetian Senators favoured the new views and corresponded with Melanchthon. It was in the terri- tories of the Eepublic that our countryman, Pole, first met Contarini. Their great topic was the doctrine of Justifica- tion by faith, called by Luther " the mark of a standing or a falling Church." Contarini wrote a treatise on this, and Pole cried, " Thou hast brought forth that jewel which the Church was keeping half -concealed." Another friend, Flaminio, who never left the Koman Church, talks of the glad tidings, " that Christ has satisfied for us the justice of the Father ; whoever believes this, enters the kingdom of God and becomes a child of grace." Luther would have heartily approved all this ; it must be borne in mind that this;doctrine of Justification by faith, based on the teaching of St. Paul and St. Augustine, had never yet been condemned by the Koinan Church. Not far from Venice is Ferrara. Here the good Duchess, a daughter of Louis XII., did her best to promote the Eeformed opinions, and entertained Calvin and Marot ; the former in the course of his life sent her many letters. The neighbouring city of Modena was wavering in the faith. Modena and Lucca were, of all the Italian States, the two most inclined to Eeform ; even illiterate men and women, we are told, when they met in the streets, would dispute about faith and Christ's law ; it was said that all Modena had turned Lutheran. The University of Bologna was stirred into unwonted life by professors who undertook to explain the epistles of St. Paul ; it was hoped that soon both clergy and laity might buy Bibles without being called heretics. But Naples was the point to which the Italian Eeformers looked most eagerly. There a Spaniard, Juan Valdez, Secretary to Don Pedro de Toledo, the Emperor's 44 HOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. Viceroy, held private meetings in a garden or a tower ; in these meetings he scattered the seeds of the new doctrines far and wide. Among his hearers were noble ladies, like Vittoria Colonna and Giulia Gonzaga, the latter being known as the most beautiful woman in Italy ; scholars such as Carnesecchi and Flaminio, and a few others who demand here a longer notice. 1 Ochino was a Siennese who rose to be Vicar-General of the Capuchins, a new and most strict branch of the Franciscans. Wherever he held forth, crowds Hocked to listen to the best preacher then in Italy ; he might make stones weep, as was said by Charles V., a frequent hearer in 1536. The friar became imbued with the new ideas of Valdes, and preached the doctrine of Justification by faith, though with great caution, as he had aroused the suspicions of. the monks. A friend of Ochino's, but more learned than the friar, was Peter Martyr of Florence, an Augustinian who had gone deep into Hebrew and Aristotle, had reformed corrupt convents of his Order, and had quelled the factions of Spoleto. Being ap- pointed to high office at Naples, he listened to Valdes, read Protestant tracts, and preached to vast audiences on St. Paul's epistles. He explained the one text in the New Testament that has been brought forward in defence of Purgatory, and his explanation was not that sanctioned by the Church. The authorities at Naples forbade him to preach, the Eeforming Cardinals at Borne stood his friends, but illness laid him aside. Among his hearers had been one of the Valdes circle, young Caracciolo, sou of a great Neapolitan nobleman, and a near kinsman to the dreaded Cardinal Caraffa. This youth was afterwards to make one of the greatest sacrifices on record for the sake of con- science. All Southern Italy was soon infected. The historian of Paul IV. says that most mischief was done by the schoolmasters, who numbered three thousand. Calabria and Puglia were full of them, and some are named as the worst of heretics. A process had to be directed against 1 For these Italian Reformers see M'Crie, and also Miss Young's two volumes on Paleario ; these should be carefully studied by all who desire to know the working of the Reformation in Italy. II ITALY 45 the Archbishop of Otranto. A Sicilian apostate taught a school at Caserta. 1 All the Keformers at Naples and the friendly Cardinals, such as Contarini and Pole, laid great stress upon their favourite doctrine of Justification by faith, but as yet none of them forsook the Church. No corruption, they thought, could be so great as to force them out of the fold ; they wished to repair what was old, not to build anything new. Strange must have been the jumble of contradictory ideas in their minds ; they grounded all their hopes of heaven upon the sacrifice of Christ, offered fifteen centuries earlier once for all, yet they countenanced the daily sacrifices of the Mass as an offering for sin. As to other points, it would have seemed treason to Italy, in the eyes of most of her sons, had they attacked the doctrine of Papal supremacy, the great source of wealth and honour. In 1537 Paul III. had named a Commission of nine, among whom were the Cardinals Contarini, Caraffa, Sadolet, and Pole, also the reforming Prelates Fregoso and Giberti. These drew up a Scheme to correct Church abuses ; Palla- vicini, as usual, is angry with the Pope for the bare acknowledgment that there was any need of reformation. They pointed out various blemishes, such as the admission of improper persons to the priesthood, the disorders of convents, the granting of dispensations, the pluralities held by Cardinals, the simony of former Popes, the parade of courtesans in Rome amid admiring clergy and courtiers. The new Scheme was printed and soon found its way into Germany. Luther prefixed to it a print which showed the Cardinals sweeping away dust with foxes' tails instead of brooms. Paul III. in practice set aside the reforms recommended, and Paul IV. was so ashamed of his own work, done by him when plain Cardinal Caraffa, that he put the printed Scheme of Eeform into the Index of prohibited books. 2 There was not much eagerness for improvement in the 1 See the quotation from Caracciolo (the monk) given in Palumbo's Vita di Vanini, 80. * The Scheme of Reform is given by Mayuier, Concile de Trentc, 135-148. It may also be read in Sleidan. 46 EOME AND KEFOEM CHAP. Sacred College, if we except the new recruits of the first years of Paul III. Fregoso was to Genoa what Contarini was to Venice, the noblest and worthiest of citizens. The former became Cardinal in 1539, and affords us a peep at his brethren at work. Contarini had sent word from Germany how the Catholics there had accepted the Protestant views on the crucial point of all, Justification by faith alone. Would Eome agree to this acceptance ? " We shall debate it to-morrow," said Fregoso to Ochino ; " we shall be fifty Cardinals ; of these, thirty will not know what is meant by this Justification through Christ ; of the other twenty, the greater part will assail the doctrine, and any one who defends it will be held a heretic." ] Caracciolo, who about 1610 wrote Cardinal Caraffa's biography as handed down by some aged Theatines, moans over the fact that false doctrine at this time sprouted everywhere, and that the worst of those infected were the monks, who were bound to be zealous professors of the Catholic faith ; some of them damaged the Church by their false doctrines, others by their wicked lives. It is a curious fact in history that the great Franciscan Order, the peculiar offspring of Italy, has been in frequent collision with the Popes ; at one time its Generals have bearded Eome, at another time some new heresy has been cham- pioned by the brethren. About this time the Franciscans, true to their history, were deeply tainted with the new doctrines. A state of things now prevailed as bad aa anything that had been known in the old days of Elias of Cortona or Michael of Cesena. 2 But a man, who is to the Italy of .the Sixteenth century as regards religion and politics much what Michael Angelo is in art, was soon about to aim a crushing blow at the fast-spreading Eeformation. Caraffa had heard from his brother Theatines about the heresies afloat in Naples ; he now persuaded the Pope to set up a supreme tribunal of the Inquisition in Eome, formed on the Spanish model. 1 This comes from Ochino, quoted in Miss Young's Life of Paleai-io, i. 268. 2 Ranke sets out a remarkable letter (Appendix, No. 29), written by Caraft'a so early as 1532, dealing with the Franciscans at Venice. ii ITALY 47 This was in 1542, the year that sharply divides twenty- two years of happy promise in Italy from twenty-eight years of blighting persecution. Six Cardinals were ap- pointed Inquisitors, with full powers over clergy and laity alike ; the Pope alone had power to absolve culprits once condemned. Caraffa forthwith hired a house, which he fitted up as a prison, with chains and dungeons. He drew up four rules, the last of which was, " No man must debase himself by showing toleration towards heretics of any kind, above all towards Calvinists." Nothing was to be printed without leave from the Inquisition ; booksellers and private persons were forced to denounce all prohibited books, and long lists of these were published. The Italian intellect began to be stunted ; bright scholars were handed over for a prey to dull monks ; short work was to be made of the hateful doctrine of Justification through Christ alone ; even the Eeforming Cardinals and Bishops saw their works placed in the Index. 1 The case of Paleario is well known ; his work on the Benefits Bestowed by Christ had been printed, and thousands of copies had been distri- buted throughout Italy. The Inquisition proscribed it, piles of the confiscated books were burnt at Eome, and the work for three hundred years seemed to have vanished out of existence. The leaders of the Italian Reformation had now no choice but between flight, martyrdom, or recantation. Ochino, in this baleful year 1542, was cited to Eome on account of his doctrine. He first visited Cardinal Con- tarini, then on his deathbed at Bologna. The friar found himself elsewhere watched by twelve men ready to seize him ; he was able, however, to escape across the Alps. In 1 Mendham gives at full length one Index of prohibited books ; this was printed by the Inquisition at Venice in 1554. Here, besides many Protestant works, are the Commentaries of tineas Sylvius or Pope Pius II., Armachanus, Dante's Monarchy, eleven works of Erasmus, Cardinal Fregoso On Prayer, Occam, William of St. Amour, Cornelius Agrippa, Reuchlin, Valla, Lucian of Samosata, Marsilius of Padua, Corderius, Poggio, several works of Raymond Ltilli, Bishop Gardiner, the Talmud, Hippojhilus Melangeus (Philip Melanchthon), and some books of Pasquils. See Mend- ham, Index of Prohibited Books, 1840. 48 HOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. the last four years of his long life he leant to the doctrine of Socinus. Much about the same time as his friend Ochino, Peter Martyr, one of the most learned and stain- less of all the Keformers, left his flock at Lucca and fled to Strasburg ; his subsequent efforts at Oxford are well known. Celio Secondo Curioni, a Piedmontese, had read some of the earliest German Protestant works, and had afterwards led a life of hairbreadth escapes, always in conflict with the clerical authorities. He now had to fly from his professorship at Pavia and to pass the rest of his life at Basle, whither foreigners from distant lands resorted to hear him ; the Pope himself in vain strove to win him back to Home by the most brilliant offers. The highest in clerical rank of all the Italian exiles was Vergerio, long employed by the Papal Court as Nuncio both in Germany and France, and rewarded with the bishopric of Capo d'Istria, his native place. He strove hard to put down superstitions among his flock, but was stripped of his mitre, and fled to the Grisons about the end of 1548; he it was who converted the villages of Pontresina and Samaden to Protestantism. 1 To his busy pen we owe most of our knowledge of these evil times. Young Caracciolo in 1551 turned his back upon father, wife, children, and the brilliant career that lay open to him as one of the chiefs of the Neapolitan aristocracy : he spent the rest of his life under a lowly roof at Geneva ministering to the temporal wants of his exiled countrymen. So eager was his great-uncle, Paul IV., to win him back that the grim Pope actually promised to the heretical truant the free exercise of his religion on Italian ground. 2 Four years before the youth took flight from Naples the Emperor and Pope had made a vehement effort to establish the Inquisition in that city. Both nobles and plebeians rose in opposition ; the very name of Inquisition was hateful to the Neapolitans ; they said that if it were established, any man might swear away the life and pro- perty of his private enemy. The Viceroy, the famous 1 M'Crie, 335. 2 Miss Young, Paleario, ii. 423. II ITALY 49 Toledo, let loose 3000 Spanish troops upon the populace; men, women, and children were slain. The Neapolitans rang the great bell of San Lorenzo, the headquarters of their national parliaments, and there was a fearful uproar. All ranks united to send an envoy to the Emperor ; skirmishes between the citizens and the troops went on for a fortnight ; the great cry was, " Union in the service of God, the Emperor, and the City." At last Charles V. sent word that it was not his intention to establish the Inquisition, and that he would forget the past; thirty-six persons were exempted from this general pardon, but only one man was executed. Above 2000 lives had been lost, and a fine of 100,000 ducats was laid on the town. Naples was doubtless held in scorn by her proud masters from Castile and Aragon, but these would have done well themselves to imitate the patriotic spirit shown in this matter of the Inquisition by the vassal city. Toledo seems to have done as little as he could in opposing the patriots ; a great innovator and builder, he is held to be the best of all the Spanish Viceroys, and to him Naples owes the noble street that is called by his name. 1 Other Italian cities were not equally happy. In 1546 the Pope addressed a long brief to Venice, com- plaining especially of the tares that were sprouting in her -town of Vicenza. Two years later persecution was raging all through the land of St. Mark ; the Swiss Cantons and the Grisons were in vain implored to interfere. Altieri, one of the leading Reformers, a man in the confidence of English and German statesmen, had to leave "pleasant Venice, with its execrable religion." He fled from town to town, and writes to a friend, " There is not a place in Italy where I can be safe with my wife and boy." After this, like many another able Italian, he disappears from history, the victim probably of the Inquisition. The Bishop of Bergamo was thrown into prison for heresy. So strong was the pressure from Rome that even 1 Giannone, Istoria Civile for the year 1547. Toledo in 1540 drove the Jews out of Naples ; most of them went to Rome. See his Life by Miccio in the Archivio Storico Italiano, ix. 9. VOL. I E 50 ROME AND REFORM CHAP. foreigners who lived at Venice lost their liberty. Heretics were not burnt here as elsewhere, but were drowned in the sea at midnight. This was the doom of Baldo Lupatino, Provincial of the Franciscans at Venice, who, speaking both Italian and Slavonian, had preached the new doctrines in many cities. Mollio, a Bolognese professor and a Franciscan, was dragged before the Inquisition at Rome in 1553, where he denounced six Cardinals to their faces, while many of his companions recanted. " What is your doctrine but a dream," said he, " a lie forged by hypocrites ? Your very countenances proclaim that your belly is your God." They ordered him to instant death, and he was burnt in the Forum. The good Duchess of Ferrara was driven to go to Mass, and her cousin, the King of France, sent an Inquisitor to convert her. Locarno is an Italian city that had long before been handed over to the Swiss Cantons by the rulers of Milan ; here, after 1546, the new doctrines throve mightily. The Inquisition could not lay her grip upon these particular heretics, hence recourse was had to forged bonds and to mob law. The Swiss Cantons, always at daggers drawn among themselves in religion, debated the matter with heat ; in the end Zurich had to yield to Lucerne. The Locarnese Protestants were accordingly driven from their homes in the bitter winter, and had to seek refuge in the Grison country ; the Papal Nuncio in vain begged that their children might be taken from them. Hundreds of Italian exiles from the South found shelter in the Valteline, a part of the Duchy of Milan which now belonged to the Grisons. The first printing press in that country was established at Poschiavo ; the Pope and Spanish King in vain asked for its suppression. About twenty Protestant Churches flourished in this haven of refuge to the South of the Alps ; half of the population of Chia- venna withdrew from the old faith. The monks stirred up the people against the heretics ; the Spanish Govern- ment built forts close to the Valteline, and the Inquisitors kidnapped ministers, who were afterwards sent to the stake. The government of the Grisons was overawed by its power- II ITALY 51 ful neighbours, and did not protect its subjects as it ought. It was now on a downward slope, to end in the bloody business of 1620. But the greatest feat of the Spanish Government was achieved at the other end of Italy. A colony of Waldenses from the Alps had been settled for 200 years in Calabria, where they far surpassed the natives in their skill in tilling the ground. On hearing of the spread of the new doctrines these peasants ceased to attend Mass, as they had done hitherto. They were in vain, about the year 1558, addressed by the monks ; soldiers were sent against them after they had fled to the woods, and some of these soldiers were killed by the fugitives in sheer self-defence. The Viceroy came down upon them, called to his aid all the robbers of the province, and slaughtered the Waldenses wholesale. Some of them were handed over to the In- quisitors to be tortured and burnt. It was said in 1560 that 1600 had been condemned, 88 were butchered in cold blood with the knife, others were sent to the galleys, the women and children were sold for slaves. 1 Their parent stock, still dwelling in the Alps, underwent much persecution about the same time. Many were burnt and sent to the galleys, but they took up arms in self- defence. The Duke of Savoy, the hero of St. Quentin, asked for a Legate to instruct his subjects. The new Pope, Pius IV., departing from his usual mildness, answered that there was small hope of their conversion ; no good was ever done by moderation ; brute force was the best weapon. A year later the Duke, having lost thousands of soldiers in attacking the Waldensian fastnesses, gave the rebels free- dom of worship. Of this the Pope made bitter complaints in full Consistory, contrasting the mild measures taken in Piedmont with the thorough methods of Calabria. 2 Eather later we hear of a famous missioner, Rodericio, going through Southern Italy and converting many heretics, though he 1 For these annals of persecution, recourse must be had to M'Crie and Miss Young's Paleario. Giannone says that heresy had^spread into the Basili- cata from Calabria. 2 See Sarpi's Council of Trent for the years 1560 and 1561. 52 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. sent some of them to the galleys. In two towns alone he brought back 1500, besides children. His work in 1564 lay much on the shores of the Adriatic. 1 Rome did not trust to the Inquisition alone when making head against Northern heresies. Only four years after Luther's final breach with the Church, Caraffa, who had been employed in the highest posts, had resigned all his preferments to found the Order of Theatines, and to supply what was wanting in the secular clergy, men cor- rupted by vice and ignorance. He and his friends visited the hospitals and preached in the streets, a strange inno- vation on the usual state of Rome under Clement VII. The Capuchins, a reformed offshoot of the Franciscans, appeared in 1528. The Somaschi fathers and the Barnabites, new creations of the time, gave themselves to the relief of the poor in Northern Italy. But Rome's great champion, the future arch enemy of heresy, was yet to come. Ignatius Loyola, after many dreams and visions in his own land, went to Paris, and at that renowned University gained a handful of disciples, men who were to stir the whole world. At Venice he fell in with the Theatines, who were working there under the eye of Caraffa. The two men for a time lived in the closest inti- macy. The next step was to Rome. In 1540 Paul III. first sanctioned the Society of Jesus, and more absolutely still three years later. The three great duties of the new Brotherhood were to preach, to hear confessions, and to educate youth. They wasted no time over the long course of religious exercises cultivated by other Orders ; they were formed for action, not for contemplation and ascetism ; the Protestants were to be attacked with their own weapons. The Jesuits were welcomed in many cities of Italy, even in those that had listened to Ochino and had read the tracts of Paleario ; the brethren won still greater influence in Spain and Portugal. We have before us here one of the most momentous facts in the whole history of the Roman Church. Nothing like this new institution had ever sprouted except in the Sixth and 1 See Sacchini, Historia Socictatis Jesu, Pars Secunda, 269, 308. II ITALY 53 Thirteenth centuries. For the next two hundred years the Jesuits became to the Papacy much what the Tenth Legion was to Csesar, what the Old Guard was to Napoleon. It was the Jesuits who were the sternest foes to anything that looked like a concession to Protestantism even in matters of discipline ; much more in the great question of all, Justification by faith. 1 They swayed the consciences of Kings, an office formerly discharged by Dominicans. They aimed at effecting a lodgment in the great cities of the world ; above all, in those which contained the Universities, for there was no teaching in the world to rival that of the the new Order. 2 The son of Loyola combined in himself two characteristics that had hitherto stood afar apart ; he had all Politian's thirst for classic lore ; he had all Caraffa's burning zeal for religion. Still somehow or other the Jesuits have not been able to rival other Orders in breeding men reverenced by all the world for pre-eminence either as Reformers or as sages ; they cannot show a Savonarola or a Las Casas, a Mabillon or a Montfaucon. 3 But the Church was to gain strength in yet another way. Charles V. had long asked for a General Council to make reforms and reconcile the Protestants. Paul III., that link between the Kenaissance and the Eeaction, at last brought himself to drink this bitter medicine for the ailing -Papacy. Why, it may be asked, could not the Pope make the much-needed reforms himself ? The answer is, that what one Pope gave, another Pope in the future might take away. Keforms made in the face of the world by a Council General were not so easily put aside. Again, a Pope could not well bear harshly on the Eoman Court, which was confessedly the source of most of the disorders in the Church, more especially of non-residence a plague spot ever fruitful of mischief. A Council alone could turn a deaf ear to the voices of hundreds of Churchmen at head- quarters, men who throve upon abuses. We must remember 1 Scioppius called the Jesuits, "Prsetoria cohors castrorum Dei." 2 Bernardus colles, valles Benedictus amabat, Oppida Franciscus, rnagnas Ignatius urbes. 3 Xavier is their great product. : 54 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. that no one dreamed at this time of two rival Churches con- fronting each other in Germany ; it was held that recon- ciliation was still possible, and that all that was needed was a resolution to make certain reforms, called for long before Luther's time. It was not bill the days of Pius IV. that the final cleavage between the two opinions was effected. Men of the school of Contarini and Seripando avowed that the Church ought to be brought back to her state in the Primitive times. The other school, that of Caraffa, could see only the Middle Ages and the Papal power as it was wielded by Gregory VII. and Innocent III. The spiritual Monarch must have money, and no reforms which cut short his supplies ought to be countenanced by sound Catholics. No concession at all ought to be made in dogma, and very little in discipline. The main champions of this last opinion in the Council were the Spanish clergy, who continued the traditions of Ximenes, men trained under the Inquisition, priests of austere lives, as stern to them- selves as they were to heretics. In one point, indeed, they were strongly opposed to their Italian brethren ; the Spaniards held that all Bishops held their power from Christ and not from the Pope. Akin to this was the opinion, handed down from Constance and Basle, that a Council was superior to the Pope. Still many at Trent held both the Divine right of Bishops and at the same time the superiority of the Pope to a Council. Times had altered within the last 100 years; feudalism was giving way everywhere, and Despotism, strong in the new standing armies, was overawing most of Western Christendom. No wonder that any Pope living in the days of Charles V. would not have Eoman authority lessened in aught. The Spaniards who called for the abolition of the Cruzada Bull, useless now that there were no infidels in Spain, received no help from the Papacy. It was warmly debated where the Council should meet, but Trent, lying on the border between Italy and Germany, was in the end chosen. Thither the Pope sent three Cardi- nals as his Legates, Di Monte, Cervino, and Pole. They came to Trent early in 1545 ; a few Bishops followed, some of II ITALY 55 whom were so needy that the Pope had to pay them forty ducats a year. In December the Council was opened, to last, with intervals, for eighteen years ; twenty-five Bishops were present at the outset. Massarelli, Secretary to Cardinal Cervini, gives us in his Diary a sketch of Trent as it stood in 1545. It was kept clean by the waters of the Adige ; there was a grand old cathedral and a fine new Bishop's Palace ; both the Prelate, who was given to hospi- tality, and his eighteen Canons were rich men. The city had of old been divided into the Italian and the German quarters ; each nation wore its own garb, and even entered the church by different doors ; sermons were preached to the citizens in both languages. 1 No place could have been more suitable for the ever-memorable debate between the ideas of the German Keformers and those of the Italian Conservatives. One of the latter, in his sermon at the opening of the Council, declared that the Pope's light had come into the world, but that men loved darkness rather than light. The first note of discord came from the French, who wished to add to the official description of the Council the words, " representing the Church Universal," a title which sug- gested ugly memories of Constance and Basle. But this proposal was quashed by the Legates, who, as they wrote -to Eome, did not proclaim the true reasons of their opposi- tion. Early in 1546 the numbers of the Council rose to forty-three ; a few more appeared later in the year ; the Divines were thirty in number, and almost all friars ; the Bishops were mostly lawyers and courtiers, and knew little of Theology. The first Lutheran opinion to be overthrown was the notion that Scripture (without Tradition) contains all things necessary to salvation. Marinaro, a Carmelite, on this point uttered doctrine which Cardinal Pole declared to be fit only for a Colloquy in Germany. There were long arguments on the Vulgate translation ; some said that if it was not approved, the Grammarians would take upon 1 Maynier, in his Concile de Trente (1874) gives long extracts from Mas- sarelli. See 178-180. 56 ROME AND REFOEM CHAP. them to teach Divines. In the end a decree was made that Scripture and Tradition should be treated with equal reverence, and that none should dare to reject the Vulgate. 1 This one decree alone proved to the Protestants that they had nothing to hope from the Council. The Legates wrote to Rome advising that two Bishops, who had spoken out too plainly, should be driven from Trent. The Spanish Prelates complained that they were thrust aside in favour of Friars who thought little of Episcopal jurisdiction. Orders came from Rome that the Friars were to be main- tained in their privileges, but that the abuses connected with Pardoners (one of the great causes of the Schism) might be reformed. The Fathers then came to Original Sin ; here the Fran- ciscans, wishing to exempt the Virgin from the common doom, clashed with the Dominicans. Even these last could not agree among themselves, as was seen by the speeches of two of their great leaders, Caterino and Soto. 2 Curates were ordered to preach at least on Sundays, and Bishops were bound to preach themselves, or to find good substitutes. The Council handled first some point of doctrine, and then some point of discipline, one after the other. Justification by faith was next taken in hand, the Assembly well knowing that all Luther's errors hinged upon this. They were not likely to be favourably received. At this very time the Roman Pope and the Roman Emperor, " the praying Moses and the conquering Joshua," were marching side by side, as it were, to storm the citadel of German heresy; the war in the North had broken out. Twenty-five Articles, representing Luther's belief, were set forth, to be condemned ; Caterino leant to Luther's ideas, and brought forward Scripture, the Fathers, and the School- men. He was vigorously opposed by his brother Jacobin, Soto, who made subtle distinctions. The Franciscans quoted a saying of 1300, that God never fails the man who doth as much as he is able. The unlucky Marinaro 1 See Raynaldus for the year 1546. 2 Soto condemned all trust in works, and so became suspected of Luther- anism. II ITALY 57 found the whole Council against him. 1 The Archbishop of Sienna and seven others ascribed Justification to the merits of Christ and to faith alone, declaring good works to be nothing more than the proof of faith. Pole, who had long been known in Italy as a favourer of this same doctrine, in vain exhorted the Council not to reject an opinion simply because it was held by Luther. Among the wisest speakers was Seripando, the General of the Augustinians ; he had watched heresy while yet in the bud, having been at Naples in the days of Valdes. He propounded the theory that Justification was twofold ; the one inherent in us, which causes us to do good works, the other is the righteousness of Christ, imparted to us, which atones for all our sins, and which must alone be relied on. But even this moderate theory was fiercely attacked. Caraffa, who had already withstood Contarini's overtures to the Lutherans, was now among the Cardinals who controlled the Council from Eome. He put forth a treatise of his own on Justification, utterly adverse to Seripando's proposal. 2 He was heartily backed by the Jesuits ; Ignatius had enjoined his disciples to commit themselves to no novelties in doctrine ; Lainez, a future successor of Ignatius, combated the moderate pro- posals in a huge volume. The Archbishop of Sienna and Pole had to give way ; the task of drawing up the decrees of Trent on this weightiest of all points was entrusted to Seripando, even though he had taken part against the majority of the Council. Many years later, towards the end of the sittings, he was specially deputed to draw up a scheme of reforms which might silence the heretics. 3 The opinions of the deceased Cardinal Contarini on the great subject had been brought forward once more by his nephew of the same name, who was Bishop of Belluno. A 1 I have taken my matter thus far from Fra Paolo ; what follows comes from Pallavicini. I have used Zaccaria's edition of this last writer, pub- lished at Rome in 1833. It is here affirmed that the Council used "una soprabbondante condiscendenza " towards all Protestants, ii. 751. In ii. 279 will be found Bellarmine's judgment on Caterino ; the friar's opinions are said to be, not heretical, but erroneous. 2 Ranke quotes Bromato on this point. 3 For Seripando see Pallavicini, ii. 266-269, iii. 432. 58 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. more fiery champion in the same cause was San Feliz, the Bishop of Cava, a Commissary of the Holy See, who, when the Assembly was dismissed, overheard himself denounced by the Greek Bishop of Scio as either a fool or an impudent fellow. San Feliz rushed upon the Greek and tore out a part of his long beard, while the victim repeated the objec- tionable words. The whole affair was debated at the after- noon sitting. A Spaniard proposed that San Feliz should be sent to the Inquisition at Eome after his heretical speech on Justification. The Italians took the side of mercy. The offender was sent to a convent; Paul III. ordered the Legates to be severe ; the injured Greek in vain besought them to pardon his enemy. At the end of two months San Feliz was allowed to withdraw to his own diocese. 1 A few weeks afterwards, Pacheco and another Cardinal had a sharp dispute with Di Monte, the chief Legate, in which the latter was taunted with his low birth. In August 1546 the doctrine of Assurance was dis- cussed, Caterino, followed by all the Carmelites, inclining to the Lutheran view. So hot was the dispute, that the Cardinal Legate, seeing that his flock needed the bridle more than the spur, passed on to Free Will and Predestina- tion. On this last doctrine Luther was found to be orthodox, but other Protestant leaders were condemned. Cardinal Cervini took incredible pains in framing the Decrees, so as to avoid inserting matter that had led to controversy among the Schoolmen. Soto the Dominican and Vega the Francis- can printed huge tomes on the hard matters debated, writing in flat opposition to each other. Next the question of Residence was handled, the well-known Carranza, the future victim of the Inquisition, taking part in the discussion. The Spaniards declared that Bishops were bound to reside in their dioceses by the law of God, and not by the law of the Pope. These Spaniards were headed by Cardinal Pacheco, as great a champion of reform at the beginning of the Council as Guerrero, the Archbishop of Granada, was at the end. The renowned Hurtado de Mendoza was acting as the Emperor's ambassador to the Council. 1 Maynier, Concile de Trente, 391-391. ii ITALY 59 Early in 1547 the Decrees of the Fathers at Trent on Justification were published, after having been discussed for seven months together ; it is needless to say that they were sharply criticised in Germany. Soto and Caterino published books against each other as to the meaning of the Decree on Assurance; the Chief Legate took a third view on this doctrine. It would clearly not be easy to bring Protestants over to such a chaos of opinions. The Fathers now came to the Sacraments, where Cate- rino leaned to the Protestant view as regards the intention of the priest in administering ordinances. Some abuses connected with Baptism were removed. The Spaniards, twenty in number, passed a Censure, consisting of eleven articles, demanding the reform of Pluralities and of the bestowal of Benefices. The Legates sent word to Borne that the Bishops were encroaching on the Pope's authority. By this time Paul III. had become suspicious both of the Em- peror and of the Emperor's subjects, the Spanish Prelates in the Council. In March 1547, under pretext of a threatened plague, the Pope transferred the assembly from Trent to Bologna, after it had been at work for almost a year and a half, and had attained to the number of ninety members. The Imperial liegemen refused to stir from Trent. Charles and Paul were now at bitter enmity, and this state of things was to last for two years, much to the gain of Pro- testantism. " Caesar is son of the Church, not her Lord and Master," said the Chief Legate to the Spanish embassy, early in 1548. The speaker was himself chosen Pope, by the name of Julius III., in 1550, Caraffa having opposed the election of Pole on account of that Cardinal's notorious leanings to Lutheranism. It was not until September 1551 that the Council met once more at Trent, after an interval of more than four years. Cardinal Crescenzio was now appointed Papal Legate, and did his utmost to uphold the Pope's superiority to the Council, the Fathers numbering at the outset sixty -four members. They began with the Eucharist ; after debating the doctrine, various abuses of this Sacrament were de- nounced; it was kept so long in some churches that it became putrid ; it was given to concubines and to persons who knew not their Paternoster ; there was a particular usage at Home, that every communicant was obliged to hold a burning candle with money sticking in it, all of which was afterwards given to the priest. The Council next handled Penance, embracing Confession of Sins, and then Extreme Unction and Orders. Last of all, early in 1552, came Matrimony. Various Protestant envoys from Germany (among them was Sleidan, the historian) appeared before the Council and invited it to proclaim its superiority to the Pope, as at Constance ; they haggled over the form of safe conduct to be given to heretics. Amyot, the great French writer, was another illustrious foreigner present. Early in April news came that Germany had risen on her tyrant and was sending her armies southwards ; the Prelates at once broke up from Trent ; both Pope and Emperor had by this time had enough of the Council ; it separated, not to meet again for ten years. 1 To fill up this interval I add a few facts that throw some light on the state of Italy about the middle of this memorable Sixteenth century. Spira was a renowned lawyer who had done his best to spread the new opinions. The Legate at Venice forced him to recant in public, while his friends besought him not to throw away his life. But he afterwards fell into a state of despair, believed that for him there was no salvation, since he had been guilty of the deadly sin against the Holy Ghost. He was removed to Padua, but the physicians of that renowned University could effect no cure ; the conscience-stricken man died in frightful agonies of mind, utterly bereft of reason. It was this tragedy, which happened in 1548, that drove Bishop Vergerio, a witness of Spira's sufferings, to fly Northwards, out of the reach of the Inquisitors. 2 To turn from religion to politics ; in 1546 Burlamacchi, u Lucchese nobleman, laid a plot to free Pisa and Florence from the Medicean yoke, and to unite them with Lucca and Sienna in a republican league ; moreover, he wished to 1 I follow Sarpi as to this part of the Council. 8 Miss Young, Life of Paleario, ii. 380. II ITALY 61 hand over the Papal dominions to the Emperor. This patriot was a true son of the Renaissance, and drew his inspiration from Plutarch's Lives ; an uncle of his had been a friar, and a hot partisan of Savonarola. The year 1546, when the Spanish troops had been sent into Germany, seemed a favourable moment for action. But the plot was revealed ; the Senate of Lucca had heard the flighty youth talk of the freedom of Italy, but had thought that he would never go further than talk. He was demanded as a victim by Duke Cosmo, the founder of a line that was to last for two hundred years in Tuscany ; but the Senate well knew that the cruel tyrant's aim was to torture Burlamacchi into some admissions that might be turned against the independ- ence of Lucca. As it was, the patriot was thrice tortured, and was then, early in 1548, beheaded at Milan by the Imperial order. 1 His house afterwards took fast root at Geneva, a haven of refuge to all persecuted Lucchese. Punishments for heresy were inflicted at Lucca by Papal orders so late as 15 77. 2 No such martyr to freedom again stood forward in Northern Italy until the days of Pellico ; the spirit of the Renaissance was now giving way to the spirit of Jesuitism. As to the working of Law, I will bestow a short notice on a Roman trial which in its day made as much noise as the later process of the Cenci. The Duke of Paliano, one of Paul the Fourth's two famous nephews, had detected his wife in an intrigue with young Capece. He first put the gallant to the torture, wrung a written confession from him, and then stabbed him twenty-seven times. All that the old Pope said, on hearing of the affair, was, " What has become of the Duchess ? " That question soon had an answer ; she was strangled by her own brother, in the presence of two monks sent to confess her, one of whom has left an account of the tragedy. It made little stir at the time, but many months afterwards Pius IV. threw the Caraffa nephews and their accomplices into prison. Pallantieri, the Procurator-Fiscal, a personal enemy of the 1 See Guerazzi, Vita di Francesco Burlamacchi, for all this. 2 See Maffei, Gregorio XIII. , for that year. 62 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. accused, conducted the trial before a Commission of nine Cardinals ; hardly one of these was favourable to the culprits. We are allowed a glimpse of the proceedings; a witness averred that Capece was the lover of the Duchess a fact well known to all the world. " Keflect on the gravity of your words," said Pallantieri. The man, astonished; con- firmed what he had said. The tormentor was at once brought in, and began to undress the too truthful witness. The poor wretch gave way, and cried out that he wished to reflect and revise his recollections of the past. Next day he was ready to depose whatever the Court might choose ; the Duchess and Capece were therefore held innocent, and the Duke had evidently committed a wanton murder. This high-born criminal had not the courage to undergo the torture ; when the weights of iron had already been attached to his feet he confessed whatever was asked. Cardinal Caraffa, accused of other crimes, fared no better than his brother. Pallantieri made the Court rise sooner than usual when the prisoner had all but demolished a perjured wit- ness ; none of the Cardinals durst come to the help of their brother. Both of the Caraffas were put to death, in spite of all the exertions of their stout-hearted advocate, Borghese, the father of the future Paul V. It is a comfort to think that Pallantieri was afterwards executed under Pius V., the most righteous of men, at least when heresy was not in question. 1 We are about to enter on the dreary days of Spanish tyranny in Italy ; of this I give an early specimen. In 1556 Saria, the Spanish Ambassador at Borne, had asked leave to have the gate of St. Agnese thrown open to him before dawn, as he proposed to ride a hunting. There was some mistake connected with relieving guard ; so when Saria and his forty horsemen rode up he found the gate barred. He at once fell upon the Pope's soldiers, killed some, scattered others, forced the gate, and rode out. For two days no one durst tell Paul IV. of the outrage ; his fury, when he did hear it, may be imagined ; he wanted to throw the ambassador at once into prison. Saria had the 1 See Duruy's book on Cardinal Carafa, 315-338. II ITALY 63 coolness to demand an interview ; Paul gave orders to arrest him as soon as he should enter the Vatican. The Spaniard was with some trouble persuaded to withdraw, amidst the threats of the justly indignant Eoman populace. 1 The parts of Italy that were under the Castilian yoke were most backward in religion and morals. Giussano, an eye-witness, sets before us a gloomy picture of the Milanese clergy shortly before 1560. They held their vows of celibacy cheap ; such was the ignorance, that parish priests thought that they needed not shriving themselves since they confessed others. There was a common byword, " If you wish to go to hell, become a priest." Many men went for fifteen years without the Eucharist. Balls were given in convents, and churches were used for dancing. No slight trace of this state of things might be seen even after St. Charles Borromeo had begun his labours; the well- known attempt on his life by certain of the Umiliati was made in 1569, after which Pius V. abolished that corrupt brotherhood. 2 I have touched upon the subject of murder ; few of the Italian Governments, lay or clerical, had any objection to this crime if it seemed to be expedient. Cosmo dei Medici, the first of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, had small scruples on this head ; but he was far outdone by his son Francesco, the lover of Bianca Cappello. Some conspirators against this tyrant had sought refuge in France ; he strove to hunt them down, there making use of both poison and the dagger ; even in England they were not safe. One of the murderers was caught, and confessed on the wheel that the Grand Duke had sent him into France for the express purpose of slaying an Orsini, for which deed six thousand ducats had been promised; the Florentine Secretary at Paris was in consequence arrested. Many Tuscans at home suddenly disappeared ; it was thought that they had been sacrificed to their jealous tyrant's suspicions. 3 Even 1 Duruy, Le Cardinal Carafa, 121. There is a Life of Pedro de Toledo in the Archivio Storico Italiano, ix., a fine portrait of a Spanish Proconsul in Italy. 2 Giussano, Vita di San Carlo, lib. ii. cap. i. 3 Galluzzi, Toscana, lib. iv., chapters iii. and iv. See also lib. v. p. 166. 64 EOME AND KEFORM CHAP. Francesco's brother, one of Italy's best rulers, directed in 1596 the murder of a chief in France, whose death was most expedient from the Tuscan point of view. Such rude shocks had been undergone by Orthodoxy since 1520, that accusations of heresy were made against the highest of the clergy ; rather later than this time even a Pope was glanced at. Grimani, a patrician of a most noble Venetian house, was Patriarch of Aquileia : he had taken part with a Dominican, who had set forth before the Council the well-known views of that Order on Predestina- tion and Election. Eleven years later Grimani was on this account accused to Rome of heresy ; his real offence was that he had corrected the morals of his clergy, who now in 1560 took their revenge. His opinions were branded as those of Luther and Calvin ; it is most likely that these Reformers, and also the Dominicans, alike borrowed their peculiar ideas from St. Paul and St. Augustine. Venice begged of the Pope that she might try Grimani by Prelates and Theologians, to be named by herself ; the trial lasted for twenty-four days. Grimani's work was pronounced not to be heretical, but it was forbidden to be published, since some difficulties were not explained with sufficient exact- ness. 1 This new Orthodoxy did not lead to holiness of life, except in some of the higher clergy. The new system of entails upon the eldest son drove hosts of young women into the convents ; those of Lucca alone held five hundred girls ; some renowned law cases remain which bear witness to the debauchery that went on in these buildings. Murder was a common occurrence ; the nobles sheltered ruffians, called bravi, who would undertake any crime at a patron's behest ; the Papacy itself, as we shall see, had not clean hands in this matter. Brigands swarmed everywhere, and could not be kept down for long, even by the most cruel methods, such as the tearing to pieces by red-hot pincers ; this punish- ment formed part of the sentence in the Cenci case. 2 Italy, 1 Gerdesius, Specimen Italia Reformatcr., 92, 93. 2 For the morals of Italy see Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, vi., chapters v. and vi. II ITALY 65 under the Spaniard and the Jesuit, was rapidly speeding down hill. Late in 1559 Koine had a new Pope, who took the title of Pius IV. He was the son of a Milanese of lowly birth named Medici, having no connection with the great Florentine house, though we see in the Eoman churches the well-known six balls of the Medicean arms, appropriated by Pius IV. as his own. He was a cheerful, good-natured man, of simple habits, a hearty friend to the poor, a Cardinal who had been much hated by the aged Paul IV., his exact opposite. Still the new Pope owed his election mainly to Cardinal Caraffa. The worst stain on the memory of Pius IV. is his ingratitude to this benefactor. Six months later the whole Caraffa family were thrown into prison, and two of them were executed, as has been related ; it is the last time that a Pope has ever put a Cardinal to death, and never again has any Pope's nephew aspired to found a reigning house ; the system of the last fourscore years was now at an end. The new Pope, unlike his predecessor, had no thought of trampling on the kings of earth ; he disliked war and bloodshed. Geneva, lying at the gate of Italy and France, was for many long years an eyesore to the orthodox, yet Pius put aside an offer from the Duke of Savoy to attack -Calvin's stronghold. But danger was threatening from still further West ; even Avignon was wavering. After the deaths of Henry II. and Francis II. the Huguenots had become a power in the French State ; nothing would con- tent them but a National Council to settle the affairs of religion in their land ; the rack and the stake were of no avail in these evil times. The Pope, on the other hand, affirmed that a General Council was the only true remedy ; it must be held at once to check threatened revolts ; it was to be a continuation of the former Trent sittings, and thus all hopes of the Protestants for concessions in dogma were quenched. The Council of Trent at its outset had to face Luther's followers; at its end it confronted the far more virulent brood of Calvin. The new Legates were appointed in 1561 : Cardinal Gonzaga, of a house that had always VOL. i F 66 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. favoured Italian Reformers ; Cardinal Seripando, a most worthy Churchman who had leant in the same direction ; Hosius, the Polish Cardinal ; Altemps, who did not remain long ; and Simoneta, this last being the only one of them all on whom Pius could thoroughly rely. The revived Council of Trent held its first. sittings early in 1562. Speeches were made by the orators of the various nations. About 150 votes were given in an early debate on the great question of Eesidence. There were bitter complaints of the abuses connected with Indul- gences. One Hungarian Bishop proposed that the Pope should himself be reformed ; the sick body could not be healed if the head were not cured. It was said that the Council was not free, and that more than forty Bishops took regular pay from the Pope. The Emperor Ferdinand, like the French Court, demanded the Cup in the Communion for the laity, also the marriage of priests, the use of the vulgar tongue in the services, and the reform of monasteries. Lansac, the French envoy to the Council, was already talking of hunting the Idol out of Eome. Pius roused himself and sent the crafty Bishop of Vintimiglia to Trent to act as a check upon the Legates, and to send home full information. We are allowed a peep behind the scenes about this month of July by the diarists Massarelli, Musotti, and Mendoza. Cardinal Madruzzo, Bishop of Trent, told Massarelli as a great secret that he knew seven or eight Bishops who were Lutheranissimi, as he found by their confessions ; these confessions of course could not be revealed. Musotti was in the confidence of Seripando ; he says that the Pope won over three Spanish Prelates by dangling red hats before them, and by making them jealous of Archbishop Guerrero's leadership. This split was of great importance. The Legates wrote to Eome their despatches in common, but Simoneta was accused of sending thither private letters of his own, very different from the common despatches. Seripando became most angry, and threatened to go to Eome and justify himself. We hear that the Legates resolved to disobey the orders of II ITALY 67 the Pope, who was eager to dissolve the Council after it had sat but a few months. The Cardinals representing Pius had to write to him before they could enforce obedience upon Salmeron, the Jesuit. 1 The new Order was already making its influence tell. The question of the Cup was fully debated, and was in the end referred to the Pope. Here the Spaniards, with an eye on their heretical vassals in Flanders, were strongly opposed to the French and Germans ; thus one nation could be played off against another. The envoy from the Duke of Bavaria demanded that priests might be allowed to marry ; in his country there was not one priest in twenty who kept the vow of celibacy. But Eeform had stout enemies in the Jesuits. One of these, Salmeron, would not be limited, when speaking, to the usual half-hour, but took up all the time. Their General, Lainez, came later, and disdained to rank as last among the Generals of the Kegulars. He and all his flock saw at Trent a man who might well inspire them with the worst fears for the future ; this was Baius, the forerunner of the Jansenists, a Louvain pro- fessor, who was soon to be condemned by the Pope. 2 There was a long debate on the Mass, in which various abuses were reformed. The Spaniards held fast to their old opinions on the question of Eesidence, Guerrero, the Archbishop of Granada, taking the lead. King Philip was asked to keep his subjects in order. Lainez made a long speech in favour of the Pope, warning the Council that if they decreed the Divine right of Bishops the upshot would be an Oligarchy, or rather an Anarchy. No speech at the Council was more praised or blamed than this of the renowned Jesuit's. At last, in November, arrived Guise, the great Cardinal of Lorraine, upon whom the whole business was to hinge. Though himself one of the greatest pluralists that was ever fattened, he at once began to harangue on the removal of abuses, the only way to content the Huguenots whom he 1 For all this see Dollinger's Zur Geschichte des Concils von Trient, i. 226, ii. 10, 15, 17, 20, 22. 2 Pallavicini, iii. 317. 68 EOME AND BEFOKM CHAP. had left at home. It is strange to find the Guises taking their place among Reformers. He at once joined the Spaniards in their contention as to the Divine right of Bishops, and backed a bold Spanish Prelate, who was stopped in his speech by Cardinal Simoneta, and who was denounced by others as a Schismatic. Mendoza, one of the few Spaniards won over to the Pope's side, gives an account of this scene on the 1st of December. Eather later, when a Prelate was holding forth on the Divine right con- nected with bishoprics, an attempt was made to cough him down. 1 Party spirit was running high at the end of 1562. Lorraine complained that he had heard Italian Prelates use a phrase, common at Trent, " From the Spanish scab we are fallen into the French pox.'" Men would fight in the streets of the town, the one side shouting " Spain," the other " Italy." There was but a sorry outlook for the Papacy at this particular time. The Huguenots had just fought what was practically a drawn battle with the French King's troops. The Emperor, Ferdinand L, was coming into the Tyrol to watch the Council nigh at hand. The Pope on his side talked of going to Bologna ; he now made some reforms in the tribunals and other offices at Rome. The year 1563 opened at Trent with the proposal of thirty - four French articles for reforming the Church. Couriers were constantly on the road between Rome and the Council. Pius declared that the Assembly was not merely free, but licentious ; he had had three good occasions to dissolve it, but was content that it should go forward. The question of Matrimony was first handled, and then the marriage of priests. Lorraine went to Innsbruck, where for five days he discussed matters with the Emperor ; they were the most dangerous pair in Europe in Papal eyes. More than this, the Emperor's son, Maximilian, was present, who was thought to be half Protestant. Death now carried 1 Mendoza gives in his own tongue what Lansac said on this occasion, "Cosa maravillosa es ver el catarro que cria este jus divinum." See Dol- linger's Unpublished Documents on the Council of Trent, ii. 101, 107. n ITALY 69 off two of the Legates, Gonzaga and Seripando, most worthy Churchmen ; they were replaced by Cardinal Morone and another. The Cardinal was a remarkable man, a touchstone of the characters of two widely different Popes. Paul IV. had long kept him in prison for heresy. Pius IV. now picked him out as the best man to bring the Council of Trent to a happy end. Morone himself was under no illusions as to the fearful dangers that were overhanging the Church ; on leaving Home he told Soranzo, the Venetian envoy, that there was no hope for the Catholic religion. 1 There was one chance left ; France, Spain, and Germany could never unite ; Italy might haply outwit them all. We have now to see how Lorraine and Guerrero yielded to statesmanship of a shrewder stamp than their own. The Spaniards had always pursued a double end ; they showed a firm front to the Pope on one side, to Calvin on the other. The French had as yet been more single- minded ; but now news came to Lorraine that his brother, the renowned Duke of Guise, had been murdered by a Protestant. This gave the Cardinal a more Komeward impulse than he had hitherto shown. The Emperor and Pope exchanged sharp letters turning upon alleged griev- ances, such as the fact that the Legates alone had the right of proposing resolutions, and that the decisions were in reality made, not at Trent, but at Kome. On the other hand, the Spanish King was strong as ever against the grant of the Cup and priestly marriage ; and this opinion was shared by the Italian Princes. Pius now made his wisest move by sending Cardinal Morone to the Emperor. The shrewd Churchman insisted on the fact that the right of initiative in the Council, if granted to the Prelates, would be quite as harmful to temporal Princes as to the Pope. He induced the Emperor to lay aside the old question whether Council or Pope was superior, and he promised searching reforms. Ferdinand on his part with- drew many demands that his envoys had been making, and 1 See Alberi, series ii., iv., 82. Soranzo later shows how little Pius IV. thought of the head of Germany. 70 EOME AND KEFOEM CHAP. the triumphant Morone went South to preside over the Council. 1 Lorraine in the meantime had been haranguing against dispensations and pluralities in such sort, that he had gone perilously near to Lutheranism, at least in Cardinal Simoneta's opinion. The Frenchman was privately denounced as " a man full of poison " by the Archbishop of Otranto, who led a squadron of forty Papalists, and who was bent on earning the Ked Hat. But there was a change at Paris. Queen Catherine, hearing of the Emperor's defection, began to lean towards the Roman Court, and advised Lorraine to be more conciliatory. He himself saw that for his own sake he ought to prefer the Pope to the Huguenots, who were waxing far too powerful at home. He therefore soon enraged the Spaniards by deserting them on the great questions of Residence and the Divine right of Bishops ; he excused his new lukewarmness by saying that he had learnt from experience that nothing perfect could be achieved in a Council. Meanwhile at Rome, France and Spain were struggling for precedence, Philip claiming to be the greatest King in the world, and to have always preserved the Catholic faith in his many realms ; the Pope ended the dispute by practically treating the two Monarchs as equals. There were great uproars in Bavaria about this time because the Cup and the marriage of priests had not been granted. Lainez was the most favoured member of the Council ; the others had to stand when speaking, while he had a seat allowed him ; he was never rebuked, however long in haranguing he might be. The Jesuit Order had evidently struck its roots deep into the soil of the Vineyard. He now made a strong Papalist harangue which displeased the French Prelates ; he excused it by saying that it had been aimed, not at them, but at the Sorbonne. On one occasion he claimed for his Society exemption from a certain decree, though this decree might be very necessary, as he allowed, 1 Morone was directed to promise Ferdinand the grant of the Cup so soon as the Council should be over ; the Emperor was very weak. Philippson as to this promise quotes Alberi, x. 141, 148. II ITALY 71 for the other Orders. He laid a good foundation, upon which his successors built. Two such great leaders of opposition as Lorraine and the Archbishop of Granada were now diverging on the Episcopal question and on that of Residence ; but business was proceeding rapidly, owing to the new-born complaisance of the powerful Cardinal from France. Morone also was present to smooth matters. One thing alone he could not effect the expulsion of Vergerio, a most biting critic, from the Valteline. First a decree on Faith was voted, then another on Reform. One most important point was the institution of Seminaries ; no longer was an unlearned clergy to be exposed to the gibes of Protestants ; henceforth the flocks were to be well tended. The Council, as we hear, was composed at this time of 150 Italians, and of 60 Transalpines ; the Pope clearly had no cause to fear rough treatment suggestive of Constance and Basle. 1 The Venetians, it is true, gave a little trouble by putting in a plea for liberty on behalf of their many Greek subjects, whose views on Matrimony were widely different from sound Latin ideas. Another dispute arose when King Philip begged leave to set up the Inquisition at Milan, with a Spanish Prelate in command. The Lom- bard Bishops took the lead in opposition to the hateful project, which was soon dropped. Pius was most anxious to have done with the Council. King Philip had promised to keep his unruly Bishops at Trent within due bounds, and now, in the early autumn, the Cardinal of Lorraine went to Rome. He was received with unusual honours, and was lodged in the Pope's palace ; the two men found that their interests were similar, now that France was over- run with heretics. The Council began to debate the reformation of Temporal Sovereigns, too apt to encroach upon the clergy ; but to this the Emperor was strongly opposed, and the Pope allowed it to drop. A violent harangue was made by one of the French envoys at Trent, a discourse for which he had later to apologise ; sound 1 He wrote a letter of rebuke to the Spanish envoy at Trent in August 1563 ; this is set out by Raynaldus for this year, p. 432. 72 KOME AND REFORM CHAP. Papalists talked of " the itching ears of that unquiet nation." Lorraine, still at Home, had some trouble to defend himself in the College of Cardinals ; Gallican notions were becoming simply outrageous. The noble convert came back to Trent zealous on the Pope's side. The Articles on Matrimony were settled ; also those on the duties of Bishops and Priests. Morone, being now sure of the French and German Prelates, hurried on the business, talking of only one session more, though many debatable questions stood over ; some of the Spaniards proved stubborn to the end. The Legate was most dexterous in his management of the Council in these its last days. The question of Indulgences came up once more, and a Decree was made against the abuse of these, the source of all the mischief in Germany. Had equal wisdom been shown in 1517, little would have been heard of Luther. The Pope suddenly fell dangerously ill and sent letters to Trent ordering the Council to be ended at once ; it was feared that the Fathers might take upon them to elect the new Pope, as had been done at Constance. Decrees on Purgatory, Image-worship, and the Reformation of the Clergy were speedily passed ; all future keeping of concu- bines by priests was to be sternly punished. At last, on 4th December 1563, Cardinal Morone dismissed the Council of Trent. Lorraine, heedless of future French criticism on his act, thundered out blessings on the three Popes and the two Emperors who had done so much to further the business of the great assembly ; about 350 members were present to the last sitting. All the decrees were confirmed by Pius IV. early in the next year ; he also gave the Red Hat to no fewer than nineteen Italian Bishops who had done him good service in the Council. 1 Thus ended the Tridentine Assembly, which decreed some useful reforms, still subsisting in full vigour. The morals of the clergy were changed for the better ; the 1 Of course for the Council of Trent both Sarpi and Pallavicini have to be studied. Of all Von Ranke's monumental book on the Popes, no part is more admirable than the long note in which he balances the merits and faults of these two Italian writers. II ITALY 73 institution of Seminaries enabled Rome to rival the Protes- tants on their own ground. The powers of the Bishops over their clergy were extended ; on the other hand, little was taken from the Pope ; no real concessions were made to the North. For this there may be some excuse ; had the rulers of Rome attempted to change front in presence of the enemy, they might possibly have fared no better than the Spanish regiments on the right wing at Albuera. The Council of Trent made the Papal power the corner- stone of true religion, and covered various weak points in the system with well-wrought armour. All future attempts at modifying the Roman polity, attempts like those of Con- stance and Basle, were now ruled to be unlawful. Doctrines were made definite, and a uniform code of laws was estab- lished, built on the rock of Peter. The Council set up an everlasting barrier against the Protestants in many points, but chiefly in the matter of Justification by faith alone, a doctrine now at last driven forth from the Latin Church. Caraffa had triumphed over Contarini. The war between the North and South was now to be waged on more equal terms. Rome had shaken off her worst abuses ; she had the Jesuits at her back, and through them she was to make the Kings of the earth her willing tools. On the other hand, the early vigour of Protestantism was speedily to die out with Calvin and Melanchthon. Pius IV. had given one remarkable proof of moderation ; nine out of ten at the late Assembly had wished to declare the Pope superior to the Council; but this, at the prayer of Lorraine, the Pope refused. 1 Being now happily free from all anxieties, and no longer trembling for his authority, he proved an easy-going Father, a great contrast to his renowned nephew, St. Charles Borromeo, who wielded great influence at the Roman Court. Pius gave fine entertain- ments, built largely, and was rather slack in his religious duties. His tendency to secular ways displeased the fanatics, who fondly looked back to the days of Paul IV. One of these men formed the project of murdering Pius, but shrank back when the moment to strike came. The 1 Pallavicini, iv. 743. 74 ROME AND KEFOKM CHAP. man, together with an accomplice, was put to death. Pius himself ceased to live late in 1565. Few have done more for the Papacy than this commonplace Milanese lawyer, a match for Kings in diplomacy. His successor was stern enough to satisfy the most exacting of fanatics. The last forty-four years mark a period of transition ; the school of Leo X. was at last to be definitely replaced by the school of Pius V., the men of the Eenaissance by the men of the Inquisition. This period of transition began with the earnest Keformer Adrian VI., the herald of coming change ; it ended with the mild Pius IV., a relic of the old system. The Popes between the two sometimes fore- shadow the New, sometimes remind us of the Old. Paul III. in particular was one of the worst of nepotists, but at the same time he has linked his name with Trent, Loyola, and the Inquisition. What changes must have been beheld by some old Roman, who as a boy had gazed on the last Borgia Pope, and who lived to rejoice over Lepanto ! It was Luther who wrought this mighty revolu- tion in the Papacy, just as it was he who in reality convoked the Council of Trent and founded the Order of Jesus. 1 A wonderful change was wrought by the Council of Trent in the Roman Court and its hangers-on, a change tolerated by Pius IV., and actively pursued by his nephew, St. Charles Borromeo. Old abuses were now rooted out. Hitherto a crowd of so-called gentlefolks had lived upon the Cardinals and Bishops, selling themselves, their wives, and their daughters for places. Then came the middle class, and lastly, myriads of beggars, such as there must be wherever there are hundreds of convents. The population of Rome rose and fell ; it seems to have tripled itself within thirty years after the too stirring times of Paul IV. Money had hitherto been everything at Rome ; the office of the Datariate, which dealt with the bestowal of benefices, brought in about 8000 crowns a month; the Camera Apostolica set a price on every crime ; even Paul IV, 1 Luther would have been much astonished could it have been foretold to him that the three countries which would (indirectly) receive most damage from his reform were Bohemia, Poland, and Ireland. ii ITALY 75 handed over to his nephew the privilege of compounding with criminals. Hence wealthy culprits indulged their vices, and innocent men had to pay blackmail. Murderers could be hired at a most cheap rate. Now stepped in the Council of Trent, which forced Prelates to leave Eome, abolished simony, and made justice unsaleable. Already in 1565 it was remarked that the Cardinals were becoming poor, and that able men no longer flocked to Eome. Little money now poured in from abroad ; hence the Pope had to impose high taxes on his own people. His dependents, whom he had to feed, were in number twelve hundred ; his chamber- lains alone were one hundred and ten ; his stud was much neglected. Cardinal Borromeo, the Pope's nephew, was making his great influence tell in the right direction. 1 Paul IV. might well seem to have started once more to life in the person of the new Pope, chosen early in 1566. This was Michael Ghislieri, a Dominican, born near Ales- sandria. Having undertaken the office of Inquisitor in Northern Italy in the days when heretics swarmed there, he had been received with showers of stones at Como ; a prisoner whom he had made was torn from him at Ber- gamo. This zealous agent had received the Eed Hat from Paul IV., and owed his election to the Papacy mainly to Sfc. Charles Borromeo ; it was a choice over which King Philip exulted. 2 The new Pope, who later became a canonised Saint, took the name of Pius V. Spare and meagre, as we see by his lifelike portraits, he was stern to others, but more so to himself ; a lover of truthfulness, though rather too hasty and suspicious; always fasting and praying, wearing his old coarse shirt under the gorgeous robes of his office, and walking barefoot in the great processions even when he was in the physician's hands. The first thing he did 1 Alberi, Relazioni Venete, series ii., iv. I invite particular attention to pages 31, 35, 87, 96, 132, 136. Mocenigo and Soranzo are the writers treating of this most important period. 2 All writers upon these times agree as to Pius V. In Galluzzi's History of Tuscany we see him protesting against his predecessor for raising a mere boy to the Cardinalate. When Pope, he induced the Grand Duke Cosmo to marry, and thus avoid a life of sin. 76 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. was to refuse a bishopric to a man of high family known to be unfit for it. Pius begged the Cardinals to ask no boon of him that was against the late Council's decrees. He insisted that all who lived on Church revenues should wear the clerical dress and should be tonsured ; also that they should be clothed in wool, not in silk ; he would not allow the baggy breeches that were then in fashion. The cost of the Papal household was wonderfully diminished. A certain Count who had threatened to drown the former Inquisitor was sent to Eome as ambassador; all that Pius said to his old enemy was, " See how God helps the innocent ! " He soon provoked enmities, and was assailed by a writer of pasquils ; he made the bard recite the poem, and on hearing that no one except the Devil had aided in the scurrilous composition, Pius said, " If you had attacked me as Pope, I should have taken vengeance, but since you have reviled me as Brother Michael and as the Cardinal of Alessandria, go free ; I shall always be vile in my own eyes." He kept his nephews at a distance, and was with great trouble induced to promote one of them to the Eed Hat, a man well suited to the honour. He set about the reform of the monasteries throughout Italy. Some of the Cardinals were apt to run in debt, and no one durst sue them or give sentence against them. Pius forthwith ordered the houses of the noble offenders to be stripped until due satisfaction should be made. He would not grant dispensations, even if large sums were offered ; justice, not expediency, was his watchword. He was most severe in punishing blasphemy and Sabbath-breaking. He ordered courtesans to be driven from Eome. It was objected that the loss of revenue to the State would be heavy ; he replied that he and his Court would leave the city rather than tolerate vice. In the end he allowed a few of these women to remain in a remote corner of Eome, but flogged them if they strayed out of their bounds ; he cast their bodies on the dunghill if they died without the sacraments ; yet he was ready to help them forward in a chaste life. He was equally attentive to the Jews, some of whom he himself baptized ; more than a hundred were now converted by means most unlike those ii ITALY 77 in fashion among the Spaniards. 1 Pius as a ruler may be coupled with Marcus Aurelius and St. Louis ; all three acted up to the strictest behests of conscience. This Pope on one side seems a counterpart to Calvin on the other. The Eeform of manners, beginning at Rome, soon spread through the Pope's dominions, and then through Italy. Two things distinguished Pius V. from Paul IV., who was otherwise very like him : hatred of nepotism and love to the Spanish King, who had it in his power to be the right arm of the Church. Yet even Philip complained of the new Pope's stern sway, and of the publication of the Bull In Ccend Domini, so pernicious to the Temporal Lords. Those Princes and States that took taxes from the clergy were excommunicated ; the strife between the two powers at Naples was most sharp about this time. Venice appealed against the Bull to old customs ; it was months before Pius V. ceased from this contest. 2 Other Italian rulers were more complaisant, though the Gonzagas at Mantua were always somewhat refractory. Duke Cosmo of Florence handed over the learned heretic, Carnesecchi, even while a guest at the Ducal table, to the envoys of Pius V. in 1566. Thirty-four articles were alleged against the victim, the first being of course his belief in Justification through faith alone. After a long trial he was beheaded and burnt. The Pope rewarded the Medicean betrayer both for this service, and for having sent troops against the French Huguenots. Pius bestowed on Cosmo the title of Grand Duke, in despite of the Emperor's protests. Both 1 I have taken most of this from Surius, who in his German monastery would have the best news from Rome. The Lives of Pius V., written by Catena and Gabutius from the best sources, should also be studied. As to the Jews in Rome, their treatment varied with the reigning Pope's char- acter. Statesmen like Alexander VI. heaped privileges upon them ; bigots like Paul IV. oppressed them sore. Pius IV. was mild towards them, but Pius V. confined them to Rome and Ancona. See Bedarride, Lea Juifs, 307, 336. De Maistre, in his Letters on the Inquisiti-on, coolly tells us, " Rome est peut-etre le seul lieu de 1'Europe ou le Juif ne soit ni maltraite, ni humilie." This is in Letter I., just before his long quotation from Voltaire. 2 See Adriani, Istoria de' suoi tempi, book xx., for the year 1568. Gian- none also has much on this subject. 78 HOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. Pope and Lutherans seemed at this time to agree in hold- ing cheap the decaying Holy Roman Empire. One other remarkable Italian Keformer still survived. Paleario had for ten years held a professorship at Milan, unmolested, strange to say, by the ruling Spanish powers. But his book on the Benefits of Christ's death was remem- bered against him ; the old man was thrown into the In- quisition, sent to Rome, and after a long trial was put to death in 1570. 1 Pius V. might now flatter himself that he had gleaned up almost the last remnants of heresy in Italy ; Lucca alone seemed to stand out, though but feebly. Moreover, he sent troops to aid in the war against the French Huguenots, with strict orders to make no prisoners. He deemed the ruthless Alva, reeking with the Netherland butcheries, worthy of the choicest favours of Rome. But the most important war of the Pope's making was under- taken against the Turks, who had lately all but conquered Malta, and who had now been allowed to master Cyprus, a loss that was shameful indeed to Christendom. Pius V. formed a League between Spain, Venice, Genoa, and Rome against the dreaded Ottoman ; in this he in vain strove to include Austria and Poland. The allies at Lepanto won a great victory, which the Pope conceived himself to have beheld in spirit on the very day of the fight. Seldom in modern times has Italy played so glorious a part as in this year, 1571 ; the great names of Colonna, Doria, and Bar- barigo stand out conspicuous in the records of the battle, when the sea was dyed with Turkish blood. Many trophies were sent to Pius V., whose prayers and ships had alike contributed to the glorious end. 2 The old Pope did not long survive; some of his last thoughts were bestowed on the exiles from England, whose Queen he had deposed. Thus died one of the most remarkable men that ever sat in St. Peter's chair ; few of the Holy Fathers, even of 1 For these two martyrdoms see Miss Young's Paleario, where many original documents are given, towards the end of vol. ii. 2 Tu comparatis classibus, Votis magis sed fervidis, Ad insulas Echinadas Fundis tyrannum Thraciae. ,i ITALY 79 his own wonderful Century, are equally striking. 1 He is the great Dominican Pope, as Sixtus V. is the great Fran- ciscan Pope ; their tombs face each other in Santa Maria Maggiore. Pius V. was succeeded by Ugo Buoncompagni, a learned lawyer from Bologna, who took the name of Gregory XIII. He had earned his Eed Hat by good work done at the Council of Trent. He was always striving, after his elec- tion, to live up to the high model set before him in his predecessor's life. He was burdened by a son, born to him thirty years earlier; yet when on the throne the new Pope cannot be charged with excessive nepotism ; he for- bade his own brother to visit him at Rome. He was unlike most of the Popes since 1521, for he leaned upon one man, the Cardinal of Como, as his lieutenant in foreign affairs ; this agent was a partisan of Spain. Gregory was the last Pontiff who could well remember the times when Luther still professed to be a faithful son of the Church. This Pope has damaged the Papacy more than most of his brethren by the medal struck and the fresco painted in honour of the black day of St. Bartholomew ; the Hugue- nots of 1572 have done more abiding harm to Eome by their f deaths than by their very active lives. 2 She had been on the brink of a fearful danger ; only in the previous year the Moderate Catholics of France had sketched a league aimed at the power of Spain. This was to be formed of the Protestant States, and moreover of Savoy and Genoa. Charles IX. sent an envoy of his own to Tuscany to engage Duke Cosmo in the plot ; but that wary statesman thought the risk too great, and betrayed the project to King Philip. 1 Pius IV., in July 1564, had granted the Cup to some of the Emperor's subjects ; Pius V. recalled the grant. See Raynaldus when treating of this time, p. 514. 2 Maffei, a Jesuit, wrote the Annals of Gregory XIII. He was allowed the use of the Vatican documents, and he had talked with many of the actors in these stirring events. He says that the 3000 gentlemen murdered at Paris, whither they had followed Coligny, were the flower of their sect. On the news of this the Pope gave thanks, " mostrando temperata letizia " ; he afterwards proclaimed "un amplo Giubileo." Maffei's work, taking year by year, gives a good picture of the times ; he declares in 1583 that miracles were wrought in favour of the new Calendar. 80 EOME AND EEFORM CHAP. The envoy came a second time, after Lepanto had been won, with new proposals to detach Venice from the Spanish side ; but he had no better success than before. 1 Venice was, at this period of furious strife, a beacon to the nations. Her shrewd envoy Correro, who marked the beginning of the Wars of Religion in France, says that he had often heard the Frenchmen cry, " O that I had all my property at Venice ! " They were always asking if the Republic would borrow money at interest ; they knew where their goods would be secure. They did not wish to be at Rome, or Naples, or other Italian cities, but only at Venice, the land where there was one God, one form of worship, one Prince, one common law, where every man might live in peace and enjoy his own.^ Under this much-envied government throve the re- nowned University of Padua, founded in 1222, with her fourteen chairs of theology and philosophy, her eleven chairs of Canon law, her seventeen chairs of Civil law, her fifteen chairs of medicine and mathematics. She was soon to boast the names of teachers such as Galileo, Aldus Manutius, Vesalius, Scaliger, Sarpi. The wise men of all the world were hither invited, no matter what their creed. What a difference was there between Padua and Salamanca ! Rome did not wholly approve of this toleration ; she asked that no Rector who was a non-Catholic should hereafter be appointed. Venice would not listen to this proposal, which would have driven hundreds of Protestant students from Padua. The Senate, on the contrary, confirmed the election of a Rector who was a German Protestant. The Jesuits founded a school of their own to balance the tolerant influence that prevailed. " We shall soon be Guelfs and Ghibellines here," wrote a man of learning. The famous Duplessis Mornay, then a youth, had to fly to Du Ferrier, the French Ambassador, who was of much use to Sarpi in throwing light upon the Council of Trent, and who was a noble specimen of that school of 1 Galluzzi, Toscana, lib. iii. 134, 148. He gives Charles's letter in part. 2 Tommaseo, AmbassadeursVenitiens, ii. 196. n ITALY 81 religion which would side neither with Geneva nor with Madrid. 1 One of his diplomatic feats was the rescue of a knight bearing the hateful name of Vergerio, an agent of the Protestant Princes of Germany. This envoy had been thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition at Venice under the pretext of heresy. Du Ferrier, instructed by King Henry III., obtained the knight's release ; the In- quisition seized him again in the palace of the French embassy. " I could never have thought that Venice would endure this," wrote the French King. " Vergerio is an old servant of this Crown." The Inquisition durst not keep their victim, who had better protectors than poor Carne- secchi had. The ambassador wrote home, " Sire, the Senate has done for you what has never been done in such an affair, either by them or by any other Italian Prince, such is the reverence for the judges of the Inquisition deputed by the Pope." In the end Gregory acknowledged the innocence of the captive. 2 The Pope had sometimes better luck in hunting heretics. Thus a Greek of Scio had cast off the garb of St. Dominic, and had later found himself in the prison of the Inquisi- tion. Eeleased in the riot after the death of Paul IV., the man had fled to Germany, and turned out a leading heresiarch. He was most artful in gaining the good-will of various nations and in bringing in new opinions, so much so that he was said to have some familiar demon at his beck. Pius V. in vain tried his best to get hold of the miscreant, who was favoured by the Protestant Princes. At last Eodolph II. threw him into prison at Vienna, and, in despite of the Saxon Elector, handed him over to the Nuncio. The victim was with much trouble sent to Rome ; he held out in his heresy until he saw the fire ready for him. He then recanted, and was kept for two years in prison writing a confutation of his old opinions ; he was afterwards beheaded in private and burnt in public. The Germans were wroth at their Kaiser's complaisance to the 1 Un Ambassadeur Liberal (Du Ferrier), by Fremy, 39-42 . 2 Ibid. 342-346. VOL. I G 82 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. Pope, but the man was said to have intrigued with the Turks and the Poles. 1 We now get a glimpse of the training that went to form youthful Dominicans. In the great convent of the Order at Naples, under the shadow, as might be said, of St. Thomas Aquinas, a lad from Nola was studying for Orders, having become a friar at the age of fourteen. He was far too independent in his views ; thus, on finding a friend reading the mystical Seven Joys of the Virgin, he remarked that it would be better to throw that book away and to read some other book, like the Lives of the Fathers. Another day he gave away certain images of the saints, and kept for himself nothing but the Crucifix. The Master of the novices began to compile an act of accusation against the young thinker, but tore it up. The friar received priest's orders when twenty-three, but he soon began to doubt the doctrine of the Trinity and to compose an Italian comedy, lively but unclean, published some years later. The Provincial Father was now drawing up a second process, in which the youth's former faults were rehearsed. The culprit, who had been lately reading Erasmus's Notes on the Fathers, fled to Rome, and thence to Northern Italy. Rather later the name of Giordano Bruno became widely known ; he lived on the best terms with the great men of Paris and London ; he did not love Geneva, but took kindly to Wittemberg. Betrayed by a false Venetian friend to the Inquisition, he was kept in prison at Rome for seven years, and was burnt alive in the Jubilee year 1600. One of his heresies was a new one; he taught the plurality of worlds. 2 As a contrast to this deserter, we may cast a glance at a man of a very different spirit. We have already seen what could be done by one Roman diplomatist at a great crisis ; it will repay us to study the life of another, whose 1 Maffei, Gregory XIII. ii. 251-254. 2 Vita di Giordano Bruno, da Berti. This, published in 1868, is the first life of the sage based on the records of the Inquisition. The annalists of the Dominicans, Echard and Que'tif, deny that Bruno could have belonged to their Order. See Berti's work, 2. ii ITALY 83 work was spread over many years. Commendoni was a Venetian subject, born in 1524, and bred at Padua. 1 Pre- ferring the dignities of Eome to those of Venice, he entered the household of Julius III., but scorned any familiarity with the worthless young Cardinal who bore that Pope's family name, or with the Caraffa nephews when they in turn became all powerful. But he had no objection to write verses, which were engraven on marble in the new pleasure grounds of Julius. The youth spent three whole years in the study of Civil Law ; he rose by merit, not by favour. He was sent in disguise to London when Queen Mary first came to the throne, an embassy that required boldness as well as wisdom. 2 She entrusted him with the knowledge of her future schemes and with her letters to the eager Pope. These he carried from Brussels to Rome in nine days, riding post. Commendoni was then called upon to deliver the good news from England to the Cardinals assembled in Consistory. Still he had no high opinion of Julius. We hear much of the sums of money that Pope spent upon his new villa, and of the laziness which caused him to refuse an audience to the deputies of Sienna, who in their distress were offering the town to the Holy See. Under him the revenues of the Church were employed only to foster the luxury of Churchmen ; one of them would hold three bishoprics at once ; they chose to dress as cavaliers ; they took the air with ladies in their carriages, and talked of nothing but banquets and comedies. 3 The two next Popes were Reformers, and most unlike Julius. Paul IV. made Commendoni his Nuncio to Charles V. The young Venetian was afterwards sent to induce his old State to take up arms for the Pope a bootless errand. The youth, unlike the priests who followed Caraffa from Rome, refused to attend a Venetian ball ; here he stood alone, and the disgusted Caraffa speedily caused the 1 His Life was written by his secretary Gratiani, was translated into French by Flechier, and was published in 1671. It gives a good picture of the Sixteenth century. 2 He saw the Protestant dagger hurled at the preacher of a Popish sermon, a well-known incident. 3 La Vie du Cardinal Commendon, 61, 62. 84 HOME AND REFOEM CHAP. stubborn Puritan's disgrace at headquarters. Commen- doni had now leisure for more than a year's study in the Vatican, and was soon able to return good for evil to his persecutor. He was in favour once more under Pius IV., who sent him on an embassy to the German Protestant Princes, wishing to lure them to the Council of Trent. The disputes in Germany between Lutheran and Calvinist rejoiced the Nuncio's heart. His eloquence and courtesy won him a great reputation in the North. He was chosen by the Legates at Trent to go on a new embassy to the Emperor Ferdinand, and on that occasion got the better of the great Cardinal of Lorraine. He was then sent to Poland, whence he was able to drive Ochino. He had a most weighty influence upon the unhappy land, which was at that moment wavering between Eome and Geneva ; owing to him the Polish clergy, though not the Diet, consented to admit the decrees of Trent. Commendoni, we are told, had no acquaintance with St. Charles Borromeo, who at this time governed all the affairs of the Church under his uncle the Pope. But St. Charles was so struck with the good work done in the North-East that he procured for Commendoni the Cardinal's hat at the age of forty -one. Hitherto the Nuncio had gained but little of this world's goods ; he had had great expenses, and had been much harassed in at- tempting to obtain his rightful pension, the two hundred gold crowns given every month to Nuncios. 1 All, from the Emperor downwards, sent congratulatory letters to Commendoni, who had plainly vast influence with the rulers of Vienna and Cracow. The old courtiers at Eome thought his promotion something astounding, since it had been won by merit alone. After his arrival at Eome Pius V. bestowed especial favours on him. Some advised the new Cardinal to amass wealth while he could, but modesty and scorn of riches were throughout life his great virtues. In Eome he always drove out in a close carriage to avoid troublesome greetings. His real value was well known to Pius V., who sent him once more as Legate into Germany to check the Protestant leanings of Maximilian 1 La Vie du Cardinal Commendon, 267. II ITALY 85 II. a most difficult task. Much credit was due to Com- mendoni for persuading his native Venice to ally herself with unpopular Spain ; the victory of Lepanto was the result. The Pope sent him on to gain new recruits for the great League, the rulers of Austria and Poland. Com- mendoni prevented King Sigismund of the North from treading in the steps of Henry VIII., both politically and matrimonially. The Legate was the main cause of the success of the French candidate in the contest for the Polish Crown. After this last triumph he returned to Home. Gregory XIII. had no love for him, and left him a prey to the grasping malice of the great Cardinal Farnese. But many of his brethren had an earnest wish to confer the tiara on the famous diplomatist, the man who always refused bribes and the gifts of Kings, which he might fairly take. He died in the year 1584 at his beloved Padua. He dealt many a shrewd blow to Protestantism in his lifetime ; but we may surely forgive him this, and look upon him only as one of the worthiest statesmen ever sent forth by Rome, a man whose career lets us into many a secret of the complex Sixteenth Century. Pope Gregory XIII. was the author of the new Calendar, a much-needed reform. He forwarded huge sums of money to Monarchs who were fighting against the Moslem or against the Northern heretics. 1 He revived the Germanic College, and founded an English and a Greek College ; twenty-two Jesuit Institutions arose at his bidding. He appears in Maffei's work, pushing his conquests among the Japanese, the Abyssinians, and the Maronites. How were the funds for all these undertakings provided ? The States of the Church were at this time most wealthy, and exported corn for the benefit of neighbouring countries to a vast amount. The ports were thronged by foreign merchants. Eome, like Venice, has had the good sense always to harbour the Jews. But there was a dark side to the picture. Eomagna was 1 These two last sometimes became allies. Maffei, writing of the year 1573, says that an Italian nobleman who had plotted to hand over Ancona to the Turks was aided by Flemish heretics at Rome, who corresponded with Orange. 86 ROME AND REFORM CHAP. inhabited by a valiant population, and was the best nursery of soldiers in Italy ; but it was also full of feudal chiefs, and of clans banded together, as in the Corsica of our own days ; civil war was rife in the land. The Popes laid on taxes, which were always mounting higher and higher during this Century, all for the benefit of universal Christendom. Gregory, though a most good-natured man, came down with a heavy hand on the Romagnole nobles, wresting their lands from them on any pretext ; but troops of outlaws and brigands took the field in many a pro- vince ; rape and homicide abounded, and vast criminal organisations arose which defied the law. The Pope found himself driven, against his will, to pardon men guilty of many murders ; some of them went on the Irish Crusade. 1 So much for the Italian King ; what about the Father of the faithful ? Gregory must have cast an almost despairing eye upon the kingdoms of Christendom, so changed and sundered since the days of his youth. What was the outlook before him in 1577? Thanks to the Inquisition, Italy, Spain, and Portugal had been freed from the taint of heresy, and formed a good base for those war- like operations, both spiritual and temporal, that were sure to come sooner or later. Besides these, Ireland and Croatia were staunch in their faith, and were to supply thousands of good soldiers to the Roman cause. Even so early as 1531 an iron barrier had been set up in certain of the Southern Swiss Cantons which heresy has never been able to overleap. But Northern Europe seemed to be lost. Sweden, Denmark, England, Scotland, far the greater part of Germany, and all the Baltic coasts, were gone ; a great Protestant champion was holding, not merely Holland, but 1 In 1583 the Barigel of Rome seized a bandit in the Orsini Palace. Three nobles tried to rescue the prisoner, and lost their lives in the conflict that followed. The Roman Barons levied their vassals and made a horrible massacre of the police, a slaughter which lasted for days. One of the Orsini killed in cold blood a lieutenant of Buoncompagni, the Pope's natural son, who was General of Holy Church. Gregory in the end found himself obliged to put the Barigel to death in order to appease the nobles. See for this Cardinal D'Ossat's Letters, i. 11 ; also Maffei, ii. 358-360. II ITALY 87 Antwerp, Ghent, Brussels, and many another time-honoured city, all swarming with heretics, and all bound by a late agreement never to bow the knee to the Spanish despot. 1 Central Europe was now halting between the two Creeds. France, though herself cleaving to the Mass, had been an external buttress to Protestantism. A bold chief of the obnoxious faith, a man who might yet prove the destroyer of the Papacy, stood on the steps of the throne of St. Louis. It might well happen that within a few years a French host, taking the old road, might be led to sack the convents of Milan and Bologna ; to such an impending chance of war the Pope might well prefer even the Spanish yoke. Bohemia was moving on the path of reform much further than her old teacher, Huss, had gone. Transylvania had been first in the field in giving to the world the noxious pattern of toleration in religion. Hungary, half of which was now under the Turk's heel, had been as lukewarm in her Catholicism as her old Sovereign, Maximilian II., lately deceased, had shown himself. His Austrian dominions were a nest of heresy ; Tyrol and Croatia alone stood fast in the faith. Poland had just lost a King who had been a corre- spondent of Calvin's ; her proud nobles, lovers of freedom, had been drawn away in thousands from despotic Eome to democratic Geneva, and, moreover, had made themselves the great patrons of a new heresy even worse than that of Calvin. 2 Besides the affliction of schisms in Christendom, 1 The high water-mark of Protestantism in Europe must be placed after 1572, when Holland was, as it were, born to new life, and before 1578, when the great Spanish triumphs in the Southern Netherlands began. 2 To illustrate the tolerant character of Austria and Poland at this time I here set out shortly the life of Bishop Dudith. He was a Hungarian, who studied in Italy, and followed Cardinal Pole to England. Ferdinand I. gave him a bishopric in Hungary, and he represented that country at Trent, where he gained some concessions as to the grant of the Cup to the laity. At Trent he was beloved by all. He was sent as ambassador to Poland, and there renounced his religion and married. He was burnt in effigy at Rome, but his masters, Maximilian II. and Rodolph II., never ceased to be on good terms with him. He represented Austria in Poland at the Diet where his old acquaintance, Bathory, was elected King. He died at Breslau in 1589. I have taken all this from a letter of Sir Henry Saville's to De Thou, printed in the French edition of De Thou's History of the year 1734 ; it is in tome xv. 236. 88 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. Rome had an ill neighbour in the Turk, who might at any moment root himself in Sicily, as he had already done in Cyprus, and whose career of conquest was to last for another Century. But in spite of all there were gleams of hope for the future. Never hitherto had there flourished an Order like that of the new-born Jesuits, bending all their energies to mould the minds of Kings on the right pattern, and to afford to young noblemen the best education then attain- able. A new class of agents, it was clear to all men, was at work ; aged Germans must have seen some difference between Tetzel and Canisius. Thanks to the decrees of Trent, the Church had got rid of her worst corruptions. As to money, the Popes had a rich kingdom of their own, and besides, had access to King Philip's gold, ever pouring in from the Indies. Moreover, there were weak joints in the enemy's armour. The peculiar ideas on the Eucharist, unluckily held by Luther, were to bring ten thousand woes on Protestantism. Lutherans were prone to stand aloof from Calvin ists. All hope of Protestant unity seemed to have been buried in Melanchthon's grave. Gregory himself must have sighed when he looked back upon the spring of 1520 ; but there stood in his Court many a young Church- man who would live to see 1630, and to rejoice over the reconquest of much of the ground lost in Central Europe. The aged Pope himself beheld the turn of the tide, more especially in the Netherlands, though Vienna and Cracow were as yet very far from rising to the theological heat of the Paris and Madrid of 1550. Gregory might have taken comfort, could he have foreseen the future, from the thought that after his day no Catholic people was to embrace the new heresies ; if Rome hereafter was to lose millions of souls, it was not Calvin, but Frenchmen of a far different stamp, who were to be the gainers. Gregory died early in 1585. The Conclave met forth- with. Among the most remarkable men there was the Cardinal dei Medici, Ferdinand, the future able Grand Duke of Tuscany, who dwelt on the Pincian hill ; the Cardinal of Este, brother to the Duke of Ferrara, a Churchman II ITALY 89 always on the side of France ; Cardinal Deza, red with the blood of slaughtered Moriscoes ; Cardinal Farnese, who had worn the Ked Hat for nearly fifty years, known as the " Pope-maker," a Prelate whose life is the history of the great Jesuit reaction, the builder of the Gesu Church, a man who was one of the stateliest figures that ever adorned the Sacred College. Many others of the brethren there were whose one thought was to promote the Spaniard's empire over Italy and the world. The electors took no long time to elect the new Pope, a man fated to be one of the strangest of all the occupants of St. Peter's chair. Peretti, a young peasant from the March of Ancona, had entered the Franciscan Order, had won fame as a preacher, and had satisfied the most keen-eyed of all Inquisitors, Brother Michael Ghislieri, who later was able to make Peretti a Bishop and a Cardinal. Gregory XIII., on the other hand, had hated the aspiring friar, and this hatred had been returned with interest. On Gregory's death the low-born Franciscan was chosen Pope, and took the name of Sixtus V. 1 Peretti had been unhappy in his domestic relations ; one of the inmates of his modest mansion, near the Baths of Diocletian, had been the notorious Vittoria Accoramboni, his nephew's wife; the young husband had been murdered at the instigation of her Ducal lover. Pope Sixtus at once made it clear that lawlessness would not be allowed to thrive under his sway as it had in the days of his predecessor, a man who quailed before the violence of high-born criminals. On the fourth day of the new reign four brothers were hanged for carrying arms contrary to law ; a boy was executed for resisting the police. The brigands, many thousands in number, who plied their trade throughout Italy, were sternly put down wherever the new Pope could come at them. Pepoli, one of the greatest nobles of Komagna, was strangled for harbouring a bandit. Crimes were punished that had been committed forty years earlier. Pasquin described a statue of St. Peter as bent on a journey, fearing to be called to account for the old busi- ness of Malchus's ear. The name of Pope Sixtus was used 1 I have used Hiibner's admirable work on Sixtus V. as well as Ranke. 90 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. by Eoman mothers as a bugbear to frighten their children. Within little more than a year the Papal States were freed from the old curse of brigandage, while Venice and Tuscany had been persuaded to follow the good example set, though Southern Italy, of course, was in a hopeless state as re- garded peace and order. Within a short time ten thousand Neapolitan emigrants, escaped from a repressed rebellion, were filling Home ; and this was again and again repeated. Sixtus was most successful in the matter of finance. He gained much by the sale of offices, creating many new ones ; his taxes were heavy, but he soon had millions of crowns in gold stored up in the Castle of San Angelo. The richest Sovereign of his day, he used to declare that a King with- out money is nobody. He was willing to employ it for the good of Christendom, but only under certain specified cir- cumstances. He ordered mulberry trees to be planted, set about the drainage of the Pontine marshes, and did much for his native province in the North-East. We have his works at Eome still before our eyes. He brought water from the Sabine hills, a distance of twenty-two miles, and constructed the Acqua Felice. 1 He built the ugly Lateran Palace, after destroying the fine remains of the mediaeval abode of the old Popes. He it was who laid out those curious straight roads from the Lateran to the Esquiline height, and thence to the Pincian hill. A noble chapel in Santa Maggiore, where we still see his statue, claims him as its founder. St. Peter's was still without its cupola. Sixtus achieved that wonderful task in less than two years, keep- ing men at work there both night and day. He had, when a Cardinal, patronised Fontana, a young mason from Como. This youth was now employed to direct the nine hundred workmen who raised the huge Egyptian obelisk still stand- ing before St. Peter's, an exploit admired by the whole of Europe. All this was wrought within little more than five years, the too short Pontificate of Sixtus. His foreign policy is most interesting. He had a keen eye for genius at home, as he showed by his favour to young Sarpi; he had a 1 Hence his title was sometimes changed to Summits Fontifex. rr ITALY 91 high admiration for his political enemies abroad, the sure token of a great mind. Elizabeth of England and Henry of Navarre felt equal admiration for Sixtus, though a hard fate drove them to fight against him. The Pope was all but tempted to back the Savoyard in an attempt to seize Geneva, but happily drew back in time. The great game was in playing further to the West. The League, sanctioned by Gregory, had for some time been sapping the rights of the French Crown. King Philip had hitherto felt sure of the Papal concurrence in those sharp practices of his that seemed to aim at universal monarchy. But with Sixtus a change came over the spirit of the Papacy ; Spain was now something to be dreaded. The new Pope delighted in re- hearsing the feats of Drake, the Sea-king, who was the bane of Philip's Empire. Sixtus groaned over the Spanish sluggishness, most evident in the unreasonable delay of the Armada. When that great Crusade had gone to wreck he haggled with Olivarez, the Spanish Ambassador, over the gold that Eome had bound herself to supply. " The Pope has a horror of parting with money," wrote the envoy. Sixtus would stalk up and down the room thundering out argu- ments ; the only three men who could withstand him were two of the Cardinals and the detested Olivarez. Henry III. of France, weak and wicked, plucked up heart after the Fearful Spanish disaster in 1588, and murdered his enemies, the Guises. Unluckily one of them was a Cardinal. Sixtus denounced the crime in full Consistory, and ordered Cardinal De Joyeuse, who stood up for the French King, to leave the room. Henry called the Huguenots to his aid, and was soon himself murdered by a Jacobin. Sixtus had no love for King Philip, the tyrant of Italy, yet was forced to back him in his designs upon hapless France ; even the Spanish yoke was preferable in Papal eyes to an invasion of Huguenots, led by the second Captain of the age, men who would rejoice to take Antichrist by the beard in his own den. Venice, less shackled than Eome by religious obligations, gave great umbrage to the Pope by her too early leanings to the side of the new King, Henry IV. ; an embassy of the wariest sages of the Eepublic was 92 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. needed before Sixtus could be pacified. The conversion of Navarre (Henry's name at Eome) was openly hinted at, and his envoy was received by the Pope, to the disgust of the Spanish faction, which consisted of the majority of the Cardinals. The quarrels with Olivarez became more and more outrageous during the last six months of the Pope's life. On one occasion Sixtus howled with rage and threatened to excommunicate the envoy. " Does King Philip," it was asked, " want to make himself Pope ? " So strong was Spanish pressure that the French Ambassador had to leave Rome, feigning a pilgrimage to Loretto. Olivarez next asked that those of the French Catholics who in vast numbers followed Henry might be excom- municated. Sixtus called the envoy a liar and fled from the closet. At a later interview it was openly threatened that Philip would free himself of his obedience to the Pope. Sixtus was a clear-sighted statesman, and said that he must be mad if he asked for Navarre's recantation at this particular time, when Ivry had just been won by the help of the Huguenots. The Pope's one idea was to gain time. He imprisoned some preachers for becoming the mouthpiece of the League. Navarre, backed by all the influence of England at Constantinople, was proposing to bring the Turk into the war as a counterpoise to the Spaniard ; these two last were the two overmastering powers of Europe from 1530 to 1640. A new envoy, the Duke of Sessa, was sent by Philip to Rome. He was a mild man, but for all that, Sixtus gesticulated, got angry, and screamed till he was hoarse. Most of the Cardinals were against the Pope. At last he had to give way and agree to send troops of his own into France to fight on the side of the hated League. The Venetians were working hard on Navarre's behalf, and upon them the sore-worried Pope fell back, wringing his hands. He had not a fortnight to live, yet he once more faced the dreaded Spanish envoys : " We are not," said he, " King Philip's slaves ; these men will kill us." A fever, coming on in the summer heats, was doing its fell work upon Sixtus, though he struggled hard for life. Some of his last thoughts were given to the war in France ; he uttered II ITALY 93 a hope that Navarre might be converted. In the evening of 27th August 1590 the last Pope of strong original genius that Eome has ever seen, yielded up the ghost, while a dreadful thunderstorm was raging overhead. His enemies (and these were many) gave out that he had made a compact with the Devil, and that his soul had now taken the wrong road. Olivarez wrote home that the Pope had died without confession, and even worse, worse, worse. Sixtus had never borne any love to the Jesuits. He had been assailed by one of them, who, preaching at Madrid, had strongly hinted that the Holy Father was an abettor of heresy in France. The old Pope had become so furious when news of this sermon came as to propose changing the very name of the Society of Jesus; but Acquaviva, perhaps the ablest of all the Society's Generals, was able to stave off the business until Sixtus's death. Already, about this time, the Jesuit missions in the East were assailed by the combined Dominicans, Fran- ciscans, and Augustinians, and this enmity was to last for two Centuries. "We reproach the converts," so affirmed the complainants, " with revering their Pagan ancestors; they answer that this is authorised by the Jesuits who baptized them. When there is a persecution, it falls upon us, not upon the Jesuits. We find hardly an idea of Jesus among those whom they have baptized ; a crucified God seems to them a hard mouthful for be- ginners." l To this the Jesuits answered, " The honours given to ancestors are not idolatrous rites, but unimportant courtesies." The greatest loser by the death of Sixtus was France, called by him " the right eye of Christianity and the world's pivot." Had the Pope lived a few years longer, Navarre's reconciliation would have been effected much earlier than in 1595, and that King's harassed liegemen would have enjoyed a speedier respite from blood and butchery, the 1 "Bocado duro para principiantes. " See for all this a Spanish docu- ment quoted by Forneron, Philip the Second, iv. 59. I have remarked that modern Ultramontanes, when championing the Jesuits, conceal the fact that the keenest enemies of that Order were Popes and Legates, Franciscans and Dominicans. 94 HOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. work of Philip and the League. Sixtus V. was followed by three Popes, all tools of Spain. Their three reigns lasted little more than a year. They wasted the gold, heaped up by their wise predecessor, in the needless strife on the Seine. In 1592 the popular Aldobrandino was chosen, who took the title of Clement VIII. Sixty years earlier his family had been driven from Florence by the Spanish arms, and he had therefore, happily for France, no reason to love the Spanish despot. Clement made great professions of orthodoxy, while, like a good statesman, he held out secret hopes to Navarre. The Pope knew that there was a third party in France, midway between the school of Geneva and the school of Madrid, and that this party, the Moderates, as we should say, held the casting vote as to the French crown. A year after Clement's election the Protestant champion had resolved on taking the great leap and going over to Eome. But he was already a relapsed heretic, and Clement was afraid of being tricked. There was a long time of hesitation ; but the League was falling to pieces, and Henry was welcomed to orthodox Paris, a city of martyrs ; even the Sorbonne ceased to hold out against him, and began to turn its batteries upon the Jesuits. The Spaniards and many of the Cardinals withstood to the last. Such was the feeling of Ultramontanes, that the Inquisition in Italy was eager to punish the Florentine friar who had revealed the conspiracy of the wretch Barriere against King Henry's life. The Grand Duke Ferdinand, who was a main agent in Henry's conversion, had to interpose before the friar could return to Italy. The Turks were now engaged in a new assault upon Austria ; yet King Philip was eager that the might of Italy should be expended upon the desolation of France rather than upon the rescue of Hungary ; the Turks and Spaniards, those remorseless foes, were now practically fighting upon one side. 1 But even in Eome there were glimmerings of the true policy to be followed. A saying was noised abroad, " Clement VII. lost - J Galluzzi, Toscana, lib. v. p. 141, 150. In this author we read of the violent means taken by Spain to bully the Pope ; she was ready to encourage brigandage in his dominions in order to bend him to her will. II ITALY 95 England by too much haste ; Clement VIII. will lose France by too much slowness." ] Late in 1595 the repentant sinner of Navarre was received back into the Church, after a grand ceremony, when his deputy was absolved by the Pope. Happy Borne could now once more hold the balance fairly even between France and Spain. There was little danger henceforth that the Popes would sink to the level of mere tools, wielded by the tyrant of Madrid, whom Cardinal D'Ossat called " his Catholic and Omnipotent Majesty." Spain had become most unpopular. Great was the joy at Eome in 1596 when the news came of the sack of Cadiz by the English. The Court and the populace alike made their remarks on King Philip, who had well armed his limbs (Flanders, Lombardy, and Sicily), but had left his head bare. Spaniards had gone to all quarters of the world anywhere away from home. The heedless King had been seized by the throat ; he would lose his credit with the merchants ; his weakness had been discovered ; his provinces would soon rebel. It was thought at Eome that the English ought to have followed up the great blow more vigorously than they did. 2 Two years later Henry IV. had a chance of proving his gratitude to Pope Clement. Alfonso II. of Este, Duke of Ferrara, best known to us as Tasso's gaoler, had died, leaving his Duchy, a fief of the Papacy, to a pretender unre- cognised by Eome. War threatened to break out. The new claimant was backed by Spain and by many of the Italian States, who were jealous of Papal greatness. France had always been in strict alliance with the Este family in the earlier strife of this Century ; but Henry IV. now threw them over and offered to lead an army in support of the Papal claims. The case was a doubtful one ; bastards had been hitherto allowed to succeed to the heritage of the 1 D'Ossat's Letters, i. 437. - Ibid. ii. 193-198. He writes, "Tout cliacun 4toit ici bien aise, qxie ce grand sossiego espagnol fut humilie." He was long the French envoy at Rome, and was a model Frenchman. He gives many particu- lars about Clement VIII., who of all Popes was the one who wept most freely. 96 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP, Estesi, but now the Pope was excluding a claimant from an illegitimate source. Late in 1597 Clement excommuni- cated the pretender in public, casting a burning taper to the ground. The luckless aspirant yielded, contenting himself with Modena and Eeggio, which were not fiefs of the Papacy. A few months later the Pope made his triumphal entry into Ferrara, where the Estesi, the old vassals of Innocent III., had reigned for nearly four hundred years. The finest parts of the city, already a decaying city, were swept away to make room for a new fortress, much to the discontent of the Ferrarese. The devastation seems to have gone on for seventeen years. 1 France and Spain did not confine their rivalry to things temporal. In 1588 the Jesuit Molina had published a book carrying the efficacy of free-will in the justification of sinners even further than the Council of Trent had allowed. Theologues of this stamp seem to have thought that the further the Church shrank from Protestant opinions the more orthodox she became. But the Dominicans at once assailed the book, since it opposed their great tenet of predestination as expounded by Aquinas. The cause wa& fought out at Eome under the eye of Clement ; sixty-five meetings and thirty-seven disputations were held before him on all the points agitated. The Jesuits were backed by France, the Dominicans by Spain, as was natural. Clement rather leant to the latter, but was shaken on being told that any Protestant might subscribe the Dominican opinions. 2 Still the Pope leant to this side, 1 Frizzi, Storia di Ferrara, v. 37. He gives a long list of Churches, Palaces, and old gates destroyed. 2 The Universities of Lou vain, Douai, and Salamanca took the Domini- can side. Baronius writes as follows on the question : "I cannot read the books of Molina without indignation. One might say that his sole aim was to condemn St. Augustine, to reproach him with negligence, and to prove that on these questions of Grace his own lights were far superior to those of that great Bishop, to whom he affects never to give the name of Saint. He glides like a serpent from the hands that would grasp him, so that it is easier to prove his temerity than convince him of heresy. However, I have marked more than fifty expressions or propositions that savour of Pelagi- anism or Semi-Pelagianism." But Molina's work had been approved by the General Acquaviva. I have taken this from Neale's Jansenist Church of Holland, 8. II ITALY 97 The Preaching friars believed themselves to be on the eve of a triumph when in 1606 their rivals rendered a great service to Eome by undergoing poverty and banishment in her behalf. A year later she dismissed the litigants with a decree that neither of them should assail the other, thus practically sanctioning a great innovation. The Jesuits clave to their own system of doctrine without fear of molestation. Their great General Acqua viva was about this time enabled to put down certain unruly members of his Order in Spain. His disciples were now at leisure to prepare for their coming triumph through most of Europe during the next thirty years, the Golden age of the Society ; the Dominicans had been defied ; the Jansenists had not yet arisen. The gap between Home and Geneva had been widened far beyond what it was in the days of Pius V. Clement VIII. enjoyed a long Pontificate ; he had the happiness to act as mediator between France and Spain, and bore a great share in the peace of Vervins, made in 1598. France was there detached, at least nominally, from her heretical English and Dutch allies. Two years later the Pope made a further peace between France and Savoy. He was naturally inclined, by ancestral memories, to the side of the French ; he gained over many States in Italy to this alliance, but he would not allow matters to go so far as war. Clement was somewhat of a despot in his own dominions ; he allowed much power to a nephew, who received proof of the Koman people's hatred in a squabble that arose between himself and one of the Farnesi. Matters were now much softened down at Eome with regard to foreign travellers, compared to the state of things thirty years earlier. We may contrast the dangers en- countered at Rome by that stoutest of young Protestants, Duplessis Mornay, with the tolerance exercised towards the witness I am now about to call. Clement was the first Pope who allowed passports to foreign Protestants, so that they might freely visit Rome. We are allowed a peep at the state of Italy shortly before 1600, as it was seen by Sir Edwin Sandys, a son of the Protestant Archbishop of VOL. I H 98 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. York. 1 This traveller, moderate, shrewd, and chivalrous, a worthy pupil of the great Hooker, is far above the common run ; he gives proof of an impartiality most rare in Eng- land during the Sixteenth century ; he looks forward to the reunion of Christendom, and grants the superiority of the Roman Catholics in some points, thereby showing himself to be no cross-grained Puritan. Differing from the average English statesman of the time, he has a horror of the Turks. He sets Clement VIII. before us, a Prince thrifty in things temporal, but wasteful in things spiritual, such as Indulgences ; shedding floods of tears at his Masses and Jubilees ; suspected of a strong ancestral leaning to the Florentines of the old Republican party; known to be a good man, a good Prelate, and a good Prince. There was a great difference between him and Sixtus V., " the most stout, resolute Pope that ever wore crown," the most dangerous enemy Spain had in the world. The Pope's work had been much lightened of late by the institution of various congregations ; one of these had charge of Eng- land. The mainstay of Rome was the multitude of friars, some of singular piety, but the greater part men of evil lives. Into the cloister, that haven of refuge, rushed men crossed in love, men assailed by deadly private enemies, men sought by outraged Law and Justice, men eager to rise to some high post in the Church. It was computed that a quarter of a million of Italians were in the cloister. In many places half the land, but generally one-third of it, belonged to the Churchmen. Hence Italy, in spite of her natural wealth, was not so strong as she once was. The Franciscans numbered thirty thousand, the Capuchins eight thousand. The Jesuits had already begun to arouse enmity in all places by their eagerness for riches ; other countries were sown with the friars, but Italy was thick strewed with them, having perhaps about one quarter of the whole number of them. They obeyed their Generals, 1 His book is called Europce Speculum. I have used the edition of 1638. Another writer says of Clement : " Ceux de la Religion meme ne le haissoient pas, s'etant toujours comporte* en leur endroit fort gracieusement, jusqu'a leur octroyer des passeports." Philippson, Heinrich IV. und Philipp III., 345. n ITALY 99 residing at Home, like well-trained soldiers ; they had amassed much Church plate and treasure ; they were a strong bulwark against Protestantism. Almost all Italian men or women who made any pretensions to piety were enrolled in some fraternity allied to the Friars. The Pope granted various Indulgences to the Eeligious houses, which also drew crowds of pilgrims to miraculous images ; there was further the gain made by Masses. The Italian nunneries, unlike those of France, had undergone of late years a thorough reformation. The friars had not been corrected in the same way for fear of driving them to Geneva. There was great inequality in the revenues of Italian bishoprics, some having but a thousand crowns a year, others twenty times that sum. The parish priests had at least a hundred crowns a year eked out by Masses, and they, moreover, enjoyed certain farms as glebe land. The fashion in Italy was for the preacher to kneel to the crucifix in the pulpit and weep upon it, but the sermons left much to be desired; some thought St. Paul a hot- headed man, whose writings savoured of heresy; others averred that his epistles had not been published until they had been approved by St. Peter and the rest of the Apostles. No notice was taken in the Italian pulpit of Protestant arguments, but the Lutherans and Calvinists were denounced as blasphemers of God and the Virgin. It was said that England had grown so barbarous of late that her soldiers were cannibals ; that Geneva was a harbour for the knaves and traitors of all countries. 1 Sandys heard in a Bolognese church a preacher put forth a tale about a Polish heretic, who, speaking at table against the Pope, found his bread turn black as ink ; he repented, and the bread became white again. But serious controversy in religion was discouraged. Padua was the one exception to the rule, a place where theriETWere always { 1 Sandys says that certain Italian friars robbed their convents of plate and fled for safety to Geneva, on the strength of these sermons. They were at once sent to the gallows there, for the stern Genevese punish even those crimes that are committed beyond their borders. A Spanish coiner made a similar mistake, which "cost him no less than his headpiece." 100 HOME AND REFORM CHAP. hundreds of Protestants. The Inquisition, " killing all in the bud like a shearing wind," was at work in the land ; it was entrusted to the most active and industrious friars ; it laid its grip even upon men who reproved the bad lives of the clergy ; it made use of witnesses of vile character. Foreigners were tolerated if they gave no scandal, since they brought much gain to Italy. Forty thousand Vaudois also were allowed the exercise of their religion. A great part of Lucca, less happy than the Vaudois as to toleration, had no relish for the Papal yoke. There were still many Greeks in Apulia and Calabria maintaining their own rites. The Jews abounded everywhere except in the South, whence the Spanish Governor had driven them. It was said that there were at least ten thousand of them in Eome alone, where they were allowed to exact much more usurious interest than any Christian might take. Avignon was the only city in France where they were harboured. They, like the courtesans, paid a poll tax to the various Princes of Italy. The Inquisition forced the Jews to make alterations in some of their sacred books, and took from them the Italian version of the New Testament, printed in Hebrew letters. They were much scandalised by the image-worship of the Christians, and by the omission of the Second Commandment. A Jew, if baptized, had to give up his goods to the" Christians, since these goods, gotten by usury, came under the head of the Devil and all his works. The Pope gave a few dispensations from this to certain Jewish physicians who had been converted. Sandys was not so dazzled by the wealth of the land as to be blind to the underlying rottenness. Italy was said to excel Northern States in her rich soil, her keen wits, and her opportunities of traffic with all parts of the world ; but her Princes were most oppressive to. their subjects, taxing everything lands, markets, trades, marriages. Their unlucky victims were racked and flayed, as it were, so as to yield thirteen millions of yearly revenue to their tyrants, while the Pope from his States raised only two millions. 1 1 I suspect that Sandys had Tuscany in particular in his eye when he treated of taxation. Dallington in 1596 wrote a Survey of the Great Duke's ii ITALY 101 Italians longed to be a united nation under the Papal sway, for Pope Clement had remitted many taxes on gaining possession of Ferrara. Romagna supplied both Venice and Florence with stout soldiers and leaders. As to the character of the Italians, Sandys found them to be a most grave, courteous, and frugal people, but on the other hand they were disgraced by filthy speech and beastly actions, that were by no means confined to the laity ; what would not else be borne with, was in Italy held in high honour ; a virtuous man was thought a mean-spirited fool. From this land infamous vices had been of late years im- ported into England vices unknown to former generations of Englishmen. An Italian might deny his body no wicked pleasure all through life, yet might hope to save his soul at the last. 1 Atheism and blasphemy abounded, especially among the soldiery. A gentleman, one of themselves, said that his countrymen had but three faults: in their lusts they were unnatural, their malice was unappeasable, and they deceived the whole world ; to which Sandys would add that they spend more upon others than upon themselves, that they blaspheme oftener than they swear, that they murder more than they revile or slander. At Lent a great change came over the whole nation ; blasphemies State of Tuscany, a small book printed for Blount nine years later. It is hard to see what was not taxed ; in Sienna there was even a poll tax. ' ' There is not that poor asses' burden of dung that goeth out the gates, nor that radish roote that commeth in, that payeth not his Gabell." Peasants lived on chesnuts and water. Monopolies were rampant. The proportion of priests, friars, and nuns in the community was astonishing. Artisans were losing their cunning, except as to works in cloth of gold and silver. In any one University hardly two good Grecians were to be found. But Italy excelled in poetry and painting. "No marvell, when all their time is spent in amours, and all their churches deckt with colours." The Tuscans were always looking back to their lately lost freedom ; of them it might truly be said, "Qui sub Medicis vivit, misere vivit." 1 Evelyn, speaking of Florence in 1645, says that the Duke had a daily tribute from every courtesan in his dominions, and so had the Pope, but not so much in value. The reforms wrought at Rome by Pius V. seem to have been short-lived. Compare all this with the far higher standard of the year 1212, when a German Bishop aroused popular hatred against the Emperor Otho IV. by swearing that the Kaiser had designed to raise money by a tax on brothels. See the Annals of Reinhardsbrunn, quoted by Schirrmacher in his Life of Frederick II. 102 KOME AND REFORM CHAP. ceased, pleasure was laid aside ; there was nothing but preaching and almsgiving ; our English traveller never before understood the right use of Lent, and even wished for short Lents later in the year. Two things struck him forcibly : the reformation in the nunneries and the number of hospitals for foundlings, converted courtesans, cripples, and diseased wretches ; in these charities Italy outdid the whole world ; it was in truth incomparably the richest nation in all the West ; but unhappily the rich were very rich, and the poor were very poor, owing to the fearful taxation. 1 It was a land of sharp contrasts ; on one side of the street a nunnery, on the other a brothel, with public toleration ; to-day the fooleries of the Mask, to-morrow processions of men flogging themselves till the blood came ; here excommunications, there Jubilees and full discharge of sin ; here the Jesuit, learned in every branch of knowledge, there the ignorant Mass priest ; on Friday the Inquisition would come down on a man suspected of eating flesh, on Sunday the greatest market was usually held ; great rigour in enforcing Church rules, great heedlessness as to God's commandments ; the causes of Princes might drag on for years, while the meanest subject might have audience of the Pope. This last was the one corner-stone of religion and unity ; he might be excelled in holiness by any old woman, in knowledge by many a friar, but in power and authority he swayed the world. Many of his subjects thought the name of Papist to be more necessary than that of Catholic ; the former name showed the unity of the faithful with the head of the Church, the most needful thing of all ; the latter name showed only their unity with the body of believers. The power of the Pope seemed to be something almighty; he had an overwhelming influence over the Princes of earth, owing to his power of dispensing with unholy marriages and with sworn treaties, and also owing to his command of hot-headed fanatics ready to sacrifice them- selves in an attempt upon a King's person. He had for the last sixty years enjoyed the support of the Jesuits, 1 We know Addison's lines, a hundred years later, on the wretched state of the Italian peasantry. II ITALY 103 " that super-politic and irrefragable Order," who were envied by many another brotherhood on account of their engrossing the office of confessors to princes and rich men, the sure source of vast power and wealth. They were thought the most perfect orators of the day ; one of them, with yearly change, was sent out to preach in every city of Italy. Everywhere they opened free schools, to which even Protestants sent their children, so good a method of education did the Jesuit employ. But the noblest and most brilliant of their pupils were too often enticed into the Order ; even an only son would be snatched from his father. The one weak point that Sandys could see in the Brotherhood was their useless propagation of false news at Eome, such as the Alexandrian Patriarch's submission, the conversions of the Scotch King and of Beza nay, of the whole Genevese State ; the reconciliation of Queen Elizabeth. These coinages bore the stamp of the Jesuits, the masters of that worthy Mint ; it was thought that their miraculous conversions wrought in the Indies were not much more genuine. They were noted by some of their own friends to be too hardy equivocators, making light of an oath when life or liberty were at stake ; fifty years later a great deal more was to be said on this particular charge. Other Orders do not seem to have won a great name in casuistry ; -at any rate, about 1600 the sons of Loyola, rapidly rising in the world, had made it their boast that the Church was the soul of the world, that the clergy were the soul of the Church, that the Jesuits were the soul of the clergy. They were not popular in all countries. Thus they were not established in France until about twenty years after their foundation, and then they were vigorously opposed by the Sorbonne and the begging friars. The Jesuits were accused of saying little in their sermons about the Virgin and the Saints. This simply shows that they knew the right way to deal with Protestants at the outset. They gave public lessons to all comers at very little cost ; from their schools came forth many poor men, thoroughly well taught in things sacred and profane. The French intellect 104 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. soon swayed round to their side. 1 In Germany, heretics, about 1580, sent their children to the Jesuit schools with a view to their learning the Catechism ; had this been taught in old times there would have been no heresy. " We went to the heretical ministers," said the Protestants, " because any religion is better than none." * We see the reverse of the medal in the charges brought against the Order a few years later by Pnouski, a Pole, then residing at the College of Padua. He declares that they had carried trouble and confusion everywhere ; that they had backed the Pretender to the Russian throne, and had thus inflicted misfortune on the Polish nobles; that they had handed over Portugal to the Spaniards ; that by their constant plots they had forced Queen Elizabeth to become a persecutor; that they had been the parents in France of that frightful monster, the League ; that they had been the ruin of Transylvania, having broken the peace with the Turk ; that they had caused the Polish King to lose Sweden ; that they had been the worst of advisers to the Archduke Ferdinand in Styria, and to the Duke of Bavaria ; that they had pretended that the Persian Shah was ripe for conversion. They had stirred a quarrel with the Dominican Order ; they had brought in a new system of receiving confessions and giving absolutions by letter, setting up a kind of Bank for sins. Fifty years earlier it would have been hard to find a Doctor in France who set the Pope above a Council ; now, by means of the Jesuits, the contrary doctrine was becoming prevalent. They absolved sins for money, and found much virtue in little medals ; there was no crime committed that would not pass for a pious work through Jesuit interpretation and dispen- sation. No wonder that a doctrine that favoured sin made many partisans. 3 We seem to be listening to a forerunner of Pascal. A few years later, one of the holiest men ever bred in France, the founder of the Oratorians, writes thus 1 Mtmoires de Claude Haton, 636. 3 Possevinus, Moscovia, 377. This Jesuit knew France, Germany, and Poland well. His works were printed in 1587. s Pnouski's Letter occupies four pages of De Thou when treating of 1607. I! ITALY 105 of the Jesuits : " It is notorious that they can barely live in Italy with the Theatines, in Spain with the Dominicans, in Flanders with the Capuchins, in England with all the clergy and all the Eeligions. It is hard to blame us if they can barely live with us, since we share this misfortune with all the rest of the Church." 1 Bagshaw, an English secular priest, in his " True rela- tion" of the Wisbeach troubles, 1601, throws some light upon the Jesuits and their methods. Cardinal Allen, it is said, had striven to keep them within sofne reasonable compass. -"But after his death they pronounced him, the greaf~English champion of the faith, to "have been but a simple man, of no great "~w6rtIT. They wasted money in show, money that should" Tiave been spent" in alms. They would admit no fello w- labourers ; they challenged to themselves a spiritual monarchy over all England. They inveigled rich and noble men to enter then 1 Society flhey disposed of the last wills of the sick and intermeddled with marriages. They had mind of nothing but their own gain ; they looked not after the cottages of the poor. They delighted in equivocation, which they defended in their public writings. Men would not believe them on their oaths. '"""But for their "ambition, some toleration ere this would have J^een granted in England. The Catholics feared -them more than they did" the heretics. The Jesuits would spread lies against a good priest, and so drive him to poverty, and haply to the gallows. Their revenge ended only with the death of their enemy. The Pope is besought to lay the axe to the root of the tree, and cut off this pride of the Society. 2 If we consider the lay Princes of Italy, there was one noble exception- to-the-- -eonnnoTr -run ; " I meaii Ferdinand, the Cardinal Duke of Tuscany. His predecessors had been 1 Tabaraud, Histoire du Cardinal de Berulle, i. 221. The Cardinal thus describes the policy of Rome, which he knew well : " Le propre de cette cour est de s'etendre fort en paroles, et de ne pas traiter les affaires som- mairement, celles surtout qui regardent les here'tiques, a 1'egard desquels ils sont toujours dans la defiance, et trop souvent excessifs dans leurs precau- tions." Ibid. i. 339. 2 Law, Jesuits and Seculars, 101-118. 106 KOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. enlightened patrons of commerce, of which the chosen seat was at Lyons through most of the Sixteenth century. Charles V. had in vain sought to transfer the monopoly of that city to Augsburg. Lyons was thronged by Tuscan merchants before the ruin wrought by the French civil wars ; while not only the cloth manufacture, but also the arts, nourished at home ; the Grand Dukes were great collectors of statues, medals, and manuscripts, though the Inquisition, with its Index, proved a fearful enemy to improvement. The proverb ran in Italy that the great foes of the peace of mankind were the taxes in Tuscany and the Inquisition at Eome. Still, in spite of all, Pisa began to thrive once more, and the new harbour of Leghorn was thrown open to trade. In 1590 English and Dutch ships brought much-needed supplies of corn to this port, whence Eome herself was fed. Duke Ferdinand had secret relations with Queen Elizabeth and with Maurice of Orange. 1 Florence and Venice in some degree showed to Italy the true path a path loathed by Pope and Spaniard. Clement in 1593 issued a Bull, whereby he forbade Italians to go into heretical lands without a license from the local Inquisition. 2 Nothing can more clearly show the gap that yawned between the Church and the true sources of prosperity. Many of the Italian towns could boast of some life, as we see by the report of the famous Duke of Eohan, who travelled through the land in 1600. He shows us Venice, with her Arsenal containing a hundred galleys ready for war, and with her two thousand artisans employed by the State ; any one who had seen Venice had seen one of the cabinets of the world's marvels. Her subject Padua was frequented by numerous students from all nations, for great was the freedom there to be enjoyed. Milan was remarkable, like Naples, for the fact that the nobles would have nothing to do with trade ; nothing elsewhere could equal the Milanese craftsmen in the matter of armour. The Spanish rulers of the city were suspicious of. Frenchmen ; 1 Galluzzi, Toscaiia. 2 Bianchi Giovine, Vita di Paolo Sarpi, i. 13. ii ITALY 107 Kohan had to say that he was a Lorrainer before he was allowed to go over the Citadel, the finest fortress ever seen. The beauty of Genoa lay in her Palaces ; their number could hardly be believed ; fine buildings were sown over the country for two or three miles round. Our traveller was enraptured with Florence, where he saw the new-built gallery and the renowned Tribune, abounding in treasures of art ; there was also a fine Armoury. The Grand Duke Ferdinand had been employed for the last ten years in building Leghorn, which was now well fortified ; the new harbour was one of the wonders of Tuscany. 1 Mun, the shrewdest of English merchants, calls the Grand Duke "a noble and industrious Prince," who was wont to enlarge his trade by lending his merchants great sums for very small profit. Mun himself received forty thousand crowns of him, to be spent on the Turkish trade. There was hardly a gentleman in Tuscany that did not embark in business ; hence Leghorn had become rich and strong ; ready money and foreign ships abounded. 2 Italy was full of attractions to strangers, but few of them could see far below the surface. Hard indeed and cruel was the fate of the land in these dismal times ; she could breed great Captains, such as Farnese and Spinola, but their victories were most seldom of any use to their " Father land, though of great consequence to Hapsburg tyrants. It was the same with her other children, the great statesmen ; Mazarin might enlarge the boundaries of France, Alberoni might galvanise decaying Spain into new life, but no good to Italy came from their efforts. Her stout-hearted soldiers in this age rivalled even the Spanish bands, especially on the great day of Nordlingen ; but instead of guarding Italy against the ever-present Turk, her children were sent to fling away their lives in Holland and Germany. As to great thinkers, the Church was not very merciful in her dealings with Sarpi and Galileo ; but we 1 Memoires du Due de Rohun, 220-282. 2 Mun, England's Treasure by Foreign Trade, 24. In p. 72 we hear that Genoa manufactures the wools of Spain and the raw silks of Sicily, working them into velvets and satins. 108 EOME AND KEFOBM CHAP. must never forget that the life of the Church was the death of Italy. It must be acknowledged that shortly before 1600 the Opera was invented by certain Italians. On the other hand, Tasso was to have no successor for centuries, and the chief trophies of the great Italian art were soon to be won by Velazquez and Murillo. This was the hour of the Jesuits and casuists, and the Ultramontane gospel was fully preached. The effect upon Italian morality was disastrous. The Seventeenth century, now opening, was to behold the institution of cicisbei, for which word we have happily no English equivalent. Italians borrowed silly Spanish ideas from their conquerors and thought trade dis- honourable. Every family that aspired to be noble must possess landed estates. Younger sons must live in idleness, and daughters must be locked up in convents. No woman could appear in public without her lover. Any husband who sought to be his wife's friend and companion was laughed at. A parade of immorality was now made for the first time a state of things unknown in the despised Middle Ages. Monopolies ruined commerce throughout Italy wher- ever the State was enslaved. Men took pride in titles and in vain outward show. A man's landed estate could not be mortgaged or sold ; it must he handed on to his children, if we may so call his wife's offspring. Flattery and baseness alone led to honours ; one thing alone was left to the average Italian sensual pleasures, to be atoned for by a deathbed absolution. Wide indeed was the gulf that separated these slaves of Eome from the English who sat in judgment on Strafford, or from the Dutch who wrested the sceptre of the East from all previous rivals. 1 But the Italian intellect at this time was not wholly swayed by the Jesuits ; even the South of Italy, the most backward part of the land, could boast of eminent thinkers. Among these was Telesio of Cosenza, who, by his attacks on Aristotle, seemed to forestall Bacon, and who found in Pius IV. a protector from the angry monks. Not so happy was Bruno of Nola, also an assailant of Aristotle ; his fate has already been related. An equally remarkable son of the 1 See Sismondi, Rtpubliques Italiennes, in the beginning of chapter cxxiv. II ITALY 109 South was Campanella, a Dominican disciple of Telesio, a man who thirsted after knowledge, and became an enthusiast for freedom, both mental and political. He strove to raise a religious and civil revolution in Calabria by means of his own Dominican brethren and other friars. No fewer than five hundred of these were engaged to preach revolt against the Spanish yoke through Southern Italy. There he appeared as a new Savonarola, declaring himself appointed by Heaven to overthrow the Spanish tyranny in the coming year, 1600. His cause, which soon spread beyond Calabria, was embraced both by bandits, by Barons, and by at least four Bishops. Priests and monks who should oppose the great plot were to be put to death, and, in particular, all the Jesuits ; the aid of the Turks was secured. But the secret had been spread too widely. Two accomplices turned informers, and in the summer of 1599 Campanella and many of his priestly associates were arrested by the Spanish authorities. Some of the plotters died in fearful tortures after the Church and State had wrangled over the question which of the two had the right to condemn the culprits. The head of the plot, when tortured, had the art to persuade his tormentors that he was a lunatic. Campanella, after twenty-six years, broke his prison ; he had unluckily preached toleration in his writings, so passed some years more of his life in the -Roman Inquisition. He died long afterwards, a pensioner of France. 1 The whole business of this Calabrese plot carries the mind back to the Sicilian Vespers. Dreadful was the oppression in Southern Italy under the Spanish yoke. Never was the feudal system more hateful than here, where the nobles seized at will upon the wives and goods of the peasants and perpetrated murder under the very eye of the Viceroy. The clergy abounded everywhere, and robbed the unlucky laity at birth, in life, and in death. The convents were free from all taxes ; excommunications were employed, not to defend the vassal, but to rob him ; corpses were left unburied, for some whim 1 For the plot see Giannone, Istoria Civile, xxxv. See many of the depositions, and also a statement by Campanella himself, in the Archivio Storico Italiano, ix. 405, 621. 110 ROME AND EEFOEM CHAP. of the priest. Fishermen were cursed who did not pay a tax for leave to fish on holy days. A man might not dispose of the stream that rose on his own property. The best men lurked in the cloister, or, like Bruno and Vanini, left their unhappy country. 1 As to Sicily, she furnished her Spanish masters with abundance of grain, and was a strong bulwark against the Turk. The villages were few, since the people chose to with- draw into cities, partly to escape the corsairs, and partly to fly from the bloody feuds among themselves that never ceased. The Spanish yoke was hated here as elsewhere, but there seemed to be no chance of a deliverer. 2 Lombardy was rich and powerful, being able to furnish thirty thousand good soldiers ; her worst grievance was the quartering of foreign troops, who lived on her, robbing and eating up the land. 3 The Spanish King's great policy was to divide the Italian States from each other, to keep them weak, and to cut them off from all foreign aid. He gave large pensions to the different Princes, and drew the flower of their subjects into his armies. 4 In 1605 Clement VIII. was succeeded, first, by a Pope who lived not four weeks, and later by Cardinal Borghese, otherwise Paul V. Like his father, the new Pope had followed the law, but had made himself in no way remark- able ; on his elevation an instant change took place in his demeanour. His first act was to put to death a hapless scribbler for an unpublished libel on Pope Clement, and to confiscate the man's trifling possessions. Paul V., who had Baronius and Bellarmine at his elbow, held the most exalted notions as to the power of the Papacy. He is the last Pope who has thrown his whole heart into the endeavour to put the nations under his feet, and to bring back the days of the old Gregorys and Innocents the tamers of the German Csesars. He soon began a spiritual war with 1 See the long Latin law papers printed in Palumbo's Vita di Vanini, 70-79. a Barozzi, Belazioni Venete, i. 100. 3 Ibid. 105. 4 Somers, Tracts, iii. 313. This is the remark of Cornwallis, the English Ambassador to Spain. II ITALY 111 most of his Italian neighbours, and at first met with some success at Naples, Genoa, and Turin ; but Venice proved a tougher foe. The boundaries of Ferrara, the collection of the tithes of the Venetian clergy, were made matters of dispute. The renowned printing presses of Venice had been nearly ruined by the interference of Eoman officials and Inquisitors. At last the crisis came ; the State had handed over to the civil tribunals two priests guilty of infamous crimes. These men the Pope demanded back ; the Jesuits threw all their influence into his scale. Bellarmine declared that the priesthood could acknowledge no temporal superior ; that the priest, exempt from all burthens on person or property, should judge the Emperor, not the Emperor the priest ; the sheep must not pretend to judge the shepherd. Eome further demanded the repeal of certain old laws that hampered the clergy. Venice would not yield one hair's-breadth. She found her champion in Paolo Sarpi, a Servite friar, already well known for his studies (he was a friend of Galileo) in mathematics and physics, and re- nowned for quickness of wit such as has seldom been given to mortal man ; his amazed enemies declared that he had a familiar spirit. Though a favourite of Sixtus V. and a friend of Bellarmine's, the friar had already become embroiled with the Eoman authorities ; he was often in ~ company with Protestants, and there were many envious friars always ready to denounce the most harmless action. 1 He was now chosen by the Venetian Senate to act as a Consultor of State, and this office he held for seventeen years. Though no Protestant, he hated the secular influence of the Papacy, and this feeling comes out strongly in his History of the Council of Trent, published many years later. He was a thorough patriot, and could well enter into the sentiment, " We were born Venetians before we were baptized Christians." He was the friend of many French- men who had made a figure in the great Council, and he 1 Fra Fulgentio (Life of Sarpi, which I follow here) tells us that one man denounced his priest to the Inquisitor for Lutheranism, because in the pulpit he had laid the main stress on the last syllable of the proper name Habacuc. 112 HOME AND KEFORM CHAP. well knew how their former King, after 1300, had dealt with the haughtiest claims of the Papacy. Christ had not himself wielded any temporal power ; he could therefore never have handed this down to the Popes. Rome, at least in things temporal, could never appeal to any Divine right. The great struggle began in April 1606, when Paul V. excommunicated the Doge, Senate, and Consultors of Venice, laying an interdict on all her churches and convents. The clergy obeyed the State rather than the Pope, and public worship went on as usual ; the only ex- ceptions to the rule were the Jesuits, Theatines, and Capuchins, the Orders that dated from the last Century ; their churches were at once filled by other priests. War seemed to be at hand. Cardinal Baronius, to whose Annals history owes so much, had already roused the Pope to further action by quoting the text, " Rise, Peter ; slay and eat." The champions of Venice were cited before the Roman Inquisition ; these wise men refused to appear. The Papal troops were gathering from every quarter, and the son of the great warrior Farnese was named General. In vain did Venice set forth the theological opinions of Gerson, the renowned Gallican ; in vain did she prove that her clergy enjoyed already a yearly revenue of more than a million ducats, and that if some stop were not put to the absorbing appetite of the Church, the laity would soon be left beggars. Bellarmine urged that Venice had accepted the Council of Trent in 1567, yet she still allowed anonymous authors to print books on religion, though such license was expressly forbidden by the Council. This was Rome's strongest argument ; the Council had con- firmed all the old rules and decrees of the Popes. 1 War between Rome and Venice was near, and war was the aim of the Spanish Ultramontanes on the one hand, of the French Huguenots on the other. 2 But wiser heads, both 1 De Thou for the year 1607 should be carefully consulted. I have taken much from him. 2 Priuli tells us that he had offers from many French nobles, non solo cattolici ma reliyiosi (Huguenots) ancora, to fight for Venice. Barozzi, fielazioni Venete, serie 2, Francia, i. 280. The whole State Paper is well worth reading. ii ITALY 113 at Madrid and Paris, decided for peace. Early in 1607 the Venetians gave the Pope a loophole of escape, and he then suspended his censures. But Venice stood firm as a rock against any proposal for the recall of the Jesuits ; the French King himself could not bring his good allies to a milder policy, and the Society was exiled from Venice for fifty years. Spain, where the Dominicans were strong, would not interfere on behalf of the rival Order, now almost heretical in the eyes of Jacobins. The two priests, the cause of the whole dispute, were handed over to the French Ambassador, who passed them on to the Pope. The Venetians wanted no absolution, having, as they said, done no wrong ; and so the absolution was pronounced, as it were, privately. Their victory, achieved so long before 1630, seems something born out of time. Paul V. hence- forward showed himself most forbearing to the stout-hearted Commonwealth. But there was one Venetian whom Paul could not forgive. Brother Paolo Sarpi, after peace had been made, was visited by the well-known Scioppius, and was informed that the Pope, like a great Prince, had long hands. Soon afterwards the friar was assailed by five assassins, and received three severe wounds, happily not mortal. The knaves fled at once to the house of the Pope's Nuncio; -they were thence rowed to Ferrara, and so made a triumphal progress to Eome. The Venetian people were with some trouble prevented from pulling down the Nuncio's house. The Senate offered large rewards to any man who would seize or slay the members of the ruffian gang ; their chief, Poma, was especially sought for. He received a bill of exchange for a thousand ducats, paid by the Pope's agent at Ancona ; he and his comrades were allowed to go about armed to the teeth in defiance of law. They were after- wards sheltered at Eome in a Cardinal's house. At last Pope Paul began to feel some shame, so loud was the outcry all over Europe. He tried to shuffle off the murderers to Naples, but Poma slunk back to Eome, uttered rash threats, and was therefore thrown into prison, where he died. " I have been tricked ; no account is made of me," cried the VOL. I I 114 ROME AND EEFOEM CHAP. wretch in 1608, who learned by bitter experience that the way of transgressors is hard. 1 Sarpi himself, " the terrible friar," survived for many years, escaping more than one attempt at murder to become the oracle of Venice, to write the History of the Council of Trent, and to correspond with many good and wise men, differing in their creeds, throughout Christendom. Long before Pascal this friar pointed out the true character of the Jesuits and their peculiar methods. The shameful complicity of the high Eoman authorities in this frustrated murder is interesting as throwing some light on the constant attempts made on Queen Elizabeth's life attempts which have happily done so much to fix the great gulf between England and Eome. Venice was now giving proof that a people may resist Papal tyranny and yet at the same time be a prey to the dark- est superstition. The English envoy at Venice writes home that the Capuchins had proclaimed the new Saint Borromeo as the one advocate in Heaven against sudden death a frequent calamity at Venice. Hence altars were erected to him in most of the churches, and nearly all men enrolled themselves in his Confraternity. His shrines blazed with hundreds of candles, while old Saints, like St. Ambrose, could hardly boast one light. The picture of St. Charles, with a prayer under it, was bought up with the greatest eagerness. The wiser of the Venetians began to say that people dealt with Saints as with their mistresses ; when they are tired of the old ones they look out for new ones. 2 Still there was at Venice a minority that aspired to better things. Father Paul reckoned at twelve thousand the number of his fellow-citizens who were ready to leave the Church of Eome. Some of the nobles, a Contarini among them, had weighed the claims of the Papacy, and had found them wanting. Wotton, the English envoy, now gained leave to hold his own worship in his house, 1 See Bianchi Giovine, Vila di Paolo Sarpi, ii. 17-42. 3 "Winwood's Memorials, iii. 329. In Roe's correspondence it is said that the Papacy wished Father Paul's bones to be cast out of his grave after death. I! ITALY 115 and urged on the reforming movement. Diodati, one of the ablest of the Genevese ministers, and the father of Milton's friend, travelled to Venice in 1608. He found a great number of Bibles for sale in the city, and learnt that the Inquisition was held in check. Venice was losing her old trade ; but at this very time the Pope was draining the riches of Italy, now that he had lost so many sources of wealth beyond the Alps. Diodati did his best to induce the Venetian Senate to form a strict alliance with the Pro- testant States. Every one saw that a great war was at hand. But the murder of Henry IV., the death of the liberal Doge Donato, and the recall of Wotton, put an end to all projects of reformation. Diodati at length saw that there was a vast difference between Luther and Father Paul Sarpi. 1 Venice still made her old enemies feel how far her arm could reach. Her ambassador at Constantinople was suspected of spreading reports to the prejudice of the Jesuits, branding them as the spies of Spain, as professing king - slaying doctrines which might perhaps harm the Sultan, as baptizing Mussulmans. The six Jesuit mission- aries defended themselves, but in vain ; the French Ambas- sador rescued them from impalement by handsome bribes. They were driven out, and in future no Jesuits were to be admitted at Constantinople. 2 Pope Paul, untaught by the result of his struggle with Venice, showed himself a most unbending Ultramontane. It seems never to have struck him that high Papal pre- tensions, well adapted to the age of the Crusaders, must seem simply laughable in the days of Bacon and Galileo. In the interest of the Vatican, Bellarmine attacked the treatise of James I. and Barclay, and asserted the Pope's right to depose Kings, thereby stirring up much ill blood not in Protestant lands alone. Bather later, Suarez was commissioned by the Pope to support the same Ultramon- tane theories, and his book was handed over to the hang- man both in London and Paris. Paul V. stood in much 1 See Vie de Diodati, par De Bud^, 40-85. 2 Tabaraud, Histoire du Cardinal de Bcrulle, i. 260. 116 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. the same situation as Boniface VIII. three hundred years earlier. Each strained the Papal prerogatives a little too far for the age, and each found himself exposed to the thrusts of a stiff-necked generation of men, who had learned from the study of Law how to defend themselves. The renowned text in Jeremiah as to setting up and pluck- ing down was henceforth less quoted. The Pope's right to depose Kings and to lord it over commonwealths, after having been revived for about fourscore years, was soon to be tacitly laid aside. But even in this degenerate age Paul V. could still make his influence felt through the Roman Inquisition. An eloquent French priest, De Bois, after King Henry's murder, had preached at Paris both against the Jesuits and against the Pope's Deposing power. He was after- wards induced to make a private recantation, but was later allured by the Nuncio to Eome, on some commission from the Queen Regent, whose almoner he was. When there he was soon thrown into the Inquisition. Great was the wrath of the French clergy ; it was said that the Law of Nations had been broken, and that the victim's safe con- duct had been set at naught. But the Pope declared that De Bois should never be delivered upon any conditions, or be allowed to see his friends. 1 The influence of the Jesuits, thus fostered at head- quarters, was still on the increase throughout Europe. How could it be otherwise when we reflect that no educa- tion, such as that imparted by the Jesuits, could be else- where obtained ? Even the sternest Protestant parents were not proof against this seductive fact. Thus we hear that young G-assion, the future Marshal, though he had sucked in Calvinism with his mother's milk, was sent to the Jesuit's College at Pau, where his teachers in vain strove to pervert him. The only alternative in the way of schooling seems to have been a Barnabite College. Some years later, young Petty entered himself at the Jesuits' College at Caen on condition that they should only pray for his conversion, but do nothing more. Here he learnt 1 Winwood's Memorials, iii. 304, 308, 311, 328. ii ITALY 117 Latin and Greek, and as much mathematics as any lad of his age ever acquired.* But the Jesuit would bear no brother near his throne. We hear that he showed no grudge to the Oratorians so long as they confined themselves to catechising in the villages ; but when at the request of bishops and magistrates they began to undertake the direction of seminaries and colleges in the great cities, then the Jesuit began to wage war upon his hated rivals. Even the meekest of men felt his wrath kindled at some of the onslaughts of the great Society." In truth there was something wanting. The Jesuits might teach grammar and rhetoric to lads, but they had little influence on the loftiest intellects of Europe, the men who were everywhere bestirring themselves in the search after truth. An Order which clung to the False Decretals was little fitted to lead the mind of Europe after 1600. Old legends were being demolished, but the Jesuits could not give them up. These sages had no more doubt that St. Peter was Bishop of Eome in the year 45 than that Paul III. was Bishop of Eome in the year 1545. The kingdom of true learning, with its scorn for all shams, had long before passed from Italy to France, and was to pass on to Holland after the deaths of Scaliger and Casaubon. Science, it would seem, prefers freedom to Despotism. The last years of Paul's Pontificate were not eventful ; in common with the Venetians, he had to suffer from the piracies of the Uscocks in the Adriatic in 1613 and the two following years. These robbers were backed by the Archduke Ferdinand, and Paul exerted himself to bring about a peace. A more likely cause of war was found in Charles Emmanuel, who ruled Savoy for fifty years; this most shifty politician was eager to make Venice his ally in 1614, and then to attack the Spanish power, of which he had been formerly a client. We are enabled to hear the debates in the great Council before the Doge, as they are recorded by Nani for many eventful years ; we see the 1 Life of Sir William Petty, 3, 5. 2 Tabaraud, Histoire du Cardinal de Berulle, i. 211. For particulars of the warfare see the whole of the chapter referred to. 118 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. Republic making her levies of Frenchmen, Dutchmen, and Albanians, and gathering strength from Bern, Zurich, and the Orisons, thanks to a system of pensions. The Spaniard, on the other hand, depended on the Forest Cantons and upon Genoa, where most of his banking was done. Pope Paul at first remonstrated against Venice employing Dutch heretics to keep the peace in Italy, but was readily appeased. 1 In 1617 both Savoy and Venice, the two champions of Italy at this time, were relieved from the wars that had plagued them. But a storm from the South was at hand. The Duke of Ossuna, the Spanish Viceroy of Naples, had always borne a bitter enmity to Venice. In 1618 he contrived a deep- laid plot for her ruin. Aided by the Viceroy at Milan, he levied forces, naval and military, at vast expense. But one morning several foreigners were found hung upon gibbets in the Piazza of St. Mark ; others were drowned ; others, serving in the fleet, were stabbed. It is said that two hundred and sixty officers and soldiers died for their share in the plot. The names of Pierre and Jaffier, two of the conspirators made away with, live for ever in Otway's masterpiece. The Council of Ten long kept a mysterious silence, and delayed public thanksgivings for the preserva- tion of Venice until five months had passed. The nature and reality of the plot is one of the most debated points in history. James Howell, who visited Italy about this time, tells us much about her various cities. He admired the Arsenal at Venice, where a complete galley could be built in half a day ; St. Mark had as many ships as there were days in the year. There were twenty furnaces at work in Murano, day and night, making the famous glass. The products of these were likened to the ladies of the country fair, but brittle. Howell cannot say enough of the Maiden City, the rampart against that huge Eastern tyrant, to whom she 1 Bethel, who wrote in 1670 the Interest of the States of Europe, says in p. 218 that the Venetians allowed Holland 5000 a month during her war with Spain. In the same page he remarks that Italy was depopulated, except Venice, Genoa, Lucca, and the city of Naples. ii ITALY 119 gave every year what she called a present in gold. She kept on foot 25,000 infantry and 600 men-at-arms; their general was always a foreigner, under the eye of two of her Proveditors. Howell found that the Pope could bring 50,000 men into the field ; his subsidies and Church rights amounted to a vast sum ; it was a common saying that as long as he could finger a pen he could want no pence. It was better to be his nephew than to be favourite to any Prince in Christendom. The statues and pictures in Eome exceeded the number of living people. Naples was a luxurious city, fuller of true-bred Cavaliers than any place ever seen by Howell. There were 20,000 courtesans regis- tered in the public office. The Spanish garrisons ate up all the immense revenues. English factors lived there far better than their principals in London. 1 At Florence, full of rarities, the Grand Duke kept up an army of 20,000 ; wealth and artisans nourished, though he levied taxes on every house built, every marriage, and every lawsuit. Genoa could boast the noblest buildings, yet her citizens, a wily race, walked in the plainest garb. Through this town Spain conveyed her treasure to Flanders ; no English were to be found in it. Lucca, a very small State, was overshadowed by the Grand Duke, and seemed like a partridge under a falcon's wing. The Italian abounded in compliments ; had he been at the building of Babel, Nimrod would have made him a plasterer. He had great virtues, and as many vices. 2 He was of a speculative turn, and a man was accounted a fool who was not melancholy once a day. Among the chief sights of Italy were the Arsenal and Treasury of Venice, the Mount of Piety in Naples, the Dome and Castle of Milan, the proud palaces about Genoa, two hundred of which were within two miles of the town. Italy abounded in castles and fortresses, " the whole country being frontier almost all over." 3 1 The Italian proverb ran Napolita.no, Largo di bocca, stretto di memo. 2 Howell's Letters, 41-66. 3 Howell's Foreign Travel, 105, 109, 200. 120 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. In this same eventful year, 1618, the Bohemians gave the signal for the Thirty Years' War. The Duke of Savoy shared in it by sending the renowned Mansfeld, then in the Ducal service, to the help of the rebels ; but Venice refused to contribute even secret aid. She was soon to have on her hands a slight counterpart to the fearful havoc raging in the North, and this contest of her own was to drag on for many years. She made the best of preparations against an evil day by entering into a fast league with Holland, her natural ally against a common tyrant. Her old enemy, Ossuna, was in 1620 dismissed from his post, soon to be thrown into a Spanish prison. 1 Howell reports many of his extravagant actions at Naples. 2 Paul V. passed away in 1621, leaving his Church at the outset of a wonderful triumph, which was to last for some years. He was followed by Ludovisi of Bologna, known as Gregory XV., a man in bad health and bent with age. This Pope it was who first established the Propaganda on a sure footing, and who furnished it with funds ; the faith was at this time making vast strides in Asia and America. He further canonised Loyola and Xavier, and did his utmost to promote the spiritual warfare which the Jesuits were now waging to the North of the Alps. Many subsidies did he pay to the victorious Emperor, the great patron of the sons of Loyola. A little spark could always kindle a great fire in Italy. The Grisons, largely Protestant, held a territory to the South of the Alps, known as the Valteline, which was for the most part steadfastly Catholic. This dependency was treated as colonies in that age were too often treated by the mother-country or the ruling State, and revenge was plotted. In 1620 a band of outlaws and exiles poured into the Valteline and massacred, all the Protestants that did not fly. The Grisons were defeated in every attempt to regain their sovereignty ; the Austrians from the Tyrol, 1 I have taken the history of Savoy and Venice from Nani, Istoria Veneta, which goes from 1613 to 1644. The writer had access to the best sources of information, and was himself a statesman and ambassador. 2 When the Host was elevated, he held up a piece of gold to show what was his God. Howell's Letters, 164. II ITALY 121 the Spaniards from Lombardy, occupied the whole country, and made it a scene of blood and fire. A great interest was at stake ; the Valteline was the key of communication between the Hapsburgs who ruled in Milan and the other Hapsburgs of Vienna, now linked together more closely than ever. But France, even under the wretched govern- ment that misguided her in the ugly interval between the days of Henry IV. and the days of Kichelieu, could not be so blind as to bear with this state of things. She made a league with Savoy and Venice in 1622, aiming at the restoration of the Orisons' independence. Pope Gregory undertook the part of mediator between these great Powers, levied a few troops, and sent them to hold the disputed towns, which were now given up by Spain and Austria. In the end, after many years of skirmishing, the Valteline was annexed to the three old Leagues of the Grisons as a fourth member with equal rights; the Papal religion was thus upheld, and Spain was still allowed to march her much- needed soldiers into Germany through Bormio. Thus Eome was in all things a gainer by the treaty. In 1623 Maffeo Barberino, a Florentine, was chosen Pope, and enjoyed his high office for no fewer than twenty- one years ; a man self-willed, loving to contradict, fond of enforcing his opinions on others, avowing that he knew -more than all the Cardinals put together ; a composer of Latin Sapphics ; much taken up with warlike affairs, using the rooms under the Vatican Library as an arsenal ; he it was who, a second Aurelian, built the new walls that girdle Eome on the West walls well tested long afterwards in the siege of 1849. "The word of a living Pope," he once said, " is worth more than the maxims of a hundred dead Popes." He is well known to us by the Barberini palace, built for his nephews, and stored with the choicest pictures. As a nepotist of the new school he ranks next to Paul V., who had bestowed on his Borghese kin even more than fell to the share of the Barberini. The new Pope leaned to France rather than to Spain. Still in 1624 he was much disgusted at finding the French, Venetians, and Savoyards seizing upon the posts in the 122 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. Grisons that were held, according to treaty, by his own troops. Both France and Spain attempted to secure his alliance, each tendering a great heiress as a bribe to the Papal nephews. A far greater quarry was now in view. Eichelieu had hardly grasped the French helm before he planned a grand combination against the house of Hapsburg, to take effect in 1625. This scheme came to nothing, owing to the untimely rising of the Huguenots against their King, whereby was struck a cruel blow against the true interests of Protestantism. In 1626 France and Spain made peace, and the Eeformed lost ground everywhere ; so much so that in 1627 Pope Urban was hoping to ally the two great powers for a new attack upon England. Sud- denly all was changed. Late in that year the Duke of Mantua died childless. His next heir-male was Gonzaga, the Duke of Nevers, a French subject. Italian statesmen could not believe that this new heir would be allowed his rights by the Hapsburg Princes. Pope Urban, in particular, showed himself most mindful of his interests as an Italian King, and seemed most forgetful of his position as Head of the Church, for he now turned against her truest champions, the two cousins that were the Lords of Madrid and Vienna and the hammers of heresy. He threw down the gauntlet to them at once by granting a dispensation for the secret marriage of the French claimant's son with a Gonzaga lady who was heiress in her own right of Montferrat. In 1628 Urban was most eager for French help; to make sure of Mantua was more important than to take Eochelle. The moment that the great Huguenot stronghold fell, Eichelieu once more turned all his thoughts to Italy ; the French crossed the Alps early in 1629 ; the Spaniards had to break up from Casale, the capital of Montferrat. The Duke of Savoy, " crafty above any in selling himself at a dear rate in time of need" (Nani's phrase), was now the ally of Spain. But the Emperor Ferdinand II., at the height of his power, poured into Italy through the Grisons a huge army that had long been wont to live at free quarters on hapless lands to the North of the Alps. He placed the French ii ITALY 123 claimant under the ban of the Empire for taking possession of its Italian fiefs without waiting for investiture. 1 In 1630 Mantua was taken and barbarously sacked, while Spain and Savoy fastened upon Montferrat. " The Italians," it was said, " must be taught that there is still an Emperor." Wallenstein declared that it was a hundred years since Borne was last plundered, and it must be now much richer than it was then. But Eome escaped the fate of Mantua. A French army once more appeared in Italy, and the whole business was ended by the bestowal of the dis- puted investiture of Mantua and Montferrat upon the French claimant, much to Pope Urban's joy. 2 Italy did not suffer alone from wars, as in the hideous sack of Mantua by the Germans, recorded by Nani ; the plague was let loose upon her at this time, as later described in Manzoni's glowing prose. Sixty thousand perished in Venice, and half a million more in the territories of the Republic, which had besides lost fifteen thousand soldiers in striving to succour Mantua. In this business the Papacy did not come off altogether with honour. Urban was interested, in common with all other good Italians, in seeing Mantua relieved ; the German besiegers had almost been starved out ; yet at the critical moment corn was brought them out of the Pope's lands, a transaction whereby the Barberini nephews made great profit. Venice cried out that Italy's freedom and safety were bartered for the price of that corn, and she brought the matter before the Pope. 3 This is one of the worst instances of nepotism, that curse of Central Italy. The spring of this same year, 1630, is the time when the great Eeaction, furthered for many years by the Jesuits, reached its highest point in Europe. The view that now 1 Cantu, Sulla Storia Lombarda, 101- 109, gives letters from an eye- witness on the ravages perpetrated by the German host on a friendly country. Manzoni, in his masterpiece, has made'good use of these materials. 2 He cried out, on hearing of the great Protestant victory at Breitenfeld in 1631, " Salva Roma, salva est ecclesia!" This, taken from the Swedish Intelligencer, p. 33, towards the end of the book, shows the common opinion as to the Pope's politics. 3 See Nani for these transactions between 1629 and 1631. 124 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. met the eye of Urban was widely different from the scenes that had opened before Gregory XIII. fifty years earlier. Heresy had even in those early days been driven out of Spain, Portugal, and Italy, if we except the Waldensian valleys. Croatia was now making a name for herself in the great war that had long been raging in Bohemia and Germany a war to which Ireland was also furnishing soldiers. The Middle States of Europe, so inclined to Protestantism in 1577, had for the most part gone back to Rome. France, far outweighing in importance all the States aforesaid, had just tamed her Huguenots, who owed their bare existence henceforth only to the wisdom or mercy of the Court at Paris ; the doughty resistance of Rochelle was never again to be repeated. Bohemia, the land of the old Hussites, had been trodden for years under the hoofs of the Emperor's horsemen ; her boldest sons were exiles, never to be restored to their own. Hungary, the most stubborn of all the Middle States, partly by persuasion, partly by force, was slowly yielding to the Papacy ; the Catholic and Austrian party had at last the majority in the Diet, and Bethlen Gabor, the one great Eastern heretic, was now in his grave. The Austrian provinces, composing the South-East of Germany, had been converted by sheer brute force, and their fitful risings had been already stamped out. Poland, where Loyola's brood swayed with a thoroughness elsewhere unknown, had been almost wholly recovered, if we except a few thousands of the nobles and a few German-speaking towns ; not only her Protestant, but her Greek subjects, knew what was the Jesuit reading of the text, " Compel them to come in." The rulers of Cracow and Vienna, trained in the new school, were indeed widely different men from Maximilian II. and Sigismund Augustus, monarchs who had leant towards Protestantism. The Southern part of the United Provinces had long bent to the Spanish yoke. Great had been the achievements of Guise and Alva, Farnese and Spinola, Tilly and Wallen- stein, the leaders of the mighty Reaction. As to Northern Europe, which had long seemed secure against Rome, Germany had been for years scourged with wars and ir ITALY 125 famines to which there have been few parallels in any age of the world ; her luckless factions of Lutheran and Calvinist had made the Jesuit's path fairly smooth. Millions of her folk outside of the Tyrol and Bavaria had been brought back to the old paths by the strong hand. The famous Heidelberg library had been sent to Eome, the most grateful of trophies, only one year before this time. Ferdinand II., the conqueror of Mantua, happier than Charles V., had issued the famous Edict of Eestitution, to transfer monastic property in Germany from the Protes- tants to the Catholics ; he was at the head of a mighty host of 100,000 men; yet a little longer, and Luther's bones might safely be torn from the grave and be thrown on the dunghill. Denmark had been beaten to her knees. England, fallen from her high estate, was now much as she had been when she heard the news of the loss of Calais : her foreign policy had been lately shaped so as to suit Buckingham's whims and antics, and her home policy seemed likely to lead to civil war at no distant date. One thing alone had been well done, for she had planted strong Protestant garrisons in America and Ireland. To two countries, and only two, could a Northern man living in these awful times look for comfort. Holland was still holding out steadfastly against Spain, and had a fair chance of escaping the dismal lot of Antwerp and Brussels. Sweden, lately become the steel head of the Protestant spear, had already wrested from Poland certain Lutheran provinces on the Baltic, and was soon to astonish the world by her unlooked-for prowess in Germany. That hapless land was indeed sighing for a deliverer from home tyranny. In former times she had looked to France and England for help, or had benefited by the Turk threatening Vienna. But in 1630 France, though at last mistress of herself, seemed unwilling to look further to the North than the Alps. England, bereft of her Parliament, her true source of strength, was helplessly floundering in the mire, while the Turk had a war with Persia on his hands. Hence the Hapsburgs, Spanish and Austrian, could trample German Protestantism under their feet. Great, forsooth, had been 126 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. the changes wrought throughout Central Europe since 157*7, and the main honour of the aforesaid changes was due to those wariest of wirepullers, the Jesuits, the teachers of Emperors, Kings, counsellors, and soldiers. Pope Urban's ghostly empire, through the black-robed brethren, had been carried far North. But, unlike him, they set the spiritual power throughout Europe above the temporal power of the Papacy in Italy ; they thought little of the woe of Mantua when rejoicing over recovered Prague and Eochelle ; the Elbe drew their thoughts far more than the Po. This being the case, the Jesuits had little sympathy with Pope Urban, who looked upon every defeat of the despotism enthroned at Vienna as a gain to himself, and in whose eyes the great Swedish King was a welcome deliverer. The Pope tacitly favoured the alliance of France with her old friends, the Protestant States, an alliance brought about rather later. He refused all help in men or money to the struggling Empire, saying that the present war was not one of religion. He strove to detach Bavaria from the side of Ferdinand, and to withstand the election of Ferdinand's son to the Crown. Critics averred that the Pope stood cold as ice amid burning churches ; that he was not so zealous for the Catholic faith as Gustavus was for Lutheranism. Spain backed Austria. Cardinal Borgia, the ambassador employed by Olivarez, the prime minister of Spain, wrangled with his Holiness much as the father of Olivarez had wrangled with Pope Sixtus forty years earlier. In March 1632 a remarkable scene took place in the Vatican ; the Swede was now fighting his way towards the Alps, and the Emperor's envoys had made demands for help, which the Pope refused, coupling his refusal with many home truths about the late sack of Mantua. Thus baffled, they went to Cardinal Borgia's palace, where the Spanish party assembled, and talked of convoking a Council, that last resort when men wished to overbear the Pope. They drew up a protest, which Borgia afterwards read in full Consistory. After some time, Urban, stung by an allusion in the document to his slack- ness, shouted to the Cardinal, " Hold your tongue, or go II ITALY 127 out ! " One of the Barberini nephews took Borgia by the arm to turn him out, and was encouraged by Colonna. The Cardinals broke out noisily in Latin, Spanish, and Italian. The Pope rang a bell, which brought in the guards. At last he took the protest from Borgia's hand. Complaints were made later that none of the Italian Cardinals had uttered a word on behalf of the Spanish King, the benefactor who gave them such handsome pensions. 1 Copies of the protest were widely circulated, in spite of all precautions. Urban launched a counter- protest against Borgia, and banished certain Spanish- minded Cardinals from Eome, one of whom was Ludovisi, nephew of the last Pope and the builder of the great Jesuit's Church, his own burial-place. The Boman burghers met in the Capitol, and begged the Pope to persevere in his resistance to Italy's foreign tyrants. It was said that Christian Borne owed as much to Gustavus as Pagan Borne owed to Camillus. Cardinal Pazmany, the famous Primate of Hungary, was sent as ambassador to the Pope by the Emperor, who must indeed have been hard pressed when he employed so exalted an envoy. The Hungarian enlarged on the late insult to the Spanish King, who might be provoked to reform his national Church after the French pattern. Urban denied that he approved of the late Edict ~of Bestitution, which had made peace altogether impossible. Ferdinand was furious at this falsehood, and sent written proofs to contradict the Pope's statement. Borgia was still at Borne, and would not greet the Barberini nephews when he met them in public. On the death of the great Swede, late in 1632, Urban would do nothing more than sing a low Mass, and showed great anger at the news of this untimely mishap. Two years later he was forced to celebrate the glorious victory of Nordlingen over the Protestants. He seemed gloomy, and put on violet robes instead of red, the token of sorrow rather than of triumph. 1 It was remarked that Gregory XIII. had behaved with far greater dignity than his successors ; the former listened to a noisy ambassador, who threatened an appeal from Rome to a Council, and when the rude speech had come to an end the Pope uttered the one word audiviinus. 128 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP, Some of the Cardinals wore red, others violet ; so in the choir they looked much like Jacob's ringstraked flock, as was remarked at the time. Not many months after- wards Urban got rid of his old enemy Borgia by issuing a Bull to enforce residence on all Bishops. 1 The war went on, and in time the Emperor found that he must yield something to the Protestants. For this he was at once blamed by that same Pope who by his slack- ness had done his best to further the Protestant triumph. Urban himself was to pass away before stable terms of peace could be settled between the two jarring creeds. As to his rule in Italy, the question of Mantua was succeeded by that of Urbino. This little Principality had long enjoyed prosperity and good government under the Dukes of the Delia Eovere house, beloved by the people. But the young heir had killed himself with debauchery, and his aged father, the last of the family, alone survived. He died in 1631, and even before his death Urbino, a fief of the Papal See, had been treated much as a possession of the Pope's. The inhabitants complained bitterly of the dismal change by which the government of greedy priests replaced the old patriarchal sway of the Dukes. Urban alternately assailed and courted Venice; he would sometimes destroy the painted monuments of her glory in the Vatican ; sometimes he would allow her to levy thousands of good soldiers in his domains. The Turk, fresh from his Eastern victories, seemed about to attack the West. Eome and Venice combined, but in vain, in 1639 to bring about a general peace in Europe. The Pope was now to have a new war on his hands. The Farnesi had always been a thorn in the side of the Papacy ; even their own founder, Paul III., had had good reason to complain of his kinsmen. Odoardo, the Duke of Parma, had made himself most unpleasant when visiting Eome in 1639. He was, moreover, deeply in debt to Eoman creditors, and had pledged the town of Castro for the pay- ment of the money due. Urban VIII. stood forth as the 1 See Gregorovius's work on Urban VIII. and his Opposition to Spain and the Emperor. He gives many original documents. II ITALY 129 champion of these creditors in 1641. He seized upon Castro, and went on to aim at the possession of Parma and Piacenza. But Venice, Modena, and Florence were all alike resolved to allow no further extension of the Papal dominions ; they had begun to fear France, Urban's chosen ally, more than Spain, which had already begun her down- ward course. These small States seemed to have the grim shade of Pope Julius II. ever before them. Duke Odoardo led an army into the Papal States. Urban in alarm fortified Rome, and raised so large a force as 30,000 men ; the soldiers on his side were mainly Frenchmen, while Germans formed the chief strength of Duke Odoardo. No great exploits illustrate this petty war, but the Papal treasury was soon emptied, and taxation became crushing. The French and Spaniards had now begun to fight out their quarrels even in the streets of Rome. In 1644 all alike were ready for peace, and the French undertook to mediate. Urban was driven, much against his will, to restore Castro to Odoardo and to recall the excommunica- tion under which the Duke had long lain. Here the Papacy underwent a decided defeat, the forerunner of many another. Urban fell into a swoon at the moment of signing the treaty, so great was his distress. He died not long after- Awards, in the summer of 1644. His conscience harassed him towards his end on account of his boundless gifts to his Barberini kin. Inclined though he was to France, he had many differences with Cardinal Richelieu. It fell to Urban's lot to pronounce a censure on the famous work of Jansenius, and so to leave a troublesome legacy to many succeeding Popes, and to their eldest daughter, France. Rome passed through six stormy weeks, while murders were of common occurrence. Then Cardinal Pamfili was elected, who took the name of Innocent X., a man upright and affable, hard-working, bent on keeping the peace and pro- tecting the weak from the strong. His one fault was that he would trust no one ; he never gave himself out for a theologian. He at once brought down his hand heavy upon the Barberini nephews amid the applause of VOL. I K . 130 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. the Eoman people. Unlike Urban VIII., he enjoyed the confidence of the Italian Powers, though there is one dark stain upon his home policy. Castro had been given back to the Farnesi ; the Bishop of the town, Giardi, was threatened with death if he went to his See. The Pope ordered him to go. On the road Giardi was shot, after a last warning. The murder was due to the new Duke of Parma's prime minister, who was afterwards put to death for it. The Pope seized the goods of the Farnesi and besieged Castro in 1649 ; the town yielded, on con- dition that the citizens should not be troubled. But the See was at once transferred to Acquapendente, and the fortress, churches, and houses of Castro were all destroyed. One solitary pillar was set up inscribed, " Here was Castro." Crosses were erected to mark the places where churches had stood. The inhabitants, after being forced to destroy their own town, went begging through the neigh- bouring villages. With the conquest of Castro the States of the Church attained their utmost growth, and so re- mained, with short intervals, down to 185 9. 1 Innocent was able to hang up in St. Peter's the Scotch banners taken at Benburb in Ulster and forwarded to Rome. He carried on a war nearer home against the Roman barons, forcing them to pay their debts. He took away from the Confraternities their privilege of releasing men condemned to death. He made one of the Barberini Cardinals get rid of the ruffians kept in pay. Innocent did not sin on the side of mildness ; he put to death a Eoman poet for having threatened one of the officials. 2 The most scandalous case of these years was that of Mascambruni, a man of low birth who crept into the Datary, and there in a short time piled up a mass of 180,000 crowns by tricking the Pope into signing dispensations. The knave was detected owing to the fact that a Portuguese nobleman, accused of an infamous crime, applied that his cause might 1 Ciampi, Innocenzo X. 62-74. I doubt whether any other Pope ever destroyed churches, except for some good reason, as at Ferrara. Barbarossa when he destroyed Milan left the churches standing. 2 Ibid. 92, 108-111. II ITALY 131 be transferred from the Inquisition to a Bishop. No one would believe that the Pope could ever have granted such a favour. All came out. The chief culprit and some of his accomplices were put to death. 1 This Pontificate is famous for more than one cause. It was Innocent X. who sent Einuccini to Ireland, a very late attempt at meddling with the subjects of a Protestant Grown. He it was who, through his Nuncio Chigi, protested against the Peace of Westphalia. Under Innocent the great Jansenist controversy became more prominent, and the new French opinions were preached at Eome itself. These were embodied in the Five Propositions, and were laid before the Pope for his decision. The greater part of the learned men consulted were averse to the Jansenist theories, but Inno- cent, though he was no theologian, had a shrewd forecast of the tremendous issues then at stake. " When he came," it was said, " to the edge of the chasm, and measured the greatness of the leap, he held back and would not advance." - Had he only stuck to his cautious system he would have conferred a greater benefit on his Church than if he had threaded the niceties of Predestination and Freewill in such sort as to win the applause of both Dominicans and Jesuits. But he had behind him Cardinal Chigi, an old enemy to Jansenism, who declared that the doctrine of Papal "infallibility must not become a laughing-stock. Innocent unluckily gave way, and condemned the Five Propositions as heretical, blasphemous, and accursed. He thus entailed a civil war of 140 years upon the Church a war not confined to France alone. He won popularity at Eome by repealing the tax on flour laid on by Urban, but this popularity was somewhat abated owing to the airs assumed by his sister-in-law, Donna Olimpia Maidalchina, who reigned in Eome as a queen. s 1 Ciampi, Innocenzo X. 154-163. 2 See Ranke's quotation from Pallavicini on this point. 3 This is the last time that we can apply to any Pope the lines " Romanus (eheu, poster! ne.ua bit is !) Emancipates f;emina'." Pasquin's joke on the lady's name was "olim pia, nunc impia." 132 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. She procured the richest heiress in the city for her son, but afterwards the two women quarrelled, and made the Vatican a scene of turmoil. The aged Pope could not shake off the yoke of Donna Olimpia, a rapacious queen. He disapproved of the state of things that went on, but he could not do without the tyrant of his hearth ; he became self-willed and burthensome to himself until he died, early in 1655. A few years before the Pope's death the Neapolitans had broken out into revolt under their fisherman leader. Southern Italy had long been the prey of Spanish misrule. Viceroy after Viceroy had come thither from Madrid, seem- ingly only to enrich themselves and to carry off the chosen treasures of Italian art to deck the galleries of Madrid. Justice was sold to the highest bidder ; houses were unroofed and the beams sold to collect the taxes. The starving peasants were forced into brigandage ; executions never ceased. The land was drained of its manhood to fight Spain's battles in the North, especially during the Thirty Years' War. These soldiers were replaced at home by Spanish garrisons. Turkish raids were frequent, for Spain would make no truce with unbelievers. Eiots often broke out at Naples, followed by fearful punishments, such as breaking on the wheel The famous Ossuna, when Viceroy, used to put men to death without any trial. He seems to have aimed in his latter years at carving out a kingdom for himself, setting up his throne at Naples. Most of the trade was absorbed by the Genoese, who were called the blood-suckers of the whole of the Spanish monarchy ; false coinage became most common. The nobles owning vast fiefs oppressed their vassals, fought duels with each other, fostered the brigands, and wallowed in riotous debauchery. 1 Some quarrel with Eome on spiritual questions was always simmering; the churches and monasteries abused the right of asylum to a fearful 1 About this time the Baron of Nardo, having a lawsuit with the Chapter of his fief, cut off the heads of twenty-four Canons, and placed these heads on the stalls in the church ; no punishment followed. Colletta (Storia di Napoli, vii. 85), who tells this story, says that every baronial fief has similar memories. II ITALY 133 extent ; the clergy led scandalous lives, and often would not wear the priestly garb. The ever-growing misery is best painted by the question and answer, " How are the people to pay these taxes ? " " Let them sell their wives and their daughters " was the official reply. If ever there was a God-forsaken land in Europe it was Southern Italy in the Seventeenth century under the Spanish yoke. In the year 1647 matters came to a head. A rebellion had already broken out at Palermo. The Neapolitans were ready to rise on account of a fruit tax which the Viceroy, the Duke of Arcos, would not remove. A young fisherman, Masaniello, led the mob in the ensuing outbreak, which was favoured by the Cardinal Archbishop. Soon a hundred thousand men were ready to attack the Spanish garrison. They went on to sack the palaces of the nobles and to commit many murders. Then the Viceroy was glad to embrace the victorious fisherman in public, and to make a solemn treaty with him. But Masaniello could not bear prosperity ; he perpetrated crimes worthy of a madman, and was slain by hired assassins. Two well-known names flit before us every now and then in the wild turmoil, that of Salvator Eosa, and that of Altieri the Nuncio, after- wards Pope Clement X. The rebels had long respected the Spanish King's name while they attacked his soldiers, ~but within a few months Naples proclaimed herself a Eepublic. A civil war went on all over Southern Italy ; the hatred borne to the nobles and the cruelties committed remind us of the French Eevolution. At last the nobles combined in defence of the Crown and reduced the capital to great want, while the Spanish fleet held the sea. A gleam of hope came to cheer Naples when the Duke of Guise, the third of his house who has won a name in history, threw himself into the city. But this arrival was more than balanced by that of Onate on the other side, the one capable Spaniard of this Century ; he became Viceroy in 1648, having been earlier ambassador at Eome. Cardinal Mazarin at Paris made a most unusual blunder in not properly backing the revolters. Hence Onate was able to master Naples, to calm the provinces, and to drive the 134 ROME AND REFORM CHAP. French out of Elba. The nobles had done great service to the Crown within the last few months ; but for all that, the new Viceroy made it his policy to crush them ; they no longer durst foster the brigands as before, and were hurried off to a Spanish prison on slight pretexts. On the other hand, the system of taxation was in some degree reformed, and Onate's government lasted for five years. 1 The other Spanish possession, Milan, had an enormous population, who worked much in silks, gold thread, and silver thread ; they made admirable guii barrels. The Spaniards were said to treat Lombardy with more gentle- ness than they showed to their other dominions; but this land was long the seat of war, and was therefore much harassed by having armies quartered upon it for long periods. The Italian proverb ran that the Spaniards gnawed in Sicily, ate in Naples, but devoured in Milan ; 2 that they governed in Sicily with mildness, in Naples with cunning, in Milan with authority. 3 In the Seventeenth cen- tury they laid one tax on the importation of silk, another on the exportation of cloths. A vast emigration from the benighted land was the result; and when in 1706 the yoke of the Spaniards was broken, they left at Milan only one hundred thousand inhabitants where thrice that number had been wont to dwell. 4 I may add that even Scotland herself was rivalled in her persecution of warlocks by Lombardy, when that country was under the two great Borromeo Cardinals. 5 Genoa about this time^won the good opinion of foreign 1 See Giannone for the above events. For Spanish government in Southern Italy the chief authorities are in the Archivio Storico Italiano, ix. An Englishman who wrote JEuropos Modernce Speculum in 1665 speaks of the Spanish King, "whose Treasure is more beholding to the Gabels of Naples, that come to 4 Millions of Crowns (the People paying there for every thing they enjoy, to their very Sallets), than to the Mines of India, that cost him more." For a picture of the nobles and brigands of Naples, see Mdmoires du Due de Guise in P4titot's collection. 2 Gailhard, Present State of Italy, 78-81. This book belongs to 1671. 3 Boussingault, Le Nouveau Theatre du Monde (1681), 4. 4 Cantu, Sulla Storia Lombarda, 35, 37. 6 Ibid. 44, 45, where the horrible details are given. ii ITALY 135 observers; her strong walls, carried high up the hill behind her, recalled the memory of their designer, the great Spinola The city, numbering one hundred and thirty thousand souls, was the Bank of Spain, and into Genoa poured the revenues of Milan and Naples, sums taken up for the payment, at high interest, of Spanish debts. The city was thoroughly safe, whatever a certain school of travellers might say ; a stranger might walk through the streets in the darkest nights and might never hear of any murder for weeks. The yearly revenues of Genoa were not one hundred thousand pounds sterling ; those of Venice were eight or nine times as much. The taxes in the former city were just enough to defray the cost of a frugal government ; there was not one soldier to be seen in Genoa. 1 This account of the good government of Genoa was confirmed a few years later by Burnet, though he thought ill of Genoese morality. Bethel in 1670 writes of Italy that, with her advan- tages, she might equal in commerce any country in Europe ; " but the depopulating of Italy, as also of Spain, by severity in State and persecution in the Church, and the natural averseness to industry and traffick that is thereby bred in the people of those countries, with the vast interest that Ecclesiasticks have in them both, and especially in Italy, is ^the great benefit of the Northern trading nations, who bring and fetch from them most of the commodities that they either want, or have, and even what the growth of their own country affords ; so that the reason of the poverty of Italy may be rendered to be the Komish Eeligion, together with not making Trade their interest." 2 This is confirmed by Galluzzi in his account of the year 1670. Wool and silk had been the two great articles of manufacture at Florence ; this had now decayed, and the traffic passed into the hands of other nations. But one trade was not dull ; Brescia was a magazine, always ready for war though 1 Bethel, Interest of the Princes and States of Europe, 232-248. He says that, next to England, he should prefer Venice for an abode, if only the State were Protestant. - Ibid. 219. 136 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. peace might reign. Every shop was stored with arms of all kinds, the best in Europe. In these lay the great traffic of the town. 1 In this inquiry we need not trust wholly to foreigners. Shrewd Italians were most ready to allow that their country was in evil plight. Thus the Venetian envoys at the Court of Paris give a most pitiful character of their countrymen. In 1668 the Italian Princes were said to have no money, or military discipline, or generals, or well -affected subjects. or populous cities, or wise counsels. Mazarin had already pointed out the degeneracy of his compatriots. The Italian cities were said to have become mere caverns from the want of inhabitants. The monasteries had a great share in producing this baleful state of things. In 1671 every Frenchman who returned from Italy talked of the disunion of her Princes, the want of Captains, the scarcity of money, the laziness that unmanned the nation, the overmastering proneness to luxury and lusts. All the glory of the Italian name was said to be represented by Venice alone. 2 The contrast at this time between Paris on the one hand, and Florence or Madrid on the other, must have been most striking, especially after Colbert had made his mark and while the Huguenots had not yet fallen upon evil times. The Seventeenth century was most ruinous to Italy and Spain ; nothing seemed to thrive but the monasteries, increasing every year. A Fleming, who took the name of Deone, gives us a picture of Borne at this time ; his letters were laid before the Spanish Court, and he knew the Papal circle well. He sets before us the pomp of the nobles ; thus three hundred carriages once followed the Spanish ambassador to a reception. Prince Ludovisi alone could bring a hundred into the street. The great Bernini himself some- times designed carriage ornaments. The Popes kept up a constant war with the courtesans, who wished to pass for noble ladies. The Spanish Ambassador ordered his servants to hamstring the horses of his Portuguese rival, a mere 1 Pope Alexander VII. (Camden Society), 104. 2 Barozzi, Kelazione Venete, serie 2, Francia, iii. 175, 198, 228. II ITALY 137 rebel. A furious fight followed, with wounds and deaths. 1 The Eoman populace joined in ; they were to be bridled only by very severe punishments. Bargrave saw two gentlemen executed for carrying pistols in their pockets ; they were knocked down with a club, and were then quartered, when only half dead. " This is priests' justice," said the crowd. " O these priests ! they are bloody men." 2 In April 1655 the Cardinal Chigi, who bore so fierce a hatred to Jansenism, became Pope by the style of Alexander VII. His family had long thriven at Eome, and is best known as having fostered Raphael's genius. That same month of April saw the hideous massacre of the Vaudois in the Alps, the last very atrocious outburst of Eomish cruelty that has sent a thrill through the world. 3 We are now entering upon a milder age ; great is the contrast between the butcheries that disgraced Europe for 120 years before 1655 and the more tolerant spirit that has followed that year. The change is equally marked in the Holy See itself as regards its power. Innocent X. had been often able to make his influence tell in Europe. Alexander VII. was destined to undergo shameful outrages unknown to the Popes of the old school ; he stands at the head of a feebler generation, which was to last down to the Trench Revolution. 1 Ciampi, Innocenzo X. 213-222. 2 Bargrave, Alexander VII. (Camden Society), 12. Dumas describes' a scene at Rome like this at the beginning of his Monte Cristo. It reminds us of the English punishment for high treason. 3 The later persecutions in France and Hungary, bad as they seem, are nothing in comparison with the Savoyard cruelties in 1655. To show the spirit of the age I give an extract taken from Burnet's account of the year 1686 in his History. Whitford, the son of a Protestant Scotch Bishop, had turned Papist, had killed the well-known Dorislaus, and had then taken service with the Duke of Savoy. He died in Scotland about thirty years later, after having called for some ministers, before whom he abjured his faith, abhorring its cruelty. He had murdered both women and children in the Piedmontese massacre, and had felt an intolerable horror of mind ever after- wards. "He had gone to priests of all sorts, the strictest as well as the easiest, and they had justified him in what he had done, and had given him absolution. But his conscience pursued him so, that he died as in despair, crying out against that bloody religion." 138 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. We are at once struck by the contrast between 1655 and 1630. In the spring of the latter year the Jesuits had seemed about to bring almost all Europe under their yoke. But they had undergone a rough check later in that very year, and a short time afterwards the Ultramontane lands were to be vexed by Protestants, Greeks, Mussulmans, and false brethren, and were to enter upon a long period of disaster, reaching down to 1683. 1 It was in 1640 that Spain, the mightiest land of them all, began to fail ; she saw Catalonia and Portugal break away, and rather later she had to listen to the tidings of Eocroy, the knell of her supremacy in Europe. In 1645 the champion State of Italy suffered a terrible wound from her old enemy ; the Turk laid hands on Candia, and wore out the strength of Venice in a series of campaigns lasting for four-and- twenty long years. In 1648 the bloody Cossack revolt against Poland broke out, the first of a long line of calamities that went on until the Polish State vanished altogether. In 1648 Austria had to give up provinces and sign a disgraceful peace, against which the Pope in vain protested ; it was thereby proved to all the world that her Emperors had been inflicting wanton horrors upon Germany for more than twenty years. In 1649 Ireland saw the Protestant sword fall with awful effect upon her ill-defended shores, and knew that the Protestant colony within her would henceforth insist upon its right not only to exist, but to rule. Every one of these countries had sent their soldiers to crush the freedom of Bohemia. Eetribution had come, and the weakness of the Ultra- montane States seemed even more glaring when contrasted with the ever-waxing strength of France, the one Catholic land that was guilty of the sin of religious toleration at home, and that clung steadily to Protestant allies abroad. These allies, lately snatched from the brink of ruin, were now more powerful than ever. I need only mention the 1 This catalogue of the enemies of Rome about 1655 somewhat reminds us of the speech of Innocent IV. at Lyons in 1245, where he likens the five distinct enemies of Rome in his day to the Five Wounds of Christ. This speech is given by Matthew Paris. II ITALY 139 names of Cromwell, De Witte, Charles X., and the Great Elector. Holland and Sweden were still marching steadily onward in the old road, and were now followed by England and Northern Germany. Thorny paths had led to glory. The wilderness had been exchanged for the Promised Land. Rome, as we see, was threatened by many Northern foes, and as to the South-East, the Turk, not yet quite at the end of his tether, was about to make a grand assault on Italy, Austria, and Poland. This last name reminds me that in the North-East a new power was now slowly arising, which was to show the world that the Greek Church, sick unto death for the last 450 years, had not yet spoken her last word, and was still capable of winning back much of her lost ground from her Latin rival. Southern Europe was sinking. It was not long after this time that Bunyan saw Giant Pope, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints that he could do little more than sit in his cave's mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they went by, and biting his nails because he could not come at them. What had been the three causes of this downfall of the countries of the Roman obedience since Luther's time ? First, we must give much of the credit for this achievement to keen-witted France, which cut herself loose from all religious bonds in politics, and fostered mightily the cause of ^Reform in England, Holland, Sweden, and Germany. She was to throw aside this policy in 1672. Still traces of it may be seen in 1740, and even in 1866. Germany owes much to France for promoting the triumph of Berlin over Vienna. Secondly, the Turk had sometimes struck in, and taken off a part of the heavy weight that pressed upon Protestantism, though he unhappily showed great carelessness of his own interest during the Thirty Years' War. Thirdly, the history of Paul III., Paul IV., Sixtus V., and Urban VIII. proves how often the Popes set their temporal interest above their spiritual dominion, and thus fostered the Protestant cause. The two chief advantages that were thrown into the scale on the other side were the silly strife between Lutheran and Calvinist, and the amazing warfare waged by the Jesuits. 140 EOME AND REFOEM CHAP. These last had been the main cause of former triumphs of the Papacy, but this renowned Order was now changing for the worse. Acquaviva had left behind him no fitting successors at the helm. Vitelleschi was far too easy in his admission of disciples who had no vocation. Nickel, a harsh man, was practically deposed by the Order, with the consent of Alexander VII. The next General, Oliva, cared more for luxury than anything else. When disputes arose between the Popes and France, the Jesuits, those former champions of the Papacy, wrote in defence of the French Crown. The Sultan, we know, could not always master the Janissaries. The fine gold was becoming dim ; there was an eagerness after worldly interests. The Jesuits turned their attention to banking and manufactures. Why should not they throw themselves into mercantile pursuits, if the earliest Benedictines had varied their prayers and chants by tilling the neglected soil ? Pope after Pope issued Bulls against Jesuit trafficking, but always in vain. Disputes would break out between the fathers of the Order and their pupils in Italy ; a blow from the master would be followed by a stab from the boy. 1 The great aim of the Jesuits had been to mould the minds of Kings and statesmen in the Confessional. By the middle of the Seventeenth century they had compiled a series of manuals which aimed at dragging down morality to the level of sinful human nature. Their teaching as to theft, perjury, adultery, and murder, when dragged to light, astonished the world ; it was said that they had lengthened the Creed and shortened the Decalogue. Sa, Busenbaum, and others put forth text-books which became the laughing-stock of the reading public. Pascal's wit made the names of Escobar and such-like a byword. The First Century of the existence of Loyola's Order had been a brilliant period. The Second century showed his sons in a far different plight ; they might be backed by such a weak Pope as Alexander VII., 2 1 See Ranke's account of the Jesuits about this time. 3 Alexander was not always on their side. See Cerri, Secretary to the Propaganda, who wrote his State of the Catholic Religion throughout the World about 1680, a work translated by Sir R. Steele in 1715. In p. 121 ii ITALY 141 but, on the other hand, they were assailed in all quarters of the world by Dominicans and Franciscans, by such noble- minded Prelates as Palafox ; above all, by the little band that have made Port Royal a name of everlasting renown. One sad blunder the Jesuits had made a few years earlier. They seemed to have all the science of Italy in their hands. Great then was their wrath when a lay interloper like Galileo interfered with their monopoly. They strained every nerve to suppress the bold intruder, and persuaded the vain Urban VIII. that Galileo's character Simplicius, representing ignorance, had been meant for the Pope. The Jesuits and Urban must divide the infamy of the persecution of Italy's greatest sage. 1 Truthfulness in history was by no means the Order's strong point. We have the candid confessions of more than one Pope early in the Sixteenth century, as to the excesses that provoked the Reformation. But these confessions were disgusting to the Jesuit writers about 1650. Pallavicini and his follow- ing would have men believe that there was nothing so very wrong in 1520 to cause such an ungodly uproar in the world. From the Jesuits we pass to the Inquisition. What shackles it laid upon the Italian intellect may be seen from the following tale. A Servite friar had taught a child ~of eight years philosophy, theology, and other sciences, and so wonderful was the boy's memory that Cardinals we read that Alexander VII. sent to the East Indies three French Bishops, who were denounced by the Jesuits as intruders unfit to give the Sacra- ments. Jansenism was alleged against these envoys. Clement X. ordered the General of the Jesuits to put a stop to these scandals, but no result seems to have followed. In p. 126 the loss of Japan is imputed to the Jesuits, owing to their meddling in politics, and also to their trading publicly. Voltaire gives an account of the missions in the East and the renewed quarrels after 1700, Siecle de Louis XIV., chapter xxxix. He seems very impartial between the two sides. 1 See Von Gebler'sbook on Galileo, part ii., chapter iii. There is some- thing of a set-off to Urban's misdeeds in this famous case. He proved a warm friend to Campanella, and rescued him from the dungeon of Naples. The Spaniards stirred up the Roman mob against the reputed heretic, and even the Pope was not able to defend him. Campanella was aided by the French Ambassador to escape to Marseilles. See Madame Colet's book on Campanella 31-34. 142 EOME AND REFORM- CHAP. and Prelates went to hear him dispute. The Inquisition at once began to inquire if the whole were not the work of the Devil, and long apologies had to be written in behalf of the poor friar. 1 But Eome was now to see a different sort of prison from those of the Inquisition. Innocent X. in 1655 built the Carceri Nuove in the Via Giulia after pulling down some loathsome old dungeons. The new prisons, spacious and comfortable, were the first in Europe that provided separate cells. Rome here had the start of England by more than a hundred years. 2 Church Architec- ture at Rome seemed to become as debased as morality. The man of taste in our own days shudders when he sees the names of Borghese, Barberini, Pamfili, Chigi, engraved on the outside of some Roman Temple, especially when he thinks of what the old building, so dismally replaced, must have been as it stood in 1600; it might perhaps have dated back to the age of the first Leo or the first Gregory. Far nobler work is seen in the streams of water brought into Rome about this time from distant sources, and tak- ing the form of the most charming and abounding foun- tains, one of the few useful things at Rome envied by the Northern visitor. Pilgrims, such as Milton and Evelyn, were always thronging to the one city where the finest libraries might be studied, where the noblest collections of coins, gems, pictures, and statues (those of the Borghesi and Barberini are the best known) might be inspected, where the most thrilling music and the most enchanting gardens invited the stranger's attention, where the noble colonnade, thrown out to the right and left of St. Peter's, was now rising at Pope Alexander's behest. 3 Much heed was bestowed upon the New, but little on the Old. The Baths of Constantine were nearly perfect, but under Paul V. they were demolished to the very foundation. He also mauled the Temple of Peace, and allowed his kinsmen to commit any devastations they might choose. Urban VIII 1 Ciampi, Innocenzo X. 234. 2 Ibid. 313. 3 Gailhard enlarges on the toleration customary at Rome at this time. A Protestant might eat flesh all through Lent by buying a license for two shillings. Rome was the centre of all news. Paid spies abounded. n ITALY 143 was only prevented by a rising of the Koman people from pulling down the matchless tomb of Caecilia Metella. Eome was an enjoyable residence, but the provinces subject to the temporal power of the Popes had much to complain of. The unlucky war of Castro seems to have been the beginning of evils. The reign of most Popes after that conflict was one long tale of increasing debt and desolation. The fund-holders, as we should call them, were often foreigners, such as the Genoese ; hence the taxes of the Eoman State were largely spent abroad. Office was bought by hirelings athirst for gain ; risings in the provinces often occurred. The Campagna was rapidly going out of culti- vation ; the great houses were swallowing up the small yeomen. Venetian envoys in the Sixteenth century had given a flourishing report of the thriving fields and towns of Eomagna. Their successors of the Seventeenth century told a far different tale. 1 About 1650 it was the general opinion that priestly government meant ruin ; the Church seemed to blight everything. Those high in Court favour, such as Donna Olimpia, exacted vast sums from suitors. It was notorious that judges took bribes ; business that might have been settled at once was delayed for many years. A Cardinal, in a memorial to Pope Alexander, declared that the Eomans underwent oppressions worse than those undergone by the Israelites in Egypt ; slaves in Syria and Africa had a happier lot. The state of things temporal in 1650 had declined from what Sandys saw about 1600. Vast sums flowed into the Papal coffers from Italy and Spain. Every benefice conferred by the Curia had to pay a pension to some member of that body. The Bishop of Urbino strove to resign his rich See because it was stripped for the benefit of Eoman officials. In 1667 twenty - eight Prelates in Southern Italy were ejected because they did not pay the pensions imposed upon them. Even parish priests were fleeced. 2 The monasteries were 1 Gailhard in 1671 says that, according to the Italian proverb, the Romagnoles were the best of soldiers and the worst of subjects. 2 Pasquin (see Mary Lafon's work on him) utters complaints of the bad administration of the Church about this time. 144 KOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. held in contempt. In 1652 Pope Innocent complained in a Bull that there were many small convents, mere dens of lust and crime, where religious rites could not be properly performed. These he suppressed, as Wolsey had done in similar circumstances. Alexander VII. suppressed some Orders at Venice, comparing himself to a good gardener, who lops all useless branches from the vine. There was a general dearth of talent ; poor men could not get advance- ment ; everything depended on the great Papal houses. Shrewd observers scoffed at the preaching now to be heard in Eoman pulpits. No theological works compar- able to those of Paris and London were to be found in the capital of "Western religion. The days of Borromeo and Baronius were over. The fiery impulse of 1540 had been quenched, a Century later, in greed, sloth, and worldliness. 1 As to Science and Literature, the story of Galileo is too well known to need further reference. The Italian poets whom Milton met with were by no means akin to Ariosto and Tasso. 2 Pope Alexander VII., who heads the new school of Popes, began well ; he would not allow his nephews to visit Eome. But a year later they were invited thither, and obtained the most lucrative offices. The Cardinals now sought to encroach upon the Pope's authority. Alex- ander had no relish for business, but liked better to criticise the works which authors read to him works that have not lived to our days. It was complained that he was more intent on building the colonnade of St. Peter's than on backing Venice in her hard struggle with the Moslem for Candia. He had been distinguished, when a Cardinal, by quickness, judgment, and readiness of expression. These qualities were not found in him after he had become Pope. He had a strong dislike to Mazarin, the most powerful member of the Sacred College, who brought shame upon his Order by allying himself with the Arch heretic Cromwell. A new sign of the times appeared ; Blake's 1 I have taken my picture of these times from Ranke. 2 Professor Masson, in his account of Milton's travels, introduces us to these poets of the Seventeenth century. II ITALY 145 impious fleet gave law to Western Italy. Paul V. had com- plained earlier of the heretical soldiers paid by Venice, but now a much worse state of things had arisen. Yet a few years and heretical powers would decide on the fate of Italian crowns and fiefs of the Papacy. Rome was no longer what she once was. Since Pope Urban's death she had swung round to the Spanish side. The late Popes had refused canonical in- stitution to the new Bishops set up by the Portuguese rebels. Hence the episcopate in Portugal had almost died out, and Church property had become a prey to laymen. But France, a more important vassal, was behaving in a way worthy of Philip the Fair. She would not invite Alexander to the conferences which resulted in the peace of 1659, though Innocent had sent ambassadors to the more famous peace eleven years earlier. But in 1660 Louis XIV. began his career of tyrannous insolence towards the small States of Europe, a career to be unchecked for forty- four years. The French Ambassador at Rome claimed the right of asylum over a number of streets near his palace, and he placed guards throughout this district. The Pope showed himself most forbearing, but the other side was bent on a quarrel. Insults were heaped upon the Pope's Corsican guard ; they were goaded into a fray, and killed two attendants of the Ambassadress. Thereupon the French King seized Avignon, drove out the Nuncio, and sent an army over the Alps as far as Modena to avenge the insult. None of the great powers would stand forward on the Papal side, so the unlucky Alexander, fallen upon evil times, was forced in 1664 to declare the Corsicans incap- able of serving the Papacy, to erect a pyramid which pro- claimed the late outrage and its expiation, to leave hold of Castro, and to send his nephew to Paris, there to make apology for the past. 1 Cardinal Chigi was the first Churchman ever sent as Pope's Legate to foreign lands, not to enforce demands, but to beg for pardon. It was little compensation for such an announcement of weakness 1 Muratori, in his Annals, very truthfully calls this a "disgustosa con- cordia." I borrow these details from him. VOL. I L 146 EOME AND KEFOEM CHAP. that Alexander welcomed to Eome Christina, the Eoyal Swedish convert, the daughter of the great Gustavus. From 1667 to 1676 two Popes, Clement IX. (Eospigliosi) and Clement X. (Altieri), ruled in the Vatican. Then followed a far more interesting Sovereign. 1 The small town of Como has, from first to last, given birth to an unusually large brood of famous men. One of her children, be- longing to the house of Odescalchi, had gone South when a youth, equipped only with sword and pistols, bent on a lay career. But on being better advised by a Cardinal, he had betaken himself to the service of the Church, and had won his way upwards by degrees. In the end, so highly was he esteemed, that the Eoman people shouted for him during the Conclave as the one man who ought to be chosen. In 1676 he was able to change his name to that of Innocent XI. The state of things at Eome at his election was not cheering to a Eeformer. The envoys of Louis XIV. throughout this Pontificate have drawn a dark picture of the clerical Court, though this picture is most probably exaggerated. We are brought acquainted with many scandals, for some of the Cardinals were most prone to entangle themselves with women and worse. The Italian clergy were branded with the vilest charges. 2 As to criminal justice at Eome, we hear of a black case in 1678. A man named Eesta, a mere assassin, strong in the protec- tion of Cardinal Altieri, was allowed to commit horrible actions upon certain men in prison. He wished to make them depose against a Baron, his enemy. Some of them did 1 About this time Cardinal Bona was suggested as Pope. Pasquin de- clared, "Papa Bona est oratio incongrua" ; a French wit answered Vana soloecismi ne te conturbet imago, Esset Papa bonus si Bona Papa foret. Pasquin, by Mary Lafon, 236. 2 See Michaud's Louis XIV. et Innocent XL, in four volumes, mostly taken from the French despatches sent from the Roman Court. I do not put entire faith in them. Thus the mild Cardinal Howard, so highly ex- tolled by Burnet and Lord Macaulay, appears to the Frenchman as having ' ' toute la feYocite' des Anglais, avec toutes les mauvaises qualites des moines, sans avoir les bonnes ni des uns ni des autres," vol. ii. 115. The other Cardinals are described in vol. i. 169-233. II ITALY 147 this in order to save their lives ; others, who refused, were strangled by Kesta in the prison. This was an altogether new mode of procedure. 1 Everything was sold at Eome, and a dispensation for bigamy proved that this was the most costly of all irregularities. Fifty-six thousand Eoman crowns had to be paid before part of the revenues of St. Denis could be handed over to the new foundation of St. Cyr. Vast sums were collected throughout Italy for the Turkish war. 2 Pope Innocent gained great applause by refusing to make his nephew a Cardinal ; on the other hand, the youth received vast revenues. If the morals of the clergy could not be reformed, the Pope at least took in hand the ladies' dress, far too low. He would not always tolerate the opera, much to the disgust of the Swedish Queen. The leading event in Innocent's reign is his struggle with Louis XIV., but before we consider this we must cast an eye on the dealings of the French despot with certain other Italian States. Of all the distant cities under the Spanish yoke Messina seems to have been the happiest. She still kept her Senators and popular representatives, though heavily taxed for the never - ending wars. An attempt was made to shut the Senators out of their chamber. No redress could be had from Madrid, so in 1674 the town rebelled and offered their city to Louis. In the next year a French fleet saved Messina from starva- tion. In 1676 the great De Ruyter fought against the unlucky townsmen. We see strange alliances, Frenchmen and Sicilians ranged against Spaniards and Dutchmen ; all memory of the Vespers and of Alva's butcheries seemed to have passed away. In 1678 a general peace was effected and the French were recalled. King Louis seems to have thought it beneath his dignity to make any effort to procure fair conditions of amnesty for his Messinese allies. Four hours only for preparation were granted to those of the townsmen who might wish to fly. Seven thousand embarked for France. The great Sicilian city of sixty thousand had been within four years reduced to eleven thousand. She was deprived by her Spanish master 1 Michaud's Louis XIV. et Innocent XI. i. 6. 2 Ibid. i. 310. 148 HOME AND KEFOEM CHAP. of all her privileges and became a skeleton ; half of her former population went to Palermo. Louis was with reason reviled by his dupes as a betrayer and a faithless Prince. He maintained the exiles in France for eighteen months and then drove them out, giving them just as much money as would take them home. Some nobles became beggars, others assassins. Fifteen hundred, having nothing to live on, abjured their faith when in Turkey. The Spanish Viceroy sent to the gibbet or to the galleys fifteen hundred who returned to Messina, though provided with passports by Spanish Ambassadors. 1 Italy was still doomed to this Spanish yoke for thirty years longer. In 1684 Genoa, the great ally of Spain, was suddenly ordered by Louis to disarm some galleys. The French fleet soon came to bombard the fine old city ; her stateliest churches and palaces went to the ground. In the following year her Doge was forced to go to Paris, there to ask pardon for the crime of self-defence. The Genoese had to disarm the galleys, to send away their Spanish soldiers, and to restore the burnt churches ; such was the pious despot's will. 2 In 1687 he bullied the Grand Duke of Florence into disbursing vast sums for the benefit of the Duchess, a shameless woman of the Bourbon stock, who had forsaken her husband in order to amuse herself in France. 3 For nearly forty years Eome and Louis remained at enmity. So early as 1678 Innocent had protested against the many acts of oppression perpetrated on the French clergy by the Crown. He was therefore painted in dark colours by the various envoys from Paris. He was said to be equally timid and vain ; to speak to him was to break one's head against a wall. At one time he thought of asking the prayers of the faithful against the French, as though they had been Turks. He was capable of anything, and had bad advisers. His crass ignorance would not allow him to hear reason in any business. Pride and greed were his two ruling passions. He had no merit, no 1 See Muratori's Annals, 1674-1678. 2 See Muratori for these years. 3 Galluzzi, Toscana, lib. viii. 183. II ITALY 149 doctrine, no piety. He could shed crocodile's tears ; he would like to stir up the Huguenots; his nephew was a thief. 1 This is not the picture of a Saint, such as most historians have hitherto loved to paint Innocent. One of the main points of the interest aroused by him is what were his real feelings towards the Huguenots and the Jansenists, those enemies of the French Court. As to the former of these sects it is true that in 1688 he did his utmost to further Protestant interests. The French declared that he would make himself chief of the Mussul- mans so long as he could thereby injure Louis. But he had little love for the heretics on the Rhone ; he rejoiced to hear that their privileges were curtailed. He had no scruples about the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes. He disliked the grant of toleration to the Hungarian Pro- testants. He wished that the King of England would imitate Louis. He rebuked Queen Christina for disap- proving of the cruel methods adopted at Paris to spread true religion. The Jesuits strove to regain Innocent's good opinion by boasting that five hundred of them were employed in converting the French heretics. He declared that Charles the Great had never done so great an action as the Eevocation. In 1686, after Easter, the Te Deum was chanted at Eome, and there were illuminations for two days in honour of the great achievement. Innocent's game, in truth, was to allow the Gallicans and Jesuits to crush the Huguenots and then to lord it over the victors himself, strong in his Infallibility. 2 As to the Jansenists, Innocent at heart loved them no better than he did the Huguenots. At the outset he wished the peace of Pope Clement IX. to be observed, and avowed his readiness to chastise the misbelievers. But in 1680 his Cardinals were in close union with the Jansenists, who were now assailing King Louis. Innocent salved his 1 Michaud, Louis XIV. et Innocent XL ii. 262. On the other hand, Innocent's minister, Cardinal Imperiali, long afterwards described his virtues to Father Labat. See the latter's travels in Italy, iv. 372. 2 See Michaud's work, iv. 471-508. 150 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP, conscience by constantly repeating that there were now no more Jansenists. Some of his Cardinals strove to win the Ked Hat for Arnauld, the Jansenist leader, even though that stubborn fighter had no belief in Papal infallibility. Both the Pope and the Jansenists had their own ends to gain in their alliance against the common foe. Innocent suppressed a sentence passed by the Inquisition against certain Jansenists ; many of < the sect lived in peace at Rome. He averred that the Gallicans were much worse than Arnauld's disciples. One French pamphlet against these latter was entitled " The seven sorrows of the Roman Court and the seven joys of Port Royal" The Jansenists cried, " Rome once condemned us ; she now protects us ; her judg- ments cannot be infallible." Arnauld, we see, was a clever diplomatist as well as a deep theologian. 1 The persecuted Jansenist Bishops in France, driven from their Sees, lived on a pittance supplied by their flocks. Innocent gave great offence to the French Court by sending briefs to the deprived Prelates, praising their conduct and encouraging them to persevere ; this was almost the first act of his reign. 2 The Pope, as was natural, found his worst enemies among the Jesuits. In 1679 he condemned sixty -five propositions taken from the Casuists of that Order. 3 Rather later, in 1681, the brethren were working hard against Innocent. They and the Paris Parliament stood for once on the same side. In the next year the French clergy put forth the Four Articles, the Charter of Gallicanism as against the Papacy. Innocent at once refused to grant institution to such French Bishops as might have taken part in the rebellious proceedings. Soon thirty-five Sees nearly one-third of France were vacant. 4 Another cause 1 See Michaud's work, iv. 414-450. See also Jervis, Church of France, ii. 88. Cardinal D'Aguirre, a great Ultramontane, harangued the Con- sistory in eloquent praise of Arnauld. See Bayle's article upon this latter, as to his popularity with the Popes. 2 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, serie 2, Francia, iii. 322. 3 Martin, Histoire de France, xiii. 618. 4 Pasquin and Marforio give us a curious picture of most of the kingdoms of Europe about this time. See Mary Lafon's book, 277. II ITALY 151 of dispute between the two powers arose. Innocent had abolished the right of asylum enjoyed by the ambassadors at Eome, a right turned to good account by the local thieves and murderers. Louis resolved to retain this infamous privilege, even though all other Kings might be ready to give it up. In 168*7 he sent Lavardin at the head of a large force to brave the Pope in the streets of Rome. Innocent quoted a text about chariots and horses, pronounced the censures of the Church on Lavardin, and laid the French national Church of St. Louis under an interdict. In the next year, a memorable one for Europe, the new envoy added to former insults by marching into St. Peter's with three hundred men while his master seized on Avignon. The foolish pride of Louis, a most ingenious blunderer, had by this time brought about a coalition of Roman Catholic and Protestant States against himself, all alike going in daily fear of some fresh outrage from Paris. Mild and tolerant was the spirit that now reigned at Rome, as we see by the account Burnet gives of his sojourn there and of his intercourse with the good Cardinal Howard. 1 All this was most displeasing to Jesuits and partisans of Louis. " What is wanted for the peace of Christendom," said a wit, " is that the Pope should become a Catholic, and that King James of England should become "a Protestant." Innocent did his best to apply the brake when James was speeding along the road to ruin ; but the Jesuits were here able to counteract the Pope, and to entail fearful misery upon his English children. A shrewd English observer, well acquainted with eminent Churchmen, gives us an insight into Roman affairs in 1687. The Pope's aversion to the Jesuits was very visible. He took every occasion to mortify them, and this accounted for the cold welcome given to the English embassy. 2 Not only the Pope, but every impartial man in Italy looked upon the Jesuits as a covetous, fraudulent, intriguing, and 1 It was very different from the state of things at Milan a few years earlier, where Evelyn found the Inquisition anything hut an empty name. 2 King James's Ambassador threatened to leave Rome if he was not better used. Innocent dryly answered, " Lei k, Padrone." 152 HOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. turbulent body, who could never be quiet unless they reigned, who would stick at nothing to raise the wealth and power of their Order. At Eome it was said that religious affairs in England must needs miscarry since the Jesuits were there in so much credit. The foolish letters they sent from London gave a clue to the value that should be set upon the letters from their brethren in the Indies and elsewhere. In the latter case they might lie without fear of detection. " English matters cannot go well," said an eminent man, " so long as the morals and politics of the Jesuits and the understandings and courage of the Irish are so much relied on." The Jesuits differed from every other Order. They could be promoted by their own brother- hood alone. From the General of the Jesuits lay no appeal to any Cardinal Protectors; that General was the most absolute and arbitrary Sovereign in the world. Almost all the several interests at Eome were united against the Jesuits, yet the Order stood fast. Their strength lay in two points in training youth and in managing estates. The distance between the Jesuit and the needy secular priest was immense. An aged man, long trained in the Koman Court, remarked that he would be well satisfied with a toleration of religion in England accompanied with an exclusion of all Regulars and Jesuits. 1 These facts have a bearing on the great sentence to be passed by the Papacy ninety years later. One of the weighty turning-points in European history is the year 1683. To the mighty results of that year Innocent's gifts in money had largely contributed, and it was therefore with good reason that Sobieski sent the huge Turkish standard to Rome. The Italian Muse, soaring higher than her usual wont in this dull age, inspired Filicaia with his glorious ode on the triumph of Christen- dom over Islam. The evil times that had hung over the Latin obedience for forty years seemed to be past. Poland 1 I take this from Three Letters concerning the Present State of Italy, written in 1687 and printed in the next year. There is also much about Molinos and his new heresy. See pp. 124 and 129-135. See also Michaud, i. 300. II ITALY 153 had wielded the lance not in vain. Venice was to make small conquests and Austria mighty acquisitions from the Turk. The two long centuries of war between France and Spain were, after one sharp final bout, now drawing to an end. But this new concord Innocent did not live to see, since he died in 1689. The Roman populace held him for a saint, and sought after relics of their deeply-mourned pastor. 1 Still his system of government was most open to criti- cism. Burnet, who visited Italy in 1685, compares that rich land with the barren Swiss Cantons, much to the disadvantage of the former, owing to the grinding taxation. Italy was full of beggars ; the Grisons had none at all. The vast waste of wealth in the Churches was the ruin of trade ; the masses of plate to be seen on the altars meant the deadness of commerce. The traveller entered the Papal States by Ferrara and found the rich fields aban- doned, and whole sides of the streets of the town uninhabited ; even the churches were mean. The ground was left undrained, so the air became infected, as in the Roman Campagna. The hundred thousand subjects of the old Dukes of Ferrara had dwindled down to fifteen thousand under the Popes. Most different was Bologna, where the spirited burghers, reckoned at seventy thousand, had always preserved some show of freedom and self- government ; the frequency of assassination was here the one drawback. In the same way Leghorn was thriving and Florence decaying. The silk trade, the old mainstay of Italy, had been ruined by the rivalry of the East Indies. 2 But the land from Viterbo to Rome was a wilderness. There had been a succession of four ravenous reigns ; the Barberini, Pamfili, Chigi, and Altieri had enriched them- selves, but not their subjects. Even under Innocent XI. it was not possible for the people to live and pay the taxes. Almost one-fourth of them had left Rome. The Pope had his hand in the corn trade and in the banks, whence arose 1 I have consulted for Innocent both Burnet's History and Muratori's Annals, as well as Michaud's long work. 2 See Burnet's Third Letter in his account of Italy. 154 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. much evil. There was said to be more oppression under Christ's Vicar than in Turkey. Burnet does full justice to the private character of Innocent XI. ; that Pope's table charges did not amount to a crown a day, and under him public vices were not to be seen. It was Donna Olimpia who had first taxed the bread of the people, an impost un- known in other lands. Her evil system was still in full vigour. Burnet was equally at home among the manuscripts at Eome and beneath the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. He found Naples enjoying unwonted happiness under the sway of the Marquess of Carpi. This Viceroy, who stands almost alone, punished his Spanish countrymen as severely as natives of the city. He paid and clothed the soldiery, that used to be half-naked and to rob by daylight. He rooted out the banditti, losing five hundred of his men in the process. He then turned his thoughts to the im- provement of the coinage. The Jesuits, who were great merchants and paid no duties, owned nearly half Apulia, and were as harsh to their tenants as the lay Barons were. There was a brisk traffic with England, though the natives were idle and lazy. The Churchmen held one half of the soil, and, besides, acquired vast wealth by tithes, gifts, and legacies. Purgatory was a mine not easily exhausted. In Naples alone there were twenty-four houses of Dominicans and twenty-two of Franciscans, without reckoning all the other Orders. There were said to be about one hundred convents belonging to the city. The ignorance of the clergy was fearful, but Burnet found a few men among them who were evidently forerunners of Giannone. Molinos, the new Spanish heretic, had twenty thousand followers at Naples, and also many friends in Home. 1 After Innocent XI. came Alexander VIII., the Venetian Ottobuoni, who trod in the former Pope's steps, and was a stout opponent of France. 2 Lavardin was recalled, and 1 See Burnet's Fourth Letter for Rome and Naples. Innocent was at first friendly to Molinos, but the man was afterwards thrown into the Inquisi- tion and imprisoned for life. See Michaud, Louis et Innocent XI. 451-471. 8 Pasquin was hardly just when he hailed this Pope with the sentence, " Per un Papa cattivo abbiamo otto buoni," Swinburne's Courts of Europe, i. 212. ii ITALY 155 Louis abandoned all his obnoxious ambassadorial rights. The new Pope was indeed worth conciliating, for France had now no allies but the Turks and Irish in the new fearful war that Louis had kindled. In 1691 was chosen Innocent XII., the Neapolitan Pignatelli, whom Browning had made known to us. The new Pope, in his devotion to French interests, was unlike his late namesake. He was wont to speak of the poor as "his nephews," and he kept his mind bent on many a plan for setting them to work. As to foreign politics, he found that he could do little for France. The great Protestant leader was too strong to be withstood even in the Vatican, and Innocent com- plained, " If I stir, I am told that I am helping the French to set up a universal Monarchy. I am not like the old Popes. Kings will not listen to me. The Prince of Orange is master ; he governs us all. God alone can help us." 1 Nothing can show clearer how com- pletely Papal influence in Europe had sunk since 1655. The war spread to Italy. Victor Amadeus, a mere youth, who was to raise the Cross of Savoy higher than ever, took up arms against the tyrant of Europe, and was able to make head even against so good a soldier as Catinat. The Emperor sent into Italy the monster Caraffa, infamous for his late cruelties in Hungary. This General soon made himself hated by all allies of the Empire, and wrung vast sums from Tuscany, Genoa, Lucca, Mantua, and Modena. These heirs of the old Ghibellines had once more to bow before the majesty of the Holy Eoman Empire, now reviving. Even Parma, though a vassal of the Church, was called upon to contribute. The Papal power was fast ebbing. 2 Louis grasped at the chance of gaining anew ally; in 1693 he made a tardy peace with Eome, and obtained the needful Bulls which enabled his Bishops to take possession of their Sees. At home Innocent aspired to be a Eeformer, directing 1 Macaulay's History, iv. 265. 2 So cruel was Caraffa in Italy that Muratori thinks that the Emperor could not have been aware of his misdeeds. This kind of excuse is most common in history. 156 EOME AND REFOEM CHAP. his special attention to the abuses of the law courts and to the sale of offices. He found many obstacles in his way when he set about the reform of the monastic bodies. He had to content himself with applying the old strict discip- line to future monks and friars, whilst sparing the present ministers of the Church. He launched a Bull against nepotism, and caused an Abbot to compile a treatise against this vice. Even Protestants were loud in their praise of this conduct. The Pope's alms were bestowed on the tens of thousands of sufferers from the earthquakes which had tormented Sicily, Southern Italy, and Northern Italy within three successive years. The blight of war was always at hand ; the heretical fleets hovered about the Italian coast. In 1696 the country was astonished at the news that the wily Savoyard had left the side of Vienna for that of Paris. Muratori, then a young official in the famous Library at Milan, heard the loud curses of the populace poured out upon the traitor. By this step Victor Amadeus forfeited any chance of the English Crown that his house might have had ; William III. never forgave the Duke's desertion. More vast sums were paid to get the Germans out of Italy ; the Pope himself contributed fifty thousand crowns. Next year the Western peace was made, in which Innocent was forbidden by the Protestant powers to interfere. The far more glorious peace with the Turk, achieved by the Christian arms, was signed rather later, when Venice won the Morea, to be held for a few years. Her great general Morosini, surnamed Peloponnesiacus, may fairly be called the last of the Venetians, at least while the Doges held sway. The Popes of late had bestowed much money in aid of wars against the Turk on the Danube and elsewhere. Before plunging into the bloody war that was now hang- ing over Italy and all Western Europe we may glance at the condition of some of the Italian States. Duke Cosmo III. now ruled at Florence, a man unhappy alike in his wife and his children. He was a well-meaning busybody, one of the worst Monarchs ever known even in Italy. He laid a tax of twenty per cent upon all incomes ; this went to fatten a multitude of friars and to pay for batches of con- ii ITALY 157 verts from Judaism and heresy. The year 1700 was in Tuscany a mournful contrast to the year 1600. The peasants were handed over to Inquisitors and friars, and the clergy were relieved from taxation at the cost of the laity. Even Eome herself could not help laughing at the many antics of Duke Cosmo, though her votary. In 1691 a nobleman had wedded a certain lady. The Duke x out of complaisance to a Cardinal, had striven to hinder the match. He got the unlucky pair into his power, and then locked up the husband for life. The wife, to whom was given the choice, could not bring herself to share the husband's dungeon. But the Duke usually took great interest in effecting marriages, wasting much money upon dowries, which were given upon the recommendation of friars. One law was passed to prevent youths entering any house where girls were. New orders of monks were brought in from France and Spain. The clergy enjoyed greater privileges in Tuscany than even in the Eoman State. It was plainly high time for the Medici to die out and to make way for a line of wiser Princes. 1 We obtain a peep at Venice, about the time that she was conquering the Morea, from the pages of Freschot. 2 He has no great esteem for the Venetian clergy, who were very poorly endowed in comparison with their brethren throughout Italy. They did not here enjoy the prefix of Don, everywhere else the priest's title throughout the Peninsula. They were drawn from the lowest class, and boasted little learning or chastity. The Senate, however Eome might complain, would not check clerical vice. The Eegulars were on much the same level with regard to morality as the Seculars. The nuns were most unwilling to shut the parlours of their convents upon visitors of the other sex. Monks became very good actors, and performed plays in their monasteries, and this was the custom at Eome and Milan even among the strict Theatines. The Inquisitor, 1 See Galluzzi, lib. viii. 68, 76. The writer was born not long after these times. 2 This book, well worth studying, was printed at Utrecht in 1709. The writer was an honest Roman Catholic who waged war upon Misson, the Protestant writer of travels in Italy. 158 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. the Prior of St. Dominic, and a Bishop, all appeared in a box at a public theatre to see an opera ; but most monks wore a mask when at such amusements. It was these Operas, lasting for a season of four months, that brought such crowds of strangers to Venice. No such music was to be heard elsewhere in Italy. There were sometimes six Operas running at one time ; the salaries paid were extra- vagant. One foul blot on Venice was the number of castrated singers. A mighty hero would be represented by a squeaking eunuch, for this was the Italian taste. The courtesans were allowed great freedom, whereas in other Italian cities the clergy and the married men were sternly forbidden to have any dealings with these girls. Four huge hospitals at Venice sheltered swarms of foundlings and orphans. One noble Contarini opened his palace in the country to more than three hundred of these children, mostly girls. They were taught embroidery and lace- making, and those who had voices were trained for the stage. There were numbers of freethinkers at Venice who laughed at the many false hypocrites making a trade of religion and living by beggary. Nowhere was the Pope's authority more limited. Every Bull was carefully examined before it was allowed to be published. Cardinals never wore their robes in public. The State was most jealous. Thus the Greek Patriarch, sore oppressed by Turks, had fled to Venice. Innocent XI. was bent on driving his rival out, and to that end employed a clever Franciscan, a Professor at Padua, a man who had great influence with the whole of the Venetian nobility. The Pope by this friar sent a written promise of a Cardinal's hat on certain conditions to Nani, the historian, a man of the greatest weight. But Nani, who hoped speedily to become Doge, handed over the friar as an emissary of Home to the Inquisitors of State. The suspected traitor was kept for long in a dungeon, and came out half the man that he had been, as it seemed to Freschot, who tells the story. So hostile was Venice to the Pope that the Komans nicknamed the city " the Great Geneva." Deceased Lutherans were borne to the German Church II ITALY 159 (Koman Catholic) with full Church ritual, though later at night they were buried in the Lido. A French minister was even allowed to hold a Reformed service in a private house. But the State was not equally tolerant as to foreign ambassadors ; with these no free intercourse was allowed. One of the Contarini was in love with a lady ; he had no means of seeing her unless he scrambled over the house roof of an ambassador, her neighbour, in the dark. One night he was taken as he came down. He scorned to bring in the lady's name, and so he was hung up by one foot as being convicted of underhand dealings with a foreigner. Many years afterwards the lady on her death- bed owned the truth to her confessor. By his advice she stated the facts of the case in legal form, and thereupon the Senate re-established the deceased Contarini's honour. Venice was not as yet wholly corrupt. It seemed to foreign observers that the old Roman Senate was still living in those sages of the Adriatic, with their great white beards, long robes, and round bonnets, men who disposed of a revenue of four millions of ducats. 1 Burnet had seen the Land of St. Mark a few years earlier. He mourned over the decay of the University of Padua owing to the quarrels among the students. The State winked at factions among her subjects, since she made much money by allowing murderers, who were reckoned by thousands, to compound for their crimes. Venice would not allow her own subjects to bear arms, but hired foreigners. She had the noblest arsenal in the whole world. The war of Candia had been as damaging to Venice as that of Castro had been to Rome. The young nobles were to be seen idling in the Broglio when the war with the Turks was on foot. The right to nobility was now put up to sale. The morals of the women were dis- gusting. Yet Burnet, in common with most observers from Sixtus V. downwards, could not but admire the stability of the government of Venice, where the State Inquisitors made their power felt by all. They had many spies at work, chiefly among the Gondoliers. Our traveller did 1 This last sentence comes from Boussingault, Theatre, 45. 160 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. not visit Genoa, but heard that the Government there was so easy that multitudes were drawn to her barren soil, and money went there at two per cent. On the other hand the Genoese were said to be the worst people in Italy, and the most corrupted in their morals. 1 As to Parma she was soon to lose her Farnesi, and the wars of the age were to weigh heavily upon Modena. The very vilest pattern of an Italian Prince might be seen in the last Duke of Mantua, who for forty years afflicted his people, wasting their substance in the lowest debauchery, and not averse to murder. The condition of the Eoman State is clearly set before us by Father Labat, a French Dominican, who travelled there soon after 1700. The old proverb, he says, averred that the Pope had the flesh of Italy, while the Grand Duke had only the bones. The bones were now well covered, but the flesh belonging to the Pope was frightfully lean. In Eome the proportion of vowed celibates to those unshackled by vows was as one to twenty. 2 Monks were allowed access to the parlours of nunneries, though the police were always on the watch to catch unlawful intruders. Certain convents, filled with Princesses, were able to defy the police, who were three hundred in number, taken from the lowest and most contemptible of the population.^ One of the worst abuses was the privilege of Sanctuary for criminals ; it was called the Sacrato. Labat himself was almost shot by a ruffian who had taken shelter in a chapel at Tivoli. Out of ten murders in Italy, nine were due to this abuse, to which the clergy clung most steadfastly, and not the clergy alone. When the French held Mantua one of their soldiers, under great provocation, slew a man in sanctuary before the high altar. The people roared for the foreigner's blood, threatening a general rising ; but Marshal Catinat con- trived to smuggle him out of the city. The Austrian Viceroy at Naples seized an old woman, a hardened poisoner, who had sought refuge in a nunnery. The Cardinal Archbishop in consequence threatened to lay an interdict 1 See Burnet's Third Letter for Venice and Genoa. 2 Labat, Voyages, ii. 207, iii. 329. 3 Ibid. iii. 290. II ITALY 161 on the city, and he was at first backed by the people. The criminal was tortured, made to confess all, and then strangled. A compromise was made by restoring her dead body to the nunnery, and this seems to have satisfied the Prelate. One Viceroy put a stop to crime by sending men to shoot criminals in sanctuary through the windows or doors of the Church. Duels were sternly forbidden by the Pope, but this led to poisoning and to hiring assassins on a grand scale. 1 The bandits were most faithful to their salt. One of them when wounded, and all but caught by the police, cut out his own tongue with a knife, that the torture might never make him speak. The country police were usually Corsicans, bold and hardy, thieves set to catch thieves. 2 Civita Vecchia might have been made a good harbour, throwing both Genoa and Leghorn into the back- ground, but in these two latter cities the Inquisition had little power, therefore foreign merchants had no fear of taking up their abode there. 3 No galleys in the Medi- terranean could surpass those of the Pope ; some of the rowers served of their own freewill. There were about twenty-five bad priests and monks among the galley slaves. One of these, sent to row soon after Labat's residence at Civita Vecchia, had gone about preaching and performing miracles with a Crucifix that drooped its head. The Inqui- sition came down upon the knave and lodged him in the galleys for seven years. 4 Labat traversed the Papal States in all directions. He remarked at Anagni the badness of the harvests, which was said to be a consequence of the outrage perpe- trated on Boniface VIII. centuries earlier. 5 It was astonish- ing to him how the Italian people and priests took the part of Germany in the great war, and how they hoped that France would be dismembered. One monk had the ill-breeding to ask for a present from Labat on bringing him the news of Malplaquet. Yet the Germans had lately 1 Labat, Voyages, iv. 28-36. 2 Ibid. iv. 161-163. Corsicans were the favourite bodyguard of Napoleon III. 3 Ibid. iv. 233. 4 Ibid. 299, 321. * Ibid. 85. VOL. I M 162 EOME AND KEFORM CHAP. done much damage to Italy, and had exchanged blows with the Pope. 1 One of the brightest jewels in his Crown was Bologna. Here the Spaniards had a college for the study of Law, the pupils of which, most tenacious of their national dress and haughtiness, were afterwards called to high places in the Council at Madrid. There were other Colleges for the Germans, the Piedmontese, and the men of the Anconitan March, the countrymen of Sixtus V., the founder. It was said that the number of scholars amounted to ten thousand. No city in the world had finer convents. Justice was strict and taxation was light, the climate healthy, and food was astonishingly cheap. The Botanical garden was well maintained. The men of letters met two or three times a week at the house of Count Pepoli. Bologna was renowned not only for her University, but for her great activity in manufacturing. She was indeed a green spot in the surrounding wilderness. 2 Most different was Velletri, where Labat complained of the many con- vents that impoverished and unpeopled the State. If some of these were to be suppressed manufactures could be estab- lished. 3 The Franciscans and Dominicans lived in brotherly union throughout Italy, but it was very different in France and Spain. 4 The Roman Inquisition was most mild com- pared to that of Spain and Portugal. The Turkish galley slaves under the Pope were allowed to practise their religion freely. One of them became a convert, but was taken in the act of eating flesh on a Friday. He said, " You threw a little water over my head and then said that I was a Christian. Just so, I threw some water over the flesh and called it fish." He was mildly treated after this lapse. 5 Labat draws a sad picture of Sicily, which was full of murderers and thieves. The greatest of all blas- phemers were the Spaniards and Venetians ; after them came the Sicilians. 6 1 Labat, Voyages, 42, 52, 101. Can this be an expiring spark of the old Ghibelline spirit ? We know that when the Emperor Joseph II. came to Rome later, the populace bade him make himself at home, since he was in his own house. I think that these cries must be the last hint of any Italian Ghibellinism. 2 Ibid. ii. 234. 3 Ibid. viii. 78. 4 Ibid. vi. 226. 8 Ibid. 113. 6 Ibid. v. 201. II ITALY 163 The little territory owned by the Duke of Mantua was under a government worthier of the South than of the North of Italy. Here a wretch named Buselli found shelter, a pensioner of France ; he had been outlawed by all other States. He lived in a castle given him by the Duke, and subsisted by exactions on the wealthy of the neighbourhood. He had a hundred and fifty ruffians in his castle, whom he hired out as murderers for so much a crime ; his victims were innumerable. All this was affirmed to the English envoy at Vienna by the Emperor's Commissary, sent to all the Princes of Italy ; the tale was confirmed by Prince Commercy. 1 At the end of the Seventeeth century the great question of the Spanish Succession was about to force itself upon Europe. Were the wide dominions of the Spanish Crown in Europe and America to go to the French Bourbons or to the Austrian Hapsburgs, since the present possessor was sure to die childless, leaving the field clear for his kinsmen at Paris and Vienna ? Innocent XII. had all along leant to French interests ; of late years he had been more than ever estranged from Austria by the insolence of her envoy at Home. In 1 700 the Pope had the great question examined by a Commission of Cardinals and lawyers. These pro- nounced in favour of King Louis and his grandson, who in the end won the glittering prize, somewhat shorn of its lustre, after seas of blood had been shed. All Italians had a weighty stake in the question, since Lombardy, Southern Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia formed part of the rich booty now to be shared. The leaden Spanish yoke in Italy was soon to be broken. In 1700 Innocent XII. made way for the popular Albani, who took the name of Clement XL He was a young man to be Pope, and in spite of his asthma held his high office for more than twenty years. 2 The fighting began near Verona in the summer of 1701. The wary 1 Lexington Papers, 259. This ruffian, it was thought, meant to attempt the life of William III. in 1697. The Austrians, of course, did their best to prevent this attempt. Buselli lived about seventy years after Manzoni's L' Innominate. 2 His wretched health is described by Labat, Voyages, iii. 154. 164 EOME AND REFOKM CHAP. Pope, as Overlord, would give the investiture of Naples to neither Philip the Frenchman nor to Charles the Austrian. The Hapsburg party at Naples issued placards bearing the words " We have no King but Csesar." Some of the rioters were put to death after a short-lived rising. Turkish depredations went on ; seven men of war under the Moslem flag landed in Calabria and bore off three hundred of the inhabitants into slavery. The Ottoman, moreover, fortified a town on the Gulf, so carefully forbidden of old to any ships of war but those of Venice. 1 In 1703 the shifty Savoyard went back to the Austrian side. Three years later his renowned cousin, Prince Eugene, whose best troops were Prussian Protestants, settled the fate of Italy for many years by utterly routing the French at Turin. The great soldier tells us in his Memoirs that the luckless fugitives were slaughtered wholesale in the passes of the Alps by their old victims, the oppressed Vaudois. Much money of course was needed, and the Austrians exacted tribute from Parma, the vassal of the Church. Clement in vain issued censures against this iniquity. In 1707 he saw his dominions overrun by the victorious Austrians, who marched by way of Tivoli to the conquest of the South with little more than eight thousand men. The fickle Neapolitans broke in pieces a fine statue of King Philip just set up. "When Gaeta fell, the last trace of Spanish rule in Southern Italy vanished. The Austrian forbade his new subjects to remit any money to Eome ; he seized Mantua for himself, while he allowed the Duke of Savoy to take Montferrat. The ruler of Parma was ordered to seek investiture for his fiefs from the Emperor within fifteen days a direct challenge to the Pope. Clement, angry at the loss of his town of Commacchio, armed twenty thousand soldiers and made levies among the Swiss. But in 1709, in spite of a stubborn resistance, he was forced to 1 Cole's Historical Memoirs, p. 460. At p. 493 of this book we learn that about 1707 the Jesuits at Constantinople were able to bring over the richest part of the Armenians. Hence came violent disputes, and the Turk was induced to interfere, thinking that he should lose his customary tribute. Many of the renegades were put to death unless they would profess the Koran. This was quite contrary to all Turkish maxims of old. ii ITALY 165 recognise Charles as King of Spain, whereupon Louis and his grandson withdrew their ambassadors from Rome. All the Pope's revenues from Spain were stopped for two years. Rome might well cry out against the loss of her old freedom; the Austrian was far worse in his exactions than the Spaniard had been. In 1713 came the Treaty of Utrecht. Britain had already by her fleet mastered the Sardinian shores. She and Holland, both heretical powers, had much to say as to the disposal of Italian duchies and kingdoms, some of which had been for nearly seven hundred years fiefs of the Papacy. The Duke of Savoy was rewarded with Sicily. He forthwith went to take possession of his lovely new dominions, and soon embarked in a quarrel with Pope Clement as to the revenues due to Rome from the island. Some towns in Sicily were laid under an interdict. More than four hundred of the Sicilian clergy fled to their ghostly Father, their new Temporal Lord having decreed that the old uses or abuses must be upheld. Meanwhile Lombardy and Southern Italy, as well as Sardinia, went to Charles, who had become Emperor. 1 Spain, now held by Philip the Bourbon, seemed to have lost all her Italian dominions, lands enjoyed by her for two hundred years ; but she would not resign herself to this loss without a struggle. Her Queen, the heiress of the Farnesi, was biding her time, bent on revenge. In 1715 the Christians were engaged in a new war with the Turks, in which the Emperor won the Banat and Venice lost the Morea. Pope Clement fitted out galleys and sent money in aid of the common Faith. He had guaranteed the Emperor's dominions during the war, and was much astonished at the quarter whence a new storm threatening 1 Pope Clement fretted more as an Italian King than as Head of the Church. He complained to the famous Lambertini of the mishaps of his Pontificate. The other thought that he was referring to the French quarrel about the Bull Unigenitus. " Oh no ! " said Clement, "I mean the German troops that ravage our State. If the faith is lost in France, a thousand apostles will return to preach it again ; but when the soldiers have ruined our country, all the apostles in;the world will not bring back one cabbage." Lambertini told this thirty years later to De Brosse. See the President's Letters, chapter xlii. 166 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. the Empire seemed likely to burst. Clement had given the Eed Hat to Alberoni, the Italian statesman, who was now toiling hard to galvanise effete Spain into life. The new Cardinal must have appeared afar off like a blazing comet to his sober, steady old brethren whose post was at Rome. The Hat was a reward for a promised Spanish fleet, which was to attack the Turks in the good old orthodox way. Greatly astonished was the Pope when this same Spanish fleet steered for Sardinia, now a part of the Austrian dominions. The Emperor was most angry with Clement for falling a victim to Alberoni's trickery, and the Eoman Court was therefore for the time deprived of its revenues from Naples. Sicily as well as Sardinia was seized by the Spaniards, but in 1*718 the Quadruple Alliance was formed against them, and their fleet was destroyed by Byng. Alberoni, a statesman worthy of a better fate, was overthrown late in 1719, and in the next year peace was made. To Victor Amadeus was allotted (a hard bargain) Sardinia instead of Sicily, which went to the Emperor. Pope Clement in vain protested against the decree of the European Powers, since they granted Parma to a certain claimant without the least regard to the feudal rights of the Papacy. Alberoni, against whom a process at Eome had been begun, had the assurance to come to the Conclave which made the new election in 1721. He was forgiven his trespasses and was entrusted by later Popes with important posts. Three years afterwards one of the Orsini became Pope, taking the title of Benedict XIII. 1 It is worth while to glance at his Pontificate, since it proves that the best of friars may make the worst of Kings. He had been a Dominican, and even when Pope would take his meals at the well-known convent which bears the name of Minerva, and would kiss the hand of the General of the Order. He would visit the poor on their beds of sickness, 1 This election produced these lines : II Cielo vuol Orsini, II Popolo Corsini, Le Donne Ottoboni, II Diavolo Alberoni. ii ITALY 167 and he put down the lottery, sending transgressors to the galleys and disregarding the loss sustained by the Papal treasury. But he took for his minister Cardinal Coscia, whose system seems to have been one long course of rapine and forgery. At his patron's death in 1730 the Cardinals took vengeance on the evil minister even before the new Pope, Clement XII., a Corsini, had been chosen. This ruler imprisoned other officials of Benedict's, and rather later condemned Coscia to ten years' imprisonment, depriv- ing him of all his pensions and benefices. 1 Keysler gives us a sketch of Italy as it stood about 1730. Victor Amadeus was still reigning, and his city of Turin was renowned for bigotry, a character that it kept until 1848. Books sold publicly in Eome and Naples could hardly be asked for at Turin. Death was the punish- ment meted out to Jews who spoke ill of the Saints or of images. For four days in Passion week every Jew had to keep his doors and windows shut and was forbidden to stir out ; if he sang or played in those days he was whipped. Yet King Victor Amadeus would not grant to the clergy exemption from lay jurisdiction. He would not allow the right of asylum in Savoy, though in other places the mob were vehement in its favour. He forbade the Jesuits to keep schools, while new public schools were founded at Turin. The other religious orders rejoiced at the blow inflicted on the crestfallen Jesuits, and two Dominicans maintained in the University several theses which cut at the root of Ultramontanism. The Vaudois, numbering more than thirty thousand souls, met with fair toleration. Every one of them who could bear arms had turned out against the French in the late war. The clergy in Piedmont lived in a decent and orderly manner, and were sharply distinguished from their brethren in the rest of Italy. The laity were quick- witted, and the Bull Unigenitus had many foes. The troops were largely recruited from Protestant lands, and were paid a small sum if they went over to Eome. One 1 It is curious to observe how Muratori says hardly a word against Coscia in his account of the old Pope's life, but breaks out vehemently against the minister as soon as the old Pope is dead. 168 KOME AND KEFORM CHAP. regiment was made up mostly of French refugees. Eight of the officers threw up their commissions rather than kneel to the Host. Italy was now nearly free from brigands, owing to the stern methods of which Naples had set the example. The laws in Piedmont were admirable. Her great trade was in silks, the best in Italy, though the brocades did not equal those of France. The nobles were hardly used; in 1724 there had been a resumption of former grants by the Crown. 1 At Milan there were 110 monasteries, 250 churches, and 170 schools. The forces in Lombardy numbered 18,000 men, whose arms and clothing came from Germany. The ladies of the higher classes lived the gayest of lives, and the women of the lower class managed the shops. Convent life was much relaxed. Even in 1730 the great picture of Leonardo da Vinci is described as bearing too many marks of the injuries of time, and as being spoilt by rain penetrating through the wall. The Inquisition still existed at Milan in a Dominican convent ; the Jews were the chief victims. A priest had lately had his thumbs and some of his fingers burnt to a coal before being hanged ; his crime had been that he had celebrated Mass before receiving his Bull of Ordination. The hospitals were well managed under the inspection of nineteen of the chief nobles. No country in the world equalled Italy in the care of the poor and sick. 2 Keysler was astonished at the number of pictures in Italy. There were said to be fifteen thousand of the Last Supper and fifty thousand of the Annunciation. The convents were great patrons of art, having more money than they knew what to do with, and whatever was laid out on their churches was reimbursed by the gainful resort of pilgrims. The legacies of dying sinners were another source of income, as was Purgatory. The different Orders, jealous as ever, rivalled each other in pomp and show. Still the con- stant building caused money to circulate, and this was better for the country than that jewels should lie idle at Loretto. 3 1 Keysler's Travels, i. 243-300. 2 Ibid. 310, 312, 339, 342. 3 Ibid. ii. 216. n ITALY 169 At Naples, a city of blood and unnatural lust, the old hag Tofana might still be seen, the inventress of the poisonous water. She was said to have made away with some hundreds of people, but her life had been spared on her entering a religious sisterhood. There were eighteen thousand courtesans in Naples, and the clergy often lodged in the most infamous part of the town. These last were exempt from civil jurisdiction, and their excesses were hushed up ; any complaint against them by laymen was looked upon as the height of insolence. The peasants preferred begging or robbing to labour, but some nourish- ing manufactures were carried on in the city. 1 The standing army in the Kingdom did not exceed fourteen thousand, to maintain the new Austrian sway. There were 445 barons, and rather more noblemen of a higher rank, all vassals of the Crown and very poor. The streets of Naples were not lighted at night, and were therefore most dangerous. The number of inhabitants was 300,000. Their active spirit of inquiry often led them into atheism. Molinos had a strong party in the city, and there were many who were Jansenisfs at heart. Nowhere in Italy did booksellers enjoy such freedom ; Protestant works on religion were openly sold ; 2 Austria seems to have been more tolerant than Spain. The number of pilgrims to Loretto was about fifty thousand in a year ; the poorer sort were received in a hospital for three days. The offices were sometimes sung by eunuchs, who were not excluded from the priesthood if they had been mutilated in childhood. A long list of offerings is given, coming from most parts of Europe. Superfluous gems were sometimes converted into money, for foreign jewellers were well known to visit professionally the convents of Italy and to pick up bargains. The treasures of Loretto on the least appearance of danger were sent to Ancona. The yearly revenue of the Holy House was thirty thousand crowns, besides the offerings of 1 It was a proverb that a Viceroy, to keep the people quiet, must provide three Fs, feste, farine, forche. 2 Keysler, ii. 368-371, 380. 170 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. pilgrims. Fourteen thousand pounds of wax were consumed every year in the House and the Church ; the country around swarmed with beggars. 1 The University of Padua was now in a state of decay ; the students were barely five hundred. They insulted any one who walked the streets after dusk ; for their benefit courtesans were publicly tolerated. Protestants, if matri- culated in the University, might be buried in a church or convent. 2 At Venice the fine old ceremony of wedding the sea, a rite in which both the Doge and the Patriarch bore their part, might still be seen. The latest Bucentaur had been built two years before Keysler's visit. The Pope's Inquisition was not allowed to meddle with Jews, Greeks, or witchcraft ; it took cognisance only of heresy and of the abuse of the sacraments. The Host was carried privately, and not publicly, to the sick. A Lutheran preacher was connived at, who had to dress in a lay habit. There was no law of primogeniture; hence many noble houses, being debarred from commerce, came to poverty ; some of them were unable to keep a servant. Only one brother in a family married, a source of much vice, openly practised. Sometimes three or four nobles combined to keep a mistress. So ill-bred were these patricians that they would spit from their opera boxes upon persons in the pit below. The State in war employed mercenaries hired from the German Princes. It was well known that Venetian plebeians had no love for the nobles, and could not be trained to arms. Venice was the modern Carthage. The trade of Murano was much decayed, as other nations had now surpassed Venice in the art of making glass. The Venetian clergy were not renowned for either learning or morality. The nuns objected to strict discipline, as many of them had been persuaded to take the vows for the behoof of their families. Venetian statesmanship saw clearly the harm done to a State by Papal encroachments ; the number of churches, convents, and hospitals in Venice was said to be ISO. 3 1 Keysler, iii. 33, 36-46. 2 lUd. 202, 238. 3 Ibid. 266, 273, 275, 289, 299, 303. II ITALY 171 After 1720 Italy enjoyed thirteen years of peace, if we except the beginning of the struggle between Genoa and the Corsicans. In 1731 the Farnesi of Parma died out in the male line, though the renowned Elizabeth, Queen of Spain, the last who bore the family name of Pope Paul III., still survived. She was able to secure Parma for her son Charles, who made it a stepping-stone to Naples. Two years later a new war broke out between Austria on the one hand, France, Spain, and Sardinia on the other. Southern Italy threw off the harsh Austrian yoke after an experience of twenty-six years, Sicily did the like, and Charles the Bourbon, getting the better of Charles the Hapsburg, was able to found a line that was to last at Naples and Palermo for a hundred and thirty years. 1 In this year, 1733, Prince Eugene was not far from the grave, and Britain would give no help. Austria, therefore, now came to the end of that wonderful career of prosperity that had cheered her for the last fifty years at the expense of Turkey and Spain. The next thirty years were to show a mournful difference. Both Austrians and Spaniards had treated Pope Clement's territory with great contempt. In 1737 the heirs-male of the Medici in Tuscany, after their house had lasted two hundred years, came to an end in the person of Giovan Gastone, who had passed much of his time iff bed. He was replaced, so Europe had willed, by various Princes of the house of Lorraine, under whom Tuscany throve most happily. Another European war broke out in 1740, and this time the wary King of Sardinia, after long thought, ranged himself on the Austrian side. He was bent on the hereditary policy of his house, making ready to eat the Lombard artichoke leaf by leaf. Few families can rival the house of Savoy in the warriors and statesmen it bore within the space of two hundred years after 1550. Austrians 1 Foscarini explains in a masterly treatise (Archivio Storico Italiano, v. ) how the Emperor lost the hearts of the Italians chiefly by thrusting Spanish officials upon them, his old partisans in the Succession war. After reading this treatise we are not surprised at the Venetian rhymes of 1763 Gran Papa Lambertini, Gran Doge Foscarini, etc 172 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. and Spaniards once more fought out their quarrel in Southern Italy, and behaved with small courtesy to the Pope and his subjects. The chief result of this war in Italy was that Parma and Piacenza were handed over to Philip, a younger son of Elizabeth Farnese and her Bourbon husband. In 1746 Genoa burst forth with one last flash of her old spirit. The Austrian plunderers in her streets were assailed by a sudden rising of the artisans, and were driven out with the loss of eight thousand men. The whole tale reads like a foretaste of the insurrection at Milan a hundred years later. We turn away from these scenes of blood to consider a plan, proposed by a foreigner in 1745, a plan that might have proved a vast boon to down-trodden Italy. D'Argenson at Paris was fully alive to the evil state of Europe. He wished to change the anarchical constitution of Poland into an hereditary monarchy under the Saxon line. He further advised that Italy should be made a confederation on the German model, with a permanent Diet ; that Austria should be driven over the Alps ; that Italian rulers, such as the new King of Naples, should never be allowed to hold possessions out of Italy. The French statesman was even willing to give up Savoy to the Sardinian King. But such a man as D'Argenson was out of his place at the worthless French Court ; Louis XV. intrigued against him, and dismissed him early in 1747. This statesman, more akin in his views to Cavour than to Fleury, had the lot of La Bourdonnais and Dupleix. Far-seeing Frenchmen were not in request at this particular time. 1 Genoa, happier in her plebeians than in her patricians, might blaze up for a moment, but her old rival Venice, after a stirring life of thirteen hundred years, was now slowly rotting away. Already, in 1701, the French Am- bassador had remarked upon the debauchery and self-conceit rampant among her nobles, and upon the State debt, which made heavy taxation necessary. Venice had in this Century 1 See Martin, Histoire de France, for 1746. D'Argenson used to be called la Mte, because his manners were not up to the Versailles mark. He had more foresight than elegance. JI ITALY 173 neither money, nor credit, nor friends. The clergy held enormous possessions, and were most unwilling to be taxed by the State ; they were more numerous, in proportion to the whole population, than their brethren in France, or even in Spain. As to morals, Venice had long been to Europe what Paris became later, the Paradise of gamesters and debauchees, whither many a stout soldier came to fling away the money earned in his hard campaigns. 1 There were of course no divorces, but shameless suits for nullity of marriage abounded, as they did in Poland rather later. At one time all the courtesans were driven out. Soon afterwards these " well-deserving " women (so runs the decree) were recalled. Mothers would sell their daughters by a contract, bearing the signature of a public officer. There was a huge Kedoute, where eighty gaming tables were set out. Here grave patricians, most unlike the old Contarini and Foscari, stooped to be hirelings of Jews, and openly held the bank, while the other players, male and female, were bound to wear masks. This sickening tale was soon to have an end. 2 Matters were hardly better at Malta. Lord Charlemont, who visited the Isle of Valour in 1750, tells us that there was not in the world so debauched a set of men as the military monks. The vows of celibacy made the town one vast brothel ; almost every woman was a knight's mistress. Hither, as to a mart, flocked the votaries of Venus from distant lands. Drinking, though dangerous in so hot a climate, was much the fashion among the German knights. If Venus was active, Mars was idle ; hardly any harm was done to Turkish ships. 3 We can imagine the state of things when there were some hundreds of thousands of men and women in Italy bound by monastic vows in the days when abbots, purple as their wines, could still afford to slumber. We are allowed a peep at the general state of Italy in 1739 by the future President De Brosse, a Burgundian, 1 Venice ruined the health of the young heir of Tuscany in 1696. Not long afterwards the Medici came to an abrupt end. See Galluzzi, lib. viii. 232. 2 See the 35th Book of Daru's Histoire de Venise. 3 Hardy's Life of Charlemont, i. 45. 174 EOME AND REFOEM CHAP. whose name will ever be dear to all lovers of keen wit and antiquarian lore. He tells us that men of intellect and merit abound more at Florence than elsewhere. He thinks the populace of Naples the most disgusting vermin on the face of the earth, men who spend their lives in doing nothing, and who live on the convents. From him we have one of the earliest accounts of the wonders of Hercu- laneum. But Eome was the great object of his travels. He had but a cold welcome on entering her gates, for the police took away his guide-book, as it was written by the Protestant Misson. He might have had it back if he had stooped to tell a lie to St. Peter's successor, but he remem- bered the fate of Ananias. 1 De Brosse reviews the Popes of his time; he has high praise for Innocent XIII. (Conti), and great scorn for Benedict XIII. and his precious minister Coscia. The Pope of 1739 was Clement XII. (Corsini), whose gorgeous chapel may be seen at the Lateran. He was now not far from ninety ; he had been blind for most of his Pontificate, and used to remark that through life he had in his circumstances always changed for the worse. 2 Among the Cardinals of this date were the old firebrand Alberoni, now condemned to fly at no higher game than the little State of San Marino ; the learned Quirini ; Borghese, whose Eed Hat had been bought for a round sum from Coscia, the knave who was to be fetched out of prison to vote at the next Papal election ; Tencin from France, who was thought likely to create the future Pope ; Passionei, a collector of rare books, a man free in his manners, with a lofty scorn of all hypocrisy. Then there were the two Albani, whose house had vast influence in the Church throughout the whole of this Century ; one of them was a most discerning patron of art. Last, and greatest of all, was Lambertini the Bolognese, a master of Canon Law, said to lean to Jansenism, virtuous in all his actions, but using phrases fitter for a grenadier than a priest ; witty 1 Misson seems to have been the Baedeker or Murray of those times. I do not quote from him, as he was a strong Huguenot. 2 His words were, "Son stato un ricco Abbate, un comodo Prelato, un povero Cardinale, ed un Papa spiantato." II ITALY 175 and utterly void of pride. In him his renowned mother, Bologna, made a noble gift to Italy and to the world. These men had charge of the Church in ticklish times when statesmen were ready to kiss the Pope's feet, provided always that they might tie his hands. Jansenism was well known in Italy ; there it raised no debates as to the Five Propositions or as to efficacious Grace, but it had much to say on the Infallibility of the Pope. As to the Jesuits, an impartial judge saw that they were in the right in their dispute against the Pope and his Legates on the great Chinese question, but it was equally clear that they had fought against the Papal Bulls with fury worthy of the Jansenists. 1 The world was becoming wiser, and the witty De Brosse was to see wondrous changes in clerical circles, to be followed after his death by other changes at Paris still more astonishing. Clement XII. had borne many slights from the various Powers who claimed to dispose of Italy. He was succeeded by Benedict XIV., the Lambertini already mentioned, who reigned from 1740 to 1758. 2 Men who entertain a strong aversion to Rome and the things of Rome have united to extol this Pope, a most learned man, tolerant, wary, and kind-hearted, fonder of a joke than any of his predecessors. In his days Genovesi, the first professor of political economy irr Italy, made the writings of Leibnitz and Locke known at Naples. The bold innovator was of course persecuted, but found a protector in Pope Benedict. Genovesi and Liguori represent the two opposite poles of Italian thought at this date. The new Pope wisely made concessions to the different Courts of Europe ; even in Southern Italy, his special fief, he allowed the old rights of the Papacy to be curtailed. One of the signs of the times was that the priests were now taxed for the benefit of the State. In Austria the holidays enforced by the Church were, with the Pope's sanction, diminished. His favour to France was 1 See De Brosse's Letters, especially 42 and 46. 2 Muratori ends his Annals, my best guide for the last hundred years, in 1749. He praises all the governments then existing in Italy, and has a bout with an Ultramontane critic to wind up. 176 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. most evident. In a discussion with Montfaucon, Benedict remarked, " Fewer Gallican liberties on your part, fewer Ultramontane claims on our part, and all will go right." By his Bull of 1756 he came to the help of the French Jansenists, who were much vexed on their deathbeds by fanatics of the other party. For this kindly interposition Louis XV., with unwonted wisdom, thanked the Pope ; the fatal Bull Unigenitus was by degrees dropped. Benedict accepted from Voltaire the dedication of Mahomet, but this was at a time when the philosopher had not fairly spoken out. 1 The Pope allowed Maria Theresa to tolerate Protes- tants in her States. " They will never be converted," he wrote to her, " unless by persuasion and gentleness." He showed himself, when there was a question of filling the See of Breslau, wiser than the great Frederick. Even the Sultan was one of Benedict's admirers. The Pope abolished the Inquisition in Tuscany, though he could not do the like in Spain. Protestants now ceased to talk of the Beast with ten horns ; the epitaph, written for Benedict by Horace Walpole, has often been quoted. " He would make us all Papists if he came to London," said one Briton. The Pope had the best English and French books translated into Italian ; his own works consist of sixteen huge volumes, published by him not as*Pope, but as a private Doctor, thus welcoming criticism.. He was the friend of Mont- faucon, Muratori, and Noris illustrious names. As to his own States, he was the enemy of usurers and sham nobles ;. he favoured freedom of commerce ; he diminished the number of holidays and the number of Indulgences. He restricted the condemnation of books by the Index. He took part against the Jesuits in the matter of the Chinese ceremonies. He would never, like two of his successors, have enjoined the degradation of Protestants in Poland and France. Benedict was probably the wittiest, as well as the most learned, of all the Popes, and some serious men have reproached him with his love of joking, which never left 1 Voltaire's line on the learned Benedict is well known Qui mundura scriptis docuit, virtutibus ornat. ii ITALY 177 him. The Eomans wished that he had trusted less to his ministers, and had himself taken a greater share in the Government. He bestowed favours on all, except on his own kinsmen and on religious impostors. Some most learned hisfew?ieal"WOf^s"were produced at Home in his reign. He was borne to the grave, amid universal mourning, ""in 1758. 1 ""'Benedict had done well to keep on good terms with his own cKitcfren, for the revolted part of Christendom seemed now to be waxing stronger than ever ; the powers of dark- ness were overmatching the sons of light. Britain and Eussia had long made their mark in the world. In Benedict's time they were reinforced by a third State that was soon to throw both the practical might of Austria and the theoretical claims of the Holy Koman Empire altogether into the shade. The Papal kingdoms were, moreover, divided within them- selves. The theories of Molina, adopted by the Jesuits, assailed by the Dominicans and the later Jansenists, had been solemnly espoused by Pope Clement XI. in the famous Bull Unigenitus, put forth in 1713. Against this docu- ment a ceaseless war was waged by a powerful party in France, a party which soon had offshoots in Spain, Italy, and elsewhere. 2 Jansenism was the great enemy of the strict Eoman claims in the earlier half of this Eighteenth century. A still more dangerous foe was to crop up in the latter half. The Jesuits fought manfully on behalf of Eome, but their right hand seemed to have forgotten her cunning. 1 I wish that a proper Life of Benedict XIV. could be written. I have taken my owfi'"sTefcTTof Tiimlrom "fBS^Siographie Universelle of 1811 and the Nouvelle Biographie G&nerale of 1855. Tt is amusing to find that Rohr- bacher, in his History of the Catholic Church, leaves out nearly all the points that a Protestant admires most in Benedict. This author, however, enables me to add one more fine trait. The Pope in 1741 heard from weeping peasants that the landowners would not allow them to glean in the fields at the end of the harvest. He published two Encyclicals restoring to the peasants this right, so emphatically enjoined in the Old Testa- ment. * Thus Cardinal Fleury writes in 1740, "The opposition that (the Jesuits) find at the Roman Court shows that the Jansenists find there many untterhand protectors." Ravignan, Clement XIII. i. 17. VOL. I N II 178 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. They had found nothing but sheer brute force to oppose the keen assaults of Pascal and Arnauld. All the intellect of Christendom was driven to take sides against the sons of Loyola. Even the other religious Orders bore no love to these redoubtable rivals. Eeform was now in the air ; Choiseul, Aranda, Tanucci, Pombal, were soon to take the lead in different countries of Southern Europe, ministers all alike averse to priestly prerogative and to worn-out systems. Pope Benedict had already condemned the peculiar practices of the Jesuits in their foreign missions, where they had to face the loud complaints of Franciscan and Dominican rivals. Pombal, the great Portuguese minister, who had learned much in England, was opposed by the Jesuits in Paraguay. He demanded from the Pope a reform of the Order. Another point of attack was the commercial enterprise of the Society, an old story ; this point was pressed more especially in France. Benedict, dying in 1758, would have left a hard task to his successor, even had that successor been a man like- minded with himself. The new Pope, Clement XIII. (Rezzonico) was a Venetian, but his principles were most opposite to those of his great countryman, Sarpi. Former Popes had usually found one or two crowned heads to back them in troublous times. Clement was to stand alone, holding on with unslackened grasp to all the old powers of the Papacy. He was strong on the Bull In ccend Domini ; it was suppressed at Venice and Parma, but the wearer of St. Charles's mitre resisted the Austrian governor of Milan and stood true to the famous Bull. 1 Another stone of stumbling was religious toleration, which was making strides even in Italy. In 1761 the Venetian Government allowed the Greek schismatics of Dalmatia to have a Bishop of their own in spite of the severe reproaches contained in a Papal brief. 2 We are now far from the time when the Greek subjects of Venice used to cry, " Rather the Turk than the Latin ! " 1 Ravignan, Clement XIII. atul XIV. i. 227. In p. 54 we learn that even Clement would not tolerate all the Jesuit writings ; he solemnly con- demned a work by Father Berruyer. 2 Daru, Venise, tome v. 62. ii ITALY 179 Seven years later the Venetian Senate seemed to declare war on the clergy. A report was made upon the ever- growing wealth of that body, and upon their efforts to baffle all restrictive laws. More than 4,600,000 Masses had to be said by the monks every year ; 4,200,000 were celebrated by the secular priests. The clergy, taken as a whole, enjoyed a revenue of more than 4,000,000 ducats, a sum almost equalling the income of the State, which did not tax the clergy. They numbered more than 45,000 ; they were at this time in Venice, compared with the laity, as one to fifty-four ; in Spain, as one to sixty-three ; in France, as one to a hundred and fifty. A diminution in the number of the Venetian clergy was now effected. Morals were most corrupt ; there was no divorce, as among Pro- testants, but the most shameless allegations of nullity of marriage were made and accepted by both judges and priests ; the same state of things existed at Warsaw. Brothels and convent parlours were alike free to libertines. The State was so rotten that it had no right to reckon upon long life. 1 Pope Clement XIII. could see little to amend in the Jesuits, the most skilful oarsmen in St. Peter's Bark. Hardly had he been elected, than the well-known attempt on the life of the Portuguese King was made. Pombal asserted that the Jesuits were at the bottom of the plot, and drove them to the shores of the Papal States. The French Parliament fell upon the Society in consequence of a commercial law- suit. The constitutions of the Jesuits were made a matter of public scrutiny. Their General, Bicci, an ally worthy of Clement, would not hear of any alteration of the con- stitutions ; " Be they as they are, or be they not at all," was his last word. In 1762 the French Parliament, acting in the teeth of the Pope, expelled the Jesuits, then numbering four thousand, from France for ever, and this was confirmed by King Louis two years later. Charles III. caused every house of the Order in Spain to be closed in one day, and inflicted great cruelty upon the brethren. Naples followed the example set. Clement had seen his Bulls burnt by the French Parliaments ; he was now 1 Daru, Venise, tome v, 88-98. 180 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. braved even by his own vassal, the Duke of Parma, who cared not for excommunication. These Bourbon Sovereigns all acted together, and seized temporarily on three of the Pope's towns. All the Italian States sided against Clement ; even the pious Maria Theresa, when besought to interfere, made answer that the affair was one of State policy, not of religion. In 1769 the Bourbons demanded the suppres- sion of the hated brotherhood. In that year they were able to decide a most weighty business, the election of the new Pope, Ganganelli, who took the name of Clement XIV. The Italian Cardinals, friends of the Jesuits, in vain with- stood. He, the most blameless of mankind, belonged to a widely different school from his predecessor, and he well knew that the days of Hildebrand were gone for ever. He began by suppressing the Bull In ccend Domini, a legacy to the world from Pope Pius V. Clement made conciliation his watchword ; he had leanings to Jansenism, which was widespread in Italy. The Jesuits fought hard to the last. In 17*71 they exposed a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary on an altar lately erected in the Coliseum. Pope Benedict XIV., it was well known, had not approved of this devotion, as he knew how much the people are attached to material objects ; and Clement XIV., when a Cardinal, had argued against his predecessors' proposal to establish a particular office in honour of the Sacred Heart. The Bishop, who had furnished the new picture, wherein Marie Alacoque figured, was now ordered to leave Rome. Cardinal de Bernis writes that the heretics and the impious are laughing at these novelties, and that the fanatics by these means are strengthening their party. 1 Another print was well known all through Rome ; in the middle was the General of the Jesuits, with his hands bound ; beside him the Pope, asking, " What shall I do with this man ? " The Bourbon Sovereigns were shouting " Crucify him ! " . The King of Sardinia remarked, " I find no cause of death in him." The Emperor said, " I am innocent of the blood of this just person." King Frederick put in, " What will ye give me, and I will betray him unto you ? " 1 Le Cardinal de Bernis, par Masson, 184. n ITALY 181 Underneath the whole was written, " They took counsel how they might take him with guile and kill him." The Jesuits, in despair, even caught at alliance with England ; never were English Princes so well received in high Eoman society as at this time. 1 But near at hand stood the cold, implacable Monino, the Spanish Ambassador, who insisted on nothing less than the suppression of the great Brotherhood. Spain had indeed altered her views of late years. A Commission sat upon the Jesuits. All the old charges against them were discussed : their undue love of authority in things temporal ; their enmity to the other Orders ; their immoral doctrines ; their winking at heathen rites in the East ; their hankering after riches and com- merce. At length, in the summer of 1773, Clement issued his decree, which he called at the time his own death-warrant. "We do extirpate and abolish the Society of Jesus, its offices, houses, and institutions." For two hundred and thirty years the Jesuits, the asserters of the highest Papal claims, had waged war on Protestants and Greeks. Now Home by her new decree seemed to bear witness to all the world that this war had been waged in vain. Britain, Prussia, Eussia, were the States with a future before them. France, Spain, Austria, and, above all, Poland, had been dragged down below their fair level by some mysterious power. Clement XIV. himself died in 1774, after undergoing agonies of mind and body for many months. Whether he was poisoned by the Jesuits or not is one of the debatable points of history. 2 The Holy See had not yet been pro- nounced infallible in questions of faith and morals, for the famous Archbishop of Paris denounced the suppression as " an isolated judgment, dishonourable to the Tiara, damaging to the glory of the Church and to the maintenance of the Faith." 3 De Beaumont's voice might be drowned in the joyous shouts of French Jansenists and Voltaireans, but at headquarters there were many to keep him in countenance. 1 Le Cardinal de Eernis, par Masson, 203, 204. - The next Pope believed that Clement was poisoned. Still, the argu- ments on the other side seem to be of most weight. 3 Jervis, Church of France, ii. 365. 182 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. The next Pope was informed by the Spanish Minister at the Vatican that great part of Eome pursued Clement XIV. with a hatred so unbecoming that even heretics were scandalised. That Pope had gone only a little further than Innocent XL and Innocent XIII. Popes such as Pius V., Sixtus V., Clement VIII., and Benedict XIV. had not been favourable to the Jesuits. 1 These old champions of Eome could now find shelter nowhere but in the dominions of the Prussian and Eussian sovereigns, where the talent of the brethren in educating youth was highly prized. In 1783 the Jesuits discovered at Eome a new Saint, the French beggar Labre. His prophecies, not unfavourable to their Order, were freely circulated ; miracles were wrought. The Saint's life, after his death, was composed by an ex- Jesuit ; but the book was suddenly withdrawn when it became known that Labre in his early days had approved of Jansenist works. The whole tale afforded much mirth to Cardinal de Bernis, who then repre- sented France at Eome, a good type of the Present order of things as opposed to the Future. 2 Few suspected what that Future was to be ; the revelation was to come trumpet- tongued in 1789. For forty years or more Italy had enjoyed peace before the rough awakening came. Marshes were drained and much attention was paid to roads and harbours ; the suppression of the Jesuits seemed to kindle new fire in the Universities. In the North there was vast improvement. Most unlike was the present Austrian sway to the past Spanish yoke. Earlier in the Century, Giannone, the denouncer of the yearly Neapolitan miracle, had been kidnapped to be put in the Inquisition for many years, in spite of his great historical lore ; his age had not become ripe for truth. But rather later Beccaria at Milan wrote the famous work which caused a revolution in European thought as to crimes and their punishment. Alfieri, another Northern man, created Italian tragedy, and directed the attention of his countrymen to nobler models than any they had known 1 This long State Paper is set out by Saint Priest, Chute des Jesuites, 366. 2 See his Letters in Saint Priest, Chute des Jesuites, 335-345. II ITALY 183 for two Centuries. The Emperor Joseph II. was now doing much for Lombardy. He made the University of Pavia one of the first schools in Europe. He would allow no Papal Bulls to be published without his leave. He suppressed useless convents and gave small heed to remonstrances from Koine. His brother Leopold, an equally enlightened Prince, though a busybody, reformed the laws of Tuscany, made war on feudal privileges, and did much for commerce and agriculture. We have a sketch of him from the pen of Dupaty, who talked with him in 1785. The Prince complained much of English travellers, not one in fifty of whom ever halted to see hospitals ; they thought more of the punch and tea in the inns. He insisted on the benefits of free trade, which he had established after careful study of the matter. He could not, he said, get rid of beggary, since it was favoured by religious prejudices, and supersti- tion was very ready to talk of impiety. Beggary had roots under the altars. Men of science durst not write on certain topics, since even the Grand Duke could not save them from the consequences of excommunication. But things were brightening. There was no longer imprison- ment for debt. The punishment of death, as also torture, was not yet forbidden, but there had not been an execu- tion for ten years. Leopold spoke of the scandal caused by asylums for criminals at Rome, and of the impossibility of good government in the Ecclesiastical States. One Bull excommunicated all who exported certain things into Tuscany. Leopold's children, who were to have such influence upon Europe, were found by Dupaty studying Locke and Montesquieu. The Prince had paid off almost all his troops and had suppressed many taxes. He had made roads, established manufactures, and built hospitals, taking care that the rooms were airy ; he was hailed as the Father of the Poor. He had put down a great number of holy days. The nobles, priests, monks, and placemen were not altogether pleased by these reforms. The first- named class gave itself to the opera, to devotion, and to Cicisbeism. 1 1 Dupaty, Lettres sur V Italic, i. 87-99, 125, 137. 184 EOME AND KEFOEM CHAP. One of the Grand Duke's best councillors was Eicci, Bishop of Pistoia, a fosterer of the Jansenist ideas, which had taken root in various parts of Europe. He was much opposed to the worship of the Sacred Heart, the great badge of the Jesuits. These, in spite of their suppression, could still make their influence tell ; they even united with their old Dominican enemies against Eicci. The good man was sore harassed by these latter on account of the strict order enforced by him in the nunneries, where the Preaching friars had long revelled unchecked. 1 He was not well backed by Pius VI., who was more bent upon hushing up scandals than on punishing criminals. The Pope sent more than one brief abusing the reforming Prelates of Tuscany. Placards were set upon the gates of the Cathedral at Pistoia inscribed, " Pray for our heterodox Bishop." The Pope could command the votes of all the lewd fellows of the baser sort, and of most of the devout women ; the Government and the better class of priests took a very different view. The ignorance of Italians was something appalling, and their ignorance was fostered by the higher powers. 2 In 1786 Eicci held a Synod at Pistoia consisting of 234 of the clergy. Its debates were acceptable to Leopold, but hateful to Pius, who worked underhand against its measures. We have a curious account of another assembly held a year later at Florence, where met three Archbishops and fourteen Bishops by Leopold's direc- tion. Their attention was called to the contrast between the Eome of the three first centuries and the Eome of Pius VI. One zealot went so far as to revile St. Augustine as a hot-headed declaimer ; the common source of Protes- tantism and Jansenism was shrewdly suspected ; it was said that the Father needed St. Thomas as his interpreter. 3 1 See La Vie de Eicci, by De Potter. The infamous crimes of some of the friars and nuns are there fully described. 2 I give a specimen printed at Rome by a Cardinal in 1763 with the Pope's approbation. Among the cases reserved for absolution by the Cardinal himself is, "Sub hac reservatione complectimur hominis concubi- tum cum daemonic sive succubo sive incubo, quodcuuque tandem is sive viri sive fseminse sive bestise corpus assumat ac prae so ferat," Ibid. ii. 299. And this was 140 years after the days of Sarpi and Galileo ! 8 Ibid. iii. 31. n ITALY 185 There was much debating about Indulgences, the purchase of Masses, and Papal dispensations. Ultramontanes com- plained that the Tuscan Church had already taken several steps towards independence. But in 1790 Leopold had to leave Florence for Vienna. All Ricci's reforms at Pistoia were speedily overthrown, and the old superstitions were brought back. Pius VI. launched against him a Bull, which was suppressed at Naples, Turin, Milan, and Venice, as well as in Spain and Germany. The house of Religion was indeed divided against itself. 1 Ricci himself was weak enough to recant his opinions some years later when he discussed matters with Pope Pius VII., a man of greater forbearance than his predecessor. By that time the purging fire, coming from beyond the Alps, had tried every govern- ment in Italy. We have our last glimpse of Genoa under its old Doges in 1785, when it was visited by Dupaty. We see the galley slaves disputing for food that the dogs in the streets refused. Among them were some Turks taken by the corsairs, and these were allowed a mosque, while Protestants in France could have no temple by law. The administration of justice was an absurd affair. The Senate wished much to spare a criminal who had been guilty of ten murders ; men were driven to the rough justice of assassination. The people had begun to hate the nobles, who spent their vast wealth on valets, horses, and monks ; beggars were better off than artisans. Cicisbeism was in great vogue ; the streets were black with priests and monks. There were so many priests that there was no religion, so much debauchery that there were no courtesans. The State would allow no private sale of bread, wine, wood, and oil ; it sold the vilest of these articles at the highest price. 2 As to other Italian States, Mantua had lost nothing by the forfeiture, many years earlier, of her last Gonzaga Duke, perhaps the meanest Italian tyrant on record. Modena, the 1 La Vie de Ricci, ii. 212, 213. The many letters in De Potter's book give a lively picture of Romanism crumbling in the last half of the Eighteenth century. Even the Jacobin flood could not drive the govern- ments of Europe into the arms of the Pope. 2 Dupaty, Lettres sur V Italic, i. 34-67. 186 EOME AND REFOKM CHAP. home of Muratori and Tiraboschi, a State which had suffered fearfully in the war after 1740, was flourishing under the last heir-male of the Estesi, whose one fault was greed of money. 1 Piedmont was not quite up to the level of other States, since King Victor Amadeus was afflicted with a rage for soldiering, the source of heavy taxation to his subjects. Southern Italy and Sicily, for the first .time for centuries, enjoyed a King of their own, who was not likely to leave them for a higher crown. Tanucci, the minister of the young Ferdinand IV., set bounds to the encroachments of the Holy See. The presentation of the palfrey, which had hitherto for ages been offered as a mark of homage by the King of Naples to the Pope, was now abolished. A lively war of books, carried on between the friends and the enemies of the Papacy, was beginning to rage through Italy. 2 But Gorani, a well-informed witness, draws a sad picture of the state of Naples and Kome as they stood between 1780 and 1790, when Acton had replaced Tanucci. King Ferdinand, who had been bred in shameful ignorance, cared for little but sporting. The Queen led an infamous life, and intercepted the funds which might have saved from starvation sixty thousand Calabrese, the victims of the great earthquake. The nobles, most unlike their brethren in Northern Italy, pushed their feudal rights to excess, kept hired bravoes, outraged the honour of women at pleasure, and ruined countless peasant families. The clergy (Sicily not included) numbered eighty-one thousand priests and monks, besides twenty-three thousand nuns. Their crimes were seldom punished ; they were to the non-celibates as one to forty-five. 3 The Algerine corsairs 1 As for Parma, her Duke combined superstitution and debauchery in an unparalleled manner. See Gorani's Memoirs, iii. 291. The Duchess, though a daughter of Maria Theresa, was a mate fit for such a husband. 2 See Botta, Storia d 1 Italia, x. libro primo. He now becomes my guide until 1814. 3 Gorani saw the monks at Naples selling little antiques, images of Priapus, which they called relics of St. Cosmo. These were hung about the necks of pregnant women, who had full trust in the holy thing. There was a great run upon these wares. II ITALY 187 still bore off many victims from these luckless shores. Any one who compares these times with those of the Emperor Frederick II. will deem that Southern Italy had declined woefully from the height she had reached in the Thirteenth century. The lawyers, the modern brethren of Peter de Vinea, were held in high honour, and they were later to win great esteem in the dark days of 1850, when all around seemed a mass of hopeless corruption. The laws were a strange chaos, due to the Lombards, to the Normans, and to later Kings, native and Spanish ; the great code of Frederick II. seemed to have missed its intended effect. Southern Italy had changed very slightly since the days of Masaniello. 1 As to Rome, in 1775 one of the Braschi was chosen Pope, who took the name of Pius VI., perhaps the hand- somest of all the Pontiffs, a fact of which he showed him- self most conscious. He would bestow cuffs upon his servants, and was most unscrupulous in money matters, his great object being to heap riches and estates upon his nephews. To them were granted certain monopolies ruinous to trade, and to them went the reclaimed land when an endeavour was made to drain the Pontine marshes. This is the last instance of nepotism in the Papacy ; that fine old vice, known so far back as 1250 (witness Salimbene), has never been revived in the Vatican since the days of Pius VI. Gorani sets before us a woeful picture of the Cardinals who surrounded Pius. There were at Eome eight thousand priests, monks, and nuns, being about one-twenty-third part of the whole population ; the state of morality may be imagined. The most nauseous of all vices, a vice unknown to brute beasts, was called " the noble sin." 2 The clergy frequented the theatres, where female parts were played by handsome boys. The Cardinals were most venal, as we 1 Dupaty says that there were about 4000 murders every year iu the Kingdom, and only three executions. But numbers of culprits died in the horrible prisons. See his Letters, vol. ii. 83. 2 There is a decree of Pius V. against the clergy guilty of this (dirum nefas). They are to be deprived, and then handed over to the secular power. See Mendham's Pius V. p. 102. 188 ROME AND KEFOKM CHAP. learn from a shrewd English observer, who knew much of Roman life. 1 Dupaty, who was at Rome about this time, says that the city numbered thirty-six thousand houses, and of these twenty thousand were held in mortmain. There were ten thousand beggars or poor ; many of these had come to Rome on pilgrimage. There were nearly seven hundred places of asylum for criminals. Creditors could do nothing in any house that bore a Cardinal's arms, and this privilege was often sold. The police were held infamous ; the adminis- tration of finance was sheer pillage. The Rota was a respectable tribunal, but its decisions were not final. At Rome the blindest and the most comfortable religion in the world held sway. Let a man take part in certain ceremonies and pronounce certain words, and he was sure of heaven. There were ninety parish priests ; these might force their flocks to take the Eucharist at Easter by sending them to prison. One of them allowed that religion at Rome was very indulgent to love ; so many were celibates, that it had to be gently treated. Intercourse between the different classes was on an easy footing ; it seemed to be a universal cajolery. If justice was bad, there was always the knife in the back- ground to avenge private wrongs ; theft was rare. 2 Another city subject to the Pope is revealed to us by Arthur Young, who travelled through Northern Italy in 1787, on the edge of the storm as it were. 3 At Bologna the taxation was as light as any in Europe, and was felt by nobody. The money went to maintain the Pope, the 1 Hervey, the famous Bishop of Derry, writes to his daughter, "The committee at Rome whicli governs the religious affairs of Ireland is com- posed of seven Cardinals, . . . governed by a Secretary. . . . Every member of this committee is as venal as a Board of Aldermen, but in order to bribe them you must buy a picture of one, give a poplin to the niece or mistress of another, a suit of clothes to the secretary of a third, and so on ; so that with a good purse and a liberal hand one may know every tittle of what these Christian Pharisees have sworn not to reveal." Hervey pur- sued these methods, and soon discovered the interests and connexion of almost every Popish Bishop in Ireland. See The Two Duchesses (of Devon- shire), by Vere Foster, 77. 2 Dupaty, Lettres sur Vltalie, ii. 114-149. 3 See his Travels in Pinkerton's Voyages, vol. iv. II ITALY 189 municipality, the University, and the river banks, the first getting the best share. The morals of the city were not equally satisfactory. One Italian nobleman, who always went out with his pretty English wife, was regarded much as if he was used to walk on his head. It seemed strange to his neighbours that such a man should embrace his children, believing them to be his own. So nourishing was trade, that many English bagmen were travelling through the land, as yet unravaged. 1 A bad account is given of Venice ; there the ill-educated noblemen, forty of whom boasted the oldest blood in Europe, took no part in the improvement that had been elsewhere going on for the last twenty years. "Within that time abuses had been multiplied at Venice ; little was to be seen at the Arsenal, so famous of old. The treasury was empty, though the revenues of monasteries and hospitals had lately been confiscated by the State. The nobles of the mainland scorned admission to the Great Council. Italian cities shuddered at the idea of being transferred from some other government to that of Venice. Our traveller foretells her speedy downfall at the first real shock. The police was bad ; near Verona fifty crosses might be seen set up over the bodies of murdered travellers. Eoads were impassable, towns were unlighted, murders abounded, while the men told their beads and the women crossed themselves. In Istria if a man cut down a tree he was sent to the galleys ; hence numbers left that country. Salt was a government monopoly ; there were plenty of fish to be taken, yet this trade had to be foregone, owing to the monopoly. A few years earlier twelve thousand families had emigrated from Dalmatia, and the country had become a desert. 2 In contrast to the Land of St. Mark, Piedmont and Lombardy were pronounced the richest countries in Europe for their size. Here the interest of money was low and the price of labour was high ; there were few manufactures. Yet the Emperor Joseph had made Lombardy a beast of 1 See Arthur Young's Travels in Pinkerton's Voyages, vol. iv. 263, 632. 2 Ibid. 248, 260, 620-622, 632. 190 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. burden to Germany ; agriculture and the canals had been the mainstay of prosperity. His mother had abolished the States, and had farmed out the taxes, causing wide-spread ruin ; Leopold on becoming Emperor had restored the lost privileges. At Milan the hospitals did harm, since many idle men there sought refuge. 1 But Tuscany took the lead in Italy as to prosperity. Leopold had abolished tithes, had made the corn trade free, had extinguished the national debt, had levied taxes on nobles and priests, and had spent millions on roads. Here was a ruler more truly great than the mighty Frederick of Prussia. Some new wise improve- ment came every year. Under Leopold were a million of souls, whose taxes came to only eight shillings a head. The farms of the monks were in the best order ; one priest, after his Sunday's sermon, used to give lessons to his flock on agriculture. 2 With this peaceful development of European resources before our eyes in the days of Turgot, Pitt, Aranda, and Leopold, we cannot forbear asking, could not the world have been spared the Revolutionary hurricane ? Might not Europe have won her way to freedom and good government before 1870, even if Napoleon's name had never been heard of ? But she seems to have been unworthy of such blessings at the Almighty's hand, so in 1792 the long war broke out, kindled by the hot-headed folly of the French emigrants on the Rhine, by the boyish overhaste of the Girondins at home, and by the far-seeing selfishness of the Empress Catherine. Rome had never beheld such a crisis since 1527, and this new political revolution, started by the French, was to spread wider and to take deeper root than the old religious revolution set on foot by the Germans. The explanation of this seems to be that men feel more interest in what is temporal than in what is spiritual. Rome was not so happy now as in the days of Paul III. ; she had already suppressed the Jesuits, and no new brotherhood stood forward to beat back the rising flood and to reconquer half of the lost ground. Pius VI. was the last man to meet 1 See Arthur Young's Travel's in Pinkerton's Voyages, vol. iv. 395, 396, 618, 645. 2 Ibid. 622, 632, 636. II ITALY 191 such a crisis ; we cannot help thinking of the old woman and her mop facing the ocean which was to swamp Italy and many another land. In 1792 King Victor Amadeus marched against the French Eevolutionists and speedily lost Nice and Savoy ; he was slow to succour Lyons in her agony. Piedmontese and Neapolitans formed a part of the motley host that strove in vain to hold Toulon against her lawful owners. Genoa was hard pressed between the English fleets and the French armies, neither power being overscrupulous as to the rights of neutrals. In those wretched days there was no United Italy a sore need. Pitt in 1794 thought that the Pope should stand at the head of a European coalition ; Rome alone could make an impartial voice heard. A Bull proclaiming a holy war would have the best effect, especially in La Vendee. A Papal Legate would be well received in London, and England would send an Ambassador Extra- ordinary to Eome. Burke, and even Lord Moira, took the same view. Pius VI. expressed his thanks to Pitt, but declared that the Holy See ought not to foment wars, how- ever righteous. The Pope's only request made to the sovereigns of Europe was for alms on behalf of the starving French clergy. 1 Napoleon now astonished the world by the finest .campaign on record, that of 1796, the year in which his native Corsica was rescued from England's grasp. Italy had beheld many wars waged in this Century, but never anything so barbarous as the doings of the apostles of the Eights of Man. The sack of Pavia and the cruelties suffered by her women are a black stain on Napoleon's name. Soon he turned to the South and forced Pope Pius VI. to hand over to France priceless treasures of art and enormous sums of money. Leghorn was forcibly purged of English merchandise, though the Grand Duke strove hard to be neutral. The French commissaries seem to 1 Cretineau-Joly, in his L'Eglise Romaine en face de la Revolution, devotes many pages to Pitt's dealings with Rome, i. 189. We know what Lord Macaulay wrote about Pitt preaching a Holy War. A few Guardsmen, I suspect, would have been of more use than thousands of Crusaders. 192 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. have been greater robbers than the French soldiers, with the one exception of Massena, himself an Italian. Filicaia's famous lines on Italy and her baleful dower of beauty were truer than ever in 1796. In the next year Austria was beaten to her knees, the State of Venice was wiped out for ever, and the French Directory was at leisure to avenge old wrongs done them by Pope Pius, who had condemned and no wonder many acts of the French Government during the last few years. The Northern armies entered Eome early in 1798 ; such guests she had never seen since the days of the Constable Bourbon. Every precious article that was worth robbing was borne off; a mockery of a constitution was set up, to replace the Papal Government, and Pius VI., greater in adversity than in prosperity, was led away captive, soon to die in France. 1 Other nations have been more cruel than the French, but no nation has so well understood how to shroud a foul deed under a fair name. The world has taken them at their own valuation, for it believes France to be the most chivalrous of all nations. Napoleon turned his back on the mighty scene of robbery going on all through Italy and walked into the Egyptian trap. Nelson's great victory the only sea fight that has ever stirred Europe from end to end once more called all the nations to arms. The Neapolitans, after much fencing with the French, saw the great Eepublican enemy force his way into their city and revolutionise the whole kingdom as far as Calabria. In 1799 came the counter- stroke Cardinal Euffo led a host of brigands and cut- throats through the land. General Thie"bault has described the panic of the partisans of France ; they begged, as their last chance of safety, that the miracle of St. Januarius might be performed on their behalf. Macdonald, the French general, posted himself near the high altar of the church ; Cardinal Zurlo advanced with the sacred relic ; the closely- 1 Hereupon Pasquin remarked, repeating part of the well-known epigram on Alexander VI. Semper sub Sextis gemuit deperdita Roma ; Dat Sextus cunctis ultima Papa Pius. II ITALY 193 packed mob howled out curses against God Himself because the miracle was somewhat delayed. Thie'bault saw the President of the Eepublican Government show the Cardinal a pistol, while muttering, " If the miracle does not take place at once, you are a dead man." The Vicar-General came to the help of his superior, and the miracle of the red blood was at once performed. " You see, my brethren," said the Cardinal, " that St. Januarius accepts the Revolu- tion." In consequence of the miracle, the mob of Naples, after the French had left, fought against Euffo's army. 1 But the city in the end was stormed, and fearful was the vengeance wrought upon the men of the Revolution. Huge pyres were kindled in the streets, at which men were burnt alive ; human flesh was roasted and eaten ; victims were tortured before being put to death ; and later, the judge and the hangman were long kept at work. 2 These scenes seem to show a wonderful difference in the character of Northern and of Southern Italy. Four thousand persons, some of them the best in the land, died in this hideous civil war. Meanwhile the French were driven out of the Pope's States by a most curious alliance of Turks, Russians, and British. One of Nelson's captains forced the infidel invaders to leave Civita Vecchia ; another rowed up the Tiber and hoisted the Union Jack on the Capitol at Rome. 3 What would Pius V., or even Innocent X., have said to these things ? Ali Pasha, Suwarrow, and Nelson were fighting to give the Pope his own again. The Allies soon mastered Ancona as well as Rome. They were here aided by a stout Italian soldier named Lahoz, who afterwards died of his wounds ; his last words give a clue to the motives of many an Italian patriot between 1799 and 1870 : "I have fought against the French, yet I am no foe to Freedom or to my country. I left Austria for France, thinking that France was fighting for the Rights of Man ; Buonaparte 1 Thiebault's Memoirs, chap, xxvii. He says that Zurlo, for performing the miracle, was later cast into a rock-hewn dungeon, eighty feet deep. Even the Saint was temporarily disgraced. 2 Here, as usual, I follow Botta. He is confirmed, as to these atrocities, by Forsyth, who visited Naples not long afterwards. See also Colletta. 3 Southey's Life of Nelson for 1799. VOL. I O 194 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. and Moreau held me in high esteem. But the betrayal of Venice, the tyranny exercised in Lombardy, proved to me that robbery, not freedom, was the object of France. At last I resolved to drive both French and Germans alike out of honoured Italy ; I knew that many others cherished this thought. All the land was rising against the French ; I hoped to give a right direction to the movement ; but I see that we are too much divided, and that we have been too long under a foreign yoke ; we readily fight for supersti- tion, but not for freedom. Bear witness, however, that I at least lived and died a lover of Italy." l Many lads who heard of the death of Lahoz were to live to see his heart's dearest wish accomplished. The great Suwarrow had in vain appeared like a meteor in Northern Italy, and in vain had Massena been starved out of G-enoa. For later, in 1800, there came another change ; Napoleon won Marengo, and stood once more practically master of all Northern Italy, except the corner of it that he left to Austria. Meanwhile Pope Pius VI. had died a prisoner in France, the victim of harsh gaolers ; the Church seemed to be at her lowest ebb ; still thirty- five Cardinals met at Venice, and early in this year, 1800, elected Pope Pius VII. (Chiaramonti). 2 This choice was partly due to their Secretary, Consalvi, the ablest envoy ever employed by Rome since Morone went North to the Council of Trent. The new Pope made his famous Con- cordat with Napoleon, whereby the pair cut and carved the old Gallican Church at their pleasure, in spite of the protests of many of her Bishops. Pius went to Paris in 1804 to crown his new confederate. 8 Napoleon, coming to Milan in the next year, set the Iron Crown of Lombardy 1 Botta, xiii. 462. 2 The Cardinal of York and Cardinal Maury both voted in this election ; they represented two widely different ages. 8 Hereupon Pasquin thus drew the distinction between Pius VI. and Pius VII. : Roman i. vi diro un bel quadro. D'un santo Padre chi fu coronar nn ladro. Un Pio, per conservar la Fede, lascia la Sede ; Un altro, per conservar la Sede, lascia la Fede Swinburne's Courts of Europe, i. 212. ii ITALY 195 on his own head. In 1806 he drove King Ferdinand from Naples to Palermo ; a fearful war was long waged between Massena and the Calabrese. Throughout all these dealings of Napoleon's with the Papacy, from first to last, we see less of the Jupiter than of the Scapin. The pious Corsican feared that the revenues of the rich lands given by Pippin and Charles to the Church might be employed on behalf of the British and Eussians, who were not true believers. The Pope, though a Moses in meekness, was to be neither wheedled nor bullied ; he would not drive the British from his harbours. Here, at the threshold of the great year 1808, we must ask whether it would not have been wiser in Pius if he had boldly set sail for Palermo, and thence proclaimed his wrongs to Europe. He would thus have trodden in the steps of the great Mediaeval Popes, who, when persecuted, fled from one city to another, and yet always in the end were borne back in triumph to Eome. There cannot be a greater contrast than if we first mark Innocent IV. in 1244 galloping many miles by night towards the ships that were to snatch him away out of the Hohenstaufen Emperor's clutches ; and if we then mark Pius VII. stuffed into a post chaise and dragged off by Napoleon's agents in the burning hot summer towards a Northern prison. Innocent left the Temporal power to take care of itself ; Pius clung to it with desperate grip. Napoleon conferred vast benefits upon Italy by his Code of laws, his abolition of monasteries, and his roads driven over the highest mountains. For all that, he stood before his countrymen as a new Sforza, whose robberies and murders were done on a grander scale than ever before. In April 1808 he added a great portion of the Papal States to his empire. It was the moment when his sway had reached its furthest limits ; the vast Eussian Empire to the East, the vast Spanish Empire to the West, were his ready allies ; all the rest of Europe bowed meekly before him, if we except Sweden, Turkey, and the Enemy of enemies, though this last had been able to do nothing on the mainland for at least five years, except to win a small victory in Calabria. 196 EOME AND BEFOKM CHAP. There was as yet no incurable ulcer ever gnawing at the strength of France. The mighty Emperor called himself the successor of Charles the Great ; and he, like that grim old German, liked to dabble in theology. He was earnest in enforcing Bossuet's Gallican doctrines upon Pope Pius, doctrines that by no means came up to the orthodox Koman standard. As to the Temporal power, what Charles gave, Napoleon might take away. All Papal Bulls, before being published, must be sent to Paris for the Imperial theologue's approval. Already, in 1807, the wolf, becoming most im- patient with the lamb, had thus broken out : " Will the Pope excommunicate me ? Thinks he haply that the arms will fall from my soldiers' hands ? " The answer to this question was given five years later amid the Russian snows. In 1809 Napoleon, who had for some months occupied Eome, annexed it to his Empire. All abettors of this sacrilege were at once excommunicated by Pius, who found in Consalvi and Pacca two strong pillars of support. 2 Here- upon the Pope was seized and led away captive, along with his faithful minister, Cardinal Pacca. The last was long kept in an Alpine prison, while Pius VII., after being wantonly dragged to Valence, where Pius VI. had died, was brought back to Italy and quartered at Savona. Those of the Roman clergy who refused the new oaths exacted by Napoleon were hurried off to various prisons. The great man at Paris altered the boundaries of Sees, or suppressed them altogether at his will ; Frenchmen were sometimes thrust into Italian bishoprics. In 1811 Pius VII., separated from his own chosen advisers, was worried after a sleepless night into making certain unwarrantable concessions to his tyrant. Next year, when almost at the point of death, the Pope was dragged once more across the Alps, and was established at Fon- tainebleau. In 1813 the two potentates had an inter- view, which was most stormy. It is untrue that the Emperor seized the Pope by the hair and reviled him ; but 1 I follow here Cardinal Pacca's Memoirs, i. 84. ' 2 This was the eighty-sixth Papal excommunication since the year 398, Artaud, ii. 260. ii ITALY 197 it is true that Napoleon accused his victim of ignorance in Church lore. 1 At last the signature of Pius was wrung from him ; but after Pacca and Consalvi had been allowed to visit him he made a solemn retractation, comparing him- self to Pope Paschal II., who had been guilty of a similar fault seven hundred years earlier. In 1814 the defeated Despot sent the victim back to Rome, where Pius was to reign for nine years longer. Meantime in Southern Italy, Joachim Murat had been in possession since 1808, confronting Ferdinand in Sicily; thus the whole of the Italian mainland, either directly or indirectly, was subject to her mighty Corsican son. Murat allowed his soldiery to exercise much tyranny upon civilians ; hence the secret Society of the Carbonari arose amid the mountains of the Abruzzi and Calabria. These men bore equal hatred to King Ferdinand and to the French. They held mysterious rites, and had secret pass-words among themselves ; with them the Freemasons' lodge became a " barrack." Ferdinand, anxious to win them, held out hopes of a Constitution, and thus beguiled most of them. In 1810 Calabria was overrun by brigands, who could not be mastered by King Joachim. A French officer of his, named Manhes, undertook to subdue them ; he separated the honest men in the villages from the brigands, gave arms to the former, suspended all tillage, and threatened death to any one found supplying the public enemy with food. The brigands were either starved out, or died fighting, or perished in the foul air of frightful dungeons, prisons of which much was heard in 1860. Along with these men died many of the Carbonari ; persons who had private grudges to avenge now obtained a rare chance. But it is said that Manhes rooted out the brigands to a man ; Calabria forthwith became orderly. 2 Italy bore her full share in the sufferings under- 1 Artaud, Histoire du Pope Pie VII. ii. 320. I take many details from him. Pius more than once told Gamburini, a future Cardinal, how Napoleon seized him by the breast of his cassock and rudely pushed him down upon a chair, saying " Imbecile ! " Gamburini passed the tale on to young Wiseman ; see the Life of the latter, i. 85. 2 Botta, Storia d 1 Italia, xiv. 362. Colletta (Storia di Napoli, lib. vii. 78) tells how thirteen women and children of Stilo went to work at a distant 198 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. gone by the nations in the great Napoleonic wars. In 1812 she sent, according to Labaume, forty -eight thousand soldiers to Russia, of whom only eight hundred wounded men lived to return. Murat had to make way for Ferdinand at Naples in 1815, when the Powers of Europe, sitting in judgment on Italy, brought back the old lines of Princes, though unwilling to restore the former Eepublics of Venice, Genoa, and Lucca. Eome owed much to the clever diplomacy of Consalvi ; he it was who procured a further lease of fifty-five years for the Temporal power. Austria was now made mistress of Venetia as well as of her old possessions in Lombardy. She became the great prop of despotism throughout Italy, which was now entering upon a long struggle for Freedom ; as yet she hardly durst think of Unity. "We may divide the time occupied by this great contest into three periods : (I.) The Desultory Period . . . 1815-1831. (II.) The Mazzinian Period . . . 1831-1848. (III.) The Piedmontese Period . . 1848-1870. The Papal States were at first in worse case than the other parts of Italy ; for in Eome there had been most opposition to the reforms wrought by the French. Pius VII. was not long in condemning the Carbonari ; to oppose these the new retrogressive faction of the Sanfedisti was organised. At the beginning of 1815 all political books were in block placed in the Index, and seven hundred accusations for heresy were carried before the Inquisition. A Papal edict re-established all the religious Orders, and revived eighteen hundred convents for men, six hundred for women. All these had to be endowed by the State. One beam of light shoots across the prevailing gloom ; an Inquisitor at Eavenna had condemned to death a relapsed Jew ; Pius VII. at once forbade all sentences of death for heresy. While Consalvi was away, the more retrograde Pacca took the lead at Eorne, abolished all the late French legislation, farm, carrying a little bread. They were all taken and shot by the police ; one woman in vain made the greatest of all sacrifices, hoping thereby to save her child of twelve years of age. II ITALY 199 and restored the jurisdiction of the nobles. Torture had been abolished, but it was still employed in the case of Freemasons. All who had been Liberals was grievously harassed, and the bigotry of priests was often reinforced by the brutality of mobs. 1 Beggary had been suppressed in the past, but the beggars returned with the Pope. There were now more murders at Rome in one month than there had been for many years under the French. Vaccination and street lighting were frowned upon. The clergy hated the reforms that Consalvi was striving to bring in. The laws and procedure of the courts became a chaos ; brigands escaped punishment if they promised to do penance for their crimes. The Pope's soldiery were unable to protect the country. The Central part of Italy was rapidly sinking to the level of Turkey. 2 One of the first acts of Pius after his return to Rome had been to restore the Jesuits. This Order in our Century has changed much for the better. We no longer hear of books of debased morality so bad as to be condemned by the Holy See itself; we hear of little jealous rivalry on the part of Dominicans and Franciscans; we hear of no scandal as regards missions to the heathen. The Jesuits have not played lately any very prominent part in the politics of Europe; their worst misfortune came in 1847, when they were made the cause of civil strife among the Swiss Cantons. The Order had great influence in 1870, and forced the dogma of Infallibility upon more moderate Churchmen. Yet this is a thing of small moment (to those who look merely at things temporal) when the mind goes back to the hideous miseries of the Thirty Years' "War, the work of the old school of Jesuits. In 1820 Naples demanded a Constitution from her worthless King, and the new state of things lasted for a few months. In the next year the Austrian armies brought back despotic rule. Hundreds of Southern Italians were doomed to death or to the galleys. At the same time an attempt at reform was put down at Turin, while Silvio 1 Gervinus, History of the Nineteenth Century, iii. 20, 28, 62. 2 Ibid. 62, 69. 200 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. Pellico has left us the tale of his imprisonment to show what Austrian sway was in the North-East. The worst tyrant of all was the Duke of Modena ; he tried to extort confessions from his victims by depriving them of food and sleep ; he would administer drugs which produced delirium in the patient, whose ravings were recorded against him. Yet this Duke was a humane man when politics were not in question. 1 In 1823 Pius VII. was replaced by Pope Leo XII. (Delia Genga), who had belonged to the party opposed to the wise Consalvi. The new Pope showed himself most retrograde ; he oppressed the Jews, increased the power of the clergy, and restored the use of Latin to the law courts. In 1825 no fewer than five hundred persons in Eomagna underwent sentences for political crimes ; most of the victims belonged to the higher classes. Men contrasted these severities with the mild government in Tuscany, where the line of Lorraine had resumed its beneficent work. 2 Leo XII. carried out one project at least the cele- bration of the Jubilee at Eome in 1825. After another short Pontificate, Gregory XVI. (Capel- lari) was chosen Pope early in 1831. Much about this time a youth, nephew to the great Napoleon, bore his share in Italian outbreaks ; he was to set Italy free thirty years later. Eomagna was now once more put down by Austria ; the Five Powers of Europe joined in recom- mending reforms to the new Pope, but in vain. Italy might well be called the Land of the Dead. Still a new brood of Italian patriots was now arising, men who were to give the lie to Metternich's wise saw, " Italy is but a geographical name." One Genoese youth, disliking the system of the Carbonari, was editing a paper in France called Young Italy, wherein a new form of union was preached. These views were adopted by a sailor from Nice, who happened at the moment to be in a harbour of Southern Eussia. At the same time a young Piedmontese noble was 1 Stillman, Union of Italy (published in 1898), 102. Among the Duke'a rebels was Panizzi, to whom all English authors owe so much. 8 For these times Farini's book on Romagna should be read. II ITALY 201 punished for his liberal opinions by being removed from his work as an engineer and by being sent to do garrison duty in an Alpine fort ; it was not long before in his dreams he saw himself the Minister of Italy. Such were the political beginnings of Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour. 1 The outset of the new system was not happy, for the future hope of the nation, Charles Albert, who had now come to the throne of Piedmont, found his government assailed by bodies of armed Mazzinians. Austria seemed to be firm in the saddle ; her spies were everywhere. Tuscany gave way to her, but Piedmont would not alto- gether abase herself. D'Azeglio counted for much, while Gioberti and Balbo were busy with their pens. It was not merely things temporal that occupied Italian Eeformers. Mazzini wrote so far back as 1834 a letter addressed to Italian priests : " The question is not the breaking up of the Church. The question is its emancipation and its purification from that which is arbitrary and oligarchic. The question is to place it in harmony with political and civil society, to have it endorse the principles of reform advocated at Pisa, Constance, and Basle, principles advocated by the theologians of Venice, by the French clergy in 1682, by the men of Port Royal, and by Bicci. The question is to establish the supremacy of the Church, supremacy now gathered into the Pope ; to rehabilitate the parish priests, who are now reduced to the condition of despised and poor servants." 2 True indeed was this last sentence ; the Italian clergy were mostly gathered from the ignorant, the fanatical, and the lazy. Their theological lore was but meagre ; Biblical study was, according to Curci, abandoned as a Protestant practice. The poor parish priest was nick- named fango (mud) by the proud officials of the Vatican. 3 We are therefore not astonished at the stir among the Italian clergy towards the end of Gregory's reign. It was not in Italy alone that the priests were looking forward to a new state of things ; it was the same throughout Europe, 1 See Probyn's work on Italy during this century. * 2 Quoted from Robertson's Life of Count Campello, 182. 3 Hid. 6, 15, 38. 202 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. and the Spanish and Portuguese clergy were the only exceptions to the rule. In 1845 a Cardinal wrote that he was alarmed at the new projects talked of all around him ; the young priests were imbued with liberal doctrines ; they cared little for theology, but aspired to become men. Such tendencies were still more dangerous in priests of riper age, and this was the state of things all through Italy. A day would come when these mines, charged with constitutional and progressive powder, would blaze up. The Eomans angrily asked why the Pope debarred them from having railways or scientific congresses such as were allowed in other parts of Italy. 1 As to the state of the clergy at this time, the Jesuits were pure in morals, but as props of the old system were hated even by the other Eegulars and Seculars. The parish priests had too much power (they were able to imprison men), and so were corrupted ; they were, moreover, incontinent, like some of the Dominicans. Discipline was very lax, as were certain of the priests. There was much immorality among women both before and after marriage, A Pope of great genius and wide view was needed to adjust the Church to existing facts. 2 But meanwhile scoffers abroad were laughing at the bare idea of national unity. Italy should not take recol- lections of the past for hopes as to the future. Her great men had long passed away ; in these days Cato opens a music hall ; Virginius puts his daughter up to sale ; Csesar makes wigs ; Titus studies how to lose his day ; Fabius Cunctator becomes a diplomatic jockey ; Cornelia leaves to her servants the care of her sons ; Juvenal lives on a singer he has married ; Numa keeps a lottery office ; Horace manufactures antiques ; Gracchus and Catiline roar for the establishment of a national guard ; Brutus instigates his sons to conspire ; Cicero directs a secret press ; Marcus Aurelius hawks about anonymous pamphlets ; Spartacus 1 Cr6tineau-Joly, L'JEglise Romaine en face de la Revolution, ii. 371-376. The best things recorded of Pope Gregory are his Bulls against the slave trade, by which he won Buxton's admiration, and his rebuke of the Czar Nicholas for cruelty in Poland. 2 See Cardinal Manning's Life,'i. 386, 395. He gives a most interesting account of Rome in 1847 and 1848. II ITALY 203 buys letters of nobility ; Manlius cuts the throats of the geese before they have saved the Capitol ; Eponina and Sabinus go in for a judicial separation ; Florus lives by blackmail ; Marius resigns himself to be a tenor ; Scipio carries off young ladies. How absurd it is for Gioberti to prophesy that within a century Italy will become as it was in the days of the Scipios ! Her towns and States will never allow their old rivalries to slumber. They ruined Murat, and they will ruin any other man who shall aspire to play Judas Maccabaeus. 1 This last hero seemed about to come upon the Italian stage in the summer of 1846, when Mastai Ferretti was chosen Pope and took the name of Pius IX. He early adopted a Liberal policy, and his Hymn rang from one end of Italy to the other; the old Guelf days seemed to have come again when Alexander III. and Innocent IV. backed the Lombard League against the German. In vain did Metter- nich seek to overawe the new Pope by occupying Ferrara. Sicily broke out into revolt against her despot, Ferdinand, early in 1848 ; Naples in appearance, Turin in reality, took the side of Freedom. Meanwhile the Parisians had set fire to the gunpowder that had long been gathered in the various European capitals, and soon most of Europe outside Eussia was in a blaze. Can any one, a reader of the newspapers in 1848, ever forget the shocks of the earthquakes that rumbled all through that year when every morning seemed to bring the tidings of some new rising or battle in Europe ? Milan had her glorious Five Days, when she hurled out the renowned Kadetzky himself. Venice followed suit under Manin, purest of patriots. Charles Albert, worthy of his Savoyard forefathers, struck in boldly, and soon the whole of Italy was sending her sons to fight the outlandish host on the Mincio and the Po. At first all went well, but soon King Ferdinand was able to tame Naples and to recall his troops from the North. Pius IX. halted between his duties 1 I take this, written in 1847, from Cretineau - Joly, Simples rtcits de notre temps, viii. -xv. The old august SPQR now meant si pen que rien, according to La Mennais. 204 EOME AND HEFORM CHAP. as an Italian King and as the common Father of Christen- dom. At last he refused to join in the war against Austria, and thus signed the doom of Eome's Temporal power. Old Radetzky, no longer taken at a disadvantage, was now able to defeat Charles Albert and to recover Milan. The city of Rome was stained by a great crime, the murder of Rossi, the Pope's virtuous minister. Pius, unable to keep down the uproarious mob, speedily fled into the Neapolitan dominions. . Early in 1849 Charles Albert challenged Austria once more, lost Novara, and abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel, who was soon to take rank with Cavour and Garibaldi as one of the Makers of Italy. The Austrians were achieving their work ; Tuscany, Romagna, and Sicily were soon brought under the old yoke, and Republican France amazed all Europe by sending her soldiers to enforce the Papal Government upon unwilling Rome a blunder that was to bear bitter fruit twenty-one years later. The heroic defence of Rome's Western wall by Garibaldi, whose levies were far outnumbered by the French, and his subsequent retreat to the North, will ever live in history. Venice was the last Italian city to give in ; she yielded late in August 1849, after the Italian wars and risings had lasted for about twenty months. Ten dreary years followed ; Italy became one vast net- work of plotters. The single bright spot in the horizon was the Piedmontese Parliament sitting at Turin, fostered by the watchful care of Cavour, and on the other hand assailed by all the wiles of Austria and the Papacy. England had made her example tell ; here in Turin was something more practical than the well-meaning dreams of Mazzini. The one idea of Victor Emmanuel was to hold aloft the tricoloured flag, the emblem of Italian Freedom and Unity. The Piedmontese clergy were made amenable to the civil law, much to the disgust of Pope Pius ; one of the ministers who had been guilty of this outrage was, upon sound Ultramontane principles, refused the last Sacraments. Cavour was every day proving him- self the only statesman who could make Piedmont respected II ITALY 205 both abroad and at home ; his reforms commanded more confidence than the plans of Mazzini, who made a rash attempt at a revolution in Milan in 1853. The King had his trials ; in one month he lost his mother, his wife, and his only brother, a true soldier of Italy. The Ultramontanes throughout the world at once talked of the judgment of Heaven, evidently pronounced on account of sacrilegious dealing with the Church. But Victor Emmanuel, though daily urged to overthrow the new-fangled Constitution, proved himself worthy of the name given him by the Italians, " King Honest Man " ; he stood out in glaring contrast to the wretched despot who crammed the loathsome dungeons of Naples with the best citizens of Southern Italy, and whose method of ruling was the most favoured object of Ultramontane praises through- out the world. In no age is the debasing effect of Ultra- montanism more perceptible than in our own times ; Pius IX. himself, a most humane man, employed his soldiers, in an age of railways and telegraphs, to kidnap a Jewish babe that it might be bred a Christian. The Mortara case rang through Europe, while Tuscan peasants underwent long imprisonment for reading the Bible. The advisers of Eome had not the wit to see that if toleration be not granted, anything short of the Inquisition is useless. The dismal year 1852 had gone, the most dismal even in those black times. 1 Russia threw down the gauntlet to Europe, and Cavour dealt his blow against the old enemy of Freedom ; the soldiers of Piedmont won new laurels in the Crimea, and her great minister's voice forced the cause of Italy upon the Congress of Paris. In 1858 he made his well-known bargain with Louis Napoleon, a bargain soon to produce wondrous effects. Here let us halt to cast a glance backwards over the state of Europe from the fall of Venice in 1849 to the passage of the Alps by the French troops in 1859. The frantic excesses of 1848 had scared the Kings and priests of Central and Southern Europe into crazy reaction. The 1 Before that year France had a free Parliament. After that year all Europe applauded the collapse of Russian despotism. 206 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP- ten years I have marked bear witness to a grand attempt at putting back the clock of progress. Few such periods have ever occurred since the death of Louis XIV. The years after 1815, the days of the Holy Alliance, were not very hopeful ; still even then the Assemblies that represented France and Hungary kept alive some show of Freedom on the Continent ; Metternich would never have made a Concordat such as that of 1855. The aforesaid ten years were a happy hunting-ground for Ultramontanes ; Pius IX. wore a more triumphant mien than many of his predecessors; he had no need to make concessions to lay opinion, as the Benedicts and Clements of the last century had done. It was far better for the Church that Europe should be ruled by zealous ladies and adroit courtiers than that uproarious assemblies, often chosen by irreligious electors, should brawl and bear sway ; it was far easier for priests to work upon the few than the many. Female influence was strong, alike at Paris, at Madrid, at Vienna ; the Pope must have felt much like St. Jerome with his fair devotees. 1 One blot there was in the smiling landscape the Parliament at Turin, where the accursed Piedmontese, heedless of Koine's ban, was making ready to eat the Italian artichoke, a dainty now all but ripe. 2 In 1859 came the great deliverance. Austria, slow- witted as usual, played into the hands of her enemies and lost Lombardy. The chains dropped from a great part of Northern Italy, for France had now won her two great battles, a service to Italy that no amount of subsequent backsliding can ever wipe out. The redeemed provinces would have nothing to do with their old Despots, whom it was sought to recall. Few scenes in history are nobler than the calm attitude, ruffled by hardly one crime, and maintained for months by millions of Northern Italians, when forbidden to annex themselves to Piedmont. Behind 1 We may remember the three leading ladies who all but brought the Great Frederick to ruin about 1760. These, however, were not guided by Popes or priests. 2 As to Ultramontanism, let any one read the great Reviews professing that peculiar creed published at this particular time, whether French or English. Europe has had a happy riddance from priestly domination. II ITALY 207 them was French knavery ; before them was Austrian brute force. Pius IX., of course, uttered loud outcries at the loss of Eomagna, and launched excommunications which fell flat. But there was a dark side to the picture ; Piedmont had to give up Savoy, and also Nice, Garibaldi's cradle. The hero was sore wounded in soul; still in the summer of 1860 he set sail with a thousand followers to free Sicily from Bourbon tyranny. The old Ferdinand, known as Bomba, had made way for his son Francis, whose one aim seemed to be to tread in his father's footsteps. He soon had to face the Garibaldians on the mainland ; he gave a Constitution too late, upon finding that his army was in a hopelessly rotten state. Happy was it for Italian unity that there was no Monarch possible in the South except the Honest Man, who was now proclaimed King by the old Republican, the conqueror of Naples. Pius IX. had striven to hold the provinces he had left by enlisting motley levies of foreigners ; Cialdini led his troops against these, and soon the whole of Central Italy was freed, except a small portion around Eome, held by the French. The King of Piedmont went to the South and entered Naples with Garibaldi by his side. The old seaman, the deliverer of nations, refused all honours and money gifts to go and bury -himself in his island home. The stronghold of Gaeta was soon forced to yield, 1 and early in 1861 the first Parlia- ment that ever represented all Italy (Rome and Venice excepted) met in Turin. A clean sweep had been made of all the Despots who had put their trust in the counsels of Popes and Jesuits ; the Italians held that Pius IX. had the power of the Evil Eye ; this seems at least politically true. We have a picture of the Pope drawn about this time by the friendly hand of the Duke de Gramont, then ambassador in Rome : " It is in the Pope that obstinacy and blindness reside ; holy virtues are not enough in order to reign. The fickleness of his mind is extreme, his 1 I suspect that here it was that the good-will of England, counterwork- ing the ill-will of France, made itself most felt. The crisis was great for Italy. Our grandsons will know more about this than we do. 208 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. loquacity becomes a bore, and there are no bounds to his indiscretion. The Government is detestable ; never have I seen the tokens of decay so clearly marked as at this moment. The population of Borne depend on abuses, on administrative thefts, on clerical subventions, on pensions, alms, usury, and simony." Gramont pointed out to the Pope the faults of the Roman system, and received for answer, " We are all buffoons." l After reading dialogues like this it must be allowed that Papal Infallibility is a hard morsel to swallow. The language used of Pius by other supporters of his was down- right blasphemous ; his utterances were a Divine volume, he was the most glorious and venerated among all the Popes, he was the portentous Father of the nations, the living Christ, the voice of God. Nay, when he condemned he became God Himself ! 2 Thus Pius IX. tottered along, supported by his Minister, the immoral Antonelli, and trusting to French bayonets as the best of buttresses ; Italy might scoff, but the whole Ultramontane world was lost in admiration. Wide indeed was the difference between Pius IX. and Benedict XIV., the model Pope of the fore- going century. Rome had moved backwards, as we see by her designs on conquered Mexico. Pius wrote a letter to the ill-fated Maximilian full of strange behests ; the Mexican journals must not be allowed to attack the Church ; all dissenting worship must be put down ; the Bishops must be altogether free; the religious Orders must be re-established; all instruction must be directed by the Church. 3 This document sets before us plainly what would be the state of 1 " Buffoni di qua, buffoni di Ik, noi siamo tutti buffoni." Gramont writes, "L'existence du Pape a Rome coname pouvoir temporel empeche I'unit6 de ] 'Italic, done il faut 1'y soutenir quand bien meme nous n'y aurions pas d'autre interet." Here we recognise the hand of a main agent in the ruin of France in 1870. For all this see Sorel, Lectures Historiques, 218, 219, 222. Cardinal Manning some years later complained that Pius was growing old and garrulous, and was not to be trusted with a secret. See Manning's Life, ii. 573 ; he tried to reconcile the Pope and Italy. 2 Gladstone's Rome's Newest Fashions in eligion,I36. What I have set out is not a Protestant forgery, but the work of a hot partisan of Pius IX., widely circulated and never forbidden. 3 See Delord, Histoire du Second Empire, iv. 219. II ITALY 209 all Europe at this moment but for the Eeformation and the Eevolution. The Papal sway, however, did not altogether conduce to holiness ; under the Popes the lottery, that most pernicious way of raising revenue, was in full vigour. When the Church celebrated her great festivals all public establishments at Eome had to be closed; one alone, the lottery, was allowed to remain open, even when the Pope was giving his blessing to the City and to the world. 1 Strange tales are told of the devices hit upon by the crowd to secure a good number in the lottery. Once a friar, who was held inspired, was almost beaten to death until he muttered certain figures ; and these, as it happened, led to a grand triumph. The women at Naples might be seen to lick with their tongues a painted bas-relief of Purgatory, thinking that they thus lightened the torments of the souls. A gamester lighted candles before a holy image ; if he won he renewed them, if he lost he hung the image out of the window for a day and night. The Calabrese peasants, after a long drought, threw into prison every image they could lay hold on, and kept them there till rain came. One of the most distinguished lawyers in Naples printed a volume of prayers to the Virgin, asking her what would become of her reputation as a powerful patroness if she should not hear of his request. Such was Italy under the teaching of her Popes. 2 Victor Emmanuel had some ado to keep the peace between Garibaldi and Cavour. The last was borne to the grave in 1861 amid the tears of the nation, and he left no one behind him who could be named in comparison with him. With Cavour died all hopes of gaining Eome by peaceful means ; Garibaldi's rash inroad was speedily put down by the King's troops in 1862. From Eome were let loose hosts of brigands, who made Southern Italy their prey. There could be no peace while the French upheld the plague spot of the land. In 1864 Pius IX., much 1 Pressense, Le, Concile du Vatican, 194. 2 Witte, Rome sous Lion XI II., the book of an ardent partisan of the Papacy, 286-293. He draws a strong contrast between the religion of pious Frenchmen and that of Italy. VOL. I P 210 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. differing from the Italian leader of 1846, put forth his Syllabus, which condemned liberty of conscience and of worship. Veuillot and Ward gained a great victory over Newman and Montalembert. The document became the laughing - stock of Europe, and debased indeed must be the minds that can in our days of light accept such an Infallible pronouncement. 1 Eeligion was not much benefited ; a new generation had arisen, and few Italians of this day aimed at both the spiritual and the temporal good of their country. Pellico, Manzoni, Capponi, D'Azeglio, Balbo, Troya, had left no successors. These men, as a surviving disciple tells us, took the greatest delight in the study of the Bible. Manzoni and Troya mourned over the wretched translation of it made long before by Martini, and hoped that something better might be achieved. But the Church system was now killing religion in Italy. 2 Few religious men durst boldly stand up to the Pope ; their hesitating comments upon his pronouncements (such as we find in the life of Cochin and others) leave an impression of feebleness ; they know what to think, but not what to say. In 1866 Prussia and Austria fell to blows ; Italy struck in, underwent defeats both by land and sea, but came out of the struggle happy in the possession of Venetia. The Italian Tyrol, with historic Trent, was unluckily held fast by Austria. Germany and Italy had long been foes, but in 1866 Germany proved herself Italy's best friend. Next year Garibaldi made a dash at Eome, hoping to add it to Venice ; but the French troops defeated him with their wonder-working rifles, and the French minister, short- sighted being, declared that the Italians should " never, never have Eome." Feeling himself safe under his Voltairean protectors, Pius IX. called together his Vatican Council, the first since that of Trent. The Virgin Mary was plainly told that since Pius had proclaimed her Immaculate, she should create 1 See Cardinal Manning's Life, ii. 273. ' 2 See Curci, La Nuova Italia, 157. I cannot resist giving a reference to p. 170, where the author speaks quite seriously of il puritano Disraeli. II ITALY 211 him Infallible. 1 We cannot help contrasting the two great Assemblies. In 1870 there was no Cardinal of Lorraine, without whose countenance the Eoman Court would have been helpless ; there were no powerful Sovereigns who must be conciliated, for in these latter times the educated laity throughout Southern Europe put more faith in Voltaire than in Pius IX. The Council of Trent had thrown its proceedings open to all the world ; that of the Vatican allowed as little as possible to leak out. At Trent there were no fanatical converts from Protestantism eager to lay a yoke upon the old established members of the Church. G-allicanism spoke out boldly in 1562; it proved itself but a weakly plant when under the power of Pius IX. 2 It is to be feared that no Sarpi, no Pallavicino, will chronicle the sayings and doings of the later Assembly. Here on one side were the German, Hungarian, and American Bishops, who took their stand on the old paths, and thought that an appeal to history was anything but treason to the Church. On the other side were the Spanish and Italian fanatics, strong at least in numbers, the men who howled down Strossmayer for pronouncing a mere commonplace in favour of Protestant good faith. We are told that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty ; the absurd rules enacted to fetter the minority at the Vatican Council are a strange commentary upon this text. Vain were the protests of the dying Montalembert, of Newman, of Dollinger ; the Pope was pronounced to be exempt from error whenever he spoke officially on matters of faith and morals. The eighty- eight Bishops of the minority slunk away, not daring to face the wrath of the aged Pope cowardice that would have provoked the scorn of the Tridentine Fathers. Two Abdiels alone were found to protest against the wondrous decree of the majority of five hundred and thirty-three. Almost all of the minority, after a decent pause, re- canted their old opinions. Veuillot, who had been at 1 Pressense, Le Concile du Vatican, 124. 2 Yet Dupanloup is described as sending bales of baneful (Moderate Catholic) literature day by day to every centre of intrigue in Europe. Life of Cardinal Manning, ii. 429. 212 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. the elbow of Pius during the Council, enjoyed a great triumph. The year 1870, both spiritually and temporally, was to be one of the most fateful that Kome had seen for twenty- four Centuries. Napoleon III. hesitated and blundered until he found himself a prisoner at Sedan; Victor Emmanuel was, late in 18*70, free to drive the foreign troops out of Rome and to allow the great city to unite herself to the Kingdom of Italy, which now at last hailed her rightful capital. Hard indeed were the blows that had fallen upon Ultramontanism within the last twelve years ; first Italy had driven away her despots ; then Austria had taken the side of Freedom ; then Spain had be- come a Republic ; then France had followed in Spain's wake. No State, except little Ecuador, was found to pro- test against the loss of the Pope's Temporal power, which had been more or less of a reality for almost seven hundred years; 1870 saw the end of an old song. The Bishop of Rome had shared the fate of the Prince Bishops of Mayence and Cologne, of Liege and Durham. Things were now very different from what they had been in the spring of 1789, when there were only three States in Europe where any approach to real, free, and popular government could be seen Britain, Holland, and Switzerland ; and even in these, blots might easily be marked. In the autumn of 1870 every country in Europe outside Russia and Turkey had embraced the cause of Free- dom, and had found the British Constitution worth studying. Fourscore years had sufficed to overthrow many champions of Despotism and Oligarchy. Among others, the Italians set themselves, after their lights, to work out the great problem of " Free Church in Free State." They did not satisfy Pope Pius, who shut himself up in the Vatican and gave out that he was a prisoner. " Whither can I go ? " said he when advised by a faithful French friend to leave Rome. Pius passed in review all the States of Europe, and avowed that the only fitting shelter for him was the isle of Malta ; Queen Victoria had offered it to him in a manner ii ITALY 213 that had touched him. 1 Times had changed since Pius V. launched his famous Bull against Elizabeth. Among the signs of the times was the new statue of Dante at Florence, its pedestal decked with the arms of every city in Italy, at last united ; the great Bard stands supreme, having at his side the bird that of all feathered fowl he loved the best, the emblem of the Holy Eoman Empire that has at last made way for something better. In the summer of 1871 Victor Emmanuel made his public entry into Rome and took up his abode at the Quirinal. Later in the year he opened the first Italian Parliament that ever met at Rome. To any one who knows history, few sights in the world are more suggestive to look upon than the great Assembly of the long-divided nation, holding its yearly session within half a mile of the time-honoured Capitol. Early in 1878 died King Victor Emmanuel, who was laid in the Pantheon, while the whole of sorrowing Italy seemed to meet at his tomb. The old Iron Crown of Lombardy was borne immediately after his hearse. His death was followed within a few weeks by that of Pope Pius IX. ; the two enemies that had faced each other for nearly thirty years, the champions of Church and State, at length rested from their labours. The new King, Humbert, walked even as his father walked ; the country, having made sure of Unity and Freedom, is progressing ; the school has replaced the monastery all over the land ; beggary, robbed of its best patrons, is diminishing ; the Bible is freely sold ; brigandage and mortmain are put down ; trade is developed ; the army and navy are kept on a good footing, for Italy is one of the Three States that are the mainstay of Europe whenever there is a question of upholding the balance of power. The new Kingdom welcomed the Sovereigns of Austria and Prussia as honoured guests, a fact that would have astonished King Charles Albert, Eadetzky, and Metternich. Blemishes there are in the body politic ; King Humbert has been foully 1 Viedu Cardinal De Bonnechose, ii. 197. There is a very good account there of the election of the successor of Pius IX. 214 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP, n murdered ; Ultramontanism too often leads to Atheism ; taxation is BO heavy as to grind millions of the poor to the dust ; the magistrate not seldom beareth the sword in vain ; France is still out of humour with the new nation; the Pope is still unreconciled, though it must be allowed that Leo XIII. is not so noisy in his denuncia- tions of freedom as was Pius IX. 1 It is affirmed by the partisans of Home that her Popes have been driven out of their domains one hundred and seventy-one times, and that they have always in the end been brought home again. It is not wonderful that these partisans hope that this restoration of lost power may be once more repeated. 2 We should do wrong if we were blind to these drawbacks on the welfare of Italy. Still we cannot doubt that her poets are justified now in striking a very different note from that of Filicaia ; a right noble future lies before the land that of old ruled the world, first temporally, then spiritually, the land of Julius Caesar and Hildebrand, of Dante and Michael Angelo. 3 1 The difference between the two Popes cannot be more strongly marked than by the fact that the one kept Dr. Newman in the background, the other made him a Cardinal. 2 See Witte, Rome sous L6on XIII. 196. * Every one knows Lord Macaulay's prophecy at the end of his Essay on Machiavelli ; this has had a glorious fulfilment, forty years after it was set down. CHAPTEK III i SPAIN l Conquest and the Inquisition . . . . 1481-1572 The Dutch Ulcer 1572-1640 Utter rottenness; loss of European Empire . 1640-1715 Slow Improvement ..... 1715-1808 Loss of American Empire, Civil Wars, Military Mutinies 1808-1902 IF Italy was the brain, Spain was the right arm of the Church for many long years. This was but natural, since the whole history of Spain for eight Centuries has been one long Crusade. Eoman, German, and Arab have all left their marks deeply graven upon her; but we must not linger upon her long religious wars or the free institutions of her many kingdoms ; the source of Spanish bigotry, whence most of her future woes were to spring, calls for our earliest attention. In the Dark ages (as they are called) Spaniards had shown chivalrous courtesy to their Moslem foes and kindly tolerance to their Jewish guests, who often proved them- selves sound public administrators and gained great wealth. But in the Fourteenth century a mournful change began to appear ; thousands of the Jews were butchered by needy 1 In this Chapter I follow Lafuente, Historic/, de Espana. He has a warm feeling for old Spanish freedom, shudders at Alva's cruelties, but cannot rise to the level of complete religious toleration. This cobbler sometimes travels beyond his last when he quits the archives of Simancas and gives a sketch of foreign lands. Thus, when treating of 1547 he recounts the misdeeds of Henry VIII. ; the King sacrificed, it seems, eighteen bishops, five hundred priors, monks, and priests, three hundred and thirty -five nobles of the lower rank, and a hundred and ten ladies ! 215 216 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. debtors or priest-ridden fanatics. Laws were passed against the hated race, and the mobs were always ready to rise upon them. To escape this hot persecution the victims sometimes underwent baptism and made a show of outward Christianity while practising their own rites in secret. A general mistrust of the aliens spread throughout the land. It is usually held infamous that a man should profit by his own misdeed ; here the Christians had driven the Jew against his will to baptism ; they were now to reap vast wealth from confiscating his wealth if he proved false to the enforced rite. This was the state of things when Castile and Aragon became united under Ferdinand and Isabella. The one was ready to grasp at any means of enriching his coffers, drained by the Granada war ; the other, more humane, shrank from harsh measures until assured that her most sacred duty to God called upon her to root out heresy and false Christianity. A Papal Bull came from Eome authorising the appointment of Inquisitors to detect heresy. Early in 1481 the hideous work was begun, and before the end of the year two hundred and ninety-eight persons had been burnt in Seville alone ; three of them were among the wealthiest men in the city, another had acted as steward to the Dean and Chapter. Thousands of the suspected fled into Portugal and Granada. Two years later Torquemada, the Queen's Confessor, was made Inquisitor-General, and soon extended the working of the bloody tribunal beyond Seville. These men even warred with the dead, and gathered vast wealth by instituting processes against converted Jews then in their graves. Thousands of those that escaped the fire underwent per- petual imprisonment or saw their children beggared. We have before us Moloch rather than Jesus Christ. Of all the fiendish institutions that have cursed mankind none can compare with this Spanish Inquisition, a tribunal some- times checked, sometimes fostered by the Popes, who derived a profit from selling protections to victims wishing to shun its bloody grip. "We are sometimes told in excuse that it was nothing but a political institution, and that here Eeligion has no cause to blush. If so, how came it that Ill SPAIN 217 the agents of the Inquisition were Bishops and Friars, and that the fearful death by the flame was in established use ? The Jews would have been guilty of no greater crimes in Spain than they have perpetrated in Poland, had they enjoyed equal toleration. England keeps her millions of Mahometan subjects fairly steady in their loyalty without resorting to torture and death. The Courts in England about 1500 were able to convict criminals without having recourse to secret trial or to the rack ; the methods used by the Spanish Inquisition have often been described. I know of but one parallel instance of the use of such means, if we go through the annals of all the religions that have ever flourished on earth ; it is that of the Japanese pagans when striving to root out Christianity. The Crown was eager enough to wring vast sums of money from the victims of the Inquisition, men who often owed their ruin to nothing but the hatred of their neigh- bours. But the Spanish nation at large must bear its share of the guilt, when we make inquiries as to the introduction of this devouring cancer. Pride of birth was the besetting sin of Spain ; what elsewhere merely supplied food for jests became here the cause of national ruin. Purity of blood, free from any Jewish or Moslem taint, was the one thing needful ; none but a sound Old Christian could be promoted in Church or State. Hence arose endless quarrels between rival families, and the Inquisition afforded choice oppor- tunities for gratifying private spite. Thus in Spain, Crown, Church, nobles, commons, were all eager to foster the accursed thing. 1 Accusation was easy; a woman was punished for being present at the wedding of her brother, a Jew ; a man, for rejoicing at being able to overreach Old Christians ; another, for keeping silence when advised to invoke the God of Abraham ; another, for possessing a Hebrew Bible. Other offences were, to be ignorant of the Paternoster and Creed, to say that a good Jew might be saved, to neglect to make the sign of the Cross, 1 On this point Ranke (Ottoman and Spanish Empires) should be con- sulted. He and Hefele should be balanced against each other by all who wish to form a fair judgment on the Inquisition. 218 HOME AND KEFORM CHAP. to give alms to Jews, to change the body linen on Saturday. 1 The number of victims burnt in the days of Torquemada has been a matter of keen contention. Llorente's computa- tion, partly adopted by Prescott, has been vigorously assailed by so worthy a critic as Hefele. I prefer to dimmish the number of sufferers as much as possible, and therefore shelter myself behind Mariana, who gives two thousand as the number of those burned under Torquemada. The learned Jesuit tells us that what at the time seemed hardest was the secrecy of the Tribunal, as the witnesses were never confronted with the culprit; this was all contrary to the old method of justice ; but answer was made that the times demanded this secrecy. It was in vain that the Cortes of Castile and Aragon in later years petitioned for open trials in spiritual suits. 2 Strange it is that such hearty lovers of freedom as the Aragonese should have bowed their necks to the Inquisi- tion. After the murder of their clerical tyrant Arbues in 1485, two hundred of them died at the stake, and a still greater number in dungeons. The mob of Saragossa applauded, and here we see the beginning of the transition from Freedom to Fanaticism. The noxious Tribunal rooted itself fast in most of the provinces of Spain, and stood ready to do to Mahometans and Protestants even as it had done to the converted Jews. The Eoman Church had achieved great things for the Spaniards before 1480 ; since that year she has been a heavy weight upon their shoulders. 3 Wide is 1 See Lea, Religious History of Spain, 470. 2 Dos mil personas fueron quemadas, book xxiv., chapter xvii. Mariana's whole Chapter should be read. A contemporary writer is Bernaldez, quoted by Castro in his Jews in Spain. The case for the Inquisition is best stated in Hefele's Life of Ximenes. De Maistre's Letters on the Inquisition show us how far fanaticism can carry a well-meaning thinker in the last Century. He tells us that the Tribunal was purely Royal, and that the Church abhors blood ! The Inquisition first condemned to death, and then entrusted the execution of the sentence to laymen, at the same time petitioning for mercy. Hence it follows that Torquemada and his fellows were guiltless. Was there ever hypocrisy like this method of reasoning ? * t In the case of other countries I need not start earlier than 1520 ; in the case of Spain I have to go forty years further back. m SPAIN 219 the difference between Don Jayme of Aragon protecting the conquered Moors in Valencia and Philip II. driving the unwilling Moors into revolt ; the Eome of Dominion is here most glaringly contrasted with the Eome of Debasement. Torquemada, not content with the new Inquisition which dealt with Jewish converts, was eager to drive all Jews from Spain. An incident telling in his favour came to light in the nick of time. A Jewish renegade was detected carrying a consecrated wafer in his knapsack ; he was tortured both by cords and by water until he impli- cated three Jews and five Jewish converts like himself. They were all examined in the usual way until after eighteen months a fresh accusation was lodged against the culprits, charging them with having crucified a Christian child. No body was ever found, and no child was shown to have disappeared. All the culprits were repeatedly tortured, but they could not be made to tell a uniform story; even the alleged date was doubtful. The forced depositions are most inconsistent ; still some sort of confession was wrung from them. The upshot was that two of the Jews were torn with hot pincers and burnt, while the Jewish converts were only strangled. Torquemada published the story far and wide, and there is little doubt but that he utilised the affair so as to extort from the Sovereigns the expulsion of the Jews from Spain; the edict came out early in 1492, about four months after the late execution. 1 In 1492 Granada was conquered, to the joy of all Christendom ; Spain gained a new province, and learned how to maintain standing armies, soon to bear the Ked and Yellow Flag to Italy. In that same year Columbus gave America to Spain, and Torquemada dealt his great blow to the Jews two events which posterity views with feelings 1 The legend of the murdered child (el Santo Nino) grew with great rapidity ; no body could be found, but it was held that the victim had been taken in the flesh to Paradise. A huge church was built near the cave where he was said to have suffered ; but the Holy See refused to canonise him. Many histories of the affair have been published, the last in 1883. The story is told at full length in Lea, Chapters from the Religious History of Spain, 448-468. The case of Brianda de Bardaxi, which follows, shows what torture could effect. 220 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. widely different. The most moderate calculation gives one hundred and sixty thousand Jews as the victims of this crime ; the misery undergone by them in their flight has been set forth by many a writer ; some of them died, some of them were born, on the road. Here we have the first of the expulsions on a grand scale which were to last for about a hundred and twenty years, and were to bring Spain to beggary. Queen Isabella of Castile stands out right nobly in Spanish history, and full justice has been done to her by foreign inquirers. But some of her innovations bore no good fruit ; her great aim was to exalt the altar and the throne, and to trample down the much-abused power of the nobles. To do this she threw herself upon the Commons, and made the Koyal Council, full of priests and lawyers, the new executive power. Wishing the reign of law to pervade the land, she took the dangerous step of granting rewards to informers. She made the Inquisition, as it were, a rival to the Pope, and was bent on having as much influence in Church as in State. The system, under her own eye, answered fairly well, but her successors could not wield it as she did ; men of the middle class, becoming agents of the law, plundered and extorted on a grand scale ; Spanish literature abounds in sarcasms upon this class of men ; the alguazil who made the arrest, the gaoler who supplied house room, the judge who decided the cause, all alike took their fees and played into each other's hands. Bribery became an open institution ; it was said later that one half of Spain paid blackmail to the other half. The secret denunciations, which brought grist to the Inquisition, had their counter- part in affairs temporal, and in later years there was no Parliament to expose bribe-takers. The noble Spanish character after 1500 became more and more debased. 1 What effect all this had upon the luckless Moriscoes of Granada and Valencia will soon be seen. 1 Prescott is rather too favourable to Queen Isabella. The eighth chapter of vol. ii. of Circourt's Histoire des Mores should be studied as well as the great American's admirable work. Bergenroth's gleanings from Simancas do not present the Queen in an amiable light. Ill SPAIN 221 The Spanish Mussulmans were at first happier than the Spanish converted Jews ; the former were mostly poor labourers, the latter were rich merchants well worth robbing. For seven years the Spanish rulers kept faith with con- quered Granada. The good Archbishop Talavera strove to convert the Moslem by gentle means, and was known among them as the Holy Alfaki. But the more famous Ximenes adopted a most different system, struck terror into the new subjects of the Crown, and burnt thousands of their Arabic books. A riot at Granada was the consequence ; punish- ment followed, and fifty thousand Moors (they now began to be styled Moriscoes) made their peace by undergoing baptism. Revolts broke out in the South, and the whole business was ended in 1502 by a Eoyal decree banishing from Spain all Mussulmans who might cleave to their religion, an infamous breach of faith. It seems likely that most of them avoided expulsion by becoming Christians, at least in name. If such a fearful engine as the Inquisition was the only means of keeping Spain steady to the faith, the best that could be expected was that great pains should be taken to prevent the perversion of the tribunal to private purposes of spite or cruelty. But power, exercised in dark secrecy, readily lends itself to oppression. Cordova in 1506 became a prey to a tyrant named Lucero, who persecuted a vast number of the highest families, accusing them of Judaism ; one of his victims was Archbishop Talavera, who might safely be assailed now that Queen Isabella was dead. The base official caused creatures of his own to make themselves acquainted with certain Jewish rites, and then to swear that they had seen those rites practised by the persons whom Lucero might choose to arrest. Any one likely to discover these iniquities was burnt with a gag in his mouth. The authority for these facts is an Instruction at Simancas drawn up by priests and lawyers of repute. 1 A riot broke out at Cordova ; Lucero was imprisoned by Cardinal Ximenes, who named a commission of twenty -two to con- 1 Lafuente, torn, x., 301. He adds much to Prescott's account of Lucero. 222 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. sider the whole affair; in 1508 they reported that Lucero's witnesses had been false, and that the honour of the prisoners who had died should be re-established. 1 Lucero has doubtless had many an imitator during the three hundred years that the Inquisition was allowed to afflict Spain and America. The system of trials in secret, which I have seen highly applauded in Ultramontane writings, is somewhat open to abuse. 2 Erasmus and his works underwent strange shiftings of Spanish opinion. The Popes wrote him most nattering letters down to the year of his death ; they well knew the tremendous influence he wielded, and had no wish to drive him into Luther's arms. He had many friends in Spain, more especially Cardinal Manrique, the Inquisitor-General ; this Prelate silenced the many friars who were storming against Erasmus. But towards the end of the learned man's life Charles V. turned against him and forbade many of his works. Only three of these are prohibited in the first Spanish Index, that of 1551. But later in the Century he appears with his name marked as " a condemned author." 3 Erasmus held in scorn the outward works with which men hoped to win heaven ; the same scorn was felt by the Spanish Mystics, known as the Alumbrados or Illuminated, who thought that the soul of man could become one with God and could reach perfection with no help from the priest. Early in the Sixteenth century a peasant's daughter gave out that she was the bride of Christ, and Pope Julius II. appointed a commission to examine the case. Many similar devotees came forward, and the Church sometimes praised, sometimes persecuted. St. Theresa and Molinos had a most different fate. The notions of the Alumbrados seemed near 1 Llorente for the year 1508. 2 Thus the historian of Gregory XIII. tells us that this Pope would not enlarge the jurisdiction of the Spanish Inquisition when that Tribunal was charged to examine impure Confessors; he refused, "per non esporre 1' inuocenza ed integrita di molti Confessori a manifesto pericolo di maligne cospirazioni e false denunzie." It was a pity that others besides the Con- fessors could not have been equally shielded. Maffei, Gregorio XIII. i. 246. 3 Lea, Religious History of Spain, 35-44. Ill SPAIN 223 akin to those of Luther, especially their disregard of In- dulgences and good works. About 1524 many Franciscans were given to ecstasies and inspirations, and this led to several arrests ; banishment, scourging, and imprisonment were the consequence. The sister of Bishop Cazalla was cruelly tortured, and the Apostle of Andalusia was thrown into prison ; Loyola himself was deprived of liberty, though not by the Inquisition. Ortiz, an eloquent young Franciscan, broke out in the pulpit in defence of a fanatical lady who had been seized by the great Tribunal. 1 But besides honest fanatics there were many impostors. One of these, Magdalena de la Cruz, received messages from the Pope, and was believed in by both the Emperor and Empress. After nearly forty years of deception she con- fessed her imposture when she thought herself on her death- bed ; she was sentenced to perpetual seclusion in a convent. Many more, chiefly women, were punished by the Inquisi- tion for imposture ; the scourge and imprisonment was their usual lot. They sometimes dabbled in politics, which led to their arrest. The Spanish mind seems prone to imposture, for there were many cases in the Colonies as well as at home. 2 Torquemada in the number of his victims outdid all his successors. But from 1499 to 1524 the average -number of victims burnt was little more than two hundred each year. After 1524 the number became less and less as time went on. 3 This age of the budding Inquisition was the heroic age of Spain, when she organised herself anew, conquered Granada, Oran, Navarre, and Southern Italy, sent Columbus and Cortes to America, produced the best generals then to be found in the world, and was able to depose France from the leadership of Europe. Yet this was the very time when Spain set up a bloody shrine to Moloch and made it her chiefest boast. Great political achievements and ruinous fanaticism in religion have often 1 Lea, Religious History of Spain, 251, etc. 2 Ibid. 330, etc. 3 See Llorente's calculations at the end of his History of the Inqiiisition. He is often in our days denounced as a liar ; had the trials he records been open, the Tribunal would not have exposed itself to calumny. 224 HOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. gone hand in hand. Thus the great age of Polish victory soon after 1600 was the age of the new and pernicious system established by the Jesuits on the Vistula. The reconquest of Hungary by Austria after 1683 (a gallant feat of arms) was also the time of a most ruthless persecu- tion of Hungarian Protestants. These violent excesses are usually not so injurious at the time as they become afterwards. In 1517 the son of Philip the German and Joanna the Spaniard, the Flemish boy who was heir to the two great Spanish kingdoms and to the golden Indies, made his first public entry into Valladolid. Charles, fresh from the North, had a heavy task before him ; he, a foreign Hapsburg, had to prove himself a ruler equal to his grandfather Ferdinand, and to Cardinal Ximenes, born Spaniards both. He began but ill ; everything was entrusted to Flemish favourites, who remitted to their homes vast sums of Spanish money ; one of them, not of canonical age, was thrust into the See of Toledo, the wealthiest See in Christendom after Eome. The Cortes of Castile, Aragon, and Catalonia alike were most unwilling to acknowledge Charles as their king during the life of his mother Joanna, who was out of her mind. He was soon elected Emperor of the Eomans after his German grandfather's death, and in the spring of 1520 the lucky youth sailed Northwards to show himself to his new subjects. He left behind him Castile and Valencia on the brink of civil war ; the cities of the former kingdom had been much enraged by their new ruler's conduct ; he had obtained fresh subsidies from them, and at the same time had refused all redress of grievances. Toledo broke out into revolt under the leadership of young Padilla ; Segovia butchered one of her deputies, who had joined in voting the late obnoxious subsidies to Charles ; other Castilian cities drove their too pliant deputies into exile. Cardinal Adrian, the future Flemish Pope, who was now acting as Regent of Castile, attempted resistance, and burnt one of the great marts of the land, whereupon Valladolid joined her sisters. They formed a Junta ; thither Ill SPAIN 225 came deputies from nearly all the cities entitled to vote in the Castilian Cortes ; they carried on their projects in the name of Queen Joanna, who at this time had a short lucid interval. The Junta now put forth a Eemonstrance, couched in many articles ; it was demanded that no more Flemings should afflict the land ; that none but natives should be preferred in Church and State ; that no more taxes should be levied than in Queen Isabella's time ; that the late subsidy should not be exacted ; that the Crown should not influence elections ; that no member of the Cortes should receive pensions from the King ; that this body should be assembled once in three years ; that no gold, silver, or jewels should be exported ; that judges should receive fixed salaries; that the nobles should be taxed as well as the commons ; that the sale of Indulgences should be regulated ; that the King should confirm all the Junta's proceedings, and should never seek from Home a dispensation of his oath to that effect. The nobles took alarm on finding that the commons aimed at bridling the aristocracy as well as the Crown. Giron, one of the few of the higher class who ranged them- selves on the people's side, was made Captain-General of the Junta ; no fewer than twenty thousand men, mostly burghers, were now in arms. Cardinal Adrian, reinforced by two of the great Castilian nobles as Co-regents, took the field at the head of a far smaller body ; but his men were trained infantry and cavalry, the latter consisting mostly of gentlemen. These soon mastered Tordesillas, Queen Joanna's abode, which was defended only by a regiment of priests, led by the doughty Bishop of Zamora. Giron was now replaced by Padilla ; the new leader's wife procured money for the cause by melting the ornaments in the Cathedral of Toledo. But unhappily no great statesman arose to put forth some popular platform appealing to all, and thus to weld the nobles and commons of Castile into one body. Moreover, jealousies were always breaking out between the various cities, and threats were uttered that the nobles should be stripped of the Crown lauds that they had usurped. The Crown, had it been allowed to resume these lands, would have become wholly independent of its subjects. VOL. I Q 226 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. Meanwhile Castile was suffered to stand alone. Sara- gossa indeed made an uproar when the Aragonese nobles proposed to send two thousand men to the help of the King's officials ; the cry was, " Aragon ought not to aid in robbing Castile of her liberties." It is not often that we find this brotherly spirit in the many jealous kingdoms of Spain. At this very time the towns of Andalusia, headed by Seville and Cordova, formed a league opposed to the cities of Castile. The clergy were divided, many of them being hot partisans of the Junta. The foremost of these was Acufia, who had some years earlier obtained the mitre of Zamora from Pope Julius II., a kindred soul, without any regard being paid to the rights of the Crown. So popular did the Prelate now become, that the mob of Toledo strove to force the Canons of that Cathedral to elect him as their Archbishop, and the luckless priests were kept without food or drink for thirty-six hours, while forced to debate this most uncanonical election. On the other side, Mora was burnt by the royalists, and three thousand souls perished in the flames. But Castile suffered in vain ; neither Padilla nor Acuna were master spirits, able to handle the whole force of the country to good purpose ; we see little here to recall the England of 1215 and 1260. In the present case an impassable gulf sundered the commons from most of the nobles. The end was not long in coming ; early in 1521 Padilla was thoroughly beaten on the field of Yillalar, and was at once put to death, together with the two chiefs of Segovia and Salamanca. So thoroughly did his principles die out of the popular mind, that most Spanish historians, at least until 1800, have united to blacken his memory. Freedom, that noble bequest of the Middle Ages, was indeed by degrees becoming a stranger to Southern Europe after 1520. Most of the Castilian cities now yielded ; Toledo alone, under the guidance of Padilla's heroic widow, stood out for some months ; after the inevitable capitulation she took refuge in Portugal. Her husband's house was pulled down, and on its site a pillar was set up, branding the Padillas, in SPAIN 227 husband and wife, with infamy. In the summer of 1522 Charles returned from Germany to his rebellious kingdom, where he was to sojourn for seven years, the longest period he ever passed in Spain. Many rebels were now put to death ; a charter of general pardon was granted, a most grudging amnesty, for more than three hundred were excepted from it, not merely nobles and priests, but needy artisans. Acuna, the fighting Bishop, was locked up in the castle of Simancas ; four years later he slew his gaoler in an attempt to escape, was put to the torture, and was then executed ; Charles wrote to testify his joy at his enemy's death. Henceforth Castile was but a maimed nation, stripped of her old liberties, her noblest heritage ; for the loss of these no glory in war, no conquests in America, could ever compensate her; she lost more at Villalar than she gained at Pa via or Lepanto. One festering sore was observed at this time by one of the noblest guests that Spain has ever welcomed, Contarini, the envoy from Venice, the future Cardinal. His goodness of heart is plain in his remarks upon the Inquisition when in 1525 he writes, " It seems to me that it exercises a real tyranny upon these poor New Christians, whom they so maltreat that more cannot be said." l It was not in Castile alone that civil war had been raging. Valencia had suffered much for her nobles, whose yoke bore hard upon the unhappy commons ; all justice in the law courts seems to have been denied to the lowly. There are traces of the same system in Aragon ; these realms, like Poland, talked loudly of freedom, but this seems to have been meant only for the pride and pleasure of the higher classes. In 1519 Valencia fell into the hands of a Junta called the Thirteen, who were mostly artisans ; they represented what was called the Germania, or Brotherhood. King Charles at first leant to the popular leaders ; in some towns the nobles were put to death. The 1 Alberi, JRelazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti, Stati Europei, ii. 40. In p. 46 Contarini remarks that Charles was more powerful than any former King in Castile, for with one word he might drive out the nobles and win the goodwill of the commons. 228 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. Moors took up arms in defence of their feudal lords, now in danger ; on the other side priests preached a Crusade in Christ's name. Six hundred Moors were promised their lives if they would undergo baptism ; they accepted the terms, and were instantly butchered by the plebeians. Succour came to the nobles from other parts of Spain, and four thousand plebeians were slaughtered on one battle- field. As many died in the combats round Jativa ; on one occasion seventy prisoners were hanged at once by the Viceroy. Never before in Spain had a revolt been guided by a handful of mechanics. Peris, the great leader, was slain in Valencia, and nineteen of his comrades were sent to the gallows on that same day. At length in the autumn of 1522 the last rebellious town yielded; the commons of Valencia were laden with heavy taxes and the chiefs were put to death. A fleet, sent by Charles, reduced Mallorca, which had borne her share in the late revolution. Hence- forth the young King was to be troubled by no more struggles for freedom by Spanish Christians. The Moors, who had been forcibly baptized in the late civil war, returned at once to their old rites, paying double rent to their Christian lords in return for this privilege. In 1525 an assembly of theologians pronounced (one voice dissenting) that the new converts were true Christians, and therefore must return to the Church within a month. Thousands of the Moors fled to the mountains ; an edict was put forth ordering all that did not bow before the Cross to leave Spain by way of Corunna, thus cutting them off from Africa. The Mussulmans, who in Valencia were rather more in number than the Christians, at last sub- mitted to baptism, though Bishop Sandoval declares that not six men out of several thousands were true converts. In many of the Spanish provinces we see the unholy leaven of false Christianity at its baleful work. In 1526 the Moors held the mountains, while troops from all Spain marched against them proclaiming a war of blood and fire. The conquerors of Pavia were baffled for months by their intended victims ; but the Mussulman stronghold was at last taken ; two thousand of the defenders perished, and in SPAIN 229 the survivors had to receive baptism in their eyes the loathsomest of rites. 1 Their bodies were enslaved ; their souls were not won. The Moors in Aragon underwent the same fate. Their brethren in the South saw with dismay the Inquisition transferred from Jaen to Granada for their especial behoof ; " it has so many eyes for our sins, and so many hands for our goods." A heavy bribe won them some favour from Charles ; he used part of the money to deform the Alhambra with new buildings. In 1525 Navagero was sent by the Venetian Govern- ment into Spain, where he saw much during the next three years, having a keen eye for Eoman ruins and inscriptions. 2 He was struck with the freedom apparent in wealthy Barcelona, and with the license there extended to murderers ; the custom-house officers were so strict and grasping that they would not spare the Emperor himself. This was the usage also in Saragossa ; the country hereabouts was mos barren, away from the Ebro. In Toledo the palaces oi the nobles were superior to anything elsewhere in Spain ; the Archbishop had eighty thousand ducats a year, and his Church, said to be the richest in Christendom, had almost as much ; the canons lived a most jovial life without rebuke. 3 Seville made a great impression on the stranger with its Moorish Alcazar, Cathedral, and orange groves ; the olive yards extended for thirty leagues, with produce that could not be matched ; here the heat in April was as great as that of August in Italy. Seville was already being emptied by the emigration to America ; the women were now more numerous than the men ; here the gold from the Indies was coined, the King taking his fifth. In this city the Ambassador ate the root that is called Batatas (potatoes), tasting like chestnuts ; he also saw some Indian natives, who were most nimble at the game 1 Manrique, the Grand Inquisitor, stood their friend, so far as he was able. I mark this exception to the general rule. 2 Navagero's book was printed at Venice in 1563. 3 P. 10. "I patroni di Toledo, e delle donne precipue, sono i preti, li quali hanno bonissime case, e trionfano dandose la meglior vita del mondo, senza che alcuno li reprenda." The Ambassador stayed here for eight months. 230 ROME AND EEFOKM CHAP. of ball. At Granada the finest monument was the Alhambra, described at great length. In a church near lay the body of the Great Captain, the building being adorned with countless flags taken in battle. The Moors were beginning to decrease, and the country round was not so rich as forty years earlier ; their industry stood in great contrast to the laziness of the Christians ; no love was lost between the two races. It had been promised that the Inquisition should not be established in Granada for forty years after the Conquest ; owing to this privilege suspected men from all parts of Spain had nocked to the city and enriched it much, taking their share of the silk trade. But the time of toleration came to an end while Navagero was in Granada ; he remarked that all would naturally change for the worse. Valladolid abounded in meat and drink ; it was full of artisans, who excelled as silversmiths, since the Court was often resident here. Burgos seemed most melancholy, and wore mourning, it was said, for all Castile ; the proverb ran that in this city there were ten months of winter (inmerno) and two of hell (infierno}. Among the inhabitants were many rich mer- chants, the most courteous and friendly of Spaniards. Biscay furnished the best soldiers and sailors, and sent forth many emigrants ; swords were fabricated here and trees were carefully tended, with a view to the manufacture of pikes, the great Spanish weapon. Many monasteries in Spain are commended for their architecture ; the finest of all seems to have been Guadalupe, with its vast revenues, derived from both lands and pilgrims; there was much gossip about the million of gold kept here ; everything that could be needed for the inmates was manufactured within its walls ; its oranges, and cedars, and gardens were a fine sight. The revenues of some of the Spanish nobles were enormous, but they were always at feud with each other ; most of the gentlemen were poor, but very proud. The mean intellect of the nobles, so often observed by later travellers, was already apparent ; thus the Duke of Medina Sidonia, possessed of sixty thousand ducats a year, had to be prompted whenever he spoke to a visitor, and once asked Ill SPAIN 231 an Episcopal friend after the Bishop's wife and sons. The Duke's lovely lady governed everything, her husband's younger brother being the father of her children. 1 Freedom still made her voice heard in Castile. In 1527 the Cortes, comprising clergy, nobles, and commons alike, steadily refused to grant money for the purpose of overthrowing Frenchman or Turk. The Cortes of Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia petitioned in 1528 against the abuses of the Inquisition, and requested that the Pope might be moved to abolish many holydays, since, owing to the barrenness of the land, the observance of these days wrought much harm to the kingdom. Such a request does honour to the common sense of Eastern Spain. The Cortes made Charles a grant of money " for that time only." In the next year he sailed for Italy, to see at his feet the whole of that hapless land, lately conquered by his matchless generals. Charles returned in 1533 ; he charged the Inquisitor- General to look after the spiritual state of the conquered Moors ; for them more than two hundred parish churches were built in one year within the diocese of Valencia alone. Spain stood in glaring contrast to the North of Europe, which was now pulling down churches instead of building them. The whole of Spain (outwardly at least) seemed now at last to belong to the Cross. Yet, however orthodox they might be, the Castilian Cortes were bent upon checking the evil practice of mortmain ; " the secular estate will be destroyed ; let no new brotherhoods be founded ; the present ones only eat and drink their revenues." Unhappily for Castile, she did not adopt the thorough methods set on foot by England about this time. 2 In 1535 Charles mastered Tunis and stood at the very height of his power. Seldom has any country risen like Spain from 1480 to 1535; within the last fourteen years Charles or his captains had held in bonds the rulers of 1 Navagero was at Burgos when the envoys of England and France declared war on Charles V. early in 1528. 2 See Lafuente, Historia de Espafta, tomo xi., for the events from 1517 down to this time. 232 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. France, Eome, Mexico, and Peru ; no such Emperor of the Romans had been known for at least three Centuries. Hardly one check had as yet befallen Caesar ; the next twenty years were to tell a different tale. More wars followed, and the cost of these was frightful; soldiers mutinied for lack of pay. His Spanish subjects showed what rulers call "an ignorant impatience of taxation," which lasted all through the Century ; the Aragonese were always talking of their old laws ; the Castilians thought to mend matters by sumptuary regulations. In 1538 met at Toledo the last Cortes, where clergy, nobles, and cities were all alike represented. The clergy were willing to make a moderate grant to the King, but the nobles appointed a committee of twelve to consider the state of the realm. Charles, who wished to fill his treasury by an excise, was stubborn in opposition to their requests ; the Constable of Castile, an old and tried servant of the Crown, made a noble reply, declaring that his order was bound to state the grievances of their poorer brethren. The debate lasted for seven hours ; in the end Charles dissolved the Cortes ; henceforth a few Castilian towns alone sent their proctors to a mere idle pageant, for no opposition going beyond talk was ever made to the will of the King ; inconvenient peti- tions were simply put aside. The commons suffered in 1521 ; their enemies the nobles suffered in 1539. These last no longer, as of old, fought with the Moors ; they were no longer consulted in State affairs ; henceforth they had nothing to do but squander their vast revenues in luxury and pride. Charles threw away much 'money and many men in the business of Algiers two years later ; he was never able to bridle the Turkish corsairs. He was equally unlucky in his attempt on Germany; in 1555, being hopelessly embar- rassed in his finances, he gave his dominions in Spain, Italy, and Flanders to his son Philip, while in the next year he resigned the Imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand. In the summer of 1556 he sailed home from the North, and spent the last year and a half of his life in the monastery of Yuste. There the great Emperor made ready for death, Ill SPAIN 233 surrounded by monks and tended by faithful old servants ; he still kept his eye upon public affairs, but was too much given to the pleasures of the table. He was troubled to the last by the followers of his old enemy Luther, and he called for the sternest measures against all Spanish Keformers. 1 What a record is that of the Hapsburgs ! We may safely say that no one House has ever been the source of so much misery to mankind in the space of two hundred years as the descendants of Philip the Handsome and Joanna, whether enthroned at Madrid or at Vienna. Philip the Second succeeded his father Charles, and stood before the world from the first as the greatest of all Christian rulers, especially after his victory over the French at St. Quentin and his triumph over Pope Paul IV. Europe, Asia, Africa, and America alike bore witness to the might of the Spanish monarchy ; at this particular time the Turk alone could compare with the Spaniard. One weak point there was in Philip's system ; he suffered as much from want of money as his father had done. All the mines in America could not supply the King's needs. The whole history of this Century in Spain is one long record of ever- increasing taxation and of never-ending wars, in spite of loud popular outcries. The first step to raise money was by the sale of dignities and lordships, and by exacting vast sums from the Bishops ; little regard was paid to the Pope's rights. The clergy might have their children legitimated on payment of money. A tax was laid on the export of wool. Absurd regulations were enforced when the fleets of precious ore came in from America ; the Crown laid hands on the property of the merchants ; commerce in Spanish hands was never to thrive. The Papal Nuncio was forbidden to extract money from the country by granting dispensa- tions; this practice is called by the Council one of the greatest scandals in Christendom ; the office of Nuncio ought to be confined to born Spaniards. The Cortes met in 1558 and petitioned for the redress of many a grievance ; Philip answered them in ambiguous phrases, most different 1 See Lafuente, Historia de Espafta, tomo xii., for the events from 1535 down to this time. 234 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. from those used by the old Kings of Castile. One petition was that friars might be forbidden to make their way into nunneries ; this had already been demanded in the Cortes of 1537 and of 1552. 1 Spain did well to look to the weak points in her har- ness, for a new pestilence was now threatening her from the North. The name of Luther had been often heard in secret conventicles ; the lights of Salamanca and Alcala were not so bright as of yore ; the trumpet of St. Dominic was giving forth an uncertain sound, for many of his Order were laying themselves open to suspicion, if not worse. Still the attitude adopted by the Church at large towards the new idea had never been doubtful. A Catalan version of the Bible, made by the brother of the famous St. Vincent Ferrer, and long afterwards printed in 1478, had been so thoroughly suppressed by the Inquisition that only one leaf of it survived in 1700. 2 Ximenes had rebuked good Arch- bishop Talavera for designing to turn the Scriptures into Arabic for the benefit of Moorish converts, and this judgment of Ximenes was afterwards regarded as a pro- phetic protest against the coming Keformation. Scholars like Lebrixa had already been harassed by the Inquisition ; and the great engine, intended at first for the benefit of concealed Jews and Moslem, stood ready to withstand the new heretics who drew their creed from Germany. Lutheran tracts, printed in Spanish at Antwerp, had been handed about in Spain as early as 1520, and had been denounced by the Pope and his Legates. Learned men had to fly ; otherwise they were thrown into the Inquisition ; and this was the fate of even Juan de Avila, known as the Apostle of Andalusia. Charles V. himself could not rescue his chaplain Virves from an imprisonment of four years and from an enforced abjuration ; the victim afterwards became a Bishop. Spain was contributing disciples to the new movement ; Valdes made Naples his field of action, while Valer, a lay- man, learnt from close study of the Vulgate such doctrines 1 Lafuente, Espana, tomo xiii., 44-82. 2 A curious specimen of this may be seen at the end of M 'die's Refor- mation in Spain. Ill SPAIN 235 that he became a dangerous man at Seville, and was confined for life about 1541. He had made a noble convert in Doctor Egidius, who long preached the new ideas and had influence upon many learned Spaniards ; he was named to a bishopric, but was branded as a heretic by the Inquisition, and his bones were burnt some years later. San Eomau, a merchant, like many of his countrymen, learnt heresy in Germany, and begged Charles V. to tolerate it in Spain ; the man was seized, sent home, and burnt at Valladolid in 1544. Enzinas suffered at Kome; Diaz was murdered in Germany by his own brother, a Romish fanatic, and Charles V. refused all redress for this crime to the wrathful German Princes. Of all the towns in Spain, Seville and Valladolid were the two that leant most to the new opinions. The convents round Seville became hotbeds of Lutheranism, especially that of San Isidro, two miles from the city. Here the brethren in 1557 laid aside the whole of the old system, except the monastic garb and the ceremony of the Mass. They influenced many of their Jeromite brethren in distant convents. One of these men, Juan de Kegla, had to abjure eighteen propositions savouring of Lutheranism ; he after- wards became confessor to Charles V., and later to Philip II. In the town of Seville one of the female converts became deranged, ran to the Inquisition, and denounced three hundred persons as heretics ; but a parish priest, a friend to the new doctrine, contrived to stave off all suspicion. At Valladolid, Koxas, a high-born Dominican and an old pupil of the renowned Carranza, took the lead in preaching Justification by faith. Illescas, writing a few years later, deplores the fact that Spain sent her learned men to convert the heretics in Germany and England, allied countries, and that these preachers came home themselves infected with heresy. Such men were Ponce de la Fuente and Cazalla ; the latter held meetings for worship in his mother's house, and his opinions spread to many of the neighbouring towns. Meanwhile Aragon was much influenced by her neighbour, Protestant Beam ; vast quantities of books were smuggled over the Pyrenees. 236 HOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. The peculiarity of the Spanish and Polish attempts at Eeformation is, that nowhere else did the converts include so large a proportion of the noble and the learned, and so small a proportion of the common folk. Another point to be remarked as to Spain is that nowhere else had the movement, even at its first birth, to encounter so dreadful an opponent as the Holy Inquisition. The head of this Office since 1547 had been Valdes, a man more blood- thirsty than Torquemada himself, for he demanded from Eome the power of condemning Lutherans to be burnt, even though they had not relapsed and had desired to be reconciled ; Paul IV., it is needless to say, granted this infamous request. Late in 1557 the Inquisitor awoke to the fact that heresy was spreading around him ; witnesses, such as Illescas, tell us that a delay of only two or three months would have enabled the heretics to set all Spain on fire. News had come from the North that books of the worst kind were constantly being smuggled into Spain ; the Inquisitors laid hold of Hernandez, the chief smuggler ; he was kept for three years in their prisons, and was constantly tortured, but would never betray his accomplices. By other means the Inquisitors came to know where the heretics at Seville and Valladolid held their meetings ; early in 1558 eight hundred were swept into the dark dungeons in Seville alone. Twelve of the monks of San Isidro had already fled, taking different roads to Geneva ; only a few days after their departure the storm burst. The dying Charles V. begged that no mercy might be shown, and regretted that he had not broken the safe conduct he had granted to Luther nearly forty years earlier. New Inquisitors were appointed to the two great heretical cities, for the old officials there had shown themselves to be careless and slow- witted. One of these new Inquisitors avowed that he had to tear the flesh of his prisoners from their bones to make them betray their brethren. All this commotion, extending over the whole land, was most costly, since heretics had to be pursued and to be afterwards kept alive for two or three years ; the Pope therefore authorised an extraordinary tax to be levied on the much-grumbling Spanish clergy. Ill SPAIN 237 The first great Act of Faith was held at Valladolid in May 1559, occupying eight hours ; the chief victims belonged to the noble house of Eoxas. Cazalla, one of the first preachers in Spain, and almoner to Charles V., had shrunk from the torture and had submitted to the Church ; he was therefore strangled before fire was applied ; his brother, a parish priest, showed none of this weakness. A lawyer was equally steadfast, and was gagged before being burnt ; Illescas, who stood near him, says, " I could not observe the least symptom of fear ; it was frightful to look in his face when one thought that in a moment he would be in hell with Luther." This victim's wife recanted at the time, but afterwards returned to her husband's faith, was imprisoned for eight years, and was then burnt alive. The bones of Cazalla's mother were consumed and her house was razed, since it had been used as a temple for the heretics. Fourteen died on this occasion and sixteen were reconciled; death was inflicted on those men and women who confessed only under torture. Five months later another Act of Faith was celebrated at Valladolid before Philip II. ; thirteen were burnt and sixteen reconciled. The most interesting victim then was Don Carlos de Seso, a noble of Verona, who had spread heresy through many Castilian towns ; he chose to be burnt ~and not strangled. A Dominican on his way to the stake told the King that he was going to die for the true faith, that of Luther. On this occasion the terrible Valdes incurred some scandal by his efforts to save a nun from the fire. The sentences passed by the Tribunal are somewhat curious ; a false witness who had caused a Jew to be burnt was condemned by the Inquisitors to receive two hundred stripes, to lose half his property, and to go to the galleys for five years ; just double this punishment was inflicted upon another less pernicious knave, who had only pretended to be an Alguazil of the Inquisition. Meanwhile at Seville an Act of Faith was celebrated in September 1559, when twenty -one were put to death and eighty were reconciled; among the former were some of the brethren of San Isidro who had not escaped. Various 238 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. noble ladies were burnt, among whom was Donna Maria de Bohorques, who was but twenty when arrested ; she was an old pupil of Doctor Egidius, and understood Greek. She was tortured until she confessed that her opinions were known to her sister Juana. She aroused the pity of even priests and monks, who in vain sought to spare this stubborn heretic ; they were so merciful as to strangle her before setting her pile on fire. The second Act of Faith at Seville took place in December 1560, when fourteen were burnt and thirty-four were subjected to penances. Ponce de la Fuente had been one of the almoners of Charles V., and a famous preacher ; many of his works were placed in the Index ; he died after long confinement in a filthy dungeon. Hernandez, the smuggler of forbidden books, was burnt. Burton, an Englishman, had come to Spain in a ship laden with merchandise, mostly his own ; the Inquisitors confiscated it and burnt the owner. Part of the goods belonged to a London merchant, who sent out John Frampton to reclaim them ; he was seized, tortured, and imprisoned for two years, and the property in question was confiscated. We must remember this case, and many another of the same kind, when we read of the eagerness of the Plymouth seamen to avenge their murdered mates by plundering the Spanish Indies. An Alcalde of the prison appeared with the other victims, but was only banished from Seville for life for having failed in zeal and attention. As a matter of fact he had cheated the prisoners of their food, and had confined them in a damp dungeon on his own account when they remonstrated. Donna Juana de Bohorques, sister of Maria already mentioned, a married woman, was hurried off to the prison after her sister's declaration. She was six months gone with child, and was delivered in the prison ; her babe was taken from her at the end of eight days; before her recovery she was tortured till the cords penetrated to the bone, and till streams of blood flowed from her mouth, the blood-vessels breaking. In a few days she died, and the Inquisitors thought they had done enough for her when at the Act of Faith they declared her innocent. Ill SPAIN 239 There is an instance of moderate torture being applied to an old woman of ninety at Murcia. Yet there are some who tell us that this Spanish Inquisition was a blessed institution. 1 Lutheran heretics were burnt all over Spain between 1560 and 1570 ; after the latter year they seem to disap- pear. The wholesale disregard of all laws of equity by the Inquisition may be best studied in the processes of Guillen and Hernandez in 1561 and 1564, as Llorente gives the trials. It was not without reason that secrecy was insisted upon in these processes as the surest bulwark of the Holy Office. But there is one process that above all others claims attention that of Carranza, the Archbishop of Toledo ; the writings of his trial, studied by Llorente, amounted to twenty-four folio volumes. The Prelate was a Dominican who had uttered unsound opinions so early as 1530 and had defended Erasmus. Ten years later he sold all his books but two to maintain the starving poor. He was for three years at the Council of Trent, where he preached on Justification (a future rock in his career) before the Fathers. He did much for the faith in England when King Philip went thither ; he then became, after some resistance, Archbishop of Toledo in 1557. In the next year he visited the dying Charles V. ; one of the great charges afterwards brought forward against the Prelate was that he showed a crucifix to the Emperor saying, "Behold Him who answers for all ; there is no longer any sin, all is forgiven." Words like these must have been already uttered at thousands of orthodox deathbeds without sus- picion of heresy. But Carranza, renowned as one of the great Lights at Trent and promoted to the richest See in Christendom after Eome, had of course roused dire jealousy among Churchmen. The chief of his enemies was Valdes, Archbishop of Seville and Inquisitor-General, who arrested his rival in August 1559 and confined him in unwholesome lodgings. A Catechism, compiled by Carranza, and thought to savour of Lutheranism, was the main groundwork of the accusations against him. It was said 1 Both Llorente and M'Crie may be consulted for these martyrdoms. 240 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. that he had preached like Melanchthon ; he was known to have been the intimate friend of many of the Lutherans burnt at Valladolid ; some of them had undergone the torture on his account. He held some of the notions of the Alumbrados. 1 One witness denounced Carranza for having backed the Lutheran arguments at Trent. No fewer than forty-one of his manuscript works were examined by the Inquisition ; ninety-six witnesses were questioned ; the advocates he chose were induced to refuse him their aid. The Fathers at Trent in 1562 approved of the fatal Cate- chism ; King Philip, on the other hand, who had become Carranza's bitter enemy, rewarded the Prelate's enemies with mitres, and would not allow Pius IV. to interfere in the business ; Pius V., a sterner man than his namesake, had to threaten the King with an excommunication and an in- terdict before Carranza, a brother Dominican, could he trans- ferred to Eome in 1567; the trial had already been spun out in Spain for eight years, and it now went on under the Pope's eye. In 1576 the Archbishop was ordered to abjure sixteen Lutheran propositions, and a few days later he died with the Pope's blessing. It speaks well for the Canons of Toledo, who had much to lose, that they stood fast by Carranza throughout the whole affair ; the rage of his enemies, the Inquisitors, was by no means cooled by his death. Moreover, some of the highest Prelates in Spain, such as Guerrero, were prosecuted by the Inquisition for having approved of the unlucky Catechism, and for hav- ing voted for its author at Trent ; the victims found it the safest course to retract their opinions. Numbers of Dominican friars, as we see in Llorente, found themselves in the same plight. Carranza had sanctioned the reading of the Scriptures by men and women whom he deemed worthy of the favour. But in 1551 Valdes, the Inquisitor-General, directed an edict against Latin Bibles, which Protestant scholars had put forth in opposition to the Vulgate. A Latin Bible, even though expurgated at Salamanca and fortified by Eoyal license, was delayed in its publication for eleven 1 See Lea, Religious History of Spain, 270-280. Ill SPAIN 241 years, till the printer was ruined. Many French printers employed in Spanish towns were burnt for Lutheranism. As to Bibles in the vulgar tongue, they were forbidden in the Index of 1583; but many priests and friars, most sound Churchmen, wrote in defence of the circulation of these books. This went on down to 1620 ; by that time Casuistry and Probabilism excited the Spanish mind more than the Bible did. 1 Tremendous was the power of the Inquisition. The Viceroy of Sicily had ordered in 1543 two of its familiars to be flogged for some crime. Philip, who was then Regent for his father in Valladolid, ordered the Viceroy to do penance for this outrage ; the culprit had also to pay one hundred ducats to the injured familiars. Valdes, as In- quisitor-General, forbade certain books that were tolerated at Rome ; even the writings of St. Francis Borgia were denounced. Illescas in 1565 saw his History of the Popes seized ; he had to write the work over again, omitting the articles against some of the Pontiffs. The authorities in Italy were not equally hard upon Cardinal Baronius. What damage has been done to the Spanish intellect by this Holy Office can only be guessed ; in matters of historical and philosophical research, where there must be freedom of treatment, Spain has always fallen woefully below France and Italy. 2 Meanwhile the emigration to America was going on briskly as ever ; it has been calculated that within two Centuries thirty millions of Spaniards betook themselves to the New World, some to make their fortunes, most to meet death in an unhealthy climate. 3 France and England may well rejoice that no share of America fell to their lot until the Southern nations had fastened upon all the richest and most pestiferous portions of the Western Continent. As to humanity the Venetian envoy Tiepolo, writing in 1563, says, " They treat the Indians like brutes; in one island, where there were one million and a half, there are 1 Lea, Religious History of Spain, 48-56. 2 Llorente 'gives long lists 'of the learned Spaniards prosecuted by the Inquisition. 3 Lafuente, xv. 143. VOL. I R 242 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. now not one thousand ; there has been great depopulation in Peru." ] But there is another side to this picture. The Spanish Government passed law after law to check the outrages perpetrated on the natives in America, and Las Casas is but one of the many priests and friars who stood forward to enforce the claims of humanity ; as time went on the clergy gained still more power in America. What the Jesuits did later in Paraguay is well known. In 1560 Philip made Madrid the capital of his king- dom, and had his thoughts full of his new foundation, the Escorial, half palace, half monastery, the greatest architec- tural achievement of this Century, after St. Peter's at Borne. The King was imitated by the great nobles ; new convents began to rise on many estates. But in spite of all this nothing could disguise certain marks of rottenness in the State. The Cortes in 1560 told Philip that the Turkish and Moorish corsairs had barred the Mediterranean to Spanish traffic ; that there was desolation from Perpignan all the way round to Portugal, for there could be no culti- vation of the soil within four leagues of the sea owing to the pirates. 2 Philip was usually unlucky on the sea, but in 1565 his galleys (though most slow in arriving) had the honour of raising the famous siege of Malta when the island was hard pressed by the Turks. We are allowed a peep at the composition of Philip's army about this time ; we have a Spanish document drawn up by a secretary of Alva's which describes a body of nearly 20,000 men, 5000 of whom were Spaniards, 6000 Germans, 4000 Italians, 4000 pioneers; there were, moreover, twenty cannon. The musquetoon, as we see, was beginning to encroach upon the arquebuse. The powder came from Hamburg, the lead from England, the pikes from Biscay, the arquebuses and musquetoons from Milan. The provisions required are set forth at great length. 3 In 1563 the Cortes once more raised their voices, de- nouncing the riches of the clergy and the accumulation of 1 Alberi, Eelazioni, Stati Europei, v. 34. 2 Lafuente, tomo xiii. p. 84. 3 See Espagne au 16 et au 17 Sitcle, par Morel-Fatio, 218, 223. in SPAIN 243 estates in mortmain. This was an old complaint, uttered thrice already in this century. Philip, as we might have expected, made answer, " It is not fitting that any novelty be now brought in." He himself heaped vast riches upon his new foundation, the Escorial, the first stone of which was laid in 1563 ; Spain was building new churches, while France, Flanders, and Scotland were pulling down their old monuments. The whole cost of the monastery, from first to last, is said to have been more than one year's revenue of the State. Philip bore a part in the grand procession at Toledo rather later, when at his instance the relics of her first Archbishop were brought back from St. Denis in France, not without international difficulties. No one contributed more than Philip to the reassembling of the Council of Trent and to its results ; his ambassador at Rome took a high tone with Pius IV. when that Pope seemed to be somewhat shifty. Spanish theologians such as Salmeron, Carranza, Cano, and more than one Soto, had been prominent in the Council ; its decrees were at once received throughout all Philip's many kingdoms, a policy which differed much from that of France. But even so devout a believer as Philip could not avoid certain differ- ences with a Pope like Pius V., who was bent on upholding all the old prerogatives of the Papacy as to jurisdiction. A gloomy account of some of the religious Orders in Spain was sent to that Pope; both monks and nuns had a strong objection to remaining in their cloisters ; the Dominicans and Jeromites were the most strict. Philip asked for the abolition of the Prsemonstratenses as being all of them unlearned idiots without a preacher among them, giving much scandal to the public. 1 Letters such as this of Philip's do much to explain the Reformation. As to his private life, Philip himself seems to have left his old evil ways after 1563 and to have given his subjects thenceforward a good pattern of morality. 2 But these sub- 1 Lafuente, tomo xiii. 259. 8 " II re fa molti disordini con donne." This remark never appears after 1563. Albert, Helazioni, Stati Europei, v. 72. The whole of Tiepolo's report should be read from p. 16. 244 EOME AND EEFOEM OHAP. jects did not satisfy the critical Venetian eye. Tiepolo reports that Spain in 1563 abounded in wool, silk, oil, and wine, exporting much ; but the people were the idlest in Christendom ; the peasant wished to pass for a gentleman, and went to the fields with a cloak around him ; the artisan walked about his shop girt with a sword ; the classes above them were equally ambitious. They were the most religious people in the world, but sometimes allowed buffoonery in the churches. The clergy had almost one half of the revenues of the land, and enjoyed a most happy time. The nobles were involved in debt, and spent their money on gaming, liveries, women, and buffoons. The police were so good that there were fewer murders in Spain than elsewhere. Every one trembled at the name of the Inquisition ; it was more awful than the King's person. Eather later Soranzo tells us that the Prelates and churches are richer in Spain than in any other country ; the Bishops acknowledge their base- born children quite openly ; they make use of the Inquisition on behalf of their private interests ; all church dignities are conferred by the Crown. There are about a hundred great nobles, whose power over their vassals is not very extensive ; the King in vain tries to check their gambling ; they make a great show of religion, as it is the path to honour ; there are few that do not hear Mass every morning. The Inquisi- tion may be called the true Lord of all Spain. Philip wished his confessor to be present in all business affairs, to discharge the Eoyal conscience. This official is the Bishop of Cuenca, who lives with such pomp as to give scandal, he being a Franciscan ; his household consists of two hundred souls. In 1570 another envoy remarks on the vast wealth and the vast poverty to be seen in Spain ; men, in order to make a show, will spend in one day the earnings of a year. 1 The intellect of a nation in the end tells more than any amount of gold or silver, and the fetters that bound the Spanish intellect about this time are but too plain. Sanchez, the foremost scholar of his day, was tried by the Inquisition for some incredibly trivial remarks in his 1 Alberi, Relazioni, Stati Europei, v. 79, 85, 90, 112, 164. Ill SPAIN 245 Salamanca lectures ; he was again denounced by some stupid monks, and on his deathbed petitioned that his works might be expurgated and be then sold for his children's benefit. Arias Montano only escaped denunciation by appealing to Philip and the Inquisitor-General. Garibay was a man who had proved his zeal against heresy ; he wrote a historical work, which was inspected first by a member of the Eoyal Council, then by the King's Chronicler, and after six months it obtained the Eoyal license. He wished to print in Antwerp, whither he was unable to sail for years, yet could not revise or add a syllable to his work. He found that in Antwerp he must have fresh licenses from two quarters. In Spain the printed book had to be compared with the original. As an especial favour, his bales of books were allowed by the Inquisition to escape all search at the frontier towns. Seven years after the manuscript had been ready for the press he was able to present a bound copy to the Inquisitor- General. 1 For 250 years the great aim of the rulers of Spain seemed to be to discourage authorship. France and England, and even Italy, were happier. Spanish authors sent their works abroad to be printed ; a severe law was launched against this practice. 2 Meanwhile in the South evil days were threatening the Moriscoes of Granada. This industrious folk, in number half a million, had long been given over for a prey to Christian greed ; the priest kept an eye on those of his parishioners who did not come to Mass ; the officials plun- dered and took bribes after the new Spanish fashion ; crowds of peasants, driven to despair, fled to the mountains, became robbers, and kept up communications with the African Moslem. Above all, the fearful shadow of the Inquisition, fixed at Granada, overhung the rich valleys of the South. But the Moriscoes could not be weaned from their old rites. Canon Pedraza tells us that they were Christians in appearance, Moors in truth ; faith was want- ing, though baptism was abundant ; there was plenty of moral works, but little devotion to the Christian holy days, 1 Lea, Religious History of Spain, 192-195. 2 Ibid. 150. 246 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. less to the Sacraments. They would work on feasts with closed doors ; they would wash even in winter ; they brought their children to church for baptism, but washed off the chrism at home with hot water ; brides went to church in raiment borrowed from Christians, but on coming home they donned the Moorish dress and sang the old Moorish songs. Their confessions were very short. A Morisco on his deathbed told the priest who was giving him the last Sacraments, " Three torments in one day, con- fession, communion, and oil ! " l To counterbalance these strange believers Isabella had called into their country a vast number of Christians from eveiy part of Spain new settlers who watched the old inhabitants with jealous eyes, and took their share of the plunder that lay ready to be filched. The hard-working Moriscoes were happiest when they were vassals, a rich source of income, to some of the nobles brought in by the Conquest. 2 A little tolerance on the part of the local tyrants might be bought for hard cash. In 1565 Archbishop Guerrero, less happily inspired at Granada than at Trent, called for new measures against his stubborn subjects ; he was backed by Cardinal Espinosa, who was now taking the lead in Philip's councils. Seldom has priestly influence produced so ruinous a disaster as it did now. The King put forth a proclamation forbidding any further use of the Arabic tongue, of the Moorish dress, of public baths ; houses must be kept open on feast days. 3 All remonstrances were in vain ; Philip coldly answered, " My advisers have assured me that I am obliged to do what I do." Deza, the chief official at Granada, seemed about to lay hands on the children of the Moriscoes ; all through 1568 a rebellion was brewing, to be headed by a 1 See Pedraza's remarks in L'Espagnc au 16 et au 17 Siecle, par Morel- Fatio, 6. 2 The proverb was, "Qui en tiene Moro tiene oro " ; also " Mientras mas Moros mas ganancia." 3 The only parallel instance I can recall is the prohibition by the Russian Government in 1864 of the Polish language in many provinces ; but that was a punishment for rebellion ; Philip's prohibition was pure wanton tyranny. Ill SPAIN 247 descendant of the old Ommiades. It broke out in December ; fearful cruelties were committed upon Christian priests and officials ; women and children were also slain. It is not in the school of the Inquisition that men learn toleration. The best Spanish regiments were now with Alva in Flanders, so armed levies were called for by the government, on the spur of the moment, from all the neighbouring towns ; thousands of Christian ruffians arrived, thirsting for blood and plunder, and the rich land of Granada soon became the scene of rape and robbery on the grandest scale ; after a victory over the rebels the men were butchered and the women sold as slaves. 1 Massacres in cold blood were frequent ; thousands of old men, women, and babes perished by the Christian sword, and the booty sometimes amounted to hundreds of thousands of ducats. The treatment of women, sometimes winked at by the generals, upsets all our old notions as to Spanish chivalry. In two months' time the Moriscoes were offering to submit, but no amnesty was proclaimed, and the Christian outrages never ceased. One hundred and fifty of the doomed race were butchered in the prisons of Granada, and their widows were legally deprived of their dowries ; it was suspected that the whole business had been plotted by Deza himself, a future Cardinal. In April 1569 the Moriscoes, driven to despair, rose once more upon their tyrants. Their future conqueror at last appeared on the scene. Don John of Austria, King Philip's bastard brother, was now sent to take the command in the South. On one occasion three thousand women were captured, almost all of whom were starved to death. In June Deza turned more than three thousand Moriscoes out of Granada, sending them under guard to other provinces ; almost all died on the road by hunger or by the swords of their escort. The bloody year 1569 ended with the siege of Galera, before which the Christians sat down, late in December. No aid from Sultan Selim came to his Morisco brethren ; the con- 1 Slaves in Spain were marked on the brow with a red-hot iron ; the mark was an S and a nail (clavo). This stood for es clavo (slave). Circourt, Les Mores, ii. 104. 248 ROME AND REFORM CHAP. quest of Cyprus was to him a more tempting bait than the deliverance of distressed Moslem. Letters had been sent to Africa setting forth a lifelike picture of the proceedings of the Inquisition, and four hundred Turks from Algiers landed in Granada, a wretchedly inadequate body of allies. 1 Twenty-three thousand Christians stood ready to begin the campaign of 1570 under Don John of Austria. The siege of Galera was pressed for more than a month ; mines were skilfully employed, and the heroic garrison died to the last man. Don John ordered his guard to slaughter four hundred women who had been spared by the soldiers ; it is the blackest spot on the fame of that short-lived hero. The Christians had lost heavily ; true was the proverb, " If Africa weeps, Spain does not laugh." Galera was destroyed, and its foundations were sown with salt. By May the country had been so thoroughly devastated that the Moriscoes were once more begging for fair terms of peace. But no orders of the King, no commands of the Generals, could restrain the ruffian soldiery from murdering or robbing the rebels willing to come in. In August the Moriscoes began to disband ; some went to Africa, others hid in the caverns of the mountains. Requesens, who after- wards succeeded Alva in the Netherlands, marched through the hilly country, slaughtering every man, and capturing women by thousands. The victims were hemmed in by eighty garrisons. The last battle was fought in September 1870. Philip now sent orders to drive out all the Moriscoes, guilty or innocent, and to disperse them over Spain, taking care that families should not be separated ; out of all their vast numbers there probably remained only fifty thousand to undergo exile. Don John left Granada in November to take command of the allied fleets that after- wards conquered at Lepanto. The remnant of the rebels was gleaned up, and their chiefs were hung or torn to pieces, as might seem good to Deza. 2 Aben Aboo, their 1 See the letter about the Inquisition in Circourt, Les Mores, ii. 481. a The cruel punishment of tearing to pieces by means of horses was common in Spain. In France it was reserved for world-renowned criminals, such as Poltrot and Ravaillac. Ill SPAIN 249 crowned King, was betrayed by his followers in a cavern, and, happily for himself, was killed on the spot ; his corpse was borne in triumph through Granada in March 1571. Thus ended the war, after having lasted for rather more than two years ; half a million of thrifty Moriscoes had been got rid of, and it was found by experience that they could not be replaced ; the land became a wilderness ; the Vega of Granada, even at this day, is a gloomy sight. As to the hapless exiles scattered through Spain, any one of them who should speak or write Arabic or play on a Moorish instrument received a hundred lashes and was sent to the galleys for four years. Many of them found their way to Valencia, and thence to Africa. Those who remained had the Inquisition always before their eyes ; even Pius V. strove to soften in their behalf the practice of this tribunal. They were ordered to avow their infidelity in the con- fessional ; it was actually debated among Spanish divines whether the priest ought to treat the confessions of Moriscoes as secret, since they were not real Christians. Such was the result of the victories achieved in Granada by the soldiery who fought for " the Two Majesties," as the Spanish phrase ran ; that is, for God and the King. 1 In 1572 Philip found that he was at the beginning of a struggle far more stubborn than that with the Moriscoes. The Dutch, after bearing for some years Alva's frightful misgovernment, took up arms against the tyrant at Madrid, and never laid them down for seventy-six years, if we except a twelve years' truce. This was the ulcer that ate away the life of Spain, an ulcer far worse than any that ever plagued Napoleon. Philip might have speedily ended the Dutch war had he made but a few concessions as to religion ; but this neither he nor his priests would ever suffer. By 1572 Spain had seen her best days; no future conquests in Portugal could make up for the strife that now blazed up in the North. We must remember that the revolt headed by Orange was not like a rising in Sicily or Aragon ; 1 Circourt, Les Mores, iii. 159. I have consulted this author for the whole of the Granada war ; he ought to be better known in England than he is. Prescott also is a most useful authority on this struggle. 250 ROME AND EEFOKM CHAP. shrewd observers had already pointed to wealthy Flanders as the true Indies of the Spanish Monarchy. Philip's joy at the news of the day of St. Bartholomew is well known. Besme, the German murderer of Coligny, some time later came to Madrid, there to swagger about the wonderful feat he had achieved upon a wounded man in bed. The King and his Spaniards rewarded him with large sums of money. Never did more joyful tidings come to Madrid ; Alva had now no further fear of being crushed by France and England united. The Admiral of Castile hit off the truth when he told his guests, " The war of France is the peace of Spain, and the peace of Spain is the war of France, set on foot by our doubloons." 3 The whole history of the French League, still to come, is here set forth. In more lands than one a burning hatred of Spain was having its influence on politics, and it is worth while to see how this hatred arose. The treacherous attack of the Spaniards in 1568 upon Hawkins, while at anchor in a Mexican harbour, is well known. Phillips, one of the maltreated crew, has left us an account of the later sufferings of his captive mates. After being nearly starved, they were let out by the Viceroy to act as overseers in the Mexican mines, where they soon made much money. But in 1574 the Inquisition was established in Mexico, much against the will of many Spaniards, and even of many friars. All the English prisoners were at once dragged before the tribunal and stripped of their money. They were racked and forced to give evidence against themselves, that they were heretics ; three were burnt, one being an Irishman ; fifty others were flogged in public and sent to the galleys for various terms. Phillips himself was made use of by the Spaniards when they were frightened by Drake's voyage up the Pacific coast in 1579. At last he was brought home in a Spanish ship, had a narrow escape from the Inquisition at Seville, and returned to England after sixteen years' absence. Barret, one of the best officers of Hawkins, was burnt at Seville, while others had to serve for long years at the galleys ; " hunger, thirst, cold, and stripes we lacked none." 1 See Brantdme, Vie de Chastillon (Coligny). Ill SPAIN 251 These narratives, printed in London, must have lashed up all good Englishmen to the highest pitch of wrath ; and it was Spain that in the long-run was the sufferer. 1 As to home politics, King Philip still allowed the deputies of the Castilian cities to meet, though he paid little heed to their petitions about the ruin of traders with America, the constantly increasing charges of the war in Flanders and France, the mutinous conduct of the brutal soldiery even on Castilian soil, the disorders of monks and nuns. Spanish morals had not been much improved by the decrees of Trent. 2 In 1573 the Cortes complain that the King's servants and justices get elected among the deputies, and hence there is little freedom for debating as to the good of the realm ; the King is asked to forbid this evil usage. 3 The Cortes were great enemies to luxury, especially to the newly invented coaches ; they further induced the King to forbid the sale of small articles of foreign manufacture. This was one of the few petitions granted ; in the Cortes of 1583 only twelve out of eighty-one supplications obtained Philip's assent. One sore subject of complaint was that clerical judges used the fearful weapon of excommunication against the poor to enforce the payment of trifling debts. A wise councillor advised that the revenues of the Church should be meddled with for twenty years ; this was but fair, since the crushing wars in Flanders and France were undertaken on behalf of the Church. The Cortes well knew that an empty sack cannot stand upright ; they therefore begged that decent salaries might be allotted to judges, that magistrates should be forbidden to ply mechanical trades, and that one person should not fill two or more offices. In 1575 Philip planned a kind of Castilian Doomsday Book, in which were to be set down the description of each town, village, and church throughout the realm, with its 1 These narratives are in Arber's Etiglish Garner, v. 261-330. - As to this point, Lafuente, torn. xiv. p. 402, refers to certain ordinances of 1571, fourteen in number, only one of which can the modest man print. 3 Philip's reply to this and to many another patriotic petition was, "A esto vos respondemos, que no conviene hacer en ello novedad." This was his form of our own "le roy s'avisera." 252 EOME AND EEFOEM monuments and general history ; mines, castles, harbours, and even the relics in the monasteries were all to be de- scribed. Posterity has had a great loss in the non-execution of this noble project. Want of money was probably the reason of this failure ; the gloomy theme is uppermost in the minds of the Cortes when they sat for the last time under Philip, from 1593 to 1598. They go over all the old grounds of complaint ; the labourers were so ill paid that they had no choice but to sell their possessions or to be ruined by debt. Philip was impassive as ever ; the Cortes had become a nullity ; the Crown laid on what taxes it chose, and left most of the grievances unredressed. The contrast of Castile with Elizabeth's realm, rich and thriving, is most striking. To all remonstrances Philip's reply was, " I have to defend the Catholic faith." Happy would it have been for Spain had she never given her daughter to the handsome young Hapsburg, had she never conquered Southern Italy. In that case fewer feats of arms would have been blazoned on her scutcheon, but she would never have been driven to crush commerce, to debase the coinage, to borrow at ruinous interest, and to see her people slowly diminishing. Ferdinand and the great Gonsalvo did indeed bequeath a most baleful legacy to future generations. One of the easiest of Philip's conquests was that of Portugal in 1580; this throne had become vacant, and he was without doubt the nearest heir. The Duke of Alva, fairly humane on this occasion, led an army to Lisbon, and soon put to flight the pretender, the bastard Don Antonio, whose chief supporters were the friars. In the next year Philip came to his new conquest, and received the oath of allegiance from all, the Duke of Braganza included. The Peninsula was now united for sixty years ; such a state of things had not been known since the Moslem first seized on Gibraltar. Philip published an amnesty, with a great number of exceptions, as usual with the Hapsburgs ; many of the friars who had opposed his cause were put to death. In 1582 the Pretender led a fleet from Nantes to seize on Tercera, though France was now at peace with Spain ; but Ill SPAIN 253 he found that the Spanish admirals were masters of the sea ; more than three thousand Frenchmen perished on the occasion. Philip seemed now to stand on the highest pinnacle of his power, if we could only forget the gnawing ulcer in the Netherlands. About this time died Alva, the last of the very great Spanish generals ; henceforward Spain had to put her trust in Italians like Farnese and Spinola. Portugal, fastened on to Spain, saw her vast foreign colonies become a prey to the Dutch rebels. Philip some years later gained a triumph far more hurtful to the world than his conquest of Portugal had been. The tale of Escobedo is well known; how that luckless wight, sent from Flanders to Madrid by his patron, the famous Don John of Austria, incurred the enmity of Perez, King Philip's Secretary and chosen confidant ; and how in 1578 the envoy was murdered by the agents of Perez, with the King's sanction. Theologians were found to opine that the Sovereign, being lord of life and property, might lawfully get rid of any vassal, either openly or in secret. The murderers of Escobedo were rewarded and sent out of Spain. But Philip turned against Perez ; in 1582 accusations were brought against the Secretary, who was thrown into prison three years later. In 1590 the unlucky scapegoat was put to the torture by the orders of his Royal accomplice, until life was in danger. Rather later, he escaped from prison and fled to Aragon. He claimed the great privilege of that realm, the Manifestation, while Philip put forth a proclamation against him, hinting at dark secrets which could not be revealed. 1 Attempts were made to poison Perez ; the Junta at Madrid advised Philip that " strong and extraordinary remedies must be used, if chastisement of the culprit cannot be effected by ordinary means " ; Philip scrawled on the margin of the paper his approval of this doctrine of expediency. A new way of vengeance was imagined. Perez had attempted to fly to Be"arn, a land of heretics. He had also, in moments of wrath, uttered certain phrases that sounded blasphemous; 1 " De secretes que no conviene que anden en ellos " is the most remark- able phrase in this paper. Lafuente, tomo xiv. 343. 254 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. and blasphemy is not far removed from heresy. Hence the Inquisitors at Saragossa were ordered by their superiors at Madrid to seize Perez ; he was therefore removed in a coach from the prison of the Manifestation to that of the Inquisition. Here the free laws of Aragon, the heritage of five Centuries, were brought face to face with the gloomy despot in Castile, who had already trampled upon the liberties of mankind wherever he could reduce them to an idle show. He had before fomented quarrels among the Aragonese ; he was soon to bring down his hand heavy upon their hoary privileges. His agent, Almenara, a foreigner to Aragon, had already busied himself about the great kidnapping affair. The mob of Saragossa rose upon this foreigner, broke open his palace, and slashed him with knives, and he died a fortnight later of a fever. Others of the revolters threatened the Aljaferia, the prison of the Inquisition, where Perez lay. The Inquisitors, after many entreaties from the Archbishop and the great nobles, most unwillingly gave up their prisoner. Philip ordered the Bull of Pius V. to be published which threatens all who hinder the free exercise of the Inquisition. Saragossa answered with jests and satires. The Inquisitors declared that the whole State, even down to the clergy, friars, and nuns, had risen to defend freedom. But some of the nobles began to draw back on receiving letters from the King. Perez kept up a paper war, and musket shots were often fired. The Inquisition made another attempt to seize the traitor, and the officials set out with more than six hundred arquebusiers. The mob rose once more ; some lives were lost, but the soldiers made little resistance ; Perez was dragged out of his prison and was packed off to France. Philip now assembled an army " to restore respect for the Holy Office," though he promised not to harm the privileges of Aragon. The entrance of this Castilian army was against all Aragonese law, and the Chief Justice was asked to convoke the forces of the kingdom. A council of war met ; aid was in vain sought from the sister realms of Catalonia and Valencia ; generals of the artillery, cavalry, and mountaineers were named. Ill SPAIN 255 But the nobles, and even the Justice, fell away from the great cause ; Saragossa was left without a leader, many of the chiefs having fled. Philip's officials again promised Aragon the enjoyment of her old system ; the Inquisitors alone seemed to be ruthless. But the tyrant at Madrid was all this time meditating a dark deed of vengeance ; he had well known how to deal with Egmont and Horn many years earlier. Five weeks after the Castilian army had marched into Saragossa, La Nuza, the Chief Justice, the highest Magistrate of the freest of Christian kingdoms, was suddenly arrested, and was told that he must die next morning. In vain did he cry, "No one can be my judge but the whole of the Cortes, King, and Kingdom." A scrawl from Philip was the only death- warrant needed ; and thus died a nobleman whose house had held the office of Chief Justice for a hundred and forty years. His estates were confiscated and his castles were razed to the ground. Two of the greatest magnates died in prison before they could be sentenced ; as was afterwards said of Napoleon, Philip II. was the unluckiest of men, for all his prisoners perished in his hands. Other nobles were tortured before death ; many artisans and labourers were butchered ; even the hangman had to die by the hands of his assistant. An eagle (perhaps here I ought to say, a vulture) should not catch flies. At last came out a general Pardon, from which, however, one hundred and nineteen, many of them clergymen and labourers, were excepted. The Inquisition was equally active ; one hundred and twenty-three were imprisoned, the most for having helped Perez to escape. Some were put to death ; others were less severely chastised. Perez was burnt in effigy as a heretic in the grand procession about a year after his flight ; he lingered out a wretched life as a suppliant at the Courts of France and England. The finest streets of Saragossa became heaps of ruins, since the stately houses of the noble rebels were razed to the ground. Spain has made herself remarkable above other lands for two most barbarous practices, con- stantly repeated the destruction of houses and the burning of corpses long buried. Various notices of Aragonese 256 ROME AND BEFORM CHAP. patriotism have been handed down to us by the papers long preserved in the Inquisition. Thus a parish priest in the hot turmoil had offered to absolve all the revolters, whatever the Bull of Pius V. might say ; this priest was afterwards borne off to the secret prisons. A familiar of the Holy Office had assented to the remark that Aragon ought to bear the Inquisition no longer, saying that they had his leave to burn papers, prisons, and even the Inquisitors themselves. A monk, hearing of the approach- ing Castilian army, had cried, "If Jesus Christ were a Castilian I would not believe in Him ! " A lawyer in the Royal service had declared that the King would be a tyrant if he backed the Inquisitors ; Aragon should get rid of him and choose a king of her own, since it was her right. After Philip's triumph five hundred persons demanded absolution from the Inquisition, some for having spoken of Perez with compassion ; one, a leech, for having attended him when ill ; two gentlemen asked for absolution only to reassure their consciences, which did not reproach them. 1 To such a pass had the hateful engine of Arbues brought noble Aragon ! As we scan these records we cannot help thinking of the folly shown by the great-grandfathers of these victims when the Inquisition with very little protest was allowed to be set up in Saragossa. It had begun upon concealed Jews, and it ended with correcting sound Christians. Another thought may strike us ; Aragon stood aloof when Castile was in her agony in 1520 ; a Castilian army swept away the Aragonese liberties seventy years later. England and Scotland were blessed happily with very different relations about 1640. Philip II., like our own Henry VIII., had a hankering after forms of law when any tyrannical act had to be cloked. In 1592 the Aragonese Cortes, assembled at Tarazona, voted him the largest grant of money they had ever made. It was arranged that the Crown should henceforward name the Judges ; the high office of Justiciary became a shadow ; the 1 I take these depositions from Llorentc on the Inquisition ; he bestows much attention on the Perez affair. Mignet's book on Perez should be care- fully studied. m SPAIN 257 strongest pillar of Aragonese freedom was turned into a mere Eoyal deputy. No longer were the " Four Arms " of Aragon to remonstrate against the misdeeds of the Inquisi- tion as they had done in 1563. Despotism, however, had not yet made Spain wholly its own, for the Catalans and Basques had still to be tamed. Morosini, the Venetian, throws some light upon these times; writing in 1581, he tells us that the Spaniards are very slow in manual labour ; what in other nations would be done in a month would take four months in Spain. The cities are filthy, as they cast all the dirt into the streets. The taxes are very high. The nobles are not called to council, so they remain ignorant, and laugh at letters and trade. Their power had long been waning ; the great Alva was once made prisoner by a single Alguazil. They paid no taxes; low persons climbed into office in Church and State and bore enmity to the nobles. The Cortes in Castile dare not oppose new exactions by the Crown. More account is made of bastards in Spain than in any other part of the world. Gradenigo in 1586 says that the King trusts to the Inquisition to counteract the privileges of the free States ; it draws all things to itself and admits no justifica- tion in the accused ; it has spies everywhere. The people might wish it away, but the King would not hear a word of this course. Spain possessed three millions of men and five millions of women. This calculation, even if it be exaggerated, shows us what the emigration to America must have been. Vendramino in 1595 says that, according to the Spaniards, the gold from the Indies did them no more good than the rain falling upon the roof of a house, for gold does not remain with them. The real wealth of the country was the trade with Flanders, and that was now stopped. 1 But King Philip had a trade of his own; in 1592 the English took a Spanish carrack off the Barbary coast with the strangest of cargoes. There were fourteen hundred chests of quicksilver, without which the American mines could not be worked, and of which the King had the mono- 1 Alberi, Eelazioni, Stati Europei, v. 286, 392-396, 455. VOL. I S 258 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. poly. There were likewise ten cases of gilded Mass-books and Papal Bulls. These last, more than two millions in number, for the dead and the living, were meant for American use. The quicksilver and the Bulls cost the King three hundred thousand florins, but he sold them for five millions to the luckless natives of America, who were forced to buy them. Philip was held to be a thrifty trader. 1 In his dominions sound scholarship was much to seek, as we see by a famous imposture in 1595 and the following year. Within that time eighteen books were found in caves near Granada, inscribed in Latin and Arabic on small circular leaden plates ; these purported to be revelations and prophecies from St. James. Countless miracles were wrought by these relics, and pilgrims poured in from all quarters of Spain. Learned Moors were employed to translate the books ; they contained evidence in favour of the Immaculate Conception and the Spanish Apostolate of St. James. There was, moreover, a strong Mahometan element in the books ; it seems that they were the work of Moriscoes, who feared impending banishment. Eighteen theologians pronounced that the books were the work of the Holy Ghost. A few scholars, such as Arias Montanus, a certain Morisco Jesuit, and the Papal Nuncio were unbelievers. Even the Domini- cans durst hardly raise a protest against the forgeries. But Home was convinced of the fraud ; though the commands of Clement VIII. met with no obedience in Spain, succeed- ing Popes took the strongest measures against the Spanish forgeries, even rating the General of the Jesuits. But so late as 1753 new leaden plates were discovered, confirming the old ones ; and even in our day a work has been written in defence of the famous fraud. 2 Our next authority is a keen-eyed priest who followed Borghese (the future Paul V.), sent on an embassy from Rome to the Spanish Court late in 1593. The party took about forty days to sail from Civita Vecchia round the coast to Barcelona. Travelling in Spain was no pleasant jaunt ; 1 Motley, United Netherlands, iii. 212. 2 Lea, Religious History of Spain, 108-117. Ill SPAIN 259 we see the unlucky Italians riding through the snow on mules that often fell ; the lodging was wretched, and the food worse; the exactions at the custom-houses of the various provinces were enormous. On the other hand, the treasures of the sacristies were a grand sight ; the priest says that the churches of Spain were usually full of silver ; the relics were wonderful ; for instance, at Valencia they saw a picture by St. Luke that could never be copied, in spite of a bold attempt ; also the cup used by Christ when He instituted the Eucharist ; and a huge tooth of St. Christopher's. Madrid was said to contain 50,000 hearths ; the houses were almost all built of earth, with no chimneys ; the filth of these dwellings was always emptied into the streets, and fearful stenches were the result. The streets were often cleaned, but even then it was impossible to walk through them. The houses were low, for if they were built high half of the rooms had to be given up for the King's service. The women when abroad showed little modesty. Justice was administered by six Alcaldes four for criminal, two for civil cases ; they were most severe. Under them were many Alguazils, who were looked upon with much more respect than the Italian Sbirri at home. The foreign priest was delighted with Aranjuez, which owed its origin to Charles V. ; the garden was perhaps the finest in the world, abounding in plants brought from the Indies. The Escorial was said to have cost eight millions of gold. The slowness of the Spanish ministers in transacting busi- ness seemed to the Italian embassy something monstrous ; even an easy affair required a year to end it ; a suitor had need to bring with him a good purse. 1 Spain, like Turkey, was a mighty power in Borghese's time ; at Madrid, next to the Churchman, the soldier was highest in esteem. In no country have so many able writers borne arms ; Boscan, Calderon, Cervantes, and Lope de Vega are some of the best-known instances. But the sword of Spain was beginning to lose its sharpness ; Philip's championship of the Church outside of his own land seemed to end in nothing but disaster. The Turkish foe had been 1 L'Espagne au 16 et au 17 Sitcle, par Morel-Fatio, 161-193. 260 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. scotched, not killed, at Lepanto. The English, proud of their late deliverance, were able to sack Cadiz and to carry off from there booty worth twenty millions of ducats ; the American coast became a helpless prey to the heretical seamen, and little aid came from Spain to the Irish rebels. The French, shaking off the fiend of disunion, at last cleared their soil of the hated Spaniards. The heroic Dutch held fast as ever, showing a bold front to their old tyrant. Seldom has any ruler had to face three such redoubtable enemies at once as were Elizabeth, Henry IV., and Maurice of Orange. Western Europe refused to be swayed by an aged despot scrawling his despatches in the Escorial, and more heedful of some minute point than of broad views of policy. 1 A wise statesman (Charles V., for example) will pick out his instruments carefully, and will then trust them thoroughly. Happily for mankind, Philip chose to do every- thing himself, to trust as little as possible to capable agents, and to fill endless reams of paper with schemes more or less impracticable. No King ever wrote so much, and his minute mind is always apparent 2 while he directs the affairs of great part of Europe and America, looking upon men as mere puppets in his hand. " Time and I against two " was his favourite saw, but in reality he often let slip the happy moment for acting. His delays all but handed over Malta to the Turk. " I must walk with a foot of lead," he writes when there was a talk of invading England, He was often, in purely political affairs, under his Confessor's thumb. In the Aragonese business Fray Diego de Chaves, the aged priest who filled this office, tells Philip, " God has fought for you ; if you spare His enemies He will not spare you. Do not resort to trials ; every subject of the King must attack the rebels and slay them." Philip had been 1 Thus the chief object that he was bent upon, after the sack of Cadiz, was to hang a wretched Dutch rebel who had been captured on that occa- sion. Forneron, Philip II. vol. iv. 274. He had had good reason, a few years earlier, to scrawl biiena nueva on the letter that announced Walsing- ham's death. 2 Thus the hero of Lepanto must never be called ' ' Alteza " in word or letter ; " Excelencia " is the very highest title he must receive, and Philip's orders to this effect must be concealed. Lafuente, tomo xiii. 530. Ill SPAIN 261 anxious to keep a certain minister ; the Confessor writes, " God exacts from me that I should not allow Your Majesty to partake of any Sacrament so long as you do not yield on the question of this minister. Of all Catholics Your Majesty is in the most perilous state." In the end the Confessor had his own way throughout this purely secular affair. 1 Under such a system it might be thought that morality would be a thriving plant in Madrid. The truth was far otherwise ; things seem to have degenerated within the last few years. Members of the Koyal Council gloated over indecent dances ; courtesans had a happy time. Not a day passed without knives being used. Ten thousand per- sons hung about the Court eager to step into an Alguazil's office or some other good berth, and these claimants were ready to sell the honour of sister, wife, or daughter to effect their object. Every office, even that of judge, was sold ; bribery was rampant and murderers found a way of escape. Ignorance at home was promoted by Philip's absurd laws ; foreigners had to be called in for the simplest mechanical works. The towns diminished at a most rapid rate ; the Army and the Church swallowed up all. 2 As to finance, the most brilliant stroke was to suspend the payment of what Philip owed to the bankers under the pretext that the contracts which they had made the King accept were illicit. 3 There was widespread ruin at Frankfort and Genoa. But Philip never had much success in matters financial; the brilliant alliance with Venice, the League that won Lepanto, was brought to an end simply because Philip refused to fulfil his promise that he would pay one half of the cost of the war ; the Venetians in vain claimed fifteen hundred thousand crowns. 4 " King Philip has no money," writes D'Ossat in 1594 ; "he is crippled by debt; all his subjects, even those in Spain, are murmuring, the Churchmen in particular, since those most oppressed are the least satisfied, as we here know by the complaints they often 1 See Forneron, Philip II. vol. iv. 148, 163. 2 Ibid. 167-171. 3 Ibid. 279. 4 Un Ambassadeur Liberal (De Ferrier), by Fremy, 185. 262 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. send to the Pope. All foreign Princes wish to see the King brought low." l We cannot wonder at this feeling as we read of Spanish haughtiness displayed abroad. When the Pope in 1598 received at Ferrara the new Queen of Spain, the Constable of Castile wished to take precedence of the whole College of Cardinals, and reviled one of the Pope's Nuncios. In this case pride went before a fall, for the Constable, after kissing the Pope's feet, coolly sat down on a stool, which was always at the Pope's side, where papers and memorials might be put. The Master of the Ceremonies requested the Spaniard, not in a whisper, to rise at once, while the Cardinals enjoyed a quiet laugh. " These men," writes D'Ossat of the Spaniards, " bear us a deadly hate, so that they cannot maintain moderation towards us ; they are so presumptuous and arrogant that they scorn all the other nations." He writes later, in 1603, "The Spaniards are so haughty that they think their present King (Philip III.), who is but a boy, must be the arbiter and lord of all Christendom ; they would think it a monstrous sacrilege if any Prince in the world even dreamt of competing with their Master in any matter whatever." 2 The Emperor Charles V. had bidden his son regard three cities as the keys of the Spanish Empire ; these were Goletta, Flushing, and Cadiz ; of these one had been taken by the Turks after the Emperor's death ; another had been seized by the Flemish rebels; the third had been sacked by the English. 3 Charles V., a man untroubled by the directors of his conscience, had excelled in choosing great statesmen and soldiers as agents. When these died off Philip II. seemed unable to replace them ; Don John of Austria and the Duke of Parma for long had no worthy successors ; the defeat of the Armada was in no slight degree owing to Philip's absurd choice of an Admiral. And now, in 1598, the end was at hand. The great patron of the Inquisition had himself long been tortured by 1 Lettres du Cardinal D'Ossat, i. 258. 2 Ibid. iii. 199, iv. 514, v. 227. 3 Camden, Annals of Elizabeth, 497. Ill SPAIN 263 the gout, and this was followed by dropsy. He asked to be borne to the Escorial, there to die. He suffered fearfully from ulcers, and for fifty-three days lay unable to move, as in a kind of filthy sewer; life in such a state seemed a miracle. He gave good advice to his son, received all the consolations of religion, and died on the 13th of September. 1 The champion of the Faith was sincerely mourned by his heavily taxed subjects ; no curses followed his bier, such as those hurled after the corpse of the French tyrant more than a Century later. But these Castilians never knew the dark prison-house secrets that lay for more than two hundred years buried in the Archives of Simancas ; in particular, they could not have dreamt of the letters wherein Philip carefully arranges the death of Montigny with consummate art; perhaps the most unkingly letters ever penned by Monarch, a happy mixture of cruelty and fraud. 2 The Castilians cared little for the change in Aragon, a change due to the tyranny of the Churchmen and the tyranny of the lay Despot alike. One of the great evils that overtook Southern Europe after 1520 (this can never be repeated too often) was the loss of old Freedom ; in this loss, at least as regards Aragon, we see the hand of the Church and of her most beloved engine ; thirty years later, as the Age of Debasement unfolded itself, Bohemia, after long enjoyment of hoary liberties, was to drink of the same cup as Aragon, at the hand of another Hapsburg. Most true became the Spanish proverb which tells us that laws go as Kings choose. 3 One of the peculiarities of modern Ultramontanism is its fond reverence for King Philip II. and its readiness to cast a veil over his crimes. 4 He was a true Spaniard ; 1 See tomo xiv. of Lafuente, Historia de Espana, for all from the be- ginning of the Conquest of Portugal downwards. 2 Lafuente sets them out in his tomo xiii. 365-372. Motley has long made the black business known to the world. 3 "Alia van leyes, donde quieren Reyes." 4 Philip appeared in his most amiable guise when he received the Japanese ambassadors in 1584. They had taken two years and a half to reach Europe by sea. They were brought to the Palace at Madrid in his carriages ; he would not allow them to kiss his hand, but embraced them all three. He questioned them on their national customs, and talked with them for almost an hour, to the astonishment of his courtiers ; he placed them in his chapel 264 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. and as to superstition, Spain outran Italy. For instance, it was the custom in Spain that the priest, after the sacrifice had been offered, should have his hand kissed by the bystanders ; this seemed strange to Italians. 1 Philip III. succeeded, one of the poorest creatures that ever wore a crown, though he was the only one of the Austrian Philips who was guiltless of murder and debauchery. It is wrong to speak of him as having any influence on the events that marked his reign, for he handed over all business to his money-loving favourite, the Duke of Lerma, while the King built new convents and brought many holy relics into Spain. The country became poorer and poorer; the misery of the peasants became more perceptible ; the treasures of America brought little relief ; yet vast sums were literally wasted by Lerma and his dependants. Still wisdom was not altogether banished from Madrid ; treaties were made with England, and later with the United Provinces, though the war with the Moslem was carried on briskly. 2 A piece of good fortune, ill deserved by Spain, now befell her ; this was the discovery of Spinola, one of the two greatest of all European commanders for the twenty years after 1610. Spain had now to look to Italy for her generals ; she herself was to breed no more Alvas. Her new general was much envied by the Spaniards, who prevented him from receiving the money due to him from the Crown. 3 This decay of military prowess in Spain is remarkable, since we may say of the army that in the eyes of all good Spaniards it had no rival as a profession except the Church. A score of brilliant men distinguished themselves alike by pen and by sword ; of these Cervantes is the best known. The literary men of Spain were equally drawn to the close to the altar. He sent them to see the Escorial, defrayed all their charges, and visited them himself in the Jesuits' convent. He dispatched them to Rome in a large ship. See Histoire de I'Eglise du Japon, by Crasset the Jesuit, i. 452. 1 Maffei, Annali di Gregorio XIII. ii. 219. 2 One of the conditions of the peace with England was that her subjects should not be troubled in Spain for matters of religion, provided they gave no scandal. This was very different from the system of Charles V. and Philip II. 3 Barozzi, Relazione Venete, i. 526, 663. Ill SPAIN 265 Church ; poets and dramatists alike bore the tonsure or served the Inquisition ; they dedicated their pens to the defence of the worst spiritual abuses. Other nations were turning their attention to mighty discoveries of the secrets of Nature ; but Spain produced works widely different from those of Harvey and Galileo ; the biographies of Saints and the histories of miracles engaged the Spaniard's mental powers ; his two choicest themes were the Immaculate Con- ception and the mission of St. James. All around seemed to be rottenness and decay ; even the pencils of Velazquez and Murillo cannot make us forget the true state of the land. In 1606 Cornwallis, the English envoy, writes home from Madrid, " The want here of money and ill administra- tion of right and justice are as great as ever. The door of the Treasury is shut up ; as wherein 'tis said there is no money. The cries and discontents of the people, soldiers, and ordinary servants of the King are extreme ; and were they not bridled by extremity of laws and fear of the Inquisition, things here would not rest long in the state they are in." l Thus we find the great spiritual Court used as an instrument of despotism in things temporal. The same pen draws a picture of Lerma, with other nobles, bearing a canopy over the image of our Lady of Atocha, which was removed from her own church to another as a means of procuring the much-wanted rain. As the image passed, the people fell on their knees and knocked their breasts, " in none other sort than if God Himself had been present in it." 2 But all Lerma's devotion did not prevent him for breaking the plighted faith of the State. France had procured a general pardon for all the accomplices of Perez ; one of these, named Frontin, had lived for some time comfortably in Aragon, when suddenly three officers of justice, a confessor, and a hangman came down upon him and beheaded him. This breach of faith caused much anger at Paris. 3 Cornwallis further tell us that the Spanish Churchmen 1 Winwood's Memorials, ii. 278. This is confirmed by a remarkable passage in the envoy Soranzo, quoted by Motley, United Netherlands, iii. 536. 2 Ibid. iii. 9. 3 Ibid. 446. 266 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. are exceeding rich or extremely poor ; the latter class have to resort to unclerical labours in order to live. 1 The King had the nomination to all benefices, and also the right of burdening them with pensions. The Bishops when in trouble resorted to the Crown, not to the Pope ; their lay master found in them a mine of wealth, on which he could always draw. There were about forty Dukes who might stand covered before the King ; Philip II. was wont to sow dissensions among them, and to keep their much-oppressed vassals unarmed. The lands of the nobles were heavily burdened with mortgages. The taxation by the Crown was crushing. The people delighted in superstitions, and would easily be led into various heresies if it were not for the awful Inquisition. 2 The friar Campanella in Calabria wrote his treatise on the Spanish Monarchy about the year 1600, before he fell into its grip. 3 He calls the King a Cyrus, who has settled the daily Sacrifice throughout the whole world, so that it is celebrated every half-hour all through his Empire, which now included the Portuguese dominions. But the population at home was decreasing owing to wars and emigration ; husbandry was decaying, for French labourers wrought in the fields of Spain, and Italians manufactured the Spanish wool and silk. If the American treasure fleets were cut off, Spain must be oppressed by the tax-gatherer ; vast sums of money were wasted, yet the King was none the better. The soldiers were cheated of their pay ; our friar would make Capuchins, who care not for money, the paymasters. There were not five thousand Spanish soldiers in Naples and Sicily ; the subjects had therefore to be dis- armed. Switzers were employed as the Eoyal life-guard. It would be worth anything to reconcile the Netherlands, so full of treasure that, fifty years earlier, they used to be called "the Emperor's Indies." Idle men entered the cloisters and became a heavy burden on the Church, from necessity and not from zeal ; such men ought to be soldiering. 1 The English clergy in this Century sometimes kept alehouses. 2 Somers's Tracts, iii. 308-310. 3 I have used the English version of 1654. Ill SPAIN 26T Campanella, like the monks of Erasmus's day, wishes the study of Greek and Hebrew to be suppressed ; they have been destructive to monarchy, and are the main pillars on which heresy is built. 1 Yet all was not dark in Spain ; a flash of the old spirit of Freedom now and then catches the eye. Thus in 1601 Lerma wished to lay a tax upon the Basques ; they sent their deputies to the King, declaring this to be contrary to their fueros, and that, if their prayer were not heard, they would take up arms and give themselves to another Lord. Philip III. granted their request, avowing that he had been ill-informed, but that he had now consulted the records in Simancas. 2 Money was evidently scarce, and the revenues were soon to be further diminished. The dull-witted nation had already, under priestly guidance, achieved the desolation of Granada ; she was now to repeat the process elsewhere. The Valencian Moriscoes seem to have rapidly increased during the Sixteenth century ; at its end they amounted to almost one hundred and fifty thousand souls. In 1602 Bibera, Archbishop of Valencia, began to agitate for their expulsion. In his memorials to the Government he con- trasted the wretched state of the Christian peasantry with the flourishing industries of the Moriscoes, even though these latter had to pay enormous taxes. The Valencian nobles, unwilling to lose their best vassals, were vehement on the other side. The Moriscoes meanwhile were com- plaining to King Henry IV. that they were robbed by the Inquisition, that the Crown had burnt their old charters and now kept no faith with them ; France should send an army to their aid. Sixty-six Alfaquis met a French agent to concert a rising ; they were betrayed, and their leaders were put to death. Kibera sought help from Eome for his project, but Paul V. refused to abet him. A commission of theologians decided that it was not right to baptize the 1 Spanish Monarchy, 14, 47, 67, 73, 76, 84, 128, 186. 2 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, i. 263. Buckle greatly deceives himself when he says that Spaniards never took to rebellion before the Nineteenth century. 268 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. children of secret unbelievers ; let them first be instructed, and after that let them be driven out, unless they should ask for baptism. Some misgivings, as we see, appear to have arisen as to the hideous profanation of the Sacraments that had been going on for the last hundred years in Spain, the nurse of orthodoxy, at least in her own eyes. But at last Lerma turned against the Moriscoes, and decided in 1609 that they must be driven out. He bore an ox in his arms; hence an old prophecy of St. Vincent Ferrer was repeated, that in the year Nine the ox would roar. 1 The Valencian nobles in vain went to Madrid to protest against their impending ruin. The edict was published ; the victims were ordered to leave Valencia, and were given three days' grace, after which any Christian might rob or murder them. One family in seventeen might be retained to maintain irrigation and to tend the sugar canes. On landing in Africa they were brutally treated by the Moslem, and about half of the emigrants seem to have perished. The Spanish soldiery were eager as ever for blood and booty, and drove some of the unhappy Moriscoes once more to take up arms. They were put down and were massacred by thousands. King Philip coolly wrote to his deputy : " You will make no account of the safe conducts that you may have granted to the chiefs of the revolt." Spanish honour was indeed becoming a thing of the past. 2 Valencia having been purged, it was now the turn of the rest of Spain. There had been a secret emigration from Andalusia ; a new edict was published early in 1610 driving the Moriscoes out of Castile and other provinces ; they had to leave their little children behind. Henry IV., who had helped to bring about their disasters, was not willing to receive them in France. The Aragonese Moriscoes were 1 Lo any nou Donara un gran bram lo bou. 2 Here is another example. The Marquis of Aytona had promised a Morisco brigand chief that he should be exempt from death, from the scourge, and from the galleys if he would surrender. The deluded man came in, had his flesh torn with red-hot pincers, and was then sent to the mines. Circourt, iii. 154. Ill SPAIN 269 shamefully fleeced by their guards ; one hundred and fifty thousand took the road to France, where they did not remain. Even in 1613 examinations were still going on in Spain as to Moriscoes who loitered contrary to the King's edicts ; the last expulsion from Murcia took place in 1614. Good judges, striking a fair balance, put the number of those expelled from Spain since 1609 at six hundred thousand. One effect of the violent change was that African piracy on the coast of Spain was redoubled ; Sallee, the well-known haunt of rovers, was peopled almost entirely by Moriscoes. Yet the great Expulsion has been celebrated by the brush of Velazquez and the pen of Cer- vantes as the most glorious of achievements. 1 The Duke of Lerma and a few of his kinsmen made rich profits out of the whole business ; but Spain as a whole was half ruined by it. Archbishop Eibera died of grief, hearing the reproaches directed against his handiwork. Valencia was so rich by nature that she partially recovered ; but many of the places in Aragon and Castile, where the Moriscoes had done wonders, bear in our days the ugly name despoUado. Brigandage and smuggling throve amain ; the nobles, who had lost their vassals, now lived in the towns and forsook their old castles. Agriculture and commerce alike waned ; on the other hand, convents increased mightily. 2 On looking back over the whole mournful tale of Christian sway and Moorish wrong, we must allow that the rulers, hateful as their conduct may seem to us, were but the mouthpiece of the Spanish nation. The commons loathed the descendants of the old Moslem intruders ; what the priests thought may be best gathered from the Defensio Fidei of Bleda, a Dominican adviser of Arch- bishop Kibera ; the book was printed at Valencia in 1610; 1 So Duran's Komancero General Viva Dios y viva el Rey A pesar de los paganos ; Y la Santa Inquisicion Tengala Dios de su mano ! 2 I have taken my account of the Moriscoes in Valencia from Circourt, vol. iii. Bleda's book should always be consulted. 270 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. a number of permissions, from various authorities, requisite for the printing of any Spanish book, stand at the head of the work. Bleda describes the cessation of all fires in the chimneys of the Moriscoes during the Eamadan ; the Alfaquis who go about to keep up discipline ; the rite of circumcision delayed till the eighth year, since it is only then that boys don breeches ; backs are turned and eyes are cast down at the elevation of the Host ; pious death- bed bequests are never made*; the Cross is insulted. The hated folk prefer to drudge for noblemen in spite of the vast sums exacted from them, rather than live at ease in the King's towns, where Christians could watch them. They have both Moslem and Christian names. Their children, if tricked by Christians into eating pork, burst out crying on finding what they have done. If any of these men are about to be hanged, they at once profess their belief in Mahomet. In 1591 they offered more than thirty thousand gold coins if they might be exempted from burial inside churches. They would not allow their children to be baptized if they could help it. Volumes of the Koran have been found in their houses. Those of their number who have been punished by the Inquisition are held in high honour. They ask that they may have as much toleration as the Jews have at Rome ; Calvin taught that this was allowable, and so did a certain French party. 1 They are fatalists, and have no fear of earthquakes. The images of Saints, which they are forced to keep in their houses, are covered with cobwebs. They have no clocks, but regulate all by the moon. They take care that the priest shall have no access to their deathbeds, and declare that their deaths are sudden. After having given ninety- one marks of the evil belief of the Moriscoes, Bleda winds up with, " They have all the errors of Arius, Pelagius, Luther, and Calvin ; in a word, they are Atheists." '" He goes on later : " The Church would praise the rulers of France, Germany, and Flanders if they were to wipe out 1 Pestilentissima secta Politicorum, 104. This refers to Montmorency's Moderate party in France. The difference between France and Spain is always cropping up. 2 Ibid. 110. Ill SPAIN 271 their heretics ; so she would praise the Catholic King if he would exterminate these Moriscoes." Unbelieving men, who bow down before the Host, are worse than Christ's tormentors, who knelt, crying, " Hail, King of the Jews," and then smote him. 1 Bleda exults over the great Expul- sion, and shows how Lerma is the exact opposite of Count Julian, who brought the Moors into the country. In 1610 Spain was expecting to be assailed once more by the French, when suddenly the news of the murder of Henry IV. came. Both the grandees and the populace rejoiced over their deliverance, and set it down to the piety of King Philip III., who was evidently protected by the hand of God. 2 Their own Mariana had not written in vain on the doctrine of king-slaughter. But France was not the only enemy ; the banished Moriscoes were a powerful aid to the Turks, and made bloody raids on Southern Spain. The English Ambassador complained that his own nation suffered from this cause, and offered to send fleets to suppress the nuisance. Lerma was at first most wrathful at the proposal, but a few years later he seemed willing to accept foreign aid. 3 Of little avail were the treasures of America, whence fifteen hundred millions of crowns had been brought over in four generations. These did not remain in Spain, but were scattered over the rest of Europe in return for wares sup- plied from abroad. 4 Spain might herself be poor, but her ruler was wealthy ; the minister had a yearly income of six hundred thousand ducats, nearly a million of our money. Others of his colleagues helped themselves to huge sums ; the jewels and tapestries found in the houses of ministers were of enormous value. King Philip's European subjects were reckoned at 1 The Moriscoes were not the only people who suffered from the peculiar ideas of Spaniards as to conversion. Labat, the French Dominican traveller, told Pope Clement XI. that the Spaniards had no cause to brag of conver- sions in America : "Us n'avoient faits que des hypocrites, que la crainte de la mort ou des tourmens avoit forces a recevoir le Bapteme. " French mis- sionaries were much more reserved, and would not expose the Sacrament to certain profanation. Voyages d'Uspagne et d' Italic, viii. 65. 2 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, i. 475. 3 Ibid. 502. 4 Ibid. 565. 272 EOME AND EEFORM CHAP. eighteen millions at a time when France could muster only thirteen millions and the British Isles together not more than five millions at the highest. Spain had 120,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry actually on foot. In spite of all this seemingly overwhelming might she had found her- self driven to make peace with England after Elizabeth's death, though the clergy foretold that no good would come from friendship with excommunicated folk, the enemies of God. 1 Castile was the heart of the nation, though other provinces grumbled ; thus a French agent, passing through Pampeluna in 1612, heard the nobles of Navarre mourn over the death of Henry IV. ; they had lost their only chance of shaking off Castilian tyranny. 2 Money matters were in as bad a state as ever ; the revenue was sixteen or seventeen millions of dollars, but this was mostly pledged for many coming years to the merchants of Genoa. In vain was the coin debased ; in vain were both the interest and principal due on Govern- ment loans repudiated. The available revenue hardly amounted to five millions of dollars a year, but the regular income of the Church was at least six millions. The per- sonal property of the nation was estimated at sixty millions of dollars ; thus the income of the priesthood was ten per cent of the whole funded estate of the country. The soil was held by a few great nobles and by the dead hand of the Church ; there was a contempt for both labour and intellect ; even Spinola was refused the rewards he had so justly earned ; the wretched courtiers at Madrid all but succeeded in depriving him of the command in Flanders. 3 Towards the end of Philip's reign Lerma lost all Court 1 Philippson, Heinrich 4 und PMlipp 3, 9, 17, 23, 369. From a passage in Winwood's Memorials, ii. 169, it seems that the great Alva was the author of the famous Spanish saw Con todo el mondo guerra, Y paz con Inglaterra. This was repeated for Centuries. 8 Fontenay-Mareuil, quoted by Mercier de Lacombe in his Henri IV. et sa politique, 489. 3 Motley, United Netherlands, iv. 225, 333. He bases his account upon the Relations of Venetian envoys. m SPAIN 273 influence ; another favourite, Calderon, was put to the tor- ture by his Koyal patron. In spite of a feeble cry now and then from the Cortes, Spanish peasants were brought to beggary that great armies might be kept up abroad to domineer over Italy and to trample down freedom in Bohemia. Whatever might be the lot of the laity, the priests flourished; Davila tells us that in Spain the Dominicans and Franciscans alone numbered thirty-two thousand, and that two of the Northern bishoprics alone contained twenty -four thousand clergy. " I am a priest," says he, " still I confess that we are too many." l One of Philip's sons, of whom the world was to hear much, became a Cardinal and also Archbishop of Toledo when only ten years old. The King himself ended his sluggish life in 1621, a sound Christian. Friars at this time might well boast of the union between the two Catholic systems of the Eoman Church and the Spanish Empire ; this last seemed to have succeeded in things temporal to the decayed Holy Koman Crown. 2 These friars gathered everything to them- selves ; the noblest representatives of the Spanish intellect, such as Cervantes, were proud to don the Franciscan weeds ; Calderon has been termed " the poet of the Inquisition." Miracles abounded, and the lives of Saints were carefully recorded. Spain gloried in her shame, as is proved by the books written on the expulsion of the Moriscoes. Other countries were now moving steadily forward ; Spain, dazzled by the empty show of unity in religion, was falling back. 3 We may well talk of the age of Debase- ment. Howell, the letter- writer, visited Spain in 1620, and not long afterwards wrote an account of that strange land. He describes the King's dominions in the four quarters of the world ; there were eight Viceroys in Europe two in the East Indies, two in the West, two in Africa, and about 1 Lafuente, Historia de Espafta, xv. 489. This volume is my authority from 1598 up to this date. 2 Ibid. 419. Spanish historians are most indignant at Bassompierre's well-known tale that Philip owed his death to Court etiquette. 3 The most learned Spaniards of our day, such as Lafuente, seem to prize this unity of religion as a jewel ; it was the ruin of Spain. VOL I T 274 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAF. thirty Provincial sovereign commanders. Yet, as the King told Charles I. when at Madrid, of all these Castile and the West Indies alone yielded any clear revenue ; the rest, between governors and garrisons, absorbed everything ; the French scoffers compared the Monarchy to a beggar's cloak made of patches. Some of the nobles had enormous incomes ; the mitre of Toledo was worth 100,000 a year; there were sixteen Universities, and Salamanca alone (how different from Padua !) bred fifteen thousand students. Corn was the great want caused by the lack of rain. Most of the field work was done by Gascons and Morisco slaves. Outward show was everything; Spaniards who had not shirts to their backs would sport huge ruffs. They were most heedful of women's reputation, and most courteous even to beggars. They gambled much, but would first say their prayers ; they would kneel in the dirt when the Ave Maria bell rang, and would take up and kiss two straws lying crosswise in the street. The peasants were sturdy, bold fellows, most unlike their French brethren who were born in chains. Spanish money went into all the world ; it might be said that the coin of Spain was as Catholic as her King. The common current coin was copper, much of which was smuggled in by the Dutch. The greatest noble would tremble to offer the least affront to the meanest Churchman. Even Prince Charles when at Madrid was allowed no Protestant worship except in his bedchamber, though he had brought fine church plate and vestments with him. Thieves were so strictly put down that gold might be openly carried by travellers. The Escorial was the eighth wonder of the world, having taken twenty-four years to build ; a hundred monks dwelt there, each of whom had his man and mule; "there were a world of glorious things," says Howell, " that purely ravished me." * Mun is less rapturous ten years later, talking of " that canker of war which doth infinitely exhaust Spanish treasure and disperse it into Christendom, even to their enemies." Spain cannot maintain her armies, composed of foreigners, and lying at a distance. Her wars in Germany would beggar 1 See his Letters of the edition of 1655. See especially p. 153. in SPAIN 275 the richest kingdom in Christendom. Spain has the Foun- tain of money, yet there gold and silver is so scanty that they have to use base copper money, to the great confusion of their trade. 1 Philip IV. at the age of sixteen took his father's place ; he at once handed over all the business of his many king- doms to the Count of Olivarez, a son of the former ambas- sador, who had bearded Sixtus V. The favourite, destined to rule for more than twenty years, began his reign by persecuting the old ministers of the last King ; the new Vicegerent was laborious, steadfast in his resolves, a warm friend and a bitter enemy, careless of the interests of tribu- tary kingdoms, and little prone to ask advice. His aim was to disgust the King with business and to keep him amused with debauchery. The one idea of Olivarez was always to act in the teeth of Lerma's policy; the first minister had made a long truce with Holland; therefore the second minister must needs begin the war anew, and once more aspire to rule the world. Wars were to be waged, and therefore money had to be found; the pressure on the needy was something fearful. The Cortes made one of their remonstrances, bootless as usual ; they declared that the peasants were eating grass. Various decrees were put forth to check emigration and to prevent a too great influx of students into the Universities. The Valencians were rebuked in 1626 for their unwilling- ness to supply men and money ; it was said at Court that Milan, the leading patriot of the province, deserved the garrote. The Castilian soldiers, ill-disciplined as of old, perpetrated rapes and robberies in Aragon ; but there was still some spirit left in Eastern Spain. We read of wars in the Valteline, wars in Flanders, wars in Germany, not to speak of the Turkish corsairs. Any one who shall take the trouble to calculate the number of years of war for Spain between 1521 and 1721 will be much astonished. The proud land made a great effort, the nobles and clergy contributing ; and the result was an army of 104,000 infantry, 14,000 cavalry, 72 ships, and 10 1 Mun, England's Treasure by Foreign Trade, 33. 276 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. galleys. She did well to make ready ; Cardinal Eichelieu, the worst of all her enemies, was now beginning to come forward ; he was reviled by sound Christians as " the Patriarch of the Atheists and Pontiff of the Calvinists." English and Dutch ships were so watchful, that when, for a wonder, any Spanish galleons from America reached home in safety, there were great rejoicings at Court. 1 Worst disaster of all, the wise Spinola died in 1630, and left no worthy successor. Olivarez sought to find the sinews of war by forbidding all commerce with either rebels or enemies, and by ordering their ships to be seized ; this was in truth as much as to stop trade with almost all Europe. The proctors of the Cortes in vain remonstrated against granting money to keep alive the war in Germany, whence Spain reaped no benefit. The land was ravaged by fires and earthquakes ; part of Madrid was accidentally burnt ; the remedy applied was to raise altars on the balconies fronting the fire, and there to celebrate many Masses. The Inquisition treated the people to many Acts of Faith ; it came down in 1631 upon the Confessor of the Convent of Sari Placido, who was said to have seduced the greater part of thirty nuns, women under his care. This priest was thrice tortured most cruelly, and was then sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. Eather later, owing to strong interest, the whole cause was tried over again by the Inquisition, and many of the nuns were acquitted. 2 The great engine was often employed as a mere machine of the State, and was applied to things political. Thus the works of Perez were put upon the Index of 1612, and an essay on the coinage by the famous Mariana was suppressed. A province might revolt and issue manifestoes ; these the Holy Office would seize, and the province might request the Pope to point out anything that concerned the Inquisition. The Holy Office burnt papers reflecting upon Olivarez when in full power, and would soon afterwards 1 See Lafuente, xvi. 58, 61, 75. 2 Ibid. 122. The whole case is such that it cannot be set out in plain words. in SPAIN 277 seize pamphlets written in his favour after he had fallen from power. He forced the Inquisition to come to the help of his favourite Jesuits, suppressing pamphlets written against them ; one of their persevering enemies was fifteen times thrown into Inquisitorial or Episcopal prisons. 1 The shrewd Venetian envoys, who watched the doings of Olivarez close at hand, easily saw through the device of makin^'the cause of religion a cloak for Spanish ambition. They were fully alive to the contrast between Spain and France" wliere Eichelieu had brought in religious 'toleration ; they knew how Gustavus, the Swedish conqueror, had smoothed his path to victory by discarding all religious fanaticism. Spaniards were wont to revile Venice for her tolerance ; it was plain that this tolerance would be a beacon to all Europe in time to come. These pious Spaniards had not much regard for the Pope himself when he crossed their interests ; the Council of Castile, though it always included the Grand Inquisitor and the King's Confessor, had the greatest dislike to Bulls coming from Home. The Spanish Prelates threw difficulties in the way of the Nuncio, who was told by Olivarez that the Pope should have no satisfaction so long as the Holy Father sided with France. 2 The allies of Spain held the same views as to Eome ; the Duke of Kohan, speaking of the small and warlike Cantons of Switzerland, well known to him, says : " They are so imbued with the idea that the King of Spain is the pillar of the Catholic faith that they even doubt whether the Pope is a good Catholic if he does not lend himself to all the interests of the King of Spain." a In 1640 this pillar was about to fall from its old base. The Spaniard and the Turk had long been the two leading Powers of Europe. A parallel may be traced between these two nations ; both Spaniard and Turk looked upon themselves as the special champions of Heaven against unbelievers ; each had a rare genius for war, and each was utterly ignorant of the art of finance when the subject was 1 Lea, Religions History of Spain, 83, 204. 2 Barozzi, Relazione Venete, i. 671, 672, 678. 3 Henri de Rohan, par Laugel, 308. 278 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. to be taxed. Both of them had made themselves remark- able in their campaigns for their sparing frugality and for their brutal treatment of women. 1 But Spain was now to fall ; up to this time, however weak she might be in council, "her renown in war was great as ever ; she looked back upon one hundred and sixty years of wonderful successes in Europe and America ; she had been the right arm of the Church against Eastern Mussulman, against Western Pagan, and against Northern heretic. She had lately, with her Spanish and Italian levies, won a great battle on the Danube, and (memorable feat !) had routed the Swedish comrades of Gustavus, the first soldiers in the world bred beyond her own shores. Later still, she had marched her troops almost up to the walls of Paris. Bichelieu's best captains had hitherto made little way against Spain ; on sea, it is true, she was not so lucky as on land. But now came the change ; the disastrous guidance of Olivarez was in 1640 to prove fatal to the Lions and Castles that were so stoutly making head against the Lilies. Henceforth Spain was no longer to be the main prop of the Jesuits and their cause. Ever since 1626 Catalonia had had good reason to watch with a jealous eye the doings of the Court at Madrid. Olivarez was not the man ever to forgive a wrong ; he therefore passed many a slight on the sturdy little country that had once been driven to thwart him. The Catalans had raised an army to beat back a French invasion ; their meed was to be treated by the ill-paid foreign soldiery as if dwellers in the Pyrenees had been mere Flemings or Italians ; the old system of rape and robbery went on briskly; on one occasion a whole village was burnt. In answer to all remonstrances Olivarez did little but send ambiguous orders. Thousands of peasants from the 1 At the sack of St. Quentin, in 1557, the Spaniards behaved to the women thus : " Las daban cuchillados, por cara y cabeza y a muchas cortaron los brazos." Thousands of these women were driven out naked to die of famine ; some were sold as slaves in Castile by Philip II. See Forneron, Dues de Guise, i. 188. So late as the year 1896 the Turks massacred about a hundred thousand Armenians, while the Spaniards got rid of an equal number of Cubans by starvation. in SPAIN 279 mountains entered Barcelona in June 1640; an uproar soon broke out ; the cry was, " Vengeance ! Freedom ! Long live the Faith ! Long live the King ! Death to Philip's bad government ! " The Governor, himself a Catalan, was slaughtered. The other towns of the province speedily rose, the clergy taking the lead. The policy of Olivarez, who had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, was to hand the Catalans over to the mercy of the foreign troops. He thus ingeniously converted a population of loyalists into rebels, who were to be a thorn in Spain's side for many long years ; Eichelieu's troops were soon marching to the aid of their old Catalan foes. Meanwhile the great Spanish minister had brought about another rebellion on the other side of the Peninsula. Portugal had of late undergone much Spanish tyranny, in spite of the promises made to her by Philip II. There had been slight movements of revolt in 1637, severely punished by Olivarez. The Duke of Braganza, representing the old line of national Kings, and animated by his wife, was ready to head a better organised rising ; this broke out at the end of 1640, six months after the beginning of the Catalan revolt. The partisans of Spain at Lisbon were slaughtered, and the Duke became Don John IV., King of Portugal. Thus the Peninsula was once more rent in twain, and the vast possessions held by the Portuguese in Asia, Africa, and America ceased to own the sway of Madrid. 1 This affair was not to be settled for many years. Pope Urban VIII., however willing, durst not offend his Spanish tyrant by recognising in any way the rebel King. The Portuguese envoy, a Bishop, was allowed to enter Eome, but the Spaniards attempted to murder him in a street riot, and he soon left. The Portuguese Bishops were dying off, and could not be replaced ; the clergy sent an envoy of their own to the new Pope, Innocent X. Of thirteen Portuguese Sees, ten were now vacant, and nine Bishoprics in the colonies were in the like case. France did her utmost to aid the rebels, but the Pope, seeing a chance for 1 Well may Spaniards call 1640 afto de fatal recordacion. 280 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. himself, was now striving to get into his own hands the nomination to the vacant Sees. The King in 1647 began to threaten the Papacy, saying he would have recourse to the alliance of heretics, since souls were perishing for lack of shepherds. The Inquisition protested against the King's plan, that the chapters should at once choose their own Bishops, and the King was not a strong man. All the convents were in a flame, intent upon future elections. The chapters enjoyed the whole administration, and oppressed the clergy. The Pope and Spaniards made an aggression upon the realm of Congo ; Donna Olimpia was in vain implored to aid the Portuguese. The French clergy in 1652 sent a supplication to Innocent on behalf of their Southern brethren. The next Pope, Alexander VII., was equally unbending for all the twelve years of his reign ; but a new Pope, seeing that Portugal would never yield the nomination to her bishoprics into Papal hands, confirmed all the Prelates named by the Crown, and thus a contest that had lasted nearly thirty years came to an end. 1 The whole business shows that the Temporal power of the Papacy is by no means a certain method of settling disputes on matters spiritual. Spain was thus harassed in the "West ; to the East the stout-hearted Catalans, who had called in the troops of the French King, proclaimed him Count of Barcelona. 2 That city beat off the Castilian and Irish soldiery who assailed her walls; her chief, Tamarit, seemed likely to have a happier lot than either Padilla or La Nuza. The women and children, and above all the clergy, played their parts manfully. Army after army was in vain sent from Madrid ; the feeble King himself never came further East than Sara- gossa. On the other hand, Perpignan, the greatest arsenal in Spain, was starved out and annexed to France in 1642. Meanwhile a wretched war was being waged on the Portuguese frontier ; each party seemed to put their trust in plots rather than in arms. The Dutch aided Portugal, 1 Geddes, Miscellaneous Tracts, ii. 75. 2 They stipulated with France that thei Inquisition was to be preserved, subject to the Inquisition of Rome. They hugged their chains. in SPAIN 281 but Pope Urban VIII., as already stated, would not receive the rebel's ambassador. The Spanish recruiting system has been described by the Venetian envoys ; about four thousand men were seized in Castile and Andalusia every year, and were dragged off to be made soldiers at Naples or elsewhere ; the men were taken from their homes to prison with irons on their hands and feet; little heed was paid to the wailing of their families, abandoned to want. 1 Seville was almost driven to rebellion by the outrages of the officials, who laid hands on men and money alike. 2 King Philip felt his power to be waning; in 1640 he had to make concessions to Aragon and to moderate the power of -the Inquisition there, restricting the number of its Familiars. 3 Further to the South the grisly engine was in full swing. Hitherto for the last forty years it had left Englishmen in peace so long as they behaved themselves. But in 1643 England had sunk very low and might safely be outraged. George Penn, uncle to the famous Quaker, had married a Eoman Catholic lady, and had settled as a merchant in Seville and Malaga. He gave no religious offence, but his riches were a tempting bait. He was suddenly thrown into a dungeon ; his wife was forcibly married to another ; he himself was ordered to renounce his religion, and upon his refusal was tortured almost to death. Body and mind gave way, and he promised to sign anything. His goods were confiscated; he himself was dragged to the Cathedral of Seville to recant his errors ; here he was happily recognised by some countrymen of his, who informed the English Government. In 1647 Penn's brother, the well-known Admiral, captured a Spanish nobleman at sea, whom he stripped naked and proposed to keep as a hostage for the tortured victim. George Penn was thereupon released ; he was afterwards appointed envoy to Madrid by Charles II. This case, which must have made much stir in England, was perhaps a powerful argument to induce Cromwell some years later to turn his arms against Spain and seize 1 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, ii. 24, 82. 2 Ibid. 104. Ibid. 150. 282 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. Jamaica. 1 How strangely did Spain differ from more tolerant Italy ! The land was indeed on the downward path ; the money that should have gone to maintain armies was wasted on feasts and shows at Madrid ; the great aim of Olivarez was to keep the King amused. The shrewd Quevedo, who has painted the vices of the time in gloomy hues, on pointing out to the King the true cause of Spain's disasters was thrown into prison for four years. Sacrilege and adultery were rampant ; nuns were as vicious as other women. In fifteen days a hundred and ten murders were committed in Madrid alone. 2 No better way of restoring credit could be thought of than by tampering with the coinage ; the sale of offices went on much as it had done eighty years earlier. All men cried out that Olivarez was the cause of Spain's disasters. The Queen took the lead and opened her sluggish husband's eyes to the real state of affairs ; clergy and nobles, with good reeason, followed on the same side. Early in 1643 the great minister was dismissed after having reigned for twenty-two years, and Philip announced that henceforth he himself would undertake the business of the nation. Great was the joy of all, but Olivarez defended himself in pamphlets, asking, with much reason, how six or seven armies could be kept up at once to fight for the Faith in many lands, unless hundreds of millions of ducats were spent. Two years and a half later he died ; he may be bracketed with Torquemada, Philip II., and Lerma, as the four men who did most to ruin Spain. He spoke of his master, after the loss of many provinces, as " Philip the Great " ; it was answered that the King was great, just as a ditch becomes greater the more earth is taken away. In May 1643 came the news of the great day of Eocroy, whereby the spell of Spanish primacy in war was for ever broken ; for the next sixty years France, the ally of heretics, was always mounting, as Spain, the champion of the Jesuits, was always descending. Eichelieu was gone, but Conde*, a youth of twenty-two, came forward in some 1 Lift of Sir William Petty, by Lord E. Fitzmaurice, 119. 2 Lafuente, xvi. 307. in SPAIN 283 measure to replace the Cardinal on another scene of action. King Philip speedily went back to his amusements, and gave all power into the hands of De Haro, sister's son to Olivarez ; the new minister was averse to harshness and oppression. In 1646 there seemed to be some hope of regaining Catalonia, not through Castilian wisdom, but owing to the misdeeds of the French allies. In the next year broke out Masaniello's revolt at Naples, which Eichelieu, had he been alive, would have turned to the best account. In 1648 this revolt was put down in a great measure owing to the prudence of Don John of Austria, King Philip's bastard son, who was now coming before the world. In the same year the Peace of Westphalia was made, where Austria forsook her old benefactress, Spain. King Philip, " moved by Christian compassion," as the Treaty says, at last recognised the United Provinces of Holland as a free nation, after seventy- six years of strife. Here unlucky priest-ridden Spain, by some happy chance, for once stumbled into the path of common sense. She had another stroke of good fortune when France was harassed by the wars of the Fronde ; Turenne for a short time, Conde" for many years, fought on the side of Spain, though she knew not how to make proper use of these thunderbolts of war. Barcelona, after a long siege, yielded in 1652 to King Philip, who confirmed all the liberties of the bold Catalans ; very few of them hencefor- ward fought for France. Clarendon, who knew Spain well, gives us the means of comparing the methods of the two great rivals. When writing of the years that followed 1649 he tells us that the wily Cromwell lessened the number of his Irish enemies by giving them leave to enter the service of either France or Spain. The Irish much preferred the latter country; five-and-twenty thousand of them embarked for Spain, of whom not one-half were drawn into the field, and very few ever returned. They seem mostly to have been landed at the nearest harbours, where no provision had been made for them ; numbers were starved or were knocked on the head by the peasantry. Even where 284 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. they were expected, the poor men were not allowed to land until their officers had gone to Madrid, and even then ill provision was made for the refreshment and march of the Irish. Vast sums of money had been spent by the Spanish Government on paying the officers for the conveyance of these soldiers, who were then treated in this haphazard, shiftless fashion, " which manifested how loose the Govern- ment was." France on her side gained twenty thousand Irish, of whom she made good use. The sufferings of these Irish in their own land did not greatly move the hearts of their Spanish brethren, for a few years later Spain was offering to buy Cromwell's aid, sending an ambassador extraordinary for the purpose. The recovery of Calais was the bait tendered. This offer was made known to the world in 1657, when Spain, inconsistent Court, was reviling France as the slave of Cromwell and an enemy of the Catholic religion. The earlier Spanish policy would have shocked Pope Alexander VII., who held Cromwell in horror. But Spain could usually make sure of the Papal influence by the vast number of bishoprics and pensions in Lombardy and Southern Italy which might always be distributed among the members of the Eoman Court. 1 Still Spain did not always receive satisfaction from the Eoman authorities, for whom she had sacrificed so much. Innocent X. often made little account of her, and one of her ministers declared that it was better to buy Popes ready made than to create them with Spanish money. As the Venetian remarked, Eome must adore Spanish pride if she would stand well with Madrid. 2 King Philip, sound Catholic as he was, laid no claim to his father's purity of life ; the Eoyal son was credited with no fewer than twenty-three bastards, of whom he acknow- ledged only one. 3 In 1643 he entered into a most curious correspondence with a nun, Sister Mary of Agreda, who saw visions and could give tidings of Philip's departed son 1 Hugues de Lionne, par Valfrey, i. 10, ii. 188. After Cromwell's death Mazarin was not very proud of his English policy ; he spoke to the Spanish envoy of the Republic as un exemplo tan escandoloso contra las monarquias. Ibid. ii. 314. 2 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, ii. 182. 3 Ibid. ii. 132. Ill SPAIN 285 in the next world. The King sends her accounts of all the political disasters that befall him ; she echoes his complaints, but points him to a better state of existence. 1 She seems never to have directed his attention to worldly thrift ; soldiers might starve, but grandees over the water wrung vast revenues from the Indians used up in the American mines. In the Palace the waste of money went on ; the Royal establishment was composed of one thousand persons and more, without reckoning the guards ; the Queen and Infanta had three hundred women in their service, though the salaries were ill paid ; it was said that the whole cost a million of crowns a year. The wax candles alone consumed sixty thousand ducats annually, including the chapel. 2 Foreign observers well knew what was the source of Spain's weakness. The great Montecuculi, in his Memoirs, remarks that there the favours of old reserved for the soldier had passed to other professions, and thus the Monarchy had fallen little by little; it would never be re-established unless arms were once more brought into credit. He points out that the Turk has but one sort of academy, that of arms ; he has no monasteries, "which snatch a great number of men from the public service." 8 Poverty and wretchedness had ever attended the Spanish yoke both on this and on the other side of the globe. Spain made it her boast that the sun never set on her dominions ; but she forgot that she had left him nothing to see in his course but deserved fields, barren wildernesses, oppressed peasants, and lazy, lying, lecherous monks. Such were the fruits of her boasted conquests. They ought rather to have been ashamed that ever the sun should see them at all. 4 Marshal De Gramont, who went as Ambassador to Madrid in 1659, has some keen observations on the life he 1 See Marie d'Agreda, by Lavigne, 1855. 2 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, ii. 267. 3 Mtmoires, 210, 346. He elsewhere says that Christianity would gain more from military academies than from new monasteries or superfluous colleges, p. 219. 4 I take the last few sentences from Brydone's Tour through Sicily and Malta, ii. 57. In his time Sicily had been freed from the Spanish yoke for two generations. 286 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. there saw around him. He naturally glances first at the Inquisition, which he calls the chief foundation on which the great machine of dominion is set. Spanish religion seemed to him a mere masquerade ; it was absurd to see the natives at Mass, telling their beads while amusing them- selves with what was going on around them. They were most punctual in observing their religion when it gave them no trouble ; the Spaniard would punish blasphemers and heretics, but would "also eat meat on Fridays and keep publicly a bevy of courtesans. The monks knew little Latin and less theology ; the dissipation in some of the nunneries could not be expressed. The grandees led a lazy and vicious life at Court, finding their chief joy in serving the King at table and in dressing and undressing him. A Spanish officer might perform great exploits, and might even baffle Turenne, yet such an officer would not be allowed to make his bow to the King or to a great Court official. The ignorance of the nobles was astonishing ; one asked who was the Viceroy of Venice ; another, if Germany was a fine town. The Duke of Alba could not remember the name of his grandfather's great Dutch antagonist, and spoke of him as " the Kebel." The nobles did not spend much in dress or in white shirts ; their riches were all lavished on women and bull fights. Venereal disease made fearful havoc, owing to the ignorance of the surgeons and the laziness of the patients, who were slow "in calling in advice, and were therefore seldom cured ; the debauchery in places of public resort on summer nights Was amazing. There would be famine in the land if French workmen did not come in to till the Spanish fields and build the Spanish houses. 1 Not long before these observations were made, a blow from an unexpected quarter had fallen upon Spain ; the English Government had in vain asked that its subjects might be free from the Inquisition and might be allowed to trade in the West Indies ; " this," said the Spanish envoy, " is like asking for my master's two eyes." Cromwell, little knowing the future, resolved to back France rather 1 Mtmoires du Marshal de Oramont, Petitot's Collection, Ivii. 67-84. in SPAIN 287 than Spain ; England's share of the Spanish booty taken on this evasion was "Jamaica and Dunkirk. At length peace was made between France and Spain in 1659, the latter giving up much territory ; the Land of Toleration now rose high above the Land of the Inquisition after four-and twenty years of war. PTfflfpT devoted the last years of his reign to the war with Portugal, which was left exposed to the whole might of the Spanish Monarchy. But the little country had still friends; Schomberg,' he of the Boyne, was sent to her aid by France in an underhand way ; while England, owing to the marriage of Charles II., furnished some thousands of good soldiers, old Cromwellians. These, though somewhat mutinous, proved themselves able to beat even the Swiss. 1 Several battles followed, in one of which the minister De Haro chose to take part, and was promptly forced to fly. Don John of Austria was not happier. Schomberg ended the war by a great victory at Montesclaros in 1665 ; Philip IV., like a true Spaniard of the Century, had done his best to occasion this disaster by sending thousands of troops to Germany against the Turk instead of keeping them at home. He died in the same year, a King who had much in common with the lower animals, but who was not cruel, though almost inconceivably sluggish. Philip III. found his chief pleasure in monks, Philip IV. in actresses'lsuch as La Calderona, the mother of Don John of Austria. 2 It was remarked about this time that Spain was not very populous; her women became mothers so early that their nature soon decayed. War and America were both causes of scanty population. There were seven distinct Councils always kept near the King's person ; they were secret, but prone to rivalry with each other. The infantry was the mainstay of Spain's army, yet the Spanish Gennet was the noblest horse in Christendom. Spain had lately been able to carry on war at one and the same time in 1 All this is described by the Sieur d'Ablancourt. So full of gratitude were the Portuguese peasantry to Schomberg, that they bore their Saints in procession, dressed like him in periwigs and embroidered coats. The priests had to preach against this superstition. 2 Lafuente, vol. xvi., is my authority from 1621 up to this point. 288 EOME AND REFOKM CHAP. Catalonia, Portugal, Italy, and Flanders. The charge of the navy was a million crowns a year. The King received two millions of crowns annually from the clergy. Spanish coin was the best in Europe, but all neighbouring nations made a gain of it ; brass was the current coin, and this the King would sometimes enhance, with much profit to him- self and much loss to trade. Genoa required much interest to pay for her loans to the Spanish Crown. The Maltese Knights were most useful allies in keeping the Southern coasts of Christendom. The Spaniard would have neither war nor peace nor trade with the Turks, yet he was thought superior to them in naval matters, for the Catalans and Biscayans could not be surpassed in enduring winter weather and storms. 1 Charles IV., a sickly child of four, succeeded Philip in 1665 ; Father Nithard, a German Jesuit hated by the proud Castilians, took the helm. The widely scattered Spanish dominions lay open to any robber. Louis XIV. therefore was easily able to seize some of the Flemish towns; Spain had indeed fallen, for she owed her rescue on this occasion to the Triple Bond formed for her protection by the three great heretical nations. Yet the interval between 1640 and 1668 was not long. The latter year beheld not only the new treaty with France, but the recognition of Portugal's independence. The Jesuit confessor was got rid of in 1669, and was succeeded a few years later in the councils of the Queen - Mother by an adventurer named Valenzuela, the Godoy of the time, who was in the end exiled toTManilla. Meanwhile Louis XIV. had again taken up arms, and had forced Spain again into the field ; her generals and governors did not give great satisfaction to her ally, young William of Orange, the soldier statesman, the head of the' new European Alliance ; he was to be the polestar of Castilian hopes for the next thirty years. Nothing could save for Spain her distant province of Franche Comte, which was conquered by the generals of Louis and annexed to France. The Catalans, changing their politics, fought stoutly against 1 Europce Moderns Speculum, 98-113. Ill SPAIN 289 the invaders of their country from the North. But Messina rose against her Spanish tyrants in 1674, and when the revolt was over, it is hard to say which was the most infamous, the treachery of her French ally or the cruelty of her Spanish master. At the Peace of Nimeguen in 1678 Spain had to give up many towns in her Flemish provinces. So weak was she, that she could not even protect her subjects in the West Indies from the attacks of the Buccaneers, French and English ; their greatest feat was the sack of Panama. Spain, all through the latter half of this Century, seemed to be like a huge unwieldy whale, mauled by many a harpoon, and floating half dead along the tide. Three foul fiends had been her ruin : Bigotry in Church, Despot- ism in State, Monopoly in Trade. Of the first of these I give an* instance, which could hardly have happened out- side of Spain. Valenzuela, after his fall, had sought refuge among the monkT* of the Escorial ; the Duke of Medina Sidonia and Don Antonio de Toledo, the son of the Duke of Alva, with some other nobles, were sent to seize him. Their soldiers searched the convent, and behaved so brutally in the church, that the Prior excommunicated them. This sentence was approved by Pope Innocent XL, who, however, at the request of Charles II., condescended to absolve the transgressors, on condition that they should build a chapel suitable to the grandeur of the church that had been profaned ; in this chapel they were to receive absolution. The cost of this building would be enormous ; however, King Charles induced the Pope to accept, instead of the chapel, some jewels of astonishing value. The Nuncio accordingly took his stand at the gate of one of the Madrid churches ; the Duke, Don Antonio, and the other sinners appeared before him without shoes, and with shirts above their usual dress ; they fell at the Nuncio's feet, who smote them on the shoulders and then brought them into the church. 1 Charles's great ancestor had never done any penance for the far worse outrages perpetrated by his troops at Eome in 1527 ; but since his time Spain had been going steadily downhill. 1 Lafuente, xvii. 131. VOL. I U 290 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. A horrible Act of Faith was celebrated at Madrid in the summer of 1680 as a welcome to the new French Queen, who had left her happy home to be handed over to an impotent husband, and to undergo the spirit-crushing etiquette of the Spanish Court. On this occasion the greatest nobles of Castile were proud to act as familiars of the Inquisition; its banner was borne by the Duke of Medina Celi, then prime minister ; the Grand Inquisitor had a seat high above that of King Charles, who now took the oath to root out heresy. Many punishments were inflicted ; twenty were sentenced to the fire, as relapsed or incorrigible 1 Judaisers. Among the victims were artisans and girls of I fifteen ; one lovely Jewess appealed to the young Queen, who turned away her head, being of course powerless to help. After this scene we are not surprised to learn that Spain lacked men of ability in arms, in letters, and in statesmanship. The nobles, sunk in vice, seldom went out of Spain ; every one of them thought himself fit to lead armies, though they had been too lazy to serve in their youth. Philip II. had lured them to the Court that they might there waste their revenues and keep the peace ; their lands in the meantime went to wrack. Even the plebeians thought themselves noble, and ploughed the fields girt with swords. 1 The emigration to America still went on, nearly three thousand persons leaving Spain every year. 2 The number of the King's effective officials amounted to sixty thousand, who did not check in the least degree fraud and contraband. Every family in Spain wished to live at the cost of the Crown, directly or indirectly. 8 The land abounded with sheep, the breeding of which was most fatal to tillage; but the wool was exported to other countries, manufactured abroad, and brought back again. 4 Even the old Spanish courage was dying out. The army had numbered forty thousand good soldiers in 1672, but twenty years later it was only ten thousand, mostly made up of German hirelings. 5 1 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, ii. 453, 581. " Ibid. 534. 3 Ibid. 488. Spain solved the great question, " How not to do it." 4 Ibid. 644. 5 Ibid. 587. in SPAIN 291 Spain was now nearly at her lowest ebb ; her writers at this time abstained from recording the national debasement, which we have to gather from details supplied by foreign visitors. One of these, Villars (father of the renowned Marshal), French Ambassador at Madrid in 1679, has left us a picture of Spain. Foreign envoys could gain no attention at the Council ; the money from America was squandered, no one knew how ; three - fourths of the copper money was debased ; men feared to make purchases. The wool trade, the only one left in Spain, was much diminished. Any people less slavish and down -trodden than the Madrid populace would have broken out into sedition. The young Queen was left without any money for six months. There was much caprice in upholding orthodoxy ; some Jews were burnt ; others were employed in the department of finance, and were made to pay money when they became rich enough to be worth squeezing. The Viceroy of Valencia was deprived of his post because he had executed an apostate monk guilty of many crimes. Hereupon the great official demanded an investigation of his conduct ; for answer he received an order banishing him to his estates. The city of Seville had lost three-fourths of her inhabitants, yet she had been one of the richest cities in the world fifty years earlier. Two-thirds of the Koyal revenues went to pay off debt ; the King's stablemen left his service after having been without pay for two years. His cavalry had often neither horses nor forage. 1 The Ambassador supplies a few details as to Spanish fanaticism. At the end of the famous Act of Faith, celebrated in his time, the monks applied torches to the bodies of the victims in order to convert them. The populace showered stones upon them, while the better class used their swords upon the helpless heretics. 2 "What could be hoped of a nation like this ? Much about the same time Madame d'Aulnoy visited Spain ; she does full justice to the nobler side of the Spanish character, their sobriety, steadfastness in adversity, greatness 1 Villars, M&moires de la Cour d'Espagne, a small volume published in 1861. 2 Ibid. 189. 292 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. of soul, loyalty and courtesy to women. Against these qualities must be set their laziness, senseless pride, jealousy, and readiness to hire assassins to avenge a slight affront, ruffians to whom the convents gave abundant shelter. Valencia had an infamous name as supplying the most trustworthy murderers, men who carried about lists of their bloody exploits ; this fact is a foul blot on Spanish chivalry. Pride had made Spain her chosen seat ; even the beggar asked an alms with a commanding air, and expected to be addressed as Caballero. There were numbers of costly slaves, Moors and Turks ; and these sometimes had their bones broken by their masters ; as to other servants they claimed to be of good blood, and it was dangerous to strike them. Ignorance was preferred to knowledge ; a French nobleman was reading his Hours at Mass in a Madrid church, when an old woman dashed his book on the floor, crying, " Let that alone, and take your string of beads." This last article was in constant use among the women ; they murmured over it in the streets, at the gaming table, and even when making love or telling lies. Some of them made their assignations in the crowded churches on Good Friday and two days earlier ; this was their one chance of escape from a husband's jealous eye. The men flogged themselves until they bled (a religious exercise) before the windows of a mistress ; it was I thought a great proof of gallantry. Nowhere were super- stition and immorality so closely allied as in Spaing Some penitents would walk through the streets with seven swords ! stuck into their bodies. There was hardly a man who did not bear the scapular or some sacred image. The palaces of the nobles were rich with the spoils of Milan and Naples, Mexico and Peru, gathered during a Viceroyalty of five years. It took about seventy hours, when one of these magnates died, to make out the inventory of his plate and to weigh it. They never visited their estates, but left all to a steward. There would often be fifty horses in one stable dying of hunger from neglect. A noble paid whatever price tradesmen chose to ask for an article. When he died his money was locked up for years in chests, labelled Ill SPAIN 293 with the names of his heirs ; no one dreamt of putting it out at interest. Every rich man kept some courtesan, a most witty and rapacious personage; they were the ruin of the great" houses. Boys of quality, when but thirteen, took a mistress and neglected their studies. The disease that usually follows these excesses was almost universal. The young nobles learnt nothing, but passed their time in idleness or worse; they hardly ever were sent to travel abroad ; at seventeen they were married and had a house- hold of their own. On the other hand, when a Spaniard by good luck had enjoyed any education and had seen the world, he profited more than any foreigner. Our French lady traveller gives fine descriptions of the treasures to be seen in the Cathedrals of Burgos and Toledo ; the sixty silver candlesticks, higher than a man, ranged round the altar ; the crowns above glittering with diamonds and pearls ; the robes of the Virgin, the finest thing ever be- held. Little girls were made to take the nun's vow at seven years old, much to their regret in future years. The police was infamous ; the servants of justice at Madrid were the greatest thieves ; the most innocent man might be thrown into prison till he died without any process, if a bribe were paid. Aragon furnished bands of robbers who spread themselves all over Spain ; they would sometimes carry off ladies of quality and hold them to ransom. The different provinces, cleaving fast to their old privileges, had each "its line of custom-houses, and travellers were con- stantly detained. Spaniards themselves would not do low work, so 67,000 French migrated into Spain, while other nations supplied merchants. At the end of the reign of Philip II. Spain had contained more than eight millions ; a hundred years later she contained less than six millions. 1 In 1679 died Don John of Austria ; the ministers who succeeded him made little '"SfiJrTT" in history. So brutal were the insults of Louis XIV., the tyrant of the West, that Spain was driven to declare war once more in 1683, without a single ally ; she now lost Luxemburg for some 1 Madame d'Aulnoy, note to p. 496. I have used the edition of 1874, which has some valuable notes. 294 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. years. In 1684 her Genoese friends underwent still worse treatment. Louis next sent a fleet to bombard Cadiz, and extorted an enormous ransom. Even the Moors in Africa were now able to inflict defeats upon Spain. But in 1688 came that Northern Revolution which was so beneficial to Spain and to most of Europe. 1 England at last took her proper place on the side of the down-trodden Powers, and boldly challenged the French Despot, who was henceforth destined to make no more abiding conquests by force of arms. Charles about this time lost his fair French Queen, the only being he ever loved. 2 She was speedily replaced by a German Princess, who might be trusted to support the Austrian interest. Spain took up arms once more in 1689 ; she owed all her hopes of success to the heretic who had ousted a true believer from the English throne. William III. had speedily to request the removal of Gastanaga, the incapable Spanish governor of Flanders. Catalonia was again attacked by the French ; so strong was their navy at this time, that they could bombard Spanish cities without giving much heed to English and Dutch rivals on the sea. The successive governors of the province assailed were most worthless ; the war in this part was ended by Vendome, who at last took Barcelona. Meanwhile the German Queen and her foreign favourites disposed at their pleasure of the high offices in Madrid ; her confessor played a great part at Court. One favourite seriously proposed to the Crown to divide Spain into four parts, to be ruled by himself, the Constable, the Admiral, and another. Charles made a decree to this effect, but the result was the resignation of many of the Viceroys and Generals. Another decree exacted the third part of the pay of all officials, and ordered that every ten families should furnish one soldier. 1 A Spanish minister, on receiving a letter from William III., laid it reverently on his head ; this was au old Moorish custom. He called his Majesty the greatest Prince in the world, el Redemptor de Europa. Stanhope Spain under Charles II. , 64. 2 Any one who wishes to see to what disgusting depths Spanish super- stition could descend, should read the French Ambassador's report about the Queen ; it is set out by Rene'e, Les Nieces de Mazarin, 501. Ill SPAIN 295 This led to the flight and imprisonment of the unwilling recruits ; not one fourth of them, sent from Madrid, reached Catalonia. But even in this wretched reign the Inquisition stood not where it did ; there are now and then tokens of secular wisdom cropping up ; a special Junta, appointed to examine the matter, petitioned Charles against the excesses of the terrible Tribunal, which sought to interfere in every business and to treat every man as its own subject, while its officials claimed immunity from all taxation. Spain had indeed paid dearly for her persecution of the Jews. 1 If the natives suffered from superstition, foreigners were not likely to escape. Even the sacred rights of Ambassadors were often set at naught, though a ruler like Cromwell would not bear wrongs of this kind. Stan- hope, the English envoy at Madrid, lost his chaplain in 1691; he obtained the consent of the authorities to lay the corpse in a field by night. Yet the grave was violated, its contents were insulted and mutilated ; Stanhope had to bury the body in his own cellar. Lord Lexington, a later envoy, lost a servant in 1713; he concealed the body in his garden, and even thus could not preserve the corpse from insult. His own son died ; the body was wrapped in a bale of cloth, and was with difficulty conveyed to England. 2 Stanhope, who was English Ambassador at Madrid for ten years' about this time, throws further light on Spain. Not one good town or inn was to be found between Aran- juez and Alicant, and a man might go forty miles without meeting anything better than a wretched hostel, where he had to eat and lie with his mules. The copper money used in Castile would not pass in Valencia. All this Eastern part of Spain maintained barefaced commerce with France, though a fierce war was raging ; this commerce the Spanish ministers could not put down, and declared that the King had no real power in Aragon but only the Koyal name. One of the ministers was an old man above fourscore who had lost his memory ; he would forget to give an answer as to business matters, which would lie unheeded for three months. The Junta comprised several nobles, the King's 1 Lafuente. xvii. 238. 2 Lexington Papers, 1. 296 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. confessor, and a famous Dominican theologian ; it was a hard matter for a heretic to glean any true fact from them if they thought the cause of their religion was concerned. Every man in office did what he chose, and was never called to account ; all funds were forestalled for many years. It was rumoured that there was hardly one governor of a Spanish port who could resist a bribe. The army in Catalonia was not 8000 men, one half Germans or Walloons, who were all starving and deserting. The eighteen good men of war which Spain had in 1689 were reduced to three by 1699. The vile covetousness of the ministers increased the general scarcity. All pensions were taken away from poor widows and orphans at the very time when the Duke of Ossuna, one of the richest men in Spain, was helped by the confessor, a member of the Junta, to a pension of 6000 crowns a year for life. Even Viceroyships were put up to sale ; a huge sum was offered for Peru. When the younger Stanhope was at Mallorca nearly fifty Jews and heretics were burnt by the Inquisi- tion ; the victims were the richest men of the island, and owners of the best houses in the city. The King refused to set free four Frenchmen from the Inquisition at Bilboa, saying that he would not interfere with it even on behalf of his own servants. It approved of a holy man, a seventh son, who was said to do wonderful cures, and who was consulted as to the Queen-Mother's cancer. The difference between France and Spain came out when Barcelona yielded to the French ; they confirmed all the city's privileges, except the Inquisition and the right of sanctuary in churches in cases of murder. What specially irritated the Spanish Govern- ment against the Scotch colonists of Darien was, not the twelve hundred fighting laymen, but the six heretic ministers. A devout Spaniard usually made his soul his heir, which entitled the Church to claim all his estate after legacies paid, to be laid out in Masses. Orders were sent down to Cadiz that the sick English sailors, allies of Spain, were not to be received into the marine hospital ; heretic dogs ought not to share with good Catholics in His Majesty's bounty. There was great scarcity in 1699, and in SPAIN 29*7 twenty thousand beggars nocked into Madrid from all the country round, looking like ghosts. Men in the prison, being almost starved, broke out and fled to the nearest convents. 1 In 1697 Louis XIV. made peace with all his enemies, restoring both Luxemburg and his Catalan conquests to Spain. The French Court had views of its own as to the succession to the Spanish Crown ; happy had it been for the world if Charles II. had deceased three years before he did ; the choice of some German Prince as his successor, before Europe had laid down her arms, would have saved seas of blood. It is one of the strangest facts in history that France, the ruthless enemy, should have been able to defeat Austria, the trusty ally, in the great diplomatic struggle that now began at Madrid. The old Cortes of Castile had long been a mere name ; few dreamt of taking their opinion on the great question at issue ; this was to be settled by women, courtiers, friars, foreigners, and the Pope ; there was to be nothing now at Madrid answering to the renowned proceedings at Westminster, which bestowed the English Crown in 1689. True it was that after the death of the Aragonese King in 1410 his three provinces appointed each three judges, the majority of whom were to settle the -succession. But St. Vincent Ferrier, who took the lead on that occasion, was not more unlike Cardinal Portocarrero than was the freedom of 1410 different from the feeble despotism of 1700. The German Queen was most unpopular, and this inclined the Castilians to the French candidate. All that they asked was that France and Spain should never be under the same King. Vienna was detested at Madrid. At any rate, the Spanish Monarchy must never be dismem- bered ; " we will rather deliver ourselves up to the French or the Devil, so long as we all go together." * One great agent in bringing round the Spanish Court and people to the side of King Louis was Harcourt, the French Ambassador. Seldom have any diplomatists exerted 1 Spain under Ofiarles II., a small book edited by Lord Mahon. 2 Ibid. 153. 298 HOME AND REFORM CHAP. skill such as his in favour of his master's grandson, the future Philip V. The Austrian rival, young Charles, the Emperor's second son, was served by a German who made himself most unpopular at Madrid. The Spanish Monarchy was evidently too enormous; treaties of Partition, more than one, were therefore made by the Powers of Europe treaties which lashed up to madness the Castilian pride, unwilling to hand over old possessions to be shared out among other powers. The mind of the dying King seemed to be giving way ; nuns, confessors, wizards, and exercisers were at work around his bed, while the Inquisition swooped down upon the strange practitioners who put forward their questionable remedies. France persuaded the Castilian nobles that she objected to any partition of their domains. The Pope, Innocent XII., when consulted, preferred the Bourbon candidate to the Hapsburg. At last King Charles dictated his will, declaring his nephew, Philip the French- man, sole heir of the whole Spanish Monarchy ; the un- happy King, who was not yet forty, died late in 1700. 1 For the last two hundred years France and Spain had been grappling together ; for the next hundred years, with a few intervals of strife, they were to be allies. Young Philip V., to whom this change was due, took peaceful possession of his inheritance ; his courtiers were very wroth at the public spirit shown by the Cortes of Aragon and Catalonia, the last Cortes ever held in those provinces. Soon the well-known silly freak of Louis XIV. flung England into the Austrian scale, though only a few months earlier King William had been writing a congratulatory letter to the new King of Spain. 2 In 1701 the Spanish Government had hardly enough money to defray the cost of the King's journeys ; the clergy and the farmers of the revenue were both asked for a free gift, but both alike cried for mercy. Scarcity and misery reigned everywhere, and all expenses were likely to be thrown on France. While the subjects murmured loudly, fashions were changed in compliment to 1 Lafuente, in his 17th Volume, is my authority from 1665 up to this date. 2 This letter is set out in Cole's Historical Memoirs, 370. in SPAIN 299 the new-comer ; the old livery of the Spanish Kings was banished for the Bourbon equivalent ; the young Courtiers, at the Monarch's behest, dressed in the French style. The Duke of Ossuna no longer wore his hair after the Spanish manner, but was speedily converted into a French beau, with his locks cut, curled, and powdered. 1 In 1704 Philip the Frenchman was at Madrid, while Charles, the Austrian pretender, was at Lisbon, aided by a Portuguese army ; his English allies took Gibraltar, " the first stone that fell from the ruinous Spanish building." About this time, when Spain was at her very lowest, and when she had as yet no warlike achievements to boast of, we are allowed a peep at her army. Father Labat, the French Dominican, who landed at Cadiz in 1705, describes the soldiers doing their exercises wrapped in the national cloak, under which there was hardly any other garment; being left without pay they were forced either to steal or to beg; even officers resorted to this last resource, and the same was done in their Flemish garrisons. Sometimes the Governor would assemble the chief merchants and foreign consuls to levy a round sum upon them for the pay of the troops. Labat visited the army that was besieging Gibraltar for the first time after it had become an English fortress ; the raw Spanish troops showed but little zeal, and trafficked with the enemy at night. Our author describes many another Spanish sight ; the highest nobles kissing the priest's hand and kneeling as they offered him water at Mass ; 2 a house enjoying the privilege of sanctuary because the Host had been ^obliged to enter it owing to a thunderstorm ; the monks in swarms begging alms for their wealthy convents, and handing about relics to be kissed ; the spectacles universally worn by the priesthood. The King of Spain, the Lord of America, would be the richest Prince in the world if he were not robbed by his officers on all sides, and had not so many friars to main- tain. All the wares of Europe passed through Cadiz on their way across the Atlantic in Spanish bottoms, and the 1 Coles Historical Memoirs, 270, 405. 2 Labat, i. 36. Most of what follows is contained between 227-385. 300 ROME AND REFORM CHAP. Spanish merchants acted as factors for the foreign trader ; they had little of their own to export. Smuggling went on to an enormous extent, and was defended by Casuists, much to Labat's surprise. Thieves abounded in Cadiz ; the Church seized on one third of the effects of a man at his death ; a funeral cost four times more in Spain than in France. Bulls were baited by dogs for half an hour before the butcher gave the finishing stroke ; this was done to make the meat tender. Spain was ill-peopled ; as to the merchants, there were twenty foreigners to one native ; more than twenty thousand Auvergnats and Limousins were found in Andalusia alone ; these acted as water-carriers and vine- dressers, taking vast sums out of the country. It was said that the Bull of the Cruzada, which sold great Indulgences to the faithful for the purpose of softening the rigours of Lent, and which even beggars had to buy, was worth more than a million of ducats in Spain alone, and twice as much in America ; this Bull was one of the chief sources of revenue of the Crown. 1 In 1705 Valencia declared for Charles the Austrian, and was soon followed by Catalonia, a province that had good reason to hate anything coming from France. Peterborough took the fortress that overawed Barcelona, a feat that even Marlborough or Eugene might have envied. The noble old city for many years continued to utter her war-cry, " St. Eulalia and Charles the Third." The Catalans had none of that feeling which in Castile caused medals to be struck inscribed with " Charles III., by the grace of the Heretics, Catholic King." Last of all, Aragon went over to the side of Charles ; all the monks and friars took up arms, and Peterborough, after reviewing a number of these at Valencia, declared that he had beheld the Church militant. The border war was carried on with great cruelty, at least by the Spaniards, now disunited. Castile and most of the Spanish provinces proved themselves most loyal to King Philip, raising men and money in abundance. He was driven from Madrid in 1706, where Charles's allies appeared for a short 1 Labat sets out the Bull of the Cruzada at the end of his volume on Spain. in SPAIN 301 time ; but they only incurred the popular hatred ; the Castilians had already sworn homage to Philip, and they were stubborn never to break their oaths to the French- man. The whole country took up arms against the in- vaders ; the Castilian is seen in all his glory when he is hard driven, his back against the wall, and his sword deep in the heart of the foremost foe ; in this respect there is little difference between the years 1710 and 1810. The University of Salamanca especially distinguished herself by her steady resistance when besieged by the Portuguese. King Philip's party were now most fortunate, for Peter- borough was recalled by the English ministers. In 1707 the two hostile armies met at Almanza, where Berwick, at the head of the Castilians and French, gained a great victory over the Allies. 1 Of the beaten army, nearly three-fourths were either killed or taken, a matter of rare occurrence in warfare. The standards of the Dutch, English, Austrians, and Portuguese, with those of revolted Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, were borne in triumph to Madrid. After the battle almost all Eastern Spain, except Barcelona and a few other towns, submitted ; much hanging went on ; Jativa, which had held out stoutly for Charles, was now destroyed (except the churches), and was replaced by another jeity named after Philip. More important in the summer of that year was the Frenchman's decree, whereby he swept away all the privileges and liberties of Valencia and Aragon, reducing them to the dead level of Castile. The only use made of the Cortes henceforth was to cause them to recog- nise future heirs to the Throne. Oran, the conquest of Ximenes, was taken by the Moors, aided by engineers sent by the allies. Overtures for peace were proposed, but Philip steadily announced to his subjects that he would never leave them, whatever his grandfather at Paris might suggest. In 1710 the allies defeated Philip's army and once more pushed on to Madrid. Charles made himself much disliked, and his troops, many of whom were heretics, shocked the Castilians by seizing on church plate 1 He is called "Verbik" in the inscription on the Monument at Almanza. His Memoirs for this time are most interesting. 302 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. and selling it in the streets of the capital. Their line of retreat was harassed by Vallejo, a good type of those bold Guerrillas who have made Spanish warfare something altogether peculiar from the days of Hannibal down to the last Basque rising. In Castile the allies were not masters of more ground than their actual camp. At last Stanhope * and his English were taken prisoners after a fierce resistance, while Staremberg and his Germans, equally stubborn, had to retreat to Barcelona. The victorious general was a Frenchman, Marshal Vendome ; but his army, differing from the conquerors of Almanza, this time was wholly Spanish. Charles the Pretender, losing his elder brother, the Lord of Vienna, went to Germany, there to be elected Emperor ; and the Allies began to talk of peace. This was made at Utrecht in 1713 ; Spain lost her inheritance and conquests in Europe of the last two Centuries, the Netherlands, Lombardy, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, but Catalonia was restored to her without any stipulation for the maintenance of the old privileges of the province. This neglect is one of the blackest stains on the fair fame of England, which had been for years making good use of the Catalans, though it is true that Bolingbroke, most brilliant of knaves, the man to whom this infamy was mainly owing, afterwards underwent punishment for his foul deed at the hands of the wrathful nation, and that his punishment was lifelong. Charles, with the best will in the world, could do nothing for " his poor Catalans." Barcelona in vain offered to yield, if only the old Catalan freedom might be guaranteed ; Philip, trained in a despotic school, naturally turned a deaf ear; and in 1714 Berwick, appearing once more in Spain, took the heroic old city, after a most noble resistance made in the true Spanish style. Then came punishment ; clergy- men were banished to Italy ; laymen were mewed up for life. We soon hear of Judges of Confiscations holding their Courts in Eastern Spain. The island of Mallorca, the last stronghold of the rebels, yielded in the summer of 1715, 1 Stanhope and Wellington are the only two men who have ever gained victories in Spain, and afterwards directed the policy of England. in SPAIN 303 and thus at length ended the bloody war of the Spanish Succession. Catalan freedom was at last crushed. The land was governed by strangers who could not speak its language. The Castilian censorship was soon extended over the three revolted provinces. The Captain-General issued an edict declaring guilty of high treason every one who should not give up all books and pamphlets written in Catalonia between 1705 and 1714. Books now had to be licensed at Madrid before they could be printed, and this cumbersome process helped to quench any sparks of life that remained. 1 The Inquisition, ever since the condemnation of Molinos at Rome, was resolute in hunting down the Mystics or Alumbrados. Some of these, both men and women, were burnt about this time. What would have entailed a Century earlier only a short imprisonment, might now involve the penalty of death. The Bishop of Oviedo was carried to Rome and was there deposed. Sometimes the inmates of a Dominican convent would be sentenced to perpetual im- prisonment for their belief in some Beata ; sometimes a Franciscan would be punished for seducing a bevy of nuns ; sometimes the superior of a Carmelite convent would die under the torture. 2 Philip V., having lost his first Queen in 1714, wedded Elizabeth Farnese of Parma, one of the worst enemies that Austria has ever known. This match was promoted by her countryman Alberoni, who was fast rising in the Spanish Court, and who was soon made a Cardinal. He laid his plans with wiliness, and late in 1717 threw down the gauntlet to half Europe by conquering Sardinia. So abundantly were his troops and ships provided, that Spain was evidently now very different from what she had been under Charles II. ; even the old Catalan rebels were enlisted. Yet there was no increase of taxation, and sound reforms were made in the Palace and Treasury. The days of Lepanto seemed to have returned when in 1718 a new and great Spanish armament seized Sicily. Alberoni even hoped to make the sovereigns of Sweden and Russia his tools ; the 1 Lea, Religious History of Spain, 154. 3 Ibid. 388-394. 304 EOME AND KEFOEM CHAP. Spanish Court, moreover, now laid aside its old hatred of the Turk. But the British fleet and the French army could not be withstood ; and when this was evident, King Philip, late in 1719, rid himself of Alberoni, the great firebrand of Europe, and thus obtained peace. Some years earlier Pope Clement XI. had seen his dominions overrun by the Austrians, and had been unwill- ingly forced to recognise their candidate, Charles, as King of Spain. Philip protested in 1709, and at once forbade all Spanish intercourse with Home ; the Nuncio, moreover, was turned out of Spain. The King appealed to his Castilians, and began a paper warfare in things spiritual ; the country was all but unanimous against the Pope. Clement on his side granted Bulls to the Prelates presented by Charles, and refused them to Philip's nominees. In 1 7 10 the Lord of Madrid sent to Kome a long and energetic protest ; Spain was advancing in political and religious knowledge, for it is now hinted that the power granted to St. Peter does not extend to the deposition of Kings, or to the altera- tion of the rights of Monarchies ; could this doctrine, it was asked, be the way to bring back the Protestant Princes into the right path ? The country suffered much from the stoppage of matrimonial dispensations. Philip's envoy at Eome, a priest, was forbidden by the Pope to celebrate ; in con- sequence of this insult all Spaniards were ordered to leave Eome, and it was advised that future Bishops should be consecrated in Spain, without any regard to the Pope. Other means of overawing Eome means much more violent were counselled. After the Peace of Utrecht, Philip was recognised by all Europe as the rightful King. Macanaz, one of his ministers, drew up a long paper limiting the rights of Eome in such sort that the Pope wished to bracket the Spaniard's work with those of Barclay and Talon, pernicious Gallican books long prohibited ; the Inquisitor- General's aid was invoked by Clement, but in 1714 this official was ordered off to Sicily. However, Alberoni found it his interest to bring about a reconciliation, which was effected in 1717, when the mediator won his Eed Hat. In the next year the quarrel broke out afresh ; the Spanish in SPAIN 305 Bishops took opposite sides as to the Pope's revocation of the Bull of the Cruzada. After Alberoni's fall, peace was once more made between Borne and Spain in 1720, after eleven years of war ; Gallicanism seemed now not to be confined to France ; l Macanaz comes before us much like one of the old Parisian advisers of Philip the Fair. Spain had not yet done with the foreign ministers who abounded all through this age and effected vast improve- ments ; the Italian Alberoni was followed by the Dutchman Eipperda, whose great feat was to unite for a short time Philip at Madrid with his old enemy Charles at Vienna. But the chief guide of Spanish policy was Philip's second Queen, Elizabeth Farnese, who more than once contrived to set all Western Europe on fire in the hope of winning thrones in Italy for her two younger sons ; she was able in the end to settle the one at Naples, the other at Parma. Philip's son, Ferdinand VI., succeeded in 1746, and greatly furthered the good estate of Spain by the simple policy of remaining at peace with all his neighbours ; his minister, Ensenada, was the first of a long line of skilful Spanish pilots who did much for the country in the next two generations. One of the fruits of their labours was the Concordat made with the wise Pope, Benedict XIV., a statesman well fitted to prolong the power of Rome, which was already visibly crumbling away. The Spanish Crown gained great advantages in the matter of Church patronage ; the Nuncio at Madrid, one of the old school, was so disgusted with the whole affair that the Pope had to inflict a public rebuke upon this agent. The Inquisition was far too powerful under King Philip V., whom it forced to disown Macanaz, the champion of the Spanish Crown against the Papacy. The Holy Office further prohibited the history written by Belando, a learned Franciscan, a great authority for these times ; the friar was imprisoned for life, and was condemned to write no more. It celebrated no fewer than fifty-seven Acts of Faith throughout Spain within four years, beginning with 1722 ; 1 Lafuente, in his 18th Volume, is my authority from 1701 up to this point. VOL. I X 306 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. in these the widow of ninety-five, the girl of fifteen, and the poor washerwoman, alike met their doom. 1 Books approved at Eome, such as those of the renowned Bishop Palafox, the enemy of the Jesuits, were condemned by the Spanish tribunal. 2 It had henceforth to deal not only with Jansenism, but with Freemasonry, which was making its influence felt far and wide rather before 1740. But by degrees the claws of the Inquisition were pared ; under Ferdinand VI. it was forbidden to harass the great Bene- dictine Feijoo, a most zealous reformer of popular supersti- tions. Academies and colleges sprang up, new lights in the midst of Spanish darkness ; the policy of Philip II. was at last reversed, for learned foreigners were invited into Spain, and no one now proposed to burn the Arabic books in the Escorial. Philology, Law, History, and Natural Science were carefully studied and old archives were printed, especially by Florez. The Jesuit De Isla arose to scourge the laughable follies of the Spanish pulpit, and the Inquisi- tion itself could not check his witty sallies. The Brotherhood to which this satirist belonged was now rapidly losing ground ; about this time it was assailed by a Bull of Pope Benedict XIV. forbidding the Jesuits and the other religious Orders to occupy themselves with com- merce or to buy and sell Indians as slaves. The friars of old had been the great protectors of the Indian race ; they had indeed changed for the worse. Eather later the monks threw their influence into the scale of Eoyalty in the struggle for the independence of the Spanish colonies. A Bishop was able to paralyse the great Peruvian revolt, quelled in 178 1. 8 We are tempted to linger over the old Spain that is for 1 Lafuente, torn. xix. 484. 2 Peyron, who continued Bourgoing's work on Spain, gives an instance of the power of the Jesuits. Cisneros, cousin to Ximenes, had printed in 1500 a book, Exercises of the Spiritual Life, which Loyola afterwards tran- scribed as the groundwork of his Order. Navarro in 1712 had the work of Cisneros reprinted at Salamanca ; the Jesuits, zealous for the fame of their founder, obtained an order to seize the whole edition ; they further damaged Navarro at Court, and made him lose a bishopric, due to his uncommon merit. See Bourgoing's Spain, iv. 31. * Gervinus, History of the Nineteenth Century, vi. 29, 45, 50. in SPAIN 307 ever gone ; to watch the processions on Good Friday, when all the gentlemen bore lighted waxed tapers and scourged themselves, while Basque buffoons danced in the midst of the ceremony with tambourines and castanets. 1 Men worked and kept open shop on every day of the year except Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and the time of a bull fight. In Biscay, where the iron trade was thriving, laymen expected, even down to 1760, that every priest should keep his concubine for the general moral security. We see Salamanca, as yet unharmed by French engineers, with its fourscore well-paid professors and its twenty-four colleges, each containing thirty scholars in their long gowns and caps ; Seville with its six-score hospitals, Valladolid with its seventy convents of both sexes and its House of the Inquisition, receiving light only through very small holes ; Saragossa, which could bestow eight hundred patients in one building ; the Escorial with its relics of Saints, seven entire bodies, one hundred and seven entire heads, one hundred and seventy arms and legs, and fourteen hundred lesser pieces ; the Abbess of Las Huelgas, who was Lady of fourteen towns and fifty villages ; the Archbishop of Toledo with his revenue of three hundred and sixty thousand crowns, while his clerical subordinates between them had rather more. Amazing is the . account of the vast treasures held by the Church in Spain, wealth soon to vanish into the melting pot of Napoleon's marshals. 2 Improvement made further progress under Charles III. who in 1759 came from Naples, his old conquest, to reign at Madrid ; we may well suspect that he had profited much from the neighbourhood of so enlightened a Pope as Bene- dict XIV. We have come to the best King that Spain has had since the Reformation. He sent Galvez, a man utterly different from the typical Spaniard, to America, there to carry out much-needed reforms, and to raise the revenues without injuring the inhabitants ; the American trade was now for the first time thrown open to many Spanish ports ; 1 The Spaniards had a wonderful love of dancing in church ; traces of this exist at Seville even in our time. 2 I have been guided here by Udal ap Rhys, who published his Tour in Spain in 1760. 308 HOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. Monopoly, like the Inquisition, was slackening its hold on the land. We must not linger over the famous riot at Madrid in 1766, ending in the promotion of the renowned Aranda, already a popular man. Many other Spanish cities broke out ; and even Biscay, so quiet for Centuries, joined in sedition. In the next year the Jesuits throughout the realm were expelled with much harshness, and were handed over in thousands to Pope Clement XIIL, who at first refused them leave to land in his States. The Fathers were accused of having been accomplices in the great Madrid riot, and King Charles now upbraided them with fanaticism and false doctrine. 1 He had already, when reigning in Italy, shown a desire to depress the enormous power of the clergy, and had later brought down his hand upon both Inquisitors and Bishops. There was a great difference both in Spain and Italy between the years 1720 and 1750; the world had been making rapid strides even before Voltaire spoke out boldly ; both Macanaz and Giannone, persecuted patriots, should have lived a few years later. The Spanish Prelates, men long renowned for piety, were consulted as to the aboli- tion of the Jesuits ; thirty-four voted for this, fourteen voted for merely a reformation of the Order. The French Prelates were not equally hostile to the sons of Loyola. In 1778 Pius VI. issued a Brief approving of a transla- tion of th,e Bible. Some fanatics declared that the Papal Brief ought to be denounced to the Inquisition, and that Pius should be forced to recant his errors. Spain, however, followed in the wake of the Pope. In 1782 the Inquisitor- General published a decree stating that the old rule of the Spanish Index might now be modified and conformed to the Tridentine rule. Spanish versions of the Bible were once more lawful after two hundred years of prohibition. One learned man defended at once the Inquisition and also the circulation of the Scriptures. 2 1 The Jesuits, as all know, were accused of winking at Paganism in China and India ; it was the same in Chili as regards certain Pagan rites, called Muchitun. See Lafuente, xx. 243. 2 Lea, Religious History of Spain, 160. in SPAIN 309 Spain was becoming more and more independent of Eome ; the latter had ordered the Inquisitor-General to proceed against the Pastoral instruction of a Spanish Bishop. But the cause was taken out of the Inquisitor's hands and was decided by a body of five Prelates and two Generals of Orders. The faulty Bishop had incidentally spoken in high terms of the schismatic Church of Utrecht ; this might have been condemned by Home, but the cause had never been fairly tried. However, the Assembly at Madrid approved the Prelate's sentiments. Spain was now bent on the canonisation of Bishop Palafox, the great enemy of the Jesuits ; the process had lasted more than eighty years. 1 Monino, the Spanish Envoy at Eome, was the main agent in inducing Pope Clement XIV. to abolish the Order ; this lawyer, a man harsh and unbending, is accused by writers like Cretineau-Joly of being the true cause of the Pope's death ; the Spaniard was rewarded for his work by the title of Count Floridablanca. Meanwhile Spain was making rapid progress at home. Agriculture and trade were fostered ; fine roads and canals were made ; foreign workmen were imported ; justice was more fairly administered ; the recruiting for the army was set upon a sound footing ; exemptions, such as those of the familiars of the Inquisition, were now curtailed. The schools and universities were reformed, and the Jesuit colleges were turned into seminaries for the clergy. Salamanca at first showed herself most reactionary in her attitude to the new learning ; Eollin and Muratori were by her coupled with the new Encyclopaedists ; Newton and Descartes were pronounced to be useless writers. But Salamanca herself after a few years followed in the wake of Alcala and other reforming Corporations. Commerce with the Indies being thrown open, the Custom-house dues were at once doubled. Madrid owes all its noblest buildings to this time. Even the women bore their part in the universal improvement now going forward ; the hands of Aranda and Floridablanca were every- where felt. The highest class in rank was alone open to foreign criticism ; the nobles had sadly degenerated from 1 Neale, Jansenist Church of Utrecht, 332, 333. 310 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. their forefathers, who a hundred years earlier, mounted on their own priceless steeds, had boldly met the savage bull in the arena. 1 But even in these days of progress the Inquisition was still able to cast its blighting shadow over the land. In 1767 it was proposed to bring six thousand German colonists to work the mines of Andalusia. The oversight of these was entrusted to Olavide, a correspondent of Voltaire's. In 1775 he was accused by a foreign friar as a heretic and atheist ; he had certainly blamed some of the popular superstitions. The King himself could not avert the process, begun by the Inquisitors; in 1778 Olavide was condemned to eight years' imprisonment in a convent, and his goods were confiscated. He broke his parole and fled to France ; he was later reconverted to the Roman faith by beholding the horrors of the French Revolution, and he ended his life in Spain. Part of his penance in the convent was to read night and morning the works of two dull monks. 2 On the sea Admiral Solano, who had distin- guished himself in war, had in his possession a copy of Raynal's famous work ; the almoner of his ship threw the book into the sea, threatened the terrors of the Inquisition, and forced the Admiral to do public penance. This was not the way to breed seamen fit to cope with Rodney and Nelson. Llorente gives a long list of priests and monks perse- cuted about this time on suspicion of Jansenism. Aranda himself was denounced four times to the Inquisition, and the well-known Jovellanos, a truly model Spaniard, was exiled. The Countess of Montijo, a great patroness of 1 Swinburn says (Travels in Spain, ii. 385), "The Grandees, one or two excepted, are diminished by a series of distempered progenitors to a race of pigmies, which dwindles away for lack of heirs, and tends gradually to an union of all the titles and estates upon the heads of one or two females." Bourgoing says, ii. 293, "That horrible gift, which the New World has given to the Old, is become in Spain the patrimony of whole families, and the degeneration of a great number of illustrious races is strikingly visible." 2 Segur remarked that this punishment was known to the ancients ; the culprit had been damnatus ad bestias. See his Memoirs, i. 250. On the same page is the story about Admiral Solano. Ill SPAIN 311 learning, was attacked as being a correspondent of Bishop Gregoire. The last person burnt by the Inquisition was a Beata, who had made a compact with the Devil ; this was in 1781. A few years later the Inquisitor-General himself commissioned Llorente to write a work exposing the vices of the procedure of the Holy Office ; it was plain that the tribunal that had so long been a millstone around Spain's neck was now not far from its end. Another sign of the times was that peace was made with Turkey, after ages of weary war; it was reckoned that, for the last Century, the Spanish captives in Algeria had usually amounted to thirty thousand, each of whom had to be ransomed for a thousand dollars on the average. 1 One of the best of all sojourners in Spain gives us an insight into the last years of Charles III. Townsend, a Wiltshire parson, went through the country in 1786 and 1787, and has left behind him a valuable book of travels. He gives sad proof of the depopulation that had long been going on, and of the ruinous system of finance. He was struck with amazement at the rich shrines of silver and gold, the treasures of American mines, to be seen in the Spanish cathedrals ; what would not these riches have done for Spain had they been spent on roads and canals ? He gives a glowing report of the Spanish Prelates, men of toleration, whose guest he often became ; he is less satisfied with the priests and monks, who possessed two-fifths of all the land under tillage. The whole population now amounted to more than ten millions, of whom 188,000 belonged to the clergy, or were sacristans, acolytes, and nuns. 2 In other words, out of every sixty souls one was devoted to the Church. Townsend was once able to relieve a monk suffer- ing from the stone; all the brethren at once crowded around asking for remedies for their complaints ; these were either the stone, the gravel, or the hypochondriacal disease ; for this last the only cause seemed to be a life of inaction and the want of hope. 3 Townsend had had occasion to praise a French Bishop who had done much good by trans- ferring to the Sundays many of the numerous holydays that 1 Townsend, ii. 224. 2 Ibid. 201, 213 3 Ibid. 39. 312 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. encouraged only idleness and vice ; this Prelate seems to have had no counterpart in Spain. 1 The Inquisitors had learned humanity, though traces of the old fearful system still remained; the Dutch Consul at Barcelona, who had been imprisoned by the Holy Office thirty-five years earlier, could never be prevailed upon to give any account of his confinement, and seemed much agitated when the subject came up. A fellow-sufferer of his, though then safe in France, would never utter a word as to the awful secrets of the Inquisition. 2 What must Spaniards have borne for three hundred years 1 All over the land, when a bell tolled at eight, every coach halted, every hat was off, and every lip muttered prayer. But an instant later all went on as usual; the young men and women turned to their usual evening pursuits, though some regard was paid to outward decency. 8 Improvement had long been at work ; at this time the practice of murder was confined to the lower class. The right of asylum had been diminished, for only one church in each city was now allowed to enjoy this right, a premium on murder. 4 The clergy were regarded as a shield against the anger of G-od ; when they were in the streets the people formed a line and gave them the wall ; every Spaniard, of whatever rank, kissed either the hands or the sleeve of the priest. 5 Of all Spain the most thriving pro- vince was Galicia, even though half of it was owned by the clergy ; the reason of its well-being was that it was bounded by the sea on two sides, and was not afflicted by the curse of the mesta, whereby the farmer was ruined for the sake of the shepherd. 6 Late in 1788 died Charles III., after having worn the crown, either in Italy or Spain, for nearly sixty years ; two foolish wars with England, and his needlessly harsh dealings with the Jesuits, are almost the only faults that can be brought against this good King, who earned the hatred of the Spanish clergy. The French Eevolution had to be faced by his son Charles IV., and by the minister 3 Townsend, i. 65. 2 Ibid. iii. 336. 3 Ibid. i. 289. * Bourgoing, iv. 268. * Ibid. ii. 270. 8 Ibid. i. 269. Ill SPAIN 313 Floridablanca, a stern opponent. The helm was soon taken by young Godoy, the new Queen's paramour, much to the dis- gust of all true Spaniards ; he was a good friend to learning, though the worst of politicians. War was declared against impious France, and peace was not restored until 1795 ; republican plots now first began to be woven in Spain. In the next year Godoy attacked England in a war which was to last long. Complaint was made by the French Govern- ment against Spanish preachers, whose invectives against the Eevolutionary fiend had to be toned down by order of the Court. Madrid was now encroaching on Borne ; at the death of Pius VI. a Eoyal decree transferred to the local Prelates the power of giving matrimonial dispensations ; some of the Bishops refused to use their powers. A lively struggle began ; the Inquisition and the Nuncio denounced as Jansenists some of the holiest men in the Spanish Church ; the Confessional was abused, the drum ecclesiastic was banged, and the Government had to put down a war of pamphlets. Both the clergy and laity could now boast of great names, such as Tavira, the Bishop of Salamanca, learned in Eastern tongues, the fosterer of studies, the friend of the Reformers, a preacher highly esteemed by Charles III. 1 The best man of the laity was Jovellanos, a minister who did his utmost to make the Inquisition harmless, and who underwent an imprisonment of seven years in Mallorca, afterwards to figure as one of the leading patriots in the great War. Public opinion was not yet ripe for Reform, and one of the ministers, Caballero, was fitter for the year 1700 than for 1800 ; he kept a strict watch on the importa- tion of foreign books, and was a persecutor of all men of eminence. The reign of Charles IV. was most reactionary, if compared with that of his father. Early in the Nineteenth century Spain and England were once more at war; the old Castilian spirit was not dead, as we see by Collingwood's letters in 1805 referring to the Spanish Governor when Spain was smarting under the loss of Trafalgar. " He offered me his hospitals, and pledged the Spanish honour for the care and cure of our 1 Lafuente, xxii. 254, 231. 314 EOME AND KEFORM CHAP. wounded men. Our officers and men who were wrecked in some of the prize ships were most kindly treated, the priests and women distributing wine, and bread, and fruit among them. The soldiers turned out of their barracks to make lodging for them, whilst their allies, the French, were left to shift for themselves." l Strange it is that the same nation, so abounding in chivalry to her enemies, should have disgraced herself three years later by breaking the capitu- lation of Baylen, and by leaving the French prisoners of war in a starving state on a Mediterranean island. In 1807 the royal house of Spain was embroiled in family quarrels ; in the next year Napoleon stepped in, and found himself able to perpetrate a masterpiece of violence and knavery combined. He made his brother Joseph King of Spain, while the rightful heir, Ferdinand VII., was a prisoner in France. At the news of the Madrid massacre all the Spanish provinces sprang to arms ; their heroism was alloyed with baser admixture, for scores of murders were committed on harmless Frenchmen or on suspected traitors. The clergy were the soul of the glorious rising. We must pass over the too delusive triumph of Baylen, the siege of Saragossa, that sternest of all grapples at Albuera, 2 the swoop of Wellington at Salamanca, while we fix our eyes on the meeting of the Cortes in 1810. 3 Castile, after a sleep of nearly three hundred years, seemed to be treading once more in Padilla's footsteps. The National Assembly met at Cadiz, while the French bombs were falling about their ears, and while (worse calamity) news came that the 1 Collingwood's Correspondence, i. 185. 2 I am amused at Lafuente's long description of this fight, xxiv. 508 ; he contrives to make no mention of the British at all in relating the grand final struggle on the hill ; he does not specify the British proportion of the killed. 3 I give one instance of the ferocity of the war, taken from an author little known. Mr. A. Dallas was attached to Wellington's army ; he after- wards went into the Church and wrote his own life. In 1812 he was at Anover on the Tagus, and heard the following story from the natives. The French were long quartered there, but had once to retreat. A captain of their cavalry stole back in disguise, hoping to seduce a Spanish girl. The monks of a convent, hearing of his return, seized him and burnt him alive on their huge brasero. The French soon returned, and hanged twenty of the monks in their cowls and frocks. Ill SPAIN 315 hardly-used American colonies of Spain had begun to revolt. One mark, racy of the soil, distinguished Spain from France and Italy ; the new recruits of Freedom swore to tolerate no religion but that of Eome. The liberty of the press was one of the first reforms carried in the teeth of several priestly opponents. The Chamber was divided into liberates and serviles ; it soon betrayed a desire to tax the clergy. 1 Feudal privileges were abolished and the public credit was supported. In 1812 the new Constitution was decreed ; this again forbade the exercise of any religion but that of Home. One sole chamber was to be elected ; the right of female succession to the Crown was established, a point that became of weighty import twenty years later , all alike were obliged to serve in the army, an innovation which later led to much bloodshed. Schools and the liberty of the press were decreed ; new tribunals were created. A lively war of pamphlets was carried on ; the friends of the Inquisition fought stoutly for their idol, now tottering. The Cortes gravely chose St. Theresa for the patroness of Spain. As may be believed, there was a wide difference between the new Constitution and the old Assemblies of Castile and Aragon, the choicest fruits of the Middle Ages. Early in 1813 the Assembly at Cadiz, freed at last from the danger of French enemies, decreed that the Inquisition was incompatible with the Constitution ; in this many priests concurred ; the votes were ninety to sixty. The ninety -two thousand monks and nuns that cumbered the ground in 1800 were now threatened. 2 The Old and the New in Spain were brought into sharp collision ; the Pope's Nuncio remonstrated warmly against the proposed reforms. It would be unpardonable to pass over altogether in any account of Spain so thoroughly national a topic as that of the Guerrillas. What service they did to Wellington in cutting off convoys and intercepting despatches is well known. I confine myself to the exploits of one among them, Mina in Navarre, though I have some mistrust of his figures. He tells us that in the course of the war he lost 1 Lafuente, xxiv. 408-469. 2 Ibid. xxv. 410. 316 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. five thousand men of his own, and either slew or took almost forty thousand of the French invaders. He had to enforce humanity, not without success, by threatening to hang four of the enemy for every one of his own men put to death in cold blood. 1 In 1814 Napoleon set Ferdinand VII. free, telling him, at the same time, that England was fomenting Jacobinism in Spain. The restored King owed much to the Cortes ; but one of his first acts was to get rid of them, and to resolve on a despotic system. The most outspoken of the deputies were at once flung into prison at Madrid ; the besotted mob of that city rose in support of the King and Absolutism. Ferdinand, who was treachery incarnate, and who was one of the most debauched of kings, may well be bracketed with the four other Spaniards already named, the men that did most to bring about the ruin of a noble land. The suppressed convents and the Inquisition were restored ; the great aim was to bring everything back to the year 1807 ; the fanatical clergy and grandees denounced every one who had striven to give a welcome to new ideas. Informers came forward from all sides. Many of the liberal leaders and the most learned men were sentenced to imprisonment in unhealthy quarters and in African towns ; Ferdinand himself took pleasure in aggravating their miseries. This was not the way to win back the American colonies that were now bent upon achieving their freedom, aided by old soldiers of Wellington's. In 1815 the King welcomed home the re-established Jesuits ; more than a hundred were still alive whom his grandfather had banished. 2 The old chiefs who had headed the Spanish armies in the great war were beginning to conspire ; some, such as Porlier, were sent to the gallows ; torture, which the Cortes had abolished, was now once more employed. Five con- 1 See Mina's account of himself, published in Spanish in London in 1825, during his exile, pp. 27, 37. 2 One minister of the Reaction was granted the motto, Pontifice ac Rege (equl defensis. Ill SPAIN 317 spiracles were discovered within four years in different provinces ; the new ideas were widely spread among the troops. Eottenness seemed to prevail in all quarters ; the old heroes of the war were left for months without pay and clothing; even officers stole out at night to beg. One of Mina's ablest comrades, having been left for three whole days without bread for his wife and children, waited on the paymaster with drawn sword, gained his due, and was never called to account. On the other hand, brigands (most of them old Guerrillas) kept the roads and levied blackmail for three years, when at last seventy of them were executed. By the side of all this we read of the city of Santiago with her thirty convents, though she had but twenty- five thousand souls ; her priests were the main agents in overthrowing the luckless Porlier. 1 Meanwhile in America all was going from bad to worse. It is to the colonies that we have to look if we would know what Spanish cruelty can be. I take Venezuela alone ; here the Spanish official returns show that within a few years eighty thousand persons were massacred by various devices, and that Morillo, the Spanish general, avowed him- self the inventor of the most painful of the various torments. Every town and village that favoured the patriots was ~ simply destroyed with all its inhabitants. "By cutting off the educated," writes Morillo to the congenial Ferdinand, " I hoped to arrest the spirit of Eevolution." Men, women, and children were slaughtered in batches of six hundred. Keprisals of course followed, and in one island seven thousand Spanish skulls might be seen heaped together. The English soldiers in the patriot army were reprimanded for not taking part in the wholesale butcheries. Women might be seen without eyes, ears, and noses, and with the soles of their feet cut off; they had been thus tortured by Morillo to make them confess where were the buried treasures of their refugee masters. The land, once thickly inhabited by a thriving population, now lay waste for many leagues. The difference between the methods of Spanish warfare in 1 See Blaquiere's Spanish Revolution, 166, 195-198, 225. This was printed in 1822. 318 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. Venezuela and of the former English warfare in Virginia is somewhat startling. 1 This savage war in America had been fed from Spain, but a change was at hand. In 1820 an army was most unwillingly about to embark at Cadiz on its way to subdue the rebels. In that town there had always been a lodge of Freemasons, belonging to a branch of the society peculiar to Spain. It had made its way from Cadiz into nearly every regiment in the Spanish army. 2 The soldiers of this new expedition were led by Riego to pronounce against the G-overnment, thus setting a precedent to be followed by Spanish revolutionists for the next fifty years. In Spain, very different from France, it is the army that makes the great changes, and the populace of the larger towns follow in the wake of the army. At the other end of Spain, Galicia took up arms for the Constitution of 1812, and the fire ran all through the North. Within a short time King Ferdinand was forced to swear to the much-hated Constitution, and the fickle Madrid mob sacked the buildings of the Inquisition, which was soon once more abolished. Even Don Carlos, the King's brother, the great prop of absolution, proclaimed his adherence to the cause of Freedom. The officers who headed the rising were rewarded with promotion ; an unhappy precedent. Freemasonry took root in the army, and discipline was much weakened. Little wisdom was shown in dealing with the clergy, who of course loathed the new regimen ; and Pius VII. uttered a protest against it. Ferdinand refused to sanction the suppression of the Religious Orders ; he met with public insults from the mob of Madrid outrages that recall the French Revolu- tion. The Royalists began to counterplot, and tumults were frequent ; a priest was murdered in his prison. Alava, 1 I have taken this from Recollections of the War of Extermination in Venezuela and Colombia, by an officer of the Colombian navy, published in 1828. He gives a good account of the decisive battle of Carabobo. See vol. i., 3, 29, 158 ; ii. 233. 2 The Freemasons in Portugal had great influence in 1817, and were hated by the clergy ; according to Marshal Beresford, a great number of the best officers belonged to the society. See Gervinus, History of the Nine- teenth Century, tome vii. 103, 230. Ill SPAIN 319 "Wellington's friend, seems to have been the best man among the Liberals ; but no Spaniard showed himself capable of the lofty part of Pym or Hampden, ever ready to moderate between two extremes. In 1822 fighting went on in some of the provinces, and there was a bloody attempt at reaction in Madrid. The Pope refused Bulls of Institution to two priests appointed by the Government to bishoprics, and this he did simply on account of their liberal ideas. Elio, the former scourge of the patriots, was unjustly put to death. Mina, another chief whose fame dated from the Napoleonic war, strove in vain to put down the Absolutists in Catalonia. Meanwhile the Holy Alliance was threatening Spain and her Kevolution ; even countries like Prussia and Eussia were most anxious that the Pope should keep his old Spanish rights. In 1823 a French army was sent to support the Crown ; the foreigners were received with joy by the populace of Madrid and Saragossa, fickle beings ! The towns showed little love for the Constitution ; the priest-led peasantry showed still less. The King was brought by his captors to Cadiz, where the deputies held out for a short time against the French invaders, while a reaction, headed by the clergy, was going on all over Spain. - Ferdinand, rescued at last from the Liberals by the French, published a decree of vengeance against his late gaolers ; the prisons were soon filled with victims ; the only place of safety was in the quarters of the foreigners. 1 Ten years of reaction now began. Eiego, lately the idol of the nation, had been hurried a prisoner to Madrid, where he was sentenced to the gallows. Most barbarous were the punishments inflicted by the Government and the mob, though it must be allowed that the Liberals had before been guilty of bloodshed on a great scale in certain places. Spain seemed to have retrograded hundreds of 1 In Spain both actors and spectators in the theatre used to fall on their knees at the sound of the bell outside announcing the passage of the Host. The French officers at Barcelona had a bell sounded at the moment when Figaro was soaping his patron's chin. A laughable scene was the result, which gave rise to great scandal. See Madame d'Aulnoy's Travels in Spain (edition of 1874), note to p. 43. 320 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. years ; lads of sixteen were put to death, and it was said that the families of the Blacks (Liberals) ought to be rooted out even to the fourth generation. 1 Many convents were turned into Eoyalist clubs, and few preachers durst take the side of mercy; the most savage of the priests earned the mitre. The cruelties that now went on in Spain were too much even for the sages of the Holy Alliance. In 1824 Ferdinand was found to be too moderate for the Apostolic party, the fanatics of the Eeaction ; and his brother, Don Carlos (ill-omened name !) began to supplant him. In Eastern Spain arose Juntas of the Faith, a copy of the former Inquisition. That of Valencia laid hold of a schoolmaster named Eipoll, an old Liberal, and accused him of teaching no more than the commandments of the law, and of not going out of his house to bow down before the Host when it passed. He was accordingly hanged in 1826, but was not burned according to his sentence ; this case made a great stir all over the world ; it was the last time that any one in Europe has been put to death for religion under a Christian government. Petitions came in for the re-establishment of the Inquisition ; but to this the King, perhaps swayed by French counsels, would not consent. The Universities were handed over to Jesuits and friars ; the most harmless books were forbidden, such as those of Jovellanos ; hypocrisy was rampant. We may here remark that Spain differs once again from France and Italy in respect of the ferocity shown by the priesthood in the Nineteenth century ; the two latter countries, in their struggles for Freedom, have had little occasion to blame their clergy as regards the Christian grace of humanity, though much provocation has un- doubtedly been given to the spiritual soldiery of the Papacy. But on luckless Spain the black shadow of the now abolished Inquisition seems to rest ; and Intolerance, per- sonified in the priesthood, for long years could hardly be restrained from grasping her prey. Spain has given birth to neither a Eicci nor a Gregoire. 1 Lafuente, xxviii. 323. From him I take all the history of this wretched time. He ends in 1833. Ill SPAIN 321 Ferdinand allowed seven months to pass before he published an amnesty, which, as usual in Spain, contained a long list of exclusions. Liberal priests were shut up in convents, and one virtuous Bishop had to renounce his mitre. Executions were going on even in 1825 ; one of the most cruel was that of the Empecinado, the greatest after Mina of all the old Guerrillas, a chief who had ridden into Madrid by Wellington's side in the glorious year 1812. This patriot was exposed in an iron cage to the scoffs of the populace, as though he had been a wild beast ; a French general, perhaps an old enemy, in vain tried to save him from the gallows ; Ferdinand would listen neither to the foreigner nor to the hero's own mother. 1 Six or eight thousand Spanish exiles aroused the pity of all Europe. In 1823 every learned Spaniard seemed to seek refuge in London, where the national literature renewed its youth. 2 Meanwhile the American colonies had all established their freedom except Peru, and here the struggle lasted long. The last attempt to rivet the Spanish yoke was in 1829, when an army of 25,000 Spaniards had to surrender in Mexico. 3 Great Britain, having been much disgusted with the intervention of the Holy Alliance in Spain, early in 1825 recognised the independence of these colonies, and the war with the mother country soon came to an end. Cuba and the Philippines were almost the only colonies left. But disturbances were threatening nearer home. In 1827 the party that was more Eoyalist than the King broke out in Catalonia under the absurd pretext that Ferdinand was ruled by the Freemasons. The clergy were the mainspring of the whole movement, and soon had thirty battalions in arms ; one of the chiefs was a monk known as the Trappist. But the rising was put down and the leaders were executed. In 1828 there was a reign of terror at Barcelona ; more than seventeen killed themselves in dungeons ; four hundred were banished to African garrisons. The navy was all but extinguished ; the old army was 1 Lafuente, 423. 2 Gerviuus, History of the Nineteenth Century, xix. 136. 3 Ibid. xvii. 247. VOL. I Y 322 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. replaced by a Royalist militia ; smuggling flourished on a grand scale. We now have our last glimpse of the true old Spain with her countless monks and beggars at the monas- tery doors. Saint Priest travelled through the land in 1829 ; never, even at Rome, did he meet with so many monks as at Valencia ; the processions were crossing each other daily ; the churches were ablaze with marble and gold. The Miquelets, bold, frugal, and devoted, made the best of police, but the thieves could never be rooted out. An Ambassadress, travelling with a great train, was robbed on the high road to Madrid ; the best chance of recovering her goods was to have recourse to an old and reformed thief. The Alcaldes, if wise, would not make too searching inquiries into these misdeeds ; one of them began to examine into a crime, and his vineyard was burnt ; he would go on with his inquiries, and was then burnt himself. 1 So much for home government ; as to the Spanish colonies, Buxton laid some startling facts before the British Parliament. Spain and Portugal had received more than a million of money at the Congress of Vienna on engaging to give up their traffic in men. But this they were still carrying on to as great an extent as ever, no less than 264 vessels, avowedly engaged in the slave trade, having sailed from the single port of Havana between January 1827 and October 30, 1833, this being but a small part of the detestable commerce. 2 Things seemed to be at their worst, alike at home and abroad, when Ferdinand overthrew all the hopes of his brother Don Carlos by marrying Christina of Naples ; she gave birth to two daughters, famous in European history, and the King abolished the Bourbon law, according to which the Spanish Crown went only in tail -male. 3 He ended his worthless life in 1833, and Christina (her Liberalism at first was not ardent) became Regent for her child, Isabella II., the new Queen, a Sovereign who was to 1 Etudes diplomaliques et litUraires, par A. de Saint Priest, ii. 362-374. - Life of Sir Fowell Buxton, chap, xxii., towards the end. 3 Lafuente ends his work in 1833 ; vol. xxx. of his History contains his life, which is well worth study as regards the growth of Spanish tolerance. Ill SPAIN 323 differ much from Isabella I. Don Carlos took up arms in the North, finding his best adherents among the Basques, their time-honoured privileges having been foolishly swept away by the new centralising Democracy that soon came into power, fostered by the divisions in the Eoyal house. In July 1834 the Cholera was raging at Madrid; a lying report was spread among the populace that the monks were poisoning the fountains. Twenty Jesuits were massacred in their convent ; a still greater number of Franciscan friars were slain, and the troops of the line were more active in butchery than the rabble of the town. Strange men are the Spaniards ; in the midst of the brutal slaughter three priests bearing the Host made their way through the crowd, and were received with all the usual tokens of respect. In the case of other convents the Madrid mob did not go beyond robbery. The Inquisition was now formally abolished. 1 Next year the mobs of the various cities rose upon the clergy. Five or six convents at Saragossa were pillaged or burnt, and twelve monks were murdered in cold blood. What went on at Barcelona was much worse ; several con- vents were burnt, and nearly a hundred monks were murdered ; some were beaten to death, others were hurled into the flames; the victims were torn from the hands of the soldiers. The movement spread to other places in Catalonia, but in general the monks escaped with life. These foul deeds were followed by a popular illumination. The mobs at Saragossa, Valencia, Cadiz, and Corunna decreed the suppression of all convents. The Government at Madrid was utterly helpless ; later in the year it declared all monasteries except seven suppressed. This wholesale slaughter of monks was the achievement of the most monk- ridden land in Europe ; Germany and England, happier than Spain, had been able to reform themselves without resorting to massacres. 2 The Government took possession of two thousand convents, which were no longer to shelter swarms of monks and nuns; part of the Church lands 1 Annual Register for 1834, p. 396. 2 See the Annual Register for 1835, pp. 447-454. 324 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. were sold as National property. The Pope and the Bishops in vain excommunicated the Spanish purchasers ; more- over, tithes were suppressed, and the Liberals were triumphant. Meanwhile the Carlist war, lasting seven years, was being waged with savage ferocity ; the Northern rebels had no fewer than ninety thousand men on foot. Both sides put their prisoners to death in cold blood ; the most famous victim was the mother of Cabrera, the great Carlist general. France and Great Britain threw their weight into the scale of the Christinos, and insisted that some regard should be paid to humanity. In 1840 Espartero brought the war to an end. During this bloody strife Queen Christina had found herself a puppet in the hands of the army. In 1836 a handful of sergeants and corporals had forced their way into her presence and had insisted upon her proclaiming the Constitution of 1812, together with the abolition of the monasteries. She resisted for five hours, but had to give way ; Quesada, who commanded in Madrid, was speedily murdered by the mob. 1 These scenes have been set before us by the vivid brush of Borrow, an eye-witness. Espartero, like Fairfax and Moreau, was an able general who failed wretchedly when called upon to take civil affairs in hand. He swayed Spain for a few years ; about this time upwards of thirty dioceses were without Bishops, as Gregory XVI. would not confirm the nominees of the Government. The Pope attacked one bold Prelate in an address to the Cardinals. 2 But better times dawned on the Church ; Espartero in 1843 was -overthrown by a group of young generals who seduced the greater part of the army. Narvaez and others governed in reality, while Queen Christina was recalled from exile. The Moderados, now in power, stopped the further sale of Church property and brought back the Prelates who had followed Don Carlos. But the Churchmen, who formerly owned one third of the soil of Spain, were now much to be pitied ; the old monks and friars, driven from their convents, were allotted a 1 Annual Register for 1836, p. 371. - Meyrick, The Church in Spain, 440. Ill SPAIN 325 decent subsistence, but this was never properly paid ; many of them, on the borders of starvation, had to go out at dusk and beg in the streets. 1 The country was not enriched by trade ; enormous duties were levied on foreign goods ; a vast system of smuggling was the upshot ; and the custom- house officer was paid only thirty pounds a year to keep himself and his horse. The result may be easily guessed. 2 Little was done to remedy these evils by a new Constitu- tion, set up in 1845, according to which the Crown named the Senators, and press offences were no longer tried by jury. No weakness was shown ; a hundred and sixty Carlists were shot in one day at Valencia ; four hundred men in Catalonia were put to death without any trial. 3 In 1846 Louis Philippe, being abetted by Queen Christina, was able to perpetrate that masterpiece of knavery known to the world as the Spanish Marriages ; to promote his family interests, Queen Isabella, then sixteen, a lively, blooming girl, was wedded to a man unfit to be her husband ; from this source sprang many disorders in the Court of Madrid during the next twenty years. The priestly party was now in full sway. The great shock of 1848 had little effect upon Spain, though of course there were a few military revolts easily put down. The reaction afterwards went on briskly over all Europe, and a Spanish army was sent to aid in restoring Pope Pius IX. to his throne. But by the side of all this, Socialism was taking root in the country, and the shameless prodigality and luxury shown at Court bore bitter fruit. Some light is thrown upon these times by the letters of Donoso Cortes, Marquis of Valdegarnas, written to a noble friend who was at the same time (odd combination) a Pole and a worshipper of the Czar Nicholas. The Spanish grandee was in intellect high above his fellows, as it is easy to see ; yet the retrograde ideas he puts on paper give us a clue as to the reason of the wretched part played by the 1 See Revelations of Spain (printed in 1845), i. chap, xxxii. 2 Ibid. i. 290. 3 Garrido, L'Espagne Contemporaine, 79. From him I take my sketch of Spain between 1833 and 1862. 326 HOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. Spanish nobles in our Century. " What is more abnormal," writes the Pole, " than the state of the Peninsula ? It is neither order nor anarchy ; it is the hundredth change from an anarchical state to another state equally anarchical, with no hope of a better future." " Liberalism and Constitu- tionalism," writes Padilla's countryman, " are the form of evil in this age ; it is God who condemns Liberalism that is pride to the shameful powerlessness to which we are reduced. Order in Spain seems a miracle. It is folly to acclimatise the English political system in Europe ; this on the Continent is corrupting, ruinous, precarious, turbulent, wasting time and resources. England poisons and brutalises her friends and enemies. The moderate party in Sardinia (Cavour, to wit) has tendencies as anarchical and as foolish as the demagogues themselves. Palmerston has shown perfidy with regard to Naples ; no one doubts that the King's alleged cruelties are either false or exaggerated ; it is easy to say that he goes too far. Palmerston's cruisers (these were then employed to check the Cuban slave trade) are only a means of exercising the right of search and of ruining commerce. Every English minister since Canning, from jealousy of other countries, has sought to trouble their peace, order, and prosperity. I have taken Hannibal's oath against England ; it is only the personification of the Devil. They are pirates ; they give an asylum to all the bandits of the Continent ; Nicholas is the only statesman in Europe." The Pole calls the Czar " wise, pure, good, worthy, and great." He further gives an account of one Chico at Madrid, a Spanish Jonathan Wilde, an old servant of King Ferdinand and Narvaez, a political spy who sometimes handed over his own brigands to the Government, and who was at the head of a band of thieves forming a secret police. He was arrested by the Governor of Madrid, but Queen Christina at once interposed in the man's favour ; she desisted, on being shown jewels stolen both from her and from the young Queen found in Chico's house. 1 Donoso 1 Le Comte Raczynski et Donoso Cortes, par le Comte Adheniar d'Antioclie. See p. 203 for Chico. We learn in p. 138 that Jarisenists still existed in Spain in 1851, but they were called regalistas. in SPAIN 327 Cortes is but a specimen of the high-flying Ultramontane who looked on with disgust at the great transformation of Europe between 178 9 and 1870; the England so hated by him may well be proud of her part in effecting this change. The Spanish army, herein differing from all other military bodies in Europe, broke out into revolt about twenty- five times between 1814 and I860. 1 One of the most remarkable of these risings was in 1854, when O'Donnell, in the name of morality, shook Queen Isabella's throne ; it was only saved by Espartero's consenting once more to take the helm, and the Moderadoswere replaced by the Progressists. Men who had grown grey in Liberalism were now advisers of the Crown, but even they were not prepared to proclaim religious freedom ; of a truth Spain is a land differing from all others. Espartero, unpractical as ever, was got rid of by the Court party in 1856, and power was afterwards wielded sometimes by O'Donnell, sometimes by Narvaez ; their remedy for the evils of the time was copious blood- letting. For twelve years they were to truckle to the Church ; Queen Isabella II. atoned for peculiarities in her private life by submitting to the rule of her Confessor and to the counsels of a fanatical nun, long before convicted of imposture. 2 O'Donnell, almost the only Spaniard who could bridle the different factions, himself bore a taper in religious processions. The Queen had long before made a tearful and passionate protest against the sale of entailed lands and Church pro- perty, threatening to abdicate ; but Espartero insisted upon her sanctioning the measure. The Pope's Nuncio in vain exhorted her to stand firm at any cost, but relations between Eome and Madrid had to be broken off. Later, O'Donnell had to give way to her demands that the sale of the Church lands should be suspended. Pius IX. was induced to absolve the persons who had bought this property, the distribution of which made Spain most prosperous, and the 1 Garrido, L'Espagne, 89. Here all the military revolts are set out. 2 See the whole story of Sor Patrocinio in Lea's Religious History of Spain, 416-420. 328 EOME AND KEFOEM CHAP. population increased rapidly. 1 But great part of the town- dwellers threw off all religion ; the upper classes thought themselves obliged to give an example to the poor by imitating the Queen's religious practices. Even the very brothels in Spain display the Crucifix, the Virgin's image, and holy water. 2 Still there is a mighty change ; the general population increases just as the clergy decrease ; exactly the contrary of what was observed about 1700, when Spain was at her very lowest. There was a striking divorce observable between Spanish superstition and humanity ; the slave trade was carried on about this time with little disguise ; in the one year 1860 no fewer than sixty thousand blacks were brought over to Cuba, in spite of Spain having long before undertaken to put down the hideous traffic. The Court and the Captain- Generals made large profits by winking at the trade. 3 This went on down to the year 1886, when slavery was at last suppressed. Pope Pius IX. did not manifest the horror felt by his predecessor at the accursed thing ; he was rewarded by the hearty sympathy of the Court and the Moderados during the two years that Italy was in making. Spain never recognised the new kingdom until 1865, lagging long behind the Russians ; she also waged a wretched war against her own children in South America, and was guilty of the barbarity of bombarding their cities. The press could hardly protest, as it was placed under military tribunals. The University professors became mere puppets. The Government expenses were enormous, and foreign bond- holders, having been already tricked, would do nothing more. In 1866 broke out the most stubborn revolt, both civil 1 Hume, Modern Spain, 427, 434, 439. 2 Ibid. 138. Tanski, in his L'Espagne en 1843, gives an instance of the contradictions in the Spanish character. He was robbed by a brigand youth of some rosaries found in his baggage ; the captor kissed them devoutly, but at the same moment uttered the worst Spanish oaths on dropping some of the booty, p. 449. 3 Ibid. 348. Davey, in his Cuba Past and Present, gives a good account of slavery in that island. There was not very much cruelty, but priests were not allowed to Christianise the negroes ; the Jesuits and Franciscans were persecuted because they strove to convert the slaves. See pp. 29 and 34. The book came out in 1898. in SPAIN 329 and military, that Madrid had ever seen; this was tamed by O'Donnell, with the loss of very many officers ; it failed because Prim, the Catalan chief, had been driven into exile and was not on the spot. Scores of sergeants were after- wards shot for having imitated O'DonnelTs former conduct in 1854. The press was gagged; hence a secret press was in full vigour. But a check was given to the reaction by the deaths of both O'Donnell and Narvaez ; Prim's partisans in 1868 swept away Queen Isabella II. from that soil of Spain which she had too long disgraced. 1 Her kingdom was now treading in the footsteps of Italy and Austria. 2 Spain even went further than these, for she proclaimed a Eepublic after the Savoyard whom she had elected King had left his throne in disgust at the insults heaped upon him and his Queen. Eeligious toleration gained a step. In 1870 and 1871 laws were passed establishing civil marriage as alone valid, though the priest might celebrate the marriage rite before or after. Four years later, civil marriages were declared necessary only for non-Catholics or bad Catholics. Thus sanction was given by the Spanish law to what the Church regards as mere concubinage. 3 Spain was once more scourged by anarchical move- ments, and by a revolt in Cuba which lasted ten years, provoked by oppression ; but Queen Isabella's son was set up as King in 1874, as it was most important to crush the second serious Carlist war that was raging in the North, caused by the helplessness of the late Government. The chief benefit received from all these many revolutions was that freedom of thought gained a fair standing, even if some- thing be still wanting to perfect toleration. The number of Protestants in Spain soon numbered about ten thousand, 1 Lafuente, xxvi. 451, speaks of Isabella II. as " magnanima y generosa en sus sentimientos, grande y noble en sus miras, elevada y digna en su proceder"; . . . "protectora de la espansiondel pensamientoy de la libertad razonable en la emision de las ideas." Who would ever gather from all this that she was the patroness of Narvaez and fanatical nuns, that she was always ready to imprison Protestant converts for years ? 2 I have taken the history of 1854-1868 from Mazade, Les Revolutions de I'Espagne. 3 See Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, ii. 153, 155. .330 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. a fact that would have been incredible to Torquemada or even to Narvaez. 1 There is some excuse for a Spaniard's change of creed if he ponders over the damage done to his country by her religion, damage that is quickly remarked by any observer from outside. Biscay has the finest and most hard-working peasantry in Spain, with the most abundant opportunities for honest toil ; yet these men are the uncomplaining thralls of priestly misrule. The Church insists upon the strict observance of numerous holydays, though the Govern- ment strive to get rid of many of them. The peasant, how- ever willing, dare not work on these days ; he spends the latter part of them in dancing and drinking, therein wasting his hard-won earnings. Thus he is condemned to hopeless poverty, varied by campaigns on behalf of the Carlists. The women, high and low alike, are completely under the sway of the priest, who will not tolerate even a newspaper. 2 In 1896 a bomb was exploded at Barcelona. More than two hundred men, many above the lower class, were thrown into prison. No trace of the culprits could be found for nearly two months ; at the end of that time the cap- tives were subjected to torture by military procedure. Innocent men were condemned to death on the strength of forced confessions ; some were shot, others were released, maimed for life. All the chief cities of Spain held meetings to protest against this infamy ; and at Madrid one of the captives told in public how they had been fed with salt fish to increase their thirst, while water was denied. Some of them sought refuge in suicide ; the tortures applied recall the Inquisition and its skill in wrenching limbs and burn- ing the flesh. The trail of this awful engine still lingers over Spain in spite of Press, Parliaments, and Ministerial responsibility. 3 The last act of the Spanish drama has passed under the 1 Lafuente denounced the Inquisition in sharper terms than I have done ; but for all that in 1854 he opposed religious toleration. See his vol. xxx. 80-104, Cosas de Espana ! 2 Vizcaya, a book published in 1874, pp. 177, 182. 3 See Spanish Highways aiid Byways, by Miss Bates, 211 ; a capital American account of Spain. Ill SPAIN 331 eyes of our own generation. Even after 1830 there re- mained a few colonies still to be lost by misgovernment. The Cuban revolt of 1868 had lasted for ten years, more or less, before it could be put down. No improvement followed ; Spain broke her promises of reform, and her rule was seen to be every whit as corrupt as before. In 1895 another revolt broke out in the island ; savage cruelties were perpe- trated on both sides. At last General Weyler was sent out by the Conservative Government ; he swept a large part of the population into the towns, where nearly a hundred thousand of them are said to have died of starvation. About the same time the Turk was slaying another hundred thousand victims in Armenia ; it is curious to remark how both the greatness and the crimes of the Spaniard and the Turk seem in history to run parallel. The Cuban outrage went not unpunished; America intervened in 1898, and gave to the world one more instance of the superiority of Protestant activity to Roman Catholic sluggishness ; the Spanish seamen died like heroes, while the generalship of their chiefs was absurd. The Peninsular War had long before revealed this contrast. Spain lost not only her West Indian possessions, but the Philippine Islands in the Pacific. Here one characteristic peculiarity of Spanish rule was that, even at the end of the Nineteenth century, vast power was placed in the hands of communities of monks. This system was loathed by the natives, who usually found the State more merciful than the Church. The priest was detested for his greed, lust, and insolence. Even Roman Catholic travellers declared that the only salvation for the islands was to drive out the whole body of friars. 1 At length in 1896 the natives revolted and made the way of the American con- querors smoother than it would have otherwise been. So much for Spain ; the Ultramontane party, in spite of all, extol the past. The main excuse pleaded for the Inquisition is this, that it shielded Spain from bloody civil wars, such as raged in France after 1560. True it is that 1 See the Quarterly Review, July 1899, p. 213. There is one exception to the rule ; the Jesuits have done noble work in the Philippines, and haye been most jealously regarded by the friars. 332 KOME AND REFORM CHAP, m Spain never brought forth a Galileo or a Newton ; but as a set-off, the rivalry between Guises and Chatillons had 110 parallel on her soil. In answer to this, I would direct the apologists of darkness to the never-ending broils, though unconnected with religious doctrines, raging in Spain for about seventy years after 1808 ; in that period, even when there was a short truce, men could always hear the rumbling of the volcano beneath them. What was staved off in the days of Philip II. came in the days of Ferdinand VII., though the quarrel was not religious but political. Spaniards were at last bent on having a voice in their own government ; a nation cannot with impunity turn from the good and choose the evil. Most men would prefer the lot of England ; a few hundred lives lost in the Sixteenth century, and four years of hard fighting after 1642, to be followed by long peace and a mighty expansion of the national mind, unchecked by Popes or Inquisitors. Spiritual tyranny is not to be commended, whether it comes from Eome or from Canterbury ; but even the worst excesses of this last See allowed free play to men's intellect in things temporal. The Spanish soldier of our Century, thirsty for power, is a more dangerous type of man than the earlier English Reformer. But even ages of Despotism have been unable to crush out the spirit of the noble Spanish peasantry, the main prop of the country ; aristocrats may be degenerate, artisans may be riotous, place-hunters may be greedy, and priests may hanker ofter lost privileges, but so long as the peasantry stands where it does now, there is hope for Spain. She need not hence- forth be overburdened with debt or standing armies ; she has no call to take part in European wars ; her mines seem to be exhaustless ; she has been able to restrain herself from outbreaks after her late disasters; she is happy in the Austrian Regent, who governs for the boy King. May Spain (she is a standing lesson to Russia and Britain) be more blest in our days, now that she is shorn of her old greatness and of her colonies, than when, as the first of Christian Powers, she gave law to the whole of Christendom and swayed in all the four quarters of the world ! CHAPTER IV FKANCE l The Italian Wars 1494-1559 The Huguenot Wars 1559-1629 Toleration at home, Conquest abroad . . 1629-1681 Intolerance at home, loss of Colonies . . 1681-1789 The Revolution and its consequences . . 1789-1902 No land in Europe surpasses France in the fruitfulness of her soil, in the compactness of her dominions, in the keen wit and winning demeanour of her inhabitants, in the fiery onset of her soldiery, in the energy with which she seizes and propagates new ideas. She had but one fatal draw- back ; strange indeed does it seem that she could never of old keep abreast of other less gifted nations in the art of limiting the despotism of her Kings, the authors of her much-prized unity. When she was at last freed from the yoke, first of Italy and then of Germany, her doughty knights began, about 1040, to draw to themselves the eyes of all the world ; she came forward as the nurse of Chivalry, the cradle of the best Architecture, and the modern parent of Literature. The great University of Paris for a time stood alone in Europe. The French pro- vinces, long hostile to each other, were by degrees annexed by the King at Paris; so that about 1300 France was evidently the foremost State in Europe. She made herself 1 I have always had before me Martin's Histoire de France and Jervis on the Church of France. Baird's Rise of the Huguenots has been my guide down to 1574. This is very full, but is rather apt to slur over the misdeeds of the Protestants ; these must be sought elsewhere. 333 334 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. for the time mistress of the Papacy itself. The bloody English wars checked her progress for a while, but in 1494, having recovered herself, she was able to put forward her claims to great part of Italy, and to show herself ready for her long wrestle with Spain. As to Church history, Home had for some time drawn vast revenues from the French, and had aroused resistance to her sway even so far back as the Thirteenth century. In the Fourteenth century France seemed to be leading the Popes captive. In the Fifteenth century Frenchmen had been the soul of the two Councils of Constance and Basle, names so hateful to all sound Ultramontanes. Indeed the past history of France seemed to place her above all other nations in any struggle with the Papacy. Englishmen and Germans traced their Christianity back to missionaries sent forth by Rome. But the religion of France dated from, a far earlier age, when the claims of the Papacy had been little heard of; St. Irenseus had flourished hundreds of years before the first Benedictines landed in Kent. Again, British Christianity had been roughly broken in upon by Pagan destroyers, Spanish Christianity by Moslem con- querors. Italy herself had lain prostrate before Ariau rulers, while France, alone in the West, could boast of the unbroken purity of her faith since the days of Clovis. Hence France could always take a line of her own when dealing with the Popes. Her sons could always command a wide audience throughout Europe, as was proved alike by St. Bernard, Calvin, and Voltaire. Early in the Sixteenth century the French King and the Pope had been the bitterest of enemies, but in 1516 the youthful Francis L, fresh from his great victory at Marignan, was lured by Pope Leo X., his defeated enemy, into the famous Concordat of Bologna. By this the old rights of the Gallicau Church were sacrificed to the King and the Pope, now combined. The King was henceforth to choose the Prelates for vacant Sees ; the Pope regained the Annates, a rich source of revenue which had been earlier suppressed. Francis now took the place of the old Chapters, Leo that of the old Metropolitans. All France iv FEANCE 335 uttered outcries of wrath against the new measure ; but Francis I., the greatest Despot in Western Christendom, forced the unwilling Parliament and the University of Paris to register the hateful ordinance. Henceforth the French bishoprics were handed over to men not remarkable for piety or clean living, the younger sons of noble houses which had made themselves useful to the Crown ; the Gallican liberties were to become, in great measure, Gallican servitudes. Eichelieu, more than a Century later, might well raise his voice against these new fetters. 1 It might have been thought that France, writhing under this crushing blow, would have eagerly sprung to the side of Luther when four years later he broke with Eome. But this was not to be ; the Sorbonne took the lead in 1521, denouncing not only Luther but Erasmus. At this time, and long afterwards, the French clergy offered a most tempting mark to their enemies ; vast wealth had bred vice and luxury ; the higher Prelates lived at Court, heaped up preferments, and took no heed of the flocks. Cardinal Duprat, Chancellor of France, was the shame of his Order. The monks and friars were much on the level of their brethren in Italy and Scotland. 2 In this state of things, as was natural, Eeformers began to start up. Even before the great German had come forward, the French Lefevre had proclaimed the doctrine of Justification by faith, and had shown himself possessed by the idea that the world was about to be renewed. His pupil, Farel, was to go far beyond him, and to become one of the great lights of the Eeformed Church. These two were made welcome at Meaux by its Bishop, BriQonnet. A French version of the New Testament came out in 1523, and was 1 I give an instance of the later way of disposing of French bishoprics. Henry III. gave those of Amiens and Grenoble to a worthless favourite, Du Guast. 2 Perhaps the French clergy were the worst of all. I give an instance, about the year 1560, when abroad Paul IV. had been already enforcing a reformation of morals. Crequi was accused of two violations of women ; he was, however, named to the See of Amiens, though the nobles of Picardy, a province always strong on the Papal side, protested. Next year he was made Cardinal. I doubt if the annals even of the old Scotch Church can show anything so bad. See Martin, ix. 178. 336 HOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. read aloud to the people in the churches of that diocese. But the Bishop was tried at the instance of the Parliament of Paris, was fined, and soon shrank from the side of Eeform. Farel fled to his native Dauphiny, and made many converts in that province, one of the most progressive in France, alike in the days of Farel and in those of Barnave. Lambert, in 1522, was the first French friar who threw aside his cowl, and published his reasons for the step. In 1526 heretics were burnt at Paris. Francis I. had no love for the ignorant monks who swarmed around him, but he had a lively dread of the excesses of the German Protestants, who seemed about to shake other thrones besides that of the Pope. The King, who all the latter part of his life was suffering from a foul disease, had no love for the stern moral discipline of Geneva. Moreover, his designs on Italy made the friendship of the Popes an indispensable thing. His sister Margaret became the great patroness of the Eeformers, having had BriQonnet for her spiritual guide. Early in 1525 King Francis fell into the hands of the Spaniards on the field of Pavia. This was looked upon as a judgment of God for the Royal toleration of the new heresies, and therefore his mother, the Regent, hastened to alter her policy. A Commission against the heretics, bear- ing some resemblance to the Inquisition, was authorised by Pope Clement VII., and speadily began to work in France. De Berquin was a learned young nobleman, a friend of Erasmus, and a Reformer who had twice already gone to prison for his religion ; in 1529 he was sent to the stake at Paris. In 1532 Francis, beaten in the great war, began to make overtures to the German heretics ; he was already hand and glove with the English King, a traitor to the Pope. This was long the leading idea in French policy ; Spain might boast that she never made any truce with heretics or Mussulmans ; but wiser France, at least down to 1672, was always seeking the alliance of the warlike enemies of Rome, both in the North and the East. France stood, as it were, between the living and the iv FKANCE 337 dead ; between London and Madrid. She still showed the Pope a fair countenance ; in 1533 Francis and Clement VII. met at Marseilles, and the girl Catherine dei Medici, the future bane of the land, was wedded to one of the King's sons. This year, 1533, was a most eventful one for France. Nicholas Cop, the Eector of the University of Paris, astonished his learned hearers by a sermon full of the hateful doctrines of Luther and Zwingle. The preacher had to fly abroad for his life ; but the real author of the sermon was a youth from Picardy, of whom the world was to hear much. Next year Francis made great efforts to bring the German Protestants over to his side ; he had already been in constant correspondence with their brethren in Bern and Zurich most important allies to any French King. Melanchthon (it was his usual failing) seemed ready to make great concessions in religion to Du Bellay, the tolerant envoy of Francis. But all was wrecked by the folly of a few fanatical heretics, who posted copies of a most violent Placard, printed abroad, throughout the streets of Paris. One of these papers was affixed to the door of the King's own bedchamber. The revenge taken by this so-called Kestorer of Letters was to forbid any Printing in France, on pain of the halter ; this curious decree had been before suggested by the Sorbonne. It was six weeks before Francis returned to his senses. Many heretics were put to death with torments surpassing those of the Spanish Inquisition. The victims were hoisted by a machine above -a blazing fire, into which they were let down and then withdrawn, so that their agonies might be prolonged for hours. Many Eeformers fled abroad, and the whole affair gave a great shock to the credit of Francis on the other side of the Khine. For instance, the Elector of Saxony, a far-seeing man, sternly forbade Melanchthon to become the guest of the French King, though even Luther had at first advised the acceptance of the Koyal invitation. Henceforth there was no chance of Francis placing himself in the fore- front of the new Movement. Its headquarters were to be, VOL. i z 338 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. not Paris, but a city beyond the bounds of France the far- famed Geneva. This had been lately rescued from the hands of the Duke of Savoy by Francis and his Bernese allies, Germans who allowed their French-speaking subjects in the West to embrace the creed taught by Farel and other exiles. But a greater than Farel was now about to appear on the scene. John Calvin, born in 1509, had been trained for the law at Paris, Orleans, and Bourges, at which latter place he became the pupil of "Wolmar, a German Protestant. Calvin, having come under this new influence, supplied the materials for Cop's famous sermon and then withdrew from Paris. Taking refuge at Basle, he published, when only twenty- six, his far-famed Institutes, composed to free the Pro- testants from the shameful calumnies put forth against them. This work, wherein the great ideas of St. Augustine were powerfully revived, turned out to be one of the weightiest theological treatises ever compiled. The pro- ductions of Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingle were far outdone by the young French exile, who gave proof of a master-mind. Almost alone of great authors, Calvin never had anything to retract from this early production of his youth, which became the great Charter of the Eeformation. In the conflicting ideas as to the Eucharist, the source of countless woes to Protestantism, he in the end took middle ground between Luther and Zwingle, appealing to the early Fathers. Calvin's organising brain created a new system, in which both clergy and laity had their part ; a system that seemed to be the one thing on earth able to make head against the grim Inquisition and the Jesuits. In comparing the new Apostle with his great con- temporary we must remember that Luther had but the training of a monk ; the happier Calvin enjoyed that of a lawyer, and had his full share of the logical French intellect. Each played a lofty part in calling forth the full resources of his mother tongue ; Latin was no longer to reign alone. As to the spiritual conquests of the two Reformers, Luther has had little influence except on his native Germany and on Scandinavia. Calvin, less tram- iv FKANCE 339 melled by the ties of the past, has wrought mightily in every other country where Protestantism has taken root, and has even pushed his way into Luther's own Father- land. The new law -giver, proud of his iron system, thought, like Hildebrand before him, that it was possible to found a city of God on earth. The German was the leader of a forlorn hope ; the Frenchman, great but un- lovable, acted as commandant of the town after it had been won, or rather half won. Calvin's theory of Church government, so opposed to that of Eome, has appealed to the hearts of millions, both in Europe and America. His disciples have been distinguished by their reverence for law and by their hatred of tyranny. They have shown zeal for freedom, not only in things spiritual but in things temporal. Lutheranism might leave all religious matters to the magistrate, Anglicanism might sometimes bow in too slavish a fashion before the Crown, but Calvinism was endowed with a power (witness Scotland in 1637) of bearding Eoyalty and of welding nobles, priests, and commons into one sturdy body, all alike zealous for the commonwealth. Contrary to a well-known saying, this religion is assuredly one fit for a gentleman, as we see by the thousands of French, Polish, and Hungarian nobles who have embraced it. From Transylvania to New England the effects of the new system were to be everywhere apparent. We of Old England must allow that Calvinism has had a great share in preserving that long-lived Constitu- tion of ours which was first moulded by devout believers in the Papacy. Had France embraced the system of her gifted son, her history would have been wonderfully altered for the better. Wretched indeed was the statesmanship shown in 1538 by the great French enemy of Calvin's disciples. In that year Francis made peace with the Emperor Charles V., at the prayer of Pope Paul III. A new policy now came into play ; the King threw over his old heretical allies in England and Northern Germany and allowed himself to be wheedled into a Spanish alliance, the bait of Milan being skilfully dangled before his eyes by Charles V. In the 340 ROME AND REFORM CHAP. next year Francis actually went out of his way to further the interests of his great rival by allowing Charles to cross France in order to crush revolted Ghent, the natural ally of Paris. It is needless to say that the promises of Charles as to Milan were but empty wind. In 1542 the war between Francis and Charles broke out for the third time ; but now the late absurd policy favoured at Paris had thrown both England and Germany into the rival scale. The Constable, Montmorency, a furious bigot and oppressor of French Protestants, had been the main adviser of the ruinous change in 1538 ; he was now driven from the Court ; but still the persecution went on. Francis put forth edict after edict. Many of the Bishops, men who enjoyed Rabelais more than their breviaries, had shown themselves sluggish in searching for heretics ; these Prelates were now threatened by the King. In 1546 the Venetian Envoy names Caen, La Rochelle, and Poitiers as towns where Protestant worship was tacitly winked at. 1 One of the worst crimes ever perpetrated by Monarch disgraced the last years of Francis. The Waldenses of the Alps had two hundred years earlier sent out a colony into Provence. By the thrift and industry of the pious strangers the face of the whole land had been transformed. But the Parliament of Aix, about 1533, had sent many of them to the stake. Rather later they found an intercessor in the good Cardinal Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras, one of the few Roman theologians bold enough to cross swords with Calvin. But in 1545 King Francis was induced to let loose the soldiery upon the Waldensian peasants. The very site of Merindol was destroyed. A slight attempt at resistance made by Cabrieres was avenged by burning the women of the town in a barn. Eight hundred bodies of the slain lay in one church. For seven weeks the bloody work went on, and twenty-two towns and villages were destroyed ; thousands died of hunger while wandering in the woods. Oppede, the ruffian who had taken the leading share in these outrages, was called to account at Paris, but was saved from punishment by the Guises ; the Pope wrote a 1 Tommaseo, Ambassadeurs Venitiens, i. 262. IV FKANCE 341 letter in behalf of the accused, describing him as " perse- cuted in consequence of his zeal for religion." l Of all the crimes perpetrated in the name of faith none is darker than this wholesale massacre of 1545. The victims were not soldiers who had resisted the oppressors, but harmless toilers, who desired nothing but to be let alone. Here France sank to the level of Spain. For one hundred and ten years from this time Europe beheld butcheries, almost incessant, on a grand scale, the counterpart to the contem- porary efforts made to crush Christianity in Japan. The age of Bacon and Galileo was not altogether an age of enlightenment. Francis I. died in 1547, and was succeeded by his son, Henry II. The new King gave up all power to his mistress, Diana of Poitiers, to the Constable Montmorency, and to Guise, the young Cardinal of Lorraine. The lady amassed enormous sums of money by interfering with the adminis- tration ; the soldier was renowned for his ruthless cruelties perpetrated on his own countrymen ; the Cardinal, covetous and violent, became the great enemy of the Eeformers. To these three, who were connected by marriage, the kingdom of France was given over for a prey. The confiscated goods of the heretics, who were often wealthy traders, seemed fair game for the rapacity of the greedy Three. Even when King Henry was succouring the German Protestants perse- cution at home was raging worse than ever. But there were means of resistance ; the presses of Geneva became a great power throughout France. Pedlars coming from their city of refuge brought in numerous books at their own risk. If one of these men was detected he was mercilessly racked before being burnt, that the names of the buyers of his books might be made known. Zurich and Berne in vain recommended mercy to their ally at Paris. King Henry, though himself living a most immoral life, was much shocked at a Bull of Julius III., which allowed the faithful to eat eggs, butter, and cheese in Lent. The Bull was burnt by the orders of the King and Parliament. But for all this the Koyal wrath blazed 1 Martin, France, ix. 480. 342 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. fiercely as ever against the Pope's spiritual enemies. The heretics were burnt in batches; at one time we hear of the " Fourteen of Meaux " ; at another of the " Five Scholars of Lausanne," whose cells were likened to five pulpits. It was insisted that the only remedy for the disease was the Inquisition, which had wrought such wonders in Spain ; but this scheme was defeated by the French Judges. These men of the Law were very apt to wink at the spread of heresy, and to shield the accused. The war against Spain was being fiercely waged with the aid of Pope Paul IV., and this diverted the attention of the Government from the Protestants. Hitherto these had enjoyed no public ministrations, but in 1555 the first Protestant Church was organised in Paris. Ten other cities followed this example within a very short time. In 1557 the French lost the great battle of St. Quentin, a defeat which was of course proclaimed to be the vengeance of God for the spread of heresy. A month later the mob of Paris made a savage attack on some hundreds of Protestants who had partaken of the Lord's Supper in a private house. A few were burnt on this occasion, among whom was a young lady of rank. The old calumnies against the early Christians were now revived ; it was openly printed that the Protes- tants at their meetings were guilty of cannibalism and of promiscuous lust. If heresy increased it was not for lack of opponents. About 1554, as we hear, every farmer who had three or four sons sent one of them to school with a view to the priesthood, though the greater part of the clergy was vicious and loose of living. The most vicious of all, so we are told by a zealous Catholic, were those who resorted to the knife in defence of their religion. Thus the clergy, even in these days, was increasing in number. 1 Now for the first time in France great Princes and soldiers stood forward to head the new movement. Antony 1 Meir\f)ires de Claude Halon, 15, 129. He gives us a good picture of the Civil Wars as seen from a small country town. La Noue gives us the view of the camp, and Castelnau that of the fair-minded Courtier. Haton, though a good-natured man, constantly repeats that the Huguenots owed their proselytes to vile lusts. JV FEANCE 343 of Bourbon, King of Navarre, his younger brother, the Prince of Conde", together with D'Andelot, Colonel-General of the French infantry, and nephew of the great Constable, began to frequent Protestant worship. The last of these new recruits, having married a lady from Brittany, brought into that province two ministers, to whom the Breton nobles gave earnest heed. Pope Paul IV. was most angry that D'Andelot, one of the heroes of the age, was not promptly put to death. For eight years had the war with Spain been raging ; in 1559 peace was made, a shameful peace for France. Henry II. now gave up nearly two hundred places, most of them belonging to the Duke of Savoy ; these had been taken by France within the last thirty years. Lyons once more became a border city. King Henry begged, but in vain, for Spanish help to attack Geneva, the source of so many woes. He had work before him nearer home. The French Parliament was much infected ; out of a hundred and twenty members only one-eighth were zealous against heresy. All the West and South of France was said by the Cardinal of Lorraine to be full of vermin. The King made a royal progress through Paris to ask the advice of Parliament ; Anne du Bourg made a noble speech before Henry, advocating the suspension of all persecution. The King swore that with his own eyes he would see the high- minded lawyer burnt. This was not to be. A little later Henry gave a grand tournament to celebrate his daughter's bridal ; he wore the colours of his mistress Diana, and insisted that Montgomery, the Captain of his Scottish archers, should break a lance with his master. The sub- ject's weapon penetrated above the King's eye into the brain. Henry lingered for some days and died one month to the hour after his visit to the Parliament. Few rnonarchs have more richly deserved their doom. The death of this great persecutor affords an oppor- tunity for the relation of a few tales whereby is illustrated the union of refinement and barbarity in the Courtiers who thronged the stately halls of Fontainebleau. No one made a greater figure at the French Court than Mont- 344 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. morency, the Constable, the bosom friend of King Henry II, This grim old warrior had not only sons of his own famous in history, but was also the uncle of the three renowned Chatillon brothers, whom he established well both in Church and State. 1 In 1548 we see the Constable at his very worst. The Western Coast of France had been always remarkable for the excellent salt of its marshes ; the taxes levied upon this became higher and higher, and the tax- gatherers were too prone to violence and fraud. Every head of a house was bound to buy a certain quantity of salt at an enormous price for the benefit of the Crown. Some peasants who had transgressed this law were set free from prison by a popular rising. The soldiers sent against the rioters were defeated ; a general revolt broke out in the Western provinces, and the Eoyal officers were massacred. The dwellers in the towns joined the rising ; La Eochelle and another city alone refused their aid. Some of the nobles had their castles pillaged and burnt. The lower classes of Bordeaux, though unaffected by the salt tax, took part in the rebellion. Moneins was sent by the authorities to restore peace ; he was massacred by the Bordelais mob and many houses were pulled down. Montmorency, sent to chastise the West, advanced with his troops and with twenty guns. Fearful was the vengeance wreaked upon Bordeaux ; the city was deprived of all her privileges, and the magistrates had to kindle with their own hands the fire that burnt their old charters ; the town hall was destroyed and an enormous fine was levied. The body of the murdered Moneins was buried in the Cathedral, while the whole city was forced to follow in mourning garb. Executions went on for a whole month. One hundred and forty men were impaled, torn asunder with horses, or burnt ; no witnesses for the defence were called if any accuser came forward. Two leaders had to wear crowns of red-hot iron before being broken on the wheel. These horrors went on under the eye of a Perigordian youth of eighteen, Stephen de la Boetie, whose Contr'un, a treatise against the 1 The pedigrees of all the chief French houses of this time are given in Forneron, Dues de Guise, vol. i. The pedigrees have to be borne in mind. IV FEANCE 345 rule of one (a despot), is a forerunner of the great Eevolu- tion. The young writer was pronounced by his cool-headed friend Montaigne to be " the greatest man of the age." l If we search through the whole of English history from King John's death to our own day we shall find that on our own soil nothing has occurred equal in indiscriminate cruelty to the massacres in Provence and the punishment of the Aquitanian rebels. Yet this was the age of the Eenais- sance, the age of those great sons of France, Estienne the printer, Dumoulin the lawyer, Eamus the philosopher. The choicest works of the Italian brush and the French chisel were criticised by the ladies and courtiers of Paris, who were rejoiced to hear of the torturing deaths inflicted on men of the middle and lower classes, deaths that brought in a rich harvest of confiscations. Any nobleman like De Vieille- ville, who turned with scorn from the proffered booty, was thought a marvel. In 1549 a tailor was at work in the Eoyal palace. The King and his mistress Diana, to pass the time, catechised the man on his religion ; he made a bold con- fession, and told the great favourite that she had already infected France, and need not mingle her poison with so holy a thing as the truth of God's Son. He was soon hurried to the stake ; Henry placed himself at a window to see the uncourtly man's agonies. The victim kept his eyes steadily fixed on the tyrant while the fire was blazing up. Henry soon had to withdraw from the window, and for nights afterwards had the whole hideous scene before his eyes. The sufferers were now and then of high degree. A young lady of twenty-three, Philippine de Luns, had her tongue cut out, but was allowed the favour of being strangled before the flames were kindled. Yet even here the hangman, probably to please the brutal Parisian rabble, applied the torch to her person in most shameful wise. 2 Her estates were begged by a courtier of high rank. In 1 Martin, Histoire de France, ix. 492-503. 2 Ardente face pudendis ipsius turpissime et crudelissime injecta. So says Beza, quoted by Baird, Rise of the Huguenots, i. 307. 346 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. more cases than one the fanatical mob would not be cheated of their pleasure, but insisted on the fire as preferable to the rope. Men of humanity must have longed for the grim decorum of the Spanish Inquisition. Scenes like the above did fearful harm to the Eoman Church. Every one was amazed at the steadfastness of simple women under torture, while men cared little for the red-hot pincers, and mocked at their enemy when their bodies were half burnt. The beholders longed to read the books which imparted such courage to the sufferers ; the more that were burnt, the more new disciples sprang from the ashes. We are struck now and then by Frenchmen of the most opposite opinions being brought in contact with each other. Thus the Huguenot, Bernard Palissy, is one of our best authorities for the change in morality that the new Keligion wrought among its votaries in Saintonge, a change evidently far greater than anything that made itself felt in Germany or England. The great potter, after unheard-of trials, per- fected his new invention, and was then patronised by the brutal Montmorency, the artist's entire opposite in every- thing. Palissy was long employed by the Constable in adorning the Castle of Ecouen with decorated tiles, taking his designs from the Bible. Thus also the future hero of Metz and Calais, the man to whom the Papal Church owes more than to any other Frenchman, had his cheek pierced by an English lance in a skirmish in 1545. Most of the physicians gave him up, but a young and unknown man extracted the iron with steady hand, so that no harm was done except that a deep scar was left. The young man was Ambrose Pare", the father of French surgery ; he taught his fellows a better way of treatment than the old method of cauterisation with boiling oil. 1 He never made any disguise of his heretical opinions, even on the bloody day of St. Bartholomew. Through the despatches of the Venetian Envoys, written about this time, we are enabled to view the France of the Sixteenth Century ; to see Paris, " the heart of Christen- dom," with her four hundred thousand inhabitants, twenty 1 Martin, France, ix. 445. IV FKANCE 347 thousand of whom were students at the University, Paris, the only city in the world that could be compared to Venice. 1 Lyons owed all its prosperity to four yearly fairs, drawing thither vast numbers of Italian merchants, and influencing the money market of Spain and Flanders. 2 France had many enemies ; among them the dreaded English, ten of whom were thought equal to twenty Frenchmen; the Spaniard was another source of danger. 3 The Swiss were bought by the yearly distribution of sixty thousand crowns among them, and German infantry might always be hired. The Turk was a welcome friend ; the French had the grace to talk of natural law and the canons as sanctioning this strange alliance. There was a great trade between Marseilles and Alexandria ; the Moslem corsairs were allowed to repair their ships on the Southern coasts of France even when no war was in hand. 4 The French peasants were crushed under a load of taxation, while many of the great cities were exempted from imposts. Normandy, where the peasants were driven to quit their lands, was the wealthiest and most harshly treated of all the provinces ; G-ascony and Languedoc were not far behind ; small indeed must have been the tribute brought to Paris from these two last during the last forty years of the Century. 5 The receivers and officials robbed on all sides, and this seems to have gone on down to 1789. The sale of offices and the forests brought in much ; the sixth part of the land was said to be covered with wood ; the export of corn, wine, and cloth was very great ; also of salt to England. Italian workmen were now teaching the French how to manufacture silk. The readiness of the French to endure taxation and their adoration of the Crown were something that stood quite by itself in the Christian world. There was a common proverb, " The King pays all, the King takes all." The strength of France lay in her unity and obedience. Lawyers abounded, and the legal proceedings 1 Tommaseo, Relations des A mbassadeurs Venitiens, i. 31. 2 Navagero, 58. He calls Orleans perhaps the second city in France ; it was for a short time the Protestant capital. 3 Tommaseo, i. 69. 4 Ibid 69, 461. 5 Ibid. 297. 348 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. seemed never to end. As to the clergy, the King took their property ; they paid, and the Pope held his tongue. The King named his own Prelates to ten archbishoprics, to eighty-three bishoprics, to five hundred and twenty-seven abbeys, and to an infinite number of priories. 1 One use of the abbeys was to quarter worn-out soldiers therein. France, it was thought in 1 5 6 1, yielded yearly fifteen millions of golden crowns ; of these two-fifths went to the clergy, one-tenth to the Crown, and one-half to the nobles and landowners. 2 Prodigality was a French vice ; the pay of the soldiers was always being embezzled, at which the frugal Venetians were much amazed. Gascony was almost the only province that furnished home-born infantry to the French army. Other provinces also had been called upon in this age, but it was feared that the oppressed peasants, becoming soldiers, might rise upon the nobles. 3 The Swiss and Germans stood always ready to fill up the gap. The cavalry was com- posed of the very best material, the French nobles, who made war their trade. The Princes of Germany, more especially the Protestants, received large pensions from the French Crown. 4 Paris in the North and Toulouse in the South might rage furiously, but there was a city just beyond the French border that was winning the title of the Protestant Eome. Calvin had been at work in Geneva for many years, and had transformed the place, though unhappily the town registers remain to show us that much vice still existed in spite of all his preaching. The fearful case of Servetus occurred in 1553 to prove how little toleration there was in the world on either side ; at this time Transylvania was the most advanced of all Christian lands in that weighty matter. Calvin's little city on the Lake (behind it growled the protecting Bear of Bern) was the eyesore of the French Government. Nothing could stop the shoals of prohibited books or the number of preachers who took 1 Tommaseo, i. 49. *Ibid. 503. 3 Ibid. 495. Navagero, some years |before, had remarked of Gascony, Quel paese produce la meglior gente da guerra, che sia in Francia." 4 Ibid. 445. IT FKANCE 349 their lives in their hands and penetrated to almost every corner of France. Every day the influence of Geneva was waxing greater. Thus a few days before King Henry's death the first National Synod of the French Protestants met with the utmost secrecy in a house at Paris. This assembly published a Confession attacking both the Romanists and the Sacramentarians ; but unhappily this offshoot of Geneva would have nothing to do with religious toleration. It organised the new Church on a strict Presbyterian basis, and gave the country a system that worked more steadily than the oft -intermitted States- General. France has always loved unity, and in this respect her new daughter, bred under rough nurses, was worthy of the great parent. In France (most unlike Eng- land) Protestantism has never broken up into a variety of sections. What is more, for two hundred years Unitarian- ism, viewed as the deadliest of all poisons by the Papal Church, was never allowed to influence Protestants in France, however much it might work upon their brethren in Poland and Transylvania ; the doom of the hapless Servetus was a ghastly warning to all thinkers. Calvin had to complain of the too subtle intellects of his Italian converts ; he had little trouble on that head with his own countrymen. What weighty years for France were those between the summer of 1559 and the spring of 1562 ! At this particular time she was far hotter in her zeal for Pro- testantism than England was. The new religion was advancing with giant strides ; one thing alone was need- ful, that peaceful progress should not be broken by war. But the Cardinal of Lorraine and his brother, the Duke of Guise, were able to force on violent measures and to nip the new religion in the bud. Cecil and Guise, much about the same time, were able to shape the future destinies of their respective lands. There is a great contrast between the shrewd Lincolnshire lawyer, who could barely tell who his grandfather was, and the great soldier, who could boast of near kinsmanship to the Dukes of Lorraine. But it was the low-born man who produced the best results. Eng- 350 EOME AND BEFOKM CHAP. land went one way, France another ; the Popes were able to keep their hold on Paris. The upshot was bloody civil war for many years ; the wanton expulsion of the best part of the nation ; the frenzied Eevolution that for the time swept away Church and Throne alike ; the amazing follies of statesmen in 1870. Meanwhile England was always advancing, happy in her own system, midway between that of Bellarmine and that of Voltaire. Protes- tantism, had it only taken fast root, would have given to France a solid, steady type of character, the basis of free, orderly government both in things spiritual and things temporal. Calvin and Beza were Eeformers of a better type than Eobespierre and Carrier. If we read the memoirs of the Sixteenth century, French Protestants seem like Englishmen, who by some odd chance have found their way over the Channel, speaking the French tongue indeed, but standing widely apart from the countrymen of Eabelais and Montaigne. The leaders of " The Eeligion," as it was emphatically called in France, were men who might have shared in the councils of Pym or have ridden abreast of Fairfax. Seldom has there been a nobler pattern of the soldier -statesman than the Admiral Coligny the man who saved France from the Spaniards in 1557. Perhaps it would have been better for the Admiral's country had a French Henry VIII. stood forward at the right moment, utilised the many French Bishops who were now under Eome's ban, and endowed the land with a form of religion somewhat like that which was taking root at Canterbury and Oxford. This part could never have been played by Francis I. or Henry II., since their whole policy was centred in Italy, and it was plain that the Pope was the best ally they could have had for their designs on that land. But after Henry's death a noble chance lay open to some Eegent or magnate. A reformed Gallicanism, checked by the austerity and zeal of Calvin's disciples, would have changed the fate both of France and of Europe. The Eeformers would in that case have triumphed in Poland, in Hungary, and in Southern Germany. The Lily would have been invoked by millions who groaned under the IV FKANCE 351 Lions and Castles. France would have enlarged her borders at home, and would have joined the English and the Dutch in seizing upon the fairest shores of America. In a word, she would have played the part that fell later to England. As Englishmen we may rejoice, as Christians we must mourn, that the rival land missed her destiny. It has been objected to this fair dream that France was bound by the strongest ties to her Spanish and Italian sisters, and that she would have been faithless to her Latin origin had she thrown off the Pope and professed the Teutonic creed. 1 I myself cannot see that Spain ever played a very sisterly part to France in the two hundred years that followed 1500. As to Italy, the disputes between Paris and Kome were endless. The only return that France has won for all her sacrifices on behalf of the Southern religion has been that she is hailed now and then by the Papacy as the Eldest Daughter of the Church. A baleful title indeed is this, as was plain to all mankind in 1870. On the other hand, nothing has helped France forward more than her alliance with Protestants, as seen between 1533 and 1672. A weightier objection to any change of creed on the part of France is to be found in Calvin's well-known tenets as to Election and Eeprobation, tenets so contrary to the good sense of the French nation. But these would no doubt in the course of time have been softened down. Little of them is now to be heard from the pulpits of Holland and Scotland, formerly the great strongholds of the purest Calvinism. The men who held these opinions must always have been a small minority in France. The two parties now stood fronting one another, and wide was the gulf that yawned between them. The majority held by the creed of their forefathers, by the gorgeous temples and shows of the old religion, by the long Episcopal chain that united the Prelates of Henry II. to St. Irenseus and St. Peter ; these things atoned for the one very weak point in the Church system, the debauched lives of thousands of her priests and monks. The minority, 1 This is M. Martin's view. See his History, ix. 465. 352 HOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. which seems to have numbered one million and a half, clung to the wondrous Book that pointed out to every man how he might win Heaven, not by frequenting countless Masses, not by doing endless penances, but by placing his whole trust in the God Man who had sacrificed Himself once for all to save mankind. The fiery minister from Geneva, preaching at the risk of his life to a few eager artisans in the open air, seemed to a large portion of the French nation a servant of the Lord worthier than a score of Popes and Prelates fattening upon the best things of earth and lording it over God's heritage. This minority was out- rageous in word and deed, quite prepared to speak of the Host as "John the White," to grease boots in holy oils, to defile the holy water in the churches. 1 Was Eome or Geneva, Guise or Coligny, to win the day in France ? Henry II. was succeeded by his son, Francis II., a sickly lad of sixteen, the husband of the beautiful Mary of Scot- land. His mother, the renowned Catherine dei Medicis, had been deprived of all power in the State by her late husband, and she now grasped at what had been hitherto denied her. She got rid of the old Constable Montmorency, her husband's bosom friend, and threw herself into the arms of the Guises. The chief of the Protestants at this time was King Antony of Navarre, head of the Bourbons, a Prince who had the best claim to the Regency, since there were but few lives between him and the French Crown. But this poor weakling durst not assert his rights ; he underwent the insults of the Guises and their friends, and meekly kissed the rod. Such a man was not likely to shield the Christaudins, the Protestants of Paris, whose houses were plundered and whose children were cast upon the streets. Anne du Bourg was put to death, after lying for months in prison. All Paris was astonished at this great lawyer's steadfastness in view of death ; " We were melted in tears," says a hot Roman Catholic, " and we cursed the unjust judges who had condemned him. His sermon at the gallows did more harm 1 Mtmoires de Claude Haton, 150. IV FRANCE 353 than a hundred ministers could have done." l The tyranny of the two Guises was execrated in many a French province ; the Duke took the charge of the war department, the Cardinal managed the finances. It was forbidden to suggest the assembly of the States-General, the one bulwark against misgovernment. Men began to talk of rising against the Guises ; on this point men of all religions were at one. 2 The plot was discouraged by Calvin, but approved by other theologians and jurists in France and Germany. Soldiers were now beginning to take the lead in the Huguenot Councils. A leader was found in a Perigordian nobleman, La Kenaudie, who had had to mourn the loss of a kinsman, tortured and murdered by the Cardinal of Lorraine. The new chief travelled all over France rousing the discontented, and assembled a vast number of partisans at Nantes. Five hundred gentlemen were placed under ten captains ; these last obeyed La Renaudie alone. In the spring of 1560 the Guises were to be arrested. Seldom has a secret, known to hundreds, been so well kept. Still many warnings came from abroad, and one or two traitors were found at home. The Guises, finding themselves on the brink of a precipice, were constrained to make concessions in religion, and many imprisoned heretics were set free by the Edict of Forgiveness. The Court was at Amboise ; the storm was about to burst ; La Renaudie was but twenty miles off, with partisans who had come from the furthest provinces. But the Guises, warned in time, fell upon the little knots of horsemen who were converging every day. The rebel leader was slain, and his followers were butchered by scores, either on the roads or in the Castle of Amboise. Numerous corpses were floating down the Loire. Eighteen of the bravest captains of France, according to Throgmorton, the English Ambassador, were among the captured enemies. A nobleman of Saintonge, riding through Amboise, saw the heads of his old comrades 1 Florimond de Roemond, quoted by Baird, Huguenots, i. 374. 2 Castelnau says, when discussing the punishments that followed the plot, "On pardonnoit moins aux protestans qu'aux catholiques qui estoient de la conspiration." Castelnau's M6moires may be found in Buchon's Col- lection. VOL. I 2 A 354 HOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. still recognisable on the gallows ; he cried, " The hangmen, they have beheaded France ! " and adjured his little son, a lad of eight years old, to avenge the victims. This boy was the famous Agrippa d'Aubigne, who lived to see the final downfall of his party, all but seventy years later. The religious sect that followed Calvin were first in 1560 called Huguenots, and no longer Lutherans or Christ- audins. They were now spreading in all quarters of France ; the printing presses, the French Bible, Calvin's writings, Marot's hymns, all helped forward the great work ; the deaths of martyrs, the infamous lives of many persecutors, alike drew the attention of all. The only difficulty of the great lawgiver at Geneva was to hold back his too fiery followers. One of the main Calvinist strongholds was Dauphiny, which was under the government of Guise ; blood was by his directions shed at Valence ; Nismes took up arms; while Mouvans, in Provence, melted down the Church treasures, and boasted that he could bring thousands into the field. Many towns of Normandy now began to celebrate the new rites in public. The Guises saw themselves forced to do something. They had utterly blundered in the North, and had thrown Scotland into the arms of England. They now consented to Queen Catherine's plan, the project of the new Chancellor L'Hospital ; they summoned in August the Assembly of Fontainebleau. Here sat the boy King Francis, his Scotch queen, and his mother ; the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine, the twin curses of the land ; Montmorency the Constable, with his three noble Chatillon nephews, to wit, Odet the Cardinal, D'Andelot, and Coligny, Admiral of France ; L'Hospital, the new Cato, the one man probably who could have staved off civil war ; many Bishops were also present, many of them eager for Eeform of some kind, Coligny brought forward the petitions of the Huguenots ; Montluc, Bishop of Valence, drew a gloomy picture of the morals of the French clergy and called for a General Council ; an Archbishop proposed the Assembly of the States -General, as the people were crushed by taxation. Coligny once more advised toleration ; Guise made a fiery iv FKANCE 355 rejoinder. But the Cardinal of Lorraine talked of mercy and reformation, while at the same moment he was begging for aid from Spain. This great Prelate, unhappily too influential in French history, has been sketched for us in 1561 by Michiel the Venetian. No one was comparable to Lorraine. He was the greatest power in the realm, though not yet thirty- seven. He had a most keen understanding, an astonishing memory, and a rare eloquence. He knew Greek, Latin, and Italian ; also the sciences, especially theology. His pure life was a lesson to most other French Prelates, at this time a debauched Brotherhood. His great fault was covetousness, and the use of criminal means to gain his end. He was, moreover, a noted liar ; thus he would half approve of the Augsburg Confession if anything were to be gained from the Germans. He was, further, envious and revengeful ; his violence was such that all France longed for his death. 1 In dissimulation he had no rival. The Cardinal's brother, the hero of the land, is hardly mentioned except as a great Captain,who, unlike most Frenchmen, could keep his head cool. The one brother might easily become the tool of the other. All the South was now in a ferment. Already in 1560 we hear of the Cevennes as a place of refuge for thousands of the persecuted. Beza, Calvin's right hand, had come from Geneva to visit Antony, King of Navarre and his noble Queen, Jeanne d'Albret ; the husband, always the ficklest of men, was readily gained ; the wife only by very slow steps came over to the side of the Reform. Antony, instead of boldly taking the field, came North and meekly placed himself in the power of the Guises. His gallant brother Conde", the future head of the Huguenots, was at once imprisoned and charged with high treason. He refused to hear Mass, and was after a trial sentenced to be beheaded. Happily at this critical moment Francis II., who had been for nearly a year and a half the mere tool of the Guises, was seized with a gathering in his ear and died in a fort- night. Calvin remarked that God, who had pierced the father's eye, had now stricken the son's ear. 1 Tommaseo, Ambassadeurs Venitiens, i. 429. 356 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. France seemed to be relieved from a heavy weight when Guise and his Cardinal brother quitted the helm. Nothing shows more clearly the popular hatred against Lorraine than the eloquent Hotman's famous pamphlet directed to the Tiger of France ; it is written in the crisp, vigorous old French of the Century. For this Churchman religion was but a mask ; benefices were but a common traffic. " Thou seest nothing holy that thou defilest not, nothing chaste that thou violatest not, nothing good that thou spoilest not." One poor wretch of a printer was tortured and hung for having a copy of the once famous Tiger in his house. 1 But the Cardinal and his brother Guise had now to make way for the Regency of Queen Catherine and her instrument, Antony of Navarre ; the new King of France, Charles IX., was but ten years old. The States -General met late in 1560. A vast number of Huguenot sufferers were released from prison, and Cond4 once more took his rightful place. The nobles, as Suriano tells us, were for the most part infected with Protestantism, and even in the Court the majority were inclined to it. 2 Queen Catherine was wavering. But the patriotic party lost one who had been for many months on their side, at least in things temporal. The aged Constable Montmorency could not give up the old religion, though his nephews strove hard to shake him. Henceforward he clung to Rome and to his ancient enemies the Guises. He had heard hints that he would have to give account of the vast sums of money he had handled in past years. There were risings in many cities against the Huguenots, especially at Beau vais, where Cardinal Odet de Chatillon, so it was said, had celebrated the Eucharist in the Geneva fashion. The Govern- ment issued edicts of toleration, which the Paris Parliament refused to register. The Toulouse Parliament went on burning heretics as before. On the other hand, the neigh- bouring Montauban in the summer of 1561 tore down the images and pictures in her churches, and Calvin in vain 1 Baird, Huguenots, i. 444. 2 See his Despatches, edited by Sir H. Layard for the Huguenot Society, London, 23. He is the best of guides for 1561. IV FEANCE 357 wrote to urge moderation on his followers. " They want to reduce the Kingdom to the state of a Swiss Canton," cried an aged Cardinal. 1 One of the great problems of the day was how to meet the expenses of the Crown. Henry II. had levied more from his subjects in twelve years than had been raised for the previous eighty years ; yet at the same time many millions of debt had been contracted. In the King's house- hold were more than six hundred officers of various kinds who had lately paid for their posts. 2 The States of Languedoc had debated the matter ; the clergy offered to pay off nearly one-half of the Eoyal debt ; but a Capitoul of Toulouse, speaking in the name of the Third Estate, proposed to seize upon all the temporal goods of the Church, assigning pensions to those ousted. Another speaker accused the clergy of ignorance and corruption, and went unpunished. The new Eeligion, we are told, favoured liberty. It made astonishing progress at Annonai and in the neighbourhood. 3 Nothing, it was said, had been gained by death and fire for thirty years ; another way should be tried. The new preachers usually began their sermons by thundering against those abuses, which no wise Catholic could defend. Had these ministers, says Castelnau, been more grave and virtuous they might have gained something. But they found fault with everything, and were utterly without the moderation of the Protestants in England and Germany, who had kept much of the old system. This is the judgment of Castelnau, as cool an observer on the one side as La Noue is on the other. The Church took the alarm ; even before the war broke out the priests, no longer lazy, began to preach and warn their flocks ; Jesuits and begging friars went round the towns and villages. 4 The States -General met at Pontoise in August 1561. The commons made a claim for toleration and for some relief from taxation. A regular representative government 1 Suriano, 37. 2 Castelnau in Buchon's Collection, 130. 3 Gamon in Buchon's Collection, 339. 4 See Castelnau for the year 1561. In his account of the next year he says that in May the Lutherans drove the French Calvinists out of Frankfort. 358 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. was advocated. Never were the French nobles so full of patriotism. They owed indeed a vast debt to their country, for their subjects were groaning under heavy burdens, and at this time the lord would sometimes seize the vassal's daughter and bestow her in marriage as he might choose. These States -General of 1561 were the most patriotic Assembly that ever met in France between 1356 and 1789; the nobles and burghers, with their mistrust of the clergy, remind us of England. 1 How near was France at this moment to the path of orderly freedom ! All that was needed was that the Chatillons might keep the Guises within bounds. Both nobles and commons were quite ready to seize upon Church property for financial purposes. Meanwhile Queen Catherine seemed to be giving her countenance to a future National Council, which was to consider the affairs of religion ; slight heed was given to the Pope's wishes. Beza and Peter Martyr were now invited to defend their faith before the Prelates of the Gallican Church, the Cardinal of Lorraine standing forward as the champion of Rome. The conference took place before the King, the good Chancellor, the Council, and fifty Prelates. " Here come the dogs of Geneva," said a Cardinal. " Ay, dogs are wanted to bark at the wolves," retorted Beza. 2 This minister had not gone far in treating of the Eucharist before his voice was drowned in loud accusation of blas- phemy. But at any rate, for the first time in almost forty years, the Huguenots had obtained a public hearing in France/and Queen Catherine had declared that the only appeal possible lay to the Scriptures. Several conferences were held at Poissy, but from the third the public was prudently as much as possible excluded. The Cardinal asked his opponents if they would sign the Lutheran con- fession of faith ; they replied that they had come to be convinced of their errors and not to sign creeds. Lainez, who succeeded Loyola as General of the Jesuits, made a speech fuller of abuse than of argument. 3 Five moderate 1 See Martin, ix. 70, 94 ; also Suriano, 40. 2 Baird, i. 514. 3 The doings of Lainez at this .time may be found in Sacchini, Historia Socielatis Jcsu. IV FEANCE 359 Eoman Catholics (Bishop Montluc among them) met five Protestant ministers and drew up an Article of Concord, approved by the Queen and Lorraine, but promptly rejected by the great body of the Prelates. These last promised payment of large sums of money, but in return exacted the restoration of all churches then in Protestant hands. Many of the Bishops were now sent to the Council of Trent, where they gave but slight satisfaction to the Pope. The prospects of the Huguenots seemed bright at the end of 1561, so much so that the Guises and Montmorency left the Court in disgust. Even King Charles was said to be inclined to the new doctrines ; his mother was assuredly no bigot. Throgmorton, the English Envoy, was in high spirits. There were now no fewer than 1150 Protestant churches in France. They were chiefly established in the provinces between the Alps and Pau, and thence to Caen in the North, though Brittany must be left out of the account. The bravest soldiers, the richest merchants, the shrewdest of the artisans, were all ranged on the side of Keform. The great stronghold of their enemies lay in Burgundy, Cham- pagne, Picardy, and above all the Isle of France. 1 " Would that our friends could restrain themselves, at least for two months ! " cried Beza, who knew that murders on the one side were being avenged by profanation of churches on the other. 2 We can understand what was going on wherever the Huguenots had the upper hand when we read the experience of Morvillier, the Moderate Bishop of Orleans, who later became Chancellor of France. After Easter, in 1561, the Protestants of his city began openly to preach their doctrines, laughed at the Church rites, insulted the priests, and fired arquebuses at processions. The Eoyal governor could not check them. In October they seized the Carmelite church for their own assemblies. One night they carried off twenty-four nuns from a con- vent. A Cordelier had to preach four times a week to keep the true flock steady in their allegiance. The Bishop 1 Even at Troyes, in Champagne, about eight thousand persons came from the neighbourhood around to celebrate the Eucharist in the Geneva fashion. Baird, ii. 11. 2 Ibid. i. 565. 360 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. himself had to leave Orleans and attend the Court; one sentence from his letters, sparing neither side, gives a good picture of the state of France in 1 5 6 1 .* No one could foretell the future of the land ; the Court seemed to be wavering ; the Nuncio actually went to a Protestant service, for which he had to excuse himself at Rome. Philip of Spain and Pope Pius IV. were already threatening to strike in. It was time, for thousands of Huguenots were singing their Psalms openly in the streets of Paris. The " tumult of St. Medard " broke out, when some lives were lost at a Protestant sermon, and the Eoyal officers, who had arrested some of the priests, were put to death for having done their duty. The fateful year 1562 began with an Assembly of Notables. Chancellor L'Hospital, as usual, urged a system of mutual toleration ; and this was embodied in the famous Edict of January. Of forty-nine opinions given only eleven stood out for the old plan of fire and butchery. All that was wanted was a year or two of peace ; but this, so the Guises had settled, was not to be. The Eoman Catholic preachers were furious, and denounced the modern Ahab and Jezebel, the crowned votaries of Baal. The Parliament of Paris long stood out against registering the Edict. At this moment the fickle Antony of Navarre left the Protes- tant side, being tempted by the bait of Sardinia dangled before him by the Spanish Court. His noble wife, Jeanne d'Albret, was stout in opposition to him. Antony's new allies, the Guises, had gone to Alsace, there to meet the Duke of Wirtemberg, an old comrade of 1537; Duke Francis pretended to sigh over the Protestant blood already shed in France, while the Cardinal of Lorraine gave out 1 Jean de Morvillier, by Baguenault de Puchesse, 137-139. He says, ' ' En plusieurs villes, le peuple a usurpe 1'office du magistral, car il s'est fait juge de ceux qui introduisaient nouvelle forme de religion, et en a tu6 et massacre" avec grand scandale. En d'autres lieux, la nouvelle secte est plus puissante et en plus grand nombre ; elle veut commander et au magistrat, et au reste du peuple." At the Council of Trent the Bishop was earnest that the monks should be reduced in number, " Et ne demeure personne d'eux oisif et inutile, comme ils sont presque tous maintenant." This last sentence explains how the Reformation got such a hold upon France. iv FKANCE 361 that there was little difference between himself and the Lutherans ; he adored Christ in heaven, and merely venerated the wafer ; the Mass was not a sacrifice. He swore that he had been guilty of no man's death for the sake of religion. Seldom have more astounding lies been more wantonly uttered by men of lofty lineage. The noble pair promised, on their salvation, not to persecute the Protestants at home. 1 On the 1st of March 1562 Guise, on his way back to Paris, was passing through the little town of Vassy in Champagne. He had kept his late solemn promise of toleration by hanging a poor artisan who had had his child baptized in the Geneva way a deliberate murder in the teeth of the Edict of January. Worse was to follow ; twelve hundred Protestants were quietly worshipping in a barn at Vassy on that unlucky Sunday morning. The Duke's soldiers made an assault upon the building ; they slew fifty men and women, and left about a hundred others wounded. Guise had the grace to see that some apology for this bloodshed was needed ; his published defence was that the Protestants had armed themselves with stones before going to worship. Not one of his own followers, as it would appear, was slain; we need have little doubt whence the provocation first came. Hence arose the famous Wars of Eeligion in France, laying waste that great country for thirty-six years wars broken now and then by a short truce. Vassy is a name that should be more hateful in the eyes of all good Frenchmen than the names of Pavia or St. Quentin. For one month the storm went on growling before it burst. Conde, who was now the head of the Huguenots, demanded vengeance from the Queen -Mother. Beza de- clared that the Church of God might endure blows, but still it was an anvil that had worn out many hammers. Guise was hailed almost as a King by the fanatical mob 1 Baird, ii. 14. This relation was taken down at the time by the Duke of Wirtemberg. See also Pfister, Herzog Christoph zu Wirtemberg, 399-406. It is no wonder after what followed that the Duke breaks out, "Adi, France, mit aller seiner untrew, leichfertigkeit, ueppigkeit, und unglau- bens," 417. 362 EOME AND REFOEM CHAP. of Paris ; he was soon joined by his allies, the Constable and the worthless Antony of Navarre. The priests com- pared their hero to Moses and Jehu, who slew the un- believers ; wiser men, like Castelnau, knew well that the Protestant worship at Vassy had been safeguarded by law. Queen Catherine sought refuge at Fontainebleau. Conde left Paris for Meaux, whence he sent requests for help all over France. His best ally appeared when G-aspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, the head of the Chatillons, came to the rescue. This great soldier-statesman, perhaps the noblest- hearted Frenchman that ever lived, had hitherto been able to serve the cause of Eeform by peaceful methods, instead of plunging, like Conde, into the Conspiracy of Amboise. Now the Admiral had to make his choice between acqui- escing in a nominal peace, wherein no Huguenot could be safe or beginning a bloody civil war. No wonder that he hesitated ; but his brave wife called upon him in God's name not to be false to the Cause, otherwise she would be a witness against him at the Judgment Day. He listened to her, and rode to the field. Guise and his friends got the start of the other party, and secured the young King and his mother. Conde gained more followers in six days than he had expected to unite in a month ; they had come by twenties and thirties from remote provinces, stirred by the news of Vassy. 1 At the head of fifteen hundred horse, the best of the French nobles, " better armed with courage than with corslets," he threw himself into Orleans, which was then thoroughly Protestant, on the 2nd of April. In a few weeks a num- ber of cities throughout the South and West of France, and moreover in Normandy, had declared for Conde 1 . Stern was the discipline enforced in camp by these Huguenots, " who had fire and lead in their heads." There were morn- ing and evening prayers ; two soldiers were hung for having stolen a little wine from a peasant. But there were two points in which all Calvin's authority was set at 1 La Noue in Buchon's Collection of Memoirs is our best authority here, and for many a later year. This brave soldier tells us all the camp gossip. IV FKANCE 363 naught. 1 His French disciples insisted on tearing down every idol in the churches, and, what shocks us more, they had commonly no scruple in breaking into the tombs of the dead. France in these respects lagged far behind other Calvinist lands. 2 The soldiers would not obey even Conde" himself, who in vain aimed an arquebuse at one destructive fanatic. At Caen alone damage to the extent of a hundred thousand crowns was done, and the tombs of old French heroes, such as William the Conqueror, were ruthlessly destroyed. Some noble churches at Lyons were pulled down ; St. Martin's relics were scattered ; even the statue of the greatest of French heroines was over- turned. Far worse were the excesses on the other side. Sens began by a massacre of a hundred Huguenot men and women. At Orange the Papal troops added torture and violation to murder. This was avenged by Des Adrets, a Huguenot commander, for whom no apology can be made. His cruelties are well known ; and, moreover, he broke a capitu- lation. One of the most infamous ruffians on the other side was the Duke of Montpensier, a descendant of St. Louis, whom (a hater of heretics) he professed to take for his model. He was the tyrant of Anjou and Touraine ; he would execute men who had yielded upon honourable con- ditions ; no faith was to be kept with heretics. As to any captured Huguenot women who could boast the fatal gift of beauty, these he handed over to a burly debauchee, one of his followers. 3 After this we are less astonished at the ferocity of Montluc, a Gascon of the Gascons, who has painted himself in his Memoirs. The city of Toulouse of course distinguished itself by bigotry ; three thousand persons perished, to most of whom life had been promised : and afterwards two hundred were executed in cold blood. Pope Pius IV. at once sent forth ecstatic Briefs of gratitude. In 1 Evelyn, long afterwards, saw the beautiful stained glass remaining in the Cathedral of Geneva, a proof of Calvin's own tolerance. 2 Traces of this feature in the French character are found in the wanton destruction of the tombs of the German Caesars, of the great Portuguese abbeys, and of the Kremlin. 3 See the disgusting tale in Brantome, Life of Montpensier. 364 EOME AND KEFOEM CHAP. fiery Provence, as Castelnau says, more cruelties went on than in any other province. A war of manifestoes was waged between Paris and Orleans, Guise and Conde. On either side foreigners were making ready to step in ; it is a blemish in Coligny's statesmanship that he long stood out against calling in the German Protestants ; the savagery against which he had to fight might surely excuse anything. His own party was not guiltless. Priests and monks seem to have been put to death in numbers, being looked upon as preachers of the bloody intolerance that had brought about the war. 1 One of the worst cases took place at Orleans, where the old worship was strictly forbidden. A priest chanted his Mass in a secret place for months before he was discovered ; the Huguenots dragged him round the town, buffeted him, and sent him to the gallows. Coligny offered him his life if he would recant ; he professed his old faith in a long speech, delivered from the ladder a speech which made many Huguenots much ashamed of themselves : Conde himself was somewhat shaken. 2 But he broke a capitulation rather later when Pithiviers was yielded, hanging both priests and soldiers. 3 Meanwhile Guise took Bourges, an important capture, since it lies right in the middle of France. The good Huguenot discipline now began to die out ; the Admiral, talking with Telligny and La Noue, had remarked of this discipline, " It is a fine thing so long as it lasts, but in two months things will be different. I have long com- manded infantry, and I know it ; true is the proverb which says that a young hermit makes an old Devil." 4 The speaker, a ruthless general who would take no excuses, soon had to hang one of his captains, booted and spurred, for 1 See many particulars in Tommaseo, Ambassadeurs Venitiens, ii. 804 to the end. Surius, especially for the year 1562, gives a long account of sacri- leges and crimes, but he is anything but a strictly accurate author. See also Claude Haton. 2 Mtmoires de Claude Haton, 250. 3 Ibid. 299. 4 Scott puts something like this proverb into Evan Dhu's mouth in Waverley ; perhaps he got it from La Noue, a soldier and writer after Sir Walter's own heart. IV FRANCE 365 sacking a Norman village. A Provencal regiment, on taking Boisgency, was more cruel to their Huguenot brethren in the place than to the enemy ; the Gascons speedily followed the bad example. Soon, as La Noue says, was born Mademoiselle La Picoree, who has since become Madame, and will in time be called Princess. There was a difference as regards pillage between these Frenchmen and their English brethren who fought fourscore years later ; it may be accounted for by the fact that the Roundheads, having London at their back, were regularly paid, and had no need to depend on the plunder of shrines and altars. The Huguenots now found themselves obliged to hand over Havre to Queen Elizabeth, in return for English succour ; and this measure did their cause no good. In the autumn the Roman Catholic forces besieged Montgomery in Rouen, which was not very strong ; he was aided by five hundred English. 1 Troops from Germany fought on both sides. At last the city, the richest of all except Paris, was taken, and barbarously sacked. The Rouen Parliament, now restored, began to put men to death in cold blood, for which Conde made reprisals. The worthless Antony of Navarre died of a wound received at the siege; this father of the great Henry IV. wavered to the last between the two religions. D'Andelot had by this time brought from Germany seven thousand soldiers, and Conde was now able to take the field with about fifteen thousand men. In December the first pitched battle between rival Frenchmen was fought at Dreux. Conde", at the head of his nobles, made one of the finest cavalry charges of the age. Bold indeed must have been the horsemen who could break through the pikes of Uri and Unterwalden ; the Swiss colonel and nearly all his captains lay dead on the field. But the German foot misbehaved, much to D'Andelot's disgust ; Guise proved the hero of the day, and his enemy, Coligny, drew up what was left in good order behind a ravine, after a fight of five hours, ending in the loss of seven thousand men. Conde on the one side, Montmorency on the other, were made 1 We are glad to learn from La Noue that these English, led by Kil-Gre" (Killegrew), " firent tous merveilleux devoir." 366 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. prisoners ; the Cardinal of Lorraine was far away at the Council of Trent. 1 Coligny began the year 1563 by overrunning Nor- mandy, and Guise laid siege to Orleans, defended by D'Andelot. Lyons could hardly hold out for the Protes- tants, and the ruffian Des Adrets had left the sinking ship. The hero of Vassy was boasting that he would spare no one on mastering Orleans, when in February he was mortally wounded by an assassin, Poltrot, a knave who was half braggart, half fanatic. Being taken prisoner, he ac- cused Coligny and Beza of having instigated the deed ; he was tortured, retracted his first statements, and was torn to pieces by means of horses. Coligny published an indignant disclaimer, but Queen Catherine took care that the murderer should die before he could be confronted with the Admiral. Poltrot in the end, as we can now see, caused the deaths of the two greatest Frenchmen then living, the one directly, the other indirectly. The death of Guise was viewed by the Huguenots as a boon from Heaven, by the Catholics as the blackest of calamities. Certainly Kome never had such an ally in France ; by forcing on the war he has influenced the whole history of that land for the last three hundred years. 2 Now that Guise was gone there was no further hindrance to peace. Queen Catherine nattered the captive Cond4 into agreeing to most insufficient terms ; he obtained the con- sent of the Protestant nobles, and cared little for the remonstrances of the wiser ministers ; the civil war had lasted all but a year. Neither side were satisfied with the 1 There is a good description of this battle in the despatches of Barbaro, annexed to those of Suriano, 70. - The following stave was sung all over France : Ce fut cet Angoulmois, Cest unique Poltrot, (Nostre parler Frangois N'a pas de plus beau mot,) Bur qui tomba le lot De retirer de presse Le peuple Huguenot En sa plus grand detresse. Labitte, Les Frtdicateurs de la Ligue, lii. IV FRANCE 367 terms of peace ; the Paris Parliament would hardly register the new Edict, and Coligny was highly displeased. It was his party, in truth, that were the losers ; they now numbered, perhaps, about one-tenth of the French nation ; but they were never to become much stronger. Their cause had been damaged when it came to owe little to the martyr's stake and much to the nobleman's sword. It was decided once for all in 1562 that France was never to be Protestant. Her Court, soon to become a mere den of murder and lust, where debauchery was used as a political instrument, could have little in common henceforth with the grim Geneva ministers, who had lately inflicted death upon a pair of adulterers, and who could not tolerate a hasty oath. The populace over the greater part of France followed in the wake of the Court ; to begin with, they were imbued with the usual foibles of the French character. Then, when the Huguenots began to rob and slay, the mass of the people, as Correro, an eye-witness, tells us, asked, "What is this religion? Who are these men who boast that they understand the Gospel better than others ? Where did Christ order us to rob and slay our neighbours ? " All general enthusiasm for the new creed was at once checked. 1 Guise won the day. What wrath must have been kindled in many a French bosom by the news that the Cathedral of Viviers, with the houses of the Canons and Bishop, had been sacked by the heretics of Dauphine, and that the holiest relics had been burnt, bits of the cradle, of the robe, and of the cross of Christ, the hair, the milk, and the robe of the Virgin ! We are not surprised to learn that a few years later the children in the neighbouring city of Puy used to run like mad dogs, hooting the Huguenots on the way to the preachings ; these young champions shot a heretical surgeon with an arquebuse, and no redress for the murder could be had. The banks of the Rhone were a nursery of warriors ; Dauphine alone furnished 12,000 Protestant soldiers for the war of 1568, many of whom died at Moncontour. 2 1 See Arnaud's Histoire des Protestants du Vivarais, 42, 76, 78. It is a valuable book, and gives us some idea of the horrors of the Civil War. 2 See Tommaseo, Ambassadeurs Venitiens, ii. 118. 368 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. They wore the white scarf, the old badge of the French armies before the religious wars ; since these had broken out, the King's soldiers had been so unadvised as to adopt the red Spanish scarf. Never did the French noble show to greater advantage than when riding in the Protestant squadrons. " We say," said one of their German enemies, " that a man ought to charge once for money, twice for his country, thrice for his religion ; but at Dreux I was charged four times by the French Huguenots." 1 There was some ground for the saying, in vogue rather later, that in order to drive the Turk out of Europe there must be a union of the French horse, the Spanish foot, and the English fleet. But however brave the nobles might be in war, there was another side to their character. Haton, writing in Champagne, accuses some of them of robbing the peasants of a fair share in the woods and pasturage. They hated nothing so much as to see their subjects wealthy and prosperous, and employed both the stick and corruption of justice in order to rob. They sold their game to the towns; in time of civil war they would bring rough soldiers, who lived at free quarters, down upon their refractory peasants. The good noblemen, as Haton says, were fewer than the bad ; the former were about one to three ; forced labour, violation of women, and robbery of food out of houses were common misdeeds of the upper class. As time went on these nobles became quite capable of murdering an enemy on the sly, not in fair fight. 2 Nowhere is the contrast between England and France more striking than in the number of very small towns that boasted walls ; these walls could keep out an enemy, if he had no heavy artillery. The villagers, at the approach of an army, would drive all their cattle and goods into one of these places, and there the poor beasts would often starve in the streets. The soldiers, whether German or French, 1 Les Princes de Condi, par le Due d'Aumale, i. 204, 210. The best authorities hold, I believe, that cavalry should not be called upon for more than one great effort in a battle. Waterloo is a well-known case in point. 2 Mtmoircs de Claude Haton, 712, 787, 854. Haton is fond of a pun, using gens tue hommes and gens pille hommes for gentilshommes. iv FKANCE 369 would seize every horse they could find, and might be seen riding, two at once, upon their booty. They must have the best wine and meat, and would eat up the whole country. Money was extorted by blows or tortures, such as ham- stringing ; the peasants were sometimes employed as beasts of burden. No justice could be had even for wanton murder, for the officials were thoroughly corrupt. Neither Jews, Turks, nor Saracens could have been guilty of worse outrages than the Christian French. If the soldiers happened to be Huguenots, then the churches were sacked and the clergy stripped or slain. If one of the little walled towns made resistance, men and women within it alike were murdered by the soldiers, should they be able to storm the ramparts. 1 But one effect of these civil wars was to enrich France rather than otherwise. They brought into circulation a quantity of treasure, such as the metal images of Saints, which had long stood useless; it was said that more gold circulated now than silver had done before. Usurers found their trade waning, and poor gentlemen could afford to keep thrice as many horses as before. Many a town was sacked, but these towns fifty years later seemed to be richer than ever. Many of the clergy sold their treasures secretly, and then cried out against Huguenot pillagers. The higher clergy and their agents grew fat upon what was wrung from poor priories and parish priests ; to the former class civil war was a nursing mother. The magistrates were so ungrateful as to put to death numbers of Huguenots, the very men who had enriched them. The one drawback was the hordes of Swiss and Germans who fought in France, and then bore home much of her wealth. She might be likened to a fat goose ; the more it is plucked, the more the feathers grow. 2 Nothing is more remarkable in these times of bloodshed than the steady confidence of Northern France in the 1 I take all this from Claude Haton, especially from his second volume. Most other French provinces must have been in the same state as Champagne, where Haton dwelt. 2 All this comes from the latter part of Brant6me's Life of Chastillon (Coligny). The writer talks of "cette bonne guerre civile." VOL. I 2 B 370 KOME AND EEFORM CHAP. ultimate victory of the established religion. Thus the burghers of Beauvais, afflicted though they were with a heretical Bishop, went perseveringly on with the building of their noble cathedral. The lofty transepts were built between 1500 and 1548; the next work was to erect a spire that in height even surpassed her Strasburg sister ; this addition, which was not to be long-lived, was completed in 1568, when the thoughts of all men were bent on civil war. 1 Southern and Western France might pull down their noblest monuments ; North-Eastern France held to the old ways. One cause of the destruction of churches was that the Huguenots had been forced in 1563 to give back every sacred building they had seized, even where they were the vast majority. Hence in 1568 the men of Montpellier pulled down eight of their churches, which are named, before the end of the Second Civil War. We are told that when, long afterwards, Louis XIII. entered the city in triumph he could not find one church wherein to pray ; all had vanished. 2 The first thing done by the French, now all united, after the peace of 1563 was to recover Havre from Queen Elizabeth, who had played a most selfish part. Every obstacle possible was thrown in the way of the Huguenots when they sought to enjoy the very limited freedom guaranteed to them. King Charles was openly threatened. At the head of the angry protesters against anything like tolera- tion stood Pope Pius IV., who now summoned to Eome for heresy eight French Prelates ; among them were the diplo- matist Montluc and Cardinal Odet de Chatillon ; it is not often that a Protestant has worn the Eed Hat. Pius further cited the Queen of Navarre to his Court ; but this the French Government would not allow. King Philip was eager to seize the Queen in her castle at Pau. The Council of Trent had now broken up, but the Cardinal of Lorraine could not effect the publication of its decrees in France ; L'Hospital would have none of it; and Dumoulin, the greatest of French lawyers, proved that its decrees were null and void. 1 I take these facts from my Beauvais guide-book, by Trezel. 2 Corbiere, L'Eglise reformte de Montpellier, 81, 162. IV FRANCE 371 Queen Catherine in 1564, the year of Calvin's death, carried her son all round France. As the Court went along decrees were issued depriving the Huguenots of their rights. Scores of them were murdered in the towns, and hardly any redress could be had. In the next year Catherine and Alva had an interview at Bayonne, where the Queen's zeal did not satisfy the ruthless Spaniard. The Cardinal of Lorraine and the honest L'Hospital every now and then clashed at the Royal Council on the great question of toleration. This could not be enforced ; the courtly Castelnau tells us that in 1565 an infinity of murders and cruelties was com- mitted in Maine, Anjou, and Touraine, where the Huguenots were weak. 1 In 1567 Alva led his troops across Europe to the Netherlands, which henceforth became a frightful scene of butchery. This year the patience of the Huguenots gave way ; their chiefs consulted, and the fiery D'Andelot pre- vailed over his cool-headed brother Coligny. One of their grievances was that all priests, monks, and nuns who had married were forced to put away their spouses on pain of the galleys or perpetual prison. 2 The rebels gathered their forces with astonishing secrecy late in September; they all but seized King Charles and his mother at Meaux, but the Swiss effected a rescue. 3 The unhappy boy never forgave this attempted outrage. The rebels, who in their pro- clamations denounced Italians and demanded the assembly of the States-General, were able to cut off Paris, their arch enemy, from most of her supplies of food. She sent forth an army six times the size of that of the Huguenots. They met at Saint Denis ; the Parisian regiment fled, and the aged Constable Montmorency, a relic of the Fifteenth century, was mortally wounded. Each side claimed the victory; early in 1568 the Huguenots met their German allies on the Lorraine border, and being now twenty thousand strong, countermarched towards the West. The Germans 1 La Noue says that 3000 Huguenots had been murdered since the peace. 2 Castelnau for 1567. 3 Correro declares that the secrecy of this plot, known to many thousands, is unexampled in history. He was then with the Court. 372 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. wanted their pay ; the French, down to the lowest camp followers, offered their plate, chains, and whatever they had to satisfy the foreigners. Meanwhile Nismes had disgraced itself by a butchery of eighty Catholic prisoners ; both sides, according to Castelnau, were now breaking the law of nations without any shame. Orleans was secured by La Noue, the most chivalrous of his party ; this city he calls in his Memoirs the mother - nurse of the Huguenots. Most important of all, La Eochelle openly ranged herself on the side of the Eeformation, and henceforth became a rival city to Paris. The rebels concentrated at Chartres, to which they laid siege. But the Chancellor was urging peace, and it was signed after the war had lasted half a year. 1 The German levies were paid off by the Court. But the Huguenots were foolish enough to exact hardly any security, being moved by babble about " the dignity of the Crown." The explanation of this seems to be that the Southern nobles were eager to return to their homes ; some of them set off without leave, even before the siege of Chartres was raised ; Coligny himself could not hold them. Toulouse gave them fair warning as to what they might expect by putting to death a Protestant gentle- man who had been sent by the King with the terms of peace ; she long refused to register the Eoyal edict. The stray Protestants of the North -East hardly durst return to their homes. The Swiss and Italian levies were unrestrained, and lived at free quarters upon the late rebelst Pius V. sent a special Brief of praise to a Duke who had refused to grant the just claims of the Lyonnese Huguenots. There were massacres at Auxerre and Amiens ; the slain in other towns were reckoned by thousands. The fickle 1 I give the Ultramontane view of the good Chancellor L'Hospital : Sa vertu c'est d'estre un Proth6e, 8a neutrality d'estre athee, Sa pais deux lignes maintenir ; Changer les loix c'est sa praticque, Sa cour, les pedants soustenir, Et son savoir d'estre heretique. Claude Haton, 526. IV FRANCE 373 Catherine at last exchanged the counsels of L'Hospital for those of Lorraine ; she was now playing off the Guises against the Montmorencies. The good old Chancellor, the great apostle of toleration, was driven from office. Late in the summer of 1568 the Court resolved to seize the Huguenot leaders. These made their escape, with a handful of men, right across France to La Eochelle. The Third Civil War at once broke out, taking the treacherous Court by surprise. Charles IX. solemnly burnt all the Edicts of Toleration, and thus taught the rebels that they must either conquer or die. Cond^ sent a pathetic appeal to the King against the murderous outrages long tolerated by the Crown. 1 Most unwise seems to us the conduct of the French rulers ; they had two sound policies before them ; they might either enforce toleration on the mobs of the Northern cities, or they might call for aid from Spain and Italy and set about the extermination of the heretics making no truce with them. The French Government took neither of these courses, but waged a series of savage wars, of all of which within a short time they wearied. To explain this we must remember that fickleness was a lead- ing feature in Queen Catherine's character, and that her noble advisers suffered little in their own persons, since they threw all the burden of costs upon the unlucky clergy and commons. So the civil wars went on, while thousands of soldiers flocked in from every land in Western Europe, and the business usually ended by the French Crown paying huge sums to the German hirelings who fought on either side. The folly as well as the cruelty of these hateful forty years is most striking. D'Andelot from the North, Jeanne of Navarre from the South, led their troops to La Eochelle, the new City of Refuge, and many Western towns fell into their hands. Thirty-five thousand Frenchmen, if La Noue be right, were now facing each other. The Church property in the South was sold and applied to Huguenot purposes. The English 1 Les Princes de Conde, par le Due d'Aumale, ii. 355. He there says that if the King would do justice, " tous les arbres seroient plus couvertz d'hommes que de^fueilles." 374 HOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. fleet brought succour to La Eochelle, and the bold French sailors raised funds for their cause by pillaging the ships of all Catholic nations. In the spring of 1569 Conde fell at Jarnac, killed in cold blood after he had been made prisoner, his antagonist, the young Henry of Anjou, brother to the King, being far superior in military strength. Not long afterwards the brave D'Andelot died, who had long played Marcellus to his brother's Fabius. Of all the old French leaders who had stood for and against the Pope since 1559 Coligny, the Fabius in question, almost alone remained. About fourteen thousand Germans once more crossed France to aid the Protestant cause; among them was the great William of Orange. The combined Protestants failed at Poitiers, and in the autumn were routed at Moncontour, where nearly four thousand mutineers from beyond the Ehine deservedly perished, besides many Frenchmen ; the Swiss showed no mercy to the Germans. Anjou disbanded most of his army, thinking that the war was over. But Coligny was never greater than when his party seemed to be at their lowest. Late in October he marched to the South, and inflicted due vengeance on the property of the bigots of Toulouse. He now turned Northwards, picking up allies as he marched along and threatening Paris; in nine months he had compassed twelve hundred miles. In August 1570 he dictated terms of peace to the Court. His great advantage was this, that his whole party obeyed him readily, while the opposite camp was distracted by the quarrels of jealous leaders. Four cities were to be held by the Huguenots for two years, and the late rebels were recognised as faithful subjects; the war, Lorraine's handiwork, had vexed France for about two years. Charles IX., perhaps jealous of his brother Henry's exploits, gave out that he, the King, was bent on maintaining the peace ; and in this he was probably sincere. But murders went on as before, and the clergy hounded on the rabble. One of the phrases of the day was " letting loose the big dog." Never was greater recklessness of human life shown than in these wars. I give an instance : a general of the King's iv FKANCE 375 in 1570 was marching his troops by a bridge over the Loire near Angers. He had in vain ordered the loose women who follow the camp to depart ; on this occasion he had eight hundred of them flung over the bridge and drowned ; this almost led to a mutiny of the troops. 1 One effect of these constant wars was to turn for the first time every Frenchman into a soldier, as Correro remarked in 1569 ; up to this time the lower classes (the Gascons always excepted) had been looked down upon as a cowardly and worthless pack. 2 German hirelings were still to be in request, but not for many years longer. One of the greatest concessions wrung from the Crown was that the Huguenots might hold a synod at La Eochelle. Over this Beza, Calvin's future successor for forty years, came to preside. He upheld his master's doctrine on the Eucharist, but he was withstood by a strong minority which leant to the theory of Zuinglius, that this Sacrament is nothing but a bare sign. The latter opinion was that of both the soldier Coligny and the scholar Kamus. Nothing shows Calvin's theological power more than this, that he should have been able in his lifetime to draw over most of the Zuinglians half-way towards the Lutherans on this point ; his language on the Eucharist and the strict regard he here paid to the Fathers have won him the praise of Bossuet. 3 These disputes were soon laid aside on a certain fearfully practical question coming up. In this year, 1571, Queen Elizabeth was coquetting with the prospect of a French marriage ; Anjou and his brother Alengon were by turns proposed to her. France and England, it was suggested, might both fall upon the Spanish despot's dominions in the Netherlands. Coligny was well received by the King at Blois, and was even kissed by Catherine. In 1572 Queen Jeanne and her son Henry were lured to Paris, that he might there marry Charles's 1 Brantome, Vie de Tiinoleon de Cosst. He discussed the matter with the culprit, who afterwards repented of his crime. 2 Tommaseo, Ambassadeurs Venitiens, ii. 148, "Popolo vile, da poco, e quasi da niente, nelle cose dell' anni." 3 Martin, ix. 277. Bossuet in his Variations deals at length with Calvin's views on this point. 376 ROME AND REFORM CHAP. sister ; the great Huguenot lady died speedily, and thus left her kingdom of Navarre to the bridegroom expectant. French soldiers broke into Philip's lands on the Scheldt ; but these adventurers proved to be no match for Alva. Catherine beheld the new Spanish successes ; she had a shrewd suspicion that Elizabeth was no trusty ally ; and these two circumstances made the Queen-Mother take the side of the Pope against Coligny, who was burning for war. Navarre's wedding was celebrated before the eyes of hundreds of the best Huguenot knights, the scarred veterans of the last twelve years. The greatest of them all seemed to be rapidly ousting Queen Catherine from her influence over her son. Charles IX. was wavering. That wretched youth, whose name will be a byword and a hissing unto all generations, had at least the wit to know a great man when he saw one. The Italian woman was furious ; she now caused a murderous project to be broached, but at first only among a chosen few. On Friday morning the Admiral was wounded by a shot from a window. He was visited on his sickbed by Charles and by many of the Court. On the Saturday morning a knot of councillors won the hapless being who wore the Crown over to the side of treachery and murder. Late in the evening he issued orders to secure the city gates. On Sunday morning, the 24th of August, the ever infamous day of St. Bartholomew, Coligny was murdered by the followers of the young Duke of Guise ; the body of the great rebel was dragged about the streets for three days, and was then hung on a gallows. Many Huguenot gentlemen were lodged in the Louvre ; they were called out one by one, and were butchered by their host's soldiers ; the noblest victim here was De Piles, who by his stout defence of a Western town had almost retrieved the black day of Moncontour. The priest-ridden Parisian mob was soon rushing through the streets, athirst for the blood of the heretics ; even babes were murdered, and women were foully handled. Only two Protestant pastors perished though they were eagerly pursued. The young Sully, then but twelve, had a wonderful escape. Ramus, the most learned man of the sect, was hunted down by a jealous rival. IV FKANCE 377 The Seine was full of putrefying corpses. On the Sunday afternoon the King tried to check the further progress of the massacre; but it went on for days. Perhaps 4000 victims died in Paris alone. Young Guise insisted that Charles should take upon himself the guilt of the business ; and this was done on the Tuesday morning. On Thursday the King walked in procession through the streets to give thanks for his preservation from a rebel conspiracy. The young King of Navarre and his cousin Conde were forced to join the Eoman Church. Orders were sent off to the other cities of France to copy the butchery at Paris. Two hundred were slaughtered at Meaux, the cradle of French Protestantism; fifteen hundred died at Orleans, where the bloody work went on for a fortnight. Fewer lives were lost at Bourges, whence the great Hotman, professor of law at the University, was able to escape. At Lyons hundreds of the most wealthy and industrious were first thrown into prison and then butchered by the populace, since the soldiers would not act. The Septembrizers of 1792, as we see, had orthodox fore- runners. At Eouen five hundred died three weeks after the outbreak at Paris ; fewer were slain at Toulouse. At .Bourdeaux the Governor boasted of having killed two hundred and fifty. The young Duke of Guise wished to prove to all the world that he had sought the death of Coligny alone, and therefore would have no widespread slaughter in his province of Champagne. Perhaps twenty thousand in all France outside of Paris fell victims. 1 Excessive was the joy at Home, where the medal struck and the fresco painted in honour of the massacre are stains never to be wiped away. Pope Gregory allowed the Cardinal of Lorraine to present to him the scoundrel who had fired at Coligny and given the first wound. 2 Philip of Spain and Alva had good cause to rejoice ; there was no chance now of a French army succouring the Flemish patriots. From all the rest of the world came a hoot of execration ; the lies of the French Ambassadors abroad were everywhere set down at their true value. Coligny's papers 1 Baird, Huguenots, ii. 530. - Ibid. 534. 378 EOME AND REFOEM CHAP. were in vain ransacked to prove that he had been a rebel plotter. The Lutherans of Germany, on this occasion at least, showed some brotherly love towards their slaughtered Calvinist brethren. Thousands of Frenchmen sought refuge at Geneva, where Beza gave them a warm welcome. As to the effect of the Great Massacre upon the other Swiss Cantons, Charles's envoy, who was evidently more at home in Courts than in mountains, had to write back, " Simple and rude people are violently excited by such things, and are very hard to reassure." * The Huguenots had now no great leader, but the middle class, their great stronghold, stood firm as ever. La Eochelle had resolved on resistance, and welcomed thousands of fugitives within her walls. The brave La Noue acted as her commandant when in December the King's troops appeared to enforce submission. Anjou and many others who had figured as leaders of the late massacre came before the great stronghold, but could effect nothing ; they here lost, it is said, about twenty thousand men. Meanwhile, at Sancerre, the besieged Protestants were dying of starvation. At last the war ended in the summer of 1573, on account of Anjou having been chosen King of Poland. The Southern Huguenots had received a rude shock ; we are told that at first most of the Protestants at Annonai and the neighbour- hood stooped to go to Mass. 2 But they soon organised themselves, so that they could readily put twenty thousand men into the field. France, thanks to the folly of her rulers, repeated for years, now saw a State within a State. Charles had to listen to demands, no longer from high-born Bourbons and Chatillons, but from burgher deputies. These men played a great part between 1572 and 1580, when the old leader had vanished and the new leader had not revealed himself. A new party was forming in France called the " Politi- cals," who were moderate Eoman Catholics, thinking more of their own land than of the Pope ; they were headed by the Montmorencies, and were in close alliance with the Hugue- 1 Baird, Huguenots, ii. 559. 2 Gamon for 1573, in Buchon's Chronicles. IV FKANCE 379 nots. Loud cries for the States- General were arising, and Hotman's great work, the Franco Gallia, now came out to probe the origin of political power ; his ideas on this sub- ject were more akin to Knox than to Calvin. The French intellect, both Catholic and Protestant, was eagerly- throwing itself into these questions. The King's youngest brother, Alenqon, a weakly youth, sought to put himself at the head of the rebels and to escape from Court. In the summer of 1574 Charles IX. died, after undergoing agonies of mind for his late misdeeds ; his infamous mother unhappily survived him, and was now able to take vengeance on the brave Montgomery, the innocent cause of her husband's death. We are allowed a glance at provincial life in France, as it was about this time. Haton gives us the history of Provins in Champagne for about thirty years. We see the Jacobins and Cordeliers opposed to each other, both giving scandal, owing to some of their brethren going over to the Huguenots. The wars break out ; at night, when an assault is expected, the streets are lighted up with candles. The very children of Provins are ready to slay a heretic in 1562 ; ten years later they drag another Huguenot's body from the gallows, hold an inquisition upon it, and sentence it to be burnt. The hated sect numbered only forty in 1563, though they mustered two hundred on a Sunday when reinforced by their brethren from the country round ; had it not been for the sermons of a learned Cordelier they would have been twelve times as many; in 1570 they were reduced to eight only. In 1567 every one has to serve in the defence of the town ; even the priests and the monks, two hundred in number, had license from the Pope to don arms ; one of them was a champion tennis-player. These priests were as ready to rob as their brother soldiers. " I think," says Haton, " that if the Saints in Paradise went to war, in a short time they would become devils." Even the Catholics did not scruple to stable their horses in the churches. Provins could turn out a hundred horsemen and five hundred arquebusiers under her four captains. Conversions from 380 EOME AND REFOEM CHAP. heresy were made thus; after the defeat at Jarnac a Jacobin preacher declared that all Huguenots must leave their heresy, or they would undergo corporal punishment and lose their goods ; very soon they nearly all went to confession, and swore to abide in the Church thenceforward. At the St. Bartholomew the few who remained at Provins locked themselves up for a whole week ; the gentry of the wrong persuasion fled to Sedan or Geneva, wearing great white crosses and carrying paternosters. Six years later, so great was the throng of marauders in Champagne, that her towns and villages were driven to make a league, to which the clergy subscribed their money ; all soldiers who could not show a commission from the Crown were to be cut down without mercy. 1 Catherine was now rejoicing to see the Crown of France worn by her favourite son, Anjou, who took the title of Henry III., the most false and contemptible of Kings, who by his vile lusts (from them history averts her eyes) made royalty a laughing-stock. The race of Francis I. was slowly rotting out of a disgusted world. From the very outset of his reign Henry was bearded by the Huguenots. Montbrun, on being ordered to lay down his arms, made answer, " The King's commands are very well in time of peace, but in time of war, when a man has his arm weaponed and his rump in the saddle, we are all mates." The courtly Bossuet, a hundred years later, shows himself much shocked at this rough speech, worthy of Poland ; but we can have little doubt as to whether of the two men, Montbrun or Bossuet, was fittest to stave off the coming days of 1793. One of the main causes that brought about the bloody events of that year was the wide gap that yawned between the French nobles and the Third Estate. Never was that gap more likely to be filled up than in 1561, when Reform both in Church and State was in the air. The Protestant nobleman must have enter- tained a respect for his lowlier countrymen never felt before, when he saw the vinedresser and the cobbler go to the tortures of the stake for their common religion as 1 I take all this account of Provins from Claude Haton. IV FRANCE 381 blithely as the knight went to battle. The new creed, if adopted by France, might have done much to draw all classes of Frenchmen together ; but this was not to be. One great scourge of the land, the Cardinal of Lorraine, died about this time, after having walked in a superstitious Royal procession during the bitter winter ; " the wickedest of men," said Queen Catherine. What sums of money, what rivers of blood, this one Prelate cost France can never be computed. The waste of the public finances was fear- ful ; the King's brother, Alen^on, began to think of revolt ; German armies once more traversed France, and these had to be bought off. All profession of religion seemed to be dropped ; we are told that the Catholics among the Gascons and Provencals ruined churches and massacred priests a frightful scandal. 1 In 1576 Henry of Navarre, the one hope of the land, fled from the corrupt Court into the West, after a captivity of three years and a half ; he soon pro- fessed himself once more a Huguenot, and had an able lieutenant in his cousin Conde", son of the hero of Jarnac. Peace was made in the spring, the fifth peace within thirteen years ; it was most glorious for the Huguenots. It was now seen that the St. Bartholomew had done simply nothing for the French Court, except that it had barred all chance of conquering the Netherlands. Henry III. was held in scorn by his Catholic subjects for having granted such a shameful peace. Picardy took the first step in oppo- sition to the Court, under the direction of the young Duke of Guise. The articles, which were to serve later as the base of the future terrible League, were now drawn up ; if the King did not show himself a good Catholic, his subjects pledged themselves to make no account of him. Other provinces followed in the wake of Picardy. In this year the States -General met, and there the Huguenots found many champions, especially in the Third Estate, where there was much impatience of taxation. Late in the year the sturdy sect renewed the war, but peace was once more made at Bergerac in 1577; the Guise party had been steadily opposed in the States -General. Castelnau, 1 Memoirs of Gauion in 1575. 382 EOME AND EEFORM CHAP. who as a courtier had the best means of judging, about this time sums up what had happened to France : " In less than twelve or fifteen years more than a million of persons of all conditions have died in the civil wars." l In 1578 the Spaniards seemed to be gaining on their revolted subjects in the Netherlands. Alen9on, who had now taken his brother's old title of Anjou, led a French army, composed of men of both religions, to the aid of the revolters ; Germany and England contributed other soldiers to the same cause. To turn from the State to the Church, Lippomano, who was Venetian Ambassador to France in 1577, allows us to see that spiritual matters have improved since 1560; thirty years after his time they were to make still greater progress. He says that no great respect is shown to the Sacrament when carried through the streets ; people will hardly kneel to it. There is one admirable French custom ; the great ladies go round churches begging for the sake of the poor. The French priest is not very debauched ; he is inclined to drink, like the rest of his nation. He would be more easily reformed than the clergy of other lands. There are good and learned preachers who can hold forth for three or four hours without stopping ; they only halt to spit ; all this is a thing incredible. If the benefices were not held by women, children, and heretics, religion would recover itself ; there are many good and learned men whose teach- ing would bear good fruits. They are counteracted by the more powerful, who will not allow the decrees of Trent to be received in France. 2 The University of Paris was frequented by thirty thousand students that is, as many as all the Italian Universities put together. 3 We read that in 1579 no fewer than twenty-eight bishoprics were left vacant, and their revenues were devoured by laymen ; of eight hundred abbeys there were only one hundred properly filled ; the rest were enjoyed by soldiers and women. 4 The 1 See his Memoirs in Buchon for the year 1559. 2 Tommaseo, Ambassadeurs Venitiens, ii. 578-580. 3 Ibid. 606. His numbers seem a little too high ; he, moreover, says that Paris contains more than a million. 4 Martin, ix. 494. IV FRANCE 383 bishops and priests opposed each other in the States- General. The terms of peace in France were usually ill observed ; in 1580 war broke out once more. Henry of Navarre began to show his quality; but he hazarded a life upon which hung the interests of millions at the storm of Cahors, a feat of arms that lasted four days and nights. Later in the year came peace, as usual, or rather an armed truce. Anjou had been active in promoting peace, since he needed all the French aid he could get for the conquest of the Netherlands, which in 1581 elected him their Governor. 1 Meanwhile his Royal brother remained at home, entranced with his two handsome favourites, the Dukes of Joyeuse and Epernon. Philip II. was becoming more and more hostile to the French Court, owing to its attacks upon him both in Flanders and also in the Azores, where thousands of French soldiers were butchered in cold blood. Even the slothful Henry III. began at last to suspect that he was encompassed in a net of conspiracy, to which Spain, Eome, and the Guises were privy. His brother Anjou was a statesman worthy of the Parisian Court; in 1583 he per- petrated a useless massacre at Antwerp, which was of much benefit to the cause of his Spanish enemy. The year 1584 was a most important one in Western Europe ; first died Anjou, leaving the succession to the French Crown open to the Protestant Henry of Navarre, now the next heir, though a most distant one. A few months later the great William of Orange was murdered, by whose death the revolted Netherlands were evidently laid at King Philip's foot, unless they could find some powerful ally. They offered the Sovereignty of their country to Henry III. ; he halted a long time between two opposite policies, but in 1585 he declined the offers of the rebels, thus forcing the English Queen to take his place. He was driven to this course by the plots of Guise and the League, under which the Catholic part of France had been organising itself, resolved never to endure a heretic on the 1 Claude Haton gives us a good picture of this worthless Prince, who was for some time at Provins doing much damage. 384 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. throne. Protestantism was at this moment undergoing defeat in many parts of Europe ; Eome was more active than ever. The majority of France were now ready to take the pay of the Spanish tyrant ; Pope Gregory XIII. engaged to support the League, stipulating only that the King should not be murdered. In March the rebel Cor- poration published its manifesto, to which Henry III. made a weak rejoinder. He soon went over to the League, and declared that he would not tolerate the heretics any longer. Henry of Navarre had few besides these heretics on his side ; the new Pope, Sixtus V., who thundered against the bold Bearnese, found that his Eoman Bulls now commanded more heed in France than those of Pius IV. twenty years earlier had done. The civil war, after an unusually long truce of five years, broke out again, and was now to rage for thirteen bloody years. The Leaguers extolled the " wholesome blood - letting " of the St. Bartholomew and the Spanish Inquisition; no heretic should ever wear the French crown. On the other side Queen Elizabeth was sending help to the Protestants both in the Netherlands and in Gascony. The German Princes, instigated by old Beza, remonstrated with Henry III. on his folly in renew- ing religious persecution. In 1586 Guise was blockading the Protestant refugees in Sedan. Early next year great part of France was stirred to madness by the news of the execution of her old Queen, Mary Stuart. The League was now quite prepared to seize the King; it had become a democracy, and seemed to tend towards a Republican federation ; Hotman's writings had influenced others besides the Huguenots. In the South of France the villagers were flying to the woods, and were eating acorns, roots, and the bark of pine-trees ; many died of hunger and cold ; a great plague soon followed. 1 In 1587 Henry of Navarre, aided by two comrades, who bore the great names of Conde" and Turenne, was pre- paring to encounter Joyeuse, the Eoyal general. The King had debauched the daughter of a lawyer at La 1 Gamon for the year 1585. iv FKANCE 385 Kochelle ; the ministers had remonstrated, but the sinner could never be brought to acknowledge his fault in public. His faithful friend, Duplessis Mornay, now urged him to give glory to God on such an occasion ; so on the morrow, after a sermon, the King made public confession of his fault in the church of Pons before all the nobles. Most courtly preachers in France have thought it best to wink at Royal amusements. Some men thought it all too hard on Henry ; he answered, " No one can abase himself too much before God, or defy men too much." He further agreed to repeat his confession later at La Eochelle. 1 He soon had his reward ; the Protestants won their first victory in the open field at Coutras ; the needy gentlemen of the South slaughtered hundreds of the splendid nobles of the Court, the cruel Joyeuse among others. Shortly afterwards Navarre's German allies marched to the Loire, but were driven back home, mainly through the skill of Guise. The glorious year 1588 opened with the death of the second Conde, poisoned, as it would seem, by his wife's servants. But worse foes than this Huguenot surrounded the unhappy King at Paris, a city now governed by a fanatical body called the Sixteen. Hither came Guise in defiance of Henry's order ; the pair had in the Louvre an interview, which for a wonder did not end in blood. Paris was soon full of barricades, which the Swiss guards could not force. Guise, the idol of the fanatics of the League, asked nothing less than his appointment to be Lieutenant- General of the realm ; thence to the throne was no long step. King Henry had to fly from the rebel city to Chartres ; he complied with the League so far as to swear that he would make no truce with heretics. This was prob- ably owing to his terror of the great Armada, which sailed this summer. Great was the harassed King's secret joy at the wreck of the mighty Spanish fleet, a wreck which led to mighty results in France. The States -General met at Blois in September; the Third Estate was clearly of opinion that the chief power belonged to the States and not to the King. The League 1 La Vie de Duplessis, 108. VOL. I 2 C 386 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAV. insisted upon humbling him while it retrenched the taxes and subsidies. Late in December he resolved on a bloody scheme ; Guise was lured into a trap, and murdered by the King's guards ; Coligny was well avenged. Guise's brother the Cardinal, was also put to death. A fortnight later Queen Catherine, the Jezebel of the French monarchy, followed her old accomplice in butchery to the next world. Paris was lashed into madness by her priests, so sud- denly robbed of their great idol. Fanatical indeed were the utterances of most of these men, who were ready to lay the French Church at the Pope's feet. They were not mere petty barkers ; among them stood most able theo- logians, such as Archbishop Genebrard, one of the first Hebrew scholars of the day, who was now quite ready to hand over the crown of France to her worst enemy, the gloomy Spanish despot. Even the Guises were preferable to this new master. 1 All moderate men were at a discount ; the learned Bishop Amyot was driven to make apologies to a fanatical cordelier, who openly talked of murdering his superior. " I have the people's wrath in my hand," boasted the friar, " and I can let it break any head I choose." The same boast could have been made by preachers in most parts of France. Amyot could only return to his diocese after having been furnished with a safeguard by the Pope's Legate. 2 Early in 1589 the Sorbonne declared the French people absolved from their oath to Henry III., and this had a great effect all over the realm ; the whole of the East of France rose in revolt, and Eouen perpetrated more massacres of heretics. Brittany, which hitherto had mostly stood apart from the civil wars, revolted under the Duke of Mercoeur. In April Henry was driven in his own despite to make an alliance with his cousin of Navarre ; no one did more to bring about this alliance than Chatillon, the worthy son of Coligny. Most of the nobles took the King's side, for the peasants in some parts were rising against the harsh J See Jervis, Church of France, i. 190, a work I have had always before me. 2 Labitte, Les Prtdicateurs de la Ligue, 53. iv FKANCE 387 rural system under which they groaned ; three thousand of them were slaughtered on one field. 1 Mayenne, the brother of the late Guise, for whom happily he was a poor exchange, was at the head of the League ; his great mainstay was Meudoza, King Philip's chief agent for keeping France divided. The greatest of Despots kept in his pay the democrats of the League. The free passage over the Loire was a main point with the Southern warriors, and to this end Saumur was placed in the hands of the worthy Duplessis Mornay, one of the chief constructors of the new alliance ; it was only stipulated that the heretical worship should not be publicly celebrated there for four months ; 2 the town afterwards, under its new governor, became a stronghold of Protestantism, and the seat of one of the greatest Protestant Universities. Henry III. put forth a proclamation justifying his alliance with heretics by the example of Abraham, Constantine, and the late Kings of France ; even the Pope had just made a treaty with the Protestants of Dauphine for Avignon and Venais- sin, engaging to pay them eight thousand crowns a month for their garrisons. 3 All seemed to be going well; the two Henries brought nearly forty thousand men to the siege of Paris. But Clement, a young Dominican, who had heard from his superiors that the murder of a bad King was merely an " irregular act," obtained an interview with Henry III., and plunged a knife into his victim. A few hours later the House of Valois was extinct. Coligny's old pupil, Henry of Navarre, who now became Henry IV. of France, seemed like a soldier of fortune advanced to the Crown in an age when the realm appeared to be splitting up into a crowd of republican cities (St. Malo was one) and prince-governed provinces. The League was extolling Clement as a martyr; and even Sixtus V. com- pared him in full Consistory to the Jewish heroes of old. Most of the Eoyal army dispersed at once ; the new King remained in the North, whence he could get succour from 1 Martin, x. 150. 2 La Vie de Philippe de Mornay, 131, one of the best books on these times. 3 Ibid. 133. 388 EOME AND BEFOKM CHAP. England. He gained a victory at Arques over Mayenne, who was thrice as strong as the Eoyalists. Henry was soon succoured at Dieppe by five thousand English and Scotch ; the old Swiss levies remained steady to him, and Venice recognised him. The League meanwhile was distracted by quarrels, and its allies, the Dukes of Lorraine and Savoy, were mainly intent on seizing French territory. The year 1590 began with Henry's great victory of Ivry ; x after some delay he laid siege to Paris, where, among the rest, three hundred priests and monks took up arms against their rightful King ; the Pope's Legate hailed them as true Maccabees. Paris was soon starving ; but the preachers of the League denounced any proposal to surrender. The Huguenot soldiers saw in the miseries of the great city the hand of God, who was awarding due meed for the St. Bartholomew; twelve thousand Parisians at least died of hunger ; " bread or peace " was the cry. But King Philip had ordered the great Farnese, Duke of Parma, to march to the relief of Paris ; Henry IV. in vain strove to force a battle, and the city owed its deliverance to the Spaniards. Another army of Philip's landed in Brittany, where they were faced by four thousand English. Moreover, a small Spanish army invaded Languedoc, and in 1591 Paris itself received a Spanish garrison. Henry now took Chartres after a long siege, while Philip II. was dreaming of setting his own daughter on the French throne and Rome was still thundering against the rightful heir. The Moderate Catholics were ordering the Pope's Bulls to be burnt. The Huguenot Lesdiguieres, who long ruled like a King in Dauphine", won a great battle over the Swiss and Italians, whom the Pope was pouring into hapless France. To another Huguenot chief, Turenne, was given the heiress of Bouillon and Sedan. The rising of Aragon happily pre- vented King Philip from marching one more army into Gascony; all his thoughts were now bent on mastering 1 Duplessis Mornay, in his Life, 145, attributes this victory to the King's Squadron charging a body of the enemy double their number, and outflanking them right and left, since the Royalists were drawn up in only seven ranks. The movement in flank has decided many a battle. IV FEANCE 389 France. Late in this year Henry began the siege of Eouen, where he was aided by young Essex and thousands of English. Strange it is to find cities like Eouen, Orleans, and Lyons, which had been so zealous for Eeform in 1562, now fanatical on the side of the League. France was doing her best to rival Spain. Thus Sixtus V. had long been the target of abuse in the latter country ; but now French preachers rejoiced over the Pope's death ; one of the worst of the crew, Aubry, declared that God had delivered France from a wicked and Political Pontiff, and that had Sixtus lived longer he would have been preached against in Paris. 1 The Politicals, the heirs of Erasmus and L'Hospital, were now making their influence felt ; but the Huguenots, as D'Aubign says, believed as little in this Third party as in the Third place that is, Purgatory. 2 Peace was not yet ; Frenchmen were still for a few years longer to cut them- selves with knives and lancets before the altar of their strange G-od, undergoing sufferings so fearful that no bystander was found to jeer. Once more, in 1592, Farnese was ordered by his master to raise the siege of Eouen. The two greatest generals in Europe were now matched against each other on the Seine; but Henry could not prevent the Italian's advance ; Eouen was succoured twice in this one year. Farnese received a wound in a skirmish near Caudebec, a wound that in the end proved fatal and delivered the Dutch from their worst enemy. Eome received a most deadly blow when she lost her greatest general. Meanwhile many of Henry's soldiers were grumbling at his persistence in Protestant heresy. Was France to be sacrificed to certain dark points of theology ? Even some of his own Huguenots urged him to think of his conversion ; the new Pope, Clement VIII., was not such a furious bigot as his latest predecessors ; Mayenne had begun to waver ; even Paris talked of peace and listened to the Politicals. Farnese, the one man who could have kept the war alive, was in his grave. Early in 1593 the States-General met at Paris ; the nobles would hardly take part in the factious 1 Labitte, 85. 2 Ibid. 105. 390 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. assembly, which obeyed Mayenne, the Pope's Legate, and Philip's envoy ; the latter openly claimed the French Crown for a Spanish Princess. To counteract these, Henry now proclaimed his desire for instruction in religion ; in July he heard the Protestant service for the last time ; he then went through the farce of consulting several French Bishops, and at St. Denis was received into the Eoman Church. The civil war ought now to have been at an end, but it went on furiously for some years longer. The States- General showed their quality by voting away the liberties of the Gallican Church. The fanatics preached against the King's pretended conversion, and roared for a new Ehud or Jehu ; an attempt on Henry's life speedily followed. Pope Clement was not very favourable to the new conversion ; he said that he would never believe in it unless assured by an angel ; he called the Catholics of Henry's party " bastards of the bondmaid," while the Leaguers were the legitimate children ; he would give the King no better name than " Navarre." ] This Papal perverseness inflicted two years of suffering upon luckless France. In 1594 many towns went over to Henry's side; he was crowned King, not at Eeiins, but at Chartres. It was not long since his only title with many Frenchmen had been " the Archduke of Geneva." In the spring he made his entry into Paris, after a hard bargain with her governor ; these high men of the League commonly demanded exorbitant fees before they would join in effecting the salvation of their country. Three thousand Spanish soldiers were allowed to march out of the capital, so long their ally ; the Sorbonne resisted for a whole month before it would renounce the League. Paris was followed by the North and East of France. One of the masterpieces of French wit, the famous Satyre Menippte, the work of both Gallicans and Huguenots, came forth to seal the downfall of the League ; Eabelais was triumphing over Loyola. This satire, so it is said, was as useful to Henry as his victory at Ivry. 2 Queen 1 Jervis, Gallican Church, i. 201. 2 This is the great specimen of French prose between Montaigne and Pascal. Nothing is more amusing than the bad Latin attributed to the IV FKANCE 391 Elizabeth sent troops to aid in driving the Spaniards out of Brittany, while Henry himself took Laon, seated on her lofty hill ; Amiens soon followed Laon. The young Duke of Guise, the fourth Duke of that title who had played a part in France all through this Century, came over to Henry, receiving a round sum of money. The peasants in Guienne and Gascony had risen, to the number of forty thousand, to obtain relief from the feudal tyranny under which they had long groaned ; the King gave them some redress and employed them against the League ; the same spirit of revolt blazed up in the Celtic part of Brittany. A young pupil of the Jesuits all but murdered Henry in Paris because the King was not " approved " by the Pope. The Parliaments of Paris and of some other cities at once banished from their boundaries the great and baleful Order ; thus began the new year 1595. Henry, infuriated more than ever against the Spanish King, the great patron of murder, invaded Philip's province of Tranche Comte, and Burgundy was almost entirely conquered. A more important victory was gained at Rome ; Clement VIII., after long hesitation, admitted Henry into the communion of the Church, and no longer exacted the extermination of the Huguenots or the admission of the Papal right to dis- pose of the Crown. One part of the great ceremony was disgusting to all good Gallicans ; the Pope had smitten the King's two envoys with a little rod. What would Philip the Fair, or even Henry II., have said to this ? The preachers of the League, such as Boucher, boldly declared that the Pope had no power to absolve the heretic. Union between true French patriots was the one thing needful ; the state of the land was appalling. We may take Angoumois as a fair specimen of what the provinces, the seat of the war, underwent ; we learn that most of her inhabitants left their homes for two years after 1588, scourged by plague and famine. Taxes had made agriculture Pope's Legate and to Cardinal De Pelve". The Sieur de Rieux, one of the ruffians of the League, gives a fearful account of the tortures inflicted on honest Frenchmen to extract their money, or in his own words, ' ' pour les faire venir a raison." 392 KOME AND KEFORM CHAP. almost impossible. Soldiers marched through the land pillag- ing everywhere, and goading the peasants to rise in rebellion. Some of the finest castles were destroyed. So widespread was the desolation, that Catholics and Huguenots actually combined together in 1595. Another revolt broke out two years later. 1 If we turn from the Angoumoisins to the Bretons, there is no improvement ; the League seems to have driven the whole of France mad. Brittany was not afflicted with civil wars until very late in the day, but in 1589 Nantes and most of the province revolted. The town of St. Malo would obey neither party, but acted for itself. Spaniards and English wrestled together in Brittany. One Leaguer, of the name of Fontenelle, was the scourge of the Western part of the province, where the people have always been most devoted to Eome ; he slew in one day fifteen hundred peasants. By the end of 1597 his victims amounted to five thousand ; he was a brigand on the land and a pirate on the sea. He once forced his way into a castle, stabbed the lord, outraged the lady, and tortured their child to death by means of a cat. 2 In the same year a huge Spanish fleet was wrecked on the rocks of Brittany, and this loss was the forerunner of peace. Fuentes, the new Spanish general in Flanders, was most successful in his invasion of Northern France. Early in 1 5 9 o Henry made his treaty with Mayenne, the Chief of the League, which thenceforth went steadily down ; even bigoted Toulouse gave way. D'Epernon, the old favourite of Henry III., took Spanish pay, but was unable to hand over Marseilles to Philip. The Spanish troops captured Calais, and Queen Elizabeth was in no hurry to drive them out; her fleet was better employed at the sack of Cadiz. At this moment Henry had the happiness to pick out the stern Huguenot Sully as the man fittest to set in order the exhausted finances of France ; the new minister was soon able to bring in half a million of crowns. 1 See Bujeaud, Ohronique Protcstante de L'Angoumois, 89, 104, 109. It shows us very clearly the union between the Calvinist nobles and ministers. 2 Daru, Histoire de Bretagne, iii. 302-332. It is a comfort to know that this ruffian was broken on the wheel for another crime some years later. IV FEANCE 393 Early in 1597 the Spaniards surprised the great city of Amiens, which they held for six months ; Brittany and Savoy also gave much trouble to Henry. But Philip was now bankrupt, and was willing to treat ; Holland had made great progress whenever the Spanish arms had been directed to France. Brittany was at last won over to Henry's side, a huge sum, as usual, being exacted by her arch-rebel. The League was now at an end ; it is not often that so strange a mixture of Democracy and Ultramontanism has ever been seen ; we are here reminded sometimes of Marat, sometimes of Veuillot. 1 Bossuet in his Variations has to skip very nimbly over this most curious part of French Church history, where a votary of the Divine right of Kings must find little to admire. This year Henry signed the renowned Edict of Nantes. The religious wars that had been raging for thirty-six years after the affair of Vassy were now to have an end. The Edict (what a satire !) was to be perpetual and irrevocable. Freedom of worship was granted to many towns, and also to the owners of fiefs ; Protestant books might be published, and a special Chamber was created in the Parliament of Paris, where Protestant causes might be judged. On the other hand, the Huguenots were to pay tithes to the priests. Some of the more bigoted provinces refused to register the great Edict ; Henry was forced to tell the lawyers of Toulouse that they still had something of the Spaniard in their bellies. Within five years after the King's absolution there were no fewer than five plots against his life. 2 In May 1598 the Peace of Vervins was signed ; Spain gave up Calais and a few other towns to France ; Holland and England would not be included in the Treaty. King Philip's death soon followed ; but Henry IV. had still twelve years of a glorious and useful reign before him. Agriculture, commerce, roads, canals, taxation, silk manu- facture, were all taken in hand by the King and his great minister ; Canada was colonised ; noble buildings arose ; the Cathedral of Orleans, ruined by the Huguenots, was rebuilt 1 Something of the same kind was seen in Ireland after 1880. 2 Martin, x. 507. 394 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. as we see it now, in a style by no means equal to the old Gothic. As to French learning, the names of Scaliger and Casaubon were without dispute the first names in Europe ; Italy, the old nurse of scholarship, was now making way for France. The most interesting spot in Paris was the house of the great De Thou, where a knot of lawyers and magis- trates met to discuss points of learning and politics. They were nearly all Moderate Catholics, who saw clearly where the true interest of France lay. A wide gap separated them from the Jesuits and Ultramontanes ; many a letter did De Thou write explaining to subjects of King Philip why some mercy ought to be shown to Protestants, and why the policy of the Guises had not been altogether wise. Critics like Scioppius were never weary of pointing out to De Thou that the slaughters recorded in the Old Testament were the true model to follow, and that the tolerant Henry IV. was no better than half-hearted Jehoshaphat. 1 The lies spread abroad about this time by the German Ultramontanes when dealing with any eminent Protestant are something past belief. 2 Their brethren, the Jesuits in France, coming forward as rivals to the decaying University of Paris, soon got into their hands the teaching of the French youth, and had their colleges in most French towns. It was by slow degrees only that the French were learning to tolerate each other ; the clergy of Saintes had a strong dislike to Protestant cemeteries ; the King himself had to overbear the opposition of an abbess to these grave- yards. At historic Jarnac we see the Huguenots restoring the church to its old owners, and buying a barn for their own service. The monks of a neighbouring abbey got leave from the King to make search for the missing orna- ments, books, and charters of their foundation. 3 Now and then there was an outbreak of the old spirit, as when the Synod of Gap in 1603 branded the Pope as Antichrist. The hundreds of thousands of the dead might be buried, 1 See the fifteenth volume of De Thou's History for his correspondence on these points. 2 See Pattison's Life of Casaubon ; that grave man was actually charged with unnatural crime, p. 444. 3 Bujeaud, L' Angouvwis, 111, 112. IV FKANCE 395 but certain monuments of the late civil wars were always before the eyes of Frenchmen ; for instance, the hundred and fifty ruined cathedrals and abbeys, and the far greater number of destroyed parish churches. 1 The Duke of Kohan, who travelled through Europe in 1600, envies the English their method of waging civil war ; it was ended in that happy country by pitched battles, and therefore did not last long ; and besides, there it was the nobles, not the commons, that suffered cruelty. 2 As to the future, Queen Elizabeth was old, King Henry was young ; so, as Eohan thought, France in the future would enjoy as much prosperity as England had done in the past. The young travelled Duke turned out to be a bad prophet. In 1600 Henry assailed Savoy and had an interview with the aged Beza, the Patriarch of the Huguenots ; he also married Mary de Medicis, a Tuscan lady who replaced the King's former wife, and who turned out a weak tool of Spain. The peace seemed to be merely an armed truce ; the Spaniards gained Marshal Biron, who drew into a plot, by various lures, both zealous Catholics and stubborn Huguenots, such as Bouillon (Turenne). In 1602 the King put Biron to death, and thus gave a stern lesson to all whom it might concern, whether Frenchmen or foreigners. He threw his shield over Geneva, and in 1603 had to mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth, whom he called " his second self." That same year the Jesuits were allowed to return to France, much against the will of the Gallicans ; on the other hand, Henry permitted the Huguenots to build a temple for their worship six miles out of Paris. The King's council was divided ; many, the remnant of the old League, longed for union with Spain, while others, as Sully, would not abandon their Protestant brethren abroad. 1 In Beauce alone, not far from Paris, 300 of these latter had fallen. What must it have been in the South ! See Jervis, Church of France, i. 215. 2 Rohan pronounces that the English were more cruel than the French ; I suppose he had seen some bear-baiting and bull-baiting in London. But how about the St. Bartholomew ? This he accounts for by setting it down to the Devil's arts, since such a thing was not natural to Frenchmen. He says nothing about the horrors of 1562 and the wars in his native Brittany just before Henry IV. became master of all. Rohan's Travels are added to his Memoirs in the edition of 1665. See for the above pp. 366-370. 396 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. About this time foreign observers give us some insight into the state of France, now on her road to recovery. In 1602 Maurice, the Landgrave of Hesse, the wisest of German statesmen, undertook a tour through France. He was enraptured by the climate and the vegetation as he went along examining old ruins, churches, and cabinets of medals, sometimes lodging in a fisherman's hut, sometimes in a nobleman's palace, listening to wandering musicians and tasting the wine. He went down the Rhone to Marseilles, whence the Calvinist Prince had to withdraw speedily, for the Duke of Guise, the governor, was bent on celebrating the family exploit on St. Bartholomew's Day by dances and feasts. The traveller mourned over the little care bestowed upon the old monuments at Aries and Nismes. He was charmed with Protestant Montpellier, which possessed a garden of exotic plants and a cabinet of natural history. Carcassone still bore the marks of the late war, when the city and the lower town had taken opposite sides. From Toulouse he went down the river to Bordeaux, where he played on the great organs in the churches. He saw bridges being built, and rivers in the act of being made navigable. He was delighted with the clean streets of Tours, and saw a comedy at Blois. 1 He visited Fontaine- bleau, where five thousand birds were kept, some for song, others for the kitchen. He had a secret interview with Sully at the Arsenal in Paris, and with Sully's master at Saint Germain, which was then new. He calls the relics at St. Denis " holy buffooneries." He left France by way of Metz, after having thoroughly discussed the politics of Europe with the great Henry. 2 The King protested that he was still devoted to The Religion (reformed), and that he even proposed to make a public confession of it afresh before his death. 3 Later than the German's visit, Badoer and other Veiie- 1 Our traveller had his own plays acted at Cassel in different tongues, sometimes by pupils of his academy, sometimes by English actors, then reckoned the best in Europe. Could he have known any of Shakespere's pieces ? 2 Rommel, Correspondence de Henri IV. avec Maurice Ic Savant, 56-67. 3 Ibid. 79. iv FKANCE 397 tian Envoys, soon after 1605, set before us the abundance of all things in France even after long civil wars ; the thirteen millions of inhabitants ; the wealth of Paris, with its population of four hundred thousand ; the revenues that, under Sully's fostering hand, had mounted of late to twelve millions of gold, half of which went to pay the debts of the Crown, and much of the rest to arm the nation. It was the body of a Giant ; but in many provinces, especially in the South, were to be seen the sad tokens of the late civil wars, burnt churches and villages with nothing but the walls remaining. 1 Still, Marseilles was now rising in the world, with three hundred ships in her harbour, doing a vast trade with the Levant for the benefit of Italy and Spain, and by degrees taking the place of Venice." As to the French King's army, the infantry of old had been furnished by Germany and the Swiss Cantons, but the late civil broils had turned all men into soldiers, especially the Gascons, who had always had a special turn for war. 3 The French foot soldiers, the men whose sons were later to conquer at Eocroy and Lens, were the true offspring of the Huguenot wars, which gave to France a wholly new direction, and taught her to trust to her own levies, not to foreigners, in the matter of pike and arquebuse. The French, frivolous and hot- headed, set little store by their lives ; their murderous duels astonished foreign observers ; eight thousand gentlemen, besides others of lower birth, had perished in these combats since the end of the great war. 4 How different was this state of things from the all but total absence of duels in Cromwell's army, where each officer believed his life to be due, first to the Almighty, then to England ! The French nobles lived at Court for a quarter of the year and passed the other three-quarters on their estates. As to Church matters, France had never accepted the Council of Trent or the Bull In ccend Domini ; the Pope was not allowed to exact money on any pretext without the consent of the King and clergy ; countless disorders had been the fruit of the famous Concordat, since the Crown was wont to bestow 1 See Barozzi, Selazioni Vencte, serie 2, Fraiicia, i. 84, 97, 454. 2 Ibid. 493. 3 Ibid. 454. 4 Ibid. 87, 212. 398 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. Church preferment on worthless laymen, women, and heretics. One-third of the realm was possessed by Church- men ; there were ninety-four Prelates and about six hundred Abbots, who were sternly kept beneath the authority of the Parliaments ; four hundred thousand crowns were the usual yearly payment of the clergy to the King. 1 As to their enemies, there were three thousand and five hundred gentle- men of the Huguenot persuasion, and that party could bring 25,000 good soldiers into the field. They held seventy-six posts, garrisoned by four thousand of their own men, to whom the King paid yearly more than 200,000 ducats ; he also gave large sums for the maintenance of their clergy. The distribution of their numbers is interest- ing; in Languedoc they had 203 churches, in Provence 94, in Normandy 59, in Orleans and Berri 39, in Brittany 14, in Burgundy 11. Lyons had been one of the great Hugue- not strongholds in 1562, but forty years later the party held only four churches in that district. Their religion was tolerated in 739 places of France altogether. They had four colleges, to which the King gave forty thousand crowns ; most learned men, bitter enemies of the Pope, came forth from these institutions to keep at work the printing presses of France and Germany. The marriages of apostate priests were held good ; ministers were freed from all public burdens and taxes. 2 One advantage of the religious peace was that Catholic worship had now been restored in many cities of Languedoc and Gascony, whence it had been clean swept away. The Huguenots held their General Assembly once a year by the King's favour. So strong was the party that when at Nismes the Jesuits published Garnet's famous miracle, wrought in England, they were driven out by the populace, and their college was pulled down. 3 One of the great Huguenot chiefs, Sully, had been heard to boast that through him the Crown had gained fourteen millions of gold ; we need not wonder at his influence with his beloved King. 4 Let us call another witness, an Englishman. Sir George 1 See Barozzi, Relazioni Vcncte, serie 2, Francia, i. 251. 2 Ibid. 94, 219. :i Ibid. 487. 4 Ibid. 230. IV FRANCE 399 Carew places before us most vividly the aims of Henry and the state of his Court and his subjects as they stood in 1609. No King of France ever paid away so much in pensions, and most of these went to the inferior nobles who followed the Court seeking employment ; King Henry did not in reality discourage duelling among them. The middle class seemed to addict themselves to chicanery rather than to war ; there was a regular sale of offices at fourteen years' purchase, one of the most assured revenues of the Crown ; it was said to wring the financiers like sponges. Yet all officials, after buying their places, took a solemn oath that they had done nothing of the kind. The corn, and also the labour, of France was carried into Spain and was exchanged for the precious metals. The French were held to be neat and nimble beyond all other manufacturers ; the King had set up many new crafts at Paris, drawing foreigners into his realm ; he had enjoined the planting of mulberry trees, and thus hoped to make France the staple for all the silk to be worn in North Europe. Canals were to be cut and marshes drained ; new buildings at the Louvre were rising ; tapestry was being wrought at a place called the Gobelins. Hence there were about five hundred families in Paris that ate from silver plate. On the other hand, the peasantry were crushed by their landlords and by taxation ; their minds were base and their bodies " wearish and shrimp- like " ; even their beasts were taxed. They complained that Henry sought to be King, not of Frenchmen, but of beggars ; he was like the petty pilling tyrants of Italy. Most different was the lot of the English and Scotch peasants. The Church was kept well in hand ; Bishops had to give up to the Crown much money, sometimes to the value of half the See. The Pope's Nuncio could make but small gains in France; his brother in Spain could make 100,000 crowns in three or four years by reason of faculties, dispensations, and collations of benefices. 1 All the world has heard of the grand plan of Henry IV. ; how he purposed to overthrow the Hapsburgs both of 1 Sir George Carew's relation, printed in Birch's Negotiations between England, France, and Brussels. 400 EOME AND EEFOEM OHAI-. Madrid and Vienna, and to parcel out great parts of their lands among the small States of Europe, while France was to gather into her bosom all French-speaking provinces. In spite of the Jesuits, now pressing onward everywhere, Roman, Lutheran, and Calvinist were to dwell together in unity ; the Turk in the end was to be driven back to Asia. The Princes of Hesse and Anhalt, champions of Calvinism, came to consult the great French King ; the main point was to snatch the Empire from the Hapsburgs. This bait was dangled before the Duke of Bavaria, but nothing could reconcile the Lutherans and Calvinists. 1 Meanwhile Henry had gained great influence with the new Pope, Paul V., by championing Rome in her fierce dispute with Venice. In 1 6 9 Spain abated her pride so far as to sign a truce for twelve years with her Dutch rebels. Her great Parisian enemy looked out into Asia as well as Europe ; he knew the move- ments of Shah Abbas against the Turk ; it is strange to find the French King, unwitting of 1871, straining his influence in Poland to advance the interests of the Hohenzollerns. 2 The Venetian Envoys at Paris cannot say enough of Henry IV., " the King of captains and Captain of kings," who captured first the bodies and then the souls of the French. These foreigners set forth in a clear light his designs against Spain, his league with the Dutch, his dependence on the Danes for ships, his resolve to divide Lombardy between his Savoyard and Venetian allies, taking Savoy for his own share ; Pope Paul V. was to be drawn in by the gift of a Duchy to the Borghese nephew ; the Three Leagues of the Grisons and the Swiss were all ready for action ; Genoa, the handmaid of Spain, was to be mastered by force or by intrigue. 3 All was going well ; the German quarrel in 1 6 9 as to the Duchy of Cleves, which was claimed both by a Catholic and a Protestant, seemed to give Henry a grand 1 Surius, who died before this time, gives a striking picture of their quarrels all through his century. 2 Rommel, Correspondence de Henri IV. avec Maurice le Savant, 381. ' J This appears from the despatches of the luckless Foscarini. Barozzi, Jtelazioni Fenete, serie 2, Francia, i. 307-322 ; see also 466. iv FKANCE 401 chance of intervention abroad. Even the worst side of his own character seemed to advance his political interest ; he had already kept three mistresses at once, besides the Queen ; he was now madly in love with the Princess of Conde", a girl of fifteen. Her uncourtly husband, the son of Henry's old Huguenot comrade, bore her off to Brussels, where the Spaniards gave their protection to the pair. Henry was furious at this check; in 1610 he made his long -projected alliance with the Germans, Dutch, and English. The Pope, along with other Italian States, had been won over ; Spain had just been weakened by the expulsion of the Moriscoes. The Jesuits instinctively saw the danger threatening the Church ; those at Paris were thundering against Henry and his vile Edict. 1 Great armies were on foot ; as to generals, Spain had Spinola alone, who would have to command against both Henry and Maurice of Orange. But all these fair hopes were suddenly blasted in May, when Eavaillac murdered his King. Never did knife-thrust achieve so much ; all danger was averted from the Hapsburgs, and the Thirty Years' War became a certainty ; Germany was to be afflicted in the future as much as France had been in the past. The Jesuits now saw a noble game before them ; Spain had thirty years of empire still to come. Eavaillac had been evidently bred among the survivors of the League, as we see by his words, pronounced not long before his awful death : " The Pope is God, and God is the Pope." 2 The immediate result of his crime was that Sully was thrown aside, and that all power was given to the Florentine Queen, Mary de' Medici, a strong partisan of Spain. The great nobles at once seized upon the treasure that had been laid up for years with a view to the coming war. The religious disputes inside the Church were still raging ; 1 Father Cotton, Henry's Confessor, told the Spanish Envoys that his men (the Jesuits) were sons of the Spanish King. See Les Princes de Oondl, ii. 339. Henry forgot, so his subjects said, that the finest cotton came from Spain. a Pope Paul V., on hearing of King Henry's death, said to the envoy from Flanders, "Dominus exercituum fecit hoc et quia erat datus (rex) in reprobum sensum." See Phillippson, Heinrich IV. und Philipp III., 486. VOL. I 2 D 402 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. half a year after Henry's murder the Parliament of Paris was examining Cardinal Bellarmine's hook, whereby it was proved that the Pope could depose Kings and set free subjects from their oaths of allegiance. This work was now forbidden to be printed or sold in France. The Nuncio at once remonstrated at the new insult to the Pope, and threatened to leave the country. Thereupon the Queen summoned before her the leading men of the Parliament ; the First President made an eloquent speech, bewailing Henry's murder under pretext of religion, and touching upon Mariana's doctrine of regicide. " The late King," said the speaker, " would have gone to Borne itself to chastise Bellarmine." The Nuncio could get no satis- faction, even after alleging that the Cardinal had not made any reference to France in his work, and that Paul V. had known nothing about the book until it had been printed. 1 Wide indeed was the difference between France and the other Latin nations ; thus Vanini about this time discusses the question of demoniacal possession ; this, he says, is believed in by all Spaniards and Italians ; by few in France ; by no one in Germany and England. 2 But even in France there was room for improvement ; Vanini was burnt at the stake as an atheist in 1619; he had unluckily gone to Toulouse, the most bigoted place in the land. The President who condemned him says, " There is not a city in France where the laws are more stern against heresy; the Edict of Nantes grants toleration to the Calvinists, but they have never dared to establish them- selves in Toulouse ; this is the only French city exempt from heresy." 3 Toulouse seemed now to enjoy more influence than La Eochelle ; the Parliament at Paris could have little effect upon the Court, whence Sully was banished, and where Concini, an Italian thought to be too intimate with the Queen, wielded great power. The Huguenots saw some of their leaders perverted by worldly ambition ; but the 1 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, serie 2, Francia, i. 351. 2 Palumbo, Vita di Vanini, 86. 3 Ibid. 19. iv FEANCE 403 Duke of Eohan, Sully's son-in-law, was plainly training himself to rival Coligny. The Jesuits gained a victory over the Sorbonne, and, moreover, Pope Paul V. was able to prevent the great De Thou from sitting in his rightful place as First President of the Parliament. The noble historian was branded as a heretic, both on account of his remarks on the Popes, and of his services in drawing up the hateful Edict of Nantes. 1 We see Gallicanism and Ultramontanism locked in deadly grapple. Queen Mary was zealous for the latter ; in 1613 she made her foreign favourite Concini a Marshal of France, though he had never borne arms. He could be of little use to his mistress against the greedy nobles, who were now always in revolt, and who had to be well paid for their submission. There is a marked contrast in France between the twelve years before 1610 and the fourteen years that followed. Late in 1614 the States-General were assembled for the last time before the great Eevolution. The commons, composed mainly of lawyers, made a firm stand against the clergy and the nobles; Savaron harangued against the privileges of the aristocracy in a speech worthy of 1789. The nobles declared that there was no more brotherhood between themselves and the commons than between a master and his valet. Besides this, the Third Estate made a stout resistance against Rome ; their proposals were de- nounced by the clergy as sheer Protestantism ; even Eiche- lieu himself, who held a small bishopric, took the Pope's side. The commons steadily refused to receive the decrees of Trent accepted by the other two Chambers. Eichelieu made an eloquent speech as a Church Eeformer. In the end the Court forbade the commons to reassemble ; the whole affair of these States- General ended in nothing, except in the discovery of the future great Cardinal. In 1615 the Queen-Mother effected a double marriage with the Spanish House ; Anne of Austria came North as the bride of young Louis XIII., though many good French- men took up arms against this anti-national policy. Cond^, the supposed son of King Henry's old comrade, a Prince 1 Martin, France, xi. 33. 404 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. whose parentage lay open to the gravest suspicions, now made himself the ally of the Huguenots, and in the next year was thrown into the Bastille. A far greater man, Richelieu, took service under Government immediately after- wards, and his firm hand at once made itself felt both at home and abroad. Concini, the Queen-Mother's minion, had now a rival in young Luynes, the King's favourite ; and in 1617 the strife between them ended in the murder of Concini by the King's command, to the joy of the Parisians. A youth of sixteen and his chosen friend, both of them devoted to Eome,now ruled France. Richelieu was sent back to his bishopric, while the Jesuits gained great influence over the feeble King, and urged him to assail the accursed Huguenots. In 1618 the privileges of Protestant Be"arn were threatened. This year saw the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, whence France was in the end to gain so much. The Jesuits at her Court at once drew a parallel between the rebels of Bohemia and their brethren of Beam ; but the Queen-Mother, acting in constant opposition to her son, gave the Huguenots a respite for two years. Meanwhile the Emperor Ferdinand had gained Luynes to the Ultramontane side by the bribe of an heiress for his brother. Ossuna, who had been ready to rid Southern Italy of the Spanish yoke, was now thrown over by the French Court. In 1620 a French embassy was sent to Germany; the envoys discouraged the Protestants, and had no small share in effecting the ruin of Bohemia. The far-seeing design of Henry IV. was indeed reversed by his feeble son ; for the first and the last time France, Spain, Austria, and Poland were all acting on the same side. 1 At home Louis marched to Be"arn, and thus began a new war with the Huguenots that lasted, more or less, for nine years. Strong in his army, he gave back the tithes to the Catholic clergy, whom his grandmother, the famous Jeanne, had stripped of all endowments ; he issued an edict which united Be"arn and part of Navarre to the Crown of France. The Huguenots 1 The politics of this time may be well studied in the Letters of Cardinal Bentivoglio, then at Paris. iv FKANCE 405 at once held an assembly, and began to defy the King. The Hapsburgs repaid the kind offices of France in 1620 by promoting a massacre of her allies in the Valteline. Howell visited France in 1619, and calls her " one of Nature's choicest masterpieces, one of Ceres' chiefest barns for corn, one of Bacchus' prime wine-cellars, and of Neptune's best salt-pits." The only thing wanting is the equal dis- tribution of wealth among the inhabitants ; for there is not upon earth a richer country and poorer people. England has to import corn every year from either France or Dantzic; there are more heaths, commons, and waste grounds in England than in France. The Normans drink cider, and are more plump and replete in their bodies than wine-drinkers. There is a bridge of boats at Eouen whereon coaches and carts may pass. Paris is a huge magazine of men, but most filthy; the traffic of carts is astonishing. The plague is always in some corner or other of the city, which is not so populous as London. Robberies and murders happen every night, and in this London is different. There is hardly a market town but has a statue of the late King Henry ; English Kings have to content themselves with sign-posts. St. Malo had a garrison of dogs to get rid of the carrion ; the Turks in our day have something like this. The men of La Eochelle are not so hospit- able as other Frenchmen, but most republics partake of this fault. The town has the strongest ramparts by sea of any place in Christendom ; even the Dutch towns are not so well fortified. Howell, a Welshman, took par- ticular interest in Brittany. 1 Paris abounded with pamphlets and pasquils ; in reading her well- written Gazettes men might feel the general pulse of Christendom, and know the names of the greatest men in the world. Howell draws out at great length an admirable contrast between the Frenchman and the Spaniard. 2 In 1621 Louis once more marched against the Hugue- nots, who set at their head eight great nobles, presiding over eight provinces. Their enemies declared that this was to change France into an imitation of the United Provinces ; 1 Howell's Letters, 21, 32. J Howell's Foreign Travel, 52, 57. 406 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. but many of the proposed Protestant leaders wisely re- mained neutral. It was the ministers who now prevailed over the nobles of the party, the artisans over the mer- chants. The town of Saumur, a Huguenot stronghold, was mastered through most unkingly lies. Some of the fiery spouters at the late Assembly were the first to go over to the side of Louis. He undertook the siege of Montau- ban, which held out stoutly for nearly three months, while Eohan, who was not to be bribed, hovered in the rear of the besiegers. Luynes died soon afterwards, having been able to misgovern France for four years. The Huguenots carried on the war in 1622, and ruined some fine old churches ; on the ocean the seamen of La Rochelle plundered every ship they could meet with and blockaded the mouths of French rivers. They were, in truth, practically acting at this moment as the allies of the Spaniard, the worst of all their enemies. Louis gained a great victory over Soubise, Eohan's brother ; Chatillon, the grandson of Coligny, went over to the King's side, and the aged Lesdignieres, the greatest French general of the time, forsook Protestantism. 1 The false-hearted Conde, one of the main causes of the civil war, began the siege of Mont- pellier ; but peace was signed late in the year. The Huguenots had by this time lost both Beam and Poitou ; treachery was at work among them, as is made very plain in the Memoirs of Eohan. French affairs were faring badly abroad, both in Germany and Italy ; Spain and England seemed about to unite together in 1623. A struggle was going on at Paris between the Spanish party and the national party, led by Cardinal Eichelieu, who had long had great influence with the Queen-Mother. At last, in 1624, he became the real prime minister, and his power was to last for eighteen years. He at once renewed the old alliance of France with all foreign Protestants. He first, with the aid of the Swiss Cantons, drove the Austrians out of the Grison country, 1 Of this last, Rohan, who did not love him, says that but for some faults, "il se pourroit comparer aux plus grands personnages de 1'Auti- quiteV' Memoirs, 178. iv FEANCE 407 and even attacked the Pope's soldiers, who were there in garrison. A great outcry arose throughout Europe when it was seen that the Cardinal had no scruples, even when the interests of Pope Urban VIII. were at stake. More would have been done, but suddenly, early in 1625, Soubise drew the Huguenots once more into rebellion, and this broke all Kichelieu's great designs for checking the Hapsburg power. This folly of the French Protestants probably prolonged the agony of their German brethren for a score of years. 1 Blucher has won everlasting renown because, in a day big with the fate of Europe, he left a part of his own forces to almost certain defeat while he led his main strength to the decisive point of the campaign, where at some distance his allies were struggling for the great Cause. The French Huguenots were not equally wise ; they should have known that the real issues linked with Protestantism must be settled on the Ehine and the Elbe, not on the Garonne. They had, it is true, grievous cause for complaint in the broken promises of Louis, but their leader Eohan was no Coligny. The great Admiral would never have listened to the agents of Spain, had they offered him their alliance against the Government at Paris ; this was now the policy of Madrid. Eichelieu found himself interrupted in his vast designs for changing the face of Europe. La Eochelle began the rising, and Languedoc followed later ; the action of the French troops in Italy was much enfeebled. The Cardinal's new allies, England and Holland, sent their fleets to help him to put down the revolt of their Protestant brethren, but in vain. Early in 1626 Eichelieu, hampered on all sides, checked by De Berulle and the Ultramontane party, found himself forced to grant terms to the Hugue- nots, and at the same time to join with Spain in a peace that gave little satisfaction to his friends in Italy and the Grisons. The rulers of England and Savoy never forgave the Cardinal for this last piece of diplomacy. 1 This folly was the work of a small minority. Soubise, as his brother Rohan tell us, was ' ' desavoud par la Ville de la Rochelle, mesme par les Deputez generaux, et par toutes les personnes de qualite de la Religion, qui estoient a Paris." Memoirs, 148. 408 EOME AND KEFOEM CHAP. He now began the third of the three great works that entitle him to a foremost place in French history ; he had already struck at the Huguenots and the Hapsburgs ; he in 1626 smote some of the French nobles who had conspired to take his life. He strove hard to keep peace between the University and the Jesuits. In 1625 Santarelli printed a certain book at Eoine, with the approbation of Vitelleschi, the General of the Jesuits, of the Pope's Vicegerent, and of the Master of the Sacred Palace. In this book it was maintained that the Pope may depose Kings for heresy and for other crimes, and that Kings were only his delegates. Eome seemed to be acting as if her power was waxing instead of waning. The principal Jesuits of Paris were ordered by the Parliament to subscribe a disavowal of these maxims ; they did this, and explained afterwards to the Nuncio that they had made mental reservations. Pope Urban was most angry with Vitelleschi on learning the shuffling tactics that had been adopted by the General. The Nuncio at Paris was furious with Eichelieu ; " the Cardinal may be a good Frenchman, but he is not a good Catholic." The Sorbonne had shown itself a pulpit of pestilence ; it had acted as the ally of the Parliament. De Berulle played the part of peacemaker, and at length Pope Urban could please himself with the thought that he had triumphed in the dispute. 1 This whole affair was one of the last attempts to revive the pure Ultramontane doctrines of the past. It must be remembered that at this moment Eome was conquering all along the line. Orders were given that the feudal fortresses throughout France should be demolished. The kingdom was now to have a navy ; and it was time, for the English King and his favourite Buckingham were bent upon a foolish war with France, and readily threw over the cause of German Protestantism. Early in 1627 these unwise politicians began hostilities, making lavish promises to the French Huguenots ; Eohan once more was the evil genius of his brethren. La Eochelle made some delay before rising against her King ; Buckingham, who led the English forces, 1 Tabaraud, Histoire du Cardinal de Berulle, i. 421-440. iv FRANCE 409 soon blundered into defeat in the Isle of Ee. In August the army of Louis appeared before the Huguenot capital ; the King and the Cardinal soon followed, bent on taming the great stronghold once for all. Their troops, punctually paid, showed great zeal ; the lines of the besiegers were three leagues in length, and the famous dyke, a work of months, barred all access from the sea to the doomed city. The great Spinola, visiting the French lines, could not help expressing his admiration, though the Court of Spain was secretly on the side of the rebels and was engaged in counter- working France in Northern Italy. Thus opened the year 1628. The English fleet came again in May, but could not break through the dyke. All hope seemed at an end, but the mayor Guiton was resolved on holding out. In June famine began to oppress the besieged ; many women, children, and old men died between the town walls and the lines of the besiegers. Buckingham fell by an assassin's hand ; his fleet, numbering a hundred and twenty ships, made one more attempt in September, but was beaten off. Late in October La Eochelle yielded ; it is said that she had only 136 men left who could bear arms ; about fourteen thousand, one - half of the population, had died of hunger. The sturdy Guiton acknowledged to Richelieu that the King who had taken the city must be a better master than the King who had not succoured it. Few French cities, for the last sixty years, had had so stirring a history as La Rochelle. All her privileges were now abolished ; she was made a bishopric, and her walls were razed, but the Protestants were allowed to keep their own faith. The siege had lasted fourteen months. Eohan should now have yielded, but he insisted on carrying on a needless war in Languedoc. The great Cardinal was by this time so firm in the saddle that he lectured both the King and the Queen -Mother on their many faults ; the lady, Eichelieu's old patroness, had now thrown herself openly into the arms of the Ultramontane party. Early in 1629 Louis and his minister led a French army over the Alps and mastered Piedmont ; Charles the First made peace, basely abandoning the 410 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP, Huguenots, whom he had lured to their ruin. Eohan ould do little against the fifty thousand soldiers launched upon him by Eichelieu ; the Duke was now brought so low as to receive Spanish pay. Privas was taken and the Privadois were nearly rooted out ; Alais also surrendered. Louis confirmed the Edict of Nantes, but at the same time refused to allow the Huguenots to have any fortified strong- holds. Montauban, the last Protestant city to yield, now welcomed the great conquering Cardinal, who was most courteous to her Protestant ministers ; Eohan betook him- self to foreign countries. In August 1629 the Eeligious Wars of France came to an end, after having lasted for two generations. D'Aubigne, when a child, had seen the beginning of these wars at Amboise, and now the old man, an exile at Geneva, mourned over the decisive fall of his brethren. There was no longer to be a kingdom within a kingdom ; France was henceforth to enjoy the unity she prizes so much. Happy had it been for her if her later rulers had imitated the tolerance of Eichelieu, shown in the very moment of his triumph over the heretics, while Ultramontanes were gnashing their teeth at his lukewarm- ness. France owes to Eichelieu's policy fifty glorious years ; at the end of that time this policy was changed by men of low and bigoted intellect. 1 Eebellions commonly damage a kingdom, but the Huguenot party was of some service to France in breaking her religious unity. Nothing can be more different than the Gallican Church for fifty years after 1500, and that same church for fifty years after 1600. She was forced, by the example of her rivals, to reform her morals and to adopt new methods of winning souls. Much the same reformation may be remarked in the Anglican Church after 1730, due to the like cause. Unity in religion (witness Spain) is anything but an advantage to a country. There was a wide difference between Cardinal Duprat and Cardinal Du Perron ; the latter, by his public controversy with a leading Huguenot, brought over many converts to his Church ; the learned Casaubon himself was much 1 See for these times Henri de Rohan, par Laugel. IV FEANCE 411 shaken. Another great warrior in religious fields was St. Francis de Sales, whose sermons at Paris produced a great effect both upon King Henry and the King's old followers ; the preacher's converts from heresy were reckoned by thousands, and he would never leave his poor bishopric for richer preferment. Cardinal de Berulle, first the friend and then the enemy of Richelieu, founded the French Oratory, which was designed to promote the improvement of the clergy, and which produced wonderful results in theological literature, clerical training, and preaching ; the one drawback to the work of the Oratorians was that it aroused the jealousy of the Jesuits, which lasted for scores of years. 1 St. Vincent de Paul founded an Order, called " the Sisters of Charity," an Order which seems likely to outlive much more renowned Brotherhoods ; he further suggested the new projects of religious Retreats, and of Conferences for the clergy. Much about the same time the Benedictine Order was reformed ; every student of history, whatever be his creed, knows what he owes to the Congregation of St. Maur. Throughout France about this time we remark the burning fire that kindled men and women alike a fire that, more than the temporal sword, spoiled the work of the Huguenots. 2 Freed from internal rebels, Richelieu set about the task of making France the first power in Europe. He entered into treaties with the great King of Sweden, and thus saved Protestantism in Germany from utter ruin. He drove the Queen-Mother, the enemy of his sound policy, out of France ; he beheaded the last of the main stock of the Montmorencies, the grandson of the old Constable of 1562. His Swedish friends having lost a great battle, Richelieu, in 1635, was forced into open war against Spain and Austria ; the design of King Henry IV. was, in some measure, carried out, however much French Ultramontanes, treading in the steps of De Berulle, might groan. One of 1 De Berulle, though the mildest of men, hit out hard against his Jesuit persecutors. See Tabaraud, Histoire du Cardinal de Berulle, i. 445-454. 2 Jervis, Church of France, vol. i. , gives a vivid picture of this new-born zeal. The conversions of heretics, referred to in Tabaraud's work, are most numerous. 412 ROME AND KEFOKM CHAP. Richelieu's trusted instruments abroad was his old enemy Rohan, who succeeded far more brilliantly out of France than at home. The French navy achieved many triumphs, and on the sea Holland lent her powerful aid. But the taxes levied were a terrible burden ; Normandy was driven to rise in revolt, and was aided underhand by our Charles I. ; it needed six thousand French soldiers to put down the rising. The Cardinal at Paris was much harrassed by the Pope at Rome ; Richelieu had for a moment the idea of uniting with the Protestants, shaking off the foreign yoke, and making France a Patriarchate. 1 The Gallican liberties were more than ever forced to the front ; Dupin, the Cardinal's agent, published a book upon them that was denounced by high French Ultramontanes as a work of the Devil. The Government had the art to bring the Jesuits over to its side. The French clergy, most un- willingly, underwent severe taxation, that Sweden and Holland might lord it over true believers. In 1639 France set her grip on Alsace, and a year later the city of Arras was mastered; here begins a series of abiding French triumphs that was to be prolonged for forty-two years, mainly at the cost of Spain. Soon Catalonia gave herself to the Northern King, and in 1642 Perpignan became French. Late in this year died Cardinal Richelieu, a man who ranks among the very greatest of great French- men, in his death proud that he had no enemies but those of France, a politician who preferred to ally himself with living Protestantism rather than with dying nations such as Spain and Italy, a statesman who knew how to make Huguenots, like Ture,nne and Gassion, loyal servants of the Crown. Most striking is the contrast between Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal de Berulle, between the practical man of affairs, untroubled by scruples, and the saint, brought against his will into worldly politics. De Berulle stirred up Royal resentment against the Huguenots, and would fain have had no alliances with Protestant nations. He recommended war with England, and mourned over the fact that Bois-le-Duc had been taken by the Dutch allies 1 Martin, xi. 511. IV FEANCE 413 of France, men who forbade the exercise of the Catholic religion, and who converted the revenues of the Church to the maintenance of four Protestant ministers. 1 Whether of the two Cardinals was the best pilot for France in these times may be left to the common sense of mankind. A few months after Kichelieu's death Louis XIII. made way for the child Louis XIV. ; all power was now in the' hands of the Queen-Mother and Cardinal Mazarin. France thus found herself, as the saying went, under a Spanish" "woman and an Italian priest. The new reign began well with Cbnde's great victory of Eocroy. The Council of War, as usual, had decided not to risk a battle. But there was a stout Huguenot officer present, named Gassion, an old comrade of the great Gustavus. This chieT visited young Conde* after the Council, and gave him certain reasons that decided him to fight. On the morrow Conde" simply said that he had changed his mind ; the result was one of the most glorious days of France, Gassion leading the right wing and ranking second of all in merit. Eejoiced indeed must have been this Huguenot, one of Eohan's old soldiers, in dealing a blow to Spain that shattered for ever her proud pre-eminence as head of the Ultramontane cause. 2 The French forces now marched boldly into the heart of Germany, and Turenne, though not so brilliant a leader as Conde, was steadily making his way to the front. Both the French and the Swedes, now firmly allied, were most happy in their generals, while the Hapsburgs could now find no Spinola or Wallenstein. The Treaty of West- phalia in 1648 confirmed the greater part of Alsace to the French. Eichelieu had not toiled in vain. A few years later, De Lionne, one of the most skilful diplomatists ever employed by France, thus made apology for the diplomacy 1 Tabaraud, Histoiredu Cardinal de Berulle, ii. 101, 102. Richelieu has, in his Memoirs, done his brother Prelate some injustice ; it was the man of peace who of the two men was the most steadfast in the siege of La Rochelle. - Vie de Gassion, ii. 313. This book, published in 1673, should be read by all who desire closer acquaintance with Gustavus, Richelieu, Mazarin, and Conde. 414 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. that had borne France so high ; " Louis XIII., a most pious Prince, who was directed by Cardinal Kichelieu and a Capuchin, both great theologians, had no scruple in succouring his oppressed Protestant allies, in spite of the infamous libels then published in the Low Countries, libels which gild with the specious pretence of religion the Spanish drug, wherewith they wish to poison the minds of men. The preservation of the Catholic religion was assured in the places that might be conquered." * This wise diplomacy on the part of France was not to last for many years longer. In 1648 the troubles of the Fronde broke out, and occupied five years. Conde\ like Guise of old, brought the Spanish enemy into France ; but this renegade had to yield to the wary strategy of Turenne. Cromwell threw his sword into the French, and not the Spanish, scale. At last, in 1659, Spain asked for peace, after the war had lasted for twenty-four years. Vast were the expenses of France in these struggles, according to the Venetian Envoy; in 1641 forty -six millions were yearly disbursed, of which two millions went to Holland, as much to Sweden, as much to the German princes and the Swiss ; two millions also were spent on secret intelligence both at home and abroad. Seven years later the yearly expenses of France mounted to what Nani calls the fabulous sum of sixty millions of ducats, all wrung from plebeians by the harshest violence ; countless officials preyed upon unlucky France ; but in spite of all this, the armies were unpaid. We cannot wonder at the civil wars of the Fronde, that parody on the great English struggle of these times. In 1656 the French Government exacted every year five times as much as Henry IV. had done. 2 On the frontiers the French peasants were reduced to live in the woods or to take to robbery. But for all this, France was the most populous land in Europe, and foreigners were 1 ffugues de Lionne, par Valfrey, ii. 192. The Duke of Bavaria, shocked at the conduct of France, put forth in 1632 a long Manifesto, which may be read in the Swedish Intelligencer, p. 182. 2 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, serie 2, Francia, ii. 344, 435, 539. IV FKANCE 415 never weary of praising her wealth and fruitfulness, which even her financial agents could not destroy. Mazarin used to say that though Spain ruled the Indies, France enjoyed all the gold that came over the sea. War might leave long traces in other lands ; in France the wounds caused by war were rapidly healed ; and this we who have lived in 1 8 7 1 know to be true. 1 Paris was a mine of soldiers, where regiments could be raised by beating a drum ; it was a wonderful city, where all the arts flourished. But shrewd observers still found something wanting ; the Duke of Weimar, when asked by Louis XIII. what he thought of the size of Paris, advised the King to burn half of it, since it was mightier than His Majesty. 2 Here we have a fore- taste of 1789 and many a later year. The King had in 1641 more than a hundred thousand soldiers. The infantry was composed of lads, naked and tattered. The cavalry, for which France had been renowned of old, was mounted on weak horses, while most of the men were of little worth. But the officers, who were beyond measure numerous, were the redeeming point men of honour, veterans who had no fear of death ; these were the champions who made all Europe tremble. They were cadets of noble houses, who pushed their fortunes abroad while the elder brother enjoyed the estate at home. France (things had been different in 1560) was now served by her own sons, while the Spanish armies were for the most part made up of Germans, Italians, and Irish. 3 As to the French clergy, their number surpassed that of all other countries ; from them alone the Crown could draw twenty millions every year. No one could become a Prelate without being a Doctor of the Sorbonne ; hence the French priests were famous for their learning, therein surpassing other nations. 4 The characters of the two great Cardinals who in succession ruled France are well sketched by the Venetian Envoys. 5 The Italian 1 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, serie 2, Francia, ii. 438, 504, 535. 2 Ibid. 541, 542. 3 Ibid. 346, 433, 540. 4 Ibid. 412, 499. Martin, xii. 63, gives the numbers of the French clergy about 1620 : more than 100,000 secular priests, 87,000 monks, and 80,000 nuns. 5 Ibid. 332, 446, 550. 416 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. portrait of Louis XIV. at nineteen was curiously falsified in later years. 1 The French clergy might be renowned throughout Christendom, but something bitter mingled with the cup of salvation in France, according to the Papal taste. I Certain it is that France has given Borne more trouble than all the other Catholic churches of Europe put together. This seems a fitting moment for a sketch of the origin of -Jansenism, the sore that was to be kept open for a hundred and sixty years. ~" The Abbe of St. Cyran had taken the field against the Jesuits. His bosom friend Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres in Flanders, had incurred the bitter hatred of Cardinal Richelieu, who revenged himself by imprisoning St. Cyran for nearly five years. The victim could boast of many disciples in "the monastery of Port Royal, especially of the renowned Arnauld family. " The strife between the doctrines of Grace and Free Will was now once more renewed ; Baius and Molina, taking different sides on the great question, had long before claimed the closest attention of the Vatican. Jansenius wrote his book the Augustinus, published in 16 4^7 and condemned at Rome in the following year. 2 It was loudly asserted that Rome was condemning the great African Father, whose name was affixed to the new book. The 4 Jesuits acted as the champions of the Pope in the new question, and were fiercely assailed by young Arnauld, who was most outspoken in branding the laxity and worldly- mindedness of the great Order. He was in danger of the Roman Inquisition, and had to hide himself for twenty years. Some of the noblest houses in France furnished conrerts to Port Royal ; they belonged mostly to the party opposed to Mazarin, who sided with the Jesuits. The Five famous Propositions were extracted from the Augustinus and sent to Rome for examination; eighty -five French Prelates signed the letter of appeal. In 1653 Pope 1 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, serie '2, Francia, ii. 547. 'TE princlpe di natura placida, nemico della crudelta e della violenza, 551 ; la Maesta sua essendo aliena dagli amori illegittimi e molto portata per il matrimonio. " 2 The theology taught by Cornelius Jansenius may be inferred from the anagram on his name : Calvini sensus in ore. IV FEANCE 417 Innocent X. sent forth his Bull condemning the Five Propositions. The Jansenists at once declared that these were not "to be found in the Augustinus. Mazarin strove to force the whole of the French clergy to subscribe the new Bull; the Jesuits, exulting in their triumph, showed no statesmanlike moderation, and the Jansenists resorted to mere evasion." Tn~ 1656 Arnauld (the most stubborn combatant that ever took the field) and sixty other Doctors were degraded from their rank in the Sorbonne. At this critical time appeared Pascal's masterpiece, the Provincial Letters, a trenchant attack upon the system of moralit'y "upheld by the Jesuits. The work is to controversy what the writings of Corneille are to tragedy, what those of Moliere are to comedy, what those of Bossuet are to religion ; we have before Us the prime fruit of the golden age of French Literature. Soon numerous priests were denouncing . the poisonous system of Jesuitical casuistry. Unhappily, // Pascal himself is by no means free from the charge of having garbled and suppressed certain passages in the writings of his enemies. Other Jansenists, treating of the Five Propositions, maintained that Eome had erred only in a question of fact ; the bolder Pascal, going still further, avowed that the Pope had erred in an article of faith. The position of the Jansenists cannot' easily be upheld ; they thought it enough to say that their leader had been misunderstood by the Pope, and that therefore the Papal sentence was not binding. In short, they were in a thoroughly false position. They contrived to make Mazarin their bitter enemy ; and the Assembly of the French Church in 1 6 6-i passed a vote whereby all the clergy, including monks "and nuns, had to sign a Formulary directed against Jansenism. Louis XIV. and his Jesuit advisers persecuted the helpless inmates of Port Eoyal, one of whom was Pascal's sister. Archbishop Perefixe declared that these ladies might be" pure as aHgeis, but they were proud as devils; even Bossuet could not move them, and they were for years exconimunicatedT~ -Four French Bishops stood out manfully against both the Pope and the French Crown. The perse- cuting Alexander VII. was repTaced iii 1 6 6 7 by the states- VOL. i ~ 2 E 418 EOME AND BEFOEM CHAP. manlike Eospigliosi, who became Clement IX. Negotiations began, which were" carefully kept secret from the Jesuits ; the Nuncio at Paris was zealous in the cause of peace. A compromise was effected in 1669, known as "the Peace of Clement IX. " ; the Jansenists retracted nothing, but availed themselves of a certain saving clause,' with or without the Pope's connivance. Arnauld and his friends were now at leisure to turn their swords against the Calvinists, whose doctrines bore an unpleasant likeness to Jansenism. The quarrel between the two partFes in the French Church went on simmering, and at last Arnauld had to fly from his country ; the old man shunned "Home, although the then Pope, a hater of Jesuitism, would readily have made the Jansenist leader a Cardinal. 1 The Govern- ment now began to break up Port Eoyal. A favourite device of modern Ultrarnontanes is to create the idea that Eome was always a thoroughgoing partisan of the Jesuits; this is anything but the truth; such Jan outcry was made against their strange casuistry by the Dominicans and the great Universities that Pope Alexander VII. found it advisable to condemn a part of the new doctrines by a decree in 1659 ; and Alexander VIIL, thirty-one years later, con- demned the teaching of the Jesuits as to philosophical sin, so called. 2 While admiring the holiness, the eloquence, the science, and the inquiring spirit of the Jansenists, we must admit that there was something wanting. Truth is the virtue without which all else is a mere nothing^ whatever creed may be professed ; the stratagems and subtleties of the Jansenists, wiles employed to escape from a false position, show too much eagerness to palter with truth. The meanest Huguenot, toiling for years at the oar sooner than act a lie and bow down before the wafer, commands our respect far more than even Pascal, Arnauld, or Quesnel. We are somewhat advancing matters when we talk at 1 Jcrvis, Church of France, ii. 17. From this work I have taken my account of Jansenism. 2 These decrees will in vain be sought in the Bullarium. But the enemies of the Jesuits have taken good care that the decrees should not be lost. See Mosheim, iv. 113. IV FRANCE 419 this time of persecuted Huguenots ; about 1650 they were fairly treated, and their leaders were well received at Court. On Sundays coaches-and-six would bear out of Paris some of the highest aristocracy to worship at the famous temple of Charenton, a few miles off. Casaubon might make the voyage thither up the Seine in a boat exposed to wind and weather, but a grander conveyance was employed by the good*"Montausier, by the old Duke of La Force, who had had a narrow escape in the St. Bartholomew eighty years earlier, by Schomberg, the last Protestant Marshal of France, by the Rohans, Ruvignys, and Duras. Some of these wor- shippers were to follow Lesdiguieres and go over to Rome ; a sad degeneracy was remarked in certain families ; thus Coligny's grandson seemed to betray the Huguenot cause in the South ; the Admiral's great-grandson fell in a duel with one of the Guises, a fitting antagonist for a Chatillon. Turenne was to be another convert. The nobles might give way, but the burghers, peasants, and artisans as yet stood fast in their heresy. ftt 1661 Mazarin died, thus leaving the young Louis XIV. to wield the sceptre of France, unhampered by any guardian. The King soon lighted upon two ministers, his goott genius and his evil genius, Colbert and Louvois. The talents of the former had full play during the next eleven years, which was a time of peace, broken by one short and triumphant war against unhappy Spain. The finances were put in order, the navy was restored, commerce was fostered, and the colonies were attended to ; l industry rapidly advanced, and here Colbert employed the French Protes- tants, to the great advantage of the land. Louis at this time had the wars of the Fronde in remembrance, when the Huguenots had refused to follow Cond6 and had been loyal to the Crown. The King wrote in 1665 to the Elector of Brandenburg that they were treated on the same footing as his other subjects. " I am pledged to this," writes he, " by my Royal word and by my gratitude for the loyalty they showed in the late convulsions, when they took up 1 In 1667 there were in the navy 110 ships, mounting 3700 guns ; tho crews numbered 20,000. See Pontalis, Jean de Witte, L 417. 420 ROME AND EEFOEM CHAP. arms in my service." Their interests were well represented at Court by the noble Ruvigny, who could speak with courage and frankness ; these qualities were of little avail twenty years later. 1 In 1665 occurred the Great Days of Auvergne ; in Central France a Court was set up which rescued the peasants from their local tyrants and executed some of the highest nobles found guilty of murder ; others had to undergo banishment or the galleys. In spite of this the land, taken as a whole, was the delight of travellers ; they re- marked the number of navigable rivers and the woods, which yielded a vast revenue ; the canvas and linen manufacture afforded an almost incredible profit. It was said that France was an ever-flourishing meadow, which her King mowed as often as he chose. At this moment he was the greatest Monarch in Europe, and he was now aspiring to rule the sea as well as the land. The taxes and tallages in 1643 came to five millions sterling; salt alone brought in two millions, a fearful burden on the poor, who had to take more than they needed at the King's excessive rates. Twenty thousand officers were required for this business. The customs levied on merchandise, exported and imported, brought in ten millions sterling in 1648, but scarcely the tenth part of it reached the King's treasury. Nine suits of clothes a day were the King's allowance, but this mostly went to the Lord Chamberlain. Seven millions were paid for pensions and yearly interest. The revenue of the clergy was thirty millions sterling. The number of the gentry was almost infinite. There were nine Parliaments in the King- dom, but these could do little against the Koyal will. France was divided into twelve Lieutenancies, held by nobles who were as absolute as Cromwell's Major-Generals. Many of the French still looked with reverence to Geneva, a rich little State, the citizens being mostly mechanics who made excellent muskets. Her revenue was about a hundred thousand crowns ; six months' provision was always main- tained, and twenty guns were always mounted on the walls. There was a Council of two hundred. The citizens were 1 Galtier de Laroque, Ruvigny, 135, 217. IV FKANCE 421 allowed manly exercises after Divine worship on the Sunday. 1 The little State must have been an eyesore to King Louis ; as some compensation, France was now rejoicing in the golden age of her literature ; Moliere, Boileau, Bossuet, Madame de Se"vigne, were earning the gratitude of posterity. King Louis was glorious at home and made himself feared abroad. For instance, to him alone was granted at Constan- tinople the title of Padishah, a title peculiar to the Sultan, and denied even to the Emperor of the Koinans. 2 The year 1672 was a disastrous one for France. For a hundred and forty years she had usually linked her fortunes to those of the foreign Protestant States, thus preferring the healthy life of Northern Europe to the slow decay of the South. In this year Louis threw overboard the wise policy of his forefathers, and made an attack upon one of the best beloved of all their allies, the Commonwealth of Holland. It was now that he entered upon the fatal slope that led to ruin. He would not listen to the entreaties of the great De Witte ; soon Holland was overrun by the armies of France and threatened by the navies of England. How nobly the little country exerted herself at this awful crisis is well known, how she broke her dykes, how she found a champion in young William of Orange. All fair conditions of peace were refused ; the French Despot, drunk with pride, exacted the cession of many towns, the payment of a huge indemnity, and the yearly presentation of a gold medal commemorating the shame of Holland. But Spain and Germany came to the rescue, and Louis was baulked of his prey. He seemed to stand high at the beginning of 16*75 ; never in any age did a band of such illustrious French statesmen and warriors act in combina- tion ; Conde, Turenne, Vauban, Colbert, Louvois, are names hardly to be matched elsewhere. But there is a reverse side ; in this very year Guyenne and Brittany were goaded into revolt by the ever-increasing weight of taxes that were needed to maintain the armies abroad. Punishment fol- 1 Europoe Modernce Speculum, 82-97, 119. Richard Cromwell was now at Geneva. 2 Rycaut, Ottoman Empire, 174. 422 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. lowed ; the commerce of Bordeaux was ruined for long ; the woes of the revolted Bretons are known to us by the letters of the fair SeVigne, here at least far too light of heart. The Governor of Dauphine wrote to Colbert that the peasants had lived on bread made with acorns and roots, and were now eating grass and the bark of trees. Locke travelled through France in 1675 and 1676; he shows us that persecution had already begun at Nismes, where a Protestant church had been pulled down and a Protestant hospital confiscated. The temple at Uzes (here three-fourths of the people were Protestant) was to undergo the same fate, being too near the rival church. At least 160 of these churches had been destroyed during the last ten years. Lent was disregarded in Paris, and meat was openly sold ; even in Italy a dispensation could be bought most cheaply. 1 In France, unlike Poland, Arianism was punished by the stake, even in the case of a Calvinist ; the same punishment was meted out to that most nauseous of vices, so prevalent in Italy. One great grievance common to both religions was the quartering of soldiers ; these were entitled to three meals of flesh a day, besides a collation in the afternoon ; even needy tradesmen had to provide this. The rent of lands in France had lately fallen one- half owing to the poverty of the people ; merchants and handicraftsmen had to part with half of their gains ; the lands of the nobles paid nothing in Languedoc and other parts. The food of the peasantry was rye bread and water ; their greatest luxury was the inwards of some beast in the market. Any refusal of taxes was punished by soldiers being quartered on the delinquent. 2 In 1679 Louis signed the peace of Nimeguen with all his enemies ; he had won Franche Comte and many towns in Flanders, but he had cause to blush at the abandonment of Messina. Perhaps he reached his highest pinnacle of glory in 1681 when he added Strasburg to his empire; for after this all the towns he ever took he had later on to restore to their rightful owners. But this year, like 1672, 1 Locke's Life, by Lord King, i. 100, 103, 105, 155. - Ibid. i. 109, 129, 145, 147, 154. IV FKANCE 423 marks a turning-point in French history ; in the spring of 1681 numbers of loyal French citizens were being driven by the senseless policy of Louis to emigrate against their will. Pride and pleasure are the two passions that share between them the sway over the greater part of mankind ; no man ever enjoyed the two more than Louis for the twenty years after Mazarin's death ; few figures in history are more familiar than that of the Great King at Versailles, encircled by his adoring ladies and flattering courtiers while giving law to the Western half of Europe. The Venetian Envoys for the last forty years of this Century afford us a clear insight into matters in France. We first behold Mazarin directing everything, enjoying forty of the richest abbeys in the kingdom ; how much he had amassed was known to Colbert alone ; the Cardinal's palace outshone those of great kings, and his many nieces made grand matches. 1 Then we see Colbert and Louvois striving for the mastery, the one intent on taxes, the other on war. Colbert had resolved to make France the richest of all lands ; he strove to transfer into his own country all that was manufactured in England, bringing over the English workmen ; the trades of Holland and Germany were also introduced ; the treasures of the East were sold in Paris ; the French made great profit out of the war of Candia. Colbert had his eye upon both the West and the East Indies ; companies were set on foot, and Madagascar was already a word familiar to French mouths. 2 Before 1671 Colbert had established the French navy. His great canal in Languedoc was at first a failure, and he carried Protection much too far. He was never weary in inventing new taxes ; the salt tax alone brought in vast revenues. 3 We have many a picture of Louvois, rough and brutal, able to work night and day, most rapid in dispatching business ; it was said that he could do more in one hour than all the other ministers in one month. War was his element ; he it was who tempted the King to make the Royal name resound in every corner of the earth. 4 1 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, serie 2, Francia, iii. 52. 2 Ibid. 183-186. 3 Ibid. 214, 274, 327. 4 Ibid. 324, 424 EOME AND EEFORM CHAP. The Venetian Envoys, ever in hopes of French help for their wretched war in Candia, envied France her noble army, brought to perfection by Louvois. In 1678, the last year of war, she had 187,600 infantry and 60,600 cavalry in arms, and possessed 112 fortified towns. The army, kept afoot in time of peace, was double what it had been in former times. The soldier was punctually paid, and was not allowed to harry the country. A fleet of thirty great ships had been maintained for the war in Sicily. New fortresses were built as new provinces were added to France ; Vauban, the greatest of engineers, disapproved of building so many of these strongholds, as 120,000 soldiers were needed to garrison them. 1 It was the business of Colbert to find the money for the soldiers of Louvois. The greater part of the wealth of France (it is different in our days) came from commerce. She was heavily taxed ; in 1678 more than 107 millions of francs were wrung from the people, and this exaction was always increasing. Some provinces, such as Brittany, made what was amusingly called a gratuitous gift. Lorraine, unluckiest of Duchies, had to pay just as if she had been a part of France, and was cut into three strips, divided between Metz, Toul, and Verdun. The outlay was always greater than the revenues. 2 One vast source of expense was Versailles ; in 1683 no less than eighty millions had been spent upon the buildings and water- works of this place. King Louis could not bear Paris, the old nurse of rebellion, so in time of peace he set his troops to work at turning the course of a river near his new toy that had usurped the place of Paris. A despot's whims are usually costly ; thirty thousand of his best veterans died from the effect of the evil exhalations of the soil. By 1 G 8 8 the cost of Versailles was said to have been one hundred millions. 3 Paris alone, as Colbert boasted, paid in taxes as much as the three realms of Poland, Sweden, and Denmark. The police was admirable ; the great city of six hundred thousand souls, herein very different from Madrid, was governed with 1 Barozzi, Relazimii Venete, 294, 328, 462. 2 Ibid. 327, 473, 528. 3 Ibid. 361, -458, 465. iv FKANCE 425 as much economy and security as a private house. The new gates and streets of Paris were the admiration of foreigners ; in her manufactures of silk and wool she outdid England. 1 France had, it was true, no silver or gold mines, but she had the toil and the skill of sixteen millions of hard-working inhabitants. 2 War made a great change in all ; the nobles were half-ruined by their expenses ; the provinces groaned under taxation and the enforced quarter- ing of soldiers. A tax, if once imposed, was maintained for ever. The people, to keep themselves from starving, filled the ranks of the army. It was said in 1699 that France had lost two millions of souls by the war that had broken out eleven years earlier ; part of this loss was due to the fearful famine, part to the flight of the Huguenots. 3 As to Eeligion, great scandals were constantly apparent in Italy owing to the fact that girls were forced into nunneries long before maturity. King Louis XIV. checked this in France by prescribing a suitable age for taking the vows. 4 It was thought that one half of the revenues of the kingdom belonged to the clergy. 5 Another improvement due to King Louis was the stern prohibition of duels ; nothing could now shield a duellist from sharp punishment. 6 The nobles, who were as numerous in France as in any country of Europe, had to bow before the Crown in this matter as in others ; they sent their cadets into either the Army or the Church, in both of which professions Eoyal favour was of the utmost consequence. These great men, up to their ears in debt, were protected from their creditors by letters from the Crown ; it was assuredly their interest to be servile. 7 1 Relazioni Venete, 224, 291, 320. - Ibid. 325. This was double the number of the inhabitants of Italy. 3 Ibid. 523. 4 Ibid. 175. A French Minister of State in 1668 quoted approvingly the old saw, "Prima Veneziano che Cristiano," to the disgust of the Nuncio, who objected to Royal meddling with convents. 5 Ibid. 463. 6 Ibid. 177. 7 Ibid. 385, 393. The Duchess of Portsmouth, after leaving England, pro- cured letters of this kind from Louis, to the ruin of her creditors. 426 HOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. About this time the Jesuits pursued a line of policy that would have amazed their founder ; they were the main cause of the enactment of certain Gallican decrees most hostile to the Papacy. The Fathers were eager to be revenged upon two Jansenist Bishops who had thwarted the Order ; these Prelates found themselves opposed to King Louis on the vexed question of the Koyal right to confer patronage in the Church. Pope Innocent XI., a warm friend to Jansenists, remonstrated with Louis in 1678. Both sides became heated as the dispute went on ; the Bishops' goods were confiscated ; the Papal Bulls were suppressed at Paris. In 1681 forty-one French Prelates were convoked, who gave their judgment on the dispute ; the Jesuits played into the hands of the Crown as against the Pope. Bossuet preached a wonderful sermon before the Assembly at Paris, evidently feeling like St. Paul standing up to St. Peter, and referring to Louis as " the most religious of Kings." Innocent rebuked the Assembly for cowardice, and annulled what they had done. In 1682 the Assembly adopted the Four Gallican Articles, a fearful wound to the Papacy ; Colbert, not Bossuet, was the true instigator of this step, though the great Bishop was the author of the aforesaid Articles. He took the line that the Holy See is indefectible, though particular Popes may have proved themselves fallible. The Articles rejected all temporal authority of Rome over Kings ; the decrees of Constance were maintained ; the old rules of the Church were to be observed ; it was averred that the Pope's judgment stood in need of confirmation by the Church. Thirty-four bishops and as many priests signed the Articles ; these were but a small fraction of the Gallican Church. Bossuet indignantly asked if Bellarinine's sophis- tries were to be all in all. Pope Innocent was so angry that he refused Bulls of Institution to all ecclesiastics named to French bishoprics who had been members of the Assembly of 1682; soon thirty-five French dioceses were vacant and could not be filled. Many foreign Ultra- montanes attacked the Four Articles ; Bossuet completed a noble defence of them in 1685, though this was not published until 1730. The Pope of that day on the iv FKANCE 427 appearance of the great work shrank from condemn- ing it. 1 It is well known that Innocent XL wished to make the famous Arnauld a Cardinal ; the Eed Hat was actually given to another Jansenist, Camus, the Bishop of Grenoble, a man of austere life, professing a morality much opposed to that of the new casuists, and opposed also to the peculiar life led by Archbishop Harlay. Innocent of his own accord pro- moted Camus, without the usual reference to the French Court ; the new Cardinal was ordered by Louis to remain in his distant diocese ; he was not allowed to take part in the next Conclave. Unlike some other Jansenists,he was most mild in his treatment of the Huguenots, and declared him- self against the profanation of the Eucharist, so often enforced by fanatics. 2 Another Camus, a hundred years later, was to become a standard-bearer of the Jansenists. The French Huguenots had fared well under Richelieu, rather worse under Mazarin, much worse under the youthful Louis XIV. Still, in spite of all drawbacks, France had been one of the chief strongholds of toleration in Europe through most of this Century. Poland, Holland, and Transylvania could alone be compared to her in this respect ; and Poland, under Jesuit guidance, had long forsaken the right path. But in France Protestants enjoyed not merely toleration, but equality of rights. And well did they repay this kindly treatment ; though there was but one Protestant to nine Catholics, the Huguenots claimed at least one half of the leading French statesmen and warriors for 130 years after 1550. Coligny, Henry IV., Sully, Lesdiguieres, Rohan, Turenne, Duquesne, might fairly be reckoned a good counterpart to Guise the father, Guise the son, Richelieu, Conde\ Colbert, Louvois, Vauban. The Huguenots as a body had been thoroughly loyal since 1629, while their old enemies, Paris and Bordeaux, had been the hotbeds of sedition. Could it be believed that this fair scene was now to be blighted by a Monarch puffed up with ignoble flattery 1 Jervis, Church of France, ii. 23. ' 2 Spanheim, Relation de la Cour de France, p. 266. This was written in 1690. 428 EOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. and drunk with success, the hero of a double adultery, a penitent debauchee, taught by his priests how he could best atone for his past sins ? The Gallican clergy in their assemblies were always complaining of the toleration shown to the heretic, and they were sometimes able to persuade the governors of provinces to harass the evil brood. All the years after Mazarin's death are full of teasing edicts of the Crown ; thus Huguenot children of fourteen were allowed to change their religion. Many nobles seduced by Court favour had gone over to Rome ; the strength of the Huguenots now lay in the industrious middle class, the men after Colbert's own heart. This minister, alarmed at the emigration of many families, obtained in 1669 the reversal of some of the persecuting edicts. Still, the Bearnese were deprived of five-sixths of their churches, and La Eochelle was further meddled with. In 1674 the evil policy was once more at work. Two years later France lowered herself to the level of Tuscany ; large funds were set apart to bribe converts at the very time when the peasantry were starving. Not long after this time King Louis was beginning to tire of his many mistresses, and so set himself to atone for his past sins by worrying better men than himself. The Great King had not as yet married Scarron's widow, but he was already much under her influence. In 1679 many Huguenot temples were destroyed ; no Huguenot minister was allowed to receive converts ; Colbert was prevented from employing Huguenots in his financial operations ; mixed marriages were forbidden. The Gallican Church became ecstatic over these decrees ; she was now struggling against the Pope, and had therefore to prove her orthodoxy. The brutal Louvois made himself an advocate of persecution ; in 1681 his soldiers were for a short time let loose upon the peaceful Protestants of the West ; children might now become con- verts at the age of seven. In this fatal year, which marks a turning-point in French history, emigration went forward on a great scale ; foreign States well knew the worth of the French Calvinists ; even Lutheran and Anglican monarchs abated their prejudices in favour of the hard-working new- IV FKANCE 429 comers, and invited them to settle ; the wise city of Amsterdam made great advances of money to the exiles. King Louis thought to check the emigration by threats of sending to the galleys the heads of emigrating families. Even Philip II., on conquering rebel towns in Flanders, had allowed all Protestants to leave the country, giving them reasonable time to settle their affairs. Here we see the former land of toleration falling below the champions of the Inquisition. The Huguenot religious assemblies having been sup- pressed, in many parts the people set up a secret organisa- tion. In 1683 blood was shed in Dauphine ; the troops behaved brutally, and the Cevennes suffered much. One old minister, Homel, was broken on the wheel ; the hang- man was drunk, and gave him twenty blows with the bar, each followed by a curse. This year died the wise Colbert, knowing that he was leaving France on the brink of ruin, while Louvois was to riot unchecked. The great minister's dying words were, referring to his ungrateful master, " Had I done for God what I have done for that man, I should be saved ten times over ; and now I know not what is- to become of me." In the France of this century Sully, Eichelieu, Colbert, stand out a noble three, who were now to be replaced by bigoted women, wily Confessors, and chiefs of Dragonnades. Two men who had access to the Eoyal ear acted at this time as the worst of counsellors : the Archbishop of Paris and the King's Confessor. Harlay, the well-known Prelate, was a clerical debauchee who had thrown Jansenists into the dungeon, and had done his best to cause a breach with Pope Innocent XL The Archbishop now kept up his credit at Court by urging on the persecution of the Huguenots. Louis, as his enemies allowed, was usually most strict in enforcing morality upon the French Church- men ; Harlay was the only one of them who could gain any tolerance for his frequent misdeeds. The King's Confessor, Father La Chaise, was a Jesuit who had little talent, but who was by nature gentle, tractable, and moderate. Un- happily he was bound to his Order, and he had therefore 430 EOME AND EEFOEM assailed both the Jansenists and the Vatican. He had great power at Court, and saw his rooms always thronged by clergymen eager for promotion. He now encouraged His Majesty to persecute the Huguenots, and strove to keep Louis in ignorance of the cruelties perpetrated. A great share of the bad faith, of the violence, of the inhumanity shown in 1685 was due to the Confessor, as good judges thought. Such is the power that fanaticism can obtain over a naturally mild character. 1 In 1684 Louis married Madame de Maintenon, and the persecution forthwith waxed hotter than ever. If a Catholic child happened to enter a Protestant temple, the building was at once closed and all worship forbidden. The famous Academy of Saumur was shut up. No Pro- testant was allowed to become a physician, an advocate, or a printer. In 1685 Louvois once more let loose his dragoons (Saint Ruth was the type of them) upon the terrified South and West. There was a general panic ; twenty-one thousand Protestants were converted in Beam alone. The booted missionaries next effected eighty thousand conversions in Guienne. Even sturdy Languedoc gave way. " If the fathers are hypocrites, at least the children will be Catholics/' wrote the wife of King Louis. Late in the year was abolished the perpetual Edict of Nantes, the monument of the great Henry IV., the work that had raised France high above almost every other land in Christendom ; the great law, it was now said at Court, had been a merely temporary regulation. As to the Protestants, all their temples were now to be demolished, all their ministers were to leave the realm, all their schools to be swept away. A fine field was thrown open to the greedy informer and to the savage fanatic. Everything was per- mitted to the soldiers except downright murder and rape. The detail of the tortures inflicted is sickening ; the young mother was prevented from giving suck to her starving 1 See Relation de la Gour de Fraiice, par Spanheim, published in 1882, pp. 247, 249, 253. Spanheim was the Prussian Ambassador at Paris, a calm, moderate eye-witness, whose pictures of the Court of France should be consulted. Voltaire, in his Siecle, described this Court only from hearsay. IV FKANCE 431 babe until she consented to pretend belief in the Mass. One favourite torment was the privation of sleep ; the soldiers would sell repose to their victims at so many crowns the hour. The Spanish masters of the Moriscoes had shrunk from profaning the Eucharist by enforcing it on men known to be merely nominal converts ; King Louis and his Bishops had no such squeamishness. Con- verted Huguenots, on their deathbeds, were known to spit out the hateful emblem of Eome, which had been, as it were, rammed down their throats by the priest. Those who did without the sacrament were cast out upon the dunghill after death ; we know what became of the corpse of their great oppressor fourscore years after his own death. 1 The women showed themselves more resolute than the men ; on the other side, the nuns were more humane than the priests and monks. Children of six years old might be torn from their parents ; even the Duke and Duchess of La Force had to undergo this outrage. Any one attempt- ing to escape from the prison house (such had France now become) was sent to the galleys. All the French provinces suffered except Alsace, where Lutheranism, less dangerous than Calvinism, prevailed ; the rigours of persecution were much abated in Paris, whither consequently many hapless provincials fled for refuge. The French officers seemed to lose their national char- acter ; we hear of them spitting in the faces of the per- secuted women. It is remarked of the Bishop of Oleron that he was too gallant a Prelate to be cruel ; he was more successful in his conversions than most of his brethren. He was not imitated by Gassion, President of the Parlia- ment at Pau, a kinsman of the great soldier ; we hear of this man that he thought himself specially bound to destroy the Reformation, since his forefathers had done so much to forward it. 2 It is said that the women of Metz had to suffer more than those of any other province ; the outrages 1 See a list of names of persons who suffered this outrage in Bujeaud, L'Angoumois, 277. This book is well worth study. See also Peyrat, Pasteurs du Desert. 2 Benoist, Histoire de I'lZdit de Nantes, v. 834, 835. 432 HOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. were such that they cannot be here recorded. 1 Orange bore much, owing to her foreign Sovereign ; here hopes were held out to converts that they should not be forced to bow before images, or be forbidden the Communion under both kinds. 2 The dungeons, which yawned for Confessors all over the country, seem to have been worthy of the last Neapolitan kings. The famous Bayle, who had fled to Eotterdam, branded the system of the French Court as it deserved, in his own sharp style. Louvois in revenge seized Bayle's elder brother, a meek pastor of weak constitution, who was thrown into a dungeon and died within two months. Many, after a few weeks of the prison at Grenoble, left it without rhair and teeth. Some were sent in crazy vessels to the West Indies. Many were the shifts resorted to when fugitives drew near the frontier. Some Protestants would get a certificate from a good-natured priest and pretend to be on a pilgrimage to Loretto. Many guides made their fortunes by smuggling heretics over the border. 3 The South of France was far more staunch than the North ; the peasants of Languedoc held their meetings while those of Normandy underwent conversion. There were two hundred thousand Protestants in this latter province, and of these eighty thousand, nearly all of them nobles, burghers, or artisans, fled into exile. 4 France thus lost a body of men who had had a weighty influence for good on the national character, which to foreign observers has seemed somewhat frivolous ; the grave Huguenots were a living witness to their countrymen that man was sent into this world for some higher purpose than to fight, sing, dance, and make love to the women. Wretched excuses have been made for the great Revocation ; we hear that the unity of France must override every other consideration, and that this unity had long been broken by the Huguenots. Precisely the same argument might have been used by Robes- pierre when he smote the French priests and nobles in 1793. 1 Benoist, Histoire de Vtidit de Nantes, 917. '- Ibid. 925. :! Peyrat, Pastcurs du Ddsert, i. 76, 89. 4 Galtier de Laroque, Ruvigny, 22. IV FKANCE 433 While a million and a half of Frenchmen were being made a prey to agonies of body and soul, Bossuet, the great light of the Gallican Church, was comparing the tyrant of Versailles to Constantine and Theodosius. This was echoed by most of the brilliant men whose writings were now adorning France. One or two, such as Vauban and the later St. Simon, might stand aloof; but the whole of Catholic France loudly applauded the awful crime com- mitted, and made herself partaker in the guilt. The King ordered 250 new churches to be built for the new converts. But these would persist in holding meetings in the woods in spite of the gibbet and the galleys ; they would arrive in England in open boats, half starved, on a stormy winter's night, for darkness was their best ally. Men and money, that France could ill spare, were carried abroad ; perhaps two hundred thousand, the flower of the land, made their escape ; among them were nine thousand sailors, twelve thousand soldiers, and six hundred officers; one of these last was Schomberg, now the second best General in France. 1 The learned Huguenots turned the free press of Holland to good account, and held up the Great King, " the Most Christian Turk," to the execration of Europe. Certain it is that he met fiercer opposition in his war of 1688 than ever before. The exiles enriched Spitalfields with the silk manufactory, and made Berlin more populous than ever. The paper mills of Angouleme and the neighbourhood had of old enjoyed a monopoly and had quadrupled within twenty years, but after 1656 they declined rapidly ; in 1697 only twelve were left ; the workmen had gone to enrich England and Holland. 2 Even at Court many began to have misgivings. There was something incongruous in the fact that the brilliant Madame de Se'vigne' and the gentle Kacine should be writing in a land where harmless men, women, and children 1 We know that at Annonay one-third of the Protestants changed their faith, one-third fled, and one-third held firm ; in 1768, when the persecution was all but over, there remained ninety-five Protestant families at Annonay. See Arnaud's Histoire du Vivarais, ii. 3. 8 Bujeaud, L'Angoumois, 303. Balzac, in Les Illusions Perdues, tells us much of the paper mills of Angouleme in the Nineteenth century. VOL. I 2 F 434 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. were subjected to wanton torture and death. Often the old followers of the Pope refused to denounce the secret assemblies of the new converts. A Boyal edict was launched against those of the clergy who were slack in the work of persecution, men who, it is said, from delicacy will not act as informers. 1 Sometimes instructions came from the Court to wink at Protestant aberrations as much as possible. The King's mind wavered between cruelty and mildness; the war of 1688 was a happy event for the Huguenots, since for many years the Eoyal attention was drawn away from them. The Venetian Envoys, as usual, throw some light on the situation. The number of Huguenots in 1668 was esti- mated at almost one million and a half; perhaps about one-tenth of the French nation. The heretics had given themselves mainly to commerce ; it was held that two- thirds of the national traffic was in their hands. When they were forced to fly, they either carried off or buried vast quantities of gold. No approbation of the persecution came at first from Eome ; it was there said that armed Apostles were not the right kind of missionaries, and that Christ had not employed this method in converting the world." King Louis was displeased at gaining no applause from the Pope, though the Venetian Ambassadors, shrewd as they were in things temporal, might call the expulsion of the Huguenots " a glorious and grand enterprise." In 1699 the persecuted remnant in the South were still con- tinuing their secret assemblies ; two fortresses had been built specially to bridle these possible rebels in Languedoc and Dauphine. Madame de Maintenon was heard to say that even if foreign foes should force their way to the Loire, the King would never assent to a decree of tolera- tion. 3 If we wish to know something of the sufferings of these noble confessors, we cannot do better than study the recital 1 Coquerel, Eglises du Desert, i. 68. 2 Unhappily Pope Innocent, somewhat later, published letters in contra- vention of this worthy sentiment. 3 Barozzi, Relazioni Venete, serie 2, Francia, vol. iii. 176, 466-469, 523. IV FRANCE 435 of Marteilhe, a young Perigordian who, in 1700, at the age of sixteen, made his way to the Flemish frontier, and was sentenced to the galleys for having striven to escape from France. Thirteen years did he undergo bitter hardships rather than pretend to worship the wafer in the priest's hands. Some martyrs endure a painful death, which is compressed into a short space ; these are consoled by the applause of admiring friends ; the French galley slave toiled on for years, remote from public view, while his flesh was gnawed by vermin, his back flayed by the lash, his limbs chained day and night, his diet limited to little more than a foul mess of beans. A few words of falsehood uttered by him would at once have set him free. Marteilhe gratefully describes the compassion felt for him by most of the laity of all ranks ; even the blasphemous scoundrels beside him on the benches testified their respect for the martyr of religion. The Jesuits and some of the priests, on the other hand, did their best to increase the sufferings of the heretics, going far beyond the orders of the Court. The book, artless in composition and interesting as a novel, discloses a state of things (it is not to religion alone that I refer) which made the year 1793 a certainty. 1 In enlightened France, as we here read, at a time when Voltaire had already begun to think, a Turk had a narrow escape from being burnt alive because he had unwittingly profaned the consecrated oils used in one of the Sacraments. Spain was soon to alter for the better, while France was becoming more degraded. The armies were changing for the worse ; among Marteilhe's fellow -sufferers 1 The book was republished in 1865 as AKmoires d'un Protestant, con- damn6 aux Galeres. King Louis appears here as ruthless and unforgiving, even in things temporal. I extract from an old family Bible the following lines written in 1698 : Nos fllles dans les monasteres, Nos prisonniers dans les cachets, Nos martyrs dont le sang se repand a grands flots, Nos confesseurs sur les galeres, Nos malades persecutes, Nos mourants exposes a plus d'une fnrie, Nos morts trained a la voirie, Te disent, O Dieu, nos catamites. These lines are from a note on Marteilhe's book, 552. 436 KOME AND KEFOEM CHAP. at the galleys were some worthy peasants, no heretics, who had been impressed against their will, and had afterwards deserted. France was indeed grievously weighed down ; Saurin, in eloquence a rival not unworthy of Bossuet, uttered from a Dutch pulpit the famous sentence, " Ee- doubtable Prince, whom I once honoured as my King, and whom I still respect as the Scourge of the Lord, . . . may God forget those rivers of blood with which thou hast covered the land ! " Another confessor, the schoolmaster Migault, saw his wife half roasted by the dragoons, and afterwards fled from well- watched La Eochelle by sea, along with his little children. He and others had tripped in their faith ; almost the first thing to be done at Eotterdam was to make public con- fession of their sin before God and the whole Church. Looking back upon his life he writes : " Was there ever oppression more unbearable than what we had to endure, worried to madness if we staid in France, and punished like criminals if we sought to fly ? It cannot be sound statesmanship to exasperate a numerous class against a Government that they were ready to love. Many Protes- tants have doubtless abjured, but was their change sincere ? The only victory that was won over these hapless apostates was to have robbed them of all religion." 2 Henry IV., so skilful was his diplomacy, had been able to bring into alliance with himself both the Northern Pro- testants and the Italian States, the Pope included. Henry's grandson, after 1672, contrived to achieve exactly the reverse of this; he drove both the Northern Protestants and most of the Catholic powers into alliance against him. Of these last, not the least to be dreaded was the Pope, upon whom Louis had been waging a long war ; in 1688 Innocent XI. had the joy of seeing the overthrow of a powerful vassal of France, and of knowing that henceforth England, roused from her old degradation, would be a main prop of 1 Coquerel, Eglises du Desert, i. 61. There is much about Saurin in this book ; he was the great opponent of Bayle. 2 Journal de Jean Migault, published at Geneva in 1854. See pp. 159, 184. IV FEANCE 437 the European League that the Versailles tyrant had called into life. The Jesuits, it is true, were not equally delighted at this astonishing Revolution. It was not by them, but by Protestants and Jansenists, that the death of Innocent was regretted. The war went on ; Louis XIV. had made already some startling blunders ; he now sent but few thousands of men to Ireland, while the warier William, knowing what was at stake, brought over a large Protestant force to conquer at the Boyne. 1 France now had to meet in the field her own valiant children, driven abroad by her senseless bigotry. Their great enemy, Louvois, died in 1691; his complete opposite, Fenelon, sent an anonymous letter to the King, begging for peace. This, in reality but a short truce, came in 1697, when Louis restored some towns that he had held at the outbreak of the war, nine years earlier. Appalling is the picture of the misery of France at this date ; town and country alike seem to have suffered ; the great merchants of Tours and Eouen had vanished ; one- third of the population of La Rochelle had disappeared within the last twenty years. 2 Vauban in vain asked for the abolition of the privileges of nobles and clergy ; he proposed to do away with the abuses of military recruiting by a conscription. The shrewd old ministers of Louis had now been replaced by mediocrities like Chamillart. In 1700 the French King's grandson was chosen King of Spain, and in the next year war broke out afresh. The folly of Louis in goading unwilling England into the new war is well known. Soon France and Castile had to defend themselves against half Europe. Louis blundered once more in the choice of his generals ; he kept the victorious Catinat idle for many years ; he employed Villars, the most far-seeing of French commanders, in fighting against revolted peasants ; he shackled Vendome by giving him a Eoyal and inexperienced colleague, while 1 Spanheim, writing in 1690, says, " Combien cette reduction de 1'Ir- lande importe ... a la cause commune et a tous ses allies." Relation de France, 381. 2 See Martin, xiv. 330. 438 HOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. such poor creatures as Villeroy, Tallard, and Marsin were opposed to Marlborough and Eugene. The Huguenot mountaineers of the Cevennes had under- gone great cruelties in the persecution ; their ministers, a restraining force, had been driven into exile ; excited laymen, male and female, now took the lead, seers who could see visions and dream dreams. They were under one of the worst of all the oppressors, Basville, the most cold-blooded persecutor on record. Many of his soldiers had been with- drawn and sent to the war in Italy ; here was a chance of delivery. A priest named Du Chayla had made his abode a torture chamber for the benefit of the Protestants ; in 1*702 he was murdered by some of the maddened victims. Civil war at once broke out ; many old oppressors were ruthlessly massacred ; the rebels took the name of Camisards, from the white shirts they wore at night ; they rushed down from their mountains, encouraged by their prophets, and defeated large bodies of the Government troops. They kept their stores of food in the mountain caverns, and got a great part of their warlike munitions from the Pope's town of Avignon. A marshal of France was sent against the insurgents with ten thousand soldiers who should have been fighting abroad ; the greatest barbarities were perpe- trated ; whole villages were sent to the galleys. For two years did this civil war last ; the Allies were to blame in not properly keeping it alive, though to this end some feeble attempts were made. At Nismes two hundred old men, women, and children went out to pray in a mill near the town ; they were surrounded by troops, fire was applied to the mill, and all perished. Four hundred villages were burnt, and twenty leagues of country were ravaged. The Cevenols, under leaders like the stripling Cavalier, did not fear to accept battle, though the odds against them might be six to one. In April 1704 it was reckoned that eight thousand soldiers, eight thousand Protestants, and four thousand Catholics of the country had perished within the space of one year. 1 The great Villars, who ought to have been facing Marlborough on the Danube, was now sent to 1 Peyrat, ii. 112 ; he gives a very good account of the Cevenol War. IV FEANCE 439 put down the rising. He tried clemency, allowed the peasants to sing their Psalms, much to the disgust of the clergy ; he set free the Protestant confessors at the galleys, and threw open the frontiers to fugitives. Above all, he contrived to win over Cavalier ; strange were the four signatures set to the treaty made on the occasion ; they were those of the noble Marshal ; of Basville the civilian, the ruthless tyrant of the province ; of the youthful Cavalier; and of Daniel Gui, one of the inspired prophets of the Camisards. The revolt seemed to be extinct late in 1704. Many of the Cevenol chiefs sought refuge at Geneva, and scandalised that austere city by their visions and ecstasies ; soon they found their way back to their mountains, and strove to revive the insurrection in 1705. This time their adversary was the cold, stern Berwick, not the generous Villars. A vast conspiracy was discovered ; the leaders, old soldiers in the late war, underwent hideous tortures before death. Two years later Berwick was waging a more honourable warfare in Spain. On the field of Almanza, his great victory, he saw one of his French regiments charged by their Protestant countrymen, who were led by Cavalier ; so furious was the shock of bayonets that only three hundred men were left alive. The last chief who carried on war in the Cevennes was broken on the wheel in 1710. High and low alike were stricken down by iron-hearted lawyers like Basville. One of the greatest noblemen in Languedoc was the Baron of Saigas, a Huguenot who had been outwardly converted. He and his lands were spared by the Camisards ; he was therefore arrested, and confronted by twenty - eight bribed witnesses ; torture could wring nothing from him ; but Basville, his personal enemy, con- demned him to the galleys, where he lingered on for thirteen years amidst brigands and corsairs. For many years after the outbreak of the Camisard War the history of France was one long disaster ; there was defeat abroad and famine at home. All advice was wasted on the Court ; the financial agents rioted in luxury while the peasants were starving. Vauban wrote a book to check 440 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. the evil, and the Council of Louis sent the book to the pillory ; six weeks later the noble old patriot died. Fe"nelon became as stern a critic as the great engineer. The year 1709 surpassed all others in widespread misery, when even nobles and burghers had to ask for alms, and when hospitals turned out their inmates to starve. Louis begged for peace on almost any terms ; he even offered to cede Alsace and Valenciennes. Next year there came a gleam of hope ; Sacheverell and Mrs. Masham were able to change the whole system of English policy ; these were the mice that nibbled the net in which the French lion (but has he a right to this name ?) lay enmeshed. After all, it was but fitting that a King who had always been so complaisant to priests and ladies should owe his salvation to a noisy parson and an intriguing woman. It was not until 1715 that all war ceased in Western Europe ; the accession of one Frenchman to the Spanish throne had cost France dear. One of the scourges of the land was the King's new Confessor, Le Tellier, who reigned after 1709. The Huguenots (excepting in the Cevennes) had been mildly treated after 1705 ; but as soon as the war was over, persecution was renewed. An edict was published in 1715, which took for granted that there were no more Protestants in the land ; hence any one whose parents were not married after the Catholic rite must be a bastard. The Huguenots were not the only religious body in France that suffered under Louis XIV. The Peace of Clement IX. had lasted for about thirty years. The great Arnauld died in 1694, and in the next year De Noailles was made Archbishop of Paris, a Prelate who favoured the Jansenists, and who for many years showed himself alter- nately obstinate and weak. The French Church was in all her glory about the year 1700 ; Bossuet, Fenelon, Mabillon, were still alive ; and below them came a host of eloquent preachers, learned annalists, and profound theologians. But a canker was soon to develop itself; the Jesuits had been lately mortified by the condemnation of their favourite doctrine of Probabilism, and by the question of the Chinese IV FKANCE 441 rites, a question decided against the Order by Pope Clement XT. The Jansenists were beginning to raise their heads once more, and Bossuet, the one man who could have kept the peace, died in 1704. The Pope, now in close union with King Louis, launched a Bull against the Jansenists ; in 1708 he issued a decree, little regarded in France, against the work on the New Testament written many years earlier by Quesnel, the Elisha who had succeeded Arnauld at the head of the party. Clement now suppressed the house of Port Eoyal ; the sisters were dispersed ; the Church was levelled with the ground, and the bodies of deceased Jansenists were torn from the grave. Cardinal de Noailles, an unwilling abettor of the crime, on seeing the ruins, declared that they would rise up against him at the Judgment Day. But the Cardinal could avail little against the influence of Le Tellier, the King's Confessor, a gloomy and treacherous bigot, to whom is chiefly due the renewed civil war in the Church. Louis was soon demanding from the Pope a condemnation of Quesnel's book. Clement XI. accordingly in 1713 published the famous Bull Uni- genitus, a main cause of the French Eevolution. One hundred and one Propositions, taken from the hated Jan- senist book, were here condemned. It is said that the Pope was unwilling to take so tremendous a step ; the main body of the Cardinals were not consulted. Much opposition was aroused in France ; the Bull was said to be Pelagian, only showing that Eome was fallible. Nine French Bishops, nearly one-fifth of those who voted on the subject, pro- tested against the Bull ; the more educated part of France, especially Paris, took the same side. Banishment and imprisonment became the lot of those who resisted the King's decrees. The Jansenists were distinguished by their plain dress and by their simplicity of worship in their two favourite churches of St. Medard and St. Severin ; they would have no flowers, ornaments, or light music ; they protested against frequent communion ; like their Puritan brethren over the water, they gave themselves most to meditation and prayer. 1 1 Capefigue, L'Eglise pendant les quatre derniers siecles, iii. 76. 442 KOME AND REFORM CHAP. In the autumn of 1715 Louis XIV. was borne to the tomb, after having done more mischief in the world than falls to the lot of most men. The young Voltaire was an eye-witness of the joy felt by the people, thus rid of their costly tyrant. The new King was a child five years old ; all power was at once seized by Philip, the debauched Duke of Orleans, who threw over Spain and leagued himself with Britain and Austria, thus reversing his late uncle's policy. The Jansenists at first triumphed over the Jesuits ; many of the former came forth from their dungeons ; both of these factions seemed to unite in persecuting the Protestants. These last were at the mercy of the governors of the different provinces; the worst outrage inflicted seems to have been the wholesale kidnapping of children, a work in which the Bishops rejoiced. The Eegent, who had much worldly wisdom, would gladly have recalled the Huguenot exiles, but was overborne by his Council. In 1717 the two great parties were openly at war ; Ultramontanism was on the one side ; a minority of Gallican clergy on the other, aided by the lawyers who sat in the many Parliaments of France. All who were drawn to the cause of the oppressed ranged themselves on the Jansenist side ; and this went on for two generations. Passions mounted high ; Pope Clement was refusing to institute new Prelates in various Sees, while Cardinal de Noailles took the extreme step of appealing to a future Council. But the Pope gained an unexpected ally ; Dubois, the Regent's infamous old tutor, had set his heart on gaining the Red Hat from Rome ; he was promoted to the mitre once worn by Fenelon, and he at once enforced the reception of the Bull Unigenitus upon all. He reckoned among his supporters both the Stuart at Rome and the Hanoverian at London. In 1721 Dubois, one of the vilest of debauchees, whose portrait no reader of St. Simon can forget, was rewarded for his services to Ultramontanism by the rank of Cardinal. A bitter persecution of the Jansenists followed ; the Regent, of old a lover of modera- tion, was now asked when he meant to set up the Inquisi- tion in France. Dubois died, raving and blaspheming, in IV FEANCE 443 1723; the Kegent, early worn out, soon followed the Ultramontane champion. The installation of a Dominican Pope, Benedict XIII., in 1724, seemed favourable to the enforcement of some slight moderation on the Molinists, those enemies of the Dominican theology. He at first appeared to incline to the overtures of De Noailles ; but the French Ultramontanes raised such a storm that the Pope bent before it, and confirmed the fatal Bull Unigenitus. De Noailles a few years later sank into the tomb ; his usual weakness had gained so much upon him that this party leader accepted the Bull before his death. Soanen, one of the best of the French Bishops, a strong Jansenist, was exiled from his See, and nearly fifty Doctors were driven from the Sorbonne. 1 France at this time afforded one of the most disgusting of all spectacles : unbelief in the governing class, coupled with persecuting intolerance and pretended zeal for religion ; Bossuet and Fe'nelon had been replaced by Churchmen such as Dubois and Tencin. The Duke of Bourbon had succeeded the Regent as Governor of France. Under the new pilot, Tressan, Arch- bishop of Rouen, a debauched pluralist, obtained in 1724 the re-enactment of the most ruthless laws of the Grand Monarch against the Protestants. Even family worship was now forbidden to them. The priest was enjoined to visit them on their deathbeds without witnesses, and he was constituted an official informer ; the punishment of the galleys was a common penalty. Protestants were forced by the priest, before he would consent to marry them, to curse their deceased kinsfolk and to swear that they believed them eternally damned ! 2 The Protestant pastors, at the risk of their lives, poured forth once more from the semi- nary of Lausanne to console their flocks, and emigration again began. Two years later Cardinal Fleury took the helm, a selfish mediocrity who cared not to make reforms, and who could 1 See Jervis, Church of France, vol. ii. 2 Martin, xv. 130. These French priests seem to have had no belief in " invincible ignorance " as an excuse for Protestants who rejected the Pope. This doctrine, I believe, obtains largely among English priests of our days who are bent on converting heretics. 444 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. not prevent the decline of France even in years of peace. Under him the condition of the Protestants was on the whole improved, much against Tressan's will ; still a number of women, guilty of having gone to an assembly in the desert, were sentenced to an imprisonment that threatened to be lifelong. Tressan had hoped to earn a Cardinal's hat by persecuting Protestants, but these were less hated at Rome than the Jansenists. An old agent of Dubois named Tencin, suspected of incest and convicted of perjury, wielded great power about this time ; but the Paris Parliament was always on the watch against Ultramontane encroachments, and from 1730 onward it opposed a steady front to Louis XV. and his ministers ; the middle class was now gaining strength and reputation. Jansenism and Gallicanism became more and more identified, each being assailed by the same mighty foe. Fanaticism in the victors soon begat fanaticism in the vanquished. About this time the Jansenists declared that the favour of the Almighty had been manifestly bestowed upon them, as was shown by numerous miracles. Much undoubted imposture was mingled with cases that, like the miracles of Lourdes in our day, perplex fair-minded in- quirers. The Jansenist Bishops themselves had to condemn some of their own party, and to distinguish between the works of God and the delusions of the Devil. The Govern- ment in 1732 banished from Paris a hundred and forty counsellors, patrons of the new heresy. The King, accord- ing to the well-known epigram, was forbidding God to do miracles. The Ultramontane clergy now took to refusing the Sacraments to the dying Jansenist unless he pro- fessed faith in the Bull Unigenitus. In the last age they had gone into the other extreme, and had crammed the Sacrament down the throat of the dying Huguenot against his will. A bad system of religion leads to the strangest antics. The truth of this was seen in 1728. Berruyer, a Jesuit, published a book which was censured at Eome six years later, but which was still openly supported by his Order. A second and worse part was condemned by the IV FKANCE 445 Pope in 1753, and was denounced by some of the Jesuits themselves. A third part appeared in 1758, which renewed Nestorianism, travestied Scripture, and was guilty of in- decency. The works of Berruyer, and also those of his master Hardouin, were condemned by Bishops and Councils. 1 Another Jesuit, Pichon, published a book advocating the simple act of taking the Eucharist as a cure for sin, even though there were no real contrition ; thus confession and absolution became a farce. This work was highly extolled in the Jesuit journals, was later disavowed in a half way, but was still reprinted. Men took notice of the boast of the Jesuits that no member of their Society could publish a work not in agreement with the Society's teaching. 2 France was happier abroad than at home; in 1733 she undertook a new war in Italy, and thus established a new dynasty at Naples, besides in the end acquiring Lorraine. In 1739 Louis XV. began to show what manner of man he was. The amours of his great-grandfather had been com- paratively decent, but the new King shocked public opinion by making four sisters in turn his mistresses. Throughout life he seems to have had no higher motive than the fear of -hell, and even this had but little hold upon him except in sickness. Under him the higher clergy were either hypo- critical debauchees or ruthless fanatics ; Jansenism seemed to be stamped out except in the case of the laity. The Parisians, it is to be feared, understood little about Effica- cious Grace or Absolute Predestination, but they knew well that the Jesuits were a body worthy of the bitterest hatred. Everything seemed to be going from bad to worse, even in peace ; the Intendants were allowed to do much as they pleased, especially in pressing peasants for the upkeep of the roads. Men were dying iii 1740, after a diet of grass. In 1743 Cardinal Fleury dropped at the age of eighty- nine, still holding the reins ; such a phenomenon had not been known in Europe. He left his country in the midst of a burdensome war that had been forced upon him, 1 Hardouin is best known by his belief that the classics were composed by the monks in the Middle Ages. 2 Neale, Jansenist Church of Holland, 304-314. 446 HOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. whence the only advantage to France was that she saw her Prussian allies tear away a rich province from her Austrian enemies. This change hardly compensated her for the French blood and treasure wasted for years. Even in this age of bigotry the Government found itself obliged to give the Marshal's staff to the foreign Protestant Saxe, for France was now wanting in home-born generals as much as in statesmen ; the deceased Villars was the last great French leader of armies that ever upheld the honour of the Lilies. Never did France seem more powerful than in 1745 ; in that year she achieved one of her rare victories over the dreaded English ; she enjoyed the alliance of a foreign King who knew more of war than either Gustavus or Oliver, these old allies, had known ; she had the joy of learning that England was shaken to the centre by a civil war, a most unusual event ; India seemed likely to fall into French hands. But that same year 1745 saw the elevation of Madame de Pompadour to the rank of King's mistress, a low-born woman, who was to become the evil genius of France for the next nineteen years. One of her methods of securing the love of King Louis was by acting as manageress of the infamous Deer Park, whither young girls not fit for marriage were led by the ministers of the King's pleasures ; both bribery and kidnapping were employed to swell the establishment. It is not often that we see superstition and debauchery so equally mingled in one man as in the cases of those two sons of St. Louis, Henry III. and Louis XV. We feel in the middle of the Eighteenth century that some great convulsion cannot be far off. Leibnitz, so far back as 1704, had foretold a coming Ee volution that would destroy much that was precious in Europe. Two of the forerunners of this convulsion, children of the famous Bayle, had made themselves very prominent before 1750 Voltaire and Montesquieu. The first, a true child of Paris, felt early in life the insolence of an unbridled aristocracy, and had to fly from his own land ; the new Columbus boldly set sail and discovered England. On his return from his exile he told his astonished countrymen that not far from their own shores there was a land where all alike were taxed for the IV FEANCE 447 common weal, where the lowest peasant could take the law of a high-born oppressor, where every man could print his thoughts freely, where the corpses of actors were not cast out on the dunghill, where no religious kidnapping was allowed. Montesquieu gave to the world his famous satire, disliked by bigots, on the institutions of his countrymen ; his later works were more popular in England than in France. Eousseau, unlike the deist Voltaire, professed a hazy creed, respectful to Christianity, but untrammelled by religious dogmas, a creed which became the Gospel of the men of the coming Kevolution. The philosophers in France were swaying the intellect of the nation ; unhappily the only form of Christianity before their eyes was a creed which enforced the Bull Unigenitus, a creed which bar- barously tormented believers in Christ, a creed which allied itself with a corrupt and selfish despotism in matters of State. No Pascal, no Bossuet, arose to do battle with the philosophers. These equipped themselves with formidable weapons. In 1751 Diderot and D'Alembert brought out the first volume of the famous Encyclopaedia, which was speedily attacked by the zealots of the Church. The new work, patronised by the minister Choiseul, became a beacon to France ; the shackles laid on agriculture, the system of taxes and enforced labour, the privileges of the nobles and clergy, the enrolments for the Militia, the game laws, were all vigorously assailed; toleration in religion was preached. The work was so popular that the Government could not altogether suppress it ; men's minds were being prepared for 1789. Other observers were busy ; thus a most truthful sketch of the state of France is given by Hogarth in his Gate of Calais. The fat friar and the starving soldier are the two best emblems that could be chosen to represent France in the middle of this Century. While a new enemy to the Church was steadily arising, the Jansenists were raising their heads. De Beaumont, the bigoted Archbishop of Paris, insisted on refusing the sacraments to all who could not produce Confession tickets, to guarantee soundness in the faith. The Parliament strove to coerce the Prelate, and the King in vain 448 EOME AND KEFORM CHAP. attempted to silence the Parliament. Pope Benedict XIV. (a new Clement IX.) was appealed to, and in 1756 gave a judgment well worthy of his statesmanlike and tolerant intellect. He rebuked the French Bishops, who provoked their flocks by acts of needless rigour ; at the same time he supported the Bull Unigenitus. He recommended that the sacraments should be administered, with a warning that the laws of the Church must not be disobeyed. The fanatical bigots declared that the Pope had been writing heresy ; he and De Beaumont seem to stand out as the contrasted types of Moderatism and Ultramontanism. The Archbishop was banished during almost two years from his See for thwarting the King. The Assemblies of the Clergy about this time remonstrated on two points, the spread of the new philosophy and the resolution of laymen to tax the wealth of the Church. In 1761 the Jesuits were condemned for certain mercantile dealings by the Parlia- ment ; in the next year their Order, as far as possible in France, was broken up. They underwent the same measure that they had meted to the Jansenists. In 1764 King Louis suppressed the Society within his dominions ; the Pope's remonstrance was set at naught. Nine years later Clement XIV. suppressed the Jesuits altogether. 1 We learn that the Benedictines and Oratorians in the towns, the Capuchins and Carmelites in the country, took sides against the Jesuits. 2 The Jansenists, who seem about this time to have numbered more lawyers than priests in their ranks, had borne much in this Century ; but in France there was yet another body of believers whose sufferings threw everything else into the shade. After the Camisard rising had been quenched in blood and fire, a youth of the name of Court had been chosen Pastor at Nismes in 1715. He, the bold champion of reason against fanaticism, ventured to hold a Synod, to forbid the visions and ecstasies which had kept the Southern land in turmoil, and to set up the Bible as the one and only source of true inspiration. The Church, 1 Jervis, Church of France, vol. ii. 2 Wallon, Le Clergi de 1789, p. 71. IV FRANCE 449 reorganised by him, received her orders from Zurich, and procured her ministers from a new seminary formed at Lausanne. The preachers were hanged in France when- ever discovered ; but now loyalty prevailed ; Alberoni found that he could not raise the Cevennes in revolt. Court withdrew from France, after a perilous residence there of fifteen years. In 1744 a Synod of all the French provinces was held in Languedoc ; this drew down the wrath of the Government, and many executions followed. In 1745 the persecution of French Protestants was once more in full swing ; the strange amours of King Louis had to be atoned for somehow or other. Rich heretical merchants were roughly used ; one had to pay an enormous bribe to save his children from the religious kidnappers ; another lost his daughter, owing to a private grudge nourished against him by the Intendant. Women who went to meetings in the Desert were flogged and locked up for life in unhealthy prisons ; even King Frederick himself, the chosen ally of France, could not obtain their release. All through 1751 the Huguenot meetings were dispersed with bloodshed by the soldiery; the Cevenols fled into the woods and left their harvests. The clergy waxed furious whenever some slight mercy was shown by the Government. One of the worst persecutors was the Marshal de Richelieu, a Prince of debauchery and a mighty worker of mischief all through this century. The lawyers of Bordeaux seem to have taken little heed of the teaching of their illustrious brother, Montesquieu, whose Spirit of Laws came out in 1748. The very next year this Parliament enjoined forty-six married persons, male and female, to separate, while their children were bastard- ised ; Protestant marriages must be stopped. Nine other husbands were condemned to the galleys, while their nine wives were shaved and imprisoned ; the Protestant certifi- cates of marriage were to be burnt by the hangman in the presence of the victims. These wise rulers seemed bent on driving thousands of French citizens to live in a state of Nature. 1 But this rotten system was always confronted 1 Coquerel, EglLses du Desert, i. 414. VOL. I 2 G 450 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. by new champions of the faith ; in Languedoc we begin to light upon the historic names of Rabaut and Guizot. Martyrdoms still went on, but Court, who lived at Lausanne until 1760, was always able to fill up the gaps, so far as ministers were concerned. In 1761 occurred the case of Galas, with which Voltaire (it is the best act in his life) made all Europe ring. This was not the only cause that the philosopher had to plead. In 1760 Sirven had seen his child kidnapped by a Bishop, to be flogged into the true faith in a convent ; she there lost her senses, was sent home, and threw herself into a well. The cry of murder was raised by the Bishop, and the whole Sirven family had to fly ; " four sheep," said Voltaire, " accused by the butcher of having eaten a lamb." It took five years to do justice to the hapless exiles. The Patriarch of Ferney and his German friends became the means of releasing many Protestants from the galleys. In 1769 an old man of eighty was set free who had been in irons for twenty-seven years. Fourteen women were found locked up in the historic Tower of Aiguemortes, many of them eighty years old ; the youngest had been imprisoned when fifteen, and had been confined for thirty-eight years. After 1773 no pastor was imprisoned. 1 One of the worst calamities ever inflicted upon France was her new policy in 1755 ; she now threw over her old Protes- tant allies, taking sides with Austria, and later with Spain. The Pompadour had been skilfully flattered by the Empress Queen, and King Louis had no love for the renowned Prussian heretic. Owing to this strange new policy, France soon lay open to the sledge-hammer blows dealt her by Frederick and Pitt. She lost Canada and all her fair chance of founding an empire in India ; she had to listen to the tidings of Rosbach and Minden. Her choice of agents was strange indeed ; Soubise was sent back into the field by his patroness the Pompadour, after he had already lost one great battle. All this time France was making vast payments to Austria, who was blundering almost as much as France herself. 1 See for this Peyrat's Pasteurs du Dtsert, towards the end of vol. ii. A full account is given of the Galas case. IV FEANCE 451 The whole war, ending with the peace of 1763, is one of the most disgraceful chapters in French history. It was calculated that one million of men out of the different nations engaged had lost their lives. 1 France had been better guided by Cardinals than by ladies. Eleven years of a wretched reign had still to run. Choiseul, the one capable man of the time, came into power and did his best to restore prosperity to France. The Parliaments, especially that of Brittany, waged a fierce war with the Government. Corsica was bought from the Genoese, the most baleful domain ever acquired by France, as we at once see by looking forward to the years 1812 and 1870. Choiseul was hurled from power just at the moment when he might have done something to save luckless Poland from her oppressors. The great minister owed his fall to a woman's hand ; the Pompadour was now dead, and in 1768 the Dubarry, whom Choiseul scorned to court, was promoted from the lowest rank to the vacant honour of King's mistress. She reigned for the next six years, and in 1771 she was able to make an end of the Parliament of Paris. She was courted both by the Pope's Nuncio and by the Cardinal, who was Grand Almoner. The debauchees and the Ultramontanes had long joined hands over the ruin of the Jansenist stronghold. In 1774 the wretched old King caught the smallpox from one of his girlish victims, and was soon borne to the tomb amid the rejoicings of his subjects. He had done more to hasten on the Eevolution than either Voltaire or Eousseau. Louis XVI. succeeded, the foredoomed victim of the ill deeds of his forefathers. He began by ridding himself of the evil ministers who had too long oppressed France, and by calling the great Turgot to the management of the finances. As a philosopher and an advocate of toleration the new minister was hated by the clergy and by the votaries of old abuses ; he was further damaged by the friendship of Voltaire, who wrote many pamphlets on Turgot's side. The clerical assembly begged to be allowed to continue the kidnapping of Huguenot children, and 1 Voltaire had good reason to admire the English Quakers. 452 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. declared that monstrous atheism had become the dominant opinion. Who can wonder? In 1776 fell Turgot, the one man who might have staved off the coming Eevolu- tion, and soon after his fall the old abuses abolished by him were brought back. But a new world was evidently not far off ; Necker, a Protestant, took charge of the finances ; a mighty stride was made in the matter of toleration ; Conti, a Prince of the blood, had refused the last sacra- ments on his deathbed ; and the aged Voltaire met with a Eoyal reception at Paris from all classes alike. He and Eousseau died within little more than a month of each other. Meanwhile America had shaken off the British yoke ; first Lafayette, and then Louis XVI. himself, came to the rescue of the patriots. The war carried on by France in 1780 was very different from that of 1760 ; Britain lost ground all over the world, except in India. But France was in truth in a still worse plight ; here internal reform was very slow ; numbers of peasants were still chained to the soil, and could not marry without the lord's leave. Abbeys still, as in the Jura, held many serfs, in the way that Voltaire describes in one of his last works. The Church was a great burden on the country ; thus in the one parish of St. Sulpice in Paris no fewer than twenty-six convents, without reckoning seminaries, had been established within the hundred years that followed 1609. Our wiser forefathers had built very few convents for two hundred years before the great suppression. Swarms of idle Abbe's fed and slept at Paris. There was a multiplicity of juris- dictions and petty offices, which had gone on increasing for the last three hundred years ; it was the same in Spain ; here the contrast with England was most striking to any shrewd observer. 1 The cost of the American War was enormous, and the 1 See a book called Londres, printed at Lausanne in 1770 by a sharp- eyed Frenchman who visited England five years earlier, ii. 143 ; iii. 365. The author, however, confesses that the best fanned lands, both in France and Italy, were those held by the abbeys, ii. 149. He asserts that every one of the French Bishops had abrogated the Roman Breviary in their dioceses, ii. 49. IV FKANCE 453 finances were in the greatest disorder; still, in 1781, Necker was dismissed, hated by the nobles whose pensions he had threatened ; all the foreign enemies of France were rejoicing. The new minister, the courtly Calonne, coming in 1783, allowed the Royal family and the courtiers free access to the Treasury. Eather later, Cardinal Kohan and his necklace cast a lurid light upon the morality of the French Prelates, among whom was soon to be enrolled the most renowned of all the long line of Autun's Bishops. Archbishop Lomenie de Brienne, who was called to the helm in 1787, was a man of bad morals; so changed was everything that Bishops might be found pleading for the Protestants, who now obtained an Edict of Toleration from Louis XVI. There was much struggling between the King and the Paris Parliament ; in 1788 Brittany and Dauphine were on fire ; this last province, an old stronghold of Protestantism, seems to have given the signal for the Great Revolution. All was falling into anarchy. The last Assembly of the old Gallican Church that ever met protested against being taxed, and also against " the disorder of a false equality " that is, the toleration of Protestants. On the eve of the Deluge the Church of the Guises was true to herself. In 1788 Necker replaced the directing Archbishop, while all France was boiling over with excite- ment. We must cast one more look at the Church before tht great overthrow. Mesmont, a pious priest, writing to Eome in 1786, says that in one town known to him there were three abbeys, a commandery, and some priories ; the children of the town were untaught, the sick were left un- succoured, the aged had no resources. He hoped for the suppression of the begging friars, who lived on the poor. Few monasteries kept their rules. There were in France 1100 abbeys, 678 nunneries, about 8000 monks (counting the lay brethren), and as many nuns ; there were also 50,000 parish priests. The Churchmen, with the Prelates, enjoyed one half of the revenues of the kingdom. 1 The French parish priest was soon to make himself felt in a 1 Quoted by Wallon, Le Clerg6 de 1789, p. 185-188. 454 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. way that he had never done before; humble men like Gre*goire in his Lorraine parsonage were to have a great career opened to them. The saying ran at this time that an excellent clergy might be made out of Spanish bishops and French priests. It was a proverb that the Prelates had cut down the Sacraments from seven to six, since con- firmation was hardly known. 1 Yet even in this sorry time France, in some things, aroused the admiration of foreign observers. She was unsurpassed in the art of negotiating and in the faculty of discovering the secrets of other lands. She would spend millions on the article of secret intelligence and on bribery ; her ambassadors enjoyed enormous salaries, and her ministers possessed accurate plans of every fortified place in neighbouring kingdoms. Her police was a model to other countries. Her colony of San Domingo, soon to be thrown away, was a mine of wealth. France would surely rise higher than ever if once set free from that wretched system which allowed forty farmers -general to plunder the hapless subject. 2 Soon the peasant was to be rid of the game that ate up his crops, to cross rivers without paying toll, to sell his produce freely at the market, to grind his wheat and bake his bread wherever he might choose, with- out any interference from nobleman or priest. Inequality of taxation was to be a thing of the past. Early in 1789 the elections for the States-General were going on throughout the land ; we notice one election at Msmes, where Eabaut-Saint-Etienne, the son of one of the Pastors of the Desert, was chosen ; this indeed marks a change. The lower clergy, hitherto enslaved by the Bishops, demanded a sort of democratic reform in Church and State, while at the same time they were not for freedom of worship. The nobles were ready enough to sacrifice some of the rights of the Church. The spirit of Eousseau was abroad ; the general cry was for Equality and for the 1 See Mimoires de Gh-fyoire, ii. 13, 24. Gre'goire himself, when Bishop of Blois, confirmed about forty thousand, and preached fifty-two times within eighteen days. " Zimmermann, Political Survey of Europe, printed in 1787, pp. 271, 272. IV FEANCE 455 abolition of Leo the Tenth's Concordat ; no more money ought to be sent to Home. Arthur Young about this time remarks on the vast throngs of monks in Paris and on the vast throngs of beggars ; the two usually go together. The States-General of France were opened on the 5th of May, and for five weeks it much resembled the last Assembly, anything but revolutionary, that had met under Louis XIII. On the 13th of June 1789 the French Revolution may be said to have begun ; on that day three Poitevin priests, followed later by many of their brethren, disobeyed the King's orders and took their places in the hail of the Third Estate, which soon afterwards assumed the title of The National Assembly. The old system was at an end for ever, for King Louis now sanctioned that mighty change, the union of the Three Orders. About a month after the decisive step taken by the three priests, the Bastiile was stormed, and a visible sign of Eevolution was given to admiring Europe. In August the Church sacrificed her tithes and privileges on the altar of the country ; Cardinals and Prelates had to acquiesce in the proposals of the long- oppressed parish priests. The clergy were soon reduced to the position of stipendiaries, depending on the popular will. The National Assembly was ready to disendow but not to disestablish ; so an Ecclesiastical Committee was appointed, in which strong --Jansenists and Gallicans had a majority. Early in 1790 monastic life was abolished. In May of that year the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was produced, a system which, more than anything else, was the source of coming bloodshed and revolution to France. The clergy ceased to be one of the Three Estates ; fifty Sees were suppressed, and all acknowledgment of the Pope's jurisdiction was forbidden. The Jansenists, such as Camus, the undoubted authors of the new system, had at last their revenge on Eome. Bishops and priests were henceforth to be elected by the people. Pius VI. could do little to check the Eevolution. He had already harangued a Secret Consistory against the 456 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. doings of the French Assembly, remarking among other things that Non-Catholics were now declared eligible for all employments ; the new liberty of thinking, speaking, and printing was something monstrous. The unhappy Louis XVI., branded by Eome as wanting to his Coronation oath, in vain asked the Pope to tolerate the new measures. But in July Pius sent a letter forbidding the King to approve the late decrees of the Assembly ; in Church matters some haggling, all in secret, went on between the Pope and the King, who had to choose between ex- communication or deposition ; all ended by Louis, en August 24, 1790, giving his assent to the Civil Con- stitution of the clergy. This was a middle course, which offended the old Church party, and did not for a moment abate the fury of the Eevolutionists. The vast majority of the spirituality protested against the new system, which bereft the Pope of his jurisdiction in France, though not of his nominal primacy. The National Assembly ordered the clergy to take a solemn oath which Rome could never sanction. The unhappy Louis was forced to yield, and thus to appear as a per- secutor of the Church. Gregoire and Talleyrand, with many other priests, at once took the hateful oath, and the new year, 1791, began with a war against the clergy. Five Bishops only, out of one hundred and thirty, adopted the new system ; they were followed by about one-fourth of the three hundred priests who sat in the Assembly, and who had done so much to make the Eevolution possible. Times were indeed changed ; two Jansenists and two Protestants were appointed a Committee for a new measure wounding the old Gallican Church. On January 9, 1791, the new oath was enforced on the priests amid much uproar; most of the clergy refused to take it, and were cast out of their cures ; the Sorbonne protested, and was soon sup- pressed. Talleyrand made himself useful by joining in the consecration of the new Prelates, the best of whom was Gre"goire from Lorraine. All France was divided ; the old priests and nuns were sometimes assailed by mobs in the IV FRANCE 457 towns ; the new priests, of whom there was an insufficient supply, durst not always confront the peasantry, devoted to the Pope. Many a French household was torn by civil war; thus Madame Lafayette went along with her husband in all things except one ; she could not break with Rome. This unlucky meddling with the Church was what in reality wrecked the peaceable progress of the French Eevolution ; King Louis might put up with temporal changes, but it was a very different matter when the Assembly forced him to violate his conscience and disobey the Pope. In March 1791 Pius VI. did what he should have done a year earlier ; he publicly protested against the new French Church laws of 1790. Many of the clergy who had taken the new oath retracted their acquiescence after reading the Papal utterance. The Assembly was divided between an eager desire to foster its new Church, and its horror of sanctioning religious persecution. What must they have thought of the Pope's Brief in March, which blamed them for establishing the right of free thought, free speech, and free printing : " This equality and liberty are but words void of sense." l Mirabeau, the one man who could have bridled the Revolution, now died, and his death was followed by the unhappy flight to Varennes ; Louis had been driven to this in a great measure owing to the violation of his religious scruples by the new enactments. Later in the year 1791 the National Assembly was dissolved, which, with all its faults, stands high above the noisy throng of hot-headed lawyers that succeeded it. France was setting about an impossible task ; on the one hand were her cleverest men, suckled on the milk of Voltaire and Rousseau; on the other frowned the Pope, who, by his Briefs, placed in the front rank of national crimes the new toleration granted to Protestants. De Brienne, a most unsound Churchman, was accused of having restored in part the fatal Edict of Nantes. 2 1 Arnaud, La Revolution et L'Eglise, i. 50. 2 See De Pressense on The Church and the French Eevolution ; Jervis rather slurs over the Pope's utterances as to toleration. 458 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. There is something pathetic in this attitude of the Pope, soon to be swept away in the mighty Deluge hard at hand. Yet the Papacy still had much in its power ; thus a fire- brand named Froment came to Kome and avowed that the Catholics of the South were bent upon rooting out the Protestants of Nismes. This he mentioned to Cardinal de Bernis, the famous Ambassador of France at Kome. Instantly the Cardinal wrote to Pope Pius VI. begging him to publish a special Brief exhorting the faithful to withstand the enemy by spiritual arms alone, since the Gospel abhorred the spirit of hatred and vengeance. 1 The Count of Artois and his school, the men who were the bane of France, would have been much disgusted at the Cardinal's mildness ; yet that good man had already suffered much in his property from the Eevolution. The new French Assembly, meeting late in 1791, speedily enacted a law that compelled all the French clergy to conform to the new Church. King Louis refused to sanction the tyrannical edict, and his refusal led up later by successive steps to his deposition and death. His veto was now simply ignored ; all through France civil broils broke out between the Eevolutionists of the towns and the old-fashioned peasantry ; toleration could not raise her head between persecution and fanaticism. Wise men were beginning to see that the new Church legislation, the one thing which millions of good Frenchmen would not accept, was to the Eevolution in general what the feet of clay were to the golden Image. The great foreign strife of 1792 was now declared, and France was to wage war for no less than twenty-two years. 2 She was propagating a new political creed abroad with a zeal seldom shown even in religious revolutions. Fortune went against her at first ; at Paris the Jacobins marked down for slaughter three thousand priests and nobles ; about three hundred of the former died, most of whom might have saved their lives by taking the obnoxious oath. The death of King Louis followed early in 1793. A new 1 Le Cardinal de Bernis, par Masson, 521. 2 Even in 1802 there was the war of San Domingo. IV FEANCE 459 oath was now enacted, binding all public functionaries to maintain Liberty and Equality ; there was great strife among the French clergy as to whether they could tolerate this new enactment, but Pope Pius VI. would not publicly condemn it. Savage laws were enacted against refractory priests, who might now be transported to the West coast of Africa on the charge of what was called "incivisme." Six hundred of them died a lingering death in French dungeons; all the horrors of the Huguenot persecution, except torture, seemed to be repeated. Thousands of their brethren fled to Spain, Italy, and even to Protestant England, meeting everywhere with a warm welcome. Their lay brethren at home took the field ; scores of thousands perished, and the deaths in La Vende'e were far more numerous than those in the Cevennes. In November 1793 the knot of men who misgoverned France advanced further, and did their best to abolish every form of Christianity. La Eochelle saw eight Catholic ministers, with one Protestant brother, unpriest themselves. No altar but that of Liberty was to be acknowledged. Some of the Constitutional priests abjured religion before the Convention in order to save their lives from the monsters at the helm. One striking exception there was to the prevailing baseness : Gregoire, manfully declaring himself a Catholic by conviction, a priest by choice, refused to lay down his bishopric. He spoke amid howls and roars from the men of the Convention, and felt that his speech was probably a sentence of death. He was afterwards accused of wishing to Christianise the Kevolution. More than twenty Constitutional Bishops, many of whom had contracted marriage, abjured at this time ; Sieyes did the same. In November 1793 Paris beheld the Goddess of Reason enthroned in her great cathedral ; this was indeed a reaction from the system of the Guises and of Louis XIV. Atheism was openly preached and the sacred buildings were closed. Not only the two Churches of the Latin rite, but Protestants were swamped in one deluge of impiety. At Tours the desecrations of 1562 were repeated. Late in 1793 Robespierre himself, the disciple of Rousseau, protested 460 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. against the late outrages. Nothing is more astonishing in these times than the rage displayed by millions against Christianity, without the slightest wish to replace that system by anything better. The year 1794 beheld the execution of many of the Constitutional Bishops, who would not go all lengths with their taskmasters ; many of the Prelates before death re- pented and submitted themselves to the Pope. Robespierre now underwent the fate he had meted out to so many Frenchmen, and there were hopes of a better state of things. Bishop Gre"goire was able to save sixty priests from the dungeons where so many of their brethren had died ; he stood forth once more in 1795 as the advocate of freedom of worship ; and the tide was evidently turning. Sound Republicans now traced all the miseries of the country to the folly of the Constituent Assembly in resolving to tinker the old Church ; the bloody war in La Vendee was a fearful comment upon the Jansenist projects of 1790. The sacred buildings were again opened, and men thronged to the Mass. Both the Papal and the Constitutional clergy once more began their labours. The day of Vendemiaire, 1795, ended in a victory of the Republicans over the Royalists and their abettors ; laws against refractory priests were once more enacted. In 1796 the Directory did not abstain from shedding the blood of certain of the clergy; budding toleration was checked by the Fructidor stroke in 1797. Two parties in the Directory were mainly divided by the question of religion ; very small concessions on that head would have averted the bloody Vendean civil war, which was always being renewed. Hoche proved himself a truer statesman than Barras, a hater of all religion. The replacement of Sunday by the De*cadi, one of the most glaring of all the follies of the Revolution, was enforced more sternly than ever. The curious sect of Theophilanthropists was now asserting itself. Gregoire and his brethren, without whom religion would have been altogether exiled from France, did their best to make head against the infidel, refusing to have anything to IV FEANCE 461 do with the Decadi in matters spiritual, and forbidding the clergy to marry. In 1797 a Council of the Constitutional Church, now in the deepest poverty, was held, when thirty Bishops attended ; it agreed to take an oath of hatred to Eoyalty. The old Church was of course hostile alike to Gre*goire's new fabric and to the Eepublic, and the Pope main- tained a haughty silence. Eome found Napoleon, at the end of his most brilliant campaign, more favourable to her than the Directory was. This body, now misgoverning France, dragged Pius VI. into captivity, where he died in 1799, a ruler who in the early part of his reign reminds us of peaceful 1670 ; in the latter part, of warlike 1870. Two new chiefs stood forward, for in 1800 Pius VII. was elected Pope only a few months after Napoleon had grasped the rod of empire. A great change in things spiritual was impending over France. A new political creed was now being propagated by main force from Connaught to Calabria ; but at the same time theological hatreds had somewhat cooled down ; there was in France toleration for all who refrained from attack- ing the State. Few now looked upon their country as the Eldest Daughter of the Church, bound to draw the sword for her mother in all quarters of the world ; a rash policy which was afterwards to have so great a share in the mighty downfall of 1870. But this inglorious state of things which prevailed in 1800 did not suit the aspiring Corsican ; he was bent on becoming a Constantine or a Charles the Great, a nursing father of the Church. Lafayette in vain urged upon him the American system, which leaves every Church to pay its own ministers. Napoleon wished to be hailed (falsely indeed) as the Eestorer of religion in France. Even if Eome should prove stubborn, the great man had a second string to his bow. Bishop Gre"goire's self-supporting Communion was strong ; it reckoned up at this time fifty bishops, ten thousand married priests, and it held the greater part of the churches, open in 34,000 communes. But the master of France aimed at higher game, if he could only be met rather more than half-way. 462 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. Napoleon, an adept in the art of cajoling priests, drove a hard bargain with Koine. He demanded that the eighty Prelates of the old Church, who had stood so manfully by the Pope for the last dismal ten years, should resign their Sees; that the sale of the Church property should be ratified ; that half of the old dioceses should be swept away; that the New and Schismatical Church should be received into the Pope's arms. Cardinal Consalvi was sent to Paris, there to negotiate with the First Consul, who stood almost alone in wishing for peace with Eome ; nearly all the Court and army were more or less infidels. This very year Gre*goire and his Church were, as a hint full of meaning, allowed to hold a second National Council, with much talk about the Four Gallican Articles. Consalvi found that he must yield ; on Napoleon's side no small roguery was practised, such as handing in for signature a draught, which was contrary to the previous agreement; once the First Consul tore up an obnoxious paper into a hundred pieces ; one discussion lasted nineteen hours at a stretch. 1 At last, on July 15, 1801, all was settled ; the Pope gained for the old French Church free and public worship ; all divisions were to end. Consalvi was astonished at the proposal to embrace many of the new Constitutional Bishops in the restored hierarchy without any retractation of their errors ; but in the end a solemn Bull came from Rome which made all the concessions demanded ; even the married priests were to be charitably dealt with. The bait of the restoration of his lost provinces had been skilfully dangled before Pius. But of the old French Church only forty-seven Bishops were ready to resign their Sees into the Pope's hands ; many of those in exile refused to imitate their brethren. It was a hard position ; the only answer that could be made by Rome was that an extraordinary disease required an extraordinary remedy. By his Bull of November Pius suppressed all the old French Sees (some were sixteen hundred years old), and in their stead founded sixty 1 Consalvi's account of these matters may be read in Cretineau-Joly, L'Eglise Romaine en face de la Revolution, i. 258-325. IV FBANCE 463 bishoprics. Ultramontanism, fostered by Napoleon for his own ends, won a great victory over the stubborn Gallican rival. Twelve Prelates of the new establishment were old Constitutionals, though the famous Gre"goire, the most honest of all Frenchmen, was not allowed to be one of the batch. The utmost these Prelates would do was to renounce the Civil Constitution and pledge themselves to obey the Pope ; retractation of the past was not to be thought of; Caprara, the Pope's Legate, was officially described as having sworn (he denied it) that he would not derogate from the rights of the Gallican Church. The ever -recurring Gallican Articles were once more brought forward in the teeth of the Pope, who saw that he had been duped, and who in vain protested against the wily Napoleon's manosuvres. On April 19, 1802, the First Consul held a solemn service in honour of the reconciliation between France and the Papacy ; it was with the greatest difficulty that old free- thinkers, whether men of the gown or men of the sword, could be got to countenance the newly -revived rites. " Nothing was wanting to the ceremony," said Delmas to Napoleon, " except the million of men who died in pulling down what you now set up." Men could not help laughing when the Pope by a Brief made over " his very dear son " Talleyrand to civil life. Thus the Concordat came into being, a treaty which Napoleon long afterwards denounced as the greatest fault of his life. Gre"goire tells us in his Memoirs that much persecution was now undergone by the Constitutional clergy at the hands of Napoleon's Bishops. But at first all seemed to go well ; the Pope's Legate declared that Napoleon had carried God's ark over the Jordan ; as to the Canaanites, any French Bishop could point them out, seated in their island to the North of France. In 1804 Pius came to Paris, and there crowned his host Emperor, though the Pope had great scruples as to the Coronation oath, which countenanced freedom of religious worship. The Constitutional Bishops were forced to give in their adherence to the Holy See ; and Josephine, now obtaining at the Pope's desire the marriage rites of the Church, was no longer fain to be content with 464 ROME AND KEFOEM CHAP. a mere civil contract. But Pius could not succeed in his opposition to the Gallican Articles, or in abolishing divorce in France. One great mistake he had made, as Pius VI. had before done in the visit to Vienna ; a number of aged and helpless Prelates, unable to speak French, had been brought to Paris in the Pope's train, and their want of polish provoked many gibes from the Parisian wits. Pacca, a good judge, thought most highly of the French clergy, the parish priests and vicars-general, whose sermons far surpassed the eloquence of Italy, and who excelled the clergy of all other nations put together. 1 The laity did not give him equal content ; even at Fontainebleau, an unusually good specimen of a French town, the worshippers in the churches were nearly all women ; on the great Feast of the Assump- tion all the shops were open, and masons were at work even under the Pope's windows. Many turned their backs on religion all their lives, and died without having recourse to a priest ; yet the clergy were forced by law to give burial rights to such sinners. 2 The Papal Court had not returned home long before the Eldest Son of the Church seized Ancona and proclaimed that he himself was Emperor of Home. Napoleon, as was natural, hated Consalvi, a minister with whom the Pope now had to part. The great man evidently hoped to imitate the Kussian Czars, and to make himself master of both the bodies and the souls of all who were under him ; the Pope's resistance to this plan was most annoying. Some of the Gallican Bishops, on the other hand, were ready with any amount of blasphemous adulation. In 1806 the Imperial theologian put forth a Catechism which imposed special duties of submission on the subjects of the French Crown ; any who resisted the new Cyrus would make themselves 1 Meinoirs of Cardinal Pacca, ii. chap. xvii. 2 Ibid. chap. xv. Pacca gives us some idea as to the means of carrying on Napoleon's Government. In 1814 he met in Gascony several hundred cars, each drawn by two oxen, loaded with weary soldiers, who were thus enabled to travel day and night. The peasants, who drove the oxen, lost many days' work, and had to look on while their beasts were shamefully treated by the soldiers. They implored Pacca's aid with tears in their eyes ; he, of course, could do nothing for them. See his Memoirs, chap. xvi. IV FKANCE 465 worthy of everlasting damnation. All this was sanctioned by Caprara, the Pope's Legate, but was unauthorised by Caprara's master, a point upon which Consalvi insists in his Memoirs. In 1809 Pius VII. was led into captivity ; he thence- forth refused to institute Bishops to any French Sees that fell vacant ; twenty-seven of these were soon unfilled. The Emperor appealed to a knot of time-serving Prelates. 1 Soon came the scandal of the dissolution of Josephine's marriage by the Consistory Court of Paris ; her husband was not ashamed to plead that he had never consented to the union. The Cardinals had been ordered to exchange Eome for Paris ; Napoleon doubtless wished to have the nomination of the next Pope. Thirteen of them, headed by Consalvi, refused to appear at the Emperor's second marriage ; they were all banished and stripped of their rank and property. Napoleon flew into a violent rage, declared that there was as great a difference between the religion of Bossuet and that of Gregory VII. as there was between heaven and hell, and talked of shooting refractory priests. As it was, under him more than five hundred Churchmen were thrown into prison without trial. 2 He sent to Savona some of his servile Prelates, who wheedled an important concession from Pius, left without any advisers and in a wretched state of health. A Council of ninety-five French and Italian Bishops met at Paris in 1811; the Italians at once objected strongly to the Four Gallican Articles ; the Council avowed itself incom- petent to carry out the Emperor's wishes. He forthwith dissolved the Assembly, and threw three of its leading Bishops into prison because their opinions had happened to differ from his own ; they were afterwards forced to resign their Sees. This clerical business was Napoleon's employ- ment in 1811, when he should have been before Lisbon, proving to the British that there was a greater than Massena. 1 What manner of men these were may be seen in the case of Cardinal Rohan, a successor of Fenelon's at Cambrai. He was the uncle of the wife of the murdered Enghien, yet he called Napoleon "a tutelary God"! His pay was a round sum from the receipts of theatres. Sorel, Lectures His- toriques, 69. 2 Arnaud, La Revolution et I'Eglise, i. 71. VOL. I 2 H 466 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. In the next year, 1812, the Emperor set about burning the candle at both ends, and underwent frightful disasters alike in Spain and in Eussia ; the beginning of the end was at hand. He had first dragged Pius from Savona to Fontainebleau, declaring in the Moniteur that " the Pope was free " ; there is a comic element in most of Napoleon's sayings and doings. On returning from Moscow he made greater demands than ever upon his victim ; Pius was henceforth to name only one-third of the Cardinals, was to banish two of them from his presence, and was to fix his residence at Paris. In 1813 Pius agreed to much of this, but afterwards retracted on being visited by Pacca and Consalvi ; his best ally had been Eussia and her snows. At last, when in 1814 Napoleon found himself almost at the end of his tether, he allowed Pius to return home, thus bringing to a close one of the most disgraceful chapters in the Imperial history. 1 The Gallican clergy had not played a brilliant part in these base times. " Are they not," cries G-re'goire, " the same who, after having exhausted all the phrases of servility, worn all liveries, professed all doctrines, courted all parties, always end by floating on the surface ? " But it is an assured fact that if the clergy be cut off from all interest in the land, they will shelter themselves behind the Pope or the temporal Euler. The Eeaction was now in full swing, and Louis XVIII. was depicted as riding into Paris behind a Cossack. The Emigrants, the men who had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing, did their best to disgust France with restored Eoyalty. The sons of the Crusaders wrought their will on the sons of Voltaire. The new ministers, among whom the Church was represented, seemed to make the Charter a dead letter. The old soldiers of Napoleon were soon dishonoured and alienated. The clergy, as usual, were in a hurry to enjoy their triumph. What must have been the state of things in the provinces when at Paris several persons were hurt with bayonets for having refused to uncover and kneel to passing processions ? The priests did their best to 1 In 1822 a new Bull created thirty fresh Sees in France. In 1816 divorce was abolished. iv FKANCE 467 deprive a famous actress of funeral rites, and thus caused a great uproar. The pulpits thundered against the men who had bought Church property in the late convulsion. 1 When we review all this we are not astonished at the eagerness with which most of the towns of France received Napoleon on his return in 1815. Waterloo was fought, and all went back to the old groove. King Louis himself stood aghast at the deeds of the men, who were more Koyalist than himself. We must cast a glance at the city of Nismes, which, divided between two Confessions, had always been ready to blaze forth in civil war. In 1790 Froment, an agent of the Count of Artois, had striven to stir up the Catholics of the city against all toleration, and had caused the loss of many lives. Far worse outrages were perpetrated in 1815 when the news of Waterloo had come. Bands of fanatics from the Ehone poured into Nismes and treacherously massacred two hundred of Napoleon's soldiers in garrison. They then butchered and robbed numerous Protestants both in the city and in the country round ; women were outraged and slain. The agents of the new Government seem to have winked at most of the foul deeds perpetrated, which went on for many months ; all Protestant worship was at an end. A general who had checked the rioters was shot in a tumult ; Tres- taillons, the chief ruffian, was triumphantly acquitted. The Chamber of Paris hooted down a deputy who insisted on bringing forward the massacres of the Southern Protestants; but elsewhere their cause was nobly championed by Komilly, akin to them by descent, in the House of Commons. The impunity vouchsafed to murderers by the Bourbon Govern- ment is truly startling. 2 Protestantism in France was now most unlike what it had been in Calvin's time. Most of the ministers were either Socinians or Infidels. In the Eevolution every Bible that could be found had been burnt, and the works of the old Reformers had to be buried in the ground. In 1809 1 NapoUon, par Fleury de Chaboulon, 47, 48. 2 See Wilks, Persecutions of Protestants in Southern France, published in 1821. 468 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. Napoleon had established a College at historic Montauban for his Protestant subjects, willing to play them off against the Pope ; about this time there were not 200 pastors in all France. Mr. Haldane, a Scotch Calvinist, came to this town in 1817, and strove to stir up his nominal brethren. So cold were the Protestants throughout France, that not one of their Consistories deigned to reply to a request, asking their aid in printing the Bible in French at a cost of little more than 1000. The Socinians denounced Mr. Haldane to the Government as a firebrand. He had already kindled a similar flame at Geneva, where a knot of pastors were soon to establish a separate church, based upon those principles of Calvin which had been long thrown aside. 1 These principles were for years advocated by Guizot in France, and were steadily opposed by his Socinian enemies. Pius VII. was encouraged to hope for great advantages from the Restoration. King Louis, on July 11, 1817, made a convention with Home, thereby re-establishing the old Concordat of Francis I. and Leo X., and abolishing the new Concordat of 1801. But the French Chambers, servile as they were, could not quite stomach this ; and the King, who usually could boast of common sense, durst not submit his new work to a public discussion. 2 The Bourbons had in one point sadly degenerated from their great forefather of 1700; they seemed not to set the slightest store by modern literature, allowing it to be wholly captured by their enemies. Chateaubriand, who now stood at the head of French intellect, had been of the greatest service to the throne ; yet he was suddenly banished from the King's service with the greatest dis- courtesy. As was natural, he at once went over to the Opposition, and made himself a thorn in the side of his old masters, who had not the sense to appraise genius at its right value. Few men have ever had a more baleful influence on France than the King's brother, Charles the Count of 1 Lives of R. and J. Haldane, 473-486. 2 Arnaud, La Revolution et I'Eglise, i. 76. iv FKANCE 469 Artois ; and this influence lasted for about fifty years before his dethronement in 1830. Nismes knew something of his ideas of government, and he had still further scope for these ideas when he succeeded his brother as Charles X. What sober Frenchmen thought of the Church principles now in vogue may be seen in the writings of Count Mont- losier; this nobleman, an old Eoyalist who hated the Jacobins, sets before us the greatest part of the French Bishops pressing forward to the Ultramontane goal ; the Prefects forced to follow in the same direction, though murmuring in secret ; the true friends of the Throne in a state of alarm. There were, according to him, two kinds of fanaticism in France : that of devotion to the priests, and that of impious revolt against them. Happy England, we may say, that has found out a middle path. The authority of Bossuet was quoted to certain Breton priests ; they answered that the Declaration of 1682 was a blemish, not a glory, in his life. " It is these Gallican principles," said the Superior of a Seminary at Lyons, " that were the prelude to the ruin of religion; they cease not to bring forth monsters of error." ] The Throne and Altar seemed now to be one ; in 1825 France stood aghast at the new law on Sacrilege. Thefts and profanations committed in churches were henceforth to stand on an altogether different footing from crimes perpetrated elsewhere ; and in certain cases the punishment of death was to follow. The law, Guizot remarked long afterwards, was worthy of the Twelfth century. 2 Many of the Bishops who sat in the Chamber of Peers declared that they felt themselves quite free to vote laws of this kind ; they would not shed blood themselves, but they had no scruple in ordering laymen to shed it. Much of this sort of reasoning had come down from the days of the Inquisition when active. A violent shock was given to public opinion in France by this conduct of the clergy and of their tool, 1 M6moire & Consulter, par M. le Comte de Montlosier, 69, 117, 191. 2 De Bonald remarked in the House of Peers : " As to the profaner of the sanctuary, the sentence of death does nothing but send him before his natural judge." Gervinus, History of the Nineteenth Century, tome xviii. 227. 470 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. the King. The law of Sacrilege, as it turned out, was never applied. The Archbishop of Eouen produced a great effect by- ordering the names of all who did not fulfil their Easter duties to be posted on the Church doors; he also denounced as " concubinaries " those of his flock who were satisfied with civil marriage. One priest was condemned to three years of imprisonment for having preached the damnation of Louis and Charles on account of their maintenance of the Charter. There was constant disputing over funerals and processions; sceptics paid their court to the King by taking part in the ceremonies he loved ; that old Church robber, Soult, atoned for his shifty politics by holding a wax candle in the rites dear to Charles X. About this time the play of Tartufe was very popular all over France. In 1826 men like Montlosier were attacking the Jesuits, and even the Pope, who stood in the background ; the Bishops were furious against these assailants ; the Govern- ment found itself unable to enlist the Prelates on the side of the old Gallican doctrines ; they now refused to condemn Papal Infallibility. One fanatical Bishop was chosen to be tutor of the King's grandson, much to the disgust of the public. Lamennais had hitherto been violent against Galli- canism, which was now strong among the lawyers, but had little hold on the young clergy. The Government tried to satisfy the priests by crushing the Press. In 1828 Charles X. was induced to sign a law hostile to the Jesuits ; his ministers were at once compared by the Ultramontanes to Diocletian and Saint Just. All the French Bishops except six echoed these complaints in a memorial of their own. Leo XII. had at first backed the fanatics ; he now leant to the King's side, and his modera- tion was of much use at this time, though he drove Lamennais into revolt. The Pope even pronounced that the Charter might be tolerated, as Christ had not pro- nounced in favour of any particular form of government. 1 France in these days of the Restoration had travelled far from the age of Bossuet. Gallicanism, though still 1 See Martin's History for these details. IT FRANCE 471 protected by the Crown, was now denounced as nothing but a bastard Catholicism, a hateful doctrine rebuked by the Church, a hideous creed that has no name in any language, an idiotic and servile creed, a social scourge. 1 The champions of Eome who uttered these reproaches were soon celebrating the King's triumph at Algiers, and hoping that he might be equally successful against enemies nearer home. 2 Great events were now at hand. In 1830 Charles X. and his minister Polignac wore out the patience of France and were replaced by Louis Philippe, who turned out to be a most sorry counterpart of William III. In 1832 the new Government seized and held the Pope's town of Ancona, at the same time pointing the finger of scorn at the champion of Italian freedom. 3 The Parisian mob might heap out- rages upon the clergy, but Louis Philippe and his ministers were year by year drawing nearer to despotism both in Church and State. The Jesuits, still lurking in France, were making their influence felt ; " we are all Jesuits," cried one Bishop ; Cardinal de Bonald openly attacked the old Gallican system. But Pope Gregory in 1845 found him- self obliged to make some concessions to the much-harassed Orleanist Government. These concessions bore fruit ; Quinet and Michelet were now the most dreaded enemies of clericalism ; the former of these learned men was driven from his professorship in the College of France. 4 The men who remembered the struggle with Rome forty years earlier were now dropping off. Gre"goire, the most stainless Frenchman in a high position who had passed through the crucible of the French Revolution, was in 1831 lying on his deathbed. Few men have ever done so much good in the world ; the old Bishop of Blois had always been the friend of the oppressed, of the negro slave, of the Jew, of the Protestant, of the Catholic priest during the Republic. As the champion of Christianity, Gre"goire had risked his 1 Wallon, La Gour de Rome et la France, 46. 2 Charles himself was rather shocked at these utterances of his Bishops. " It is like firing before the word of command," said he. 3 Martin, v. 20. * Ibid. 217-225. 472 ROME AND REFORM CHAP. life in the Convention ; he had bearded Napoleon at the height of power, and had turned in disgust from the Con- cordat. The dying man now asked for the last Sacraments, but was refused them unless he chose to retract his old Constitutional oath. The Archbishop of Paris might frown upon the corpse of the stubborn old Gallican, but it was borne to the grave by thousands of the best class of French- men. 1 Louis Philippe and Guizot, by their reactionary ideas, were estranging all that was generous in France. The minister was loud in his praise of Metternich, who had in 1846 dealt a savage blow at Poland, the idol of all fiery young Frenchmen. Britain had already been revolted by the infamous Spanish marriages. Switzerland in 1847 undertook to drive out the Jesuits ; Guizot actually sent arms to uphold their cause, arms seized on the road by the Swiss Government. It seemed that hundreds of young Parisians had laid down their lives in 1830 solely in order that France under her Revolutionary King might back Metternich and the Jesuits. Guizot found Britain a great obstacle in his downward path ; he therefore formed an alliance, to come into effect early in 1848, with the tyrants of Poland ; the Swiss were now at last to have a lesson. 2 Lamartine complained in the Chamber that France had changed her nature ; she had become clerical at Bern, Austrian at Rome, Russian at Cracow, French nowhere ; she was opposing the Revolution everywhere. 3 There seemed to be little difference between Polignac and Guizot. Can we imagine William III., under any circumstances, fawning upon the great Despot of 1700 ? The year 1848, with its Revolution, brought joy to the 1 See M&inoires de Gregoire, par Carnot, 1837. The Bishop says he was the last man who let Napoleon hear the truth ; this was in 1802. See the speech in the Memoires, i. 476. Gregoire has been falsely accused of having voted the death of King Louis ; his life proves how a man may be zealous for the distinctive doctrines of Rome, and at the same time may detest Royalty. 2 Martin, v. 255, 256. There was as great a difference between Guizot the historian and Guizot the statesman as between Bacon the philosopher and Bacon the Chancellor. s Ibid. 269. iv FEANCE 473 hearts of the men who dreamed of reconciling Freedom with the Church. Even Veuillot at this date declared that there would be no more sincere Eepublicans than the French Catholics. In 1850 the twenty years' war between the Church and the University as to the liberty of teaching was ended by a compromise. With this Veuillot was not satisfied ; the Vatican itself had to interfere before he could be silenced ; his journal was denounced by Bishop Dupanloup as a wound in the heart of the French Church. This wound went on enlarging itself as years rolled by. Forty- six Prelates protested against their acts being subjected to the jurisdiction of journalists. Veuillot hailed with joy the triumph of perjury and Louis Napoleon, the despot who at first leant to Ultra- montanism ; France, it was said, would reject Parliament- arism as it had rejected Protestantism. She would no longer be governed by idle words, for which she would one day be called to account. For years Veuillot, strong in his sway over the majority of the French clergy, went on extolling the Inquisition, the St. Bartholomew, and the famous Eevocation. He became the favoured agent of the Vatican. It is only by studying the history of foreign lands that England can discover what she owes to the Eeformation. Doubts as to the orthodoxy of Dupanloup and Lacordaire were thickly sown among the clergy. If any one strove to combat the sham miracles and the childish prophecies that abounded in France, he was at once branded with the charge of rationalism. Even Bossuet and the old Benedictines were held to be unsound. All alliance with Protestants like Guizot, with Deists like Thiers, was matter for suspicion. 1 Ultramontanism was indeed putting forward strange theories. In 1858 the Abbe Morel was discussing the Inquisition, which he looked upon as a real miracle, full of sublime justice. He was wroth with writers like Hefele, who made Kings, and not Popes, answerable for its cruelties. The new school would have none of this cowardice, worthy of Liberal Catholics, men full of prejudices against the coercive power of the Church ; such poor 1 Leroy Beaulieu, Les Catholiques Liberaux, 143-188. 474 KOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. creatures actually shuddered at torture as a means of pre- venting heresy. The Spanish Inquisition, with its 340,000 victims, was the true tribunal of God ; from it came the impulse to " the glorious days of the Holy League " in France ; Lepanto was the forerunner of Navarino. The unbelieving Nineteenth century was unworthy of so noble a system. This praise of the great Spanish tribunal must have been grateful to the Spanish Empress; France was now on the slope that led to Sedan. 1 The Concordat of Napoleon I. with Eome could not be executed ; by this document, for instance, the clergy were forbidden to make political allusions in the pulpit ; this regulation was constantly set at naught after 1859. The old liturgy of Lyons was replaced by that of Eome, though the Lyonnese priests protested. The body of the secular clergy, drawn mainly from the ranks of the peasants, had to obey the Bishops, who were taken from the staff of the cathedrals, and the promotion of these Bishops depended upon the headquarters at Eome. 2 The priests were therefore not so national as they had been a hundred years earlier. "My clergy march at the word of command," boasted a French Cardinal. They threw themselves into the cause of Napoleon III., and bore great part in his election ; the least he could do was to refrain from worrying them with the old Concordat. These priests might enforce Papal Infallibility from the pulpit, but they could not enforce common morality. The French peasant, bent on limiting his family for sordid gain, turned a deaf ear to the sexual teaching recommended in the Bible. Normandy and Connaught are wide as the poles asunder, not only as regards wealth, but as regards purity of life. France had already been guilty of the black crime of 1849 when she put down her sister Eepublic by brute force ; she now took a further step in the same fatal direc- tion. Her soldiers found it their interest to back the clergy ; the speeches made by the Marshals in the Senate do not remind us of Lannes or Augereau. The American 1 Wallon, La Cour de Rome et la France, 81-86. 2 Jung, La France et Rome, 306. iv FKANCE 475 adventure, which sapped the roots of the Empire, is well known. The fiery Archbishop of Mexico, De la Garza, who had long preached pure Eoman doctrine and had refused to allow the vast revenues of the Church to be taxed, led the French Court into the foolish enterprise which was to found, as it was fondly hoped, a new Catholic empire, and was to set bounds to the Protestantism of Northern America. For three years the youth and treasure of France were wasted upon this wretched speculation, abounding in wanton bloodshed and wholesale corruption ; with this the name of Bazaine is inseparably linked. The young Austrian usurper and his wife, both doomed to a terrible fate, came to ask the blessing of Pius IX. before leaving Europe ; the Pope's method of helping the new undertaking was to exact the abolition of the liberal laws, the restoration of the property of the monastic orders, and the re-establishment of the coercive power of the clergy. The new Sovereigns begged for some relaxation of these new demands ; Rome would make no abatement, though the Empress Charlotte cast herself at the feet of Pius IX. 1 It was to uphold these things, the choicest fruit of Ultramontanism, that France, in an age of railways and telegraphs, squandered her blood and gold ; is the issue decided in the black year 1870 to be wondered at ? One of Napoleon's courtiers likened this wretched Mexican business to the expeditions sent by France ninety years earlier to the aid of Washington. In 1864 came out the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX., devised to show the great gulf between Eome and the ideas of the Century ; this manifesto seems to be a stern con- demnation of modern liberties ; but Bishop Dupanloup put forth an explanation of the document, and this explanation was adopted by Home. 2 The commentary appeared to prove that when the Pope described something as black he in truth merely meant to call it white. The Syllabus, which was probably meant for the benefit of the Italian people in the 1 Wallon, La Cour de Eome et la France, 88-91. 2 Montalembert's comment on this production was, ' ' L'Eveque a fait un tour de force, mais ce n'est que cela ; c'est le chef-d'oeuvre du subterfuge eloquent " 476 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. first instance, did no good to the cause of religion through- out the world. Any workman eager to spread atheism among his fellows need desire no better text on which to preach than the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX., simply stated without any comment. The French minister wished to hinder its promulgation ; eighty -three French Bishops answered him ; of these seventy-five boldly avowed that they would send the Syllabus to their clergy. 1 The year 1867 may be called the beginning of the end ; Napoleon III. now began to suffer from the enfeebling disease that carried him off six years later ; Paris saw her last very brilliant show ; the affair of Luxemburg was in the mouths of all ; men shuddered at the death of the Emperor Maximilian ; and the relations between France and Italy were marked out with baleful clearness. The treacherous Court of Paris, after undertaking to withdraw the French troops from Eome, had replaced them by Frenchmen under another name ; Garibaldi's levies soon invaded the Pope's country. Napoleon III. hesitated for some time ; there was a chance of his agreeing to an occupa- tion by both French and Italian soldiers. The Empress Eugenie, who injured France far more than her Austrian predecessor ever did, played an evil part ; she insisted on the renewal of the French occupation, and was backed by Eouher. The Pope was already threatening to quit Eome. In an ill hour for France, Napoleon III. sent back his troops to Eome, and slaughtered hundreds of Garibaldians at Mentana ; as his General wrote, " the chassepots wrought wonders." The whole business was to have an important bearing on French policy three years later ; at present the French Cardinals and clergy raved against Italy and her King, and the French troops remained at Eome. 2 The destinies of France lay in the hands of a worn and sickly Despot who could not now make head against a fiery lady twenty years younger than himself, the tool of wily priests 1 Wallon, La Cour de Rome et la France, 92. One might write a good dialogue between Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. in the shades, as to the best way of dealing with Rome. 2 See Delord, Histoire du Second Empire, v. 212. iv FRANCE 477 and swaggering soldiers. There were said to be three Cabinets, that of the Emperor, that of the Empress, and that of the Minister ; the old statesmen of 1851 were now dying off, and Rouher alone was left. 1 The Press was sore hampered, but nothing could prevent the outbreaks of the old Gallic wit. Montalembert, when judged by Napoleonic officials, had long before appealed to the sympathies of all European lovers of freedom ; it was PreVost Paradol who in 1866 described the state of France : " A Court lady, very beautiful, loved by men of the highest position, has gone to live with a groom. She is robbed, beaten, but she cannot be torn away from the worthless lover, the man of her taste." 2 For four years longer did the French Empire stagger along, clutching at various devices to save itself and redeem its blunders. The great project of all was an alliance between France, Austria, and Italy to avenge Sadowa. It was plain to every man of common sense that Italy could never be brought into line with the other two Powers unless she were allowed a free hand at Eome. A treaty to this effect was suggested in the summer of 1870. "Rather a defeat on the Rhine than the abandonment of the Pope," was the answer of Napoleon III. 3 In good sooth, these Buona- partes have cost France dear. The Pope's Temporal power, as it turned out, fell, dragging with it its patron, the sham Charlemagne, and inflicting upon France the loss of Alsace and part of Lorraine. Rome had been left to itself by the Spanish Government, the heir of the Inquisition, and by the Austrian Government, the heir of the Holy Roman Empire. The Pope found his one last friend in France, the mother of the ideas of 1789. That title of "Eldest Daughter of the Church " has been an unhappy bait for sentimental Frenchmen ; England has never had any similar tempta- tion. 1 Delord, Histoire du Second Empire, v. 263. I know no more melan- choly reading for a Frenchman than D'Ideville's book, Les Pidmontais ci Rome. It seems that a diplomatist named Armand had the chief credit of bringing back the French troops to Rome. 2 Ibid. iv. 583. This chapter contains a good history of the French Press in fetters. 3 Ibid. vi. 136. 478 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. Few who can remember July 1870 will ever forget the strange shiftings backward and forward of French policy in that month ; how Thiers, when pleading for peace, was howled down by the mob of courtiers ; how the Emperor, thoroughly worn out, drifted helplessly along ; how the Empress cried " This is my war " ; how priests and soldiers chuckled over the coming march to Berlin ; how the prime minister went to war " with a light heart." But the Prussians had long been making ready ; it was the clash between Folly and Wisdom incarnate. Soon Metz and Paris were besieged ; Borne fell speedily into Italian hands. The Second Empire, that great Imposture of our age, was at an end. How different an upshot would there have been had Napoleon III. earlier in the year put aside the Ultra- montane bigots and declared the burghers of Eome entitled to settle their own government ! Then France and Italy would have become stout allies ; even after the crushing disasters in August an Italian army posted amid the moun- tains of Auvergne would have forbidden the siege of Paris, and would have rallied all France behind the Cross of Savoy ; Alsace and Metz would have been saved. Fierce was the wrath of most Frenchmen at the im- pudence of the Italians, who had dared to seize on this favourable moment for acquiring Eome. Of this wrath we may gain some idea from the writings, not of an Ultra- montane bishop, but of a Protestant minister, Pressense. He blames the hurry of the Italians, though in truth nearly three weeks intervened between Sedan and their entry into Eome ; he calls them more clever than generous ; he owns to feeling some indignation at their conduct in seizing their prey. He would rather have wished to see a bloody struggle between the men of Eome and the foreigners who held them down. He goes on to speak of France, the oppressor of her brethren, as " the mother of modern right ! " l What must the wrath of Veuillot and Dupanloup have been when they found that their old ally, Thiers, now at the head of affairs, would no longer draw the sword against Italy ! Almost sixty thousand French signatures were soon obtained to a 1 Pressens4, Le Concile du Vatican, 319, 331. IV FKANCE 479 petition for breaking off relations with the sister land ; forty-six deputies protested in the same sense. 1 When the Prussian war was over the war with the Parisian Communists began ; seldom has any country had such an experience as France in the twelvemonth beginning with July 1870. We may judge what was the selfishness of the French Ultramontane party by their incessant attempts to stir up strife with Italy at a time when France was reeling under her losses ; it was not enough to have Prussia alone for an enemy. Now it was that the two most earnest parties in the land stood forward in full vigour ; the one, Atheistic to the core, rejoicing in bloodshed and arson ; the other eager to serve the whims of a foreign priest and to bring back a fanatical Pretender to the throne. The government of France was anything but settled ; even so late as 1877, it seemed in that year quite possible that a French Marshal would by sheer brute force put down the lawfully-chosen delegates of the French people. 2 France had spent all but ninety years in swaying backwards and forwards, furnishing within that time many a lesson to the haters both of Despotism and of Anarchy. As to things spiritual, the ideas of Pius IX. and Veuillot have triumphed ; Gallicanism, like Jansenism, seems to have vanished from the world. But is religion in France, taken as a whole, one whit the better ? The clergy have forgotten Montalembert's advice, and have until lately yoked their cause to that of a particular party in the State. They have needlessly provoked against themselves the hatred of democracy, more powerful now in France than ever. They showered nauseous flatteries upon the Empire in 1852 ; they afterwards saw in the White flag the loadstar to be followed by all true believers. Happily for the Church, the sober wisdom of Leo XIII. (it prevailed for four-fifths of his reign) took the place of the ecstatic follies of Pius IX. ; but even this change cannot atone for the 1 Pressense, Le Concile du Vatican, 328. 2 I suspect that Bismarck saved France on that occasion, if the truth could be told. Those who wish to see what part the Church played in these times should read La Vie du Cardinal de Bonnechose. 480 KOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. bygone freaks of French Ultramontanism. The French might easily learn from the United States that it is quite possible for the Latin Church to thrive amid democratic institutions. It must be allowed, however, that she is heavily weighted in France; the average workman, who knows his national history only too well, is sure to make unpleasant reference to the St. Bartholomew and the great Ee vocation, if the claims of this Church be set before him. The English Church is anything but stainless ; still she has never made such glaring blunders. These blunders seem never to cease ; the French Church has played an infamous part in the great Dreyfus case, especially in 1898 and 1899. She has striven to deny justice to an officer because he happens to be a Jew, while she exalts a man proved a forger to the skies. The French Protestants, on the other hand, have almost to a man taken the side of outraged innocence. One Koyalist writer, who calls the forger " a grand man of honour," rebukes other journalists for not sharing his raptures ; " they are held back," he says, " by the scruples of our mischievous half- Protestant education." Seldom has a greater compliment been paid to Protestantism ; it is true that the Huguenots, though but one-eightieth part of the population, almost wholly direct French education. They are unhappily unable to impart the backbone, so sorely needed by Frenchmen, especi- ally when a noisy press is hounding down some hapless victim. 1 In our day four-fifths of the French nation seem to be bent upon upholding the Moderate Eepublic, and upon keeping Ultramontanism in check. In religion France must be either Ultramontane or Voltairean ; there is no room here for Protestant supremacy, and this was settled so far back as 1562. She may be likened to some average contemporary of Noah's ; she helped to build the ark of European Keformation, and even set one foot within it 1 See the Dreyfus Case, by Conybeare, printed in 1899. See especially pp. 5, 296, 313. Later still the Pope disgraced himself by receiving one of the noisest clerical champions of injustice, so strong is the craving for the Temporal power which France alone can restore. IV FKANCE 481 herself. 1 But, unluckily for her own interests, she drew back at the last moment ; hence she is now struggling in the sea where meet the opposing currents of Ultramon- tanism and Atheism. 2 1 Sic vos non vobis may well be applied to the French when we think of their services to England, Sweden, Holland, and Germany in most critical times. 2 Dr. Ryan in 1896 brought out With an Ambulance in tlie Franco- German War. He saw much of both sides ; in p. 186 he contrasts the piety of the invading Germans, whatever might be their creed, with the careless- ness of the French: "When you saw a French soldier in church (which was but seldom), he never seemed to utter a prayer. ... I never noticed a French soldier with a prayer-book, nor did I ever hear one pray when dying. . . . The average French citizen appears to think nothing at all of religion." Cochin, a French partisan of the Pope, writes: "The Americans pray before they go to battle ; days of penitence are appointed ; we shout and fill the air with swaggering and idiotic cries, marching like a set of scamps to death." See his Life, chap. xi. VOL. I 2 I CHAPTER V IRELAND * The Tudor Reconquest .... 1534-1603 Plantations and precarious Peace . . 1603-1641 Massacres, Wars, Penal Laws . . . 1641-1800 The Union with Britain and the results . 1800-1902 EVERY nation has her own peculiar characteristic ; the great mark of Ireland is an incurable love of disunion. It has lasted for long ; the Northern half of Italy was in the same plight for two hundred years and more after 1150; Poland, to speak roughly, for a hundred and twenty years after 1650; but these nations have long seen the error of their former ways, while the Ireland of our day seems to love disunion as much as ever. Of all political systems the tribal is the greatest enemy to order and peace ; and the tribal divisions were not rooted out of Ireland until after 1600. Eorne herself, with all her love of order, has not always been able to enforce it upon her Irish subjects, even in times when their union was of the utmost consequence to her own interests. We have most of us thrilled with enthusiasm as we watched Clan Alpine bursting on the foe ; but in sober prose the Celtic clan system is as bad a form of government as the old Polish anarchy. The Danes ravaged the land, and were then overthrown and limited to a few towns dotted round the Southern half of Ireland. But King Brian had conquered in vain ; the 1 My great authority for my first seventy years is Bagwell's Ireland under the Tudors, a most impartial and painstaking work. 482 CHAP, v IKELAND 483 five Irish monarchies were still at their old work, warring upon each other in the true Celtic style. Pope Adrian IV., alive to the fact that the Irish Church system by no means squared with the Eoman model, 1 made over the island to the English King, whose nobles established them- selves in most parts of the country. Six great houses in the end overtopped all others ; these were the O'Neills, the O'Briens, the Burkes, the Butlers, the Geraldines of Kildare, the Geraldines of Desmond. In about 130 years from the English Conquest some of the English families had began to adopt Irish customs and the Irish tongue. Little thought was bestowed by the English Kings upon Ireland ; had such rulers as Edward I. or Henry V. made her their residence, her whole history might have been changed for the better. But this was not to be ; the English interest, represented by a Parliament sitting at Dublin, was by degrees limited to the Pale and to a few towns in the South ; the Irish tribes encroached more and more, though unable to combine all together, upon the English Government ; things seemed at their worst in the weighty year 1534, when nearly all the island was shared between some ninety warlike clans, one-third of whom derived their ancestry from the English. All alike rejoiced in civil war. It was a curious system then prevalent in Ireland. Seldom have two hostile nations lived side by side, both alike looking to Eome as their mother, and both acknow- ledging one King, yet sundered by race and tongue. 2 What a difference is there between the churches of Glendalough and those of Kilkenny ! No Celt could obtain clerical preferment in the English part of the island, and none could be received into the English religious houses ; the Church excommunicated all who might break this rule, which was sanctioned by statute. In the Celtic parts there 1 Even so late as 1542 we find an O'Kelly who was both chief of his clan and also hereditary Abbot of the Cistercians at Knockmoy near Tuam. Bagwell, i. 266. 2 On the Baltic the Slavonians oppressed by the German knights were Pagans, not Christians. 484 EOME AND KEFOBM CHAP. was neither magistrate nor sheriff; as time went on, vast sums were paid to the Irish chiefs by the English as black- rent. These chiefs lived on the produce of exactions inflicted upon their subjects. The Church neglected her duty, and all the spiritual instruction given came from poor begging friars. No nation in our day is so heedful of the marriage bond as the Irish ; in the Sixteenth century hardly any attention was paid to it by either chiefs or vassals. About this time the Earls of Kildare and Ormond were at constant feud, and the Tudor Government had hitherto found that the easiest way of ruling Ireland was to make the powerful Earl of Kildare Lord Deputy, since he was far more likely to rebel than his rival of Ormond. Cardinal Wolsey was now inclining to a new system, and was employing Englishmen, some of low birth, as his agents in Ireland. The Celtic clans had become so bold that they would enter Dublin itself and carry off booty. As has been already said, things were at their lowest ebb in 1534, when English laws and customs were unknown twenty miles away from the capital. The next seventy years were to behold a mighty change. The proud Geraldine, Earl of Kildare, had been sum- moned to London, leaving his son, a youth of twenty, known as " Silken Thomas," as his deputy. A false report soon came to Ireland that the father was dead ; the son at once broke into rebellion, and renounced his allegiance to Henry VIII. One of the young man's enemies was Allen, the Archbishop of Dublin, a trusty agent of Wolsey's and of great influence in the Irish Government. This Prelate was captured and slaughtered by the wild followers of Silken Thomas ; the youth at once sent to Eome to beg absolution. It is not often that an Archbishop has ever met his death at the hands of Christians. The Churchmen at Dublin pronounced the most awful sentence of excommunication upon the murderers, nearly all of whom came to an evil end. But at first Silken Thomas was able to besiege Dublin for weeks. Relief came from England ; moreover, the gentry of the Pale and the Butlers, the old rivals of the Geraldines, took the field against the rebels. Silken Thomas sent an v IKELAND 485 envoy to Charles V., who was now in the midst of his quarrel with Henry VIII. ; this year, 1534, is the year of England's breach with Koine. Maynooth Castle, the great Geraldine stronghold, was taken; this marks an era in Irish warfare, since cannon were employed to batter it. The clans fell away from the young rebel ; he surrendered and was sent to England with his five uncles; and the whole party (some of them guiltless), were hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. There had often been contests between the Papacy and the Crown as to the bestowal of Irish bishoprics. The great breach was now daily widening; Pope Clement and King Henry alike named their own Bishop to Clonfert, and since that time two rival hierarchies' have faced each other in Ireland down to our day. The Irish Church at the beginning of the Schism was in the most wretched state, with buildings in ruins and Masses neglected. Abbots and Bishops alike behaved like great temporal Barons, oppressing the Commons ; the lower clergy were unlearned and vicious ; one blameless Bishop was murdered by his Archdeacon. The Pope, throwing aside the great Hildebrand's policy, made money by granting dispensations to the sons of priests to hold benefices. In the Irish Parliament of 1536 the work of Eeforma- tion was steadily pressing forwards. Appeals to Eome were forbidden, the Pope's jurisdiction was abolished, and first- fruits were vested in the Crown ; the proctors of the clergy in vain objected to the King's being declared Head of the Church. Cromer, the old Primate of Armagh, laid a curse upon all who should accept the new system ; Browne, the new Koyal Archbishop of Dublin, in vain harangued on the other side. Whatever the upper class might pretend to think in religion, the mass of the English and Irish, the burghers of Waterford and the Ulster kernes alike, clung to the old creed with all its abuses ; they scowled upon the innovations brought over from London. The holiest relics were now burnt, but pilgrimages could not be checked. In 1539 two Archbishops and eight Bishops took the oath as to the Eoyal supremacy; yet many 486 HOME AND REFORM CHAP. of them were not afterwards disturbed in their Sees by the Popes. Paul III. now wrote to Con O'Neill, the great Celtic ruler of the North, urging him to be strong in his zeal for the Catholic faith ; the Popes were to send many such letters to Ireland during the next sixty years. Through Ireland they could best strike at heretical England. Rome it was that forced the Tudor Kings, unwilling though they were, to undertake the reconquest of Ireland at vast cost of blood and treasure. Two Jesuits, most self-sacrificing men, who came to the island in 1542, reported that all the chiefs but one had sworn to the new Royal supremacy, that the people were savage and the clergy negligent. But all over the land the friars, especially the Franciscans, were vehement in ex- horting the common folk to cleave to Rome ; King Henry had no men to oppose to these clerical champions, who preached in the tongue beloved of the masses ; his new system was the badge of conquest, adopted by a few greedy lawyers at Dublin. The Irish called the King, " the most heretic and worst man in the world." Great resistance was made to the Crown in the Parliament of 1537. But this resistance was overcome, and the abbeys had already begun to fall. Two years later seventy-eight religious houses, mostly in the East and South of Ireland, were surrendered, the inmates receiving pensions. In 1541 all the Irish friaries, not quite two hundred in number, were suppressed ; of these more than half were held by the Franciscans, the men who seem to have kept the lamp of religion burning in Ireland. The vast possessions were mostly dealt out among the Lords and chiefs, both of English and Irish blood ; the loyal Butlers had a large share of the booty. No attempt was made to found a University in Ireland, though the needed endowments were ready to hand ; Henry VIII. was always more willing to pamper favourites than to further the true good of the realm, and this is one of the worst features in his character. As to things temporal, the Lord Deputy would some- times undertake a progress into Munster or Ulster; even the Leinster shires, close at hand, had now and then to be v IEELAND 487 tamed. Hints were heard, already in 1537, that English tenants must be substituted for Irish if the land was ever to enjoy good order. The priests- were sometimes found preaching a Crusade against the new heretics. Grey, the Lord Deputy, led the burghers of Dublin and Drogheda, with the gentry of the Pale, against the Irish enemy to the North, and shattered the Ulster clans in 1539. In 1541 a Parliament met, comprising twenty-three Prelates and twenty temporal Peers ; the Speaker of the Commons made a speech, which was interpreted by Ormond to the Irish Lords, ignorant of English. This Parliament, amid great rejoicings, made Henry VIII. King 'of Ireland ; he had before borne only the' 1 title of Lord. The Sovereign now professed to reign by the grace of God, not by that of the Pope ; this change in style provoked much wrath at Eome. A system of fines for homicide was established, thus leaning to Irish in preference to English ideas. Some clans, dis- tracted by the constant disputed successions of Ireland, now began to call in the arbitration of the Lord Deputy and the Council. In 1542 it was announced that Ireland was at peace, which was indeed unwonted news. Many Irish chiefs now undertook to conform to English fashions, to forswear Irish exactions, and to abjure the Pope. Con O'Neill received the Earldom of Tyrone, with remainder to his putative son Matthew, in tail-male, a grant which was to become the source of bloody strife in Ulster. The Earl- doms of Thomond and Clanricard were also bestowed upon the chiefs of the O'Briens and Burkes ; other Irishmen were knighted at the same time. In 1543 it seemed likely that King Henry would be attacked by France and Scotland at once ; the Macdonalds, subjects of the latter crown, had long been forcing them- selves from the North into Ulster, where the warlike strangers gave much trouble. Ireland had sent contingents to the English host ever since 1300, and had thus borne her share in some glorious days ; seven hundred kernes now took part in the siege of Boulogne ; others served in Scot- land. A few years later died Henry VIII., who would have done more for Ireland had it not been for the change 488 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP, in religion ; the abbeys were overthrown, and so all spiritual influence was handed over to begging friars. No native champions of Protestantism, ready to sacrifice themselves for the cause, arose in Ireland ; the Bible and Prayer- book were not translated into Irish, and it was long before an University was set up. The Eeformation here was maimed and incomplete; just as it would have been in England, had Tyndale written in Spanish and Latimer preached in French. Some fighting went on in Ireland after Edward VI. had succeeded ; no mercy was shown to those who ravaged the Pale. In 1549 the land was again at peace. The Mass was commonly retained in Ireland, though in England the Communion in the native tongue had replaced the Latin rite. Staples, the Bishop of Meath, preached against the Mass, and was rewarded by the hatred of his diocese ; he was said to have gained more curses than he had hairs on his head. An attempt to put down the Mass in Kilkenny seems to have had small success. In 1551 the English Communion service was translated into Latin for the benefit of those Irish who had any scholarship. Some of the Bishops had been willing to abjure the Pope, but refused to abjure the Mass, thus treading in the steps of Tunstall and Gardiner. The Irish clergy were summoned to Dublin that they might accept the new changes ; the high-minded Dowdall of Armagh, with nearly all his suffragans, flatly refusing to comply, left the Assembly ; Browne of Dublin acted as chief of the New Learning, and bickered with St. Leger, the wise Lord Deputy, who would do nothing in a hurry, and was therefore reviled as a Gallic. He was one of the most enlightened men of his day, and clearly foresaw what effect an English-made creed would have when forced upon the Irish. In 1551 a new Deputy held a conference on the subject of religion, Dowdall championing Eome, and Staples with another Bishop advocating the new system ; the dispute was conducted with more courtesy than usual on such occasions. Dowdall soon afterwards withdrew beyond seas, and Browne of Dublin obtained for a short time the Primacy v IRELAND 489 of the Irish Church. The mitre of Ossory was bestowed upon an English Protestant far more fiery than Browne or Staples ; this was the well-known Bale, the coarsest of the Reformers, who was promoted by Edward VI. himself. The new Prelate refused to be consecrated unless according to the latest Anglican use. He was a married man himself, and he found his clergy most loose in their living ; it was thought honourable to be the offspring of any bishop, priest, or friar; the purity which now distinguishes the Irish clergy was yet to come. Bale began by turning all the images out of Kilkenny Cathedral, though, like Calvin, he spared the painted glass. He denounced the Host of the priests as a " white God of their own making " ; the French heretics called it " Jehan le Blanc." Such a Eeformer was likely to do little good. Further to the West a garrison had been lately established at Athlone, on the Shannon, a post of great importance. The soldiers sacked the neigh- bouring Clonmacnoise, one of the most revered sanctuaries of Ireland ; they left neither bell, image, book, gem, nor window glass ; the sacrilege is bewailed by the Irish annalists. Hundreds had died of hunger in Ulster owing to the wars waged in the house of the new Earl of Tyrone. Most of the O'Neills hailed his undoubted son Shane as their chief: but the old father had acknowledged another son, brought to him at the age of sixteen by the child's mother, Alison Kelly, the wife of a smith in Dundalk. The Earl, as was said, was a gentleman, and never denied any son that was sworn to him. This child, born in adultery, had been created Baron of Dungannon, as the Earl's heir-apparent. From this questionable source sprang the two greatest Celts that have played a part in Ireland for almost nine hundred years. Lord Dungannon was an able man, much trusted by the authorities ; he opposed a bold front to the Scotch invasion from the North, while his rival Shane burnt the house of their supposed common father. This reign of Edward VI. brought great misery upon Ireland owing to the debasement of the coinage. In 1553 Mary came to the throne, and a Revolution in things spiritual was at once effected. Bale had to fly from 490 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. his unruly flock at Kilkenny, who rejoiced at the new changes. Archbishop Browne had to give up the Primacy, and Dowdall was commissioned to restore the old religion. Many married Bishops, such as Browne and Staples, were deprived. The young Earl of Kildare, who had escaped the doom of his kindred, was allowed to return home, and was soon followed by one of the greatest figures in Irish history, the new Earl of Orrnond, who had already begun his life- long service to the Tudors by bearing arms against their enemies in England. Like the Campbells in Scotland, the Butlers were distinguished by their politics from all neigh- bouring clans. Curwen, an Englishman, was chosen to replace the heretical Browne as Archbishop of Dublin ; at Rome this new Prelate is recognised as immediate successor to the murdered Allen. The old rites were soon restored. A Dublin Parliament in 1557 enacted all the English laws against heresy, and repealed all late Acts adverse to the Pope. But Mary could not restore the Irish Abbey lands to their old owners ; the new Irish possessors clung fast to these possessions for the next hundred years. There was no persecution in Ireland, for the very good reason that there was hardly one Protestant to burn. Pope Paul IV. had to confirm the new Tudor title whereby " Lord of Ireland " had been exchanged for a loftier name. Meanwhile the Irish clans were slaughtering each other ; but more disturbers of the peace were hanged now than of old ; the rope was to be in great request for the next fifty years. Another change was the intrusion of English tenants into Irish lands, especially in Leix and Offaly. The Western half of the new Queen's County was reserved for the O'Mores, the old inhabitants, upon whom English customs were now enforced ; the Eastern half was given to English tenants, who were to be well armed ; in this district Irish husbandmen might be employed ; there were to be twelve small towns, each of which was to have a church and English parson. This intrusion of English into Irish lands was to be a main feature in future Irish history ; the days of Henry II. seemed to be returning. Queen Mary was more ready than her renowned sister to spend money v IRELAND 491 in Ireland ; the old inhabitants of Leix and Offaly, as was natural, gave her much trouble. Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558, much hampered by her sister's debts. The Anglican ritual was soon restored in the Dublin churches, and the Parliament met in 1560. The Lords numbered forty-three; ten counties sent two knights each, and twenty-eight cities and boroughs sent two burgesses each ; civilisation was certainly making strides. The old Protestant laws were re-enacted, and first-fruits were restored to the Crown ; Royal Commissioners, not the Church, were to be judges of heresy. There were few English ministers to be had, and it was ordained that Irish priests who knew no English might use Latin in the service. Curwen, Mary's Archbishop, promptly conformed to the new order of things, and in 1563 Loftus, another Englishman, was consecrated Archbishop of Armagh ; his cathedral was burnt three years later by the O'Neills. Creagh, who was the Prelate named to the See by Pius IV., spent eighteen years in the Tower of London. In 1565 Rome made Miler Magrath Bishop of Down and Connor, and she some years later deprived him for heresy, but he had become Protestant Archbishop of Cashel rather earlier ; hence this man, utterly void of scruples, was a Prelate of the two rival Churches at one and the same time. Another Celt, Daly, who could preach in Irish, was made Bishop of Kildare ; thrice in eighteen years was he driven out of his home by rebels. Another, O'Fihily, whom Elizabeth found Bishop of Leighlin, conformed, as also did Devereux of Ferns. The Pope's Prelate and the Queen's Prelate wrangled over Cashel, and the former, Fitzgibbon, was an able emissary of the Papacy in foreign parts. One of the Elizabethan nominees, MacBrien Arra, was a Chief as well as a Bishop, and felt therefore fairly secure in his post. The Government interfered hardly at all with spiritual affairs in Connaught ; Tuam Cathedral had been used as a fortress for three hundred years. The Popes made no appointment to some Sees until long after Elizabeth's death. The Church was starved, for benefices were leased out to farmers, with very small stipends reserved for the parson ; the buildings were very generally in ruins. 492 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. Bishops (they were nearly all English) had already begun to make havoc of their revenues in order to benefit their children ; the parents' lives were often most immoral. Emissaries from Rome, men most unlike the average jobbing Protestant Bishop, prowled about the land, confirming the Irish in the old faith ; the decrees of the Council of Trent were received with far greater respect in Ireland than in France. Shane O'Neill took the lead in Ulster, having murdered his putative half-brother, the Baron of Dungannon, who left sons. Shane was the chosen man of the greater part of the clan, and succeeded his father both by birth and election in 1559. The pedigrees of these Irish chiefs would not satisfy a German herald ; they seem to have had many women living with them at one and the same time, and this was the case with the second Earl of Clanricard, known for his loyalty as the Sassenagh. Illegitimacy had always been a matter of small account in Ireland. Shane boasted that farmers were emigrating out of the oppressed Pale into his country ; he made overtures to Elizabeth and asked for an English wife. He smote the rival O'Donnells and so became supreme in Ulster ; he gave a check in the field to Sussex, the Lord Deputy. Sussex basely proposed to have the Irish leader taken off by poison. At last it was agreed that Shane should visit Elizabeth at London ; her Irish policy was with reason likened to Penelope's web, for what one of her Deputies wove the next picked to pieces. Shane, early in 1562, was followed by his gallowglasses, clad in full Irish costume, into the Queen's presence ; he howled before her on his knees, and acknowledged his rebellion. Meanwhile in Ireland the new Baron of Dun- gannon, Shane's rival, was slain by some of the O'Neills ; the youth left a younger brother behind him, of whom Ireland was to hear much. Shane triumphed in London over Sussex, the Lord Deputy, and agreed to certain terms in order to be allowed to return home. He soon showed himself as great an enemy to peace as before, and inflicted barbarous treatment on the clans that stood loyal to the Crown, such as the O'Donnells and Maguires. In 1563 Elizabeth granted everything to him ; another attempt was v IKELAND 493 made to poison him, which was probably abetted by either Sussex or Ormond. Shane gained a great victory over the Scotch intruders, while Ormond and Desmond struggled together in the South, the former leaning to English, the latter to Irish customs ; in 1565, much to Elizabeth's wrath, they fought the last battle in which two Irish noblemen have ever made private war upon each other. In 1566 Sussex was re- placed by Sidney, the head of a stock famous in English history for 140 years ; the new Deputy had wisely made his conditions with Elizabeth before undertaking the Irish government, a stone like that of Sisyphus. He at once began to deal with the terrible Shane, proclaiming him a traitor. Sidney ravaged the chieftain's lands and restored the O'Donnells ; these in 1567 were able to rout Shane with great loss ; he fled to his Scotch neighbours, who killed him, and his head was soon grinning upon Dublin Castle. He was a drunkard, cruel to women, and an oppressor of his own countrymen, by no means the equal of his young putative kinsman, who was to come forward as an Irish champion thirty years later. This year was disgraced by the massacre of Mullagh- mast. About seventy of the O'Mores were enticed into a fort, and there slaughtered by English and Irish soldiers. 1 No uglier deed, say the Celtic annalists, was ever done in Erin. Englishmen now once more began to covet Irish lands. Sir Peter Carew, a bold adventurer who enjoyed Court favour, claimed an inheritance in Southern Ireland dating from the times of Henry II., though there was a prescription of 170 years against the new claimant. He was imposed as landlord upon the Kavanaghs by the Council at Dublin, and soon clashed with the powerful Butler clan, the most loyal subjects the Queen had in Ireland. They were now driven into alliance with their old Geraldine enemies. Carew and Sir Edward Butler waged a barbarous war in 1569. Ormond and Sidney came into Munster and restored peace ; the Queen's soldiers 1 Dr. Curry, writing 200 years later, coolly raises the number of the victims to some hundreds. The true story is bad enough. 494 EOME AND BEFOKM CHAP. slew man, woman, and child in any castle that resisted. We are too much reminded of the treatment accorded at this time to the Moriscoes in Granada. In 1570 the English sway was gaining ground, for a President was now appointed to Connaught, where the Burkes were unruly. Perrott, one of the best of Irish governors, was made President of Munster, and did not err on the side of mercy. One of his enemies, James Fitz- maurice, who led his kinsman Desmond's followers by right of superior genius, was an earnest believer in the Pope (in this differing from Shane O'Neill), and strove hard to bring foreign troops into Ireland. These were eagerly expected ; Ormond stood almost alone among Irishmen in his loyalty. Fitzgibbon, the Papal Archbishop of Cashel, was attempting to stir up King Philip II. and Pope Pius V. ; he quarrelled at Madrid with Stukeley, another of the Queen's rebels. There was great triumph in Ireland over the news of the St. Bartholomew, and friars swarmed over the country bearing themselves like princes. A fresh cause of discord was now brought in ; it was resolved to found a new English colony in Ulster. The Earl of Essex, unluckily for himself, obtained a grant from the Crown of what is now the county of Antrim. The Scots and the O'Neills combined to resist him, declaring that they were not fighting against the Crown. He was guilty of an atrocious act in 1574; he invited his chief enemy, Sir Brian MacPhelim, to a feast, and then seized him and his wife, while two hundred others of the Irish men and women were put to the sword ; the captives were executed at Dublin. Soon afterwards Queen Elizabeth gave up the Ulster project. In 1575 peace was made with the O'Neills, and the Scotch were assailed in their island of Rathliii, which they had fortified. About six hundred of them, men and women, were ruthlessly slaughtered ; the Eastern part of Ulster was ravaged without mercy. Carew and Essex, who had caused so much misery in Ireland, died shortly afterwards ; the piety which they showed on their death- beds seems to have been drawn rather from the Old Testa- ment than from the New. v IRELAND 495 Sidney was once more Lord Deputy for three years ; he was well satisfied with the noblemen of Munster, who thronged to meet him at Cork ; Fitzmaurice, the shrewdest of all the Queen's rebels, fled into foreign parts. Sidney passed on into Connaught, which he divided into counties ; Galway, an old English town, was rescued from the tyranny of the Burkes. Sidney saw that throughout Ireland the Protestant Church was the weak point ; " so deformed and overthrown a Church there is not, I am sure, in any region where Christ is professed." Meath was the richest diocese in Ireland, and here only one-seventeenth of the parishes were in a creditable state ; the churches were in ruins, the ministers were often Irish rogues, with little Latin or civility. Things were in a bad state, though Drury strove to keep order in Munster, Maltby in Connaught ; there was need of a storm to clear the air. Sidney left Ireland for ever in 1578, one of the ablest men that ever reigned in Dublin Castle. In 1579 Pope Gregory XIII. thought that the time had come for striking a blow at the great heretical Queen where she would feel it most. Ireland has always been the back door whence England can be best assailed. James Fitzmaurice and Dr. Sanders, the priest, collected in Spain six hundred men of various lands ; most of them seem to have been Italian brigands, pardoned by the Pope with a view to the new Crusade. A detachment of these troops landed at Dingle, and soon began to build their famous fort at Smerwick. Fitzmaurice, who was an honest fanatic, at once put forth proclamations full of strong Ultramontane doctrine, calling Ireland to arms. A brother of Desmond's slew in bed Davells, an old English friend of his who had come down to check the invasion. Not long afterwards Fitzmaurice was himself killed in a chance medley with some of the Burkes, and thus the Papal cause lost the one man who could have brought it to a successful issue, the shrewdest statesman of all the Munster Geraldines. His chief, the Earl of Desmond, after long halting, cast in his lot with the rebels ; his first exploit was the sack of Youghal. His rival, Ormond, was harrying the land in the Queen's interest ; 496 KOME AND EEFOKM CHAP. thousands of the Irish were barbarously slaughtered men, women, and children alike. Meanwhile Maltby kept Con- naught down, and some of the Munster chieftains came over to the Queen's side. In 1580 Lord Grey, arriving as Lord Deputy, found himself called upon at once to face a great revolt near Dublin, and underwent a defeat in Wicklow. As to the South, six hundred Italians had been landed at Smerwick. Late in the year Grey led an army against this place, which was also blockaded by an English fleet. The Pope's banner was hung out, and the siege began. Very soon the surrender came ; the Italians could show no commissions to make war, and were therefore treated as pirates, a fate that, moreover, befell the French, who much about this time assailed the Azores. At Smerwick the officers were spared, but six hundred Italians were slain, Ealeigh directing the work, at which Spenser was present. In 1581 Dr. Sanders died in the woods, worn out with hardships ; and the other rebel leaders dropped one by one ; the whole affair would have ended much earlier but for the Queen's strange parsimony. Desmond was able in 1582 to ravage the whole of Tipperary ; it was said that thirty thousand had perished in Munster by famine alone. Wolves and rebels lodged in one inn, on one diet. Nineteen out of twenty of the men had fallen by sword, rope, or plague ; the starving survivors fed on water-cresses or dragged the dead from their graves. Pope Gregory XIII. in his late Crusade had done little good to Southern Ireland ; no help came from abroad, for King Philip could think of nothing but his new Portuguese conquest. 1 Grey was recalled, but the war went on. The soldiers were ill paid, and therefore took what they chose from the peasantry, whom they beat and ill used ; the same state of things, due to the wars of Eeligion, went on over the water, as the chronicler of Champagne tells us. The famine spread to Dublin, where men were glad to eat dead horses. Ormond was now sent to end the war ; he drove Desmond 1 See Maffei's Annals, ii. 474. It is here acknowledged that Gregory showed little " avvedutezza " in the Irish business. v IKELAND 497 into Kerry, and the rebels began to slay each other. Early in 1583 eighty men alone stuck to the hunted Earl. Late in the year he was surprised and slain by some of the Irish ; a man who was utterly unfit for the part he undertook, that of Papal champion and arch rebel ; Munster owes four years of misery to him and to the Pope. King Philip, true to himself, sent a few ships to Ireland after Desmond's death, when there were no rebels left. This year is remarkable for the sufferings of O'Hurley, the Papal Archbishop of Cashel, who came from abroad, deep in Roman secrets. He was soon taken ; since there was no rack at hand, com- bustibles were poured into his boots, and fire was applied to the limbs of this ancient Inquisitor ; nothing could be wrung from him, and he died on the gallows. Sir John Perrott came as Lord Deputy in 1584, and as a governor was worthy to rank with Sidney. In 1585 he held a Parliament in Dublin, where twenty-seven counties and thirty-six boroughs were represented, some of them by Celts ; English costume and polite behaviour were insisted upon ; the Tudor Reconquest was beginning to prove a reality. The assembly was anything but subservient ~to the Crown, and the Mass was openly regretted. The Baron of Dungannon here obtained his putative grand- father's title, and became Earl of Tyrone. No other Irish Parliament was summoned by Elizabeth after 1586. The Scotch of Ulster now made terms for themselves and became good subjects, while Bingham pacified Connaught. An Irish regiment went to serve the Queen in the Nether- lands. In 1588 Perrott left Ireland, mourned by rich and poor alike. One of the last Irish clan battles fought for private interests took place about this time between the O'Neills and the O'Donnells ; in Northern Scotland these fights lasted for almost a hundred years longer. The Spanish Armada, hopelessly ruined, was driven by the winds to the West of Ireland, and some of the seamen, maddened by want of water, came ashore in search of it, but were slain or hanged at once. Others were shipwrecked and butchered by their brother Catholics, sometimes in batches of nearly a thousand. Any Irish VOL. I 2 K 498 ROME AND REFORM CHAP. who might harbour the strangers were reckoned traitors. Long rows of corpses lined the beach in Connaught, food for the wolves and crows ; and the peasantry made a rich harvest of money and jewels by stripping the bodies. The names given to points on the Irish coast still bear witness to the great Spanish disaster. More than twenty ships seem to have been wrecked, and nearly ten thousand men slain or taken. There were said to be about three thousand survivors living in Ulster at one time. Meanwhile the English plantation of Munster went on, a kind of first-fruits of Protestantism in Ireland ; the poet Spenser enjoyed four thousand acres for about ten years, but was constantly harassed by his neighbour Lord Roche. Raleigh, not far off, settled many English families on his broad lands, but soon recourse was had to Irish tenants, the usual end of all. Much trouble was caused by the Burkes in Connaught, but the true source of danger lay in Ulster, where the new Earl of Tyrone, the head of the O'Neills, was about to take the field against the Queen. Here she was to find an enemy far more redoubtable than his kins- man Shane, Fitzmaurice, or Desmond. Friars and Jesuits began to swarm in the land, the Protestant churches were deserted, and Spanish gold was circulating. In 1595 the great war broke out that was to last for eight years. Tyrone, herein differing much from former Irish leaders, knew the value of union ; he attached to himself the O'Donnells, those old enemies of the O'Neills ; and in the end he became as popular in the South of Ireland as in his native North. The Ulster rebels soon overran Connaught, whence they carried off much booty ; they then entered into negotiations, demanding free liberty of conscience and a great abatement of the Queen's power. The Pope sent to his champions a store of beads, stones, and relics, while King Philip dispatched an ambassador. In 1598 more than four thousand of the Queen's troops marched north under Bagenal, whose sister Tyrone had carried off and wedded. These soldiers were defeated, with the loss of half their number, at the Yellow Ford by the O'Neills and O'Donnells ; many of the Irish on the losing v IKELAND 49 & side at once deserted. Happily the conquerors instantly dispersed in true Celtic fashion, but the stroke was felt all over Ireland. Munster broke out again, set up a spurious Earl of Desmond, and slaughtered the English colonists; Spenser himself had some ado to escape, and a town of Kaleigh's was burnt. Five hundred English fugitives flocked into Askeaton alone. The whole was a slight fore- taste of 1641. Amid the wild turmoil three of the great Irish nobles remained faithful to the Crown Ormond, Thomond, and Clanricard. These were reinforced in 1599 by Elizabeth's favourite, the Earl of Essex, the new Lord Deputy, with a far larger army than the thrifty Queen usually employed in Ireland. He made a campaign, at vast expense, in Munster, and afterwards met Tyrone in the North ; the two conversed together without witnesses, and agreed to a long truce. The outwitted English Deputy then quitted his post and went home without warrant, soon to lay his head on the block. Tyrone gave himself out as the champion of the Pope, and denounced damnation on all Irish chiefs who did not help to erect the Catholic religion ; he caused a famine in Xeinster by his ravages. His worst enemy now came to the front. Lord Mount- joy appeared as the new Lord Deputy early in 1600. Ormond, the great prop of the English interest in Ireland, was for some time a prisoner in the hands of the rebels ; others of their party laid waste Clare. Carew, who had long before fought against Desmond, had charge of Munster, where he caused the rebel chiefs to mistrust each other. Docwra, with a large army, sailed round to Lough Foyle, and there turned the site of a few ruined churches into the city of Londonderry, which he well fortified. 1 Meanwhile Mountjoy inflicted checks upon Tyrone in Southern Ulster, exhausting the country. A minority of O'Neills and O'Donnells took the English side. A sentence, written by Docwra at this time, is the key to much of Irish history ; " they (the Irish) had their own ends in it, which were 1 This was like the later English policy of building Fort- William in the Scotch Highlands. 500 HOME AND REFOKM CHAP. always for private revenge ; and we (English) ours, to make use of them for the furtherance of the public service." ] Elizabeth now sent over the son of her old enemy, the Earl of Desmond ; the youth was at first overwhelmed by the caresses of the Munster Irish, who threw upon him wheat and salt, an old custom. But on the Sunday they saw him go to the Protestant church, and forthwith reviled and spat on him ; all his influence in Ireland was at once gone. Soon afterwards he died, leaving five sisters. Elizabeth was now so hard pressed for money that she debased the coinage in Ireland, always a ruinous expedient. In the September of 1601 D'Aguila landed a Spanish army of four thousand men at Kinsale, Spain thus retorting on England the fostering of rebels ; the titular Archbishop of Dublin set forth a proclamation asserting the Pope's right to depose Elizabeth and denouncing her Irish sup- porters as heretics. Mountjoy, aided by an English fleet, at once besieged the Spaniards in Kinsale, and fortified his own camp. In the winter Tyrone and O'Donnell came to the rescue, ravaging as they marched down from Ulster ; they hemmed in Mountjoy on the East, and were joined by a few of the Munster clans. A night attack upon him was planned, but some of the Irish columns lost their way, and were attacked in the morning by the English, who had been forewarned by an Irish traitor. Tyrone lost two thousand men ; " they were routed by Divine vengeance," as the Irish annalist says. The Ulster men marched home ; some of them were butchered on the way by their Celtic brethren. Early in 1602 D'Aguila gave up Kinsale, professing disgust with his Irish allies ; three thousand Spaniards were sent home, where their general was thrown into prison. Thus ended the most important siege, except one, in Irish history. In 1602 Mountjoy and Docwra began to assail Tyrone in the fastnesses of Ulster, while Carew once more reduced Munster, and blew up the fortress of Dunbog, hanging the garrison. The stone chair upon which the O'Neill chieftains had always been inaugurated was broken in pieces, much as 1 Bagwell, iii. 377. v IKELAKD 501 Clive acted in India on a similar occasion. O'Donnell died in Spain, almost the last chieftain of the true old Celtic pattern, " a stern destroyer both of his English and Irish opposers," as the native annalists say. Ulster was laid waste by Mountjoy, and the starving inhabitants were literally driven to eat each other. Early in 1603 Queen Elizabeth died, and not many days later Tyrone made his submission to the Lord Deputy. The Irish war had cost an enormous sum in the last four years and a half, but the power of the Irish chiefs had been broken for ever ; a happy end had crowned a struggle that had lasted for two genera- tions. The new Stuart King might now reap the fruits of the costly Tudor Wars, in which the English leaders remind us of stern old Koman Proconsuls. As to the state of Ireland under the old system, we have the witness of Captain Cuellar, shipwrecked on the Sligo coast in 1588, who confirms the many accounts we have from English officials. He always speaks of the Irish as " savages," living like " brutes in the mountains," and avers that their great delight was in robbing one another, so that no day passed without fighting, for whenever the people of one hamlet knew that those of another possessed cattle or other goods, they immediately made a night attack and killed each other. There was no order or justice in the country, and every one did that which was right in his own eyes. Thus speaks a Spaniard, after passing months in Northern Ireland, mingling with all ranks of men. 1 Great must have been the capacity of Tyrone, who welded so many of these jealous clans into one army, fit for great under- takings. He saw when changes were needed in the national system, and so replaced the old kernes and gallowglasses by pikemen and musketeers. When Tyrone gave in, Ireland was about to enter a new phase of life ; the next thirty-eight years, in spite of fearful drawbacks, seem to be among the happiest she has ever known ; the tribal wars were for ever put down, and there was no difference of religion in most parts of the land to separate the high and the low. But, as we must acknow- 1 Captain Cuellar's narrative, edited by Mr. AUingham in 1897. See p. 63. 502 ROME AND REFORM CHAP. ledge, Protestantism nowhere else wore so sour a mien as in Ireland. The new Church system was a disgrace to the Government. Out of thirty Bishops not seven were able to preach. Of the lower clergy, few had more than five pounds a year ; they led most debauched lives, and could barely read the Latin into which the Anglican Prayer-book had been translated for the benefit of the Irish. The churches were ruinous as ever. This was not the way to cope with the hundreds of Jesuits and friars who came pouring in from the Southern Universities, ready to lay down their lives for the Pope. In 1560 the people of the towns had generally attended the new service, but by 1600 a great change had been wrought ; an English town like Waterford was as zealous for the Pope as any Irish clan could be. It is true that the Anglo-Irish fought valiantly against the Celts at Kinsale, but forty years later these old enemies were to fight on the same side, the Papal religion smooth- ing over former differences. The Anglican ritual was popularly known as " the Devil's service." Miler Magrath, Archbishop of Cashel, still remained the most curious figure in the Protestant Irish Episcopate, jobbing, drinking, and adding See to See ; about twenty-six livings were held by his sons and kinsmen, and almost as many by himself; several others were bestowed upon absentees who employed no curates. Not averse to treachery, he had enjoyed the favour of Elizabeth and Tyrone alike ; he died in 1622 at the age of a hundred, when he is said to have returned to the old faith. 1 One of the greatest benefits ever conferred on Ireland was the establishment of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1592 ; this was mainly owing to Henry Ussher, a future Archbishop, who petitioned Elizabeth to found the new insti- tution. Protestants and Roman Catholics alike contributed funds. The army that had conquered at Kinsale subscribed a large sum to buy books for the College library. One of the first pupils was Ussher's renowned nephew and name- sake. The first work ever printed in Irish was a Catechism, brought out in 1571 ; the Irish New Testament was not 1 Brady, the Irish Reformation, 122. v IRELAND 503 printed until 1602, and was soon followed by the Irish Prayer-book ; the Irish Old Testament did not appear until 1685. No wonder that Protestantism in the Sixteenth century proved a failure among the Irish ; it was indeed a maimed form of religion in that land. Elizabeth, far more of a statesman than her successors, abstained all but entirely from enforcing penal laws upon Irish recusants; her Deputies, such as Mountjoy, were more tolerant than the Protestant Churchmen, such as Archbishop Loftus. 1 These last, revolted by the popular religion around them, have nearly always gone to the other extreme and leant to Puritanism ; after the first few years of Elizabeth hardly one Irish Celt was admitted to the Protestant Episcopate. King James I. succeeded to the Crown of England and Ireland in 1603, and at once published an Act of oblivion and indemnity. 2 But this fair promise was soon blighted ; the new Government, unmindful of Elizabeth's wise policy, began to levy huge fines on the Irish who did not conform; these fines were later much diminished. The old national Irish usages were now everywhere abolished in favour of English law; the island was divided into counties, and fudges went on circuit throughout the land. In 1607 Tyrone and his brother chief Tyrconnel, who had been dabbling once more in treason, fled to the Continent, and in the end died at Eome. Estates in six Ulster counties were thus forfeited to the Crown. The great Ulster Plantation was the result, which posted a formidable Pro- testant garrison in Northern Ireland. Sir Arthur Chichester, who was then Deputy, settled thousands of English and Scotch in Ulster, but the native Irish were also admitted as freeholders. Large grants were made on behalf of churches and schools. King James I. was in the end destined to have a far greater success in Ireland than King Henry II. Thanks to the former, one-fourth of the 1 For these last facts see Bagwell, iii. 473. Here I unwillingly take leave of him. See also Brady, Irish Reformation, particularly p. 45. - Henceforward I receive much help from Dr. Killen's Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. He exposes in his notes Dr. Moran's curious fabrications, which counterbalance Froude's equally suspicious averments on the Protestant side. I am ware of both these authors. 504 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. dwellers in the old nest of anarchy were in time to become a noble bulwark of peace and civilisation. 1 Far better modes of husbandry were introduced. Hitherto the men of the sword, living by rapine, had lorded it in the North ; now the husbandman, despised of old, was raised to his fair level Many of the Irish in Ulster embraced the foreign creed, which has here gone on increasing down to our own day. Puritanism proved a far stronger breakwater against the Papal religion than the loose Protestantism of the previous Century had proved ; foreigners now, when wooed by the Irish Siren, stopped their ears. The Scotch undertakers held fast to their Presbyterian platform ; the Anglican Bishops and absentee parsons, sooth to say, were not men likely to attract converts. A Parliament where all Ireland was for the first time represented met at Dublin in 1613 ; 125 Protestants, many of whom sat for rotten boroughs, confronted 101 Eomanists. The Pope, fully persuaded that he had the right of deposing Kings and annulling statutes, could never be allowed to become the master spirit of the new Assembly. At the same time, a Convocation of the Protestant clergy was held, and Ussher the younger, a man too much addicted to persecution, induced his brethren to adopt a Confession of faith far more Calvinistic than the Anglican Articles. This drew more Scotchmen to Northern Ireland ; men with whom the counties of Antrim and Down were now filled. Meanwhile the Eoman Catholics were divided among them- selves as to whether it was lawful or not to abjure the Pope's Deposing power ; Paul V. more than once protested against the formularies on this head put forth by James I. 2 Lithgow, who was afterwards tortured in the Inquisition, spent six months in Ireland, arriving in 1619. He brackets the inhabitants with the Moors, the Spaniards, and the Turks as the laziest of men. Neither the peasants 1 King Henry's chief contribution to the good of Ireland was the strife between the Geraldines and the Butlers ; the towns on the coast are mostly due, not to him, but to the Danes. King James's chief contribution is Belfast and the linen trade, both due to the settlers brought in by him. 2 See Killen's Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, i. 498. This author exposes many Romanist falsehoods put forth about this time. v IKELAND 505 nor their priests, for the greater part, understood the mystery of the Mass, and hundreds of the better sort asked our traveller if Jerusalem and Christ's sepulchre were in Ireland. They entrusted their cattle to the protection of each new moon. Their cabins, sheltering their beasts and themselves, had scarcely a dry spot in foul weather ; the bogs were a floating labyrinth, in which Lithgow spoiled six horses in five months ; bridges were often impassable, and churches lost their roofs. In Ulster the peasants tied the plough to the horses' tails with straw ropes, though they might learn better from the thousands of Protes- tants toiling beside them ; the natives had sooner pay twenty shillings a year than change this custom. 1 The Irish lower class had to pay rent to the landlord, tithes to the minister, fees to the priest ; more money was exacted if the landlord travelled to Dublin or entertained strangers. He had plenty of Spanish sack and Irish usquebaugh, and was ready to pledge any health but the King's. Thieves abounded in the woods, ever ready to murder the English and Scotch settlers, and to become tools in the priests' hands. The Protestant Church was disgracefully filled, sometimes by mechanics and soldiers ; yet the livings amounted to from one to four hundred pounds a year ; these we may multiply by three. When an Irishman dies, his friends pay twenty shillings and have him buried inside the parish church. The wife, children, and servants of the minister are often Papists, and the learned man himself sometimes receives the Papal sacrament on his deathbed, confessing his life to have been a lie ; he is then borne to the grave at mid-day by Jesuits and friars. Yet there are many sound ministers, both Scotch and English. As to the others, " the alehouse is their church, the Irish priests their consorts, their auditors be fill and fetch more, their text Spanish sack, their prayers carousing, their singing of psalms the whining of tobacco, their last 1 Strafford (see his Letters, i. 291) refers to Acts passed by the Irish Par- liament in 1634 against ploughing by the tail, pulling the wool off living sheep, burning corn in straw, barking standing trees, cutting young trees by stealth, forcing cows to give milk, and building houses without chimneys. The English rule in Ireland has done something. 506 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. blessing aquavitce, and all their doctrines sound drunken- ness." l We see on looking at this picture that we are not far from 1641. Brereton, the future Parliamentary general in Cheshire, went through the East of Ireland in 1635. He was much struck with the richness of a great part of the country, and the high rents asked. Gangs of thieves lurked in the Southern woods, armed with guns, pistols, skenes, and darts ; these, when caught, were punished not as thieves, but as traitors. Algerine pirates, who took shelter in Lundy Island, made the sea dangerous ; about fifty ships used to go from Waterford to Bristol Fair under convoy of a King's ship. 2 All clan battles were now put down, and the Irish population was therefore increasing rapidly. But there was a dark side to this picture of improvement. The rich soil of Ireland, which might now be tilled in peace, drew the attention of greedy strangers, seeking by all manner of legal chicanery to oust the earlier owners of the land. In Munster the wily Boyle, the future Earl of Cork, had so prospered, that in 1611 he could show of his own tenants eighty horsemen, one hundred and eighty-six pikemen, two hundred and fifty shot, and six halberdiers ; yet to the last moment of his life he was hungering after the lands of his neighbours. 3 Still worse were the doings of Parsons, one of the wo-st of all Ireland's oppressors; he got possession of the estates of the Byrnes in Wicklow by wheedling or torturing Irishmen of the lowest class, who were thus con- strained to bear false witness against the old landholders. 4 In Longford twenty-six of the O'Farrals some years later signed a petition, directed against the quirks and quiddities of the law, which bore hard on " the mere Irish " ; they also begged for absolute religious equality. 5 All these things 1 This may be found in Morgan's Phoenix Britannicus, 212, published in 1732. The friendship of the Protestant minister and his rival reminds me of an amusing story in Maxwell's Wild Sports of the West. 2 Brereton's Trawls were published by the Chetham Society. 3 Cox, Hibernia Anglicana, ii. 17. 4 A more revolting story was never set out ; it may be seen in Carte's Life of Ormond, book i. 5 Cox, Hib. Aug., gives the document in vol. ii. Appendix III. v IEELAND 507 show how the King's misgovernment was leading up to the bloody year 1641. Yet at this very time Ireland was a Paradise in comparison with Bohemia. Charles I. showed the worst side of his character in Ireland, resembling the mousing owl rather than the kingly eagle. He would extract vast sums of money from the Irish by promising redress of grievances, and then coolly slip out of his bargain. The iron tyranny of his Deputy, Strafford, is well known ; among his outrages was the harassing of the Scotch Presbyterians, so valuable as colonists in Ulster. Still worse was his method of extorting a verdict for the King from an unwilling Gal way jury ; no title in Connaught could stand against His Majesty's claim, and the whole province was in the end adjudged to the Crown. Charles I. never dreamt of putting forth any edict which would have made every Irish landholder secure in his estate such an edict as brought peace to India after the Mutiny. The Long Parliament, rather later, bestowed hardly a thought upon the oppressed Irish landholders ; Pym and Hampden do not shine when they handle Irish affairs. These things go far to account for the great Rebellion, now near at hand. Irish soldiers had long been whetting their swords in foreign service for warfare at home ; some of them can claim the credit of Wallenstein's death. One of the most favoured counties at this time was Cavan, where the English Bedell, an old friend of Sarpi's, held the See of Kilmore. 1 He was probably the most dangerous enemy that the Pope ever encountered in Ireland ; in bestowing livings Bedell gave the preference to men who could speak Irish, and he thereby provoked the wrath of the besotted English Government ; he learnt Irish himself, and worked hard at a translation of the Old Testament. He always took the side of the oppressed, and was especially popular among the Sheridans, one of the leading clans of Cavan, a race that has since given to Britain a continuous stream of remarkable men and women, a succession else- where unparalleled. Had a Bedell been in every Irish See 1 See his Life, Camden Society for 1872. 508 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. the country would have been wonderfully changed for the better, and Protestantism would have been based upon some- thing stronger than a worrying system of fines and penalties. The year 1641 is the turning-point of Irish history; what went on in the last two months of that year has caused an impassable river of blood to flow between the two great sections of the Irish people. Those of the South have ever since been in vain exclaiming " Out, out, damned spot ! " l Sir Phelim O'Neill, although a most weak-headed man, became to Ireland all that Guise was to France or Sigismund III. to Poland. Eome and Geneva were now to fight out their old quarrel in Ireland, and the Pope had now more fiery spirits to encounter than that of the lukewarm Elizabeth. Late in October 1641 an attempt to seize Dublin Castle miscarried, but there was a general rising in Ulster. A few murders only were committed at first, but crowds of starved Protestant women, stripped of every rag of clothing, soon came flocking into Dublin, where Temple saw them in their misery. The rebels had chosen the worst possible time for their rising, since France and Spain, the only two countries that could have helped them, were now locked together in deadly grapple. The business soon degenerated into a wholesale massacre in Ulster, where thousands of the aliens, men, women, and children, perished ; hideous torments were sometimes inflicted, and even the harmless cattle that had belonged to Protestants were needlessly tortured ; we are here reminded of the cruelties, both to man and beast, perpetrated when Mr. Parnell ruled the greater part of Ireland. 2 Sir 1 Curry discusses the depositions of Protestant refugees as to the massacre ; some of them talk of ghosts,; he therefore thinks that others of them who do not talk of ghosts are equally unworthy of credit. Hallam has done full justice to Curry's notions of historical evidence. 2 Read the examination of grave Dr. Maxwell, a future Bishop, given in Cox, HiberniaAnglicana, ii. Appendix X. In 1798 the priests showed much more humanity than in 1641. In the latter year the victims were often driven out to starve, orders being given that no relief should be afforded them. This reminds us of King Henry the Second's treatment of certain Albigen- sian heretics who came to England. There may have been in both cases some superstitious scruple which ensured the death of the victim, and at the same time prevented men from actually slaughtering him. v IKELAND 509 Phelim O'Neill himself gave orders for many a wanton butchery, especially after being beaten off by some Scotch or English garrison. 1 Perhaps thirty thousand Protestants perished within half a year, many of them by starvation ; both sides seem at first to have joined in exaggerating for their own purposes the numbers slain. 2 Bishops and priests hounded on the savage Irish, though there are some in- stances of these ministers interfering to save life. Bedell in Cavan was a prisoner until his death in the hands of the rebels, but was able to give shelter to two hundred Protes- tants, since he was respected by men. of every creed. " While I have a bit here for myself," said he, " never a child shall want ; and when all is gone I will trust to God for more." A very different man, Parsons, who was one of the Lords Justices, acted as if he wished to drive all Papal Ireland into the rebellion for the sake of the broad lands to be confiscated. The gentry of the Pale, reversing their policy of 1600, soon joined themselves to the Ulster rebels, and before the end of the year both Connaught and Munster had risen. Protestant reprisals had already begun ; Wicklow had taken up arms on November 12; Sir Charles Coote, heading a regiment of Protestant refugees, was sent against these rebels, and behaved much like Sir Phelim ; babes were borne on his soldiers' pikes, and the remark made on this was that "nits will be lice." Ormond, who had a far harder part to play than his Elizabethan kinsman, led many an expedition from Dublin to ravage Leinster ; the gentry of the Pale, who seem to have carried on the war for years with great humanity, had to suffer cruelly for the misdeeds of their Ulster allies. A massacre perpetrated on some harmless Irish at Island Magee early in January 1642 bore witness 1 I am sorry that Sir Phelim seems to have been a genuine O'Neill, while his far nobler kinsman and rival Owen was descended from the spurious Dungannon brood. 2 Thus four years later the friar O'Mahony or O'Malony states in a Latin book that the Irish had slain 150,000 heretics in four years' time. See the Irish Historical Library, by William Bishop of Deny, p. 8. 510 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP, to Protestant eagerness for revenge. 1 The Ulstermen had three weeks' start, but after the Wicklow campaign there was little to choose between the two parties as regards humanity, except that the Protestants abstained from inflicting wanton torture ; they were not encumbered by vixenish women and mischievous boys. Those who begin a massacre have to answer not only for their own deeds but for the reprisals which are sure to follow. The year 1641, as all must see, is of the same importance to Ireland as 1562 is to France, as 1688 is to England. Nowhere does this come out clearer than in the religious question. The rebels, except in Cavan, were fired by a fanatical hatred of Protestantism. On the very first day of the rebellion the rioters seized a Bible, stamped on it, and cried, " A plague on this book; it has bred all this trouble ; " they hoped that in three weeks not a Bible would be left in Ireland. A friar, who otherwise behaved with great humanity, took the Bibles of the refugees and cast them into the fire. 2 In Connaught the parsons very early fled to Galway for safety. One of them, Goldsmith (perhaps the Poet's great-great-grandfather), has left us a good account of these awful times. He had conferred great temporal benefits on his parishioners, and had even drawn the children of Koman Catholics to his church on Sundays to be catechised, the parents wishing that their own priests would do as much. Yet his ungrateful neighbours stripped him of all he had. He was told that he must go to Mass or die ; he sought refuge in Lord Mayo's castle. The noble owner, alarmed by the excesses perpetrated around him, was converted to Borne by the titular Archbishop of Tuam ; all or most of the English in Mayo, about a thousand in number, followed this example ; only about ten refused, among whom were Goldsmith and his wife. The priest undertook to confute Protestants out of their own Bibles, but failed. The Archbishop tried in vain to get hold of 1 See for this Miss Hickson's Ireland in the Seventeenth Century, or the Massacres of 1641, i. 255. Some Irish writers impudently antedate this to November 1641, and say that this was the first of all the massacres on either side. Dates are most important here. 2 Miss Hickson, i. 140, 173. v IRELAND 511 Goldsmith, who went on praying and preaching in holes and corners. Threescore English, among whom was the Bishop of Killala and fifteen ministers, were being conveyed to Galway ; on the way most of them were massacred at Shrule. Even the converts to Rome could hardly be saved from butchery by Lord Mayo ; the local Irish gentry took the lead in robbery. 1 These tales about the Irish rebellion, exaggerated six- fold, were spread broadcast over England, and inflamed the Long Parliament to savage wrath. We who have lived in 1857 can remember the effect wrought upon us by Nana Sahib's atrocities ; yet these were as nothing to what went on in Ulster in the last months of 1641. One of the results of the grim tidings was to make the civil strife in England inevitable. The war in Ulster, then dying out, revived in the middle of 1642 by the arrival of the great Tyrone's nephew, Owen Roe O'Neill (Eoghan Ruadh), who had lately won European renown by his defence of Arras for the Spanish Crown. He turned with disgust from the butcheries of his cousin Phelim, a weak, hare-brained man. 2 Owen, who, unlike most of his countrymen, was a disciple of Fabius Cunctator, proved to be the one supremely able champion of the Irish cause during the next seven years. The Papal Bishops had already pronounced the war to be " lawful and pious," and Pope Urban VIII. had sent an approving Bull. Roman Catholic gentlemen who refused to join the rebels were excommunicated by the Prelates. In October a General Assembly of clergy and laity, sitting at Kilkenny, undertook the direction of affairs ; with this body Ormond, to the wrath of most Protestants, made a truce in 1643. Two years later Charles I. made terms (that he durst not openly avow) with the Assembly, and acquired in return some thousands of Irish soldiers, who were sent to the war now raging in England ; other Irish proved the trustiest of all the levies of the great Montrose. 1 For Goldsmith's deposition see Miss Hickson, i. 375. 2 See the deposition quoted by Miss Hickson, i. 178. Owen set free some of the half-starved Protestants, and burnt the houses of their persecutors. 512 EOME AND BEFOKM CHAP. It is interesting to get an insight into the opinions of the men who led on the Irish to the great crime of 1641. Le Gouz travelled through the South of Ireland in 1644: at a supper table in Tipperary he met an Irish friar bred in Spain who denounced the French as a set of reprobates, since they had no Inquisition ; they were partial to heretics, who should not be tolerated but exterminated ; the very name of Calvinist ought to be abhorred. At Cashel our traveller put down two Dominicans who had averred that the French knew nothing, and that Spain was the cradle of true theology and philosophy. The friars babbled about Lutherans, Huguenots, and French blockheads. These Churchmen were a fair sample of the leaders who lashed up Ulster into fury, and who certainly did not sin by counte- nancing any lax toleration of Protestants. 1 The year 1645 beheld the arrival of Archbishop Einuccini, the Pope's Legate, whose cause was much advanced by the great victory of Benburb, gained next year by Owen O'Neill over the Scotch in the North. The Italian threw some of his Irish opposers at Kilkenny into prison, and his leadership was upheld by swarms of friars all over the land. In 1647 Ormond, as Lord-Lieutenant, choosing the least of two evils, handed over Dublin to the English Parliament. Next year a coalition was formed between the Moderate Eoman Catholics under Preston and the Protestants under the blood-stained Inchiquin, who had long ruled as a King in Southern Munster ; here there was a, large Protestant colony dating from the old Desmond War. Ormond returned to head this coalition, while the Pope's Nuncio, strong in the protection of Owen O'Neill, excom- municated all who favoured the new alliance as men guilty of mortal sin. Einuccini's arrogance was too much for many of the Irish Bishops, who went so far as to declare that the Pope himself might be mistaken. Peter Walsh, a renowned Franciscan, drew up a long and learned rejoinder to the Nuncio, a paper of which even the Jesuits (most were of English descent) approved. These events bring before our eyes the most melancholy of all the instances 1 Tour of M. de la Boullaye le Gouz, edited by Crofton Croker. v IEELAND 513 of Irish disunion and of Irish submission to Eoman claims. O'Neill, the great Ulster leader, came to blows with the other faction, and sometimes slaughtered his brother Catho- lics. 1 He had to face Clanricard, who represented the moderate Eomanists, and also Ormond, who represented the moderate Protestants. The Lord-Lieutenant wisely admitted the Kilkenny Assembly to a share in his power. Early in 1649 Einuccini withdrew from Ireland, which he left under interdict and excommunication, and which he had helped to ruin. She makes unto herself strange gods. Curious had been some of the Italian's freaks ; he would threaten excommunication for the most trivial temporal business, such as a debt due to the captain of a frigate. One profane wretch drank to the health of the Trinity ; that is, God, Owen Eoe O'Neill, and the Nuncio ; the man was rewarded by Einuccini with a deanery. 2 We may mark about this time the tendencies of the two great parties in the Eoman Church, the Ultramontanes and the Moderates. The division between them is most plain in Father Walsh's History of the Remonstrance, a work worthy of careful study. 3 He holds in abhorrence the tenets that General Councils have no authority as against Eome; that the Pope can dispense with the Old and New Testament ; that he ought to be believed, even if he define virtue to be vice or the contrary. Walsh shudders at the title, " Our Lord God the Pope," as a glossator of the Pontiff's own Canon Law styles the Eoman Bishop. 4 The friar well knew what was Ireland's weak point ; he is full of wrath at a book published abroad in 1645 by one O'Mahony, who wished to slay not only the English and Scotch, but also those of his countrymen who helped the heretics ; the Kilkenny 1 Cox, Hibernia Anglicana, ii. 203. 2 All this comes from Beling, a Roman Catholic. See Cox, Hist. Aug. ii. 199. 3 I wish that Walsh had left us Memoirs, as he lived in such stirring times. 4 Walsh's Letter to the Catholics of England, Ireland, and Scotland, p. 23. He quotes Gerson's remark, "aestimant Papam esse unum Deum qui habet potestatem omnem in coelo et in terra." VOL. I 2 L 514 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. Council had the book burnt by the hangman. In another book, published later by Ferral and countenanced at Rome, it was averred that no priests of English blood ought to be made Prelates in Ireland, and it was further suggested that none of the Bishops of the Moderate school ought to be allowed to return home. " This national distinction," says * v Walsh, "has been the bane of Ireland for five hundred years." ] The Moderate party in Ireland could at first boast of fourteen Prelates with all their clergy, of the Jesuits and Carmelites, and of five hundred Franciscans ; the great Wadding, the brightest light of this last Order, always ready to spend himself for his countrymen, was denounced at Rome to the Pope as receiver of letters from the heretic Ormond. Then came disaster, and the Irish Moderates by degrees shrank in numbers until in 1662 only sixty -nine out of two thousand Irish clergymen would follow Walsh's lead. 2 No Irish city was to imitate Paris or Venice in their mode of weighing the claims of the Papacy, Still many laymen took the Moderate side ; as Rinuccini avers, the judges and lawyers abhorred the proposition that the heretical King was not a legitimate Sovereign, since such a tenet would ruin all who held ecclesiastical property, the gift of the Crown. This was the real and perilous stumbling-block in Ireland ; few cared to obtain dispensations from the Nuncio to retain this pro- perty, since the request would be an acknowledgment of guilt. Neither Pope Innocent nor his agent was statesman enough to follow the English precedent and confirm the rights of laymen to the long-lost abbeys. 3 1 History of the Remonstrance, 594, 595, 736. I suppose Ferral should have the Irish O before his name ; this letter Walsh is rather fond of strik- ing out in Irish names. 2 Ibid. 579. An Irish bard of 1650 sings thus in his own tongue : It was God's justice not to free them (the Irish), They went not together hand in hand, The land was not firmly united, And the clerics were ever divided, Some abounded in falsehood, Some aided the heretic horde. Gilbert's Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland, vi. 194. 3 The Embassy in Ireland of Rinuccini, 322. This work enables us to see the working of the various Irish factions ; how Owen Roe towers high above v IRELAND 515 We are sometimes told that the Irish have never persecuted for religion. This will not hold water ; in 1644 the Southern men set forth a declaration promising tolera- tion to every " moderate, conformable " Protestant on con- dition of his rebelling and joining the Irish army. But Puritans and Presbyterians, in other words half of Ulster, were to be excepted from this privilege. In 1648 it was boasted that, by the terms of the new Cessation, Protestants were not to enjoy free worship in the quarters of the Confederates. The rebels disputed whether the King should be allowed one chapel in Dublin. The bodies of Protestants were not permitted burial in the churchyard ; a garden was good enough for heretics. 1 The Irish model was Spain, not France. War, famine, and pestilence within eleven years swept off almost one half of the Irish population. 2 In 1649 Ormond was reinforced by the Ulster Presbyterians, shocked at the execution of Charles I. There were now no fewer than five parties in the Irish field ; the two in reality most opposed to each other, the Ultramontanes under Owen O'Neill, and the Puritan Eepublicans under Coote, actually for some time combined against the Moderate men. Of a truth Ireland is one of the strangest of all lands. There were two rival Bishops of Clogher, hearty on the same side ; the Pope's Bishop had been one of the contrivers of the great Ulster rising, and was soon to be hanged by his present allies ; the King's Bishop had been an inquisitor of the blood shed in the aforesaid rising ; he was soon to all others, though his Ulstermen, ill-paid soldiers, were dreaded by the Southern men as unscrupulous plunderers ; how feeble Connaught was compared to the other provinces ; how the Munster men once disgraced themselves in battle ; how careless and lazy all Ireland was, the people con- tenting themselves with a Mass in their cabins, and feeding only on what the earth produces without toil. They cared little for splendour in public worship (pp. 143, 144). The Pope's money greatly contributed to the victory of Benburb. Rinuccini, a short-sighted statesman, hopes that the English Parliament may prevail over the faithless King with a view to Irish interests, p. 145. 1 Killen, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, ii. 98, 99. 2 This is Petty's calculation. An author of the time quoted by Prender- gast increases this to five -sixths. 516 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. become Cromwell's Scoutmaster-General, and afterwards to gain the rich See of Meath. Such were the shiftings of Irish politics. 1 But now the destroying Angel was at hand. At a time when the Eepublicans held no more than Dublin and Deny, Cromwell landed in Ireland ; his massacres at Drog- heda and Wexford speedily followed. His soldiers could think of nothing but the bloodshed of 1641 and the chas- tisement it deserved. The Irish could do little except at Clonmell against the English veterans ; Owen O'Neill, the one man who might perchance have baffled Cromwell, was now in his grave. Many an Irish Bishop, who had helped the firebrand Einuccini, ended on the gallows. Their party in 1650 requested Ormond to leave Ireland ; he would not at once quit his post, when the Bishops issued an excommunication against all who adhered to him. 2 Next year the despairing clergy were inviting the Duke of Lorraine, a most lukewarm friend, to lead the Irish army, and they were excommunicating Clanricard, a man of their own creed, who had succeeded Ormond as the representative of Charles II. Limerick was taken by Ireton, and many of Einuccini's old followers were hanged. Sir Phelim O'Neill shared the same fate ; the last hour of his life did him more credit than all the rest of it. About forty thousand Irish soldiers were allowed to go abroad and wear themselves out in the service of France or Spain, which were still at war with each other. Late in 1652 Irish armed resistance to the English Parliament seems to have ceased. The West Indies were in want of colonists ; so crowds of Irish of both sexes were seized and shipped off thither ; this was repeated when Jamaica came under English rule. The greater part of the land was portioned out among the Cromwellian soldiers, who mustered nearly 35,000 men, as appeared by their debentures. 3 Meanwhile barren Connaught was set apart for some of the native 1 See Ormond's letter in Carte's Collection, vi. 586 ; also Killen, ii. 103. 2 The absurd policy of these men stands out very clearly even in the Roman Catholic Curry's History. Ultramontanism is a broken reed for any country to lean upon. 3 Petty, Political Anatomy of Ireland, 6. v IEELAND 517 gentry banished from their old homes; the humbler classes were allowed to remain and till the lands of the English soldiery. Spenser's grandson, though a Protestant, was among the landholders transplanted. Many of the Irish began to profess Protestantism, hoping thereby to escape transportation. 1 Noblemen with their wives and little ones were driven to linger out their lives on some barren bog beyond the Shannon. But many of the English found it their interest to keep the old Irish on the land ; much as the Gibeonites became thralls to the new owners of Canaan. The burghers of Kilkenny, Waterford, and other towns were all removed from their homes, which it was hoped would be repeopled by English Protestants, but which were in truth often left very barren of inhabitants. Wolves swarmed throughout the desolate land, and were found close to Dublin. 2 The Irish clergy were of course proscribed, and many of them fled abroad with the departing soldiers. 3 A few were still lurking in disguise, pursuing various occupations, and carefully guarded by the laity ; if caught, the priests were dispatched abroad. In 1 6 5 5 the gaols were full of them, and many were sent to Barbadoes. In 1657 they were shipped off to the Arran Isles, and were there allowed six- pence a day. Never did Protestantism show so stern and persecuting a spirit as in the days of the Commonwealth, when Ireland was down. Had this system been prolonged for a score of years the old religion would have been all but rooted out ; it cannot exist without priests. 4 There was another Irish plague as bad as the wolves or the priests that of the Tories, who begin to be heard of in 1650, and who are not yet extinct in England. 5 Irish soldiers who had lost all their lands revenged their wrongs 1 Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement ; I have used the edition of 1870. See 89-93, 117, 131 2 Ibid. 272, 309. 3 Ibid. 315. 4 Petty says in his Political Anatomy, p. 96, that under the Crom- wellians the Irish were observed to have been forward to relax the stiffness of their pertinacity to the Pope and his Impositions. 5 For the older Tories see a most interesting account in Prendergast, 331-357. 518 BOME AND REFORM CHAP. by robbing and slaying the new owners, finding shelter in the bogs and woods. If outrages took place, the men of the neighbourhood were transported by the Government. So much as thirty pounds was offered for the head of a Tory chief. One Irishman is easily tempted to betray another ; disunion never ceases. " Your army cannot catch the Tories," said a Puritan member for Wicklow at West- minster ; " the Irish bring them in ; brothers and cousins cut one another's throats." l A well-born Kavanagh acted as thief-taker to escape himself the dreaded transpor- tation, and this system went on for more than a hundred years. It might be thought that this common ruin would breed union among the Irish, but it was far otherwise. Walsh was told by an Ultramontane Bishop, "All the rest of Ireland may be forgiven, but you never shall be ! " The opposite party forbade any to sell meat and drink to the bold friar, and encouraged the soldiery to murder him, call- ing him an enemy of the Church. In 1649 the Kilkenny mob was stirred up to attempt the lives of himself and of others of his party. Some of the Moderate men fled abroad ; the Irish Ultramontanes persecuted them in all lands and denounced them to foreign governments ; Louvain particu- larly distinguished herself in this policy. The fanatics strove hard to throw Walsh into the Spanish Inquisition ; they would fain have debarred one Irish Bishop from burial in holy ground. In 1655 Pope Alexander at last issued a Bull empowering Irish Prelates to grant absolution from Rinuccini's censures. 2 Inquiry was made by the new Lords of Ireland into the crimes of 1641, but few even in Ulster were alive to answer for their guilt. The stern justice of the English Eepublicans, most different from the favouritism of the Stuarts, is very 1 Mr. Prendergast thus excuses them, p. 344 : " Life had become of little value ; there was no public cause to maintain ; the armies had surrendered. ... It is no wonder that, between threats and rewards, men should be tempted to betray and murder one another." The Scotch Highlanders in 1746 were not of Mr. Prendergast's mind, though Mr. A. Lang has proved that even among them there were a few exceptions to the rule. a Walsh, History of the Remonstrance, [584-593. v IKELAND 519 plain in the inquisition made in 1653 into the massacre of Island Magee. As already said, early in 1642 some sixty Scotch soldiers had taken upon themselves to revenge the Ulster butcheries by slaughtering ninety Irish men, women, and children. The depositions of the Irish witnesses remain, and it seems likely that the surviving murderers were either hung or sent to Barbadoes along with many of the opposite faction. 1 This Cromwellian settlement has coloured Irish history ever since. To this day the rich in most parts of the land profess one faith, the poor another creed. A great gulf seems to separate classes ; scorn on the one part is returned by hate on the other ; landlords have shown little mercy to their tenants. There is the parallel case of Bohemia, where a new foreign aristocracy was forced upon the land soon after 1620. But in Ireland the stern pressure of a foreign religion was soon withdrawn ; in Bohemia it was steadily persevered in for ages. Hence Ireland, unlike Bohemia, was never converted to her master's creed. Never in history did Protestantism show itself so stern as when avenging the crimes of 1641 upon Ireland, following a definite system. One good thing at least followed the English Conquest. About this time leprosy was most common in Ireland, since the people lived much upon salmon that was out of season ; the fish abounded in every river and brook. Severe laws were now made against the taking of fish at a time when it became pernicious to health. The planting of vegetables was also introduced, and each family was encouraged to keep a cow. Soon the hospitals built for lepers fell into ruin. 2 Charles II. in 1659 employed one of the Bodkins of Galway as his envoy to Cardinal Mazarin, who was found at the foot of the Pyrenees. The Koyal exile hoped to buy French aid upon three conditions : he would marry one of 1 These particular depositions fill twenty pages in Miss Hickson's work, i. 255-276. Our modern Irish patriots do not care to mention this instance of English justice. The ninety victims have been magnified into some thousands. 2 I take this from The Present State of Holland, p. 50 ; a good book published about 1740, to which the author has not put his name. 520 HOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. the Mazarin nieces ; he would give his sister Henrietta to the Cardinal's nephew ; Ireland should be handed over to Mazarin and to his heirs for ever. Bodkin added that Ireland might be united to France, and declared that there were a hundred thousand Irish in Connaught able to bear arms ; he vowed that Galway was one of the strongest places in Europe, and might be easily surprised. Nothing came of these strange overtures. 1 With 1660 a gleam of hope seemed to bless the un- happy island. Broghill and Coote, the heads of the Protestant interest, were among the earliest to declare for Charles II., who now at last enjoyed his own again. The Protestant Established Church of Ireland was at once restored, and Puritans of the most savage type, such as the two chiefs just mentioned, now affected the character of sound Anglicans. The great question was that of the land. The Cromwellian soldiers were unwilling to part with one acre of their grants ; the dispossessed Irish put their trust in the King's honour and gratitude. He began ill ; he granted 120,000 acres, formerly the property of Irish landholders, to his brother, the Duke of York, a man who was in the end to be the Evil Genius of Ireland. Enormous grants were made to Ormond ; the old Patriarch of the Cavaliers was wanting in one element of greatness, the scorn of filthy lucre. A paper remains which shows that after the Restoration nearly forty estates in Tipperary alone were made over to him, some of which were taken from his own Butler kinsmen. 2 He went to Ireland as Lord- Lieutenant with the title of Duke. A Court of claims was set up in Dublin in 1663, and this pronounced scores of the Irish to have been innocent of rebellion. The Protestants, balked of their prey, resorted to plots against the Govern- ment, which was thus overawed and preferred expediency to justice. The ghastly tale of the bloodshed of 1641 had to be 1 Hugues de Lionne, par Valfrey, ii. 312. Readers of Macaulay will remember how Bishop Ken prepared to take the oaths to William III. on hearing a false report that James II. had made over Ireland to France. 2 Carte's Ormond, Appendix, v. 196. I use the edition of 1851. v IKELAND 521 proved a fable, if Roman Catholics were to keep their estates. To this end a paper was drawn up in 1662 claiming to give an account of the barbarities in most of the Irish shires. The author, whoever he was, has the wisdom not to set his name to this production. He declares that the first massacre on either side was that of the Island Magee, where about 3000 Irish were slain early in November 164 1. 1 His statement has been made the ground of all subsequent apologies for the great massacre, but small heed seems to have been paid at the time to the impudent declaration. 2 The Irish regiments in the service of foreign States had when abroad carefully consulted Charles's wishes, and at his behest they had forsaken the service of France for that of Spain. They had shown heroic valour wherever they were quartered ; the worst stain upon their shield is their cam- paign against the Vaudois in 1655. These Irish soldiers in vain implored Charles's mercy in 1663, but they were mostly left to starve. The cases of six thousand who claimed to be innocent were left unheard. We have in writing the sad story of many Irish noblemen and gentle- men ruined through Sir Phelim O'Neill's misdeeds in Ulster a score of years earlier. 3 The result of the settlement established by Charles II. was that one -half of the good land owned by the Irish Catholics in 1641 was taken from them ; before that year they had owned two-thirds of all the good land in Ireland. 4 Ulster long continued to be the most disturbed part of all Ireland ; here, as Ormond said, were the worst Protes- tants (Presbyterians) and the worst Papists in the realm. The dispossessed Irish gentry scorned trade and lived upon their old tenants ; some of them became Tories, who burnt farms and plundered the country. They even assaulted Plunkett, the Roman Archbishop of Armagh, in his own house. 5 In Ulster the restored Anglican Bishops soon began to 1 See this paper set out in Curry's Review of Irish Civil Wars, ii. 347. 2 Ibid. 3 This is set out in Prendergast's Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution. 4 Petty, quoted by Froude, English in Ireland, i. 153. 5 Ibid. 93. 522 EOME AND REFORM CHAP. harass the Presbyterians and to banish the Covenanting ministers. But King Charles, when firmly seated on his throne, tolerated the Roman Catholics. The famous Remonstrance which denied the Pope's right to depose Kings was largely signed by the Irish nobles and gentle- men, now more than ever eager to show themselves good subjects. The Nuncio at Brussels, who had the oversight of Ireland, denounced the document as heretical, and he was backed by Rome. Of two thousand priests and friars resident in Ireland in 1665 only sixty-nine ventured to sign the Remonstrance, and these were soon excommuni- cated. 1 In 1663 Cromwell's wise policy was forsaken, and Ireland was hampered in her trade, for the supposed good of England. Every colony, as all Europe then supposed, existed simply for the benefit of the mother country. It was a doctrine fraught with ruin to Ireland, and it was carried into practice for more than a hundred years. Smuggling was promoted, industrious toil was checked, worthy immigrants were hindered, and thousands of Ireland's best Protestants fled to America. 2 The small island was in vain to implore a Parliamentary union with her tyrannical sister. The acute Sir William Petty wrote his Political Anatomy of Ireland in 1672. He tells us that there were then in the land 800,000 Papists, 100,000 Anglicans, 100,000 Scotch Presbyterians, and 100,000 men of strange English sects. Half a million of Irish and 112,000 of British had perished since 1641. The common folk were much addicted to snuff and tobacco, and made milk their diet ; already the potato, ill-omened vegetable, had taken root in the land ; thus the labour of one man could feed forty. Yet they could keep small horses, and wore better clothes than before the great war. Kerry was already remarkable for its schools, where the poorest might learn Latin. The numerous 1 Killen's Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, ii. 144. Walsh's Remonstrance must be consulted here. 2 This policy has been warmly denounced by Froude in many an eloquent page. v IRELAND 523 Church holy days, twenty-four in all, were a clog on Irish industry. Sir William Temple, writing about the same time, talks of the largeness and plenty of the food in Ireland (which he knew well) and the scarcity of people ; all necessaries were so cheap that an industrious man by two days' labour could gain enough to feed himself for the rest of the week ; hence came the laziness attributed to the Irish. 1 This state of things was to be sadly changed forty years later. In 1678 Titus Gates lashed England into madness by his pretended Popish plot. Dr. Plunkett was at this time the Archbishop of Armagh, a most worthy Prelate, though a strong Ultramontane. He had striven to correct the pre- vailing vice of drunkenness among his clergy, and three of these resolved on vengeance. They brought the usual absurd charges against him, and his trial took place at Westminster; in 1681 he was hanged and quartered at Tyburn, the most illustrious victim of all that were done to death by Gates and his imitators. His godly example was not followed by his opponents, the Irish Protestant clergy ; under Charles II. they rejoiced in pluralities and non- residence ; Usshers and Bedells were no longer to be found. The one ray of light was the whole Bible in Irish, giveij to the world now for the first time. In 1685 James II. succeeded to his brother's crown; a man whose strange statesmanship was indirectly to endow England with the best form of government hitherto known among men, and to inflict upon Ireland fearful disasters, lasting for four generations. He began by cashiering most of the Protestants who were in the service of the State, replacing them by their religious enemies. Ormond, not long before his death, had to make way, after a short interval, for the bigoted Tyrconnel. The King was driven out of England by William of Orange, but Ireland clave to James. The priests hoped to get back the tithes, the gentry clutched at the confiscated lands. The struggle between the two great sections of the Irish people was on this occasion carried on with a fair amount of humanity. The famous Attainder 1 Temple, Observations upon the United Provinces, 184. 524 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. passed by the new Irish Parliament seems, like many an English Protestant statute, to have been designed as a bugbear rather than meant for practical use. The inci- dents of the war need not be here repeated, however tempt- ing may be the names of Enniskillen and Londonderry. There are some striking contrasts with the struggle of 1641 ; thus the Irish Prelates took very little part in the war and are hardly named. But the O'Donnell chief, who embraced the English side, reminds us of the great Owen Roe allying himself (though not for long) with the Puritan Republicans. 1 As to the Protestant Prelates, they could not in a moment disown their old doctrine of passive obedience ; some of them at first lent their countenance to James rather than to William. But most in the end followed Dr. King, who ended his career as Archbishop of Dublin, and who was a pillar of the new system of government. King was a bitter enemy to the Scotch Presbyterians, now fast rooted in Ulster. He was, at least in zeal, a contrast to some of his brethren, such as Hacket of Down, who sold the livings in his gift to the highest bidder, and who never left the neighbourhood of London for twenty years. A Dean was deprived for adultery. Queen Mary, writing to her husband, might well say that the Irish Church was the worst in Christendom. 2 The most infamous of all the actions of these Prelates was the sanction that most of them gave to the breach of the Treaty of Limerick. The Irish forces had yielded that city on condition that Roman Catholics should thereafter retain such religious privileges as had been enjoyed in the reign of Charles II. King William, a lover of toleration, was forced by his subjects to break this solemn pact. In 1691 the English Parliament excluded Roman Catholics from sitting in either House. Then came an Irish statute preventing them from educating their children either at home or abroad. By another Act they were disarmed ; by another their regular clergy were banished. Further, inter- 1 Macaulay's England, iv. 94. 2 Killen, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, ii. 173, 183. y IKELAND 525 marriages between Protestants and Koman Catholics were forbidden ; and men of the hated sect were not allowed to be solicitors. 1 The next seventy years are a shameful period, which has borne bitter fruit. The Protestants of 1650, ruthless as they were, did not break faith with the Irish ; the Protestants of 1700 were not only cruel but faithless. The first half of the Eighteenth century in Ireland beheld one of the greatest stains that ever defiled Protestantism ; here the Eoman school boasts with too much truth that it can show a set-off to the Inquisition and the St. Bartholo- mew. It should be mentioned that six Bishops and eight temporal Peers did their duty as men of honour, and protested against the great breach of faith. 2 This crime speedily brought its own punishment. Nineteen thousand Irish soldiers sailed for France shortly after the Treaty of Limerick, and were afterwards con- stantly recruited from home, even in years of peace, by their countrymen, who found themselves barred from all possible careers in Ireland. 3 They speedily rose to distinc- tion on the continent ; the one that rose highest of all was Peter Lacy, an ensign at the siege of Limerick, who after- wards had much to do with the victory of Pultowa, and died a Russian Field-Marshal in 1751, after many triumphs over Swedes, Poles, and Turks. Sarsfield did not survive the wounds he received at Landen. O'Mahony and his Irish baffled the great Eugene himself, who had all but succeeded in taking Cremona. Every one has heard of the Irish Brigade at Fontenoy, and their overthrow of the Coldstream Guards in fair fight. One ill-starred Irishman, known in the land of his forefathers as O'Maoilalaidh, who came from Tulach-na-dala, is famous both in Europe and Asia as Lally Tollendal. 4 What Englishman, reading the history of the 1 One of the chief faults of Lord Macaulay's History is that he does not brand the violation of the Treaty of Limerick as it deserves. 2 See the Protest in O'Brien's Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland, ii. 21. 3 The Abbs' MacGeoghegan declares that more than 450,000 Irish died in the service of France between 1691 and 1745. I view these numbers with some mistrust. 4 All these heroes and their exploits must be studied in O'Callaghan's History of the Irish Brigades, an entrancing work, which must have been the fruit of vast research. 526 HOME AND KEFORM CHAP. Irish Brigade, will not sympathise with George II., who cried, " Cursed be the laws which deprive me of such subjects ! " In our own days one soldier of Irish blood has swayed Spain, another France. 1 There are four great breaches of faith that have tar- nished the fair fame of England since 1620 ; these are, the abandonment of the Huguenots by Charles I. after the siege of La Eochelle ; the breach of the Treaty of Limerick ; Bolingbroke's treachery to his Catalan allies ; and Bute's desertion of Frederick the Great. All these, except one, drew down the wrath of the English public upon the authors of the treacherous Acts ; but in the case of the Limerick scandal no Englishman seems to have taken it to heart. We must pursue the history of the Penal Laws after King William's death ; it is a most sickening record. The Acts passed under Anne were far more ferocious than those passed under William. Baits were held out to sons, inducing them to turn Protestant, and so to oust their Popish fathers from their estates. The landed property of Papists was divided by law among all the sons. No Papist could vote at elections without taking the oaths of allegiance and abjuration. Not only the children but the wives of Papists, and, moreover, their priests, were bribed to apostatise. Eewards were promised to the discoverers of Popish Prelates, priests, and schoolmasters. No priest could officiate except in the parish for which he was registered. No Papist in trade, except in the linen trade, could take more than two apprentices. By a statute of George I. the horses of Papists might be seized for the militia. By a statute of George II. persons robbed by privateers during a war with a Popish Prince might be reimbursed at the expense of their Popish neighbours. All marriages between Protestants and Papists, or those celebrated by Popish priests, were annulled. 2 It was not until 1745 that any Lord -Lieutenant made 1 Of all the Spanish generals mentioned in Napier's Peninsular War, I think one-third at least bear Irish names. 2 For all this see Sir H. Parnell's History of the Penal Laws ; I have used the Fifth Edition. I am glad to find that Curry's tale about the proposed castration of Irish priests is a fable ; see Killen's Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, ii. 230. v IEELAND 527 overtures of kindness to the Eoman Catholic Irish, that huge body which lay crushed under the infamous Code ; the modern Gibeonites, hewers of wood and drawers of water for the alien master ; much like Eastern Christians under the Turk. This kind of persecution curses alike them that rule and them that serve. The down-trodden Irish made not the slightest effort to join in the risings of their Scotch kinsmen in 1715 and 1745. The Penal Laws, degrading and debasing, seemed framed to crush all educa- tion, trade, and field-tillage, and to drive good subjects out of the realm. The priests in these evil times attained a far higher standard of purity than ever before ; they stood fast by their flocks ; hence it is no wonder that in our day no country is so obedient to her clergy as Ireland is. She may give up her language and her old national laws ; she will never give up her Church. One kind of toleration, unknown in France and Spain, was permitted to the Irish ; their public worship, as a general rule, went on. The number of priests registered amounted in 1704 to 1081 ; of these 87 were in County Galway, and nearly 50 in the two most Protestant Irish shires. 1 They had a strong objection to the Abjuration Oath, which many of their flocks took so as to vote at elections ; sometimes there would be seasons of persecution, when public worship altogether ceased. Jacobitism was more rampant in the ranks of the Established clergy ; these loved to harry the Presbyterians, though at the same time without feeling any compassion for the Papists. The Tory Prelates showed their Anglican orthodoxy by denouncing George I. as a Lutheran heretic. 2 The Protestant squires were ready to overlook this blemish ; what they were bent upon was the preservation of their lands, the spoil lately torn from the Papists. The wealth of the Established Church was great, but, as in France, the Prelates were enriched at the cost of the poorer clergy, who could only support life by a system of pluralities. The Irish Parliament might enact harsh laws, but these 1 Killen's Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, ii. 195. 2 Ibid. 204, 223. 528 SOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. were in practice mitigated by the good-nature of the Irish Protestants. So early as 1717 friars established themselves at Dublin, and a little later the Pope consecrated a Bishop of Clonmacnois. In 1729 the Franciscans had sixty-seven convents in Ireland ; 229 mass-houses were built in fifteen years. Prelates of the persecuted faith could live in Dublin and print their sermons. Still there were seasons of perse- cution, and Pope Benedict XIV. had to reproach the Irish Bishops for shrinking from their duty. 1 Intolerance has much to answer for in Irish history ; one of its most ruinous effects was the Presbyterian emigra- tion, which went on from the latter part of George the First's reign down to the American Eevolution. The sturdy Scotch farmers refused to undergo the teasing regulations of the Episcopal Church ; they were further harassed by the destruction of Irish trade owing to the selfish measures of the British Parliament. Great Britain, thanks to her own folly, was first assailed by Roman Catholic refugees from Ireland in the service of Louis XIV. ; afterwards by Presbyterian refugees from Ireland in the service of Washington. The Ultramontane policy of Pope Alexander VII., that stern enemy to Peter Walsh, had now been replaced by the Moderate system of Pope Benedict XIV. ; over the greater part of Europe intolerance was beginning to wane away. In 1757 the Eoman Catholics in Ireland disavowed as a calumny the idea that any power on earth could authorise the taking of false oaths or grant dispensations for perjury. They abjured the opinion that Popes could depose or murder Kings, or authorise the death of heretics ; they dis- claimed Papal Infallibility, and avowed that sins could not be forgiven by any power unless the sinner were indeed repentant ; they renounced all interest in forfeited Irish lands and all intention to subvert the Established Church. A Catechism published later by Bishop Coppinger enforces many of these Moderate opinions, which would have shocked either Alexander VII. earlier or Pius IX. later. 2 1 Killen's Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, ii. 234, 243, 252-255. 2 See Parnell's Penal Laws, 47, 50, 168. v IKELAND 529 In 1756 the Irish Parliament passed a law inflicting death on all natural-born subjects of the realm in the French service who should land in Ireland. This sentence of perpetual banishment deeply affected the Irish soldiers abroad, who had looked forward to spending their old age among their kinsmen at home. 1 Here we see the difference between the persecution in France and that in Ireland; in the former country the victims, stripped of their religious privileges, were eager to fly out of France, and wished never to return to the land of the Wheel and the Galley ; in the Green Island the victims were most willing to return home, knowing that they should not be there debarred from their religious privileges. In France the persecutors, zealous for God, burned with a hatred of Protestantism; in Ireland the persecutors, more worldly-minded, were mainly bent on enjoying their lands, taken from the old owners. So long as these lands were safe, registered priests might sing the Mass as often as they chose. The Irish Penal Laws bore harder upon the rich than upon the poor of the proscribed faith. Still the humbler classes suffered terribly. Swift dates the grievous exactions of the Irish landlords from 1700 or soon afterwards ; he often inveighs against the substitution of pasturage for field-tillage, and against the clearance of the peasantry from the land. 2 The Irish Parliament passed the Tithe Agistment Act, which exempted pastures (usually owned by Protestants) from tithes, and threw the heavy burden of these on the luckless Papists. Hence tillage decayed in most counties. 3 The peasantry were thrown almost wholly upon the land, since it was the object of the British Parliament to abolish most of the Irish manufactures. The reign of George III. did not begin well in Ireland. The Protestant squires were reckless and extravagant ; they wrung from their impoverished Koman Catholic tenants vast sums through the agency of middlemen. In Munster 1 O'Callaghan, Irish Brigades, 503, 504. 2 Lavelle, The Irish Landlord, 236. 3 O'Brien, Fifty Years of Concessions, i. 368. VOL. I 2 M 530 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. the landowners were now intent on turning arable land into pasture. Hence in 1761 arose the Whiteboys, who houghed cattle and put their local tyrants to torture ; the tithe proctors were especially detested. Juries refused to convict, and informers were murdered. Parliament struck at the disturbers of the public peace, and many lives were sacrificed ; a parish priest named Sheehy was the most pro- minent victim when the law was enforced ; his trial seems to have been most unfair. 1 Meanwhile the Protestant peasantry in Ulster combined against the tyranny of their landlords ; emigrants in thousands, the best weavers and manufacturers in the country, left for America, a land soon to become the scene of war. The Penal system was now breaking up. Already in 1757 Irish Eoman Catholics had been enlisted in the British army for the first time since the Eevolution, and these new soldiers had fought most valiantly against the French in Canada. In 1774 the war with revolted America was surely approaching ; more soldiers were wanted, and therefore the Dublin Parliament granted a particular oath of allegiance to Eoman Catholics, who were thus enabled to serve in the ranks. 2 In 1778, when American affairs looked blacker than ever, a further breach was made in the Irish Penal Laws, much to the disgust of France. 3 The worst part of Queen Anne's code was abolished, and to no one is the gratitude of Ireland for this good deed more due than to Burke, her most illustrious son, who served her well at Westminster. 4 Young G-rattan, differing much from Swift, had been among the foremost champions of this new legislation ; the change of Protestant opinion was rapid. So late as 1772 the Parliament had been offering a huge bribe to priests if they would forswear their religion; the Act of 1778 repealed the hateful baits, disastrous to the peace of many 1 Killen, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, ii. 285. But see Froude on Ireland, ii. 35, who quotes many documents. 2 O'Callaghan, Irish brigades, 608, 609. 3 Ibid. 614, 615. 4 Dr. Johnson's well-known sympathy for the Irish must have been inspired by his friend Burke. v IEELAND 531 an Irish household. 1 The country, involved in a great war, was left exposed to the assaults of foreigners; the Volun- teers, mostly Presbyterians, took up arms; and in 1*782 the Irish Parliament conferred benefits upon the Eoman Catholics, while it asserted its own independence. The blessings of freedom were not at once apparent. The Munster peasantry were still cruelly oppressed in the matter of tithes, and the Protestant clergy were not the only sufferers when redress was exacted ; fifty Koman Catholic chapels were nailed up, and priests had to undergo mob violence. The landlords did not interfere when it was a question of tithes alone ; but when rents were threatened Parliament speedily took action. 2 The luxury of the upper class in Ireland and the wretchedness of the lower class remind us of Poland. Strange was the state of Dublin, whether we consider the aristocrats in Parliament, the men who thanked God that they had a country to sell, or the citizens of the town, who houghed soldiers, or tarred and feathered obnoxious persons. Fitzgibbon saw what few of the nobles could see, that the high men of the land must lean either on Britain or on the despised majority of the Irish nation ; there was no third course. His common sense stands in glaring contrast to the flashy theories of G-rattan, who resisted the organisation of a police force for Ireland. 3 The greater part of the rulers of the land showed what stuff was in them on the famous Eegency question, when the most worthless of Eoyal debauchees was preferred to such a statesman as Pitt. Ulster was disturbed by the factions of the Peep of Day Boys and the Defenders, representing hostile religions ; and the men of the weaker sect heard the ominous cry, " To Hell or to Connaught," uttered by their persecutors. In the midst of these local broils came the great news of the overthrow of the Bastille. The French Kevolution has wrought mighty things ; one of the most wonderful of all is this, that in Ireland the Northern Presbyterians were driven into union with the Eoman Catholics of the South. 1 Killen, Ecclesiastical History, ii. 294, 297. 2 Ibid. ii. 324-327. 3 Here Froude's English in Ireland, vol. ii. , must be consulted. 532 EOME AND REFORM CHAP, In 1792 a petition for the redress of some of the grievances of these latter was thrown out in the Irish Parliament by 208 to 23. But George III. and Pitt saw, after the victory of the French General over the Prussian invader, that something must be done; they accordingly, in 1793, bullied the reluctant Irish Parliament into at last throw- ing open the elective franchise to the despised Papists. Another result of the French Eevolution, so hostile to priests, was that Maynooth College was established in 1795, to educate the Irish Roman Catholic clergy at the public charge. Ireland was to have her own attempt at revolution, prepared by Tone and his friends. The United Irishmen made great progress in 1794, and the mysterious recall of Lord Fitzwilliam in the next year greatly increased their chances of success. About this time the Orangemen, mostly followers of the Established Church, took their rise. In 1798 came the great Irish Rebellion, which did not extend far beyond Leinster ; each side perpetrated fearful cruelties ; but the rebels, unlike their Orange opponents, abstained from outrages on women. The Northern Presbyterians were soon scared into loyalty by the deeds of their Wexford allies. Of the twenty rebel leaders sent out of the country rather later, only four were Roman Catholics. 1 The Prelates of that Church stood fast by the Government, as did the militia regiments, though largely composed of Romanists. The Irish Parliament was strong for coercion only thirty of its members followed Grattan in his efforts for conciliation. The humane Lord Cornwallis, who became Lord-Lieutenant in 1798, found the members of both houses of Parliament averse to all acts of clemency, and ready to drive four-fifths of the nation into rebellion. This is his testimony, confirmed by Tone, as to that Protestant Irish Parliament which so we are assured by modern patriots was the source of countless blessings to Irishmen. Even Lord Charlemont, the honoured General of the Irish volunteers, would not allow the great mass of his country- 1 Killen, ii. 367. Only nineteen of the Lower House voted against coercion in 1798. Hardy's Life of Lord Charlemont, ii. 394. v IRELAND 533 men to vote at an election. 1 Yet he was a man renowned for taste, learning, and civic virtues, enlightened by foreign travel and by intercourse with sages like Montesquieu. The Earl towers as high above the average Protestant squireens of his day as an eagle above a swarm of sparrows and finches ; he resembles the old Polish noble of the best school. Lord Charlemont's idolised Irish Parliament was not to have a long life. Pitt, disgusted by the folly that had marked Grattan's followers on the Eegency question, had resolved to unite the British and Irish Parliaments, and this could only be done by wholesale bribery of the Irish members. The chief opponents of the great measure were the people of Dublin, for obvious reasons ; to them may be added the Ulster Protestants. On the other hand, Galway, Waterford, Cork, and blood-stained Wexford were strong for the new policy ; not one Roman Catholic Bishop opposed, and the priests took the same view. 2 To them hopes unhappily vain hopes had been held out by the Govern- ment. In 1800 the Act of Union received the Eoyal assent. Pitt wished to confer many boons on Ireland ; to throw open Parliament to the Roman Catholics, to make a public provision for their clergy, and to adjust the burden of the tithes in an equitable way. But Pitt could do nothing against the solid rock of bigotry embodied in George III., who refused to set Ireland on the level of Canada. This was the one occasion since the Revolution when an English king was able to completely thwart a minister. The good estate of Ireland was thrown back for twenty- nine years; and the Union, as it was actually carried, turned out to be but a maimed and wretched achievement. Before 1800 the popular religion had seemed in many parts to be growing lukewarm ; after that year the besotted 1 See Hardy's Life of him, ii. 298. In the last year of his life Lord Charlemont grew more favourable to the Roman Catholics ; I suspect that this change was wrought by the pitiable condition of Pope Pius VI. 2 Killen, ii. 372, 373. I hold that a limited Monarchy is better than a Republic ; but any one of the opposite opinion mayj point out what a happy State Ireland would have been had Pitt been the President of a British Republic in 1800. 534 EOME AND REFOEM CHAP. fanaticism of the Orangemen bound most of the Irish more firmly than ever to the old creed. The Bishops had seemed ready to give the Crown a veto on the appointment of Prelates ; but the laity would not brook the idea. The chief defender of the proposed veto was Dr. O'Conor, in whom Peter Walsh seemed to live again. O'Connell had now begun to make his mark ; and a still younger champion, Bishop Doyle, drew to himself the eyes of his countrymen when enforcing strict discipline upon his clergy. On the other side, the Irish Protestants were now discarding their sloth and worldliness ; it was time, for the defenders of the Established Church were falling off. Public controversial meetings between ministers of the two opposed creeds were often held about this period. We must cast a glance at the Leinster Synod held in 1831, the statutes whereof, most likely the work of Dr. Doyle, give a picture of his religion widely differing from the gross practices of Spain and Italy, and a picture there- fore most attractive to a Protestant eye. The priest's proper dress and carriage are most strictly regulated. The dangers of the Confessional are clearly recognised ; it is fenced about with many safeguards ; the clergyman who shall attempt to allure to base sin, either by words, or signs, or nods, or touch, or writing, is to be suspended for ever. The priest is to discourage the waste of whisky at funerals ; Father Matthew was soon to come forward. The clergy are to bequeath their goods, not to their kinsfolk, but to charitable uses ; most different is this instruction from the nepotism prominent in the wills of Protestant Prelates about this time. These statutes were meant to be kept secret from the profane eyes of the laity, but a copy got abroad and was reprinted. 1 Meanwhile O'Connell, the chosen man of the Clare electors, had forced his way into the British Parliament ; in 1829 the last remnant of the Penal Laws was swept away. He found some of the bitterest enemies of this 1 Killen, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, ii. 443-450. As to the Pro- testant wills, see a note in O'Brien's Fifty Years of Concessions, ii. 205. Many of them run into six figures. v IEELAND 535 much-needed enactment among the Irish Protestants. In him we see the enmity so often shown by his countrymen to nations rightly struggling to be free ; he attacked the French Liberals, groaning under the yoke of Charles X. 1 The subject of tithes soon engrossed the attention of Ireland. The Southern peasant felt it no small grievance that the tenth part of the fruits of his toil should go to maintain the ministers, sometimes absentees, of a Church that he hated. Combinations against tithes became frequent, and the Protestant clergy were in many places brought almost to beggary. For their relief, in 1833 the British Parliament voted a million of money, at the same time cutting down the Irish Protestant bishoprics from twenty-two to twelve. At this period the Eoman Catholics were more than four to one to the Protestants of all kinds. Five years later the tithe was changed into a rent charge, payable by the landlord, who was usually a Protestant ; and thus a blister of perpetual irritation seemed to be taken away. Better times were in store for Ireland under Lord Melbourne, when Drummond, the best agent of a British ministry ever sent across the Channel, held in check the elements of disorder, alike in the North and in the South. O'Connell had for a short space slackened his efforts ; still he wielded great power, as he was followed by a tail of forty members, who obeyed his slightest behest. He had boasted that all Ireland was ranged under his banner ; in 1841 he visited Belfast, but there declined a discussion with Dr. Cooke, the great Presbyterian champion. 2 He was driven from the town with groans and hisses ; and from that day to this the Protestants of Eastern Ulster have steadily refused to be governed by a Parliament, which must be mostly Eoman Catholic, sitting at Dublin. Any statesman who does not recognise the fact that two different nations confront each other in Ireland, is simply living in 1 Madden, Ireland and its Rulers, i. 107. This interesting book was published in 1844. In ii. 202 we learn that in 1829 a Mr. Coppinger was still living who had been ousted from his estate many years earlier by a knavish cousin who had turned Protestant. 2 Killen, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, ii. 476. 536 EOME AND KEFOKM CHAP. a fool's paradise. The incurable disease of the land starts to light at intervals ; about this time the patriots of young Ireland, who were professedly promoting the union ' of Orange and Green, could see nothing absurd in publishing a ballad on the bloodshed of 1641 and the rout of " the Saxon swine." l No Orange bard has ever, so far as I know, sung the bloody reprisals of Coote and Broghill. The monster meetings held in most parts of Ireland in order to effect the Eepeal of the Union failed to affright the Government ; O'Connell was tried, imprisoned, and released, thereby losing much of his former influence. He further saw with dismay the rise of the Young Ireland party, which, unlike himself, carried his teaching to a logical issue. He died in 1847, the greatest Irish Celt since 1649, admired all over the world as the champion of his creed and country, a proud position that he owed to the bigoted stubbornness of George III. Having forced one weighty measure upon the British Parliament, O'Connell thought that the Repeal of the Union might likewise be achieved ; to this end he induced his ignorant countrymen to waste their time and their money upon an idle dream. He had many good qualities, but unhappily no regard for truth, a fact which seems not to have diminished the reverence paid to him by his creed-brethren. Strange it is that the Irish peasant is the shrewdest of men at a bargain in matters he understands, and yet he has thorough belief in the most monstrous lies uttered by his political leaders. In 1846 Ireland is said to have numbered nearly eight millions and a half of inhabitants, a population far beyond what she could maintain ; crowds of beggars, living upon the small farmers, swarmed throughout the land. No country west of Bengal has ever been so overpeopled. 2 That year, 1846, saw the beginning of the great Famine which drove to death or exile one-third of the Irish. Many of the gentry now had reason to repent of their former lavishness ; their ruin was completed by the Famine, and their lands were sold in the Encumbered Estates Court. 1 See Macaulay's Ireland in 1872, 336. 8 See L'Irlande, par Gustave de Beaumont, i. 237, 377. v IRELAND 537 Britain spent millions of money in relieving Irish distress ; and not only the priests, but also the local Protestant clergy did their duty right nobly by their starving country- men. This Century saw a mighty change in Irish Koman Catholicism ; the same change that overspread great part of Europe after the fright she sustained in 1848. At the end of the Eighteenth century the Irish Prelates were quite willing to give the Crown something like a veto on the appointment of Bishops, and to accept a State provision for their Church, the Pope showing himself favourable to the former project. About 1824, priests had no objection to discuss the tenets of their creed in public disputations with Protestants. 1 In 1816 Dr. Everard, the Eoman Archbishop of Cashel, had no scruple in listening, unseen, to the sermons of a strong Scotch Calvinist, or in discussing the claims of the Bible as something far higher than the tradi- tions of the Church. 2 In 1831 Bishop Doyle, the great champion of the Roman Catholics, avowed his anxious wish to see the children of all religions united at school. 3 The .Government instituted the Irish system of education for children, and this was bitterly assailed by the Protestants, since the Bible was not taught in the schools. In 1845 Peel carried an Act for trebling the endowment of Maynooth College ; this aroused the fiercest hostility among English Protestants, as I, then a child, can well remember. Another scheme to provide a common University education for the better class of Irishmen was hailed with joy by the Presby- terians, but was viewed with mistrust by most of the Roman hierarchy ; the term " godless Colleges " was applied to the new foundations that arose at Belfast, Cork, and Galway. Now began a change in the spirit of Irish Roman Catholicism ; Ultramontanism was henceforth to root itself in the hearts of the priests more firmly than it had done since 1670. Pius IX., not Benedict XIV., was now steering the barque. In 1849, the year of Reaction, Pius set aside the three priests nominated in the usual way by the clergy 1 Killen, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, ii. 397, 404, 423. 2 Lives of the Haldanes, 406. 3 Killen, ii. 452. 456. 538 ROME AND REFORM CHAP. when the mitre of Armagh fell vacant, and he created Dr. Cullen archbishop. Next year the Synod of Thurles sat with closed doors ; its decrees were approved at Rome. Its chief work was to denounce the new Queen's Colleges. The old Moderate and the new Ultramontane schools had clashed in the Synod; Murray, the Archbishop of Dublin, now upwards of eighty, was unwilling to recant the policy of his whole life, and some of his brethren were on his side. They wrote to the Pope explaining why they had differed from the majority; Pius ordered them to submit at once, and rebuked them for divulging the trans- actions of the Synod. His love of silence and mystery was to be further shown in the later Vatican Council. A complete change took place in the policy of the hierarchy ; so late as 1848 they had taken part in opening Model Schools, and had hailed with joy Protestant co-operation ; henceforth these schools were denounced, and another bar was opposed to the much-needed union of all Irishmen. 1 Freemasonry had been laid under the ban of the Synod of Thurles ; other tokens of the modern spirit were soon to arouse the wrath of the Irish clergy and people. In 1859 Romagna shook off the Papal yoke, and most of the States of the Church had followed Romagna by the end of the next year. The Irish, who had been wont to rave against the tyranny of Queen Victoria's Government, broke out into a storm of threats and abuse against United Italy. Even the hateful lay tyrants of that unhappy land (the King of Naples among the rest) were held up as the victims of .thankless rebels. Newspapers bearing the names of the Dundalk Democrat and the Freeman pleaded the cause of Italian tyrants. A body of armed Irishmen were even sent to the aid of the Pope ; happily in vain. The names of Cavour and Garibaldi were heartily cursed on the Shannon. The more educated class rivalled the lower orders ; for many years Irish parliament men had publicly excused the worrying religious tyranny of the Italian despots, and had shown far more sympathy with 1 Killen, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, ii. 508-514. Here I take leave of a most useful and impartial work. v IEELAND 539 these than with struggling Poland. 1 It is not without reason that Irish Protestants look askant upon the sugared words of their rival, and that they still hold to the opinion that Ultramontanism, since 1520, is something debasing. The great nations of Southern Europe may fall away from the Pope ; but Ireland, Canada, and Malta, we may safely foretell, will be the last props of his power. What priestly government meant was made clear enough by the O'Keefe case in 1871, where a priest was suspended without any public charge having been brought against him by Cardinal Cullen, and when the oppressor claimed to act under the Bull In ccend Domini. This claim would have kindled a violent storm in any European country except in submissive Ireland. In 1872 the priests in a Galway election tried their strength against the gentry, many of whom were Eoman Catholics ; the facts sworn to on the trial are loathsome to any lover of freedom, and will prevent, I should say, any large number of Protestants from ever voting for Home Eule ; that is, for an Irish Government under the thumb of the clergy. 2 Poland and Ireland are somewhat alike in their sorrowful history ; the main point of difference between them is, that nobles take the lead in Poland, priests in Ireland. In 1873 Mr. Gladstone, having already abolished the Protestant Church in Ireland, brought forward a measure for establishing an Irish University, a measure whereby the teaching of history and moral philosophy was altogether suppressed. Could such a compliment to Ultramontanism have been paid in any land in Europe but Ireland ? The Bill was thrown out, and its brilliant author revenged himself, somewhat absurdly, by writing theological pamphlets against the Papacy. In 1880 he was once more called to the helm, and had speedily to grapple with the Land League. The peasantry, whose potato crop had 1 Mr. Pope Hennessy, as I remember, was a striking exception to the general rule. In America the Irish always showed themselves the worst oppressors of the negro ; the New York riots of 1863 are well known. The Molly Macguires of Pennsylvania were an ugly feature in American life. 2 For these two cases see Macaulay, Ireland in 1872, 183, 231. 540 EOME AND EEFOEM CHAP. failed in the previous year, kept a fast grip upon their holdings. Coercion was in vain, and the landlords had in the end to submit to become rent-chargers on their estates ; evictions, which had been terribly numerous all through this Century, ceased to trouble. The clergy had backed the peasantry, and even the voice of Leo XIII., an enemy to anarchy, seemed to be raised in vain. One of the strange contradictions in the Irish character now became apparent ; no nation is so rich in family love and the softer virtues yet nowhere else is there such a delight in torturing harm- less cattle ; the poor brutes, who have to atone for their masters' faults, are mutilated instead of being slain out- right. This practice was remarked in 1641 by Dr Max- well, and has often since been repeated ; the love of inflicting wanton torture belongs rather to Carthage and Susa than to Athens and Sparta. Mr. Parnell, the new leader, though not destined to a long career, proved himself the equal of Grattan and O'Connell. Mr. Gladstone was harassed almost to death. For Ireland's sake in 1886 he wrecked his own party, as Fox had done a hundred years earlier. Home Eule was adopted by the English Cabinet, and the Irish Protestants, one-fourth of the whole population, learnt with wrath that they were to be governed no longer from Westminster, but from Dublin ; that their masters were henceforth to be the Ultramontane pupils of Cardinal Cullen, men most different from the Eoman Catholics of Southern Europe. 1 The English statesman failed ; and the two nations, of which Ireland is composed, still glower at each other, in no for- giving mood, from either side of the Boyne Water. There is less hope of union between all classes and creeds in Ireland than in any other land ; nowhere else has Ultra- montanism such power. The moral sense of the people is perverted ; felons go to the gallows with a lie on their lips ; a gang of political murderers, when hanged, arouses the passionate devotion of the people ; the dynamiter, who cares 1 What the Protestants think of these schemes may be seen in M 'Carthy, Ireland since the Union, 338-341. Eastern Ulster will assuredly always insist upon its rights. v IKELAND 541 not how many harmless women and children he sacrifices, is regarded as a martyr for his country, and his freedom is demanded by many thousands. A fine monument was lately erected in a Dublin cemetery to a murderer, without the least protest on the part of the Church. 1 This course of policy is not likely to win over many Irish Protestants to the popular side ; and it is hard to see the dawn of any brighter day. I have had to tell a fearful story of old wrongs ; each religion has much to forgive. May Ireland, the mother of so many brave soldiers in our age, take Scotland for her pattern, and bring all her glories, springing from most dissimilar sources, into one common stock ; may her chosen shepherds set as great store by enlightened public spirit as they do by the virtues of the family hearth ! May truth- fulness be held in as high honour as chastity ! 1 See Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, ii. 11. END OF VOL. 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