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History Essay The attempts by Catholic monarchs to re-establish European religious unity and by both Catholic and Protestant monarchs to establish strong centralized states led to many wars among the European states. Spain's attempt to keep religious and political unity within her empire led to a long war in the Netherlands, a war that pulled England over to the side of the Protestant Dutch. There was bitter civil war in France, which finally ended with the reign of Henry of Navarre and the Edict of Nantes in 1598. The Thirty Years War in Germany (1618 - 1648) had both religious and political roots, and left that area in political and economic ruins. "Une foi, un loi, un roi. " (one faith, one law, one king).
This traditional saying gives some indication of how the state, religion, and society were all bound up in people's mind and experience. There was no distinction between public and private, between civic and personal. Religion had formed the basis for social consensus in Europe for a millennium. Since Clovis, the French monarchy in particular had closely tied itself to the church and the church sanctified it's right to rule. France was "the first daughter of the church" and it's king "The Most Christian King", and no one could imagine life any other way. "One faith was viewed as essential to civil order. How else would society hold together?
And without the right faith, pleasing to god who upholds the natural order, there was sure to be disaster. Heresy was treason and vice versa. Religious tolerance, which to us seems such a necessary virtue, was considered tantamount to letting drug dealers move next door and corrupt your children. A view for the cynical and world-weary who had forgotten god and no longer cared about the health of society.
Innovation caused trouble. The way things were is how they ought to be, and new ideas would lead to anarchy and destruction. No one wanted to admit to being an "innovator. " The Renaissance thought of itself as rediscovering a purer, earlier time and the Reformation needed to feel that it was not new, but just a "return" to the simple, true religion of the beginnings of Christianity. These fears of innovation certainly seemed justified when Henry the Second died suddenly in 1559, leaving an enormous power vacuum at the heart of social authority in France. The monarchy had never been completely absolute and had always ruled in an often-uneasy relationship with the nobility.
The nobles's else of their own rights as a class, and the ambitions of some of the more talented, was always there to threaten the hegemony of the crown. When the vacuum appeared, the House of Guise moved in. Francois the Second, although only fifteen, was married to Mary Queen of Scots, a niece of Duc de Guise. The Guise was a cadet branch of the house of Lorraine that was raised to the peerage by Francois the First.
They were ambitious and had already produced at least two generations of exceptional leaders. During Francois the Second's brief reign, Guise power was absolute. This greatly threatened the House of Montmorency, an ancient line that had enjoyed great political prominence under Henri the Second, as well as the Bourbons, who as the first princes of the blood had the rights of tutorship over a minor king. Francois was not officially a minor, which was fourteen, but he was young and sickly and no one expected much from him.
These dynastic tensions interweave with the religious and social ones. The Bourbon princes were protestant, and although the Constable de Montmorency was Catholic, his nephews, and the Chatillon brothers were Protestants. The Guise identified themselves strongly as defenders of the catholic faith and formed an alliance with Montmorency and the Marechal St. Andre to form the "Catholic Triumvirate. " They were joined by Antoine de Bourbon, who flip flopped again on the matter of his religion. His wife, Jeanne d'Albert, the Queen of Navarre, remained strictly Protestant and established Protestantism completely in her domains.
Catherine de Medici tried to promote peace by issuing the "Edict of Toleration" in January ' 62, which made the practice of Protestantism not a crime, although it restricted preaching to open fields outside the towns and to private estates of Huguenot nobles. This was not well received by many Catholics. The First War (1562 - 1563) The first religious war was provoked by the massacre at Vassy in 1562. The Duc de Guise traveling to his estates stopped in Vassy to hear mass. His servants got into a scuffle with some Huguenots who were attending a service. It escalated until the Guise faction had fired on the unarmed Huguenots, set the church on fire, and killed a number of the congregation.
The national synod for the reformed church met in Paris and appealed to the Prince de Conde to become the "Protector of the Churches. " His clients, and their respective client networks took on the tasks, and from here on in the leadership of the Huguenots moved away from the pastors towards the noble "protectors. " Conde mobilized his forces to capture the strategic lands along the waterways, highways, and crossroads of France. He made his headquarters at Orleans. He also contracted with Protestant leaders of Germany and England for troops and money. The royal forces were slow to respond, as the permanent garrisons were located along the Habsburg frontiers. Catherine de Medici was forced to turn to the Guise to deal with this alarming development. The Guise in turn sought help from the Pope and Phillip the Second of Spain.
The Protestants were dug-in in their garrisons, and the siege efforts were long and costly. Only one open pitched battle was fought: at Drug, a Catholic victory. There, the Protestants captured Montmorency. The young Admiral de Coligny managed to withdraw most of the Protestant forces to Orleans, which was then besieged during the winter of 62 - 63.
At Orleans, an assassin killed the Duc de Guise. Antoine de Bourbon had been killed at the siege of Rouen, and this last casualty eliminated the first generation of Catholic leadership. With the Huguenot heartland in the south untouched and the royal treasury becoming impoverished, the crown's position was weak and Catherine leaned towards a settlement. The noble prisoners were exchanged, and the Edict of Amboise issued in March 63. This restricted Protestant freedoms somewhat, allowing worship outside the walls of only one town per hailliage, although the nobility still had the freedom to do as they would on their estates. This increased the resentment and tension in the towns and was generally unsatisfying to most.
The Second War (1567 - 1568) Even though the Duc de Guise had died, the Guise faction remained powerful and the Cardinal de Lorraine consolidated his power even more. He argued for vigorous suppression of the Huguenots in response to Protestant insurrection in the neighboring Low Countries, where outbreaks of iconoclasm were met with fierce repression by Spain. Catherine began a two-year tour of the provinces with her son Charles the Ninth, in an effort to establish unity with the nobility. During this tour, she passed through Bayonne and met with the Duke of Alva, the King of Spain's "hard man" in the subjugation of the Netherlands. This spread alarm through the Protestant community. When the Spanish marched troops along the "Spanish Road", th...
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