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estuary narrows suddenly into the river, and often exceeds 7 ft. I became a French settlement in 1688. The English captured this in height. It is felt as high up as Calcutta, and frequently destroys town twice, but since 1816 it has remained in the possession small boats. The difference from the lowest point of low-water in the dry season to the highest point of high-water in the rains is reported to be 20 ft. 10 in. The greatest mean rise of tide, about 16 ft., takes place in March, April or May-with a declining range | during the rainy season to a mean of 10 ft., and a minimum during freshets of 3 ft. 6 in.

HUGLI, or HOOGHLY, a town and district of British India, in the Burdwan division of Bengal, taking their name from the river Hugli. The town, situated on the right bank of the Hugli, 24 m. above Calcutta by rail, forms one municipality with Chinsura, the old Dutch settlement, lower down the river. Pop. (1901) 29,383. It contains the Hooghly College at Chinsura, a Mahommedan college, two high schools and a hospital with a Lady Dufferin branch for female patients. The principal building is a handsome imambara, or mosque, constructed out of funds which had accumulated from an endowment originally left for the purpose by a wealthy Shia gentleman, Mahommed Mohsin. The town was founded by the Portuguese in 1537, on the decay of Satgaon, the royal port of Bengal. Upon establishing themselves, they built a fort at a place called Gholghat (close to the present jail), vestiges of which are still visible in the bed of the river. This fort gradually grew into the town and port of Hugli. The DISTRICT Comprises an area of 1191 sq. m. In 1901 the population was 1,049,282, showing an increase of 1% in the decade. It is flat, with a gradual ascent to the north and northwest. The scenery along the high-lying bank of the Hugli has a quiet beauty of its own, presenting the appearance of a connected series of orchards and gardens, interspersed with factories, villages and temples. The principal rivers, besides the Hugli, are the Damodar and the Rupnarayan. As in other deltaic districts, the highest land lies nearest the rivers, and the lowest levels are found midway between two streams. There are in consequence considerable marshes both between the Hugli and the Damodar and between the latter river and the Rupnarayan. The district is traversed by the main line of the East Indian railway, with a branch to the pilgrim resort of Tarakeswar, whence a steam tramway has been constructed for a further distance of 31 m. The Eden canal furnishes irrigation, and there are several embankments and drainage works. Silk and indigo are both decaying industries, but the manufacture of brass and bell-metal ware is actively carried on at several places. There are several jute mills, a large flour mill, bone-crushing mills| and a brick and tile works.

From an historical point of view the district possesses as much interest as any in Bengal. In the early period of Mahommedan rule Satgaon was the seat of the governors of Lower Bengal and a mint town. It was also a place of great commercial importance. In consequence of the silting up of the Saraswati, the river on which Satgaon was situated, the town became inaccessible to large ships, and the Portuguese settled at Hugli. In 1632 the latter place, having been taken from the Portuguese by the Mahommedans, was made the royal port of Bengal; and all the public offices and records were withdrawn from Satgaon, which rapidly fell into decay. In 1640 the East India Company established a factory at Hugli, their first settlement in Lower Bengal. In 1685, a dispute having taken place between the English factors and the nawab, the town was bombarded and burned to the ground. This was not the first time that Hugli had been the scene of a struggle deciding the fate of a European power in India. In 1629, when held by the Portuguese, it was besieged for three months and a half by a large Mahommedan force sent by the emperor Shah Jahan. The place was carried by storm; more than 1000 Portuguese were killed, upwards of 4000 prisoners taken, and of 300 vessels only 3 escaped. But Hugli district possesses historical interest for other European nations besides England and Portugal. The Dutch established themselves at Chinsura in the 17th century, and held the place till 1825, when it was ceded to Great Britain in exchange for the island of Sumatra. The Danes settled at Serampur in 1616, where they remained till 1845, when all Danish possessions in India were transferred to the East India Company. Chandernagore

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See D. G. Crawford, A Brief History of the Hooghly District (Calcutta, 1903).

HUGO, GUSTAV VON (1764-1844), German jurist, was born at Lörrach in Baden, on the 23rd of November 1764. From the gymnasium at Carlsruhe he passed in 1782 to the university of Göttingen, where he studied law for three years. Having received the appointment of tutor to the prince of Anhalt-Dessau, he took his doctor's degree at the university of Halle in 1788. Recalled in this year to Göttingen as extraordinary professor of law, he became ordinary professor in 1792. In the preface to his Beiträge zur zivilistischen Bücherkenntnis der letzten vierzig Jahre (1828-1829) he gives a sketch of the condition of the civil law teaching at Göttingen at that time. The Roman Canon and German elements of the existing law were, without criticism or differentiation, welded into an ostensible whole for practical needs, with the result that it was difficult to say whether historical truth or practical ends were most prejudiced. One man handed on the inert mass to the next in the same condition as he had received it, new errors crept in, and even the best of teachers could not escape from the false method which had become traditional. These were the evils which Hugo set himself to combat, and he became the founder of that historical school of jurisprudence which was continued and further developed by Savigny. His magna opera are the Lehrbuch eines zivilistischen Kursus (7 vols., 1792-1821), in which his method is thoroughly worked out, and the Zivilistisches Magazin (6 vols., 1790-1837). He died at Göttingen on the 15th of September 1844.

For an account of his life see Eyssenhardt, Zur Erinnerung an Gustav Hugo (Berlin, 1845).

HUGO, VICTOR MARIE (1802-1885), French poet, dramatist and romance-writer, youngest son of General J. L. S. Hugo (1773-1828), a distinguished soldier in Napoleon's service, was born at Besançon on the 26th of February 1802. The all but still-born child was only kept alive and reared by the indefatigable devotion of his mother Sophie Trébuchet (d. 1821), a royalist of La Vendée. Educated first in Spain and afterwards in France, the boy whose infancy had followed the fortunes of the imperial camp grew up a royalist and a Catholic. His first work in poetry and in fiction was devoted to the passionate proclamation of his faith in these principles.

The precocious eloquence and ardour of these early works made him famous before his time. The odes which he published at the age of twenty, admirable for their spontaneous fervour and fluency, might have been merely the work of a marvellous boy; the ballads which followed them two years later revealed him as a great poet, a natural master of lyric and creative song. In 1823, at the age of twenty-one, he married his cousin Adèle Foucher (d. 1868). In the same year his first romance, Has d'Islande, was given to the press; his second, Bug-Jargal, appeared three years later. In 1827 he published the great dramatic poem of Cromwell, a masterpiece at all points except that of fitness for the modern stage. Two years afterwards he published Les Orientales, a volume of poems so various in style, so noble in spirit, so perfect in workmanship, in music and in form, that they might alone suffice for the foundation of an immortal fame. In the course of nine years, from 1831 to 1840, he published Les Feuilles d'automne, Les Chants du crépuscule, Les Voix intérieures and Les Rayons et les ombres.

That their author was one of the greatest elegiac and lyric poets ever born into the world, any one of these volumes would amply suffice to prove. That he was the greatest tragic and dramatic poet born since the age of Shakespeare, the appearance of Hernani in 1830 made evident for ever to all but the meanest and most perverse of dunces and malignants. The earlier and even greater tragedy of Marion de Lorme (1828) had been proscribed on the ground that it was impossible for royalty to tolerate the appearance of a play in which a king was represented as the puppet of a minister. In all the noble and glorious life of the greatest poet of his time there is nothing on record

more chivalrous and characteristic than the fact that Victor | less generous in aim and always as fervent in its constancy Hugo refused to allow the play which had been prohibited by to patriotic and progressive principle. When the conspiring the government of Charles X. to be instantly produced under forces of clerical venality and political prostitution had placed a the government of his supersessor. Le Roi s'amuse (1832), putative Bonaparte in power attained by perjury after perjury, the next play which Hugo gave to the stage, was prohibited and supported by massacre after massacre, Victor Hugo, in by order of Louis Philippe after a tumultuous first night-to common with all hor.ourable men who had ever taken part in reappear fifty years later on the very same day of the same political or public life under the government superseded by month, under the eyes of its author, with atoning acclamation force of treason and murder, was driven from his country into from a wider audience than the first. Terror and pity had never an exile of well-nigh twenty years. Next year he published found on the stage word or expression which so exactly realized Napoléon le petit; twenty-five years afterwards, Histoire d'un the ideal aim of tragic poetry among the countrymen of Aeschylus crime. In these two books his experience and his opinion of and Sophocles since the time or since the passing of Shakespeare, the tactics which founded the second French empire stand of Marlowe and of Webster. The tragedy of Lucrèce Borgia, registered for all time. In the deathless volume of Châtiments, coequal in beauty and power with its three precursors, followed which appeared in 1853, his indignation, his genius, and his next year in the humbler garb of prose; but the prose of Victor | faith found such utterance and such expression as must recall Hugo stands higher on the record of poetry than the verse of to the student alternately the lyric inspiration of Coleridge and any lesser dramatist or poet. Marie Tudor (1833), his next Shelley, the prophetic inspiration of Dante and Isaiah, the play, was hardly more daring in its Shakespearean defiance of satiric inspiration of Juvenal and Dryden. Three years after historic fact, and hardly more triumphant in its Shakespearean Les Châtiments, a book written in lightning, appeared Les loyalty to the everlasting truth of human character and passion. Contemplations, a book written in sunlight and starlight. Of the Angelo, Tyran de Padoue (1835), the last of the tragic triad to six parts into which it is divided, the first translates into manywhich their creator denied the transfiguration of tragic verse, sided music the joys and sorrows, the thoughts and fancies, the is inferior to neither in power of imagination and of style, in studies and ardours and speculations of youth; the second, as skill of invention and construction, and in mastery over all full of light and colour, grows gradually deeper in tone of thought natural and noble sources of pity and of terror. La Esmeralda, and music; the third is yet riper and more various in form of the libretto of an opera founded on his great tragic romance melody and in fervour of meditation; the fourth is the noblest of Notre-Dame de Paris, is a miracle of lyric melody and of of all tributes ever paid by song to sorrow-a series of poems skilful adaptation. Ruy Blas (1838) was written in verse, consecrated to the memory of the poet's eldest daughter, who and in such verse as none but he could write. In command was drowned, together with her husband, by the upsetting of and in expression of passion and of pathos, of noble and of evil a boat off the coast of Normandy, a few months after their nature, it equals any other work of this great dramatic poet; wedding-day, in 1843; the fifth and the sixth books, written in the lifelike fusion of high comedy with deep tragedy it excels during his first four years of exile (all but one noble poem which them all. Les Burgraves, a tragic poem of transcendent beauty bears date nine years earlier than its epilogue or postscript), in execution and imaginative audacity in conception, found contain more than a few poems unsurpassed and unsurpassable so little favour on the stage that the author refused to submit for depth and clarity and trenchancy of thought, for sublimity his subsequent plays to the verdict of a public audience. of inspiration, for intensity of faith, for loyalty in translation Victor Hugo's first mature work in prose fiction, Le Dernier from nature, and for tenderness in devotion to truth; crowned Jour d'un condamné, has appeared thirteen years earlier (1829). and glorified and completed by their matchless dedication to As a tragic monodrama it is incomparable for sustained power the dead. Three years later again, in 1859, Victor Hugo gave and terrible beauty. The story of Claude Gueux, published to the world the first instalment of the greatest book published five years later (1834), another fervent protest against the in- in the 19th century, La Légende des siècles. Opening with a fliction of capital punishment, was followed by many other vision of Eve in Paradise which eclipses Milton's in beauty no eloquent and passionate appeals to the same effect, written or less than in sublimity-a dream of the mother of mankind at spoken on various occasions which excited the pity or the the hour when she knew the first sense of dawning motherhood, indignation of the orator or the poet. In 1831 appeared the it closes with a vision of the trumpet to be sounded on the day greatest of all tragic or historic or romantic poems in the form of judgment which transcends the imagination of Dante by of prose narrative, Norte-Dame de Paris. Three years after-right of a realized idea which was utterly impossible of conception wards the author published, under the title of Littérature et philosophie mêlées, a compilation or selection of notes and essays ranging and varying in date and in style from his earliest effusions of religious royalism to the magnificent essay on Mirabeau which represents at once the historical opinion and the critical capacity of Victor Hugo at the age of thirty-two. Next year he published Le Rhin, a series of letters from Germany, brilliant and vivid beyond all comparison, containing one of the most splendid stories for children ever written, and followed by a political supplement rather pathetically unprophetic in its predictions.

At the age of thirty-eight he honoured the French Academy by taking his place among its members; the speech delivered on the occasion was characteristically generous in its tribute to an undeserving memory, and significantly enthusiastic in its glorification of Napoleon. Idolatry of his father's hero and leader had now superseded the earlier superstition inculcated by his mother. In 1846 his first speech in the chamber of peers -Louis Philippe's House of Lords-was delivered on behalf of Poland; his second, on the subject of coast defence, is memorable for the evidence it bears of careful research and practical suggestion. His pleading on behalf of the exiled family of Bonaparte induced Louis Philippe to cancel the sentence which excluded its members from France. After the fall and flight of the house of Orleans, his parliamentary eloquence was never

to a believer in Dante's creed: the idea of real and final equity; the concept of absolute and abstract righteousness. Between this opening and this close the pageant of history and of legend, marshalled and vivified by the will and the hand of the poet, ranges through an infinite variety of action and passion, of light and darkness, of terror and pity, of lyric rapture and of tragic triumph.

After yet another three years' space the author of La Légende des siècles reappeared as the author of Les Misérables, the greatest epic and dramatic work of fiction ever created or conceived: the epic of a soul transfigured and redeemed, purified by heroism and glorified through suffering; the tragedy and the comedy of life at its darkest and its brightest, of humanity at its best and at its worst. Two years afterwards the greatest man born since the death of Shakespeare paid homage to the greatest of his predecessors in a volume of magnificent and discursive eloquence which bore the title of William Shakespeare, and might, as its author admitted and suggested, more properly have been entitled À propos de Shakespeare. It was undertaken with the simple design of furnishing a preface to his younger son's translation of Shakespeare; a monument of perfect scholarship, of indefatigable devotion, and of literary genius, which eclipses even Urquhart's Rabelais-its only possible competitor; and to which the translator's father prefixed a brief and admirable note of introduction in the year after the

publication of the volume which had grown under his hand into the bulk and the magnificence of an epic poem in prose. In the same year Les Chansons des rues et des bois gave evidence of new power and fresh variety in the exercise and display of an unequalled skill and a subtle simplicity of metre and of style employed on the everlasting theme of lyric and idyllic fancy, and touched now and then with a fire more sublime than that of youth and love. Next year the exile of Guernsey published his third great romance, Les Travailleurs de la mer, a work unsurpassed even among the works of its author for splendour of imagination and of style, for pathos and sublimity of truth. Three years afterwards the same theme was rehandled with no less magnificent mastery in L'Homme qui rit; the theme of human heroism confronted with the superhuman tyranny of blind and unimaginable chance, overpowered and unbroken, defeated and invincible. Between the dates of these two great books appeared La Voix de Guernesey, a noble and terrible poem on the massacre of Mentana which branded and commemorated for ever the papal and imperial infamy of the colleagues in that crime. In 1872 Victor Hugo published in imperishable verse his record of the year which followed the collapse of the empire, L'Année terrible. All the poet and all the man spoke out and stood evident in the perfervid patriotism, the filial devotion, the fatherly tenderness, the indignation and the pity, which here find alternate expression in passionate and familiar and majestic song. In 1874 he published his last great romance, the tragic and historic poem in prose called Quatrevingt-treize; a work as rich in thought, in tenderness, in wisdom and in humour and in pathos, as ever was cast into the mould of poetry or of fiction.

The introduction to his first volume of Actes et paroles, ranging in date from 1841 to 1851, is dated in June 1875; it is one of his most carnest and most eloquent appeals to the conscience and intelligence of the student. The second volume contains the record of his deeds and words during the years of his exile; like the first and the third, it is headed by a memorable preface, as well worth the reverent study of those who may dissent from some of the writer's views as of those who may assent to all. The third and fourth volumes preserve the register of his deeds and words from 1870 to 1885; they contain, among other things memorable, the nobly reticent and pathetic tribute to the memory of the two sons, Charles (1826-1871) and François (1828-1873), he had lost since their common return from exile. In 1877 appeared the second series of La Légende des siècles; and in the same year the author of that colossal work, treating no less of superhuman than of human things, gave us the loveliest and most various book of song on the loveliest and simplest of subjects ever given to man, L'Art d'être grand père. Next year he published Le Pape, a vision of the spirit of Christ in appeal against the spirit of Christianity, his ideal follower confronted and contrasted with his nominal vicar; next year again La Pitié suprême, a plea for charity towards tyrants who know not what they do, perverted by omnipotence and degraded by adoration; two years later Religions et religion, a poem which is at once a cry of faith and a protest against the creeds which deform and distort and leave it misshapen and envenomed and defiled; and in the same year L'Ane, a paean of satiric invective against the past follies of learned ignorance, and lyric rapture of confidence in the future wisdom and the final conscience of the world. These four great poems, one in sublimity of spirit and in supremacy of style, were succeeded next year by a fourfold gift of even greater price, Les Quatre Vents de l'esprit: the first book, that of satire, is as full of fiery truth and radiant reason as any of his previous work in that passionate and awful kind; the second or dramatic book is as full of fresh life and living nature, of tragic humour and of mortal pathos, as any other work of the one great modern dramatist's; the third or lyric book would suffice to reveal its author as incomparably and immeasurably the greatest poet of his age, and one great among the greatest of all time; the fourth or epic book is the sublimest and most terrible of historic poems-a visionary pageant of French history from the reign and the revelries of Henry IV.

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to the reign and the execution of Louis XVI. Next year the great tragic poem of Torquemada came forth to bear witness that the hand which wrote Ruy Blas had lost nothing of its godlike power and its matchless cunning, if the author of Le Roi s'amuse had ceased to care much about coherence of construction from the theatrical point of view as compared with the perfection of a tragedy designed for the devotion of students not unworthy or incapable of the study; that his command of pity and terror, his powers of intuition and invention, had never been more absolute and more sublime; and that his infinite and illimitable charity of imagination could transfigure even the most monstrous historic representative of Christian or Catholic diabolatry into the likeness of a terribly benevolent and a tragically magnificent monomaniac. Two years later Victor | Hugo published the third and concluding series of La Légende des siècles.

On the 22nd of May 1885 Victor Hugo died. He was given a magnificent public funeral, and his remains were laid in the Pantheon. The first volume published of his posthumous works was the exquisite and splendid Théâtre en liberté, a sequence if not a symphony of seven poems in dramatic form, tragic or comic or fanciful eclogues, incomparable with the work of any other man but the author of The Tempest and The Winter's Tale in combination and alternation of gayer and of graver harmonies. The unfinished poems, Dieu and La Fin de Satan, are full to overflowing of such magnificent work, such wise simplicity of noble thought, such heroic and pathetic imagination, such reverent and daring faith, as no other poet has ever cast into deathless words and set to-deathless music. Les Jumeaux, an unfinished tragedy, would possibly have been the very greatest of his works if it had been completed on the same scale and on the same lines as it was begun and carried forward to the point at which it was cut short for ever. His reminiscences of "Things Seen" in the course of a strangely varied experience, and his notes of travel among the Alps and Pyrenees, in the north of France and in Belgium, in the south of France and in Burgundy, are all recorded by such a pen and registered by such a memory as no other man ever had at the service of his impressions or his thoughts. Toute la lyre, his latest legacy to the world, would be enough, though no other evidence were left, to show that the author was one of the very greatest among poets and among men; unsurpassed in sublimity of spirit, in spontaneity of utterance, in variety of power, and in perfection of workmanship; infinite and profound beyond all reach of praise at once in thought and in sympathy, in perception and in passion; master of all the simplest as of all the subtlest melodies or symphonies of song that ever found expression in a Border ballad or a Pythian ode. (A. C. S.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Victor Hugo's complete works were published in a definitive edition at Paris in 58 volumes (1885-1902). The tensive, from the time of Sainte-Beuve onwards, and only a few of critical literature which has grown up round his name is very exthe more important books need here be mentioned for reference on biographical and other details: F. T. Marzials, Life of Hugo, with bibliography (1888); A. C. Swinburne, Study of Hugo (1886); E. Dupuy, Victor Hugo, l'homme et le poète (1886); Paul de Saint Jules Claretie, Victor Hugo, souvenirs intimes (1902). See also The Victor, Victor Hugo (1885); F. Brunetière, Victor Hugo (1903): Bookman for August 1904: Francis Gribble, "The Hugo Legend," an adverse view, in Fortnightly Review (February 1910); and the article FRENCH LITERATURE.

HUGUENOTS, the name given from about the middle of the 16th century to the Protestants of France. It was formerly explained as coming from the German Eidgenossen, the designation of the people of Geneva at the time when they were admitted to the Swiss confederation. This explanation is now abandoned. The words Huguenot, Huguenote are old French words, common in 14th and 15th-century charters. As the Protestants called the Catholics papistes, so the Catholics called the Protestants huguenots. Henri Estienne, one of the great savants of his time, in the introduction to his Apologie d'Herodote (1566) gives a very clear explanation of the term huguenots. The Protestants at Tours, he says, used to assemble by night near the gate of King Hugo, whom the people regarded as a spirit. A monk, therefore,

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in a sermon declared that the Lutherans ought to be called | in the Reform movement; at that synod fifteen churches were Huguenots as kinsmen of King Hugo, inasmuch as they would represented, two years later, in 1561, the number increased to only go out at night as he did. This nickname became popular 2150. The parlements were powerless before this increase; from 1560 onwards, and for a long time the French Protestants thousands left the Catholic Church, and when it was seen that were always known by it. execution and popular massacre provided no solution of the difficulty the struggle was carried into the arena of national politics. On the side of the reformers were ranged some among the noblest Frenchmen of the age, Coligny, La Noue, Duplessis Mornay, Jean Cousin, Ramus, Marot, Ambroise Paré, Olivier de Serres, Bernard Palissy, the Estiennes, Hotman, Jean de Serres, with the princess Renée of France, Jeanne d'Albret, Louise de Coligny. The policy which refused liberty of conscience to the reformers and thus plunged the country into the horrors of civil war came near to causing a national catastrophe. For more than fifty years the history of the Huguenots is that of France (15601629). Francis II., who succeeded Henry II. at the age of sixteen, married Mary Stuart, and fell under the domination of the queen's uncles, the Guises, who were to lead the anti-Reform party. The Bourbons, the Montmorencies, the Chatillons, out of hostility to them, became the chiefs of the Huguenots.

France could not stand outside the religious movement of the 16th century. It is true that the French reform movement has often been regarded as an offshoot of Lutheranism; up to the middle of the century its adherents were known as Lutherans. But it should not be forgotten that so early as 1512 Jacobus Faber (q.v.) of Etaples published his Santi Pauli Epistolae xiv. .. cum commentariis, which enunciates the cardinal doctrine of reform, justification by faith, and that in 1523 appeared his French translation of the New Testament. The first Protestants were those who set the teachings of the Gospel against the doctrines of the Roman Church. As early as 1525 Jacques Pavannes, the hermit of Livry, and shortly afterwards Louis de Berquin, the first martyrs, were burned at the stake. But no persecution could stop the Reform movement, and on the walls of Paris and even at Amboise, on the very door of Francis I.'s bedroom, there were found placards condemning the mass (1534). On the 29th of January 1535 an edict was published ordering the extermination of the heretics. From this edict dates the emigration of French Protestants, an emigration which did not cease till the middle of the 18th century. Three years later (1538) at Strassburg the first French Protestant Church, composed of 1500 refugees, was founded..

Of all these exiles the most famous was John Calvin (q.v.), the future leader of the movement, who fled to Basel, where he is said to have written the famous Institutio christianae religionis, preceded by a letter to Francis I. in which he pleaded the cause of the reformers. The first Protestant community in France was that of Meaux (1546) organized on the lines of the church at Strassburg of which Calvin was pastor. The Catholic Florimond de Remond paid it the beautiful tribute of saying that it seemed as though la chrétienté fut revenue en elle à sa primitive innocence."

Persecution, however, became more rigorous. The Vaudois of Cabrières and Mérindol had in 1545 been massacred by the orders of Jean de Maynier, baron d'Oppède, lieutenant-general of Provence, and at Paris was created a special court in the parlement, for the suppression of heretics, a court which became famous in history as the Chambre ardente (1549). In spite of persecution the churches became more numerous; the church at Paris was founded in 1556. They realized the necessity of uniting in defence of their rights and their liberty, and in 1558 at Poitiers it was decided that all the Protestant churches in France should formulate by common accord a confession of faith and an ecclesiastical discipline. The church at Paris was commissioned to summon the first synod, which in spite of the danger of persecution met on the 25th of May 1559. The Synod of Paris derived its inspiration from the constitution introduced by Calvin at Geneva, which has since become the model for all the presbyterian churches. Ecclesiastical authority resides ultimately in the people, for the faithful select the elders who are charged with the general supervision of the church and the choice of pastors. The churches are independent units, and there can be no question of superiority among them; at the same time they have common interests and their unity must be maintained by an authority which is capable of protecting them. The association of several neighbouring churches forms a local council (colloque). Over these stands the provincial synod, on which each church is equally represented by lay delegates and pastors. Supreme authority resides in the National Synod composed of representatives, lay and ecclesiastic, elected by the provincial synods. The democratic character of this constitution of elders and synods is particularly remarkable in view of the early date at which it began to flourish. The striking individuality of the Huguenot character cannot be fully realized without a clear understanding of this powerful organization which contrived to reconcile individual liberty with a central authority.

The conspiracy of Amboise, formed with the object of kidnapping the king (March 1560), was discovered, and resulted in the death of the plotters; it was followed by the proclamation of the Edict of Romorantin which laid an interdict upon the Protestant religion. But the reformers had become so powerful that Coligny, who was to become their most famous leader, protested in their name against this violation of liberty of conscience. The Guise party caused the prince of Condé to be arrested and condemned to death, but the sentence was not carried into effect, and at this moment Catherine de' Medici became regent on the accession of Charles IX. She introduced Italian methods of government, alternating between concessions and vigorous persecution, both alike devoid of sincerity. For a moment, at the colloquy of Poissy (Oct. 1561), at which Roman Catholic and Protestant divines were assembled together and Theodore Beza played so important a part, it seemed as though a modus vivendi would be established. The attempt failed, but by the edict of January 1562, religious liberty was assured to the Huguenots. This, however, was merely the prelude to civil war, the signal for which was given by the Guises, who slaughtered a number of Huguenots assembled for worship in a barn at Vassy (March 1, 1562). The duke of Guise, entering Paris in triumph, transferred the court to Fontainebleau by a daring coup d'état in defiance of the queen regent. It was then that Condé declared "qu'on ne pouvait plus rien espérer que de Dieu et ses armes," and with the Huguenot leaders signed at Orleans (April 11, 1562) the manifesto in which, having declared their loyalty to the crown, they stated that as good and loyal subjects they were driven to take up arms for liberty of conscience on behalf of the persecuted saints. The first civil war had already broken out; till the end of the century the history of France is that of the struggle between the Huguenots upholding "The Cause" (La Cause) and the Roman Catholics fighting for the Holy League (La Sainte Ligue). The leading events only will be related here (see also FRANCE: History). The Huguenots lost the battle of Dreux (Dec. 19, 1562), the duke of Guise was assassinated by Poltrot de Méré (Feb. 18, 1563) and finally Condé signed the Edict of Amboise which put an end to this first war. But the League gradually extended its action and Catherine de' Medici entered into negotiations with Spain. The Huguenots, seeing their danger, renewed hostilities, but after their defeat at St Denis (Nov. 10, 1567) and the revolt of La Rochelle, peace was concluded at Longjumeau (March 23, 1568). This truce lasted only a few months. Pope Pius V. did not cease to demand the extermination of the heretics, and the queen mother finally issued the edict of the 28th of September 1568, which put the Huguenots outside the protection of the law. The Huguenots once more took up arms, but were defeated at Jarnac (March 13, 1569), and Condé was taken prisoner and assassinated by Montesquiou. But Jeanne d'Albret renewed the courage of the vanquished by presenting to them her son Henri de Bourbon, the future Henry IV.

The synod of 1559 was the beginning of a remarkable increase Coligny, whose heroic courage rose with adversity, collected the XIII. 15

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remnants of the Protestant army and by a march as able as it | king could not, however, endure the humiliation of hearing Henry

was audacious moved on Paris, and the Peace of St Germain was signed on the 8th of August 1570.

For a moment it seemed reasonable to hope that the war was at an end. Coligny had said that he would prefer to be dragged through the streets of Paris than to recommence the fighting; Charles IX. had realized the nobility and the patriotism of the man who wished to drive the Spaniards from Flanders; Henri de Bourbon was to marry Marguerite of France. Peace seemed to be assured when on the night of the 24th of August, 1572, after a council at which Catherine de' Medici, Charles IX., the duke of Anjou and other leaders of the League assisted, there occurred the treacherous Massacre of St Bartholomew (q.v.) in which Coligny and all the leading Huguenots were slain. This date marks a disastrous epoch in the history of France, the long period of triumph of the Catholic reaction, during which the Huguenots had to fight for their very existence. The Paris massacre was repeated throughout France; few were those who were noble enough to decline to become the executioners of their friends, and the Protestants were slain in thousands. The survivors resolved upon a desperate resistance. It was at this time that the Huguenots were driven to form a political party; otherwise they must, like the Protestants of Spain, have been exterminated. This party was formed at Milhau in 1573, definitely constituted at La Rochelle in 1588, and lasted until the peace of Alais in 1629. The delegates selected by the churches bound themselves to offer a united opposition to the violence of the enemies of God, the king and the state. It is a profound mistake to attribute to them, as their enemies have done, the intention of overthrowing the monarchy and substituting a republic. They were royalists to the core, as is shown by the sacrifices they made for the sake of setting Henry IV. on the throne. It is true, however, that among themselves they formed a kind of republic which, according to the historian J. A. de Thou, had its own laws dealing with civil government, justice, war, commerce, finance. They had a president called the Protector of the Churches, an office held first by Condé and afterwards by the king of Navarre up to the day on which he became king of France as Henry IV. (1589). The fourth religious war, which had broken out immediately after the Massacre of St Bartholomew, was brought to an end by the pacification of Boulogne (July 16, 1573), which granted a general amnesty, but the obstinate intolerance of the League resulted in the creation of a Catholic party called "les Politiques" which refused to submit to their domination and offered aid to the Huguenots against the Guises. The recollections of the horrors of St Bartholomew's night had hastened the death of Charles IX., the last of the Valois; he had been succeeded by the most debauched and effeminate of monarchs, Henry III. Once more war broke out. Henry of Guise, "le Balafré," nephew of the cardinal of Lorraine, became chief of the League, while the duke of Anjou, the king's brother, made common cause with the Huguenots. The peace of Monsieur, signed on the 5th of May 1576, marked a new victory of liberty of conscience, but its effect was ephemeral; hostilities soon recommenced and lasted for many years, and only became fiercer when the duke of Anjou died on the 10th of June 1584.

The fact that on the death of Henry III. the crown would pass to Henry of Navarre, the Protector of the Churches, induced the Guise party to declare that they would never accept a heretical monarch, and, at the instigation of Henry of Guise, Cardinal de Bourbon was nominated by them to succeed. Henry of Navarre since 1575 leader of the Huguenots, had year by year seen his influence increase, and now, faced by the machinations of the Guises, who had made overtures to Spain, declared that his only object was to free the feeble Henry III. from their influence. On the 20th of October 1587 he won the battle of Coutras, but on the 28th the foreign Protestants who were coming to his aid were routed by Guise at Montargis. The new body, known as "the Sixteen of Paris," thereupon compelled Henry III. to sign the "Edict of Union" by which the cardinal of Bourbon was declared heir presumptive. The

of Guise described as "king of Paris" and on the 23rd of December 1588 had him murdered together with the cardinal of Lorraine at the château of Blois. The League, now led by the duke of Mayenne, Guise's brother, declared war to the knife upon him and caused him to be excommunicated. In his isolation Henry III. threw himself into the arms of Henry of Navarre, who saved the royalist party by defeating Mayenne and escorted the king with his victorious army to St. Cloud, whence he proposed to enter Paris and destroy the League. But Henry III., on the 1st of August 1589, was assassinated by the monk Jacques Clement, on his deathbed appointing Henry of Navarre as his successor.

This only spurred the League to redoubled energy, and Mayenne proclaimed the cardinal of Bourbon king with the title of Charles X. But Henry IV., who had already promised to maintain the Roman Church, gained new adherents every day, defeated the Leaguers at Arques in 1589, utterly routed Mayenne at Ivry on the 14th of March 1590, and laid siege to Paris. Cardinal de Bourbon having died in the same year and France being in a state of anarchy, Philip II. of Spain, in concert with Pope Gregory XIV., who excommunicated Henry IV., supported the claims of the infanta Isabella. Mayenne, unable to continue the struggle without Spanish help, promised to assist him, but Henry neutralized this danger by declaring himself a Roman Catholic at St Denis (July 25, 1593), saying, "Paris after all is worth a mass, in spite of the.advice and the prayers of my faithful Huguenots." "It is with anguish and grief," writes Beza," that I think of the fall of this prince in whom so many hopes were placed." On the 22nd of March 1504 Henry entered Paris. The League was utterly defeated. Thus the Huguenots after forty years of strife obtained by their constancy the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes (April 13, 1598), the charter of religion and political freedom (see NANTES. EDICT OF).

The Protestants might reasonably hope that Henry IV., in spite of his abjuration of their faith, would remember the devoted support which they had given him, and that his authority would guarantee the observance of the provisions of the Edict. Unhappily twelve years afterwards, on the 14th of May 1610, Henry was assassinated by Ravaillac, leaving the great work incomplete. Once more France was to undergo the misery of civil war. During the minority of Louis XIII. power resided in the hands of counsellors who had not inherited the wisdom of Henry IV. and were only too ready to favour the Catholic party. The Huguenots, realizing that their existence was at stake, once more took up arms in defence of their liberty under the leadership of Henri de Rohan (q.v.). Their watchword had always been that, so long as the state was opposed to liberty of conscience, so long there could be no end to religious and civil strife, that misfortune and disaster must attend an empire of which the sovereign identified himself with a single section of his people. Richelieu had entered the king's council on the 4th of May 1624; the destruction of the Huguenots was his policy and he pursued it to a triumphant conclusion. On the 28th of October 1628, La Rochelle, the last stronghold of the Huguenots, was obliged to surrender after a siege rendered famous for all time by the heroism of its defenders and of its mayor. The peace of Alais, which was signed on the 28th of June 1629, marks the end of the civil wars.

The Huguenots had ceased to exist as a political party and, in the assurance that liberty of conscience would be accorded to them, showed themselves loyal subjects. On the death of Louis XIII., the declaration of the 8th of July 1643 had guaranteed to the Protestants "free and unrestricted exercise of their religion," thus confirming the Edict of Nantes. The synods of Charenton (1644) and Loudun (1659) asserted their absolute loyalty to Louis XIV., a loyalty of which the Huguenots had given proof not only by their entire abstention from the troubles of the Fronde, but also by their public adherence to the king. The Roman Catholic clergy had never accepted the Edict of Nantes, and all their efforts were directed to obtaining

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