Fustel de Coulanges - "La Cite Antique"

Frances Parkinson Keyes - "The Old Gray Homestead"

Various - "The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862"

Walt Whitman - "Drum Taps"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Saint Bartholomew\'s Eve

G >> G. A. Henty >> Saint Bartholomew\'s Eve




Having recruited the strength of his troops, by a short stay at
Orleans, the Admiral moved towards Paris. Since the commencement of
the war, negotiations had been going on fitfully. When the court
thought that the Huguenots were formidable, they pushed on the
negotiations in earnest. Whenever, upon the contrary, they believed
that the royal forces would be able to crush those of the Admiral,
the negotiations at once came to a standstill.

During the Admiral's long march to the east, they would grant no
terms whatever that could possibly be accepted; but as soon as the
junction was effected with Duke Casimir and his Germans, and the
Huguenot army again turned its face to Paris, the court became
eager to conclude peace. When the Prince of Conde's army arrived
before Chartres the negotiators met, and the king professed a
readiness to grant so many concessions, that it seemed as if the
objects of the Huguenots could be attained without further
fighting, and the Cardinal of Chatillon and some Huguenot nobles
went forward to have a personal conference with the royal
commissioners, at Lonjumeau.

After much discussion, the points most insisted upon by the
Huguenots were conceded, and the articles of a treaty drawn up,
copies of which were sent to Paris and Chartres. The Admiral and
Conde both perceived that, in the absence of any guarantees for the
observance of the conditions to which the other side bound
themselves, the treaty would be of little avail; as it could be
broken, as soon as the army now menacing Paris was scattered. The
feeling among the great portion of the nobles and their followers
was, however, strongly in favour of the conditions being accepted.

The nobles were becoming beggared by the continuance of the war,
the expenses of which had, for the most part, to be paid from their
private means. Their followers, indeed, received no pay; but they
had to be fed, and their estates were lying untilled for want of
hands. Their men were eager to return to their farms and families,
and so strong and general was the desire for peace that the Admiral
and Conde bowed to it.

They agreed to the terms and, pending their ratification, raised
the siege of Chartres. Already their force was dwindling rapidly.
Large numbers marched away to their homes, without even asking for
leave; and their leaders soon ceased to be in a position to make
any demands for guarantees, and the peace of Lonjumeau was
therefore signed.

Its provisions gave very little more to the Huguenots than that of
the preceding arrangement of the same kind, and the campaign left
the parties in much the same position as they had occupied before
the Huguenots took up arms.



Chapter 8: The Third Huguenot War.


Before the treaty of Lonjumeau had been signed many weeks, the
Huguenots were sensible of the folly they had committed, in
throwing away all the advantages they had gained in the war, by
laying down their arms upon the terms of a treaty made by a
perfidious woman and a weak and unstable king, with advisers bent
upon destroying the reformed religion. They had seen former edicts
of toleration first modified and then revoked, and they had no
reason even to hope that the new treaty, which had been wrung from
the court by its fears, would be respected by it.

The Huguenots were not surprised to find, therefore, that as soon
as they had sent back their German auxiliaries and returned to
their homes--the ink, indeed, was scarcely dry on the paper upon
which the treaty was written--its conditions were virtually
annulled. From the pulpit of every Catholic church in France, the
treaty was denounced in the most violent language; and it was
openly declared that there could be no peace with the Huguenots.
These, as they returned home, were murdered in great numbers and,
in many of the cities, the mobs rose and massacred the defenceless
Protestants.

Heavy as had been the persecutions before the outbreak of the war,
they were exceeded by those that followed it. Some of the governors
of the provinces openly refused to carry out the conditions of the
treaty. Charles issued a proclamation that the edict was not
intended to include any of the districts that were appanages of his
mother, or of any of the royal or Bourbon princes. In the towns the
soldiers were quartered upon the Huguenots, whom they robbed and
ill treated at their pleasure; and during the six months that this
nominal peace lasted, no less than ten thousand Huguenots were
slaughtered in various parts of France.

"The Prince of Conde, the Admiral, his brothers, and our other
leaders may be skilful generals and brave men," the Countess de
Laville said indignantly to Francois when, with the troop, reduced
by war, fever, and hardship to one-third of its number, he had
returned to the chateau, "but they cannot have had their senses
about them, when they permitted themselves to be cozened into
laying down their arms, without receiving a single guarantee that
the terms of the treaty should be observed.

"Far better never to have taken up arms at all. The king has come
to regard us as enemies. The Catholics hate us more than ever, for
our successful resistance. Instead of being in a better position
than we were before, we shall be in a worse. We have given up all
the towns we had captured, thrown away every advantage we had
gained and, when we are again driven to take up arms, we shall be
in a worse position than before; for they no longer despise us, and
will in future be on their guard. There will be no repeating the
surprise of last September.

"I am disappointed above all in the Admiral, D'Andelot, La
Rochefoucauld, and Genlis. Conde I have never trusted as one to be
relied upon, in an extremity. He is a royal prince, has been
brought up in courts, and loves gaiety and ease; and although I say
not that he is untrue to the Huguenot cause, yet he would gladly
accommodate matters; and as we see, even in this treaty, the great
bulk of the Huguenots all over the country have been utterly
deserted, their liberty of worship denied, and their very lives are
at the mercy of the bigots.

"What do you think, Philip? Have you had enough of fighting for a
party who wilfully throw away all that they have won by their
sacrifices? Are you thinking of returning home, or will you wait
for a while, to see how matters go on?"

"I will, with your permission, wait," Philip said. "I lament this
peace, which seems to me to leave us in a worse position than
before the war; but I agree with you that it cannot last, and that
ere long the Huguenots will be driven again to take up arms.
Francois and I have become as brothers and, until the cause is
either lost or won, I would fain remain."

"That is well, Philip. I will be glad to have you with us, my
nephew. La Noue wrote to me, a month since, saying that both my son
and you had borne yourselves very gallantly; that he was well
pleased to have had you with him; and that he thought that, if
these wars of religion continued--which they might well do for a
long time, as in Germany and Holland, as well as in France, the
reformed religion is battling for freedom--you would both rise to
eminence as soldiers.

"However, now that peace is made, we must make the best of it. I
should think it will not be broken until after the harvest and
vintage; for until then all will be employed, and the Catholics as
well as the Huguenots must repair their losses, and gather funds,
before they can again take the field with their retainers.
Therefore, until then I think that there will be peace."

The summer passed quietly at Laville. The tales of massacre and
outrage, that came from all parts of France, filled them with
horror and indignation; but in their own neighbourhood, all was
quiet. Rochelle had refused to open her gates to the royal troops
and, as in all that district the Huguenots were too numerous to be
interfered with by their neighbours, the quiet was unbroken.

Nevertheless, it was certain that hostilities would not be long
delayed. The Catholics, seeing the advantage that the perfect
organization of the Huguenots had given them at the commencement of
the war, had established leagues in almost every province. These
were organized by the clergy, and the party that looked upon the
Guises as their leaders and, by the terms of their constitution,
were evidently determined to carry out the extirpation of the
reformed religion, with or without the royal authority; and were,
indeed, bent upon forming a third party in the state, looking to
Philip of Spain rather than to the King of France as their leader.

So frequent and daring were the outrages, in Paris, that Conde soon
found that his life was not safe there; and retired to Noyers, a
small town in Burgundy. Admiral Coligny, who had been saddened by
the loss of his brave wife, who had died from a disease contracted
in attending upon the sick and wounded soldiers at Orleans, had
abandoned the chateau at Chatillon-sur-Loing, where he had kept up
a princely hospitality; and retired to the castle of Tanlay,
belonging to his brother D'Andelot, situated within a few miles of
Noyers. D'Andelot himself had gone to Brittany, after writing a
remonstrance to Catharine de Medici upon the ruin and desolation
that the breaches of the treaty, and the persecution of a section
of the population, were bringing upon France.

The Chancellor L'Hopital had, in vain, urged toleration. His
adversaries in the royal council were too strong for him. The
Cardinal of Lorraine had regained his old influence. The king
appointed, as his preachers, four of the most violent advocates of
persecution. The De Montmorencys, for a time, struggled
successfully against the influence of the Cardinal of Lorraine; who
sought supreme power, under cover of Henry of Anjou's name. Three
of the marshals of France--Montmorency, his brother Danville, and
Vielleville--supported by Cardinal Bourbon, demanded of the council
that D'Anjou should no longer hold the office of lieutenant
general. Catharine at times aided the Guises, at times the
Montmorencys; playing off one party against the other, but chiefly
inclining to the Guises, who gradually obtained such an ascendency
that the Chancellor L'Hopital, in despair, retired from the
council; and thus removed the greatest obstacle to the schemes and
ambition of the Cardinal of Lorraine.

At the commencement of August the king despatched, to all parts of
his dominions, copies of an oath that was to be demanded from every
Huguenot. It called upon them to swear never to take up arms, save
by the express command of the king; nor to assist with counsel,
money, or food any who did so; and to join their fellow citizens in
the defence of their towns against those who disobeyed this
mandate. The Huguenots unanimously declined to sign the oath.

With the removal of the chancellor from the council, the party of
Lorraine became triumphant; and it was determined to seize the
whole of the Huguenot leaders, who were quietly residing upon their
estates in distant parts of France. Gaspard de Tavannes was charged
with the arrest of Conde and the Admiral; and fourteen companies of
men-at-arms, and as many of infantry were placed under his orders,
and these were quietly and secretly marched to Noyers.

Fortunately Conde received warning, just before the blow was going
to be struck. He was joined at Noyers by the Admiral, with his
daughter and sons, and the wife and infant son of D'Andelot. Conde
himself had with him his wife and children. They were joined by a
few Huguenot noblemen from the neighbourhood; and these, with the
servants of the prince and Admiral, formed an escort of about a
hundred and fifty horse.

Escape seemed well-nigh hopeless. Tavannes' troops guarded most of
the avenues of escape. There was no place of refuge save La
Rochelle, several hundred miles away, on the other side of France.
Every city was in the hands of their foes, and their movements were
encumbered with the presence of women and young children.

There was but one thing in their favour--their enemies naturally
supposed that, should they attempt to escape, they would do so in
the direction of Germany, where they would be warmly welcomed by
the Protestant princes. Therefore it was upon that line that the
greatest vigilance would be displayed by their enemies.

Before starting, Coligny sent off a very long and eloquent protest
to the king; defending himself for the step that he was about to
take; giving a history of the continuous breaches of the treaty,
and of the sufferings that had been inflicted upon the Huguenots;
and denouncing the Cardinal of Lorraine and his associates, as the
guilty causes of all the misfortunes that had fallen upon France.

It was on the 23d of August that the party set out from Noyers.
Their march was prompt and rapid. Contrary to expectation, they
discovered an unguarded ford across the Loire, near the town of
Laussonne. This ford was only passable when the river was unusually
low, and had therefore escaped the vigilance of their foes. The
weather had been for some time dry, and they were enabled, with
much difficulty, to effect a crossing; a circumstance which was
regarded by the Huguenots as a special act of Providence, the more
so as heavy rain fell the moment they had crossed, and the river
rose so rapidly that when, a few hours later, the cavalry of
Tavannes arrived in pursuit, they were unable to effect a passage.
The party had many other dangers and difficulties to encounter but,
by extreme caution and rapidity of movement, they succeeded in
baffling their foes, and in making their way across France.

On the evening of the 16th of September, a watchman on a tower of
the chateau of Laville shouted, to those in the courtyard, that he
perceived a considerable body of horsemen in the distance. A
vigilant watch had been kept up for some time, for an army had for
some weeks been collected, with the ostensible motive of capturing
Rochelle and compelling it to receive a royal garrison; and as, on
its approach, parties would probably be sent out to capture and
plunder the chateaux and castles of the Huguenot nobles, everything
had been prepared for a siege.

The alarm bell was at once rung, to warn the neighbourhood of
approaching danger. The vacancies, caused in the garrison during
the war, had been lately filled up; and the gates were now closed,
and the walls manned; the countess herself, accompanied by her son
and Philip, taking her place on the tower by the gateway. The party
halted, three or four hundred yards from the gate, and then two
gentlemen rode forward.

"The party look to me more like Huguenots than Catholics, mother,"
Francois had said. "I see no banners; but their dresses look sombre
and dark, and I think that I can see women among them."

A minute later, Philip exclaimed:

"Surely, Francois, those gentlemen who are approaching are Conde
and the Admiral!"

"Impossible!" the countess said. "They are in Burgundy, full three
hundred miles away."

"Philip is right, mother," Francois said eagerly. "I recognize them
now. They are, beyond doubt, the prince and Admiral Coligny.

"Lower the drawbridge, and open the gates," he called down to the
warders.

The countess hastened down the stairs to the courtyard, followed by
Francois and Philip, and received her two unexpected visitors as
they rode across the drawbridge.

"Madame," Conde said, as he doffed his cap courteously, "we are
fugitives, who come to ask for a night's shelter. I have my wife
and children with me, and the Admiral has also his family. We have
ridden across France, from Noyers, by devious roads and with many
turnings and windings; have been hunted like rabid beasts, and are
sorely in need of rest."

"You are welcome, indeed, prince," the countess said. "I esteem it
a high honour to entertain such guests as yourself and Admiral
Coligny. Pray enter at once. My son will ride out to welcome the
princess, and the rest of your party."

Francois at once leapt on to a horse and galloped off, and in a few
minutes the party arrived. Their numbers had been considerably
increased since they left Noyers, as they had been joined by many
Huguenot gentlemen on the way, and they now numbered nearly four
hundred men.

"We have grown like a snowball, since we started," the prince said;
"and I am ashamed to invade your chateau with such an army."

"It is a great honour, prince. We had heard a rumour that an
attempt had been made to seize you; and that you had disappeared,
no one knew whither, and men thought that you were directing your
course towards Germany; but little did we dream of seeing you here,
in the west."

It was not until evening that the tale of the journey across
France, with its many hazards and adventures, was told; for the
countess was fully occupied in seeing to the comforts of her guests
of higher degree, while Francois saw that the men-at-arms and
others were bestowed as comfortably as might be. Then oxen and
sheep were killed, casks of wine broached, forage issued for the
horses; while messengers were sent off to the nearest farms for
chicken and ducks, and with orders for the women to come up, to
assist the domestics at the chateau to meet this unexpected strain.

"It is good to sit down in peace and comfort, again," Conde said
as, supper over, they strolled in the garden, enjoying the cool air
of the evening. "This is the first halt that we have made, at any
save small villages, since we left Noyers. In the first place, our
object was concealment; and in the second, though many of our
friends have invited us to their castles, we would not expose them
to the risk of destruction, for having shown us hospitality.

"Here, however, we have entered the stronghold of our faith; for
from this place to La Rochelle, the Huguenots can hold their own
against their neighbours, and need fear nothing save the approach
of a large army; in which case, countess, your plight could
scarcely be worse for having sheltered us. The royal commissioners
of the province must long have had your name down, as the most
stiff necked of the Huguenots of this corner of Poitou, as one who
defies the ordinances, and maintains public worship in her chateau.
Your son and nephew fought at Saint Denis; and you sent a troop
across France, at the first signal, to join me. The cup of your
offences is so full that this last drop can make but little
difference, one way or the other."

"I should have felt it as a grievous slight, had you passed near
Laville without halting here," the countess said. "As for danger,
for the last twenty years we have been living in danger; and
indeed, during the last year I have felt safer than ever for, now
that La Rochelle has declared for us, there is a place of refuge,
for all of the reformed religion in the provinces round, such as we
have not before possessed. During the last few months, I have sent
most of my valuables in there for safety; and if the tide of war
comes this way, and I am threatened by a force against which it
would be hopeless to contend, I shall make my way thither.

"But against anything short of an army, I shall hold the chateau.
It forms a place of refuge to which, at the approach of danger, all
of our religion for many miles round would flock in; and as long as
there is a hope of successful resistance, I would not abandon them
to the tender mercies of Anjou's soldiers."

"I fear, countess," the Admiral said, "that our arrival at La
Rochelle will bring trouble upon all the country round it. We had
no choice between that and exile. Had we consulted our own peace
and safety only, we should have betaken ourselves to Germany; but
had we done that, it would have been a desertion of our brethren,
who look to us for leading and guidance.

"Here at La Rochelle we shall be in communication with Navarre and
Gascony; and doubt not that we shall, ere very long, be again at
the head of an army with which we can take the field, even more
strongly than before; for after the breaches of the last treaty,
and the fresh persecutions and murders throughout the land, the
Huguenots everywhere must clearly perceive that there is no option
between destruction, and winning our rights at the point of the
sword.

"Nevertheless, as the court will see that it is to their interest
to strike at once, before we have had time to organize an army, I
think it certain that the whole Catholic forces will march, without
loss of time, against La Rochelle. Our only hope is that, as on the
last occasion, they will deceive themselves as to our strength. The
evil advisers of the king, when persuading him to issue fresh
ordinances against us, have assured him that with strong garrisons
in all the great towns in France, and with his army of Swiss and
Germans still on foot, we are altogether powerless; and are no
longer to be feared, in the slightest degree.

"We know that even now, while they deem us but a handful of
fugitives, our brethren throughout France will be everywhere
banding themselves in arms. Before we left Noyers we sent out a
summons, calling the Huguenots in all parts of France to take up
arms again. Their organization is perfect in every district. Our
brethren have appointed places where they are to assemble, in case
of need; and by this time I doubt not that, although there is no
regular army yet in the field, there are scores of bands ready to
march, as soon as they receive orders.

"It is true that the Catholics are far better prepared than before.
They have endeavoured, by means of these leagues, to organize
themselves in our manner; but there is one vital difference. We
know that we are fighting for our lives and our faith, and that
those who hang back run the risk of massacre in their own homes.
The Catholics have no such impulse. Our persecutions have been the
work of the mobs in the towns, excited by the priests; and these
ruffians, though ardent when it is a question of slaying
defenceless women and children, are contemptible in the field
against our men. We saw how the Parisians fled like a flock of
sheep, at Saint Denis.

"Thus, outnumbered as we are, methinks we shall take up arms far
more quickly than our foes; and that, except from the troops of
Anjou, and the levies of the great Catholic nobles, we shall have
little to fear. Even in the towns the massacres have ever been
during what is called peace; and there was far less persecution,
during the last two wars, than in the intervals between them."

The next morning the prince and Admiral, with their escort, rode on
towards La Rochelle; which they entered on the 18th September. The
countess, with a hundred of her retainers and tenants, accompanied
them on the first day's journey; and returned, the next day, to the
chateau.

The news of the escape, and the reports that the Huguenots were
arming, took the court by surprise; and a declaration was at once
published, by the king, guaranteeing his royal protection to all
adherents of the reformed faith who stayed at home, and promising a
gracious hearing to their grievances. As soon, however, as the
Catholic forces began to assemble in large numbers, the mask of
conciliation was thrown off, all edicts of toleration were
repealed, and the king prohibited his subjects in all parts of his
dominions, of whatever rank, from the exercise of all religious
rites other than those of the Catholic faith, on pain of
confiscation and death.

Nothing could have been more opportune, for the Huguenot leaders,
than this decree. It convinced even the most reluctant that their
only hope lay in resistance; and enabled Conde's agents, at foreign
courts, to show that the King of France was bent upon exterminating
the reformed faith, and that its adherents had been forced to take
up arms, in self preservation.

The fanatical populations of the towns rejoiced in the new decree.
Leagues for the extermination of heresy were formed, in Toulouse
and other towns, under the name of Crusades; and high masses were
celebrated in the churches, everywhere, in honour of the great
victory over heresy.

The countess had offered to send her son, with fifty men-at-arms,
to swell the gathering at La Rochelle; but the Admiral declined the
offer. Niort was but a day's march from the chateau and, although
its population were of mixed religion, the Catholics might, under
the influence of the present excitement, march against Laville. He
thought it would be better, therefore, that the chateau should be
maintained, with all its fighting force, as a centre to which the
Huguenots of the neighbourhood might rally.

"I think," he said, "that you might, for some time, sustain a siege
against all the forces that could be brought from Niort; and if you
are attacked I will, at once, send a force from the city to your
assistance. I have no doubt that the Queen of Navarre will join us,
and that I shall be able to take the offensive, very shortly."

Encouraged by the presence of the Admiral at La Rochelle, the whole
of the Huguenots of the district prepared to take the field,
immediately. Laville was the natural centre, and two hundred and
fifty men were ready to gather there, directly an alarm was given.

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.