THE EARLIER LIFE OF COLIGNY.* M. BERSIER rather spoils a
useful book and honest literary performance by his Preface, in which, with the characteristic weakness of the enthusiastic biographer, he insists that Coligny is still an ho mute incomiwis. It is true that half a century ago most ordinary (in the sense of ordinarily intelligent) readers of history, "knew Coligny," as If. Bersier says, "only by a few incidents of his life and by his tragic death." They were vaguely sorry that on St. Bartholomew's Day he should have fallen a victim to Catherine de Medici. They wondered bow a man who fought and lost so many battles on land should always be known as " Admiral " Coligny. They speculated as to the condition of France, had the Guises been beaten by Coligny and Conde, and the Huguenots become the dominating element in the population of France. But of late, ample justice, M. Bersier himself being witness, has been done to Coligny by Michela, Ranke, and, above all, by M. Jules Delaborde, whose "noble monograph" was only completed in 1882. Coligny is now much better understood—in this country he was always pitied and venerated—than he was, and his almost statuesque heroism is fully appreciated. M. Bersier does not, indeed, claim to have made any important discovery regarding Coligny, or to supersede M. Delaborde :—
" Our object," he says, "has been to present Coligny to our readers in the great moments of his life before the wars of religion, .endeavouring to describe the environment in which he moves, and the principal personages with whom he comes in contact. Fully appreciating the detailed and conscientious study which M. Delaborde has given us of the thoughts and deeds of the Admiral, our aim has been to draw this central figure in broader outline, and faintly to fillin the more distant horizon of the picture. We do not claim the merit of having brought to light any passage of the history before unpublished ; but we do think we have been able to derive some
fresh views from the careful study of documents already published, the bearing of which upon our subject has not before been shown.
We have been able to throw light on several important points by the help of the valuable collection of Catherine de Medici's letters up to the year 1503, recently published by M. de la Ferriere."
M. Bersier, although he has not the gift of a fine French style. must be allowed to have accomplished the object he set before himself. His work is especially valuable for the picture it gives of a Huguenot " interior "—in the moral as well as in the
domestic sense—in the sixteenth century.
M. Bersier almost ridicules the idea of Gaspard de Coligny being regarded as an old man at the time of his death. Born on February 16th, 1519, he was murdered on August 24th, 1572, and was, therefore, only in his fifty-fourth year at the time. Yet it is rather interesting to note—although M. Bersier does not do so—that, with the exception of the arch-conspirator, Catherine de Medici, who, thanks probably to her Italian conscience, reached threescore-and-ten, Coligny attained a greater age than his leading associates, rivals, and enemies. Conde, who was in a sense his chief in the war between the Catholics and the Huguenots, was killed at the age of thirty-nine. Francis of Lorraine, Due de Guise, his leading professional rival and religious opponent, who was exactly a day younger, was assas sinated at the age of forty-four ; while his son, Henri, who succeeded to his father's hatred of Coliguy and the Huguenots, and was the soul of the "League." was murdered before he attained forty. Of the Kings who governed Prance at this time, Henri II. was forty-one when he was accidentally shot, Charles IX., who superintended the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, died. at the age of twenty-four, and Henry III. was thirty-eight when he was assassinated. It seems, therefore, a little absurd of M. Bersier to speak of the period of which he writes as "the earlier days" of Caligny. He brings his biography down to April, 1562, when, "pressed by the urgent entreaties of his beloved and faithful wife, Coligny mounted his horse and rode to join the Prince of Conde and the other leaders of the party at Meaux ;" when, in fact, he resolved to engage in civil war. Coligny had only ten more years before him ; and these, though, perhaps, the most eventful of his career, can hardly be regarded as the most interesting. Coligny had done his best work before 1562. He had still to prove, on two great occasions—like another and more fortunate Protestant leader, our own Dutch William —that he had the capacity, if not to retrieve, at least to make the most of a disastrous defeat. It is permissible to believe that, had the Huguenots entrusted their military fortunes from the first to Coligny, instead of to Conde, they would-have gained an earlier, more decisive, and, in all moral respects, less questionable victory than that which subsequently fell to them under Henri Quatre, whose chief advantage, after his mother's training, lay in his having had for his master the man whom St. Simon truly described as "the wisest and most honest man of his age, and the greatest captain." Was there not something wanting in Coligny —it may have been lack of ambition, or inability to measure himself accurately against his contemporaries—to make the charm of his nature not only good, but firm; something which stood in the way of his fellow-religionists hailing him by acclamation as their leader, as the fellow-politicians of Washington hailed him ?
How is it that the Colignys of this world only deserve success, while the Washingtons command it ?
Up to 1562 Coligny had had his ups and downs, his crosses and failures, his defeats and imprisonments ; nevertheless, all these seemed but a preparation for something more than a moral triumph, even for such a triumph as that which he gained, and which the tragedy of St. Bartholomew's Day has in no degree dimmed. He seemed marked by destiny to be not only a great, but a fortunate man. He belonged to the great House of Chatillon, which became allied by marriage with the House of Conde, and was the rival of the House of Guise. His mother, Louise de Montmorency, from whom unquestionably he derived his tendencies towards Calvinism, was one of the ablest women in an age notable for able women. His uncle was the Constable of France, and was able to give his nephew an early chance of distinguishing himself in arms. This Coligny availed himself of to the full; and it was probably only the disgrace of his uncle—a fickle and egotistic politician—that allowed Francis of Lorraine to succeed to the place he would himself indubitably have occupied. He is generally identified with the leadership of forlorn-hopes, and with making the best of bad causes ; even in this volume the most notable of his achievements that are recorded is his gallant defence of St. Quentin in 1557 against the Spaniards, a
defence which ended in the place being captured and himself taken prisoner. It is not commonly borne in mind, however, that it was Coligny who to all intents and purposes finally relieved his country of the presence of British garrisons, it was the Due de Guise, indeed, who took Calais, and so broke the heart of Queen Mary ; but the plan of his operations was Coligny's. The taking, in 1349-1550, of Boulogne, was quite as important as that of Calais ; and it was entirely Coligny's work. It was, moreover, when he was engaged before Boulogne that he drew-up for his soldiers the military code which was subsequently adopted for the whole French Army, and which not only ensured discipline, but protected non-combatants from military license. One of his rules reaches the high-water mark of military morality. "If a soldier without due cause shall give the lie to another, he shall be made to stand in the public square, and with ensigns unfurled, and uncovered head, shall ask pardon of his colonel and of the man to whom he gave the lie." Nevertheless, "his soldiers," says BrantOme, "were neither his subjects nor his mercenaries ; and yet, when they were in his presence, the slightest word of reproof was rarely needed, and in his absence his signet alone was enough to enforce obedience." It is rather curious that, although Coligny was Admiral of France, and although his name has been handed down to history with this title, he was directly engaged only in one naval action, and that was an unsuccessful attack on the Isle of Wight. At that time he was twenty-five years of age, and commanded a galley under his predecessor in the office of Admiral. Coligny's chief work during his term of office was to endeavour to plant colonies of French Huguenots in North America. It failed, like so many other of his enterprises. But the failure was due to no fault of his. Had he succeeded, the Pilgrim Fathers might have had formidable rivals,—and rivals of a religion almost identical with their own.
M. Bersier is at great pains to make the real character of the Huguenot movement in France thoroughly understood by showing the relations of its leaders to Calvin and Beza. This portion of his work is very conscientiously done. Yet we confess to a suspicion that there was a good deal of—we shall not say Mr. Arnold's "hideousness and immense ennui "—but yet dreariness, associated with the enthusiasm of the Huguenots. When there was not dreariness there was too often scandalous levity and gallantry, as in the case of Conde and of Henry of Navarre. Here, again, Coligny stands superior to the other leaders of the movement. He was purity itself; but he was tolerant, gentle, tender, even merry. His religious fervour had not destroyed the spirit of the Renaissance. The pleasantest country house in France in Coligny's time was his own Chatillon, when he lived there in his retirement. Should he have left it to join Conde and raise the flag of civil war in 1562 P That is one of the problems in French history which time will never solve, just as it has not yet answered the question whether the slaughter of the Protestants at Vassy in Champagne by the soldiers of Guise, which directly led to the war, was a chance encounter, or a carefully premeditated plot. It is just possible that Catherine de Medici, who had no love for the Guises—her recently published letters prove her to have believed that they hated her—would have allowed the French Marcus Aurelius to pray and study unharmed in his retirement, had not the welfare of his co-religionists and the entreaties of his wife driven him into the arms of Conde.
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