HIST 102 #9 - Religious Wars in Germany & France

Hello, welcome back to our lecture series for Western Civilization 102. Last topic, we discussed the Catholic Reformation and how the Catholic Church will try to take some of the wind out of the Protestant sails, some of the momentum, as I guess you could say. And so we are still now discussing religion, okay? Remember, this unit is the Renaissance and the Reformation, and the Reformation encompasses so many topics, not only Martin Luther and John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli that have been discussed in previous lectures, the radical Reformation with the Anabaptists and how they, of course, what they believed in and how they were persecuted, but we also have wars of religion within countries in Europe. And so today's topic, Dr. Robinson will focus on the German and French Wars of religion.

You may have heard already a little bit about the German Wars of religion when it came to the discussion of Lutheranism and Martin Luther, because, um, I believe Dr. Price mentioned the fact that, uh, the princes of the Holy Roman Empire, remember, the Holy Roman Empire was made up of a collection of city-states, and each city-state had its own prince, and these princes are the people that will vote for the Holy Roman Emperor. Of course, right now, it's Charles V, although he will end up resigning, which is not the norm. He retires, he gives it up. I guess he just can't take it anymore. He had so much to deal with when he was Holy Roman Emperor. But these princes are, most of them, mostly in the north, as we've discovered. But these princes will like Lutheranism because, as you've learned in past lectures, they didn't have to send their money to the church, they didn't have to send the taxes to Italy. They could keep it in their state, in their city-state. And so this was just one of the reasons you've learned that Lutheranism is so very popular with some of these princes.

Because Dr. Robinson will also again discuss the Peace of Augsburg and how this will allow princes to choose between Lutheranism and Catholicism. Now, not every prince chose Lutheranism, okay? But we do have quite a few that will. And whatever the prince's faith, the people have to to to also worship that way. It's the prince's choice on the religion in their city-state. So we'll learn a little bit more about the German or the Holy Roman Empire and and how they try to make things less chaotic. Now, this didn't include Calvinism. Calvinism is not accepted, not part of the choice that they have, as we've learned in the past as well.

So, a little bit about German and the the religious issues in Germany, and also Dr. Robinson will discuss France, specifically in France and the French Wars of religion, because we know that France has a Protestant population. It's been growing, and Calvin actually influenced a lot of that. These Protestants in France were known as Huguenots, but they're Protestants, basically. We also know that, you know, we still have, especially among the royal family, the monarch is a Catholic, and so there will be fighting between these two groups of people because some of the nobles, you'll hear about the Bourbons in France and the different dynasties that existed, the powerful families, is basically basically what we're going to talk about. And how, obviously, if you have these powerful nobles and these powerful families, they have armies, and there is fighting, and there is bloodshed, and there are massacres, as you will see in this upcoming lecture.

For example, Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre that took place in uh Paris was just thousands of people were murdered in the streets and their bodies thrown into the river. It was an actual massacre, and it was because of religion that it takes place in the first place. You will also learn about such famous people as Catherine de Medici. And I know when you think of the name de Medici, I'm hoping you at least maybe would think of Italy, Florence, because Italy was also divided into different city-states. They are not one country unified. That's not until the 19th century, so we've got quite a ways to go before that happens. But the Medici family, yes, they were very powerful. Lorenzo de Medici, you may have heard of him. But Catherine de Medici is, um, we're focusing on her with France. She is, she will become very powerful. She will become a regent to her sons, who at the time are too young to take over as king. And so she will be right up in all of this intrigue that occurs in France with these wars of religion. Um, and we'll also find out from Dr. Robinson how this is rectified, how what results from from these wars of religion, because there is a lot of bloodshed. Kings are actually assassinated. Um, there's there's this event called The War of the Three Henries, and pretty much every Henry is assassinated by the end of this time. But Dr. Robinson will discuss a very important man named Henry IV. Henry IV was a of the Bourbon Dynasty, and the Bourbons were Protestant in nature, and he will manage to survive that, I call it, War of the Three Henries, and will become monarch and king of France toward the end of these, uh, religious wars.

Now, even though Henry IV is a Protestant, he accepts Catholicism. But he'll come up with a very important edict, very important edict that will be discussed as well in this upcoming lecture. It's called the Edict of Nantes. And basically, you'll learn more about it, but basically it gives Protestants living in France some basic rights. Um, it acknowledges that they can exist, that they can practice their religion, but of course, within the confines of their towns. But Catholicism would still remain the official religion of France. And this works for quite a while, this Edict of Nantes. This is basically showing a toleration, a toleration for the Protestants. And what Henry is trying to do, he is trying to end the fighting. France cannot become or not remain powerful if it's going through a civil war within itself. It just simply can't do it. So we'll find out with the Edict of Nantes how Henry IV manages to, um, lessen the tension existing in France at this time. Although Henry IV will not meet a natural end either, he will eventually be assassinated as well, um, a little bit later on in the early 17th century. So he will meet his end with by assassination as well.

So let's find out more about the German and French Wars of religion. The period between the 1520s and the mid-17th century is often known as the Age of Religious Wars. During this period, most of the conflicts that occurred had a religious element, with Catholics on one side and Protestants on the other. However, there were other factors involved in these wars, especially dynastic interests. So they were never purely religious. Catholics at times fought against other Catholics, less frequently Protestants fought against other Protestants. But even when the wars were primarily dynastic, they sometimes had a religious dimension to them. For example, the wars of the early 16th century helped to answer a very important question, and that is, how did Martin Luther get away with it? How did an obscure, insignificant, relatively powerless monk from Wittenberg defy the might of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, of the Holy Roman Empire, of Charles V, a series of powerful popes, and other crowned heads of state? And the answer to that is that they were frequently too busy fighting to deal with him.

If we look at the the the outline of things, first, it will make clear what the problem is for those trying to stop Luther. At the center of the storm, of course, is the Holy Roman Empire at the center, which is Germany, where Luther and Lutheranism can be found. There, Charles V had been elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, just a couple of years after Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg. And by 1521, was prepared to deal with him at the Diet of Worms. As you will have seen already, Luther was condemned at the Diet of Worms, declared to be a heretic, excommunicated, and placed under the Imperial ban, which made him an outlaw. He went into hiding, and realistically, he should have remained in hiding or emerged only to find himself arrested and eliminated. But that's not what happened. He emerged from hiding to flourish and to become the leader of a movement that still exists today. So what is it that kept Charles V from dealing with him, from dealing with this most troublesome of his subjects? Well, in a word, Charles V was surrounded with other problems.

If we look at things from the vantage point of the Holy Roman Empire and start in the East, we see that there is a threat in the East. That threat exists in the form of the Ottoman Empire of the Turks, an empire that had been steadily advancing into European territory since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and an empire which, in 1520, got a new ruler, a young, powerful, ambitious, talented ruler in the form of Suleiman the Magnificent, arguably the greatest Sultan to ever rule the Ottoman Empire. And therefore, in the East, Charles would face a recurrent threat from the Turks attempting to advance further into European territory and at times making it all the way to the gates of Vienna, his capital city. That right there would be enough to keep him busy, but he had other problems as well.

There also was a threat from the West. The threat from the West came from France, from the Valois dynasty, initially in the person of Francis I, who ruled from 1515 to '47, and later on from Francis's son, Henry II, who ruled from 1547 to '59. Here is a case where dynasty trumped religious faith. For both Charles V and the Valois kings of France were devout Catholics. Neither was a fan of the Protestant Reformation. Both would have preferred to see it crushed. But their dynastic interests, Habsburg versus Valois, Charles versus Francis, later on, superseded that and kept them at war and kept them from working together. Moreover, Francis was frequently allied in his wars against Charles V with Henry VIII, a man who began the period as a good Catholic but who broke away from Rome over the issue of his marriage and took England in a more Protestant direction. When Henry wasn't allied with France, he usually was allied with the Empire. So whether it's Francis I or later on or at other times, Charles V, both of them are allied with a Protestant ruler who, all other things being equal, might not have been their friend.

So there's a threat from the East, there's a threat from the West. In addition to that, there is also a threat from the South, and ironically, this threat comes from the Papacy. The Papacy too was frequently involved in the wars of the early 16th century, not only in the years leading up to the Reformation, but in the years thereafter. Charles V and Pope Clement VII were bitter enemies, and subsequent popes were not particularly fond of Charles V, and vice versa, either. So not only do we have the two leading Catholic monarchs opposing each other, the Emperor and the King of France, but we also have the Holy Roman Emperor, one of the reputed universal leaders of Europe, faced off against the Pope, the head of the reputedly universal church. And it gets even worse than that in some cases. At times, the Papacy and France were actually allied against Charles V with the Turks. So that you had Turks and Catholics fighting against other Catholics.

Now, surely you're thinking, it couldn't get much worse for Charles. But it does. Remember that about half of his subjects in Germany are Lutheran. As by the time we get to say the 1530s, all other things being equal, Charles V would have dealt with that. But in fact, while fighting the Turks, fighting the French, fighting the Papacy, he needed the support of the Lutheran princes and their armies. And for a long time, he could not afford to alienate them. But just in case he did, the Lutherans in Northern Germany organized themselves into something called the Schmalkaldic League, a league of Protestant states, initially led by Philip of Hesse, one of the big Lutheran supporters, and by John Frederick of Saxony, another major Lutheran supporter. So, in a very real sense, Henry or Charles V was surrounded by enemies: the Turks in the East, the Papacy to the South, the French to the West, the Lutherans to the North.

If you look at the position of France, France also was surrounded in a sense because it had Charles V to the East in the Holy Roman Empire and to the South in Spain, and of course, it had at times to worry about England as well. England too was in a sense surrounded because it frequently faced France or the Empire, and often had difficulties with Scotland in the North. So the potential for warfare is enormous. And one of the best ways to get a sense of how this disrupts affairs in Europe and how it allows Martin Luther again and again to escape by the skin of his teeth, as well as doing the same thing for reformers like Calvin, uh, the best way to do that is to go through the wars themselves, not battle by battle, but at least with enough detail to show how first one thing and then another distracted Charles V and others from dealing with the Lutheran threat.

If you recall, Martin Luther attended the Diet of Worms in 1521, the same year that he was excommunicated and outlawed. The ideal time for the church and the state to deal with it. But that was not possible in 1521. Suleiman the Magnificent and the Turks laid siege to the city of Belgrade on the Danube River, a city that was essentially the gateway into Hungary. And so right at the time that he should have been dealing with Luther, Charles had to deal with the Turks. Furthermore, in the same year, 1521, war broke out between Charles V and Francis I of France, the first of the so-called Habsburg-Valois Wars, a war that would last from 1521 to 1526. So that's going on, and you have the Turks at Belgrade. The next year, in 1522, the Turkish navy captured the island of Rhodes, an island that had been in the hands of Christians for hundreds of years, and now gave the Turks an important strategic outpost in the Eastern Mediterranean. The same year, 1522, the Knights' War broke out in the Holy Roman Empire, a war fueled partly by Lutheranism and partly by the resentment of the so-called Imperial Knights against the overweening power of Charles V. So he finds himself having to worry about the Turks, to fight against the French, and also to deal with the Knights' War inside his own domain. The Knights' War lasted into 1523, and then it came to an end. But the following year, in 1524, the Great Peasant Revolt broke out in the Holy Roman Empire, in which tens of thousands of peasants rose up, motivated by Luther, excited by Luther's idea that all men are equal in the sight of God. They concluded that all men ought to be equal here on the face of the Earth as well, and they rebelled against their lords and ultimately against the Emperor. As you will know, they were ultimately put down with an enormous amount of bloodshed, and Martin Luther himself turned against them. But this occupied the years 1524 and much of 1525.

Still, by 1525, things were looking better for Charles V. In that year, he won a crushing defeat over Francis I at the Battle of Pavia, a defeat in which he actually took France's prisoner and seemed to have control of Europe exactly where he wanted it. The following year, they made peace with the Treaty of Madrid, a very favorable peace for Charles V, so it seemed, and all looked well. But in that same year, 1526, two things went badly wrong. Number one is that no sooner was he turned loose than Francis I reneged on the terms of the treaty. The second thing is that the Turks invaded Hungary and quickly overran most of the Hungarian state, killing the Christian king of Hungary, Louis of Hungary, in the process. So by the end of 1526, Charles is once more facing a hostile France, and he now has the Turks occupying most of Hungary on his eastern border. Not surprisingly, by the end of the year, war had broken out with the French again. No sooner is the first Habsburg-Valois War over than a second Habsburg-Valois War is underway. In addition to that, a number of other countries got involved in this on one side or another.

Luckily for Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent had the same problem as everyone else, and that is enemies on multiple borders. While he was overwhelming Hungary, the Persians invaded the Eastern Ottoman Empire, and Suleiman had to withdraw from the West and go to deal with the Persian threat. This gave Charles a bit of a breathing space. It allowed him to win some more battles. It also led to the infamous Sack of Rome in 1527, in which Pope Clement VII became his prisoner, thereby affecting the balance of power in Italy and also rendering Clement VII incapable of granting a divorce to Henry VIII. The second Habsburg-Valois War came to an end in 1529 with the Treaty of Cambrai, a treaty that was negotiated primarily by two women in their respective royal households and is sometimes known as the "Paix des Dames," the Treaty of the Women.

Well, it's 1529. Peace seems to have broken out everywhere. But Suleiman the Magnificent, having dealt with the Persian threat on his eastern border, was back at the gates of Vienna, literally outside the gates of Vienna. So that one could stand on the wall in the East of the city, look out, and see tens of thousands of Turks bivouacked on the ground just a few hundred yards away. On top of that, the Schmalkaldic League was organized in 1531, and this now became at least a potential threat to Charles V as well. Luckily, in 1530, the Turks withdrew again to deal with problems on their eastern border. But a couple of years later, they were back, and in 1532, there was a second Siege of Vienna, a siege that became so serious a threat to Germany that the Lutherans and the Catholics in Germany temporarily put aside their differences and actually fought on the same side. Sounds good, right?

But in 1533, Clement VII, who had finally gotten free of Charles V, entered into an alliance with Francis I, which is a prelude to a third Habsburg War, a war that broke out later that same year, 1533, and a war that led to the seemingly absurd development whereby France and the the Papacy allied with Suleiman the Magnificent, the Islamic leader. This war continued until 1538. Not only did the French and the Papacy ally with Suleiman, they also worked in close conjunction with a man named Barbarossa, who was a pirate working loosely with Suleiman in the Western Mediterranean. This stage of the fighting came to an end in 1538, and once again, it looked as though Charles might get a break. One thing that particularly helped is that in 1540, it was discovered that Philip of Hesse, one of the leaders of the Schmalkaldic League, was living in a state of bigamy, that is, he had married and remarried without bothering to get rid of his first wife. First, that temporarily set back the Schmalkaldic League, but not for long.

And in 1542, war erupted again with France, a fourth Habsburg-Valois War, in which Francis was joined this time by several other states with Protestant sympathies: some Northern German states, the Swiss, the Danes, who by this time were Lutheran, and the Scots, who at this juncture had begun to embrace Calvinism in the form of Presbyterianism. Temporarily, Henry V backed up Charles V, and the upshot of this war was that in '50, 1544, rather, they made peace without any significant changes. But in the meantime, uh, more damage had been done, more time had been allowed for Lutheranism to spread, for Calvinism to spread, and so on.

In 14, in 1545, Charles again temporarily made peace with the Turks, and the following year, 1546, Martin Luther died, having escaped with his life until he died of natural causes. 1546, Charles, who was at least momentarily at peace with the Turks and the French, found himself fighting his own Lutheran subjects. A war broke out known as the Schmalkaldic War, which would go on off and on from 1546 to 1555. Luckily for Charles, the Turks were once again fighting the Persians. But this was too much temptation for the French, especially since there was a new monarch on the French throne in the person of Henry II, the son of Francis I. In 1551, Henry II went to war with Charles V, and there was another fifth Habsburg-Valois War from 1551 to 1559. You could almost say that from 1526 to 1559, there is a single Habsburg-Valois War with short breaks. But either way you look at it, almost constantly Charles and whoever is king in France are distracted by their war with each other.

In 1555, Charles made peace with the Schmalkaldic League in what was one of the most important peace treaties in early modern history. This was the Peace of Augsburg, and the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 ended religious warfare in Germany until well into the next century. It did so by following a simple proposition, one which is rendered in Latin as "Cuius regio, eius religio," but which roughly translates as "The religion of the prince is the religion of the state." What this meant is that inside the Holy Roman Empire, this vast collection of small states, that if a local ruler was a Lutheran, that would be a Lutheran state. If the local ruler was a Catholic, that would be a Catholic state. And in fact, what that does is to transform Germany into a land of state churches, whether it's state Lutheranism or state Catholicism. It also meant that pretty much all of Northern Germany would be Lutheran, and pretty much all of Southern Germany would be Catholic. So there is a definite geographical split there.

In addition to that, though, it left out something important. The Peace of Augsburg provided only for a ruler to be Lutheran or Catholic. The question is, what if a ruler should be something else? That was not a direct issue in 1555, but it would become an issue in the years to come when Calvinists came to the throne in several German states, and thereby threatened to upset the balance, something that they would eventually do in 1618 with the onset of the Thirty Years' War, which is yet another in the long series of religious wars.

Of course, having made peace with the Schmalkaldic League, Charles V was still at war with the French. He was so tired of all of this that in 1556, Charles V did something almost unheard of, certainly unprecedented in the history of the Holy Roman Empire. He retired. He gave up the throne of the Empire, he gave up the throne of Spain, and he went into a monastery, where he lived the last months of his life in peace and relative tranquility, too exhausted to continue to fight. Well, once he has stepped aside, who takes his place? There was some thought that Spain and the Empire might remain linked, but in the Empire, the German princes did not want a Spanish ruler, and in Spain, the Spanish nobility did not particularly want a German ruler. And the upshot was this: the Holy Roman Empire elected Charles V's younger brother to become Holy Roman Emperor as Ferdinand I, and we'll leave him right there for now because he is at peace with his Lutheran subjects and will remain so. In Spain, Charles V's son Philip inherited the throne, and he becomes Philip II, a man who will become over the next fourth century, for decades rather, the most powerful and most important Catholic ruler in Europe. Finally, the two sides made peace in 1559 in the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, and for a while at least, the Habsburgs and the Valois would cease to make war against one another.

Now, as is often the case, this peace treaty between Henry II of France and Philip II of Spain was sealed with a marriage. Philip II was in need of a wife. He had been married twice already, most recently to the Queen of England, Mary Tudor, the woman also known as Bloody Mary, but she had died in 1558, leaving him single again for the third time in his life. And so in 1559, he married Henry II's daughter, Elizabeth. At this wedding, there were celebrations, and during those celebrations, something of enormous significance happened. As was often the case when there were young royalty and nobility together, there was a great deal of sport, including jousting. And in the jousting that took place, Henry II rode into the lists with his helmet not firmly fastened on. The visor was loose, his adversary's lance pierced the visor, went into his eye, pierced his brain, and within a few hours, he had died, leaving behind him a very young bride, Catherine de Medici, and a group of young children, none of whom were really ready to take responsibility to govern.

Now, incidentally, this episode in which Henry II is accidentally killed in a joust helped to make the reputation of one of the great frauds of the 16th century, and I'm referring here to the alleged prophet Nostradamus, who still pops up on the front of some tabloids in your grocery market counter almost every week. Nostradamus was in fact from Southern France. He came from Jewish heritage in Spain. He may very well have privately had Protestant sympathies, but what is really of interest to us is not so much his religion as his profession. Earlier in life, he had been a medical practitioner, and in fact, he had become the doctor to Catherine de Medici on the basis of an unsubstantiated claim that he could cure bubonic plague. We can safely dismiss that on the grounds that nothing has cured bubonic plague other than antibiotics since it made its unwelcome appearance on the face of the earth. Nevertheless, he had been Catherine's doctor, and he also was a poet who wrote four-line poems called quatrains, which often are very vague, and which he subsequently claimed were predictions of the future. Now, a lot of people believe a lot of things about Nostradamus. A lot take a great deal on faith. A lot do that without actually going back and reading his quatrains, which is a fairly educational experience. He said he claims, subsequent to the death of Henry II, to have predicted Henry's death on the basis of a four-line poem that contained a reference to a golden cage. Now, that might not seem like an obvious connection, but he argued that golden cage referred to the golden helmet of Henry II. There are a couple of problems with this. One is that Henry II was not wearing a golden helmet at the time that he was killed. But more problematic still is the fact that in France, as in any country at this time, to predict the death of the king was to risk death yourself, because to predict the death of the king was treason. Nostradamus, or anybody else, would have been insane to do that. And in fact, when you start looking at his many predictions, most of them turn out to be discussions of things that have already happened or things that it would be safe for anybody to predict. Back in the 1960s, it was popular to credit Nostradamus with having predicted the rise of the Kennedy family, and the supposition was that all of them would eventually serve as president. John Kennedy did. Bobby Kennedy ran. So also did Ted, of course. The problem is, Bobby and Ted were never elected. But the three young men that he talks about having potential to hold power are not in fact the Kennedy brothers. They are the sons of Henry II, who did in fact come to power during his lifetime, and therefore don't really represent a prophecy. So, so much for Nostradamus.

Now, Nostradamus's employer, Henry II's widow, and the mother of a bevy of royal children, was Catherine de Medici, a woman from the very powerful and shrewd political family of Florence. And of course, she is to be for many, many years yet to come, the queen mother and the power behind the throne. With Henry II dead, his eldest son, Francis II, became king in 1559 at the age of 16. Not really ready for prime time. Indeed, Francis II probably never would have been ready. He was physically very weak, mentally not very acute, and showed almost no sign of talent for being a ruler. He was, however, married by this time. He had married the young Queen of Scotland, Mary, Queen of Scots, who had grown up in France and who was now his teenaged bride. However, Francis II lasted only slightly longer than a year as king of France. He fell ill in 1560 and died, leaving his teenage bride a widow who went back to Scotland, and leaving the throne open for a still younger brother.

The next brother to occupy the throne was Charles IX, who was only 10 when he took the throne, who also had some fairly serious problems, including some in the mental area, and who spent most of his reign as a minor and actually died at the young age of 24 in 1574. His death left the throne open to the third brother, Henry III, who by this time was 23 and who had just spent a few months serving as the elected king of Poland, but who on his brother's death came back to France in 1574 and assumed the throne. Now, Henry III has some peculiarities. One, he was not a very effective ruler. He was easily manipulated by people, and there were plenty of people around who wished to manipulate him. But he also had some quirks that were problematic for someone who was king of France in the 16th century. The most famous of these is that Henry III was a transvestite. Some of you may have seen the movie Elizabeth with Kate Blanchett, the first one, the one made late in the 20th century, in which the Duke of Anjou shows up at her court dressed as a woman. Now, that particular episode is made up, but the fact that the Duke of Anjou, who becomes Henry III, liked to wear dresses is not. And this was not a good thing. We probably wouldn't think too much of that, you know, just north of New Orleans, especially after the dress parade that followed the Saints' victory in the Super Bowl. But in France in the 16th century, this was a very alarming thing to many people. There was, by the way, a fourth son who never became king, Francis, the Duke of Alençon, who for a number of years courted Queen Elizabeth of England, although ultimately unsuccessfully.

So what we have here is a very powerful, very manipulative queen mother in Catherine de Medici, and a series of four sons, all of whom are problematic in one way or another. There were also several daughters, including the one who married Philip II, and another by the name of Marguerite, who you will hear more about in just a moment. But first, let's look at some of the other factions in France, because in fact, France is riven with factionalism at this time. Part of it based on religion, part of it based on dynastic interest. It was pretty clear by the time we get to the reign of Henry III that the Valois dynasty was going to die out. Henry III did not seem likely to have children. Uh, his brother, uh, the Duke of Alençon, remained unmarried and without children, and therefore, very early on, thoughts began to turn to who would take his place.

Now, if we go back and start in the 1560s again, the time when the religious wars in France actually broke out, another important faction is the faction known as the Bourbon faction, a faction that would eventually put one of its own on the French throne and lead to subsequent Bourbons like Louis XIV. The head of this faction in the 1560s was Antoine, or Anthony of Navarre, a man who was a Huguenot, a French Calvinist, and who also held the title of King of Navarre, a tiny little state that bordered France and Spain that had really ceased to be independent but continued to lend the title to someone. In this case, Anthony died in 1562, right at the time that the religious wars began, and his place as the leader of the Bourbons was taken by his son, Henri of Navarre, or Henry Bourbon. And in 1572, Henri of Navarre married Marguerite, or Margaret of Valois, the sister of all those kings and the daughter of Henry II and Catherine de Medici. So he marries into the royal family. Now, that's particularly interesting for another reason. All other things being equal, Henri of Navarre, because of his blood ties through his parents, was next in line to the throne after the Valois. He had now married a Valois sister, which meant that any of their children that they might have, actually they had none, but potentially any children they might have would have royal blood from both sides. The complicating factor is that like his father, Henri of Navarre was a Huguenot, and the idea of a Protestant taking the throne of France was something that no Catholics in the country were prepared to envision. And as a matter of fact, there was an ultra-Catholic faction in France that was especially opposed to the Bourbons or the Kings of Navarre making any kind of advance, and who regarded themselves as a better substitute. Their original leader was Francis, the Duke of Guise, an arch-Catholic, one of the most powerful noblemen in France, and a man who was diametrically opposed to everything that the Bourbons stood for.

So think about what we have here. We have a Huguenot Bourbon faction, an ultra-Catholic Guise faction, the queen mother Catherine de Medici who wants to govern through her children, and a series of very weak sons. And in fact, this is the simple version. There were a number of other aristocratic factions at work in France at the time. These are simply the most dominant. Catherine tried to play the different groups against one another in order to maintain her own power, and she was often effective at doing that.

Now, Francis, the Duke of Guise, also had some interesting connections. Two of his brothers were cardinals in the Catholic Church, and his sister, Marie of Guise, was the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots. Marie of Guise, sister of Francis, had been married to King James V of Scotland, who by now was dead. While her daughter Mary was growing up in France, Marie of Guise ran the kingdom of Scotland. She held the title of regent there until her own death in 1560. So, as you can see, there is a very complex web, both within France and linking France to other powers outside of its borders.

Now, when Francis, Duke of Guise, died in 1563, he was followed by his son, Henry, Duke of Guise. So you see what's going to happen here. We're going to end up with a whole bunch of people named Henry all at the same time. I would remind you that's not my fault. I'm just the messenger here. But it means you're going to have Henry III, Henry of Navarre, and Henry of Guise all around at the same time. Now, structurally, that is the system of dynastic and religious rivalries. What about the religious wars themselves? Well, there had been mounting tension in France for a number of decades. There had been persecution of Huguenot Protestants, there had been retaliation against the persecutors, and in 1560, the government uncovered a conspiracy called the Conspiracy of Amboise, which led to the hanging of a number of Huguenots for treason. That, however, is not what began the war. In fact, Catherine de Medici tried at this juncture to promote toleration, not because she was any great advocate of tolerance, but because she believed that toleration would keep the peace in France and leave her and her sons in a stronger position. So in 1562, she issued an Edict of Toleration called the Edict of Saint-Germain. How well did this work? Well, not at all.

In 1562, the elder Duke of Guise, Francis, the Duke of Guise, was riding through the countryside with a number of his men near the town of Vassy. He came across a barn in which a number of French Huguenots were having church. There were no Huguenot churches because the Huguenots were technically illegal. All of the churches were Catholic, and so the Huguenots met wherever they could, and a barn is a pretty good place because you can put a lot of people in it. Well, Francis was offended by this, and he and his men massacred the entire population of that barn, all of the Huguenots inside, and this began the wars. As with the Habsburg-Valois Wars that we talked about earlier, the French religious wars could be thought of as one long war with occasional breaks, or as a series of wars, which is the way the French usually portray them themselves. Huguenots were, of course, furious about the massacre at Vassy, and one of the first things that they did was to put an army into the field against the Guise family, an army that had very good cavalry made up of Huguenot nobles, but not much in the way of infantry. The other way in which they retaliated is that in 1563, a Huguenot assassinated the Duke of Guise. Assassination becomes a regular part of the warfare in the French religious wars. Still, peace was restored later in 1563 with an edict called the Edict of Amboise, and this peace lasted for about four years.

But in 1567, war broke out again when a group of Huguenot conspirators attempted to capture the still young Charles IX. They failed to do so, but it led to more fighting and eventually to another peace called the Peace of Longjumeau in 1568. How long will that last? Well, a few weeks. The Huguenots were soon in revolt again, this time supported by German Lutheran troops from the Empire, and they fought for two more years before making peace with the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. You see, none of these attempts to make peace are very effective because neither side is satisfied with the compromise. Both sides want to win outright.

What began in the fourth war was one of the the great outrages, one of the great atrocities of the 16th century. In 1572, there was a plot, probably instigated by Catherine de Medici, to assassinate a Huguenot leader who was opposed to her policies, the Admiral Coligny. Well, what happened instead is that a full-blown riot broke out in Paris that led to the massacre of tens of thousands of Protestant Huguenots in Paris and in the surrounding countryside. Because it occurred on Saint Bartholomew's Day in 1572, it's known as the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre. And one of the things that it did was to galvanize Protestant opposition to Catholics pretty much all over Europe. It also led to the fourth phase of the French Wars, which came to an end the next year with the Edict of Bologna. And as I'm sure you're expecting by now, that edict does not hold up very long either.

One of the results of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre is that it unhinged the mind of Charles IX, who was already somewhat shaky mentally speaking and not in very good health either. And he died near the end of 1574. His brother, Henry III, the transvestite, was crowned that year, and almost immediately war broke out again, a war that lasted into the next year, 1576, and was halted with the Edict of Burlou. Well, in 1576, the Guise family, now led by Henry, the Duke of Guise, the younger of the two Dukes that we're talking about, became convinced that the Valois line would die out, that the Bourbon line would have a shot at the throne, and they determined that they were going to put a stop to that. And so they organized a paramilitary force in France called the Catholic League, which in short order was at war with the Huguenots. The sixth phase of the war, which lasted into 1577 and ended briefly with the Edict of Poitiers, almost immediately fighting broke out again, in which the Huguenots were now led by Henry Bourbon, Henry of Navarre, the putative heir to the throne, and this lasted for three years, this time ending in 1580 with the Treaty of Fleix. Again, very short breaks between wars, and the wars are getting longer. Remember too that by this time, Henry IV, or I'm sorry, Henry of Navarre is married to the sister of the Valois.

Things really came to a head in the mid-1580s, the same time that England was going to Spain, something we'll address in the next lecture with what's called The War of the Three Henries. By 1585, Henry III was angling to neutralize both of his rivals, both the Catholic Henry of Guise and the Protestant Henry of Navarre, whereas Henry of Guise was angling for the throne, and Henry of Navarre was doing likewise. So you actually have three groups fighting against each other. And if you count Catherine de Medici still pulling the strings behind the scenes, you could almost say four. In 1588, Henry III arranged to have Henry of Guise assassinated. He actually regarded Guise as the greater threat. The following year, 1589, Henry III himself was assassinated, which at least in theory left Henry of Navarre as the only man standing, as the only candidate for the throne. The problem remained that Henry of Navarre was a Huguenot.

Nevertheless, he took the title of Henry IV, becoming the first of the Bourbon Dynasty that would last down until the French Revolution and then reappear thereafter. And not surprisingly, the Catholics went to war to stop him. The ninth and final phase of this part of the French religious wars broke out in 1589 and lasted all the way down to 1598. It overlapped with the war between England and Spain, it overlapped with the war between Spain and Dutch Protestants, and so, with the exception of the Holy Roman Empire, most of Western Europe was caught up in religious war for the last couple of decades of the century or on into the next century.

However, Henry IV found a solution. He always had had a somewhat malleable conscience. He had started life as a Huguenot, become a Catholic, becoming Huguenot again, and in 1593, he announced that he intended to return to Catholicism. He is supposed to have said, "Paris is well worth a Mass," and whether he ever said those words or not, they sort of sum up the situation. His attitude was, if becoming a Catholic will get me crowned in Paris, which is very pro-Catholic, then it's worth doing. Now, does this look a little bit cynical? Yes, it does. Catholics were deeply suspicious of Henry IV's move. They questioned his sincerity. They were highly doubtful about it. But what could they do? He was the blood heir to the throne. He had the best claim. He was winning the war, and now he had declared that he was a Catholic. There was no way to oppose him. The Huguenots, of course, were very unhappy about this. Their leader seemed to have betrayed them, gone over to the other side, become a Catholic. But what could they do? He was the best Catholic king they were ever going to get. There was no rival they could put in his place, and they had little choice but to go along with it.

And in fact, a few years later, he made things somewhat more palatable for the Huguenots. In 1598, when he issued something called the Edict of Nantes, a royal edict that granted toleration to French Huguenots. What the Edict of Nantes did was two things. It allowed the Huguenots to worship as they pleased without being bothered. The second thing it did is that it allowed the Huguenots to keep a number of towns in southern France fortified as places where they could go for protection in the event that war should re-erupt. In the meantime, Henry IV, or Henry IV, was crowned in 1594. The Catholic League was dissolved in 1596. And in 1598, not only did he issue the Edict of Nantes, he also made peace with Spain and Philip II with the Treaty of Vervins. Not long after that, Philip II died, and therefore Henry IV found himself with peace at hand, with his Catholic subjects pacified, his Huguenot subjects pacified, and in a position to begin building what we will come to know as French absolutism.

Well, we will see in our next upcoming lecture, we will continue talking about religion in Western Civilization. Our next topic will discuss the Dutch, or the Netherlands revolt, and the Anglo-Spanish War. Dr. Robinson will discuss men like Philip II, the King of Spain, and William of Orange, Prince William of Orange of the Netherlands, discuss what happens to the Netherlands because the Netherlands were at one part at one time part of the Spanish Empire. So we'll see what happens with with that between Spain and the Dutch, or the Netherlands. And Dr. Robinson will also discuss the, uh, the the daughters of Henry VII, Queen Elizabeth, and Mary, Queen of Scots, which wasn't a daughter of Henry VIII, but she was one of Elizabeth's cousins. So we'll find out about the intrigue that's going on in England at this time. Until next time.