French Wars of Religion

Matters came to a head in June 1584 when the death of Henry III’s younger brother, the Duke of Anjou, left Henry of Navarre, who had repudiated his forced conversion to Catholicism after his escape from prison in 1576, as legal heir to the throne of the childless king. Fearing a Protestant king, the Guises re-formed the Holy League and secured the support of Spain and the pope for their efforts to exclude Henry of Navarre from the succession. Henry III joined the Holy League in July 1585, but was mistrusted, as his only hope of retaining any independence lay in a negotiated settlement and in preventing either side from winning an outright victory. The Holy League wanted nothing less than to destroy the Huguenots and share their wealth with the king. On July 7, 1585, Henry III, under pressure from the Holy League, issued the Treaty of Nemours, which repealed all the privileges granted to the Huguenots and excluded Henry of Navarre from the succession. Consequently, Henry of Navarre began the eighth war of religion, also known as the War of the Three Henrys, which saw the Huguenots, supported by England, Denmark, and the German principalities, take on both the Holy League, led by Henri I, 3rd Duc de Guise, and Henry III.

After being defeated at Coutras in October 1587 by Henry of Navarre, Henry III found his power rivalled by that of Henri I, 3rd Duc de Guise. He thus attempted a coup against the Holy League at Paris on May 12, 1588, in what became known as the Day of Barricades. However, the citizenry of the strongly Catholic Paris, dissatisfied with Henry III’s inability to finally defeat the Huguenots, revolted against him. Driving his Swiss troops out, they forced the king to flee the city for Rouen. Paris then declared for the Holy League—a move followed by a number of other towns—and welcomed Guise. The Holy League now effectively controlled France, and the king was forced to accede to its demands to create Guise, lieutenant general of France. However, Henry III refused to be treated as a mere puppet and on December 23, 1588, lured Guise, and his brother Louis II, cardinal of Guise, to the Château de Blois, Loire, where they were both assassinated. The murders caused Henry III’s breach with the Holy League to become permanent, and members of the Holy League, supported by Paris, Reims, and many other towns, under the leadership of the younger brother of the Guises, Charles de Lorraine, Duc de Mayenne, joined forces against the king.

Henry III subsequently sought refuge with Henry of Navarre, whom he declared his successor. The king concluded an alliance with the Huguenots and both he and Henry of Navarre became joint leaders of a Huguenot army. However, while attempting to regain Paris on August 1, 1589, Henry III was stabbed by Jacques Clément, a fanatical Dominican friar, and died the next day. Henry of Navarre succeeded as Henry IV, but was recognized only by a small number of towns, mainly in the south and west. In fact, the accession of a Huguenot caused many of the politiques to abandon his army. The remainder of France lined up behind the Holy League, who refused to acknowledge a Protestant as king of France, and were backed by the pope and intermittently supported from the Low Countries by the Spanish army.

Despite the apparent strength of the Holy League, Henry IV heavily defeated Mayenne’s army at the battles of Arques, in September 1589, and Ivry, in March 1590, both in Normandy. Knowing that he had to control Paris, the Holy League stronghold, to be accepted as king of all France, Henry besieged the capital, but it was eventually relieved by a Spanish army from the Low Countries in August 1591. A siege of Rouen likewise failed in April 1592. However, Henry managed to circumvent the problem of military stalemate by skilfully exploiting the divisions that existed among the Holy Leaguers, who were weakened by an inability to decide upon a Catholic candidate for the throne. The issue was to have been addressed at the Holy League Estates-General, which met in 1593, but internal rivalries meant that the question was never resolved. The situation was further confused by Henry IV’s re-conversion to Catholicism in May 1593, thus disarming his opponents. Though many doubted the sincerity of Henry’s conversion, the country was tiring of endemic war and peasant revolt. On March 22, 1594, Henry IV bribed the Holy League commander of Paris to admit his army. The conversion of the king enabled him to be accepted by the Parisian middle class and to return to the capital; in Henry’s words, Paris was “well worth a mass”. The following year he was crowned king at Chartres Cathedral.

After this, Henry IV was able, one by one, to defeat or buy off the towns and nobles of the House of Guise who continued to resist. At the same time, he used a mixture of concessions and force to defuse a major peasant revolt in the south-west. In 1592 he moved against the Spanish forces both along France’s north-eastern frontier and in Brittany, and was consequently granted absolution by the pope. In Brittany, the Catholic Philippe Emmanuel, Duc de Mercoeur, had declared an independent province in 1588 and with Spanish support—Philip II hoped to make his infant daughter queen of Brittany—had defeated Henry IV at Craon in 1592. Yet, Henry eventually achieved the surrender of Mercoeur at Angers in March 1598, and the withdrawal of the Spanish forces from France was obtained with the Treaty of Vervins on May 2, 1598. The wars were over.

The French Wars of Religion illustrated the great power of the major feudal princes at the end of 16th century. In spite of the efforts of Henry II, Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III, these princes were still capable of raising huge armies, following policies independent of the monarch, and of creating effectively independent states. They represented the resurrection of feudal anarchy. The wars also showed the virulence of religious extremism prevalent in France at that time, manifested in several massacres. In addition, the wars highlighted a change from the wars of the Middle Ages, as it was no longer enough for a battle to decide the outcome of a war on its own; throughout the wars, the Huguenots could lose battles but preserve their positions through treaties. Lastly, the weakness of the kings did not involve a reduction in the legislative and centralizing power of the monarchy. Strong individuals such as a Catherine de Médicis or Michel de l’Hôpital proved themselves able to preserve the structure of the institutions and administration of the monarchy during these dramatic years.

Indeed the ultimate beneficiary of the chaos of the 1590s was the monarchy, to which all sides appealed as a refuge from social anarchy. This enabled Henry IV to establish the foundations of a royal absolutism that lasted until the French Revolution of 1789. The only group excepted from this trend was the Huguenots. It was clear also that Henry could no longer rely on the Huguenots, who drove a hard bargain to secure legislation guaranteeing toleration. The Edict of Nantes of April 13, 1598, granted them freedom of worship and the protection of a large number of garrison towns across southern and western France. However, the edict was a reluctant truce between the religions, with guarantees for both sides, rather than a sign of genuine toleration, and the apparent strength of the Huguenots disguised the fact that the movement was now confined to a beleaguered minority. Eventually, in 1629, its privileges, but not its freedoms, were abolished by Henry’s son, Louis XIII, after a successful siege of the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle the previous year by Cardinal Richelieu.