. de Conde vouch for it. Among other
objections that have been urged with force against the genuineness of
the document, are the following: The improbability that the Triumvirs
would mature a plan involving all the Catholic sovereigns of Europe
without previously obtaining their consent, of which there is no trace;
the inconsistency of the project with the well-known policy and
character of the German Emperor Ferdinand; the improbability that the
Council of Trent would indorse a plan aimed at the humiliation of
Navarre, who, when the council actually reassembled in January, 1562,
was completely won over to the Roman party. In favor of the document may
be urged: First, that M. Capefigue (Histoire de la reforme, de la ligue,
etc., ii. 243-245) asserts: "J'ai trouve cette piece, qu'on a crue
supposee, en original et signee dans les MSS. Colbert, bibl. du roi."
Prof. Soldan, who has devoted an appendix to the first volume of his
Gesch. des Prot. in Frankreich, to a discussion of this reported
agreement between the Triumvirs, was unsuccessful in finding any trace
of such a paper. Secondly, that the Memoires de Guise, the manuscript of
which, according to the statement of the editor, M. Aime Champollion,
fils (Notice sur Francois de Lorraine, due d'Aumale et de Guise,
prefixed to his Memoires, first published in the Collection
Michaud-Poujoulat, 1851, p. 5), is partly in the handwriting of the duke
himself, partly in that of his secretary, Millet, insert the "Sommaire"
precisely as it stands in the Memoires de Conde, without any denial of
its authenticity. This would appear, at first sight, to settle the
question beyond cavil. But it must be borne in mind that many of the
memoires of the sixteenth century are compiled on the plan of including
all contemporary papers of importance, whether written by friend or by
foe. Frequently the most contradictory narratives of the same event are
placed side by side, with little or no comment. This is precisely the
case with those of Guise, in which, for example, no less than _four_
accounts--_three_ of them from Huguenot sources--are given of the
massacre of Vassy. Now we have the testimony of De Thou (_ubi supra_)
that this agreement, industriously circulated by the Prince of Conde and
the Huguenots, made a powerful impression not only in France, but in
Germany and all Northern Europe. So important a document, even if a
forgery, would naturally find a place in such a collection as the
Mem