uguenots. The
great massacre of St. Bartholomew was to sleep for seven years longer.
Alva was, to be sure, much encouraged at first by the language of the
French princes and nobles who were present at Bayonne. Monluc protested
that "they might saw the Queen Dowager in two before she would become
Huguenot." Montpensier exclaimed that "he would be cut in pieces for
Philip's service--that the Spanish monarch was the only hope for France,"
and, embracing Alva with fervor, he affirmed that "if his body were to be
opened at that moment, the name of Philip would be found imprinted upon
his heart." The Duke, having no power to proceed to an autopsy, physical
or moral, of Montpensier's interior, was left somewhat in the dark,
notwithstanding these ejaculations. His first conversation with the
youthful King, however, soon dispelled his hopes. He found immediately,
in his own words, that Charles the Ninth "had been doctored." To take up
arms, for religious reasons, against his own subjects, the monarch
declared to be ruinous and improper. It was obvious to Alva that the
royal pupil had learned his lesson for that occasion. It was a pity for
humanity that the wisdom thus hypocritically taught him could not have
sunk into his heart. The Duke did his best to bring forward the plans and
wishes of his royal master, but without success. The Queen Regent
proposed a league of the two Kings and the Emperor against the Turk, and
wished to arrange various matrimonial alliances between the sons and
daughters of the three houses. Alva expressed the opinion that the
alliances were already close enough, while, on the contrary, a secret
league against the Protestants would make all three families the safer.
Catherine, however, was not to be turned from her position. She refused
even to admit that the Chancellor de l'Hospital was a Huguenot, to which
the Duke replied that she was the only person in her kingdom who held
that opinion. She expressed an intention of convoking an assembly of
doctors, and Alva ridiculed in his letters to Philip the affectation of
such a proceeding. In short, she made it sufficiently evident that the
hour for the united action of the French and Spanish sovereigns against
their subjects had not struck, so that the famous Bayonne conference was
terminated without a result. It seemed not the less certain, however, in
the general opinion of mankind, that all the particulars of a regular
plot had been definitely arranged upon t