J. H. Merle D'Aubigné - History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin (Vol. 1-8)

Margaret had never ceased to entertain in her heart a hope of seeing the Count of Hohenlohe come to Paris and labour at spreading the Gospel in France. Sigismond, a man of the world and at the same time a man of God, an evangelical christian and yet a church dignitary, knowing Germany well, and considered at the court of France as belonging to it, appeared to the Duchess of Alençon the fittest instrument to work among the French that transformation equally demanded by the wants of the age and the Word of God. One day she took courage and presented her request to her brother: Francis did not receive her petition favourably. He knew Hohenlohe well, and thought his evangelical principles exaggerated; besides, if any change were to be made in France, the king meant to carry it out alone. He did not, however, open his heart entirely to his sister: he simply gave her to understand that the time was not yet come. If the count came to Paris; if he gathered round him all the friends of the Gospel; if he preached at court, in the churches, in the open air perhaps, what would the emperor say, and what the pope?—‘Not yet,’ said the king.

The Duchess of Alençon, bitterly disappointed, could hardly make up her mind to communicate this sad news to the count. Yet it must be done. ‘The desire I have to see you is increased by what I hear of your virtue and of the perseverance of the divine grace in you. But ... my dear cousin, all your friends have arrived at the conclusion that, for certain reasons , it is not yet time for you to come here. As soon as we have done something , with God’s grace, I will let you know.’

Hohenlohe was distressed at this delay, and Margaret endeavoured to comfort him. ‘Erelong,’ she said, ‘the Almighty will do us the grace to perfect what he has done us the grace to begin . You will then be consoled in this company, where you are present though absent in body. May the peace of our Lord, which passeth all understanding, and which the world knoweth not, be given to your heart so abundantly that no cross can afflict it!’ 486

At the same time she increased her importunity with her brother; she conjured the king to inaugurate a new era; she once more urged the propriety of inviting the count. ‘I do not care for that man,’ answered Francis sharply. He cared for him, however, when he wanted him. There is a letter from the king ‘to his very dear and beloved cousin of Hohenlohe,’ in which he tells him that, desiring to raise a large army, and knowing ‘his loyalty and valour, his nearness of lineage, love, and charity,’ he begs him most affectionately to raise three thousand foot-soldiers. 487But where the Gospel was concerned, it was quite another matter. To put an end to his sister’s solicitation, Francis replied to her one day: ‘Do you wish, then, for my sons to remain in Spain?’ He had given them as hostages to the emperor. Margaret was silent: she had not a word to say where the fate of her nephews was concerned. She wrote to the count: ‘I cannot tell you, my friend, all the vexation I suffer: the king would not see you willingly ; the reason is the liberation of his children, which he cares for quite as much as for his own.’ She added: ‘I am of good courage towards you, rather on account of our fraternal affection than by the perishable ties of flesh and blood. For the other birth, the second delivery—there lies true and perfect union.’ The Count of Hohenlohe, Luther’s disciple, did not come to France.

This refusal was not the only grief which Francis caused his sister. The love of the King of Navarre had grown stronger, and she began to return it. But the king opposed her following the inclination of her heart. Margaret, thwarted in all her wishes, drinking of the bitter cup, revolting sometimes against the despotic will to which she was forced to bend, and feeling the wounds of sin in her heart, retired to her closet and laid bare her sorrows to Christ.

O thou, my priest, my advocate, my king,

On whom depends my life—my everything;

O Lord, who first didst drain the bitter cup of woe

And know’st its poison (if man e’er did know),

These thorns how sharp, these wounds of sin how deep—

Saviour, friend, king, oh! plead my cause, I pray:

Speak, help, and save me, lest I fall away. 488

The religious poems of Margaret, which are deficient neither in grace, sensibility, nor affection, belong (it must not be forgotten) to the early productions of the French muse; and what particularly leads us to quote them is that they express the christian sentiments of this princess. This is the period at which it seems to us that Margaret’s christianity was purest. At an earlier date, at the time of her connection with Briçonnet, her faith was clouded with the vapours of mysticism. At a later date, when the fierce will of Francis I. alarmed her tender and shrinking soul, a veil of catholicism appeared to cover the purity of her faith. But from 1526 to 1532 Margaret was herself. The evidences of the piety of the evangelical christians of this period are so few, that we could not permit ourselves to suppress those we find in the writings of the king’s sister.

The Duchess of Alençon resorted to poetry to divert her thoughts; and it was now, I think, that she wrote her poem of the Prisoner . She loved to recall the time when the King of Navarre had been captured along with Francis I.; she transported herself to the days immediately following the battle of Pavia; she imagined she could hear young Henry d’Albret expressing his confidence in God, and exclaiming from the lofty tower of Pizzighitone: Vainly the winds o’er the ocean blow, Scattering the ships as they proudly go; But not a leaf of the wood can they shake, Until at the sound of thy voice they awake. The captive, after describing in a mournful strain the sorrows of his prison, laid before Christ the sorrow which sprang from a feeling of his sins:

Not one hell but many million I’ve deserved for my rebellion. * * * * * But my sin in thee was scourged, And my guilt in thee was purged. 489

The noble prisoner does not seek the salvation of God for himself alone; he earnestly desires that the Gospel may be brought to that Italy where he is a captive—one of the earliest aspirations for Italian reformation.

Can you tell why from your home—

Home so peaceful—you were torn?

’Twas that over stream and mountain

The precious treasure should be borne

By thee, in thy vessel frail,

To God’s elect 490....

On a sudden the prisoner remembers his friend; he believes in his tender commiseration and thus invokes him:

O Francis, my king, of my soul the best part,

Thou model of friendship, so dear to my heart,

A Jonathan, Orestes, and Pollux in one,

As thou seest me in sorrow and anguish cast down,

My Achates, my brother, oh! what sayest thou? 491

But Henry d’Albret called Francis I. his Jonathan to no purpose; Jonathan would not give him his sister. The king had other thoughts. During his captivity the emperor had demanded Margaret’s hand of the regent. 492But Francis, whom they were going to unite, contrary to his wishes, to Charles’s sister, thought that one marriage with the house of Austria was enough, and hoping that Henry VIII. might aid him in taking vengeance on Charles, was seized with a strong liking for him. ‘If my body is the emperor’s prisoner,’ he said, ‘my heart is a prisoner to the King of England!’ 493He gained over Cardinal Wolsey, who told his master that there was not in all Europe a woman worthier of the crown of England than Margaret of France. 494But the christian heart of the Duchess of Alençon revolted at the idea of taking the place of Catherine of Arragon, whose virtues she honoured; 495and Henry VIII. himself soon entered on a different course. It was necessary to give up the design of placing Margaret on the throne of England by the side of Henry Tudor ... a fortunate thing for the princess, but a misfortune perhaps for the kingdom over which she would have reigned.