The Pocket Bible; or, Christian the Printer: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

Derideron, vignette on vignon! Derideron!"

During the song of the old soldier, who calmly continued to strike at the flint, the blows aimed at the door redoubled in violence. Presently it was heard to crack, yield, break, and one of its fragments fell inside the apartment. Immediately thereupon Josephin applied the lighted wick to the train of powder and vanished underground letting down the heavy trap door over his head. The train of powder took fire, shot along its course as rapid as a flash of lightning, and reached the fuse of the petard, which exploded with a great crash at the very moment when the door, finally broken through, offered a passage to the Marquis of Montbar, closely followed by his henchmen. Like himself, they were blown up, mutilated or killed by the fragments of the iron box which flew into pieces. The masonry of the door, being torn down by the explosion, ripped the rest of the wall after it, bringing down the ceiling which fell in a heap upon the heads of the royalists.

Cornelia, Antonicq, Master Barbot, Captain Mirant and six resolute mariners who accompanied him but whose help was not needed, were soon joined at the bottom of the aqueduct by the apprentice and the Franc-Taupin. Josephin forthwith blew up the mine that he had laid at that place in order completely to obstruct the passage of the royalists in case they attempted to pursue the fugitives. The whole party soon arrived safe and sound at La Rochelle, where they met Louis Rennepont and his wife, a prey to mortal anxiety upon the issue of the enterprise, which had that morning been planned, upon Theresa's bringing back from the beach the news of Cornelia's capture and reservation for the Duke of Anjou.

The bloody defeat, sustained by the royalists at the assault of the Bastion of the Evangelium, was the presage of the raising of the siege of La Rochelle. After two other stubbornly contested encounters, at which the royalist forces were again repulsed, the Duke of Anjou commissioned several seigneurs as parliamentarians to the Rochelois with propositions of peace. The majority of the City Council took the stand that the Huguenots refused to lay down arms until a new royal edict consecrated their rights and their liberty. The minority of the City Council, aware of the worthlessness of all royal edicts, favored breaking with royalty for all time. The view of the majority prevailed. Commissioners were appointed by both sides, to agree upon the bases of a new edict. The Catholic commissioners were the Seigneur of La Vauguyon, René of Villequier, Francis of La Baume, the Count of Suze, the Seigneur of Malicorne, Marshal Montluc, Armand of Gontaut-Biron, and the Count of Retz. The Rochelois commissioners were two bourgeois, Morrisson the Mayor, and Captain Gargouillaud. The reformers stoutly maintained their position, and stipulated for the same, not in the name of their own city only, but in the name of all the reformers of the Protestant Republican Union. These stipulations were subsequently rejected by the Union, so soon as they became known, upon the just ground of the rest of the Union's not having been consulted, and of its declining to recognize the royal authority. Thus, thanks to their bold insurrection and their heroic resistance the Rochelois imposed upon Charles IX the new edict of July 15, 1573. This edict consecrated and extended all the rights previously conquered by the reformers. A clause in this edict, which was a crushing document to the Catholic party, provided: "That all armed insurrections which took place after the night of August 23, 1572, are amnestied." Thus Charles IX was made to admit that the reformers had justly drawn the sword to avenge the crime of St. Bartholomew's night!

Thus the siege of La Rochelle was disgracefully raised by the Catholic army. This expedition cost the King immense sums of money, and he lost in the course of the several assaults upon the city, and also from sickness, about twenty-two thousand men. Among the seigneurs and captains killed during the siege were the Duke of Aumale, Clermont, Tallard, Cosseins, Du Guast, etc., besides over three hundred subaltern officers.

Thus you see, Oh, sons of Joel! the glorious issue to the Rochelois of the siege of their city once more consecrates this truth, so often inscribed in the annals of our plebeian family: "Never falter! Let us struggle, let us battle without flagging. It is fatedly decreed that, only and ever through force, arms in hand, through INSURRECTION, we can conquer our freedom and our rights, which are ever denied to us, ignored and violated by our eternal foes – Royalty and the Church of Rome."

EPILOGUE

On this day, the 29th of September, 1609, I, Antonicq Lebrenn, now in my sixty-first year, close, on our farm of Karnak, this legend of our family, which is the continuation of the narrative written and bequeathed to us by my grandfather Christian the printer and friend of Robert Estienne.

Immediately upon the raising of the siege of La Rochelle I married Cornelia Mirant. Shortly after I put into execution a project that I had long been fondly nursing – that of moving to Brittany and establishing myself in the neighborhood of the cradle of my family. Before leaving La Rochelle, Colonel Plouernel, who recovered from his wounds sustained in the siege, renewed his offer of leasing out to me a farm belonging to the seigniorial estate of Mezlean, a patrimony of his wife's father, and known as the Karnak farm by reason of its being in the close neighborhood of the druid stones that bear that name. These stones are still extant, ranged in wide avenues, as they stood in the days of Julius Caesar, when our ancestress Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen, offered herself to the gods as a holocaust, in the hope of causing them to render the arms of the Gauls victorious in their impending struggle for independence. I accepted Colonel Plouernel's offer, an offer that also pleased Cornelia and her father, who, as he continued almost constantly to travel by water between La Rochelle and Vannes, a port located near Karnak, foresaw, as happened in fact, that he would spend near us all the time that he did not spend aboard ship. I sold my armorer's shop. Leaving my sister Theresa and her husband Louis Rennepont at La Rochelle, where the latter practiced the profession of law, and taking with us my uncle the Franc-Taupin, who promised to himself the pleasure of rocking our children on his knees and singing to them his Franc-Taupin songs, as he had done to my father Odelin, my ill-starred aunt Hena, and my uncle Hervé of sad memory, we departed from La Rochelle and settled down on our farm of Karnak on October 20 of the year 1573.

My sister Theresa and her husband Louis Rennepont still reside in the old Protestant city. Every year they come to see us. Thanks to the numerous trips that his profession compelled him to make to Paris, my brother-in-law came in contact with several Huguenots who were well informed on current events. His conversations with them, together with extracts from several books that were published concerning leading public men and important occurrences, furnished him with copious materials which he left with me. These materials enable me here to make a summary sketch of the leading events since the siege of La Rochelle was raised:

The edict of pacification of La Rochelle was not wholly satisfactory to the Huguenots of the other provinces. The example of the Low Countries, then in successful revolt against the monarchic-clerical power of Spain, and organized upon the republican pattern, inspired their brothers in France to renewed efforts. The "Politicals" gained new recruits every day. The Prince of Condé, ashamed of his act of desertion, fled the court and issued a manifesto from Strasburg repudiating his abjuration. Measures were in train to renew the war, and to overthrow Charles IX, when his death gave a new turn to affairs.

The monster expired in 1574, barely twenty-four years of age and haunted by his bloody deeds. "Oh! nurse, nurse!" he would cry in agonies of terror; "Oh! nurse, how much blood – it is St. Bartholomew's blood! Oh! how many murders – how many victims struggling to escape under the sword. I see them – Oh! what wicked councillors I had! Oh, God! Oh, God! have mercy upon me!"[85 - Register Journal of L'Etoile, p. 34.]

Charles IX was followed by his brother the Duke of Anjou, who, in the meantime, had been elected King of Poland. Apprized by his mother of his brother's decease, he fled his Polish kingdom, and mounted the French throne under the name of Henry III. True to his family traditions, Henry III sought at first to violate the Edict of La Rochelle. Finding this act of treachery unfeasible, he vacillated between extreme reaction and progress. This course earned for him the suspicion of the Catholic clergy and he was assassinated by a Dominican monk, James Clement, in 1589.

War again broke out, with Henry of Bearn now at the head of the Huguenots, to whom he returned during the reign of Henry III. Henry of Bearn now claimed the crown by inheritance as Henry IV, besieged Paris, and was finally crowned, but not until he once more abjured Protestantism. His reign was benign and favorable to the Reformation. In 1598 the Edict of Nantes was signed, granting the Huguenots absolute freedom of conscience. The policy of Henry IV enraged the priesthood, and he also fell a victim to the assassin's knife. The assassin's name was Francis Ravaillac. "Nine days after the death of Henry IV, on Tuesday, May 23, 1610, an altercation took place between Monsieur Leomenie and Father Cotton in full council. Leomenie said to the Jesuit that it was he and his Society of Jesus that murdered the King. On that same day, Ravaillac, being interrogated by the commission, answered in accordance with the maxims of the Jesuits Mariana, Becanus and others, whose writings recommend the killing of a tyrant."

The death of Henry IV conjured away the danger that Rome, the Empire and Spain saw themselves threatened with – the Christian Republic and the perpetual peace of Europe. The fresh murder, also committed at the instigation of the disciples of Loyola, had fatal consequences. But sooner or later Right triumphs over Wrong, Justice over Iniquity. Therefore, Oh, sons of Joel! no faltering. Some day the Universal Republic will unfurl the red banner of freedom, and will break the yoke both of the Roman Church and of this royalty that has oppressed Gaul for so many centuries.

As to our own family, Cornelia Mirant with whom I have now been married thirty-seven years, gave me after twenty years of our wedded life, a son whom I have named Stephan. We have lived on our farm near the sacred stones of Karnak, and not far from Craigh, the high hill upon which, according to our family traditions, stood the house of our ancestor Joel in the days of Julius Caesar. My uncle the Franc-Taupin remained with us to the end of his long and eventful life. He died on the 12th of November, 1589.

My brother-in-law Louis Rennepont continues to exercise his profession at La Rochelle. The youngest of his sons, Marius Rennepont, embraced the career of merchant mariner and sailed away, when still very young, on board a merchant vessel commanded by one of Captain Mirant's friends. Captain Mirant died in 1593. That same year we lost our old friend Master Barbot, the boilermaker of the isle of Rhe.

I preserved amicable relations to the end with Colonel Plouernel, since the battle of Roche-la-Belle the head of his house. Shortly before his death we visited upon his invitation the old Castle of Plouernel, where our ancestor Den-Brao the mason was buried alive together with other serfs in the donjon constructed by themselves, and out of which Fergan the Quarryman, Den-Brao's son, rescued his own child, a poor boy whose blood was to assist the incantations of Azenor the Pale, the mistress of Neroweg VI. Nothing is left to-day of that feudal edifice but imposing ruins. Its place is now taken by a magnificent castle built in the style of the Renaissance, and raised at the foot of the mountain. Colonel Plouernel's son remained faithful to the Reformed religion, but, after his death, his son abjured Protestantism and took up his residence at the court of Louis XIII, the successor of Henry IV, with whom he became a favorite. The new head of the family never returned to his own castle, which, together with the vast domains attached to it, is ruled by the bailiffs of the seigniories of Plouernel and Mezlean.

Once, on the occasion of a trip to the port of Vannes, I met a traveler just arrived from Germany, who informed me of the death of Prince Charles of Gerolstein, a descendant of one of the branches of our plebeian family whose ancestor was Gaëlo, one of the companions of old Rolf, the chief of the Northman pirates. Prince Charles left a son behind, heir of his principality, who remains faithful to the Reformed religion.

Our life has run peaceful and happy at this place. We cultivate our fields, and they satisfy our wants. My son Stephan, now sixteen years of age, helps me in my field labors. He is of a kind, timid and diffident disposition, although born of so intrepid a mother as Cornelia. He will, I hope, live peacefully here, unless the civil discords, which already begin to threaten the minority of Louis XIII, should extend into Brittany.

I shall here close this narrative which my grandfather Christian the printer began under the reign of Francis I. I shall join it to the archives and relics of our family together with the pocket Bible printed by my grandfather, and which his daughter Hena, baptized in religion Sister St. Frances-in-the-Tomb, held in her hands before she was plunged twenty-five times into the flames on the 21st of January, 1535, under the eyes of King Francis I, to the greater glory of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.

THE END

notes

1

Tire-Laines means literally Wool-Pluckers.

2

Tire-Soies: literally Silk-Pluckers.

3

Mauvais-Garçons; literally Bad Boys.

4

From the bowels of the earth I have cried up to thee, O, Lord;
O, Lord, give ear unto my voice.
May thy ears be ready to listen
To the voice of my supplications.

5

This whole sermon la a reproduction from the records of the time. See Merle d'Aubigné, History of the Reformation in the XVI Century, vol. 1. p. 332. (Pp. 86, 87, edition H. W. Hagemann Publishing Co., New York, 1894.)

6

We consider it our duty to cite literally the monstrous fact against which the heart rises in revolt, and reason feels indignant:

"Sub commissariis insuper ac praedicatoribus veniarum imponere ut si quis, per impossibile. Dei genetricem, semper virginem violasset, quod eundem indulgentiarum vigore absolvere posset luce clarius est…" – (l'ositiones fratris J. Tezelil, quibus defendit indulgentias contra Lutherum. Theses 99, 100 and 101). Cited by Merle d'Aubigné, History of the Reformation in the XVI Century, p. 86, edition H. W. Hagemann Publishing Co., New York, 1894.

7

Merle d'Aubigné. History of the Reformation in the XVI Century, vol. I, pp. 328, 329. (P. 88, edition H. W. Hagemann Publishing Co., New York, 1894.)

8

The seat of the University of Paris.

9

For these horrible calumnies spread by the clergy against the Reformation, see De Thou, vol. I, book II, p. 97.

10

In Spanish, as well as French, "woman" and "wife" are the same word. Loyola punned upon the word.

11

For a thrilling account of one of these invasions, see "The Iron Arrow Head," the tenth of this series.

12

"Executio ad alios pertinet." – Bellarmin, vol. I, chap. VII, p. 147.

13