Paris ne vaut pas une messe! - A Huguenot IN AAR

Chapter XXXIIX – The Sighting of the Stephansdom


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Allons!
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Strasbourg proved to be a decisive turning point in the conflict between France and the Catholic Alliance as it prevented the Austrian armies from isolating the bulk of the Huguenot forces from her supplies and reinforcements. Arriving in Upper Baden, the commanders, Crussol and d’Auvergne received a hero’s welcome by the French armies, but also found much favour in the grateful king Nicholas. The king saw at once that the defeat had sent the Austrian military into confusion and after a brief ceremony and ball, where Crussol was created marshal of France and Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne was drawn into the ranks of the nobility as Vicomte de Turenne, the enthusiastic monarch organized a counteroffensive against the Austrians who still held many fortresses along the Rhine. The victors from Strasbourg took their 20,000 men into Ansbach, where they inflicted another defeat upon the Catholic army stationed there. Later the force was reinforced by two Dutch and Flemish armies who numbered some 7,000 men in total. Nicholas took the Royal Army south into Breisgau where he utterly destroyed the 5,000 Austrians stationed there. While the Armée de Jura began a lengthy process of besieging and removing the well fed garrisons from Württemberg, the King hurried further into Tirol and took many prisoners and standards as prize following his battles there thanks to his skilled tactical manoeuvres. The furious charge took the befuddled Catholic commanders completely by surprise and they soon started to withdraw their forces from the eminent threat of the Huguenot armies, losing many men to attacks performed by the vanguard of the Protestant armies.


From their position in Ansbach, Crussol and Turenne advanced further into Bohemia, making good use of the roads paved for the Catholic armies during their rapid incursion across the Rhine. Although they pressed on, they were unable to convince their allies from the Low Countries to follow their example and advance on Prague. However, many Bohemian Protestants emerged from hiding and through their considerably aid with foraging and manoeuvring, the lack of the support from Antwerp and Amsterdam almost disappeared. Even though the Austrian push across the Rhine had been turned around and French forces now stood closer to Vienna and Prague than ever before the disadvantages from invading the Austrian domains now became clearer and clearer. Catholic forces that had retreated after the Battle of Strasbourg now reappeared before the French forces in Western Bohemia and Tyrol. Numbering countless of troopers from all over Catholic Christendom and some Protestant and Calvinist mercenaries from the Northern states the Catholic armies carried both the Imperial and Papal blessings with them, and in their wake came the fiercest enemy of them all: winter. As the cold months of November and December crept closer and closer both sides dug in and fortified their positions while hoping that the new year would bring better tidings of war.


All in all the first year of warfare on the German front seen incredible success had befall both sides. Austria had stormed across the Rhine and been inches away from encircling and possibly destroying the great Armée Royale, while Crussol and Turenne in turn smashed these gains aside as they spearheaded into Bohemia alongside Nicholas, which resulted in considerably (although threatened) French territorial gains. Though her armed forces had not been successful at taming Nicholas, although he almost did fall victim to his eagerness in Baden, Eleanor had continued to avoid the dreaded scenario of the conflict escalating to an all-out civil war between the Imperial states. Anton still held majority in the Curia and only Trier and the Palatinate defied imperial authority in claiming Nicholas Henri the true emperor of the German Nation while the rest of the states either remained silently awaiting the outcome of this duel of monarchs and faiths or cautiously backed the emperor in Holstein. Yet Nicholas remained strong in his belief that the petty rabble of Papism wouldn’t be able to withstand his spring offensive; this would be the time for the great pincer movement, the fulfilment of the Charlemagne Plan.




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Intermission: The Huguenot Faith



This might be incredible boring to some, but writing the following gave me a much deeper insight in the doctrines of the Huguenot faith, so it could also be incredible interesting to others.
All of this is historical correct (to some degree as I could easily have made errors along the way).

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Calvin and his Theology
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Although the prologue deals with the story of the Huguenots and how their faith came to France to a certain degree, it omits the details regarding the theological differences between the followers of Calvin and the Roman Church as well as what kind of people made out the Huguenot congregations spread throughout France. In this short intermission, I’ll attempt to account for these various aspects of the AAR’s protagonists, the Huguenots of the Gallic Church.

Through the prologue, we know that when the reformation began in earnest, there were two personages playing the leading roles in spreading the new faith; Luther and Calvin. Calvin was an ethnic Frenchman, who fled the country when his theological beliefs brought his life in danger from the Catholic reaction. Born in Noyon in Picardy, Calvin studied theology in Paris, before moving on to Orleans in order to study law and Greek. His interests lay mainly with Humanism, which clearly can be seen in his earliest publication (an edition of De Clementia, 1532 by Seneca). Shortly after the publication, Calvin underwent a religious conversion under unknown circumstances, which led him to abandon his old life at the theological schools and the life as a catholic clerk. After moving around between the cities of Basle, Strasbourg and Geneva, Calvin finally settled at the latter where he remained until his death, using it as a base from where to send missionaries, plaques and propaganda into his native country of France to which he could not return out of fear from the Catholic powers.

But what exactly was the difference between the theological ideas of Calvin and the Roman Church, which still dominated France? This is a question of great importance, as it was Calvin that forged the reformed faiths in France into something at least resembling a congregation with some measure of doctrinal coherence. Much like the other of the great religious reformers, Luther, Calvin’s theology was mainly founded on the doctrine of faith through justification[1] alone, but puts far more importance on the events of the Fall[2]. Calvin did not believe in the idea of man being in possession of a free will and saw man as an eternal sinner who was definitely incapable of achieving good by his own efforts. Still, man isn’t completely unredeemable in the eyes of God who extends the gift of salvation to an exact few of the perpetual sinners of Earth. Thus Calvin believes that God has destined one part of Humanity to salvation and another to eternal damnation through a virtue of choice incapable to the human mind. This is known as predestination [3] and although it seems somewhat harsh it actually came to be an incredible source of joy for Calvin and his followers[4], as man may see whether he would be going in the afterlife based on the faith that moved him when alive (thus acting godly and doing good would be a sign that you would be predestined to salvation).

Other than the doctrine of predestination Calvin also held several other views that came into conflict with the orthodoxy of the Roman Catholic Church of which a few notable ones will be listed here:

• He retains only two sacraments; baptism and communion, unlike in Catholicism where there are seven.
  
  
• Much alike Luther, Calvin rejects purgatory, prayers for the death and the cult of saints and sees the Scripture as the only source through which to obtain the revealed truth. God communicates with man through the Bible, but the message of God can only be understood by the elect.
  
  
• God’s presence in the Eucharist is spiritual and not corporal (again opposed to the Catholic faith) as the bread and wine are only symbols of divine elegance.

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Protestantism in France Prior to the Rise of Henri IV
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It is agreed up amongst historians that the early protestant movements in France originated as a mainly urban phenomena. The countryside, however, was not immune towards the spread of new faith and this was most obvious in the Midi (south-east part of France). Yet it was not until 1560 that the reformation began to spread towards the nobility of France. The acceptance of Calvinism by the nobility (which was done for many different reasons throughout the kingdom) doubtlessly helped spreading the new faith amongst the ranks of the second estate, thanks to the system of Clientage that existed in much of France in those times. A nobleman who converted to Calvinism would bring all his clients with him, which of course would mean an insane amount of converts if a very wealthy and popular noble was to convert.

In the towns and cities, Protestantism began appealing to the lower classes of society notably the artisans and this religious dissent has been explained by some historians as a result of socio-economic dissatisfaction in the wake of the Price Revolution. Yet as the time wore on, the Protestants of France would come to draw its strength from virtually all strata of contemporary society. Yet some evidence from the cities of Rouen and Lyon tells us that some interesting divergences did occur. Cloth-workers and lawyers remained largely Catholic while the strongest of the Huguenot trades were those with a relatively high standard of literacy. In Lyon the bankers remained Catholic while the merchants converted to Protestantism. Furthermore sources from other cities from late 16th century France tells us that out of the population of Toulouse, Grenoble and Montpellier roughly 55-65% percent of the Huguenots were notables.

Although the peasantry of the day was not immune to the new faith (Dauphine, the Midi and Normandy were notable Protestant strongholds as early as 1530), the peasant for the most part stood on the sidelines of religious diversion.

Like the varied support for Protestantism from all parts of society seems perplexing, so does the fact that there was no even concentration of reformed churches and centres in France. For the most part they lay scattered across the kingdom in its entirety, but a somewhat solid base were situated south of the river Loire and then spread out “in a broad sweep” from La Rochelle in the west to the Alps in the east. This has been commonly known as “the Huguenot Crescent”. It’s puzzling that while the south of France took an open stance and (somewhat) embraced the Reformation the provinces in the north (Brittany, Picardy, Champagne and Burgundy) remained predominantly Catholic. The closeness of Geneva to the south can not be the explanation as just as many Protestants went into exile from Normandy as there did from Languedoc. A solid guess would probably be the strong sense of regional independence felt in the south alongside the outspread use of Clientage.










[1] The extent, means, and scope of justification are areas of significant debate. Broadly speaking, Catholics and Orthodox Christians distinguish between initial justification—which occurs in baptism—and final justification, accomplished after a lifetime of striving to do God's will. Protestants believe that justification is a singular act in which God declares an unrighteous individual to be righteous because of the work of Jesus. Justification is granted to all who have faith, but even that is viewed as a gift from God.(From wiki)

[2]The original sin of Adam and Even, although this can also be seen as the wider theological consequences of this original sin through the following ages.

[3]I was personally surprised that Calvin from “Calvin and Hobbes” was based on the French reformer in more than name. Just as John Calvin believes in predestination, so does Calvin (the one with the tiger) as he continuously claims that he has a destiny for greatness etc.

[4]Schadenfreude? ^^

This has been based on J. Knecht, Robert: The French Civil Wars, Pearson Education Limited 2000
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