Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, vol 1 | Page 6

With the exception of temporary lulls, originating in policy or exhaustion, there was no cessation of arms until 1598. Although it is usually and perhaps best described as a religious war, the struggle was not altogether between the Catholic and the Huguenot or Protestant. There were many other elements that came in to give their coloring to the contest, and especially to determine the course and policy of individuals.
The ultra-Catholic desired to maintain the old faith with all its ancient prestige and power, and to crush out and exclude every other. With this party were found the court, certain ambitious and powerful families, and nearly all the officials of the church. In close alliance with it were the Roman Pontiff, the King of Spain, and the Catholic princes of Germany.
The Huguenots desired what is commonly known as liberty of conscience; or, in other words, freedom to worship God according to their own views of the truth, without interference or restriction. And in close alliance with them were the Queen of England and the Protestant princes of Germany.
Personal motives, irrespective of principle, united many persons and families with either of these great parties which seemed most likely to subserve their private ambitions. The feudal system was nearly extinct in form, but its spirit was still alive. The nobles who had long held sway in some of the provinces of France desired to hold them as distinct and separate governments, and to transmit them as an inheritance to their children. This motive often determined their political association.
During the most of the period of this long civil war, Catherine de Médicis [12] was either regent or in the exercise of a controlling influence in the government of France. She was a woman of commanding person and extraordinary ability, skilful in intrigue, without conscience and without personal religion. She hesitated at no crime, however black, if through it she could attain the objects of her ambition. Neither of her three sons, Francis, Charles, and Henry, who came successively to the throne, left any legal heir to succeed him. The succession became, therefore, at an early period, a question of great interest. If not the potent cause, it was nevertheless intimately connected with most of the bloodshed of that bloody period.
A solemn league was entered into by a large number of the ultra-Catholic nobles to secure two avowed objects, the succession of a Catholic prince to the throne, and the utter extermination of the Huguenots. Henry, King of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. of France, admitted to be the legal heir to the throne, was a Protestant, and therefore by the decree of the League disqualified to succeed. Around his standard, the Huguenots rallied in great numbers. With him were associated the princes of Condé, of royal blood, and many other distinguished nobles. They contended for the double purpose of securing the throne to its rightful heir and of emancipating and establishing the Protestant faith.
But there was another class, acting indeed with one or the other of these two great parties, nevertheless influenced by very different motives. It was composed of moderate Catholics, who cared little for the political schemes and civil power of the Roman Pontiff, who dreaded the encroachments of the King of Spain, who were firmly patriotic and desired the aggrandizement and glory of France.
The ultra-Catholic party was, for a long period, by far the most numerous and the more powerful; but the Huguenots were sufficiently strong to keep up the struggle with varying success for nearly forty years.
After the alliance of Henry of Navarre with Henry III. against the League, the moderate Catholics and the Huguenots were united and fought together under the royal standard until the close of the war in 1598.
Champlain was personally engaged in the war in Brittany for several years. This province on the western coast of France, constituting a tongue of land jutting out as it were into the sea, isolated and remote from the great centres of the war, was among the last to surrender to the arms of Henry IV. The Huguenots had made but little progress within its borders. The Duke de Mercoeur [13] had been its governor for sixteen years, and had bent all his energies to separate it from France, organize it into a distinct kingdom, and transmit its sceptre to his own family.
Champlain informs us that he was quarter-master in the army of the king under Marshal d'Aumont, de Saint Luc, and Marshal de Brissac, distinguished officers of the French army, who had been successively in command in that province for the purpose of reducing it into obedience to Henry IV.
Marshal d'Aumont [14] took command of the army in Brittany in 1592. He was then seventy years of age, an able and patriotic officer, a moderate Catholic, and an uncompromising foe