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siege in 1562
The siege of Rouen was a key military engagement of the first French War of Religion. After having been seized by those opposing the crown on 16 April, the siege, beginning on 28 May and culminating on 26 October brought the important city of Rouen back into the crown's control. The fall of Rouen would set the stage for the main battle of the war at Dreux several months later.
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The siege of Rouen was a key military engagement of the first French War of Religion. After having been seized by those opposing the crown on 16 April, the siege, beginning on 28 May and culminating on 26 October brought the important city of Rouen back into the crown's control. The fall of Rouen would set the stage for the main battle of the war at Dreux several months later.
At the time of the siege, Rouen was one of the leading cities of France representing both a commercial centre in its function as a port city and also an administrative capital, home to a Parlement. Protestantism had come to the city in the 1520s as an unstructured movement, gaining a cohesive form with the invitation of a Calvinist preacher to the community in 1557. By 1562 the community had reached a strength of 15,000 members, making it a sizeable minority in the town, particularly among artisans.
The growth of Calvinism in the city inspired a reactive change in the town's more hardline Catholic population, with the Rouen Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament established in the city in 1561 to defend transubstantiation from the ideological attacks it was increasingly being subject to. The ultra-Catholic Guise faction which was increasingly influential in the wider region of Normandy could also count on several allies in the city including the President of the Parlement Louis Pétremol, the Procurer Général Jean Péricard and the Bailli Villebon d'Estouteville. This influence was however counterbalanced in the Calvinist Governor of Normandy the Duke of Bouillon.
Rouen's Parlement and elite more generally were dominated by moderate Catholics, as such upon the issuing of the Edict of Saint-Germain in Jan 1562 that granted limited toleration to Protestant worship, the Rouen Parlement would be the first to ratify it, whilst the Paris Parlement resisted until March. Meanwhile the Council of 24, the chief governmental apparatus of the town itself was divided, its 7 elected Conselliers-Échevins split between 4 Calvinists and 3 Catholics.
Beginning with the Affair of the Placards in the reign of Francis I, Protestantism was subject to organised persecution in France. This continued through the reign of Henry II and Francis II, however with the latter's early death the regency of Catherine de' Medici for her young son Charles IX offered a new policy of limited toleration. Frequent heresy trials would be a feature of Rouen life from the 1530-50s, the nascent community’s first preacher being forced to flee the kingdom after an order of banishment in 1546. With a Parlement order of execution for any Calvinist minister arrested, and the seizing of the property of anyone found to be hosting an assembly many converts chose to flee to Geneva prior to 1559.
Those converts that chose to remain however were not idle, beginning in 1535 sporadic acts of iconoclasm and placard distribution were recorded. Illegal gatherings for worship likewise continued, and by 1560 they were confident enough in their numbers to gather publicly and sing psalms. When the Cardinal Charles de Bourbon visited the town he was heaped with insults and had his pulpit vandalised, At Lent in 1562 the Calvinists destroyed the Cathedral Portal while a Franciscan was preaching and then invaded the building to insult him. With the continuation of executions for heresy the Calvinists organised several prison breaks for their comrades in 1560, even pulling down another of their flock from the stake in 1561 despite the city’s attempt to move the execution grounds to a more secure site.
It was in this context of religious tension in Rouen that national events would propel matters into open violence. On 1 March 1562 while travelling from his estates at Joinville to Paris, Francis, Duke of Guise committed a Massacre of Huguenot worshippers in the town of Wassy. This done he ignored the regent Catherine's demands to come to court and explain himself, going instead to Paris where he received a heroes welcome for his actions. Fearing the potential violence of both the Duke of Guise and his Calvinist enemy the Prince of Condé being present in the city, Catherine ordered them both to vacate, but only Condé obeyed. The Duke of Guise and his Triumvir allies, having met prior to his entry to Paris on 12 March then headed to Fontainebleau where they took possession of the King and Regent. While Catherine, realising the vulnerability of her position had previously requested Condé come to her defence, he instead headed towards Orléans seizing it on 2 April and issuing a manifesto for his revolt on 8 April. Condé's intended strategy was to seize a network of strategic town's and utilise this to force a favourable settlement. To this end local Huguenots in centres across France were encouraged to seize control of their cities, with Tours, Blois, Montpellier and Rouen among others falling to the rebels over the following months.
News of the massacre of Wassy and subsequent actions by the Duke of Guise reached Rouen quickly, inducing a climate of fear and militancy among the town's Huguenots. Coupled with the event of the previous September in which Pierre Quitard of Bourges was executed in Rouen for possessing a list of the town's 400 leading Huguenots there was fear that this presaged a similar massacre in Rouen. Letters circulated in the Huguenot circles warning of the need to be ready to support their fellow churches with arms if necessary, and armed guards began to protect their local assemblies.
The nearby town of Dieppe fell to a Huguenot coup on 22 March, and with the outbreak of formal hostilities in April Claude, Duke of Aumale was given special authority in the Normandy region as Lieutenant General with his deputy Matignon. This angered the Governor of Normandy the Duke of Bouillon who, while not allying with Condé, endeavoured to assert his local authority by besieging Matignon in Cherbourg catching him off guard. Over the months of April and May much of the urban centres of Normandy would fall to those opposing the crown including Le Havre, Vire and Rouen.
On 7 April, two Catholic captains, Nicolas le Gras and Nicolas Maze, under the authority of the Triumvirate, entered Rouen and began to drum the streets for recruits to fight for the crown against Condé. Fearful that any raised troops would be used against them the Huguenots of the town set upon them killing le Gras and wounding Maze who managed to escape the town. The Huguenots of the town justified their actions in a remonstrance to the Duke of Bouillon later in April citing their concern that the recruiters were operating as agents of the Guise client the baron de Clères.
In the wake of this violent action on 13 April, the Bailli of Rouen, the Guisard Villebon d'Estouteville returned to the city. In the later partisan account of the Histoire Ecclesiastique the Huguenots would assert that he had been plotting their extermination and their actions had been to forestall this, however it is notable that this occurred during a wave of town coups across France. On the night of 15 April the town's Huguenots acted, first seizing the convent of the Celestines, then the town hall before besieging Estoubeville in his chateau. He was quickly forced to surrender and flee the town, leaving the Huguenots in control. The Catholics of Rouen had been caught completely by surprise, and soon power would be consolidated with Huguenot control of the gates and a Protestant dominated night watch.
The rebel elite did not announce allegiance to Condé but rather to the King, justifying their rebellion on preventative grounds to avoid a new Wassy. Those Catholic members of the Council of 24 were allowed to continue to hold office, the largely Catholic Parlement continued to sit and a soldier who had injured the Prior of the Celestines during the coup was executed.
On 19 April, the Duke of Bouillon arrived in front of the city hoping to talk down the rebels, he was however unable to do so and frustrated left his lieutenant Charles de Bacqueville-Martel in the city and departed.
Inside the town, a fraught dynamic quickly developed between the moderate rebels and those who wished to go further, a split in part on lines of class between the elders and the artisan converts. On 3–4 May a wave of systematic iconoclasm swept the city with armed Protestants breaking into churches to destroy the altars, smash icons and loot precious metals. The iconoclasts further invaded the houses of members of the Catholic elite, in particular those members associated with the Guise, seizing what arms they found in them.
The Huguenot elite would quickly distance themselves from the actions, writing a formal apology in which they asserted it had been a spontaneous outbreak led by children. The letter would however go on to point out that the act must demonstrate divine displeasure with the display of idolatry, providing a degree of tacit endorsement. Further reports of the iconoclasm being conducted in bands also suggest a degree of organisation.
Regardless of elite involvement the council soon commissioned Nicolas de l'Isle a Mantire de la Mornau with the responsibility of collecting, weighing and melting down the looted gold plate. The total value came to 57,934 Livres and would be used to pay for the costs of garrisoning and defending the city, though it only provided enough for a month’s wages.
The fallout of the iconoclasm arrived over the following days with first leading Catholic merchants and priests departing the city and then on 10 May the Parlement departing, declaring it no longer safe. Those 3 Catholic Conseillers-Échevins ceased attendance of the Council of 24 leaving the Huguenots in more total political control and with a reduced council until the July elections. Martel, the Duke of Bouillon's representative in the town departed on 14 May in response to the prior events, leaving it without a crown representative entirely.
Starting in April and continuing after the wave of iconoclasm in May, Catherine sought a negotiated settlement with the rebels of Rouen, proposing a readmission of the crown's officials in return for leniency for the rebels. This proposal ran afoul of the Catholic hardliners at court upon whom Catherine's power was dependant and the rebels, who wanted the Duke of Aumale's recently given commission over Normandy revoked as part of any deal, as such it came to nought. The Duke of Aumale himself arrived at the gates of Rouen on 28 May and summoned the city to yield to him but the rebels refused. Aumale began a siege, but having only 3,000 men to his command and no siege guns, his bombardment of the town was ineffectual. After several days he was compelled to break camp when the garrison of the town was reinforced by the arriving forces of the Seigneur de Morvillier. Morvillier would assume leadership of the defence of the town.
With the failure of the direct siege and the continued absence of the main royal army, Aumale changed tactics, beginning a campaign of harassment and trying to counteract forays from the town. Short on funds for his troops he seized cloth from Rouennais merchants in Brionne and commissioned the élu of Rouen to collect the décimis tax for him. He further armed and encouraged the peasantry around the towns of Rouen and Dieppe in the hopes they would fight back against any attempted sorties from Rouen and hamper reinforcement efforts.
Meanwhile Protestant reinforcements continued to make their way into the city of Rouen in preparation for a renewed siege later in the year. The troops proved prone to robbing the locals of the town and in their sorties into the surrounding area looted the nearby towns of Elbeuf, Caudebec-lès-Elbeuf and Darnétal in iconoclastic raids. Among these troops arrived Gabriel de Lorges, 1st Earl of Montgomery who received a commission from Condé in August to assume leadership of the defence of the town, tying it closer to the larger rebellion. His large taxation on his coreligionists in the town left him unpopular, some demanding the return of Martel.
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