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“La pluspart jugeoit du commencement que c’estoyent tous les fols de France qui s’estoyent assemblez … Mais après y avoir davantage pensé, et consideré le nombre et la noblesse qui là estoit, ils entrèrent en admiration, mais en telle sorte qu’ils ne se pouvoient garder de rire d’un mouvement si impetueux qui n’abatoient pas les arbres, comme les vents de Languedoc, mais qui plustost s’abatoit soy-mesmes. Car par le chemin on voyoit ordinairement valets portez par terre, chevaux esboitez & recreux, malles renversees, ce qui causoit mesmes à ceux qui couroit des risees continuelles.

So, in a celebrated passage of his Discours politiques et militaires, François de La Noue described the mad-cap ride – « grand galop » - of the followers of the prince of Condé to Orléans at the start of the first civil war in April 1562. La Noue had already noted how, on hearing of the massacre of Vassy, « la plupart de la noblesse … poussee d’une bonne volonté & partie de crainte, se delibera de venir pres de Paris, imaginant, comme à l’avanture, que ses protecteurs pourroient avoir besoin d’elle. Et en ceste maniere partoient des provinces ceux qui estoient plus renommez, avec dix, vingt ou trente de leurs amys, portans armes couvertes, & et logeans par les hostelleries, ou par les champs en bien payant ». [1] A more vivid description of clientage in action, of the excitement and sheer joy of the moment, could hardly be hoped for yet who were these adherents and what were their motives ? This study is intended as an attempt to analyse the make-up of that following, which has usually been treated very summarily in general histories. The classic narratives have said very little about the make-up of Condé’s following, nor have more recent accounts added much. [2]

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The interaction between religious allegiance and ties of clientage, it need hardly be said, have long been a major theme of the historical analysis of early modern French political society, from the work of Michelet in the nineteenth century, although that of Lucien Romier in the early twentieth to the recent attempts by scholars such as Denis Crouzet and Mack Holt from different perpectives to put the “religion” back into the “Wars of Religion”. To some extent it is obvious that this has become entangled with the intractable debate about the very nature of clientage that was begun by Roland Mousnier’s initial adumbration of the société des fidèles.
The analysis of lists of clients and associates in these politico-religious struggles may throw a useful light on the extent to which the kind of networks under discussion at the Glasgow Table Ronde and in this book were effective or dysfunctional. They are, though, few and far between. In a document that I published recently in French History [3], concerning the « Association » formed by the prince of Condé in 1562, I was concerned mainly to elucidate the prosopography of a document in the London Public Record Office [PRO] [4] that I thought had been unduly neglected as a source for the strength and composition of the Protestant nobility at that particular moment [5]. This was in comparison with a shorter but closely related list

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drawn up in part by Théodore de Bèze and published by Meylan from a manuscript in the British Library Lansdowne Collection in volume IV of the reformer’s correspondence (both a them, of course, had been in William Cecil’s papers). [6] The latter has been used extensively by recent historians, not least by Kristen Neuschel in her study of noble culture in order to show the fragility of ties of clientage between Condé and the nobility of Picardy. [7]
The document under discussion is not only much longer and more comprehensive than that published by Meylan; it also reveals much more about the military potential of the Protestant nobility and of the concentration of geographical origins. The aim here is to explore some more general themes but some basic details should first be recapitulated. The date at which the list was composed needs to be known. The Calendar gives it as endorsed on 7 September 1562 but in fact the manuscript shows only « September. » [8] This may only be the date Cecil received the list and some doubt has in any case been thrown on the accuracy of such endorsements [9]; it was certainly drawn up some time before that. A date in the first half of 1562 would seem likely, yet does it pre- or post-date the Lansdowne list? If this is the actual list of signatories to the Association then it omits certain names which are likely to have been on it and do appear on the Lansdowne list. [10] The fact that individuals on the list started to defect as early as July certainly dates it to before that month (see below). The composition of the Lansdowne list is probably confined to those gentlemen who were there in person; the PRO list gives the impression of concentrating on a wider network of military support, rather than those actually present at Orléans. Though it may not be that which was directly attached to the Treaty, it seems to me to represent the military resources possessed by the signatories. [11] However, the two lists are obviously related to each other since groups of names are listed in similar order in both.
In terms of its title and content its most likely initial context was the Déclaration of 8 April and the « Traité d’association », finalised at Orléans

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on 11 April 1562, signed by « autres princes, chevaliers de l’ordre, seigneurs, capitaines, gentilshommes, et plusieurs autres de tous les estats et toutes les contrées de ce royaume, en grand nombre, comme il appert par le registre estant par devers ledict seigneur », and in the copy at Berne given as « quatre mil gentilzhommes des meilleures et plus anciennes maisons de France », corresponding closely to the numbers computed from our list (see below). [12] Throckmorton got hold of a version of this document very quickly and enclosed the « association of the prince of Condé and his complices reformid and alterid from that which I sent … at my last dispatche » on 24 April (it seems to have appeared astonishingly quickly in translation in London on 16 April). [13] The text was with the Parlement de Paris by 14 April and a copy was sent to Rouen on 20th. [14] On 25 April Condé issued a further and more explicit anti-Guise political Declaration. [15] The content of the documents indicates considerable propaganda planning, perhaps mainly by François Hotman and Théodore de Bèze in terms of ideas; Delaborde’s argument that Coligny was the main inspirer of the principles behind the Association is problematic in view of what we know about his initial reluctance to join the cause. [16] Romier indeed argued

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that Condé’s following had sent for aid abroad as early as 10 March and, though there is some doubt about this [17], it is certainly the case that evidence points to preliminary measures of the mobilization of the Protestant communities early in 1562. [18] Coligny, writing to Catherine de Medici on 27 March, the day he joined Condé at Meaux, protested that his armed following was purely for self-defence under threat from the Guise. [19] Bèze’s letter to the churches of France of 20 March can certainly be regarded as a call for support, though the general order for mobilization of Protestant resources only went out on 7 April. [20] Ann Guggenheim’s conclusion that until the dash to Orléans the Protestant party was keeping its options open, prepared to fight but willing to negotiate in the hope of a deal with Catherine, seems a reasonable judgment. [21] The circumstances of the issue of these manifestos reflect the contingencies of the moment, most notably the response to the court’s removal from Fontainebleau, so much stressed in the Declarations, and then the opportunity created by the invitation from the Protestants of Orléans. [22] La Noue, after all, stressed that though

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« aucuns ont pensé qu’on avoit premedité cecy de long temps, ou qu’il estoit advenu par la diligence des chefs … je puis affermer que non, pour avoir esté present, & curieux d’en rechercher les causes » while Coligny and Condé, he says, had told him that without the spontaneous turn-out of their supporters « ils eussent esté en hazard de prendre un mauvais parti ». [23]
In the light of all this, how far should we see the Association and the course of action stemming from it in the tradition of the late medieval « alliance » as a framework for the mobilisation of noble and princely power ? Condé’s Association of April 1562 was after all the first aristocratic movement with a formally promulgated manifesto since that of the Louis duc d’Orléans in 1487-88 and as such needs to be considered in terms of its antecedents and innovations. Those antecedents in terms of political discourse also include the propaganda battles of the Armagnac-Burgundian conflict of 1407-18 and the manifestos of the War of the Public Weal of 1465, all of course within the very different political world of apanage princely politics. The wider appeal to a constituency goes back much further. For example in 1354 Charles of Navarre had issued a public manifesto in the form of letters to the Council and the « bonnes villes » justifying his murder of the connétable Charles d’Espagne, though this had been confined to his private grudges against his enemy: « pour pluseurs grans mesfaiz que le dit connestable li avoit fais ». [24] The lengthy case drawn up by Jean Petit in 1408 for the difficult problem of justifying Burgundy’s murder of Orléans is of a quite different and egregious order: a vast syllogistic argument that a tyrant is guilty of lèse-majesté. What is more « il est licite à ung chascun subject, honnorable et meritoire, d’occire ou faire occire le dessus nommé tyrant, traitre et desloial à son roy et souverain. » Orléans was a tyrant, having plotted against his brother’s life and aimed to sieze the throne, therefore was a criminal of worthy of death [25] We may or may not agree with Bernard Guenée that both Armagnacs and Burgundians from different perpectives were concerned with the role of the state but Françoise Autrand has convincingly shown that both

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« parties » or « factions » (to use what might seem anachronistic, though not entirely inappropriate, terms) had territorial bases, were based on contractual treaty alliance, colonisation of the royal administration and a programme of popular propaganda. She was also careful to stress their fragility, especially in resources, hence the need to colonise the royal administration in order to use office and revenue to construct clienteles of gentilshommes and bourgeois who aimed to gain a myriad of benefits from their patrons’ political clout. [26] The objective was to seize the royal government, dominate the Council, control finance and place men in the great state institutions; recourse to foreign alliances was all part of this. [27] The Armagnac party was founded on a treaty between the princely opponents of Burgundy, the ligue of Gien (15 April 1410) cemented by formal oaths which made the grouping something between a private alliance and a treaty. The general context of all this was, as Peter Lewis pointed out, the transition from the fief-rente to the alliance exclusive of hommage in the political arrangements of the house of Orléans, with their mixture of obligation for life and conditionality. Russell Major after all pointed out the startling continuity of such contracts between the late fourteenth century and the seventeenth. [28] So, Arthur Herman was able to call the feudal alliance « the illocutionary act par excellence, in which saying becomes doing by creating the bond of clientage ». [29] As for the propaganda element, both groups sought to appeal to public opinion by distributing political programmes in the form of letters to great institutions and pamphlets, songs and pasquils for the street which stressed the good of the kingdom and the idea, well established since the thirteenth century, of réforme or réformation, an idea which as Philippe Contamine showed was at its height as a moral basis for political action in the decades around 1400. [30] After the murder of Monterreau, we see the batteries of hundreds of letters sent

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out by both sides in order to falsify events or win support. [31] So too had Louis d’Orléans in 1485 sent out a campaign of letters to the towns and corporations denouncing the government of Anne de Beaujeu for breaking the Pragmatic Sanction and squandering the king’s revenues on their own servants and foreign agents. [32]
The instinctive recourse the formal alliance, with all its inherent instability and conditionality, in 1562 is entirely understandable; the parallels of form in political action and discourse are remarkable. Yet it is also obvious that the world of aristocratic action in the mid-sixteenth century was not the same as that of the fourteenth or fifteenth and apparent that Condé and his associates faced certain novel problems of presentation, explicitly acknowledged by La Noue when he observed on the vast output of propaganda – « artifices pour persuader » - that « il estoit tres-necessaire alors en ces alterations d’Estat, si nouvelles et extraordinaires, de lever les mauvaises impressions qui se pouvoyent prendre par ceux qui ignoroyent les intentions des entrepreneurs » [33]. It was a campaign that went as far as to publish letters from Catherine to Condé which indicated, much to her annoyance, her trust of him [34]. Their enemies accused Condé’s followers of acting from private ambition, so they had to justify their actions in terms of fairly conventional tropes such as the role of the princes of the blood as natural councillors of the king and supporters of his lineage. They in turn accused their enemies of seeking both political power and the complete extermination of the new religion and so a new element was brought in which placed an ambiguity at the heart of the Huguenot case: how far to argue that their case was political and how far religious ?
The Association was concluded at the same time as a series of appeals sent out on 11 April by Condé for help from England, Geneva and the German princes which indicate a directing group consisting of Condé himself, Coligny, Porcien, Andelot, Piennes, Jean de Rohan, Soubise, Genlis and Morvilliers. [35] Most of all we may see it in the context of a massive operation of propaganda designed to maintain the position that Condé and his associates were forced to take up arms « pour l’honneur de Dieu et la délivrance des

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majestés du Roy et de la Reyne ». In his long justification of his actions to « tous fidèles et loyaux subjets, serviteurs, alliez et confédérez de ce royaume » [36], the prince declared that, « comme prince du sang, et à qui appartient de droit naturel de défendre les subjects du Roy contre ceux qui voudroyent les opprimer par force et violence » he had been faced after the massacre of Vassy by the disloyal aim of Guise to defy royal instructions and behave as though he and his friends were « le vray conseil du Roy ». He had tried to maintain order in Paris but had been persuaded that public peace would best be maintained if he returned to his own house at La Ferté. Meanwhile, claimed the Protestants, the duke of Guise proceeded to seize the court and take them effectively prisoners to Melun. This was a not uncommon theme; Orléans had made the same point in 1485, [37] and it was necessary for security since an open challenge to the crown was dangerous. Coligny hammered home the point in his letter to Catherine of 27 March and proceeded to protest his loyalty in letters throughout April and May. Indeed, on 11 May he even told Catherine that in Orléans « le roy estre plus absolummant roy qu’il ne fut iamais ». He added though that the issue was now « l’entiere subversion et ruine de toutes les eglises de ce royaulme, de la privation des estats et offices grandes et petites et sous une belle couleur de la confiscation des biens. » [38]
Condé insisted that at the edict of January « les troubles survenus pour la religion estoyent appaisez pour la pluspart » but that it was the determination of the Guise « d’exterminer entièrement la religion qu’ils appellent nouvelle » which destabilised the situation. The Guise claim that Condé was just acting in « quelques querelles particulières » [39], part of the general government line in these years that religion was but a “cloak” for secular ambition, was a major problem.
The attached Protestation however, was largely secular in its drift: it listed (I) the absence of private grudges on Condé’s part (II) attacked the aim of the Guise to « mettre la main » on revenues raised to pay royal debts and restore the royal domain (III) protested against orders issued by the Guises in the captive king’s name which would « mettre le pied sur la gorge » of their enemies (IV)

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expressed willingness to pay due respect to his brother the king of Navarre (V) appealed to the Queen Mother either to regain her freedom and give orders for the cessation of hostilities or to give orders for Guise and Saint-André to retire to their houses. Once this was done Condé, though not of their rank in office - « il a cest honneur d’apartenir au Roy, et estre prince de son sang » - would disarm [40]. If this were not done, the prince refused to accept responsibility for the consequences. A printed pamphlet issued at the same time declares: « Neantmoins ceste seule cause [de religion] ne leur eust faict jamais prendre les armes, s’il n’y eust eu une cause civile et politique; qui est l’oppression » wrought by the Guise. [41]
The signatories to the Traité of 11 April certainly swore, in terms similar to the title of the document under discussion, « d’employer corps et biens, et tout ce qui nous sera possible, jusques à la dernière goutte de nostre sang » and again « l’accompagner par tout où il luy plaira nous commander, et fidèlement luy faire service pour les fins susdictes, et rendre tout devoir de corps et de biens jusques au dernier souspir », for the maintenance of « l’honneur de Dieu, le repos du royaume, et l’estat et liberté du Roy ». The treaty is specifically defined as a « saincte alliance » and, as in a foreign treaty, there were parties ‘comprehended’ in it, notably all members of the royal council not in arms against the signatories but it also acts as a bond of association promising that if any signatories « reçoive outrage ou violence » by their enemies contrary to the Edict of January, « nous jurons et promettons tous le secourir promptement … comme si le dommage estoit particulier à un chacun de nous » while traitors to their oath were to be denounced. [42] The fact that the Association was built on an oath was crucial; commanders allowed to surrender on terms during the subsequent conflict were required to renounce it formally. [43]

What can be learned about the membership of the Association ? As far as the nobility is concerned, the Lansdowne list contains only 72 names, which Jouanna considers the number who signed Condé’s Déclaration [44]; this is certainly far less than the number we know (see above). In the document I have published, to briefly recapitulate, some 232 individuals (including brothers) are listed but in the first two sections, 11 chevaliers de l’ordre and 5 other chevaliers and titled nobles, most of them are allocated followings composed of gentlemen or of whole gendarmerie companies. With their followings, there are thus 2520 gentlemen and 400 hommes d’armes (which in normal circumstances would amount to 1 000 horse). This gives a total of 3520 men. The personal followings of the rest, listed as « barons, seigneurs qui ont commandé ayans

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esté lieutenants pour le Roy tant en ses pays que places fortes » amount to 520 men (though these include 300 mounted arquebusiers unlikely to have been nobles in the main). This also excludes the possibility that those listed as officers of gendarmerie companies brought parts of their companies with them. The sum total of men available according to this list is therefore 4272. The roughly four thousand men accounted for on the list – very close to the supposed register held by Condé - if all nobles (unlikely of course), would certainly correspond roughly to between one quarter and one fifth of the provincial nobility as a whole. Historians now tend to accept that in all slightly more than one third of the lesser provincial nobility may have joined the Huguenot cause in its early stages, though this level of support was concentrated in certain areas. [45]
As we have seen, the PRO list probably conveys the military potential of the Protestant nobility at the start of the campaign. What were the military resources and organization of the Huguenot cause at this time? Sources are unfortunately, if understandably, rather fragmentary and contradictory and an overall inventory of Protestant military strength at this point would be valuable but extremely difficult to achieve. [46] Protestant military organisation in 1562 was undoubtedly rudimentary, though it probably included a portion of the royal army. Haton tells us that « plusieurs compagnies au lieu d’aller dès villes à eux désignés pour le service du roy, s’en allèrent à Orléans, pour le service des huguenots contre le roy » and Coligny, though he denied he had withdrawn his company from its garrison and claimed those with him were only armed with pistols, certainly had his company with him according to out list. [47] The PRO list certainly confirms

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the intention to use a number of royal gendarmerie companies. The bulk of the Huguenot forces, however, were probably recruited outside the normal chains of command among noble volunteers and levies from the communities (which for instance raised 2 000 foot in the spring of 1562). [48] In the immediate aftermath of Vassy and Condé’s move to Meaux, La Noue recounts that « la noblesse de la Religion » were quick to arm, partly out of fear partly out of desire to serve, and in groups of ten, twenty or thirty friends went towards Paris. He adds that the Protestant high command came to Orléans with 2 000 horse « tant en maistres qu’en valets ». [49] A Florentine envoy in Paris reported on 2 April that on his return from Meaux Condé had had only 80 horse but expected 17 out of 62 gendarmerie companies to join the Huguenots and for both sides to be able to put 10 000 horse into the field, a figure Chantonnay put at nearer 6000 for the royal army. [50] From Paschal within Paris, we have the observation that Condé, on his ride from Meaux to Saint-Cloud, had « environ sept ou huit cens chevalx » in open battle array [51] but Throckmorton’s observation on 1 April of 3 000 horse is closer to La Noue’s recollection and he had scaled it down to 1500 by the time of Condé’s arrival at Longjumeau. [52] Languet wrote on 19 April that they had « quatuor millia equitum optime armatorum, quorum plerique sunt ex praecipua nobilitate huius regni » and on 21 April La Rochefoucauld brought in the gentlemen of Poitou and Xaintonge with 300-400 horse. [53] Thereafter Condé’s force seems to have expanded rapidly. [54] After the truce talks at Beaugency had failed, La Noue tells us that the Protestants had 800 lances (?2 000 horse) under Coligny in the van and Condé with 1 000 horse, not counting arquebusiers and pikes. [55] Campaigning inevitably expanded the Huguenot army. By August, there were

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rumoured to be 7000 men in the garrisons of Orléans and Bourges [56] and by the time of the battle of Dreux Condé had assembled a force of 13000 (8000 foot and 5000 horse, including reîtres). [57]
As for the geographical spread of those on the PRO list, the predominance of northern France and particularly of Picardy and Normandy, is immediately apparent; the Lansdowne list, of course, shows a similar bias towards Picardy. Of the 232 entries, some sort of biographical information is possible for 178 (though in a few cases this is meagre). Of these, the regional base of 139 [58] can now be fairly certainly be identified (though with a small degree of uncertainty here or there as a result of the ambiguous regional basis, straddling Orléanais and Nivernais, of figures such as the Vidame de Chartres for instance or Beauvais la Nocle with his holdings in Bourbonnais, Nivernais and Forez).
The five figures of national importance whose estates and influence transcended any province were Condé himself, Coligny, Andelot, Porcien (whose properties straddled Champagne and Picardy and the Vidame de Chartres (primarily Orléanais and Auxerrois). They represent a nucleus which is linked very closely by ties of parentèle and amitié of the kind that Philippe Nassiet and Jean-Louis Bourquin have told us so much about. The rest were chevaliers or écuyers whose property and influence gave them a largely provincial importance. The northern and north-western provinces obviously dominate this list and the two provinces of Normandy and Picardy easily predominate within that area. Interestingly, Philip II’s ambassador Chantonnay reported large numbers of men from the north and east streaming southwards early in April. [59] In our list Picardy is represented by a little over 30% of the names, Normandy by nearly 23% and Poitou by 9 %, Ile-de-France just over 5% and Maine-Anjou-Touraine 4.5%. Of the other regions, the least represented are Burgundy (for which no names seems to correspond), Champagne (unsurprisingly given Guise influence there) and Provence. As has been pointed out, military necessity may to some extent have dictated this geographical spread, but it should also be added that the list is revealed as a network of support that did not, in the main, include some of the later bastions of Protestant support on Languedoc, Dauphiné and Guyenne or indeed the region of the central conflict at the time around Orléans. This is despite the fact that the letters sent out by the Reformed Church at Paris and its leaders in March and

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April presupposed a base of support and resources throughout the Midi. As far as the south-western nobility is concerned, the role of Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, as Lieutenant-General of the Realm and now ally of the Triumvirs, may have had a part to play here [60], since as governor of Languedoc since 1555 he had to some extent inherited Henri d’Albret’s influence in the south-west, though this may have been counterbalanced by the Protestant sympathies of his wife, Jeanne d’Albret. At any rate, Navarre’s role has been underestimated and his following still largely unexplored.
It could also be added at this point that Jean-Marie Constant’s provisional findings for Catholic activism based on membership of the Ordre de Saint-Michel put the emphasis on the provinces of the centre, center-west and south-west. [61] The tendency for political struggles to incoporporate interests with strikingly different broad regional bases is not new, of course, as we know from the work of Raymond Cazelles and John Henneman on the politics of the fourteenth century. They also found very broad divisions between the north-western and the central-Burgundian regions in the struggles for power under the early Valois. Cazelles wrote of « la communauté des pays de l’ouest » disaffected with the prevailing regime under Philip VI and Henneman pointed out that 70% of the key military commanders in the reign of Charles V were drawn from « a belt of territory that included most of the French coastline, extending from Artois and Picardy … through Normandy, Maine, Anjou and Brittany to Poitou and Saintonge. » [62] In part this had stemmed from the well-known heavier distribution of nobles in those regions [63] but this had not prevented both Philip VI and John II from relying on men drawn instead from Burgundy and the Auvergne. [64]
Constant, who discovered in his work on Beauce a high level of noble attentisme by the 1580s and suggested a generally low noble participation in the civil wars [65] has also suggested that in certain areas where there was a low level of

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noble military careerism, Protestant nobles may have have been disproportionately active. It is apparent from an analysis of the origins of those who can be identified with any certainty that there is a strong concentration of support among the lower Norman nobility who generally held a low profile (13%) of military service. [66] In part this is to be explained by the success of Protestantism among the gentry of lower Normandy in the years immediately preceding this.
Among the Picard nobility, though the proportion of Protestants among the whole was quite small, they obviously provide substantial numbers on the 1562 list. In the region military activity was high, though Protestant activism seems largely dominated by members of the influential noblesse seconde, perhaps as a result of ties of clientage which brought those close to the Bourbon family into the cause. To be precise, my analysis of the extremely detailed rôle of the ban et arrière-ban for the bailliage of Amiens in 1557, based on 411 noble fief-holders (including 4 doubles) shows 128 exempt because of service in the ordonnances and royal household (though in fact only 100 were refunded their tax) while a further 39 chose to serve in the arrière-ban in person. Military careerism, at around 25%, was therefore very prominent. Moreover, the declared wealth of this group gave them just under a half of the total for the nobles of the bailliage; they were 21 out of the 39 chevaliers and 68 out of the 250 écuyers. Of the chevaliers, out of the roughly thirty locally based, at least 10 were Protestants in 1562 and 7 of those are on our list: Aspremont, Bouchavannes, Rubempré, Morvilliers, Sénarpont, Heucourt and Ligny. The other Protestants certainly included Nicolas Rouault and Jean de Pisseleu, sr de Heilly, with the largest declared income of the 1557 list. The remaining signatories were highly concentrated in Vimeu prévoté, the region bordering the pays de Caux and de Bray. Other than the castle of Pont-Rémy, which provided a refuge for Protestants near Abbeville under the aegis of Jeanne de Saveuses [67] a series of lordships in Vimeu stretching from Morvilliers through Monchy and Sénarpont to Gamaches, Feuquières and Potrincourt indicates the focus of Protestant activity in the region. [68] All this contrasts vividly with the attraction of the titled nobility to the League in the 1580s. [69]

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Brantôme was to claim that many in the Huguenot army were old soldiers who retained a certain regard for the duke of Guise:
“Et si vous diray que j’y vis plusieurs soldatz de la relligion, qui estoient dans Orléans, le regretter autant ou plus que les autres; d’autant que la pluspart d’eux estoient tous vieux soldatz, et de ceux qui avoient combatu soubz luy aux guerres passées estrangères: car les huguenotz, en ceste guerre, avoient enlevé avecqu’eux la plus belle vollée des vieux soldatz. [70]
As he points out elsewhere, the loyalty of some to the religious cause was fairly shallow, [71] a judgment sometimes confirmed by what is known about the later lives of these individuals but often used in the past to sustain the shallow argument that opportunism dominated noble attitudes to the religious cause. As we have seen, individuals began to defect as early as July 1562. [72] In September 1562, it was reported that Morvilliers and Sénarpont father and son had renounced their oaths to Condé and gone home. [73] Among the nucleus of Condé’s supporters in April 1562 Piennes, Jehan de Rohan sieur de Frontenay and Morvilliers proved unreliable. Piennes and Frontenay provided some of the evidence for the later opinion of La Noue (who was after all on our list) that the Huguenot army had morally degenerated at Orléans [74]; Frontenay was to be accused of a particularly obnoxious case of wife murder and Piennes, acording to cardinal de Châtillon « faint estre de la religion » and was seduced by offers of royal office. [75] Even in 1562, then, the loyalties of some were shaky and in some cases we see individuals gravitating into association with the Lorraines and in other cases as active participants in the Catholic Leagues of 1576 and

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1585. In Picardy, Antoine de Bourbon-Rubempré, whose second wife was a member of the strongly Catholic Norman family of the Roncherolles, had become a Guise supporter by the late 1560s and was to be a key activist in the League of Péronne in 1576. [76] There are many other such cases on our list: Antoine de La Rochefoucauld-Chaumont, whose family were to be lieutenants of Guise in Champagne, La Curée, who had been nourri by the Constable and, though he fought at Dreux, returned to his service in 1563, Puygreffier, who was in Antoine de Bourbon’s service, Nicolas de Champagne-La Suse whose family in Maine were overwhelmingly Catholic, Louis de Cugnac-Dampierre from Beauce, whose father was a firm Catholic, Adrien des Fossez, who may have been the brother of the cardinal de Lorraine’s camérier, the sieur de Flavacourt of the Vexin who may have subsequently served in Elbeuf’s company, Louis de Potrincourt whose father was an important household man of the Guise and whose brothers were subsequently all leaguers. [77] In Auvergne, among the few nobles on the list we find La Fayette and his cousin Saint-Romain. The latter certainly was a Protestant but the former, if ever a Protestant, was organizing Catholic forces in the province in 1576. The family had been followers of the dukes of Bourbon for many generations but it seems unlikely that such loyalty extended to the Bourbon-Vendôme branch. [78]
What, finally, can we conclude about this list as a source for politics and religion and the start of the French Civil Wars ? Clearly, the possibilities for identifying individuals have not been exhausted, though I think I have taken it as far as I can. The evidence it presents about the skew of Condé’s manpower resources in 1562 is fairly clear as is the very heterogeneous nature of those resources. Loyalties among the nobility were inevitably a mixture of conviction, family and kindred influence, residual loyalty to the crown and calculations of the outcome; the motives of adherents to a cause mix the rational and the irrational At all events, Condé’s supporters were from the start an alliance of very disparate types; many of them, though by no means all, were brought together by hostility towards Guise ambitions, like Fors, captain of Dieppe who told an English agent that « rather then he wolde forsake Godes worde and to be under the tyrannie of the Guysians, he wolde rather serve the great Turke. » [79] Some were personally loyal to Condé and Coligny, others much more distantly connected and easy to detach, as Catherine de Medici found in the Summer of 1562. [80] There were undoubtedly those who considered themselves in different ways to be fighting for the cause of religion, such the Picard Séchelles who « for his great zeale of religion … hathe sufferid persecution largely in his tyme », or Yvoy, the « bon Huguenot », who was blamed for the brigandage of his men

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in 1562, the Norman Basquevilles, converted by Knox at Dieppe in 1559. [81] Given all these very different motivations, it is hardly surprising that the political Huguenot cause fell apart in 1562-3 or that its reconstitution in the mid to late 1560s led it to take some significantly different forms. The Alliance of 1562, then, displayed all the characteristics to be expected of such a form of political action, especially its conditionality. The demands of patronage and of clientelism played only a part in this greater but highly unstable movement.