Phases of Peace

Abstract

The royal policy for the pacification of the realm, like the conflicts which it sought to resolve, was complicated by external pressures and events. Factors specific to each community in which efforts were made to enforce the peace put further strain on the process. Recent research monographs have tended to focus on a fixed period or a single locality to better explain aspects of development and change.¹ The challenge here is to provide a coherent account of a single theme running throughout the wars. In order to do so, the peace process will be divided into three successive phases, variously characterised by early optimism and growing disillusionment (1562–72); crisis and renewal of the crown’s efforts (1572–85); outright rejection and, finally, restoration and consolidation under Henry IV (1585–98). Yet there was also an ebb and flow to the pattern of peacemaking within these phases which belies simple categorisation. The late 1560s, when the policy first established at the beginning of the decade and the regime of the 1563 Edict of Amboise began to falter and peace failed to hold, was followed by a revival of optimism with the Edict of Saint-Germain of 1570. The nadir for confessional (not to mention crown/Huguenot) relations of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacres of 1572 ended this first phase. It was succeeded by Henry Ill’s earnest efforts to re-establish the momentum for peace in the mid-to-late 1570s.