CRISIS MANAGEMENT 1568–85

Elizabeth formulated her policies in response to particular crises, and tended to be reactive rather than pro-active in decision making, ‘improvising as the situation demanded’ (MacCaffrey 1981: 193). She had little other choice. Between 1568 and 1585 the turn of events in France and the Netherlands was unstable and appeared as bewildering to contemporary observers as it now does to history students. Political alignments in France were kaleidoscopic, changing their pattern with every shake-up of power in the civil wars. The political fortunes of the Huguenotsebbed and flowed over the period, while the policy of the French royal family towards them swung from one extreme to another. Between 1570 and 1572 the Huguenots appeared to have won a secure place in France after fighting three civil wars to gain guarantees of toleration, yet on St Bartholomew’s Day 1572 the royal family engineered the massacre of Huguenot leaders in Paris and other cities. In 1573 Charles IX made peace and granted limited toleration to his Huguenot subjects, but his death in May 1574 left them again exposed to the dangers of persecution when Henry III, deemed a fanatical Catholic, took the throne. To the amazement and disbelief of many observers, Henry III then granted religious toleration to the Huguenots, who by 1576 had virtually formed ‘a state within a state’ in the south. The king, however, faced so many challenges to his authority from all sides that he only managed to keep domestic peace with extreme difficulty. In 1584, civil war again threatened when the death of the heir presumptive Francis Duke of Anjou left the Huguenot leader, Henry of Navarre, set to inherit the throne on Henry III’s death (see Chart 2).