Les Politiques

Whenever I read about the mess in Washington, or the rather grim business of electing people to become part of that mess, I find myself considering the problem of how to create a third party - and whether a third party might offer a way out of the gridlock.

Of course, those who know a little history are quick to assure me that "third parties never succeed".  Strictly speaking, that's not true.  Certainly, it's not inevitable.  But one must search history for examples of third parties which succeeded.

Some examples may be found in American history.  Today's Republican Party began as a third party, reaching the White House only six years after its founding.  The Populists of the late 19th century enjoyed considerable success at the state level.  The Progressives, for a time in the early 20th century, seemed destined to join the two major parties. 

Indeed, there was a period when the Eugene V. Debs' Socialists seemed to have a shot at national success. 

For some time, though, I've had the nagging feeling that I needed to reach back further.  In 16th century France, a sort of third-party movement arose in response to the bitter and bloody Wars of Religion which convulsed the country in the wake of the Protestant Reformation.

So I dug out my old college textbook - the magisterial (if eurocentric) Third Edition of Palmer and Colton's History of the Modern World - and did a bit of re-reading.

And there it was - a group called les politiques.  Not a modern political party, to be sure; there were few elections under the ancien régime.  But there were two powerful parties in 16th century France - the Calvinist Huguenots, led by King Henry of Navarre, and the ultra Catholic League, led by the Duke of Guise.

To be fair, not every educated American would quickly refer to these long-ago struggles for guidance in the present.  So, in the interests of full disclosure, I taught AP European History for five years in the 1980s- and I've recently done some brushing up on English history in that period.  Sort of an unfair advantage.

To orient the reader, then:

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517, just as Western Europe was beginning to develop monarchies and something like the unified nation-states we are now accustomed to.

In some cases, religious controversies  and their resolutions ended up strengthening the national state.  Sometimes, they had the opposite impact.

In the immediate wake of Martin Luther's Reformation, Germany - then governed as the Holy Roman Empire - tore itself apart over religious differences.  By mid-century, Germany had arrived at a truce based on an uneasy federalism, with the north largely Protestant and the south largely Catholic.  In a few states, the more radical form of Protestantism, Calvinism - in American terms, the camp which included the New England Puritans - prevailed.

But Germany was divided, and would remain so until the 1870s.

Just as Germany settled down, all hell broke loose in France.  For most of the second half of the 16th century - roughly the period when Queen Elizabeth reigned in England, and the ultra-Catholic Philip II of Spain began building his Armada, and William Shakespeare was learning to act and write plays - France was shattered by a series of Wars of Religion.

In the first half of the century, France - blessed by a long-standing arrangement which kept it largely free of papal interference and papal taxation - had proved poor soil for Lutheranism.

But by the time Germany had been pacified, France was beginning to come apart.  If Lutheranism had not succeeded in France, Calvinism had.  A small but determined minority of Calvinists - the Huguenots - found many adherents in the rich trading cities, and among some aristocrats in the south.  Bolstered by confidence in the rightness of their theology, the Huguenots demanded recognition and legal equality.  Devout Catholics wanted the Huguenots suppressed.  

Trapped between these camps, the monarchy - held by three successive weaklings - was effectively controlled by the Queen Mother, Catherine de' Medici, the Machiavellian widow of the last strong king, Henry II.   The dramatic high-point of these wars came early- in 1572 - when, on St. Bartholomew's Day, royalist mobs slaughtered some 2000 Huguenots, including nobles and their retainers who had come to Paris for an important  wedding.

A total of nine internal conflicts shattered in internal peace of France.  The last - the War of the Three Henrys - pitted the royalist supporters of the effeminate Henry III and his domineering mother against Henry, Duke of Guise, the Catholic leader, and Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot.  This war coincided with the English Queen Elizabeth's decision to execute her Catholic rival and cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, who had repeatedly plotted Elizabeth's assassination.  Mary died in 1587.  The next year, Philip II of Spain sent his Armada against England.

Later that year, the Catholic Duke of Guise was assassinated by supporters of King Henry III.  Within months, King Henry was assassinated by supporters of the Guise.  Henry of Navarre, a survivor by nature - he had survived the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre by converting to Catholicism was the last man standing, and he had the best claim to the throne.

Henry, who had re-converted to his Huguenot faith, now had to re-convert to Catholicism in order to be accepted as King.  But Henry actually believed that political unity and social peace were more important than religious conformity - an unusual viewpoint in that time.

Safely on the throne, he issued the Edict of Nantes, essentially granting legal protection to his Huguenot subjects.  From then until his death by assassination, in 1610, Henry ruled a nation in which religious differences were treated as less important than loyalty to the Crown, and to the state.

Henry of Navarre was something of a political genius, but he was also the beneficiary of a political third-party movement.  During the decades of religious war which had threatened to destroy France, a group of prudent men (and a few women) had emerged.  They were called les politiques - the politicals - because they believed that loyalty to the political state was more important than religion.  Henry of Navarre - as witnessed by his frequent conversions and re-conversions - was, at heart, a politique.

More important, for the ultimate greatness of France, was the man who rose to power after Henry's assassination - the Catholic Cardinal Richelieu, who effectively ruled France on behalf of Henry's son, Louis XIII.  During his three decades in power, Richelieu worked to disarm the Huguenots, so that they no longer represented a kind of military state-within-the-state.

However, he did not persecute them.   Though a prince of the Church, Richelieu maintained the Edict of Nantes, allowing the Huguenots to enjoy educational and political opportunity.  As a result, France grew in power on the continent as ultra-Catholic Spain - exhausted by her efforts to restore Catholicism everywhere - began to decline.

Looking at the bipartisan gridlock, it seems to me that one could learn several important things from the politiques.  They rejected the passions which threatened to tear their country apart, but they did so - not by adopting a pale, vanilla moderation between the two sides.  Rather, they offered a different set of priorities - and a different view of France's future.

Les politiques were a true third party.  They challenged both major parties by challenging the assumptions which drove them - including the assumption that religion was a vital issue within the state.  They offered a way out, and - through luck and leadership - they succeeded.

Decades of religious warfare, massacre and assassination were succeeded by a century in which France rose to become the greatest continental power. 

Something to be learned from les  politiques.