§ 172. BEZA AS THK SUCUKSSOli OK CAIA'IN. 805
parts of France.! On the 1st of September the first company of fugitives, many covered with wounds, made their appearance in Geneva. A day of fasting and prayer was ordered, and Beza exhorted his Swiss hearers to stand lirni and to provide all needed help to tlieir stricken brethren. Four thousand livres were collected in Geneva, and the wants of the crowd of sufferers attended to.*-^
In 1574 Beza met Henry of Condd by appointment at Strassburg, and successfully undertook the negotiations which resulted in enlistuig John Casimir to come with an army to the succor of the Huguenots.
But Beza's advice was not always considered prudent by the city authorities, who were more alive than he to the great risk the city ran of reprisals in view of its connivance with the Huguenot schemes. Thus in December of this year, 1574, Beza countenanced a bootless military errand in the direction of Macon and Clullons, and the masristrates gently but firmly called him to account, and plainly told him that he should never act so imprudently.-^
On Nov. 26, 1580, the Peace of Fleix brought rest to France for a little while. Beza showed his courage and fidelity on this occasion by writing to King Henry of Navarre, the Protestant leader, a letter in which he candidly informed the king that he himself and his court stood in great need of reformation. It is proof of the respect in which the Reformer was held that the king received the rebuke in good part, and of the king's light-mindedness that he did not attempt to reform.*
1 The whole number of the massacred is reckoned at about thirty thousand. Cf. the monograph of Henri Bordier: La Sainic-Barthckmij el la critique moderne. Geneve et Paris, 1879.
2 Heppe, 248. Baird (II. 554-557) gives a graphic description of the Genevese reception of the refugees, and shows how the city for so doing was exposed to the revenge of Charles IX.
3 Baird, The Hu'/uetiots and Ileiiry of Navarre, I. 50. ♦ Baird, ibid., I. 213 sq.
866 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
§ 173. Beza's Conferences with Lutherans.
The bitter theological differences between Lutherans and Reformed had long been a disgrace. Beza had in early life brought trouble upon himself by minimizing them, as has been already recorded, but in his old age he made one more attempt in that direction. Count Frederick of Wiirtemberg, a Lutheran, but a friend of reconciliation, called a conference at Montb^liard (or Mompelgard), a city in his domains in which were many Huguenot refugees, with whom the Lutherans would not fraternize. The count hoped that a discussion between the leaders on each side might mend matters. Accordingly he summoned Beza, confessedly the ablest advocate of Calvinism. On March 21, 1586, the conference began. It took a wide range, but it came to nothing. Beza showed a beautiful spirit of reconciliation, but Andrea, the Lutheran leader, in the very spirit of Luther at the famous Marburg Conference with Zwingli (1529), refused to take Beza's hand at parting (March 29) .i
Undeterred by this churlish exhibition, Beza left Montb^liard for another round of visits at German courts to induce them once more to plead with France to restore to the Huguenots their rights of worship ; for the Peace of Fleix had not lasted long, and the country was again plunged in the horrors of civil war.
The Montb^liard conference had an echo in the Bern Colloquy of April 15th to 18th, 1588, in which Samuel Huber, pastor at Burgdorf, near Bern, a notorious polemic, and Beza represented the Lutheran and Calvinist parties, respectively. It was Beza's last appearance as a public disputant, and the hero of so many wordy battles once more
1 Heppe, 287. Although he could not greet him as a brother, Andrea kindly offered to give Beza Iiis hand as a mark of his love toward him as a fellow-man — a condescension whicli not unnaturally the Genevese reformer at once declined. Baird, ibid., I. 401.