Chapter XIV: Book II (3)

On the very day following, the Calvinist army presented itself before the faubourgs of Paris, but no one came out to encounter them. They then retired on the side of Lorraine, to meet the auxiliaries, which were led by Jean Casimir, the son of the Elector Palatine. The two armies united at Pont-à-Mous-son, on the 11th of January, 1568. Here an event, probably without example in military annals, happened. The German Protestants claimed a hundred thousand crowns as their arrears of pay, and Condé had not two thousand. What was to be done? To whom apply? It was then that one army, which had itself received nothing, mulcted itself to pay another.

The historian Jean de Serres relates this singular incident in energetic terms: “The Prince and the Admiral influenced great and small by their example; the ministers in their sermons moved the men, and the captains prepared their people. Every one contributed, one from zeal, another from love; one from fear, another for shame of reproach; they collected in money, plate, chains and rings of gold, about eighty thousand francs, and by this voluntary liberality they subdued the first and pressing avidity of the mercenaries.”[48]

The war was rekindled all over France. Montluc recommenced his ravages in Guienne and Saintonge, and, after having failed before the walls of La Rochelle, put almost the whole of the Calvinist population of the island of Ré to the sword. An army of seven thousand Huguenots overran Gascony, Quercy, and Languedoc, and traversed the entire kingdom as far as Orleans. It was called _the army of the Viscounts_, because it had for leaders the viscounts Monclar, Bruniquel, Caumont, Rapin, and other gentlemen.

The towns of Montauban, Nismes, Castres, Montpellier, Uzès, remained or fell into the power of the Calvinists, who were then in a great majority. At Nismes, from the beginning of the war the Huguenot populace had committed, in spite of the exhortations of the pastors and notables, a frightful massacre of seventy-two prisoners. The following day forty-eight more (Roman) Catholics were slaughtered in the fields. This crime bore the name of _Michelade_, because it took place on the day of Saint Michel, 1567.

The prince of Condé commenced his march across Burgundy, Champagne, Beauce, and began the siege of Chartres, one of the granaries of Paris. The affairs of the Huguenots now assumed a favourable turn. The queen-mother, who was accustomed to say she could do more with three sheets of paper and her tongue than the soldiers with their lances, recommenced negotiations. The chiefs of the Calvinists, who had learned to their cost the value of Catherine’s word, wished for guarantees. But the queen had it published in the army that the Edict of Pacification should be re-established without interpretations or reservations, that a full amnesty should be given to all who had had recourse to arms, and that the chiefs alone refused this equitable arrangement from ambitious motives.

This trick succeeded. Whole companies of Calvinists, without the leave of their chiefs, took the road to their homes; and the prince of Condé, seeing his entire army thus melting away, signed, on the 20th of March, 1568, the peace of Longjumeau. It was named “_the lame and badly-seated peace_,” because, of the two negotiators of the queen, one was the lord of _Malassise_ and the other was lame. Frenchmen like to be merry upon everything; but truly there was little cause for merriment at that moment. “That peace,” says Mézeray, “left the Huguenots at the mercy of their enemies, with no other surety than the word of an Italian woman.”[49]

X.

The treaty of Longjumeau lasted but six months, or rather it never existed but on paper. Whilst the Calvinists were sending home their foreign troops, Catherine de Medicis kept hers. She took possession of the strong places, had the bridges and passes guarded, and took every measure to crush the Huguenots.

The (Roman) Catholic pulpits still thundered imprecations and anathemas against them. “They boldly advanced,” says the Abbé Anquetil, “those abominable maxims, that they ought not to keep faith with heretics, and that it is a just, pious, and useful act, leading to salvation, to massacre them. The fruits of these discourses were either public riots, or assassinations, for which no justice could be obtained.”[50]

There is a sort of frightful monotony in these scenes of murder, which stained peace no less than war with blood. Lyons, Bourges, Troyes, Auxerre, Issoudun, Rouen, Amiens, and other towns were strewed with the corpses of Huguenots. Nearly ten thousand perished in three months. At Orleans two hundred had been cast into prison. The mob set fire to the prison, and drove back those who tried to escape, into the flames: “A part of them were seen,” says Crespin, “joining hands in the fire, and were heard to call upon the Lord with a loud voice.”[51]

The Chancellor de l’Hospital made loud complaints of the impunity accorded to these butchers. He was not listened to; and seeing that he could no longer usefully serve the state, he withdrew to his property at Vignay. Catherine de Medicis gave the seals to Jean de Morvilliers, a creature of the Cardinal de Lorraine. The Marshal de Montmorency, suspected of moderation and humanity, was also superseded from his office as governor of Paris.

Even those sacred rights, which savages would blush to infringe, were no longer respected. The Baron Philibert de Rapin, _maître d’hôtel_ to the prince of Condé, having been sent to Languedoc to carry out the treaty of peace, was seized by order of the Parliament of Toulouse, and beheaded three days afterwards.

Condé, Coligny, and D’Andelot, threatened with ruin and death, fled to La Rochelle. They left the Château of Noyers in Burgundy with their wives and children at midnight, on the 25th August, 1568, and travelled a hundred leagues in twenty-four hours through bands of enemies.

The queen of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, went to join them with four thousand men. As many more came from Normandy, the Maine, and Anjou. The most famous captains of the party hastened thither with their companies, so that these fugitives of yesterday found themselves at the head of the strongest army they had yet commanded, and Coligny repeated the saying of Themistocles: “My friends, we had perished, if we had not been lost.” Thus commenced the third religious war.

Catherine de Medicis put forth edicts which annulled that of January; she also forbade the exercise of the pretended Reformed religion under pain of death, and ordered all its ministers to depart from the kingdom in fifteen days. At the same time the duke of Anjou, the next brother of Charles IX., and the favourite son of Catherine, afterwards known as Henry III., was placed at the head of the (Roman) Catholic army; but although he had twenty-four thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry under his command, he dared not offer battle. The very severe winter of 1568 was passed in marches and countermarches, without any decisive event taking place.

On the 16th of March following, the two armies met at Jarnac. It was less a battle than a surprise. The different bodies of the Calvinists fell into line successively, and were cut to pieces one after the other. The prince of Condé performed prodigies of valour; but, being thrown from his horse, and carrying his arm in a sling from the beginning of the affair, he surrendered to a (Roman) Catholic gentleman. At the same instant Montesquieu, one of the officers of the duke of Anjou, coming up behind him, fired a pistol at his head. “This action, which might have passed in the affray for a splendid feat of arms,” says Mézeray, “being done in cold blood, appeared to all good men as an execrable parricide.”[52] The duke of Anjou caused the corpse of Condé to be carried upon an ass, whilst he himself joined in the infamous jestings of the soldiers, and wanted to have a triumphal column raised on the spot where the prince had been assassinated. He acted as a worthy son of Catherine.

The news of the death of Condé and the victory of Jarnac, raised transports of joy amongst the (Roman) Catholics, and Charles IX. sent to the pope the standards that had been taken from the Huguenots.

Michel Ghisleri then occupied the pontifical throne under the name of Pius V. He had entered a convent of Dominicans when only fifteen years of age, and had afterwards been intrusted with the office of Inquisitor-General in the Milanais, whence he had been expelled on account of his implacable severity. He only knew Luther under the name of “the ferocious beast” (_bellua_), and saw in heresy the summary of every crime. His letters were printed at Antwerp in 1640, and are a standing monument of infuriate madness against heretics. Pius V. wrote to Charles IX. to be deaf to every prayer, to stifle every tie of blood or affection, and to extirpate the roots of heresy to the very last fibres. He cited the example of Saul slaying the Amalekites, and represented every feeling of clemency as a snare of the devil. At such moral aberrations it is impossible to feel anger; we are rather moved by a feeling of deep and sad compassion.

Pius V. and Charles IX. had been too precipitate in regarding the position of the Huguenots as desperate. Coligny still remained to them. He was seconded by Jeanne d’Albret, who, holding in her hand her son, Henry of Béarn, then fifteen years of age, and her nephew Henry, son of the prince of Condé, came to Saintes to “_offer to the cause_,”—an expression in vogue among the Calvinists—and prayed to God never to suffer them to swerve from their duty. The young Béarnais was proclaimed _generalissimo_ and _protector_ of the churches. “I swear,” said he, “to defend the religion, and to persevere in the common cause, until either death or victory has restored to us the liberty we seek.”

On the 23rd June, 1569, Coligny gained the advantage in the fight of the Roche-Abeille; but he lost many of his men at the siege of Poitiers, which he had been forced to undertake at the instance of the gentlemen of the province. On the 3rd of October following, he was beaten at Moncontour. The German soldiers had mutinied, and the Admiral could not avoid a conflict with the enemy, as he had intended. The battle lasted but three-quarters of an hour, and the disaster was terrible. Out of twenty-five thousand soldiers, only six or eight thousand remained under his standard. Entire companies had been put to the sword. The lansquenets cried for mercy, saying, “_I am a good Papist! I am a good Papist!_” but no one was spared.

Coligny received three wounds at the commencement of the action, and the blood which flowed under his visor was nigh choking him. He had to be carried off the field. In the evening, when some officers proposed to embark, he roused their courage by his calm and decisive words. Never was Coligny so great as in misfortune; he had always calculated the consequences beforehand.

Another trait of his character deserves to be recorded. “As the Admiral was carried in a litter,” says Agrippa D’Aubigné, “Lestrange, an old gentleman, and one of his principal councillors, also wounded and borne in a similar equipage, had it brought up in front of the other at a point where the road widened, and then putting his head out of the curtain, he looked intently upon his chief, and parted from him with tears in his eyes, with these words: ‘_God is very good_.’ They then bade each other farewell, united in thought, but unable to say more. This great captain confessed to his intimate friends that this little word from such a friend had raised him up, and turned him into the path of good thoughts and firm resolutions for the future.”[53]

Every misfortune seemed to fall at once upon Coligny. He had lost his brother D’Andelot. The Parliament of Paris had just declared him guilty of _lèse-majesté_, a traitor and a felon, inviting any one to attack him, with a promise of fifty thousand crowns to any one who should deliver him up, dead or alive; in fact, he had been exposed to several attempts at assassination. Bands of miscreants had burned his château and devastated his domains. Lastly, as if to overwhelm him with a final blow, Pius V. had addressed letters to the king and queen-mother, in which he described him as “_a detestable, infamous, and execrable man, if indeed he deserved the name of man!_”

Behold, then, this great unfortunate, outlawed by the government of his country, and, in a manner, by the human and divine law, by the chief of (Roman) Catholicity, covered with wounds, despoiled of all he possessed, with mutinied mercenaries, an army struck down by defeat, abandoned by many of his friends, blamed by a great number, and having to contend against adversaries without mercy and without faith! Behold him thus, and then read this letter, so pious and so calm, which he wrote to his children on the 16th of October, 1569, thirteen days after the disaster of Moncontour: it is one of the most beautiful pages of the history of humanity:—

“We must not count upon what is called property, but rather place our hope elsewhere than on earth, and acquire other means than those which we see with our eyes, or touch with our hands. We must follow Jesus Christ, our Chief, who has gone before us. Men have taken from us all they can; if such is always the will of God, we shall be happy, and our condition good, since this loss has happened to us through no injury that has been done to those who caused it, but simply for the hatred borne to me, because it has pleased God to make use of me to help His Church.... For the present, it is enough for me to admonish and conjure you, in the name of God, to persevere with courage in the practice of virtue.”

Coligny did not confine himself to writing: he collected together another army. At his voice, from every mountain of Béarn, of Cevennes, of Dauphiné, of Vivarais, of the county of Foix, there came down intrepid gentlemen, and warlike peasants, who promised to defend their faith and their liberty to the death. He traversed the half of France, passed the Loire, defeated the (Roman) Catholics near Arnay-le-Duc, and marched towards Paris, saying, “The Parisians would incline to peace when they found the war at their gates.”

The court was seized as much with astonishment as with fear, at finding Coligny at the head of a third army, as numerous as those he had lost, and better disciplined. It once more offered conditions of peace, and a treaty was signed at St. Germain-en-Laye, on the 8th of August, 1570. It was more favourable to the Reformed than the preceding ones. It gave them liberty of worship in all the places which were in their possession; in addition, two towns for every province for the celebration of service, an amnesty for the past, equal right of admission to public offices, permission to reside in any part of the kingdom without being molested on account of religion, and four hostage-towns,—La Rochelle, La Charité, Cognac, and Montauban.

The queen Catherine showed herself generous. The (Roman) Catholic historian Davila, who well knew the secrets of this court, assures us that she was agreed with the Cardinal de Lorraine and the duke of Anjou about the project of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. “It was determined,” he says, “to return to the project already formed so many times, and so often abandoned, to free the country of foreign troops, and then to employ artifices to get rid of the chiefs, in the hope that the party would yield of itself, as soon as they saw themselves deprived of this support.”[54]

The Admiral, who suspected nothing, signed the peace with joy. “Rather than again fall back into these disorders,” he said, “I would die a thousand deaths, and be dragged through the streets of Paris.” And so, in effect, he was; but the disorders, far from ceasing, recommenced with fury, and lasted twenty-five years.

XI.

This is the proper place to point out the changes, which had been effected since the wars of religion had begun, both in the position and character of the Reformed, and in their relations with the (Roman) Catholics.

Although still numerous on the south of the Loire, the Reformed had lost much ground. Paris, henceforth, belonged exclusively to the Romish church. Picardy, Normandy, Orleanais, Champagne, all the north, and a considerable portion of the centre of France, now possessed only scattered and timid flocks. The boldest had perished; the least courageous had returned to the dominant communion. A crowd of those who filled public offices, gentlemen and rich citizens, had done the same. The women, also, in order to escape from the brutal violence to which they were subjected, had taken refuge in great number in (Roman) Catholicism, as the last asylum for their chastity.

Another difference, equally important, must be related. At the States-General of Orleans, and at the conference of Poissy, the Reformed might hope to draw the masses to themselves, the Parliaments, even royalty itself; in 1570 they could do so no longer. Every one had clearly chosen his side for the one church or for the other; opinions had become sharply defined and matured; the floating population had disappeared.

Before the wars, proselytism was wholesale; it embraced towns and entire provinces; afterwards, proselytes were rare, being only made one by one, and with infinite trouble: so many were the corpses piled up between the two communions! So many were the bitter enmities and cruel remembrances around the two camps, forbidding communication!

The destiny of the Reformed in France was truly strange and deplorable. Had they not taken arms, they would probably have been exterminated like the Albigeois. In taking up arms, they kindled the fiercest hatred, and dug a pit, which no longer permitted the (Roman) Catholics to approach them.

But even these calamities might have become the source of good for both communions. The Reformed had been instructed by misfortunes. They now understood and proclaimed that two religions might exist in the same state. Resigned to being only a minority, they cited in their writings the arrangements concluded between the rival churches in Germany. They went so far as to invoke the toleration of the Roman pontiff for the Jews, and of the Turks for the Christians. They had renounced the pretension to reign; they only asked for the right to live, and (Roman) Catholicism might have given them that, without putting its ancient prerogatives in danger.

A respected modern historian says upon this subject: “The experience of the edicts of toleration during the peace, and of the mutual efforts of the two parties during the war, had extinguished in them (the Reformed) many illusions as to their strength. They could no longer believe that they were the more numerous, and that fear alone held the masses in apparent conformity with the Romish church. They had, on the contrary, become convinced, that progressive opinions, which called for the exercise of the understanding and of judgment, could only be dominant among the _élite_ of the nation.”[55]

It is therefore a grave error to advance either religious or political necessity in justification of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. Rome had no longer anything to fear for her supremacy, nor the crown for the maintenance of its political power. It was fanaticism, it was the resentment of the past struggles, which led to the crushing of the minority in 1572: it was no state reason.

The piety and the manners of the Reformed had also suffered much from the misfortunes of the time. Without having fallen into the hideous corruption of the court of Catherine, and without giving themselves up to the irregularities, which defiled the (Roman) Catholic clergy, they had lost much of their fervid and simple faith, and of the pious severity of conduct of their earlier years. In surrendering themselves to the spirit of party, religion had been degraded; they adhered, perhaps, the more strongly to their sect; they belonged less to Christianity.

Some Huguenots, who had been incessantly under arms for eight years, could not again settle quietly under their own roofs. They only lived, they only breathed in freedom, in the tumult of camps and the madness of battles. For this reason, Coligny wished to employ them in the war of Brabant. Others, who had only assumed the trade of the soldier for the moment, had learned from it less of brotherly love, and more of the thirst for revenge. Avarice and ambition had returned with the rest. “The consciences of several,” says a contemporary, “began to shake, and there were few who evinced a strong affection for religion; both great and small already thought much of the world, and built many castles in the air.”[56]

The pastors applied themselves to cure these wounds by means of the pious men of their consistories and synods; unhappily the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, and the fresh wars which it excited, left them but little leisure for so great a work.

We have made no mention of the national synods which were convoked after that of 1559, because their acts had no reference to general affairs, and because they were exclusively directed to points of discipline or to private matters, which have no interest for the present time. The second national synod was held at Poitiers, in 1561; the third at Orleans, in 1562; the fourth at Lyons, in 1563; the fifth at Paris, in 1565; the sixth at Verteuil, in 1567. These assemblies were properly severe concerning the preservation of the faith and good order of their flocks.

The seventh national synod, held at La Rochelle, in April, 1571, under the presidency of Theodore de Bèze, was the first of those great assemblies which took place with the full consent of the king. It deserves to be distinguished from the rest from its importance and the extraordinary solemnity, by which it was surrounded. The queen of Navarre, the princes Henry of Béarn and Henry of Condé, the Admiral de Coligny, and the Count Louis of Nassau, were present, and several of these distinguished personages took a direct part in the deliberation in their capacity as deputies of the churches.

The confession of faith of 1559 was then sanctioned and reduced to a uniform text: “Inasmuch as our confession of faith is printed in different ways,” said the members of the assembly, “the synod declares that that is the only true one which was drawn up at the first national synod.” It was determined to make three copies on parchment, of which one should be kept at La Rochelle, the second in Béarn, and the third at Geneva, after being signed by the members, ecclesiastic and lay, of the synod. The two copies of Béarn and La Rochelle were lost during the religious wars.

XII.

An illustrious magistrate of the sixteenth century said, in speaking of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew: “Let it be blotted out from the memory of man!” This wish has not been fulfilled, nor should it ever be; the great crimes of mankind are great lessons!

So far from this event being forgotten, a vast library might be filled with the books which have been written upon it. Authors of every nation—French, Italian, English, German—have devoted long and patient research to this subject. Every word has been weighed, every act commented on; and they have striven to assign to each person his due share of responsibility.

These are questions, which in our day are exhausted in the estimation of the enlightened and honest men of every opinion. Thus no one would now dare to maintain the fable of a plot by Coligny against the king’s life. The thesis of the Abbé de Caveyrac upon _salutary rigours_, will not be reproduced. The premeditation of the massacre can be no longer seriously denied. The (Roman) Catholic French historians, De Thou, Mézeray, Péréfixe, Maimbourg, all admit it; the Italian historians, Davila, Capilupi, Adriani, Catena, these confidants of Catherine de Medicis, or of the Roman conclave, do more; they admire and extol the premeditation, and see in it a marvellous effect of the blessing of heaven. These, then, are settled points.[57]

But there is another question, which, as it concerns the honour of the French name, as well as the rights of truth, must be considered. Who were the first, and the real authors of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew? We make answer, from researches, of which we will here give a short analysis.

The popes and the king of Spain, who never ceased to demand by their legates, their ambassadors, their public and secret agents, the extermination of the chiefs of the Huguenot party;

Catherine de Medicis, the niece of Clement VII., the woman of Florence, who had been nurtured in the precepts of Machiavel;

The Cardinal de Lorraine, doubly a foreigner by his birth, and in his quality of prince of the Roman church;

His nephew, Henry of Guise, a Lorraine, a young man of twenty-two, who sought to persuade himself that the Admiral was guilty of the death of his father, in order to incite himself to assassinate him, and to become, after his death, the first person in the state;

Albert de Gondi, the Florentine, whom we have already named, who cited the murder of the duke of Orleans, by the duke of Burgundy, as an example to Charles IX., and said it was necessary not to do things by halves, but to kill all, even the young Bourbon princes, the sin being as great for a small as for a great crime;

René Birago, or de Birague, a Milanese adventurer, whom Francis I. had brought to France; he had risen by climbing to the highest offices of the magistracy, and received a cardinal’s hat, as a reward for the part he took in the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. It was this Birago, who went about repeating the atrocious phrase, that to terminate the religious wars “_cooks were needed more them soldiers_;”

Lastly, Louis de Gonzague, a native of Mantua, and duke of Nevers, a skilful courtier, an indifferent captain, and one of the most eager of his day in promoting assassinations.

Up to this point there was not a single Frenchman [connected with the plot]. But besides Spain and the Papacy, there were two Lorraines, three Italian men, and one Italian woman[58] [engaged in it]. Albert de Gondi was the most intimate of the confidants of Catherine de Medicis. The duke of Guise, Birago, and Louis de Gonzague, formed a second secret council, which decided everything.

There remains, however, three Frenchmen [to be named]: the Marshal de Tavannes, the duke of Anjou, and Charles IX. These alone, with the Lorraines and the Italians, had any influence in the deliberations; the other Frenchmen were but creatures and tools.

The Marshal de Tavannes authorized the crime and helped in its consummation; he even showed himself, after the affair was begun, extremely violent; but in the councils he had spoken with more moderation than his accomplices, and had rejected the proposal to kill the two Bourbon princes.

The duke of Anjou, then in his twentieth year, had been brought up, like his brother, by Gondi, who had taught him to violate faith and to feast himself with spectacles of blood. He was already given up to those unbridled debaucheries, and to those ignoble superstitions, which made him a modern Heliogabalus, and the most abject prince ever seen upon the throne of France. “As for me,” said Charles IX. to Coligny, “I am a Frenchman and king of the French; my brother, the duke of Anjou, speaks only with his head, his eyes, and his shoulders; he is an Italian.”

Charles IX. was the last [to give his adhesion]. The execration of the human race has fallen upon his head, because he held the sceptre on the fatal day, and because, as soon as he smelt the odour of blood, he was maddened to become the executioner of his subjects. But he was not the most guilty. He had moments of candour and generosity; he alone hesitated, and was the only one of this infamous court who felt the pangs of remorse.

“Will there be no pity,” asks M. de Châteaubriand in his _Etudes historiques_, “for this monarch of twenty-three years of age, born with good talents, with a taste for literature and the arts, a character naturally generous, whom a detestable mother had delighted to deprave by all the abuses of debauchery and power?” Yes, there will be pity for him, even amongst those Huguenots whose fathers he caused to be slaughtered, and with a pious hand they will wipe off the blood which covers his face, to discover in it something that is human.

These were the real authors of the Saint Bartholomew massacre, and this is the manner in which they prepared and accomplished it.

The court saw with displeasure that the chiefs of the Reformed, Jeanne d’Albret, Henry of Bourbon, Henry of Condé, Coligny, Larochefoucauld, Lanoue, Briquemant, and Cavagnes, had retired to La Rochelle, or to their provinces. It was necessary to draw them out, in order to get them into their power. Men of the third party were sent to them, who, without raising their distrust, might induce them to approach nearer to Paris. The Calvinist deputies positively went to court, where they experienced the most favourable reception. Charles IX. behaved not only as a king, who forgets and pardons, but as a prince who was anxious to gratify his discontented subjects. He gave much and promised more; he especially heaped favours upon Téligny, son-in-law of the Admiral, a young man of frank and amiable character, who almost thought that he had found a friend in his master.

However, these chiefs of the second rank were not enough; those of the first rank were necessary, and in order to succeed, the marriage of Margaret of Valois, the sister of Charles IX., with Henry of Béarn was brought forward, a brilliant alliance for the poor house of Navarre, but one which dazzled Jeanne d’Albret but little, because she balanced the vices of the Valois against their fortune. “I would rather,” she said, “descend to be the most humble maiden of France, than sacrifice my soul and that of my son to grandeur.”

The envoys of the court set before her and the chiefs of the party, considerations of another kind. They represented that this marriage would be the best guarantee of a solid peace between the two religions. Coligny allowed himself to be deceived,—he came to believe, in the simplicity of his great heart, that the entire kingdom would be united at the same time as the royal family. Charles IX. indeed declared that he married his sister not only to the prince of Navarre, but to the whole party. “It will be,” he said, “the strongest and the closest bond of peace between my subjects, and a sure testimony of my good-will towards those of the religion.”

Jeanne d’Albret dared resist no longer, she went to Blois in the month of May, 1572, leaving her son behind her, out of a lingering feeling of distrust. “On the day of her arrival,” says L’Estoile, “the king and the queen-mother caressed her with much [apparent tenderness], especially the king, who called her his great-aunt, his all, his best-beloved, and never left her side, and entertained her with so much honour and respect, that every one was astonished.” In the evening, on retiring, he said to the queen his mother, laughing, “And now, madam, what do you say, do I not play my part well?” “Yes,” she answered, “very well; but nothing is well which is not kept up.” “Leave me alone,” said the king, “and you shall see how I will put the bit on them.”[59]

Jeanne d’Albret set out on her journey for Paris on the 15th May. On the 4th June she fell ill; on the 9th she was dead. Had she been poisoned? Many believed so. It was said that a Florentine perfumer, Master René, known by the name of the queen’s poisoner, had sold her some poisoned gloves.

She showed in her last days the same consistent piety, which had adorned her life. She uttered neither complaints nor murmurs in the most cruel accessions of pain; a faith resigned and serene shone through all her sufferings. Her tranquil heroism astonished that court, when in dying they could laugh, but knew not how peacefully to collect themselves before God. She had no regret for her life, but in reflecting on the youth of her son and of her daughter Catherine. “In any case,” she said, “my trust is that God will be to them a father and protector, as He has been to me in my greatest afflictions; I commit them to His Providence to provide for them.” She died at the age of forty-four.

The Admiral Coligny had already gone to court in the autumn of 1571; he returned in July, 1572, in spite of the warnings of many of his friends. “I trust,” he answered them, “to the sincerity and the oath of his majesty.”

In his first interview, Coligny knelt before the king. Charles IX. raised him up, called him his father, and embracing the illustrious old man thrice, said to him, “We have got you now; you shall not escape when you wish; this is the happiest day of my life.”

He opened his councils to the Admiral, and seemed to listen to him with the deference of a son. Coligny laid before him the political plans which had long occupied his thoughts, and which were afterwards adopted by Henry IV. and Cardinal Richelieu—humiliation of the house of Spain; aid to the insurgents of the Low Countries; alliance with the Protestant princes of the empire and of Sweden, in order to become the arbiter of peace and war in Europe. The conquest of the Low Countries was then easy; for the Belgians, out of hatred to Philip II. and the duke of Alba, would have joyfully offered to become an integrant part of the kingdom. If the Admiral’s plan had been followed, France from the sixteenth century would have become the first power in the world, and the entire pages of modern history would have been changed. But the popes, the queen-mother, her advisers, and the Guises prevented it, in spite of Charles IX., who felt at last the instinct of national honour.

The marriage of Margaret of Valois with Henry of Béarn, who had just taken the title of king of Navarre, was celebrated on the 18th August, 1572, and four days were spent in games, festivals, masquerades, and ballets.

On Friday, the 22nd August, Coligny was returning from the Louvre, accompanied by twelve or fifteen gentlemen. He was walking slowly, being engaged in reading a petition, when passing in front of the cloister of Saint Germain, he was struck by three balls shot from an arquebuse, which shattered the forefinger of his left hand, and wounded his left arm. The door of the house whence the arquebuse had been fired, was burst open, but only a laquais and a female servant were found. The murderer had had time to escape: it was Maurevel, formerly a page of the dukes of Guise, and one of their intimates; “_the slayer on the king’s wages, the common assassin_,” as he is styled by the historians of the epoch.

The surgeon Ambrois Paré examined the Admiral’s wound. It was feared that the copper balls had been poisoned, and Coligny believed he was approaching his last hour. “My friends,” he said, “why do you weep? as for me, I hold myself happy to have received these wounds for the cause of God; pray to Him to strengthen me.”

The news of the crime was spread in a moment throughout Paris, and excited the greatest agitation. The sheriffs (_échevins_) ordered the captains of the militia to assemble their companies, and to guard the Hôtel de Ville. The king was playing at tennis when he heard of the event, and angrily throwing down his racket, exclaimed, “Shall I never have any peace? Must I witness fresh troubles every day?” This first utterance of his conscience tends to clear his memory; the assassination was the work of the duke of Guise, supported by Catherine and her confidants; it had not been ordered by Charles IX.

The Calvinists gathered in consternation at the dwelling of the Admiral, and held counsel together. They wished to remove him instantly from Paris, but the physicians would not permit it.

The marshals Damville and De Cossé, men of the third party, also came to offer their services to the Admiral. “I have no other regret for what has happened to me,” he said, “but that of being deprived of the opportunity of showing the king the affection I bear to his service. I could have wished,” he added, “to converse a while with the king upon things of great moment for him to know, and which I think there is no one who would dare to tell him.”

In the afternoon, Charles IX. came with the queen-mother, the duke of Anjou, and other personages of the court, to see him. The occurrences at this interview are variously related. Coligny spoke to the king concerning the war of the Low Countries, and the Edict of Pacification; then he discoursed with him for some minutes, in a low voice. Charles IX. and his mother wished to see the ball, which had been extracted from the wound. “You bear the wound,” said the king, “and I the perpetual pain; but, by God’s death, I will take such terrible revenge, that it shall never be forgotten!”

Was his indignation sincere? From the manner in which he addressed the duke Henry of Guise, and from the order given him to quit the court without delay, it may be supposed to have been so. But Catherine and the duke of Anjou represented to the king that the accusation of the murder of the Admiral would certainly ascend to him, notwithstanding anything he might do; that civil war was about to be renewed; and that it was better to fight the battle in Paris, where all the chiefs were assembled, than to encounter the risk of a new campaign. “Well,” said Charles IX., in a fit of frenzy, “since you think the Admiral must be killed, I am willing; but it must be with all the Huguenots, so that there be not one left to reproach me.”

The day of Saturday was spent in preparations, and secret councils. The duke of Guise, who had speedily returned after feigning to depart, arranged matters with the sheriffs, the captains of the _quartiers_, and the Swiss. “Let every good Catholic,” he said to them, “tie a strip of white linen round his arm, and wear a white cross in his hat.”

The hour drew nigh. Catherine declared to Charles IX. that it was too late to go back; that the moment had come to lop off the gangrened limbs; and, recurring to the language of her cradle, as will happen under the dominion of powerful emotions: “_E pietà_,” she said, “_lor ser crudele, e crudeltà lor ser pietoso_ (it is pity to be cruel to them, and it would be cruelty to show them pity).”

Charles still hesitated; a cold sweat stood upon his forehead. His mother struck a blow upon the point, on which he was most sensitive. She asked if by his irresolution he would have his courage called in question. The king was indignant at the thought of a suspicion of cowardice. He rose, and cried out: “Well, begin!” It was then half-past one in the morning.

In the king’s chamber there were now only Catherine, Charles IX., and the duke of Anjou. All three preserved a sullen silence. The report of the first pistol was heard. Charles started, and sent word to the duke of Guise to precipitate nothing. It was too late. The queen-mother, distrusting the hesitation of her son, had commanded that the hour for the signal should be anticipated. The great bell of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois began to toll between two and three in the morning of Sunday, the 24th of August. At the sound of the tocsin, armed men rushed out from every door, shouting, “For God and the King!”

The duke of Guise, accompanied by his uncle, the Duke d’Aumale, the Chevalier d’Angoulême, and three hundred soldiers, hastened to the dwelling of the Admiral. They knocked at the first gate in the king’s name. A gentleman opened it: he fell stabbed. The inner gate was then burst in. At the noise of firing Coligny and all his people got up. They attempted to barricade the entry to the apartments; but this feeble rampart crumbled before the onset of the aggressors.

The Admiral had invited his minister Merlin to pray with him. A servant hurried to him terror-stricken: “Sir,” cried he, “the house is broken into, and there are no means of resistance.” “I have long been prepared to die,” answered Coligny. “As for you, save yourselves if you can; for you cannot secure my life. I commend my soul to the mercy of God.”

All reached the upper part of the house, except Nicolas Muss, his German interpreter. Coligny rested against the wall; his wound prevented him from standing upright. The first who entered the room was a Lorraine, or German, named _Behem_, _Besme_, a servant of the duke of Guise. “Are you not the Admiral?” he demanded. “Yes, I am,” replied Coligny; and looking without discomposure upon the naked sword of the assassin, [he added]: “Young man, you ought to consider my age and my infirmity; but you will not make my life shorter.” Besme plunged his sword into his breast, and gave him a second blow upon the head. The others finished the murder with their daggers.[60]

Guise was waiting impatiently in the courtyard. “_Besme_, hast thou done it?” [he shouted]. “It is done, my lord,” [was the reply given]. Monsieur le Chevalier would not believe it unless he saw it with his eyes; “Throw him out of the window,” [was, therefore, the command]. _Besme_ and one of his companions lifted up the body of the Admiral, who still breathing, clutched the window-frame. They flung him into the courtyard. The duke of Guise, wiping off the blood from his face with a handkerchief, said: “I know him, it is he;” and kicking the dead body with his foot, he hastened into the street, exclaiming: “Courage, comrades; we have begun well—now for the rest; the king commands it.”

Sixteen years and four months afterwards, on the 23rd of December, 1588, in the castle of Blois, the corpse of this same Henry of Guise was lying before Henry III., who, in like manner, kicked it in the face. Sovereign justice of God!

Coligny was fifty-five years and a half old. Since the peace of 1570, he every morning and evening read the sermons of Calvin upon the book of Job, saying that this history was his help and consolation in all his troubles. He also spent several hours of the day in writing his memoirs. These papers having been brought to the council after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, were burned by the king’s order, lest they might increase regret for his death.

Some time after this event, when the English ambassador expressed his grief for the murder of Coligny, Catherine made answer to him: “Do you know that the Admiral recommended the king, as a matter of the last importance, to keep under the king of Spain, and also your mistress (Queen Elizabeth), as much as possible?” “Very true, madam,” replied the ambassador; “he was a bad Englishman, but a good Frenchman.”

Let us also cite a saying of Montesquieu: “The Admiral Coligny was assassinated, having only had the glory of the state at heart.”

XIII.

We are willing, whilst fulfilling our task, to abridge as far as possible the details of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.

When the sun of the 24th of August rose upon Paris, all was tumult, disorder, and carnage; rivers of blood flowed in the streets; corpses of men, women, and children blocked up the doorways; on all sides groans, blasphemies, death-cries, and imprecations, were heard; ruffians by thousands insulted their victims before butchering them, and then loaded themselves with the spoils; the poniard, the pike, the knife, the sword, the arquebuse, every weapon of the soldier and the brigand, were brought into the service of this execrable slaughter; and the vile populace running after the murderers, finished the Huguenots, by mutilating them and dragging them in the mire, by a cord round the neck, to have their share also in this feast of cannibals.

At the Louvre, the Huguenots, brought up one after another between a double line of halberts, fell bleeding before they reached the end; and the ladies of the court, well worthy to be the mothers, the wives, and the sisters of assassins, came to gloat over the bodies of the victims.

It has been remarked that of so many brave men, who had a thousand times faced death on the field of battle, there was but one, Taverny, who sought to defend himself; and even he was a lawyer. The rest presented their throats to the poniard like women. A crime so monstrous overwhelmed their minds, and paralyzed their hands; and before they could recover themselves, they were no more.

Some, however, who lived on the other side of the Seine, in the faubourgs Saint Germain, Montgomery, Rohan, Ségur, and La Ferrière, had time to comprehend their position and to escape. It was then that the king, maddened with fury, seized an arquebuse and fired at Frenchmen. Two hundred and twenty-seven years afterwards, Mirabeau picked the arquebuse of Charles IX. out of the dust of centuries, to turn it against the throne of Louis XVI.

On the same Sunday morning, the king sent for Henry of Navarre and Henry of Condé. He said to them in a ferocious tone: “_The mass, death, or the Bastille_.” After some resistance, the princes consented to make profession of the Romish faith; but neither the court nor the people believed in the sincerity of their abjuration.

The massacre lasted four days. It was necessary to clothe it with a pretext before France and Europe. At first it was endeavoured to throw the burthen upon the Guises, but they refused [to bear it]. Next a pretended conspiracy of the Huguenots against Charles IX. and his family was invented. There were tergiversations of every kind, fabrications, which could not be maintained for an hour, confessions, which were retracted on the following day, orders and counter-orders to the governors in the provinces: a miserable play of the actors after the tragic scene.

On Thursday, when the blood of the victims deluged the streets of Paris, the clergy celebrated an extraordinary jubilee, and made a general procession. They even determined to consecrate an annual feast to a triumph so glorious; and whilst the (Roman) Catholic pulpits re-echoed with thanksgivings, a medal was struck with this legend: “_Piety has awakened Justice!_” The massacre of Saint Bartholomew was renewed in the provinces, and horrible to say, it lasted more than six weeks.

We would collect with a religious care the names of those governors who refused to imbrue their hands in these massacres. The Viscount d’Orte, at Bayonne; the Count de Tende, in Dauphiné; Saint Héran, in Auvergne; Chabot Charny and the President Jeannin, at Dijon; La Guiche, at Mâçon; de Rieux, at Narbonne; Matignon, at Alençon; Villars, at Nismes; the Count de Carce, in Provence; and the Montmorencys in their demesnes and governments.

We delight also, to be able to inscribe in this list the name of a priest, Jean Hennuyer, bishop of Lisieux. When the lieutenant of the king imparted to him the order for the massacre of the Huguenots, he answered: “No, no, sir, I oppose, and will always oppose the execution of such an order. I am the pastor of Lisieux, and these people, whom you command me to slaughter, are my flock. Although they have at present strayed, having quitted the pasture which Jesus Christ, the Sovereign Shepherd, has confided to my care, they may still come back. I do not see in the Gospel that the shepherd can permit the blood of his sheep to be shed; on the contrary, I find there, that he is bound to give his blood and his life for them.” Upon this the governor asked him for his own acquittance for a refusal in writing, and this the bishop Hennuyer gave him.[61]

The blow fell upon the provinces with a variable force. In those where the Reformed were few in number, as in Brittany, Picardy, Champagne and Burgundy, no great excesses were committed. In certain cantons of the provinces, on the contrary, where they were very numerous, as in Saintonge, and in Lower Languedoc, they did not dare to attack them. It is important also to observe, that in general, Saint Bartholomew’s day was nowhere so kept, but in the towns. This explains why so many Calvinists escaped death.

The faithful of Meaux were butchered in the prisons during several days, and the sword being too slow, iron hammers were employed. Four hundred houses, in the most handsome quarter of the town, were pillaged and devastated.

At Troyes, the executioner had more humanity than the governor, who gave him the command to massacre the prisoners. “It is against my duty,” said he, “for I have not learned to execute any one without a sentence of condemnation being first passed.” There were other executioners, who, finding their hearts fail them in the midst of the butchery, sent for wine to strengthen them for their work.

At Orleans, where there still remained three thousand Calvinists, men on horseback cried throughout the streets: “Courage, friends, kill all, and then you shall pillage their goods.” The most ruffianly were those who had abjured in the last wars; they parodied the psalms, whilst they immolated those whose faith they had forsworn.

At Rouen, many Huguenots took to flight; the rest were cast into prison. The massacre began only on the 17th September, and lasted four days. The prisoners were called over by their names, from a list given to the murderers. There perished, according to the relation of Crespin, near six hundred persons.

At Toulouse, the events of Paris were made known on Sunday, the 31st August. The gates of the town were instantly closed, and the Reformed, who had gone to celebrate their worship at the village of Castanet, were only admitted one by one, by little posterns. They were taken to the prisons and the convents. There they remained a month. It was not till the 3rd October that they were executed, by order of the chief president Dafis. Three hundred perished, amongst whom were five councillors, who after they were killed, were hanged in their robes on the great elm, which stood before the court of the palace.

The massacre of Bordeaux was delayed like that of Toulouse, and during these hesitations, a Jesuit named Augier declaimed every day from his pulpit against the pusillanimity of the governor. At length, companies of assassins were organized: they had the name of “_the red_, or _cardinal band_,” bestowed upon them.

The towns of Bourges, Angers, and many others, witnessed similar scenes. But these were trifling by the side of the massacres of Lyons: here there was a second Saint Bartholomew, more frightful still than that of Paris, because it was conducted with a sort of regularity. The governor Mandelot gave orders that the Calvinists should be shut up in the prisons of the Archbishoprics, of the Cordeliers, and of the Célestins, and be slaughtered in detachments. The executioner of Lyons, like his brother of Troyes, refused to lend his hand to the work. “After sentence,” said he, “I will do what I have to do; there are but too many such executioners as are needed residing in the town.” A writer says upon this subject: “What a re-establishment of order it would have been, if in this unhappy city the governor had been the executioner, and the executioner the governor!”[62]

There perished at Lyons, according to some, eight hundred, according to others, thirteen hundred, fifteen hundred, or eighteen hundred, Huguenots. The dwellers on the borders of the Rhone, in Dauphiné, and in Provence, stood aghast at the sight of so many corpses floating on the waters, or thrown up on the banks of the river; many were tied to long poles, and horribly mutilated. “At Lyons,” says Capilupi, a gentleman attached to the court of the pope, “thanks to the excellent order and singular prudence of M. de Mandelot, governor of the town, all the Huguenots were taken one after the other like sheep.”[63]

The correspondence of Mandelot has recently been published. He expressed his deep regret to Charles IX. that a few Huguenots had escaped, and supplicated his majesty to grant him a share of the spoils of the dead. Lyons has witnessed other massacres, but we have not learned that the proconsuls of the Convention held out their hands to clutch the wages of blood.