PREPARATIONS FOR MASSACRE.
1572
The attempted assassination of Coligni.--Escape of the
assassin.--Arrival of Henry.--Christian submission of
Coligni.--Indignation of Henry.--Artifice of Catharine and
Charles.--Perplexity of the Protestants.--Secret preparations.--Feeble
condition of the Protestants.--The visit.--The secret
council.--Preparations to arm the citizens.--Directions for the
massacre.--Signals.--Feast at the Louvre.--Embarrassment of
Henry.--The Duke of Lorraine.--His hatred toward the Protestants.--The
assassin's revenge.--Anxiety of the Duchess of Lorraine.--Scene in
Henry's chamber.--Rumors of trouble.--Assembling for work.--Alarm
in the metropolis.--Inflexibility of Catharine.--The faltering of
Charles.--Nerved for the work.--The knell of death.--"Vive Dieu et
le roi!"
As the Admiral Coligni was quietly passing through the streets from
his interview with Charles at the Louvre to his residence, in
preparation for his departure, accompanied by twelve or fifteen of his
personal friends, a letter was placed in his hands. He opened it, and
began to read as he walked slowly along. Just as he was turning a
corner of the street, a musket was discharged from the window of an
adjoining house, and two balls struck him. One cut off a finger of his
right hand, and the other entered his left arm. The admiral, inured to
scenes of danger, manifested not the slightest agitation or alarm. He
calmly pointed out to his friends the house from which the gun had
been discharged, and his attendants rushed forward and broke open the
door. The assassin, however, escaped through a back window, and,
mounting a fleet horse stationed there, and which was subsequently
proved to have belonged to a nephew of the king, avoided arrest. It
was clearly proved in the investigations which immediately ensued
that the assassin was in connivance with some of the most prominent
Catholics of the realm. The Duke of Guise and Catharine were clearly
implicated.
Messengers were immediately dispatched to inform the king of the crime
which had been perpetrated. Charles was still playing in the
tennis-court. Casting away his racket, he exclaimed, with every
appearance of indignation, "Shall I never be at peace?"
The wounded admiral was conveyed to his lodgings. The surgeons of the
court, the ministers of the Protestant Church, and the most
illustrious princes and nobles of the admiral's party hastened to the
couch of the sufferer. Henry of Navarre was one of the first that
arrived, and he was deeply moved as he bent over his revered and
much-loved friend. The intrepid and noble old man seemed perfectly
calm and composed, reposing unfailing trust in God.
"My friends," said he, "why do you weep? For myself, I deem it an
honor to have received these wounds for the name of God. Pray him to
strengthen me."
Henry proceeded from the bedside of the admiral to the Louvre. He
found Charles and Catharine there, surrounded by many of the nobles
of their court. In indignant terms Henry reproached both mother and
son with the atrocity of the crime which had been committed, and
demanded immediate permission to retire from Paris, asserting that
neither he nor his friends could any longer remain in the capital in
safety. The king and his mother vied with each other in noisy,
voluble, and even blasphemous declarations of their utter abhorrence
of the deed; but all the oaths of Charles and all the vociferations of
Catharine did but strengthen the conviction of the Protestants that
they both were implicated in this plot of assassination. Catharine and
Charles, feigning the deepest interest in the fate of their wounded
guest, hastened to his sick-chamber with every possible assurance of
their distress and sympathy. Charles expressed the utmost indignation
at the murderous attempt, and declared, with those oaths which are
common to vulgar minds, that he would take the most terrible vengeance
upon the perpetrators as soon as he could discover them.
"To discover them can not be difficult," coolly replied the admiral.
Henry of Navarre, overwhelmed with indignation and sorrow, was
greatly alarmed in view of the toils in which he found himself and his
friends hopelessly involved. The Protestants, who had been thus lured
to Paris, unarmed and helpless, were panic-stricken by these
indications of relentless perfidy. They immediately made preparations
to escape from the city. Henry, bewildered by rumors of plots and
perils, hesitated whether to retire from the capital with his friends
in a body, taking the admiral with them, or more secretly to endeavor
to effect an escape.
But Catharine and Charles, the moment for action having not quite
arrived, were unwearied in their exertions to allay this excitement
and soothe these alarms. They became renewedly clamorous in their
expressions of grief and indignation in view of the assault upon the
admiral. The king placed a strong guard around the house where the
wounded nobleman lay, ostensibly for the purpose of protecting him
from any popular outbreak, but in reality, as it subsequently
appeared, to guard against his escape through the intervention of his
friends. He also, with consummate perfidy, urged the Protestants in
the city to occupy quarters near together, that, in case of trouble,
they might more easily be protected by him, and might more
effectually aid one another. His real object, however, was to assemble
them in more convenient proximity for the slaughter to which they were
doomed. The Protestants were in the deepest perplexity. They were not
sure but that all their apprehensions were groundless; and yet they
knew not but that in the next hour some fearful battery would be
unmasked for their destruction. They were unarmed, unorganized, and
unable to make any preparation to meet an unknown danger. Catharine,
whose depraved yet imperious spirit was guiding with such consummate
duplicity all this enginery of intrigue, hourly administered the
stimulus of her own stern will to sustain the faltering purpose of her
equally depraved but fickle-minded and imbecile son.
Some circumstances seem to indicate that Charles was not an accomplice
with his mother in the attempt upon the life of the admiral. She said
to her son, "Notwithstanding all your protestations, the deed will
certainly be laid to your charge. Civil war will again be enkindled.
The chiefs of the Protestants are now all in Paris. You had better
gain the victory at once here than incur the hazard of a new
campaign."
"Well, then," said Charles, petulantly, "since you approve the murder
of the admiral, I am content. But let all the Huguenots also fall,
that there may not be one left to reproach me."
It was on Friday, the 22d of August, that the bullets of the assassin
wounded Coligni. The next day Henry called again, with his bride, to
visit his friend, whose finger had been amputated, and who was
suffering extreme pain from the wound in his arm. Marguerite had but
few sympathies with the scenes which are to be witnessed in the
chamber of sickness. She did not conceal her impatience, but, after a
few commonplace phrases of condolence with her husband's bosom friend,
she hastened away, leaving Henry to perform alone the offices of
friendly sympathy.
While the young King of Navarre was thus sitting at the bedside of the
admiral, recounting to him the assurances of faith and honor given by
Catharine and her son, the question was then under discussion, in
secret council, at the palace, by this very Catharine and Charles,
whether Henry, the husband of the daughter of the one and of the
sister of the other, should be included with the rest of the
Protestants in the massacre which they were plotting. Charles
manifested some reluctance thus treacherously to take the life of his
early playmate and friend, his brother-in-law, and his invited guest.
It was, after much deliberation, decided to protect him from the
general slaughter to which his friends were destined.
The king sent for some of the leading officers of his troops, and
commanded them immediately, but secretly, to send his agents through
every section of the city, to arm the Roman Catholic citizens, and
assemble them, at midnight, in front of the Hotel de Ville.
The energetic Duke of Guise, who had acquired much notoriety by the
sanguinary spirit with which he had persecuted the Protestants, was to
take the lead of the carnage. To prevent mistakes in the confusion of
the night, he had issued secret orders for all the Catholics "to wear
a white cross on the hat, and to bind a piece of white cloth around
the arm." In the darkest hour of the night, when all the sentinels of
vigilance and all the powers of resistance should be most effectually
disarmed by sleep, the alarm-bell, from the tower of the Palace of
Justice, was to toll the signal for the indiscriminate massacre of the
Protestants. The bullet and the dagger were to be every where
employed, and men, women, and children were to be cut down without
mercy. With a very few individual exceptions, none were to be left to
avenge the deed. Large bodies of troops, who hated the Protestants
with that implacable bitterness which the most sanguinary wars of many
years had engendered, had been called into the city, and they,
familiar with deeds of blood, were to commence the slaughter. All good
citizens were enjoined, as they loved their Savior, to aid in the
extermination of the enemies of the Church of Rome. Thus, it was
declared, God would be glorified and the best interests of man
promoted. The spirit of the age was in harmony with the act, and it
can not be doubted that there were those who had been so instructed by
their spiritual guides that they truly believed that by this sacrifice
they were doing God service.
The conspiracy extended throughout all the provinces of France. The
storm was to burst, at the same moment, upon the unsuspecting victims
in every city and village of the kingdom. Beacon-fires, with their
lurid midnight glare, were to flash the tidings from mountain to
mountain. The peal of alarm was to ring along from steeple to steeple,
from city to hamlet, from valley to hill-side, till the whole
Catholic population should be aroused to obliterate every vestige of
Protestantism from the land.
While Catharine and Charles were arranging all the details of this
deed of infamy, even to the very last moment they maintained with the
Protestants the appearance of the most cordial friendship. They
lavished caresses upon the Protestant generals and nobles. The very
day preceding the night when the massacre commenced, the king
entertained, at a sumptuous feast in the Louvre, many of the most
illustrious of the doomed guests. Many of the Protestant nobles were
that night, by the most pressing invitations, detained in the palace
to sleep. Charles appeared in a glow of amiable spirits, and amused
them, till a late hour, with his pleasantries.
Henry of Navarre, however, had his suspicions very strongly aroused.
Though he did not and could not imagine any thing so dreadful as a
general massacre, he clearly foresaw that preparations were making for
some very extraordinary event. The entire depravity of both Catharine
and Charles he fully understood. But he knew not where the blow would
fall, and he was extremely perplexed in deciding as to the course he
ought to pursue. The apartments assigned to him and his bride were in
the palace of the Louvre. It would be so manifestly for his worldly
interest for him to unite with the Catholic party, especially when he
should see the Protestant cause hopelessly ruined, that the mother and
the brother of his wife had hesitatingly concluded that it would be
safe to spare his life. Many of the most conspicuous members of the
court of Navarre lodged also in the capacious palace, in chambers
contiguous to those which were occupied by their sovereign.
Marguerite's oldest sister had married the Duke of Lorraine, and her
son, the Duke of Guise, an energetic, ambitious, unprincipled
profligate, was one of the most active agents in this conspiracy. His
illustrious rank, his near relationship with the king--rendering it
not improbable that he might yet inherit the throne--his restless
activity, and his implacable hatred of the Protestants, gave him the
most prominent position as the leader of the Catholic party. He had
often encountered the Admiral Coligni upon fields of battle, where all
the malignity of the human heart had been aroused, and he had often
been compelled to fly before the strong arm of his powerful adversary.
He felt that now the hour of revenge had come, and with an assassin's
despicable heart he thirsted for the blood of his noble foe. It was
one of his paid agents who fired upon the admiral from the window,
and, mounted upon one of the fleetest chargers of the Duke of Guise,
the wretch made his escape.
The conspiracy had been kept a profound secret from Marguerite, lest
she should divulge it to her husband. The Duchess of Lorraine,
however, was in all their deliberations, and, fully aware of the
dreadful carnage which the night was to witness, she began to feel, as
the hour of midnight approached, very considerable anxiety in
reference to the safety of her sister. Conscious guilt magnified her
fears; and she was apprehensive lest the Protestants, when they should
first awake to the treachery which surrounded them, would rush to the
chamber of their king to protect him, and would wreak their vengeance
upon his Catholic spouse. She did not dare to communicate to her
sister the cause of her alarm; and yet, when Marguerite, about 11
o'clock, arose to retire, she importuned her sister, even with tears,
not to occupy the same apartment with her husband that night, but to
sleep in her own private chamber. Catharine sharply reproved the
Duchess of Lorraine for her imprudent remonstrances, and bidding the
Queen of Navarre good-night, with maternal authority directed her to
repair to the room of her husband. She departed to the nuptial
chamber, wondering what could be the cause of such an unwonted display
of sisterly solicitude and affection.
When she entered her room, to her great surprise she found thirty or
forty gentlemen assembled there. They were the friends and the
supporters of Henry, who had become alarmed by the mysterious rumors
which were floating from ear to ear, and by the signs of agitation,
and secrecy, and strange preparation which every where met the eye. No
one could imagine what danger was impending. No one knew from what
quarter the storm would burst. But that some very extraordinary event
was about to transpire was evident to all. It was too late to adopt
any precautions for safety. The Protestants, unarmed, unorganized, and
widely dispersed, could now only practice the virtue of heroic
fortitude in meeting their doom, whatever that doom might be. The
gentlemen in Henry's chamber did not venture to separate, and not an
eye was closed in sleep. They sat together in the deepest perplexity
and consternation, as the hours of the night lingered slowly along,
anxiously awaiting the developments with which the moments seemed to
be fraught.
In the mean time, aided by the gloom of a starless night, in every
street of Paris preparations were going on for the enormous
perpetration. Soldiers were assembling in different places of
rendezvous. Guards were stationed at important points in the city,
that their victims might not escape. Armed citizens, with loaded
muskets and sabres gleaming in the lamplight, began to emerge, through
the darkness, from their dwellings, and to gather, in motley and
interminable assemblage, around the Hotel de Ville. A regiment of
guards were stationed at the gates of the royal palace to protect
Charles and Catharine from any possibility of danger. Many of the
houses were illuminated, that by the light blazing from the windows,
the bullet might be thrown with precision, and that the dagger might
strike an unerring blow. Agitation and alarm pervaded the vast
metropolis. The Catholics were rejoicing that the hour of vengeance
had arrived. The Protestants gazed upon the portentous gatherings of
this storm in utter bewilderment.
All the arrangements of the enterprise were left to the Duke of Guise,
and a more efficient and fitting agent could not have been found. He
had ordered that the tocsin, the signal for the massacre, should be
tolled at two o'clock in the morning. Catharine and Charles, in one of
the apartments of the palace of the Louvre, were impatiently awaiting
the lingering flight of the hours till the alarm-bell should toll
forth the death-warrant of their Protestant subjects. Catharine,
inured to treachery and hardened in vice, was apparently a stranger to
all compunctious visitings. A life of crime had steeled her soul
against every merciful impression. But she was very apprehensive lest
her son, less obdurate in purpose, might relent. Though impotent in
character, he was, at times, petulant and self-willed, and in
paroxysms of stubbornness spurned his mother's counsels and exerted
his own despotic power.
Charles was now in a state of the most feverish excitement. He hastily
paced the room, peering out at the window, and almost every moment
looking at his watch, wishing that the hour would come, and again half
regretting that the plot had been formed. The companions and the
friends of his childhood, the invited guests who, for many weeks, had
been his associates in gay festivities, and in the interchange of all
kindly words and deeds, were, at his command, before the morning
should dawn, to fall before the bullet and the poniard of the midnight
murderer. His mother witnessed with intense anxiety this wavering of
his mind. She therefore urged him no longer to delay, but to
anticipate the hour, and to send a servant immediately to sound the
alarm.
Charles hesitated, while a cold sweat ran from his forehead. "Are you
a coward?" tauntingly inquired the fiendlike mother. This is the
charge which will always make the poltroon squirm. The young king
nervously exclaimed, "Well, then, begin."
There were in the chamber at the time only the king, his mother, and
his brother the Duke of Anjou. A messenger was immediately dispatched
to strike the bell. It was two hours after midnight. A few moments of
terrible suspense ensued. There was a dead silence, neither of the
three uttering a word. They all stood at the windows looking out into
the rayless night. Suddenly, through the still air, the ponderous
tones of the alarm-bell fell upon the ear, and rolled, the knell of
death, over the city. Its vibrations awakened the demon in ten
thousand hearts. It was the morning of the Sabbath, August 24th, 1572.
It was the anniversary of a festival in honor of St. Bartholomew,
which had long been celebrated. At the sound of the tocsin, the signal
for the massacre, armed men rushed from every door into the streets,
shouting, "_Vive Dieu et le roi!_"--_Live God and the king!_