MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.
1572
The commencement of the massacre.--The house forced.--Flight of the
servants.--Death of Admiral Coligni.--Brutality.--Fate of the Duke
of Guise.--Excitement of the Parisians.--Fiendish spirit of
Charles.--Fugitives butchered.--Terror of Marguerite.--Flight of
Marguerite.--Terrors of the night.--Remarkable escape of
Maximilian.--Efforts to save his life.--The disguise.--Scene in the
street.--The talisman.--Arrival at the college.--His protection.--Henry
taken before the king.--He yields.--Paris on the Sabbath
following.--Encouragement by the priests.--The massacre
continued.--Exultation of the Catholics.--Triumphal procession.--Extent
of the massacre.--Magnanimity of Catholic officers.--The Bishop
of Lisieux.--Noble replies to the king's decree.--The higher
law.--Attempted justification.--Punishment of Coligni.--Valor
of the survivors.--Pledges of aid.--Prophecy of Knox.--Apology
of the court.--Opinions of the courts of Europe.--Rejoicings at
Rome.--Atrocity of the deed.--Results of the massacre.--Retribution.
As the solemn dirge from the steeple rang out upon the night air, the
king stood at the window of the palace trembling in every nerve.
Hardly had the first tones of the alarm-bell fallen upon his ear when
the report of a musket was heard, and the first victim fell. The sound
seemed to animate to frenzy the demoniac Catharine, while it almost
froze the blood in the veins of the young monarch, and he passionately
called out for the massacre to be stopped. It was too late. The train
was fired, and could not be extinguished. The signal passed with the
rapidity of sound from steeple to steeple, till not only Paris, but
entire France, was roused. The roar of human passion, the crackling
fire of musketry, and the shrieks of the wounded and the dying, rose
and blended in one fearful din throughout the whole metropolis. Guns,
pistols, daggers, were every where busy. Old men, terrified maidens,
helpless infants, venerable matrons, were alike smitten, and mercy
had no appeal which could touch the heart of the murderers.
The wounded Admiral Coligni was lying helpless upon his bed,
surrounded by a few personal friends, as the uproar of the rising
storm of human violence and rage rolled in upon their ears. The Duke
of Guise, with three hundred soldiers, hastened to the lodgings of the
admiral. The gates were immediately knocked down, and the sentinels
stabbed. A servant, greatly terrified, rushed into the inner apartment
where the wounded admiral was lying, and exclaimed,
"The house is forced, and there is no means of resisting."
"I have long since," said the admiral, calmly, "prepared myself to
die. Save yourselves, my friends, if you can, for you can not defend
my life. I commend my soul to the mercy of God."
The companions of the admiral, having no possible means of protection,
and perhaps adding to his peril by their presence, immediately fled to
other apartments of the house. They were pursued and stabbed. Three
leaped from the windows and were shot in the streets.
Coligni, left alone in his apartment, rose with difficulty from his
bed, and, being unable to stand, leaned for support against the wall.
A desperado by the name of Breme, a follower of the Duke of Guise,
with a congenial band of accomplices, rushed into the room. They saw a
venerable man, pale, and with bandaged wounds, in his night-dress,
engaged in prayer.
"Art thou the admiral?" demanded the assassin, with brandished sword.
"I am," replied the admiral; "and thou, young man, shouldst respect my
gray hairs. Nevertheless, thou canst abridge my life but a little."
Breme plunged his sword into his bosom, and then withdrawing it, gave
him a cut upon the head. The admiral fell, calmly saying, "If I could
but die by the hand of a gentleman instead of such a knave as this!"
The rest of the assassins then rushed upon him, piercing his body with
their daggers.
The Duke of Guise, ashamed himself to meet the eye of this noble
victim to the basest treachery, remained impatiently in the court-yard
below.
"Breme!" he shouted, looking up at the window, "have you done it?"
"Yes," Breme exclaimed from the chamber, "he is done for."
"Let us see, though," rejoined the duke. "Throw the body from the
window."
The mangled corpse was immediately thrown down upon the pavement of
the court-yard. The duke, with his handkerchief, wiped the blood and
the dirt from his face, and carefully scrutinized the features.
"Yes," said he, "I recognize him. He is the man."
Then giving the pallid cheek a kick, he exclaimed, "Courage, comrades!
we have happily begun. Let us now go for others. The king commands
it."
In sixteen years from this event the Duke of Guise was himself
assassinated, and received a kick in the face from Henry III., brother
of the same king in whose service he had drawn the dagger of the
murderer. Thus died the Admiral Coligni, one of the noblest sons of
France. Though but fifty-six years of age, he was prematurely infirm
from care, and toil, and suffering.
For three days the body was exposed to the insults of the populace,
and finally was hung up by the feet on a gibbet. A cousin of Coligni
secretly caused it to be taken down and buried.
The tiger, having once lapped his tongue in blood, seems to be imbued
with a new spirit of ferocity. There is in man a similar temper, which
is roused and stimulated by carnage. The excitement of human slaughter
converts man into a demon. The riotous multitude of Parisians was
becoming each moment more and more clamorous for blood. They broke
open the houses of the Protestants, and, rushing into their chambers,
murdered indiscriminately both sexes and every age. The streets
resounded with the shouts of the assassins and the shrieks of their
victims. Cries of "Kill! kill! more blood!" rent the air. The bodies
of the slain were thrown out of the windows into the streets, and the
pavements of the city were clotted with human gore.
Charles, who was overwhelmed with such compunctions of conscience when
he heard the first shot, and beheld from his window the commencement
of the butchery, soon recovered from his momentary wavering, and,
conscious that it was too late to draw back, with fiendlike eagerness
engaged himself in the work of death. The monarch, when a boy, had
been noted for his sanguinary spirit, delighting with his own hand to
perform the revolting acts of the slaughter-house. Perfect fury seemed
now to take possession of him. His cheeks were flushed, his lips
compressed, his eyes glared with frenzy. Bending eagerly from his
window, he shouted words of encouragement to the assassins. Grasping a
gun, in the handling of which he had become very skillful from long
practice in the chase, he watched, like a sportsman, for his prey; and
when he saw an unfortunate Protestant, wounded and bleeding, flying
from his pursuers, he would take deliberate aim from the window of his
palace, and shout with exultation as he saw him fall, pierced by his
bullet. A crowd of fugitives rushed into the court-yard of the Louvre
to throw themselves upon the protection of the king. Charles sent his
own body-guard into the yard, with guns and daggers, to butcher them
all, and the pavements of the palace-yard were drenched with their
blood.
[Illustration: THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.]
Just before the carnage commenced, Marguerite, weary with excitement
and the agitating conversation to which she had so long been
listening, retired to her private apartment for sleep. She had hardly
closed her eyes when the fearful outcries of the pursuers and the
pursued filled the palace. She sprang up in her bed, and heard some
one struggling at the door, and shrieking "Navarre! Navarre!" In a
paroxysm of terror, she ordered an attendant to open the door. One
of her husband's retinue instantly rushed in, covered with wounds and
blood, pursued by four soldiers of her brother's guard. The captain of
the guard entered at the same moment, and, at the earnest entreaty of
the princess, spared her the anguish of seeing the friend of her
husband murdered before her eyes.
Marguerite, half delirious with bewilderment and terror, fled from her
room to seek the apartment of her sister. The palace was filled with
uproar, the shouts of the assassins and the shrieks of their victims
blending in awful confusion. As she was rushing through the hall, she
encountered another Protestant gentleman flying before the dripping
sword of his pursuer. He was covered with blood, flowing from the many
wounds he had already received. Just as he reached the young Queen of
Navarre, his pursuer overtook him and plunged a sword through his
body. He fell dead at her feet.
No tongue can tell the horrors of that night. It would require volumes
to record the frightful scenes which were enacted before the morning
dawned. Among the most remarkable escapes we may mention that of a lad
whose name afterward attained much celebrity. The Baron de Rosny, a
Protestant lord of great influence and worth, had accompanied his son
Maximilian, a very intelligent and spirited boy, about eleven years of
age, to Paris, to attend the nuptials of the King of Navarre. This
young prince, Maximilian, afterward the world-renowned Duke of Sully,
had previously been prosecuting his studies in the College of
Burgundy, in the metropolis, and had become a very great favorite of
the warm-hearted King of Navarre. His father had come to Paris with
great reluctance, for he had no confidence in the protestations of
Catharine and Charles IX. Immediately after the attempt was made to
assassinate the admiral, the Baron de Rosny, with many of his friends,
left the city, intrusting his son to the care of a private tutor and a
valet de chambre. He occupied lodgings in a remote quarter of the city
and near the colleges.
Young Maximilian was asleep in his room, when, a little after
midnight, he was aroused by the ringing of the alarm-bells, and the
confused cries of the populace. His tutor and valet de chambre sprang
from their beds, and hurried out to ascertain the cause of the tumult.
They did not, however, return, for they had hardly reached the door
when they were shot down. Maximilian, in great bewilderment respecting
their continued absence, and the dreadful clamor continually
increasing, was hurriedly dressing himself, when his landlord came in,
pale and trembling, and informed him of the massacre which was going
on, and that he had saved his own life only by the avowal of his faith
in the Catholic religion. He earnestly urged Maximilian to do the
same. The young prince magnanimously resolved not to save his life by
falsehood and apostasy. He determined to attempt, in the darkness and
confusion of the night, to gain the College of Burgundy, where he
hoped to find some Catholic friends who would protect him.
The distance of the college from the house in which he was rendered
the undertaking desperately perilous. Having disguised himself in the
dress of a Roman Catholic priest, he took a large prayer-book under
his arm, and tremblingly issued forth into the streets. The sights
which met his eye in the gloom of that awful night were enough to
appal the stoutest heart. The murderers, frantic with excitement and
intoxication, were uttering wild outcries, and pursuing, in every
direction, their terrified victims. Women and children, in their
night-clothes, having just sprung in terror from their beds, were
flying from their pursuers, covered with wounds, and uttering fearful
shrieks. The mangled bodies of the young and of the old, of males and
females, were strewn along the streets, and the pavements were
slippery with blood. Loud and dreadful outcries were heard from the
interior of the dwellings as the work of midnight assassination
proceeded; and struggles of desperate violence were witnessed, as the
murderers attempted to throw their bleeding and dying victims from the
high windows of chambers and attics upon the pavements below. The
shouts of the assailants, the shrieks of the wounded, as blow after
blow fell upon them, the incessant reports of muskets and pistols, the
tramp of soldiers, and the peals of the alarm-bell, all combined to
create a scene of terror such as human eyes have seldom witnessed. In
the midst of ten thousand perils, the young man crept along, protected
by his priestly garb, while he frequently saw his fellow-Christians
shot and stabbed at his very side.
Suddenly, in turning a corner, he fell into the midst of a band of the
body-guard of the king, whose swords were dripping with blood. They
seized him with great roughness, when, seeing the Catholic
prayer-book which was in his hands, they considered it a safe
passport, and permitted him to continue on his way uninjured. Twice
again he encountered similar peril, as he was seized by bands of
infuriated men, and each time he was extricated in the same way.
At length he arrived at the College of Burgundy; and now his danger
increased tenfold. It was a Catholic college. The porter at the gate
absolutely refused him admittance. The murderers began to multiply in
the street around him with fierce and threatening questions.
Maximilian at length, by inquiring for La Faye, the president of the
college, and by placing a bribe in the hands of the porter, succeeded
in obtaining entrance. La Faye was a humane man, and exceedingly
attached to his Protestant pupil. Maximilian entered the apartment of
the president, and found there two Catholic priests. The priests, as
soon as they saw him, insisted upon cutting him down, declaring that
the king had commanded that not even the infant at the breast should
be spared. The good old man, however, firmly resolved to protect his
young friend, and, conducting him privately to a secure chamber,
locked him up. Here he remained three days in the greatest suspense,
apprehensive every hour that the assassins would break in upon him. A
faithful servant of the president brought him food, but could tell him
of nothing but deeds of treachery and blood. At the end of three days,
the heroic boy, who afterward attained great celebrity as the minister
and bosom friend of Henry, was released and protected.
The morning of St. Bartholomew's day had not dawned when a band of
soldiers entered the chamber of Henry of Navarre and conveyed him to
the presence of the king. Frenzied with the excitements of the scene,
the imbecile but passionate monarch received him with a countenance
inflamed with fury. With blasphemous oaths and imprecations, he
commanded the King of Navarre, as he valued his life, to abandon a
religion which Charles affirmed that the Protestants had assumed only
as a cloak for their rebellion. With violent gesticulations and
threats, he declared that he would no longer submit to be contradicted
by his subjects, but that they should revere him as the image of God.
Henry, who was a Protestant from considerations of state policy rather
than from Christian principle, and who saw in the conflict merely a
strife between two political parties, ingloriously yielded to that
necessity by which alone he could save his life. Charles gave him
three days to deliberate, declaring, with a violent oath, that if, at
the end of that time, he did not yield to his commands, he would cause
him to be strangled. Henry yielded. He not only went to mass himself,
but submitted to the degradation of sending an edict to his own
dominions, prohibiting the exercise of any religion except that of
Rome. This indecision was a serious blot upon his character. Energetic
and decisive as he was in all his measures of government, his
religious convictions were ever feeble and wavering.
When the darkness of night passed away and the morning of the Sabbath
dawned upon Paris, a spectacle was witnessed such as the streets even
of that blood-renowned metropolis have seldom presented. The city
still resounded with that most awful of all tumults, the clamor of an
infuriated mob. The pavements were covered with gory corpses. Men,
women, and children were still flying in every direction, wounded and
bleeding, pursued by merciless assassins, riotous with demoniac
laughter and drunk with blood. The report of guns and pistols was
heard in all parts of the city, sometimes in continuous volleys, as if
platoons of soldiers were firing upon their victims, while the
scattered shots, incessantly repeated in every section of the extended
metropolis, proved the universality of the massacre. Drunken wretches,
besmeared with blood, were swaggering along the streets, with ribald
jests and demoniac howlings, hunting for the Protestants. Bodies, torn
and gory, were hanging from the windows, and dissevered heads were
spurned like footballs along the pavements. Priests were seen in their
sacerdotal robes, with elevated crucifixes, and with fanatical
exclamations encouraging the murderers not to grow weary in their holy
work of exterminating God's enemies. The most distinguished nobles and
generals of the court and the camp of Charles, mounted on horseback
with gorgeous retinue, rode through the streets, encouraging by voice
and arm the indiscriminate massacre.
"Let not," the king proclaimed, "one single Protestant be spared to
reproach me hereafter with this deed."
For a whole week the massacre continued, and it was computed that from
eighty to a hundred thousand Protestants were slain throughout the
kingdom.
Charles himself, with Catharine and the highborn but profligate ladies
who disgraced her court, emerged with the morning light, in splendid
array, into the reeking streets. The ladies contemplated with
merriment and ribald jests the dead bodies of the Protestants piled up
before the Louvre. Some of the retinue, appalled by the horrid
spectacle, wished to retire, alleging that the bodies already emitted
a putrid odor. Charles inhumanly replied, "The smell of a dead enemy
is always pleasant."
On Thursday, after four days spent in hunting out the fugitives
and finishing the bloody work, the clergy paraded the streets
in a triumphal procession, and with jubilant prayers and hymns gave
thanks to God for their great victory. The Catholic pulpits resounded
with exultant harangues, and in honor of the event a medallion
was struck off, with the inscription "_La piete a reveille la
justice_"--_Religion has awakened justice_.
In the distant provinces of France the massacre was continued, as the
Protestants were hunted from all their hiding-places. In some
departments, as in Santonge and Lower Languedoc, the Protestants were
so numerous that the Catholics did not venture to attack them. In
some other provinces they were so few that the Catholics had nothing
whatever to fear from them, and therefore spared them; and in the
sparsely-settled rural districts the peasants refused to imbrue their
hands in the blood of their neighbors. Many thousand Protestants
throughout the kingdom in these ways escaped.
But in nearly all the populous towns, where the Catholic population
predominated, the massacre was universal and indiscriminate. In Meaux,
four hundred houses of Protestants were pillaged and devastated, and
the inmates, without regard to age or sex, utterly exterminated. At
Orleans there were three thousand Protestants. A troop of armed
horsemen rode furiously through the streets, shouting, "Courage, boys!
kill all, and then you shall divide their property." At Rouen, many of
the Protestants, at the first alarm, fled. The rest were arrested and
thrown into prison. They were then brought out one by one, and
deliberately murdered. Six hundred were thus slain. Such were the
scenes which were enacted in Toulouse, Bordeaux, Bourges, Angers,
Lyons, and scores of other cities in France. It is impossible to
ascertain with precision the number of victims. The Duke of Sully
estimates them at seventy thousand; the Bishop Perefixe at one
hundred thousand. This latter estimate is probably not exaggerated, if
we include the unhappy fugitives, who, fleeing from their homes, died
of cold, hunger, and fatigue, and all the other nameless woes which
accrued from this great calamity.
In the midst of these scenes of horror it is pleasant to record
several instances of generous humanity. In the barbarism of those
times dueling was a common practice. A Catholic officer by the name of
Vessins, one of the most fierce and irritable men in France, had a
private quarrel with a Protestant officer whose name was Regnier. They
had mutually sought each other in Paris to obtain such satisfaction as
a duel could afford. In the midst of the massacre, Regnier, while at
prayers with his servant (for in those days dueling and praying were
not deemed inconsistent), heard the door of his room broken open, and,
looking round in expectation of instant death, saw his foe Vessins
enter breathless with excitement and haste. Regnier, conscious that
all resistance would be unavailing, calmly bared his bosom to his
enemy, exclaiming,
"You will have an easy victory."
Vessins made no reply, but ordered the valet to seek his master's
cloak and sword. Then leading him into the street, he mounted him upon
a powerful horse, and with fifteen armed men escorted him out of the
city. Not a word was exchanged between them. When they arrived at a
little grove at a short distance from the residence of the Protestant
gentleman, Vessins presented him with his sword, and bade him dismount
and defend himself, saying,
"Do not imagine that I seek your friendship by what I have done. All I
wish is to take your life honorably."
Regnier threw away his sword, saying, "I will never strike at one who
has saved my life."
"Very well!" Vessins replied, and left him, making him a present of
the horse on which he rode.
Though the commands which the king sent to the various provinces of
France for the massacre were very generally obeyed, there were
examples of distinguished virtue, in which Catholics of high rank not
only refused to imbrue their own hands in blood, but periled their
lives to protect the Protestants. The Bishop of Lisieux, in the
exercise of true Christian charity, saved all the Protestants in the
town over which he presided. The Governor of Auvergne replied to the
secret letter of the king in the following words:
"Sire, I have received an order, under your majesty's seal,
to put all the Protestants of this province to death, and
if, which God forbid, the order be genuine, I respect your
majesty still too much to obey you."
The king had sent a similar order to the commandant at Bayonne, the
Viscount of Orthez. The following noble words were returned in reply:
"Sire, I have communicated the commands of your majesty to
the inhabitants of the town and to the soldiers of the
garrison, and I have found good citizens and brave soldiers,
_but not one executioner_; on which account, they and I
humbly beseech you to employ our arms and our lives in
enterprises in which we can conscientiously engage. However
perilous they may be, we will willingly shed therein the
last drop of our blood."
Both of these noble-minded men soon after very suddenly and
mysteriously died. Few entertained a doubt that poison had been
administered by the order of Charles.
The _law_ of France required that these Protestants should be hunted
to death. This was _the law_ promulgated by the king and sent by his
own letters missive to the appointed officers of the crown.
But there is--_there is_ a HIGHER LAW than that of kings and courts.
Nobly these majestic men rendered to it their allegiance. They sealed
their fidelity to this HIGHER LAW with their blood. They were martyrs,
not fanatics.
On the third day of the massacre the king assembled the Parliament in
Paris, and made a public avowal of the part he had taken in this
fearful tragedy, and of the reasons which had influenced him to the
deed. Though he hoped to silence all Protestant tongues in his own
realms in death, he knew that the tale would be told throughout all
Europe. He therefore stated, in justification of the act, that he had,
"as if by a miracle," discovered that the Protestants were engaged in
a conspiracy against his own life and that of all of his family.
This charge, however, uttered for the moment, was speedily dropped and
forgotten. There was not the slightest evidence of such a design.
The Parliament, to give a little semblance of justice to the king's
accusation, sat in judgment upon the memory of the noble Coligni. They
sentenced him to be hung in effigy; ordered his arms to be dragged at
the heels of a horse through all the principal towns of France; his
magnificent castle of Chatillon to be razed to its foundations, and
never to be rebuilt; his fertile acres, in the culture of which he had
found his chief delight, to be desolated and sown with salt; his
portraits and statues, wherever found, to be destroyed; his children
to lose their title of nobility; all his goods and estates to be
confiscated to the use of the crown, and a monument of durable marble
to be raised, upon which this sentence of the court should be
engraved, to transmit to all posterity his alleged infamy. Thus was
punished on earth one of the noblest servants both of God and man. But
there is a day of final judgment yet to come. The oppressor has but
his brief hour. There is eternity to right the oppressed.
Notwithstanding this general and awful massacre, the Protestants were
far from being exterminated. Several nobles, surrounded by their
retainers in their distant castles, suspicious of treachery, had
refused to go to Paris to attend the wedding of Henry and Marguerite.
Others who had gone to Paris, alarmed by the attack upon Admiral
Coligni, immediately retired to their homes. Some concealed themselves
in garrets, cellars, and wells until the massacre was over. As has
been stated, in some towns the governors refused to engage in the
merciless butchery, and in others the Protestants had the majority,
and with their own arms could defend themselves within the walls which
their own troops garrisoned.
Though, in the first panic caused by the dreadful slaughter, the
Protestants made no resistance, but either surrendered themselves
submissively to the sword of the assassin, or sought safety in
concealment or flight, soon indignation took the place of fear. Those
who had fled from the kingdom to Protestant states rallied together.
The survivors in France began to count their numbers and marshal their
forces for self-preservation. From every part of Protestant Europe a
cry of horror and execration simultaneously arose in view of this
crime of unparalleled enormity. In many places the Catholics
themselves seemed appalled in contemplation of the deed they had
perpetrated. Words of sympathy were sent to these martyrs to a pure
faith from many of the Protestant kingdoms, with pledges of determined
and efficient aid. The Protestants rapidly gained courage. From all
the country, they flocked into those walled towns which still
remained in their power.
As the fugitives from France, emaciate, pale, and woe-stricken, with
tattered and dusty garb, recited in England, Switzerland, and Germany
the horrid story of the massacre, the hearts of their auditors were
frozen with horror. In Geneva a day of fasting and prayer was
instituted, which is observed even to the present day. In Scotland
every church resounded with the thrilling tale; and Knox, whose
inflexible spirit was nerved for those iron times, exclaimed, in
language of prophetic nerve,
"Sentence has gone forth against that murderer, the King of France,
and the vengeance of God will never be withdrawn from his house. His
name shall be held in everlasting execration."
The French court, alarmed by the indignation it had aroused, sent an
embassador to London with a poor apology for the crime, by pretending
that the Protestants had conspired against the life of the king. The
embassador was received in the court of the queen with appalling
coldness and gloom. Arrangements were made to invest the occasion with
the most impressive solemnity. The court was shrouded in mourning,
and all the lords and ladies appeared in sable weeds. A stern and
sombre sadness was upon every countenance. The embassador, overwhelmed
by his reception, was overheard to exclaim to himself, in bitterness
of heart,
"I am ashamed to acknowledge myself a Frenchman."
He entered, however, the presence of the queen, passed through the
long line of silent courtiers, who refused to salute him, or even to
honor him with a look, stammered out his miserable apology, and,
receiving no response, retired covered with confusion. Elizabeth, we
thank thee! This one noble deed atones for many of thy crimes.
Very different was the reception of these tidings in the court of
Rome. The messenger who carried the news was received with transports
of joy, and was rewarded with a thousand pieces of gold. Cannons were
fired, bells rung, and an immense procession, with all the trappings
of sacerdotal rejoicing, paraded the streets. Anthems were chanted and
thanksgivings were solemnly offered for the great victory over the
enemies of the Church. A gold medal was struck off to commemorate the
event; and Charles IX. and Catharine were pronounced, by the
infallible word of his holiness, to be the especial favorites of God.
Spain and the Netherlands united with Rome in these infamous
exultations. Philip II. wrote from Madrid to Catharine,
"These tidings are the greatest and the most glorious I could
have received."
Such was the awful massacre of St. Bartholomew. When contemplated in
all its aspects of perfidy, cruelty, and cowardice, it must be
pronounced the greatest crime recorded in history. The victims were
invited under the guise of friendship to Paris. They were received
with solemn oaths of peace and protection. The leading men in the
nation placed the dagger in the hands of an ignorant and degraded
people. The priests, professed ministers of Jesus Christ, stimulated
the benighted multitude by all the appeals of fanaticism to
exterminate those whom they denounced as the enemies of God and man.
After the great atrocity was perpetrated, princes and priests, with
blood-stained hands, flocked to the altars of God, our common Father,
to thank him that the massacre had been accomplished.
The annals of the world are filled with narratives of crime and woe,
but the Massacre of St. Bartholomew stands perhaps without a parallel.
It has been said, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
Church." This is only true with exceptions. Protestantism in France
has never recovered from this blow. But for this massacre one half of
the nobles of France would have continued Protestant. The Reformers
would have constituted so large a portion of the population that
mutual toleration would have been necessary. Henry IV. would not have
abjured the Protestant faith. Intelligence would have been diffused;
religion would have been respected; and in all probability, the
horrors of the French Revolution would have been averted.
God is an avenger. In the mysterious government which he wields,
mysterious only to our feeble vision, he "visits the iniquities of the
fathers upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation."
As we see the priests of Paris and of France, during the awful tragedy
of the Revolution, massacred in the prisons, shot in the streets, hung
upon the lamp-posts, and driven in starvation and woe from the
kingdom, we can not but remember the day of St. Bartholomew. The 24th
of August, 1572, and the 2d of September, 1792, though far apart in
the records of time, are consecutive days in the government of God.