This town contained from twenty-five to thirty thousand of the

Reformed, for the most part, burghers, merchants, professors of the

university, men of letters, students, and magistrates. They had

chosen municipal officers of their own persuasion. “Toulouse,” says

an old chronicle, “is governed by a mixture of magistrates of three

kinds: Catholics, Huguenots, and Temporizers—people, however, of

elevated minds, adorned with many graces, rich and opulent; and there

is even a fourth kind, namely, that of the ancient heresy (probably

that of the Albigeois), which had already taken root.”[45]

After the publication of the Edict of January, the Reformed had built

a wooden church outside the gates of the town, which would hold

from five to six thousand persons. They went there in open day, and

the women were not less zealous than the men. “They had laid aside

with their prayer-books and the beads which they had worn at their

girdles,” says our chronicler, “their ample robes, and dissolute

garments, dances, and worldly songs, as if they had been guided by

the Holy Ghost: all of which our preachers could not obtain from the

Catholics with all their holy admonitions.”[46]

The majority of the Parliament continued to protect the ancient

worship; and the people, goaded by the imprecations of the monks,

attacked the Calvinists on the least pretext and pillaged their

houses. All was violence, disorder, anarchy!

Driven to extremes, and headed by some of their municipal

magistrates, the Reformed took possession of the _Maison-de-Ville_,

or Capitol, on the night of the 11th or 12th of May.

The councillors of the Parliament immediately passed a sentence of

arrest against the magistrates who had taken part in this affair, and

sent round to demand the armed assistance of all the captains and

gentlemen of the surrounding country. Then they presented themselves

to the people in red robes, commanding them to take arms and seize

the heretics dead or alive. “Pillage, kill boldly, with the approval

of the pope, of the king, and of the court,” cried out five or six

frenzied councillors, whilst traversing the streets.

The struggle became horrible. The Calvinists who had not been able

to take refuge in the Hôtel de Ville were seized in their houses,

thrown out of the windows, or dragged to the Garonne. Wretches, whom

the constables were taking to prison, were massacred on their way,

whilst no mercy was shown to well-dressed passengers! It was taken

for granted that every one, who was not a labouring man, a member of

the Parliament, a monk or a priest, must be a heretic.

Another characteristic circumstance of the struggle, was that the

people, imagining all cultivation of the mind to be a commencement

of heresy, crowded at once around the shops of the booksellers, and

burned all the books they contained in the public places. These

wretched men, who could not read, thought they were thus doing the

work of good (Roman) Catholics.

The tocsin rang from all the churches, for five or six leagues round.

Bands of peasantry poured into the town, attracted by the hope of

plunder. The Reformed, besieged in the Capitol, had cannon, and

defended themselves, from the Monday to the Saturday, with all the

courage of despair.

Reduced at length to the last extremity, without food for their

wives and children, or powder to load their arms, the people having

also fired the whole quarter near the Capitol, they demanded a

parley, crying: _Vive la Croix! Vive la Croix!_ They were promised

their lives, on condition of leaving their arms and effects in the

_Maison-de-Ville_. Before, however, they departed, they celebrated

the Holy Communion with many prayers and tears, and began, between

eight and nine in the evening, to retreat by the gate of Villeneuve.

But the labourers and peasants, whom the priests had taught that it

was not binding on them to keep faith with heretics, fell on them,

and it is reckoned that three thousand five hundred persons perished

in these conflicts.

The Parliament next proceeded to judicial executions. They first

mutilated their own body, by excluding twenty-two councillors, who,

without being Huguenots, had allowed their wives, or other members of

their families, to frequent the sermons. Up to the month of March,

1563, the provost of the town and three hundred other heretics had

been put to death, and four hundred persons were also condemned to

the same penalty for contumacy. The clergy had published a monition

enjoining, under pain of excommunication and eternal damnation, not

only the denunciation of heretics, but even of those, who had given

them counsel, help, or favour.

Acts of atrocious fanaticism were committed. It is related that a boy

of twelve or thirteen years, who had come from Montauban to Toulouse,

was called upon to recite the _Ave Maria_. He answered that it had

not been taught him, and for that reason alone he was taken to the

gallows.

In the midst of so many frightful crimes, Blaise de Montluc and the

Baron des Adrets had still the frightful honour of distinguishing

themselves by their cruelty. The first, a rude and ignorant soldier,

was the most ferocious of all the (Roman) Catholic chiefs of the

south. He seemed to enjoy a wild and insatiable delight in spectacles

of blood, and he has himself related in his _Commentaries_, with the

utmost coolness, all the executions he had ordered. He was constantly

attended by two executioners armed with hatchets well sharpened, who

were called his _laquais_. He ordered the Huguenots to be hanged

or beheaded without interrogation; “_for they_,” he said, “_have

a golden tongue_.” The roads, by which he passed, were known by

the bodies hanging on the trees. Nor did he neglect to take care

of his fortune; he knew how to pick up gold out of blood. “He who,

heretofore, had but little mercy,” says Brantôme, “found himself at

the end of the war possessed of a hundred thousand crowns.”[47] He

was rewarded for his exploits by the bâton of a marshal of France.

But pitiless as he was, he once encountered men who surpassed him.

They were Spaniards, whom Philip II. had sent to the assistance of

the (Roman) Catholic party. Having taken a little town in Agenois,

Montluc put all those to the sword who had defended the castle, and

sent back the women by a staircase hollowed out of the wall. The

Spaniards, who were waiting for them in the court, butchered them all

together, with the little children they carried in their arms. When

Montluc reproached them for this, they answered with _sang-froid_,

“We thought they were Lutherans in disguise (_todos Luteranos

tapados_).”

The Baron des Adrets, who led some of the Huguenot bands, showed

himself no less barbarous than Montluc. He had embraced the new

religion on account of an action, which he accused the duke of Guise

of having caused him to lose. He spread terror in the Lyonnais,

Dauphiné, Provence, and the county of Avignon. But the chiefs of the

Calvinist party were soon ashamed of, and shocked at his crimes, and

sent Soubise to Lyons to restrain him. They even made him prisoner

at Valence, and he was only set at liberty at the conclusion of the

peace, which he resented so much, that he returned to the Romish

communion and died a Papist.

IX.

Catherine de Medicis did not, as she had promised, make the prince

of Condé lieutenant-general of the kingdom. She caused her son to be

declared to have attained his majority, in a _lit de justice_ held at

the Parliament of Rouen, on the 17th of August, 1563. Charles IX. was

then thirteen years and two months old. This prince was not deficient

in natural intelligence; he was fond of literature, and, under

better discipline, might have prepared himself to have worn the crown

worthily. But his mother had early trained him to be treacherous,

dissimulating, suspicious, and eager for bloody spectacles. She had

given him for his preceptor a man from her town of Florence, Albert

Gondi, afterwards named Marshal de Retz, who, according to Brantôme,

was cunning, cautious, corrupt, lying, a great dissembler, swearing,

and denying God like a porter.

The Edict of Pacification was not executed. Several Parliaments would

only consent to register it after long resistance. The governors of

the provinces relaxed or tightened the clauses of the edict at their

pleasure; and the states of Burgundy, directed by the Duke d’Aumale,

even dared to declare that they could no more endure two religions,

than heaven could bear two suns.

In the districts where the (Roman) Catholics were the strongest, they

represented themselves as defiled by the neighbourhood of heresy, and

gave themselves up to shameful acts of violence against the faithful,

who went to the assemblies. They violated even the sanctity of the

domestic hearth, maltreating those who sung psalms, compelling the

Huguenots to furnish bread for the parochial masses, and to give

money to the church societies. When the oppressed appealed to the

laws, they were answered by blows, sometimes by assassinations. More

than three thousand of them perished by a violent death after the

signing of the peace.

Where, on the other hand, the Calvinists were in the majority, they

did not obey the Edict of Amboise, nor could they have done so, had

they wished; for this treaty had been made rather for the north, than

for the south of France. Imagine fifty to a hundred thousand persons

compelled to take a journey of several leagues to celebrate their

worship in a privileged town!

(Roman) Catholics and the Reformed were not united in the same

society: they were encamped face to face, erect, and with arms in

their hands. The (Roman) Catholics began, from the year 1563, under

the influence of the cardinals and bishops, to form themselves into

leagues or private associations for the extirpation of heresy. They

bound themselves to devote their persons and their goods, without

reservation, [to their cause]. The Calvinists, on their side, had

their battle-fields, their rallying-signs, watchwords, and plans of

campaign. They were two great armies, who were engaged in constant

skirmishes, while waiting for the hour and the place of battle.

In 1564, Catherine de Medicis made Charles IX. traverse the provinces

of his kingdom, in order to rekindle the affection of the (Roman)

Catholics, and to intimidate the Huguenots. When she arrived at

Roussillon, a little town of Dauphiné, she published, on the 4th of

August, an _interpretative_ declaration of the Edict of Amboise. The

lords _haut-justiciers_ were no longer to admit any but the members

of their families, and their immediate vassals, to their assemblies.

It was forbidden to the churches to hold synods, and to make

collections of money. The pastors had no longer the right to leave

their place of residence, or to open schools. The priests, monks, and

nuns who had married, were commanded instantly to separate themselves

from their consorts, or to quit the kingdom with the least possible

delay. Thus was the iron circle which surrounded the Huguenots,

tightened until they should be stifled by it.

The queen-mother held a conference at Bayonne, with the Duke d’Albe,

in the month of June, 1565. This interview has been celebrated,

because, according to the testimony of several historians, the plot

of the Saint Bartholomew massacre was there laid down. The ferocious

envoy of Philip II. told Catherine that a sovereign could do nothing

more damaging to his interests, or more degrading to his subjects,

than to give them liberty of conscience, and he counselled her to

cut down the highest heads of the Huguenots, for then the rest might

be easily managed. “Ten thousand frogs,” he continued in his coarse

language, “are not worth the head of a salmon.”

We are assured that the plot was to have been carried out in 1566,

during the session of the assembly of Notables at Moulins. But

Coligny and the other chiefs came well attended, and the bloody deed

was adjourned to a better opportunity.

The court having brought six thousand (Roman) Catholic soldiers from

Switzerland, the Huguenots saw they had to fear the worst, and the

prince of Condé held a council with the chiefs of his party. The

Admiral was of opinion that they should still have patience, and

wait till things had come to the last extremity. “I see very well,”

he said, “how we may light up the fire, but not where to find water

to quench it.”

His brother D’Andelot thought differently. “If you wait,” he said,

“until we are banished into foreign lands, bound in prison, pursued

by the people, despised by the soldiers, what will our patience or

our past humility have availed us? What will our innocence profit

us? Who will so much as listen to us? Those have already declared

war, who have thrust in amongst us six thousand foreign soldiers.

If we also give them the advantage of striking the first blow, our

misfortune will be without a remedy.”

The prince of Condé went once more with the admiral to the queen,

to entreat her to be more just to the Reformed. They were badly

received. Seeing that their complaints were useless, they resolved to

follow the example given them five years before by the duke of Guise,

and to seize the young king, who was then in the castle of Monceaux,

in Brie (September, 1567).

The plot was discovered, and the court fled precipitately to

Meaux. The Chancellor l’Hospital, always favourable to measures of

justice and moderation, proposed to send the Swiss home, to carry

out the Edict of Amboise faithfully, and promised that on these

conditions the Huguenots should lay down their arms. “Eh! Monsieur le

Chancelier,” said the queen, “will you answer that they have no other

end than to serve the king?” “Yes, madame,” answered L’Hospital,

“if I am assured that there is no intention to deceive them.” But

the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Constable were of opinion that no

concession should be made.

Nevertheless it was necessary to gain time; for the Swiss had not yet

arrived. Catherine therefore cajoled the chiefs of the Calvinists

by negotiations; she sent the Marshal de Montmorency to them, as a

man of the Third Party. He was well received. The Reformed repeated

to him the cry, which was uttered in all their complaints: “The

free exercise of our religion!” While this was going on, the Swiss

arrived; the conference was broken off, and the opportunity lost. A

(Roman) Catholic historian of our own time expresses astonishment

at “_the credulity of these country gentlemen who were ready to

disperse upon the faith of a simple promise_.” It appears to us, that

this remark does as much honour to the good faith of the Calvinist

party, as it does little credit to that of the (Roman) Catholic court

of Charles IX.

After this undertaking, nothing was left but to resort to the hazard

of arms. Condé encamped in the environs of Paris, with one thousand

infantry and fifteen hundred cavalry. The Constable offered him

battle in the plain of Saint Denis, on the 10th of November, 1567. He

had eighteen thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry, but they

were for the most part recruits of Parisian volunteers.

A crowd of idlers, and ladies dressed as Amazons, wished to enjoy

the spectacle of the fight. Monks distributed beads, and chanted

litanies. The action commenced towards the end of the day. At the

first shock, the Parisians, who were known by their embroidered

dresses and brilliant armour, gave way. The Constable, with the Swiss

and the cavalry, defended himself vigorously. At the end of two

hours, the Huguenots retreated in good order, and their adversaries

dared not pursue them further than a quarter of a league from the

field of battle.

Anne de Montmorency, covered with wounds, had been summoned by a

Scottish gentleman to surrender. “Dost thou know me?” the Constable

asked. “It is because I know thee, that I bring thee this,” answered

the other, and fired a pistol at him. Montmorency, the last of the

triumvirate, died of his wound a few days after. He obtained from

Catherine de Medicis nothing but feigned tears, from the bigoted

(Roman) Catholics a cold indifference, and from the Reformed a

well-deserved resentment. The accident of his birth had placed his

fortune too high. In all his great employments he wanted one quality,

for which nothing can compensate—a breadth of understanding.

A man of sense, the Marshal de Vielleville, spoke, indeed, truly [to

the king] of the affair of Saint Denis. “It is not your majesty who

has gained the battle, and still less the prince of Condé.” “And who

then?” asked Charles IX. “Sire, it is the king of Spain.”

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.

What was the number of victims throughout France? De Thou says

30,000; Sully, 70,000; the bishop Péréfixe, 100,000. This last

figure is probably exaggerated, if we reckon those only who met with

a violent death. But if there be added those who died of misery,

hunger, grief, the aged, who were helpless and abandoned, women

without shelter, children without bread, the many wretched beings,

whose lives were shortened by this great catastrophe, it will be

confessed that the number given by Péréfixe is still below the truth.

The sensation produced by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew

throughout Europe was immense. Men were unwilling to believe the

first accounts. When they were confirmed, all the courts, all

the churches, all the public places, every house resounded with

acclamations; and there was not a hut, into which the deeds done

on that day did not carry, according to the sentiments of the

inhabitants, the exultations of joy, or the stupor of overwhelming

grief.

Many thought, at first, that it was only the first scene of a vast

conspiracy, and that the (Roman) Catholic powers had resolved to

exterminate all the Protestants of Europe. The Papacy, Philip II.,

and the court of Charles IX., in fact never ceased to talk of the

complete extirpation of heretics: the power, not the will, was

wanting.

At Rome, the news of the massacre, which Charles IX. had announced

in ambiguous words to the legate, was expected, and received with

transports of joy. The messenger was gratified with a present of

a thousand pieces of gold. He brought a letter from the nuncio

Salviati, written on the very day, the 24th August, in which this

priest said to Gregory XIII., that “he blessed God to see his

pontificate commence so auspiciously.” The king Charles IX., and the

queen Catherine, were praised for having shown so much prudence in

extirpating this pestilent race, and for having so well chosen their

time that all the rebels had been secured under lock and key, as in a

dovecot (_sotto chiave, in gabbia_).

After having offered up solemn thanksgivings with the college of

cardinals, the pope caused the guns of the castle of Saint Angelo

to be fired, declared a jubilee, and struck a medal in honour of

the great event. The Cardinal de Lorraine, who had gone to Rome on

the election of the new pontiff, also celebrated the massacre by a

great procession to the French church of Saint Louis. He caused an

inscription to be written on the gates in letters of gold, in which

he said that “the Lord had granted the prayers, which he had offered

to Him for twelve years!”

Madrid shared in the rejoicings of Rome. Philip II. wrote to

Catherine that this was the greatest and best news that could ever be

announced to him. This prince, who has been surnamed “the Demon of

the South,” had other reasons for his joy besides fanaticism.

In the Low Countries, the duke of Alba cried out, on learning the

assassination of Coligny: “The Admiral is dead; there is a great

captain the less for France, and a great enemy the less for Spain.”

But how shall we relate the impression produced by the massacre

of Saint Bartholomew in Protestant countries? It may be seen in

the letters of Theodore de Bèze, and others of his contemporaries,

that, for more than a year, they could not chase from their minds

that bloody and horrible image, and that they spoke of it with a

trembling, which attested the profound shock which their souls [had

sustained].

Germany, England, Switzerland, in witnessing the arrival of a

multitude of fugitives appalled and half-dead, and on hearing from

their mouth the narrative of the massacres, cursed the name of

France. At Geneva, a day of abstinence and prayer was instituted,

which has been kept up to this day. In Scotland, all the pastors

preached upon the massacre of Saint Bartholomew; and the aged Knox,

borrowing the language of the prophets, pronounced in a church at

Edinburgh the following words: “The sentence is gone forth against

this murderer, the king of France, and the vengeance of God will not

be withdrawn from his house. His name shall be held in execration by

posterity; and no one who shall spring from his loins, shall possess

the kingdom in peace, unless repentance come to prevent the judgment

of God.”

The ambassador Lamothe-Fénélon, charged to justify the massacre at

the court of London, on accusing the Admiral of having conspired

against Charles IX., cried out in the bitterness of his spirit that

he blushed to bear the name of a Frenchman. “Never,” says Hume,

“was there a spectacle more terrible and more touching than that

of the solemnity of this audience. A gloomy grief sat on every

countenance; the profound silence of night seemed to reign in all

the apartments of the queen. The lords and ladies of the court, in

long mourning apparel, suffered the ambassador to pass between them

without saluting him, or deigning to give him so much as a look.”[64]

On coming near the queen, Lamothe-Fénelon stammered out his odious

apology, and retired in confusion.

The justification of the massacre was not an easier matter in

Germany. The ambassador Schomberg did what he could to support the

fable of the plot of Coligny. They refused even to treat with him

otherwise than in writing, so much did they mistrust an envoy of

Charles IX.; so deeply degraded was the word, the honour, and the

name of France! When the duke of Anjou traversed Germany in 1573,

the Elector Palatine led him into his cabinet, and showing him the

portrait of Coligny, said to him, “You know this man; you have killed

the greatest captain of Christendom, and you ought not to have done

it; for he had rendered great services to you and the king.” The duke

of Anjou answered that it was the Admiral who had sought to destroy

them all. “We know that tale, sir,” was the cold reply of the Elector.

If all the circumstances of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew be

well weighed,—the premeditation, the intervention of the court and

of the councils of the king, the snares that were laid to entrap

the Calvinists, the solemn oaths which had drawn them to Paris, the

royal marriage ceremony stained with blood, the dagger put into the

hands of the people by the chiefs of the state, the hecatombs of

human victims immolated at a time of universal peace, the carnage

prolonged for two months in the provinces, and lastly, the priests

and the princes of the priests, ankle-deep in blood, lifting their

hands to heaven to thank God,—if, we say, we ponder upon all these

circumstances, we cannot escape the conviction that the slaughter of

Saint Bartholomew is the greatest crime of the Christian era since

the invasion of the men of the North. The Sicilian Vespers, the

extermination of the Albigeois, the tortures of the Inquisition, the

murders committed by the Spaniards in the New World, odious though

they be, do not unite in the same degree the violation of all laws,

human and divine. And frightful calamities have sprung from this

monstrous crime. Individuals may indeed commit crimes, which remain

unpunished in this world; but dynasties, castes, and nations, never

go unrewarded.

The race of the Valois was exterminated by the poniard, and nearly

every actor in the massacre of Saint Bartholomew perished by a

violent death.[65]

In France, the detestable reign of Henry III. followed, together

with ignoble and brutal manners, laws despised, the madness of

the League, and twenty-five years of civil war. Abroad, every

old and natural alliance was broken off; Protestant Switzerland,

Germany, England, were against France, or wrapped themselves in a

suspicious neutrality; the country was at length reduced to a depth

of opprobrium, submitting to the tutelage of the king of Spain, and

of humbly begging for an army at Madrid. The great reigns of Henry

IV. and of Richelieu could scarcely restore her to that place in

Europe which she had lost, and they only restored her by a policy

diametrically opposed to that of Saint Bartholomew’s day.

Where then was the compensation for so much disgrace, and so many

misfortunes? One there was, if any chose to invoke it. Without

the deeds of Saint Bartholomew’s day, the French Reformation,

notwithstanding the losses it had suffered, would still have

constituted an imposing minority; half the nobility of the kingdom

would have remained in the new communion. It is doubtful whether

Henry IV. would have abjured. In any case, the Revocation of the

Edict of Nantes would have been impossible, and there might have

been, in our time, with the progress of population, five or six

millions of the Reformed in France. The massacre of that day, by

murder, emigration, and abjuration, inflicted a wound, from which

France has never recovered. Is this a justification of the crime?

But we would deprive those, who would dare appeal to it, of even

this resource. “The execrable day of Saint Bartholomew,” says

Châteaubriand, “only made martyrs; it gave to philosophical ideas an

advantage over religious ideas, which have never since been lost.”[66]

Thus there have been some millions of Protestants the less, and

several millions of philosophers or atheists the more; that is the

balance of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. What then did the

priests gain by diminishing the number of the disciples of Luther and

Calvin, in order to increase that of the followers of Montaigne and

Voltaire? They gained the anti-Catholic reaction of the eighteenth

century, the hostility of the Constituent Assembly, the massacres of

the Abbaye, the proscriptions of 1793; and what besides?—the spirit

of our own epoch. This spirit, which has passed from France into

Italy, has not yet said its last word to (Roman) Catholicism!

XIV.

The Calvinists, who had survived the massacre of Saint Bartholomew,

now only thought of organizing their means of defence. In Cevennes,

Rouergue, Vivarais, and Dauphiné, they had the refuge of their

mountains. In the plains of the south, fifty towns, large and small,

Aubenas, Anduze, Milhau, Sommières, Privas, closed their gates, and

resolved to oppose a desperate resistance to the king’s troops.

At Nismes, the inhabitants were summoned to admit a garrison, but

they refused, notwithstanding they were most vehemently threatened.

A councillor, M. de Clausonne, “_a man of great credit in the

district_,” says Jean de Serres, “had made them understand that

firmness alone could save them.”

Some gentlemen and pastors, gathered together at Montauban, even

drew up a project of religious and political federation, “_until it

should please God to change the heart of the king, or to raise up a

liberator for this poor afflicted people_.” Every town was to appoint

a council of one hundred persons, without distinction of nobles,

citizens, or peasants, to direct all affairs of justice, police,

taxes, and war, and these councils were to elect a general chief. The

utmost severity was recommended to be employed towards the seditious

in arms; but they were to exercise moderation and gentleness towards

peaceable (Roman) Catholics.

Catherine de Medicis and Charles IX. were then in a condition to

become convinced that they were egregiously deceived in supposing

that all would be at an end when the principal Calvinist leaders

were no more. They had reckoned too much upon the strength of the

old principle of vassalage, and not enough on the power of religious

principle. The Reformation had given the feeling of a personal

conscience to the humblest, which could but emanate from God, and

this new sort of independence prepared the way for the advent of

modern right.

Wheresoever resistance was possible, it showed itself, more

decisively and obstinately than before; for in the prince they now

saw only an enemy. The siege of Sancerre has remained famous. This

little town held out for more than ten months against the royalist

army, although the inhabitants, wanting fire-arms, were compelled

to defend themselves with simple slings, which were called the

arquebuses of Sancerre. It endured a famine, which brought back

the recollection of that of Jerusalem, in the time of Titus and

Vespasian. An eyewitness, the pastor Jean de Léry, has written the

details of this siege, day by day. The inhabitants were reduced to

feed upon snails, moles, and wild herbs, upon bread made with the

flour of straw, mixed with slate-dust, harness of horses, and even

the parchment of old books and title-deeds, which were steeped in

water. “I have seen some served up,” says Léry, “on which the printed

and written characters were still visible, and one might read from

the pieces placed upon the table to be eaten.”

Moreover, from hour to hour the besieged fell from inanition. The war

killed but eighty-four; hunger destroyed more than five hundred. “The

young children under twelve years,” says Jean de Serres, “almost all

died. It was lamentable to hear the wailings of the poor fathers and

mothers, of whom nevertheless the greater part fortified themselves

by the assurance of the grace of God. A boy of ten years old, drawing

nigh unto death, seeing his parents weeping near him, and handling

his arms and legs, which were as dry as wood, said to them: ‘Why do

you weep to see me die of hunger? I do not ask you for bread, mother.

I know you have none. But since God wills that I must thus die, we

must be content. The holy Lazarus, did he not suffer hunger? Have I

not read that in the Bible?’ Saying these words, he gave up his soul

to God.”[67]

The inhabitants had resolved to perish to the last man, sooner than

give themselves up to the cut-throats of Saint Bartholomew’s day.

“Here we fight,” they said; “go and assassinate elsewhere.” An

unexpected event delivered them. Deputies, who came from Poland to

offer the crown of Jagellons to the duke of Anjou, interceded in

their behalf, and the sureties they demanded were granted to them.

It was the same at La Rochelle. This town, which by its ancient

municipal franchises, formed a kind of republic, and by its numerous

vessels, equalled the forces of the royal navy, refused to receive

a garrison. Fifty-five pastors of Poitou and of Saintonge, and a

multitude of gentlemen, citizens, and peasants, had, on the first

news of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, sought an asylum behind

its lofty walls, all of whom were determined to defend themselves to

the death. The proposals made to the people of La Rochelle having

ended in nothing, and the besieging army having lost many men,

Charles IX. took the strange course of sending a Calvinist negotiator

and governor into the town, the upright Lanoue.

François de Lanoue, surnamed _Bras-de-Fer_, who had only figured

in the second rank in the Huguenot armies, became their most

distinguished chief after the death of Coligny. He was a man of a

wise and penetrating mind, of a generous character, and of perfect

loyalty. He was ever seen in these unhappy wars, forgetful of danger,

intrepid without boasting, modest in victory, calm and serene under

reverses. He was the Catinat of the sixteenth century.

From the peculiarity of his military life, Lanoue was four or five

times made a prisoner. He bore this misfortune like a soldier who

had deserved a better fate, and the (Roman) Catholics had learned to

esteem him. Not one of the Reformed, without excepting even Coligny,

has obtained from them so much praise. Two Jesuits, Maimbourg and

Daniel, do homage to his rare virtues; they regret nothing in him but

his heresy. The ferocious Montluc calls him as valiant and prudent

a man as any captain in France; the frivolous Brantôme says it was

impossible to grow tired of recounting his virtues, his valour, and

his merits; the sceptic Montaigne praises his constancy as well as

the gentleness of his manners. Lastly, when Lanoue died, Henry IV.

pronounced over him, in a few words, the most beautiful of funeral

orations: “He was a great warrior, and a still better man!”

During one of his long captivities, he composed some _political

and literacy discourses_, of which a part form what are called

his _Memoirs_. They are written in a terse, nervous style, in the

language of a soldier and of an honest man, who speaks to do good,

not to acquire applause.

Lanoue was a prisoner of the duke of Alva during the days of the

Saint Bartholomew slaughter: it was this that saved him. Restored

to liberty, he was charged by the king with the duty of offering

conditions of peace to La Rochelle. He was personally well received,

but his mission was rejected, and the inhabitants defended themselves

until the arrival of the Polish deputies.

The duke of Anjou, who commanded the royal army, was annoyed at

losing his troops and his reputation in this long siege, and waited

impatiently for an opportunity of withdrawing without excessive

disgrace. This was offered him by his election to the crown of Poland.

A new edict, published the 11th August, 1573, authorized the public

exercise of the Reformed religion, but in three towns only—La

Rochelle, Montauban, and Nismes. The lords high-justices were only

allowed to celebrate marriages, baptisms, and sacraments, at private

meetings, which were not to exceed ten persons. For all other

Calvinists, nothing but the simple liberty of household worship was

permitted. It was in this edict that the expression of “_pretended

Reformed religion_,” was first used.

This was but one of those half-measures, contradictory in principle,

and impracticable in action, which only served to exasperate the

minds [of the persons concerned], and to augment the embarrassments

of the case. If the worship of the Reformed religion was a crime, it

ought to have been everywhere forbidden; if not, it should have been

nowhere forbidden. And what was this arbitrary limitation of certain

assemblies to ten persons? How could Calvinists be prevented from

meeting together in places where they were in power? Did they purpose

to place a garrison in every town and every village of the south, and

post soldiers in all the gorges of the mountains?

The Reformed of Montauban drew up, on the 24th August, a year after

the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, energetic remonstrances, day by

day, in which they re-demanded all that had been accorded them by the

treaty of 1570, and three noblemen undertook to present this petition

to Charles IX. The king, whom they met at Villers-Coterets, contrary

to his usual habit, listened to the reading of the memorial without

giving utterance to a word. But Catherine exclaimed, in an irritated

tone of voice, “If your prince Condé were still alive, and if he

were in the heart of France with twenty thousand cavalry and fifty

thousand infantry, he could not demand one-half of what these people

have the insolence to propose to us.”

This was haughty language; but pride tells badly after infamous

assassinations, and Catherine de Medicis was in no position to

speak in so high a tone. There was nothing but trouble and anarchy

throughout the kingdom; and even in the royal family division and

disorder prevailed. The queen-mother feared the eldest of her sons,

despised the youngest, loved only the second, who was on the point of

starting for Poland, and was distrusted by all of them.

The three brothers were enemies, and their sister Margaret of Valois

was stained with adultery and incest.