“The novelties or changes in the fashion of dress succeed each other
from day to day, I might almost say from hour to hour. The French spend
without measure on their wardrobes and their table. As the profession
of the French noble is that of arms, he wears a short coat. But it
would be difficult to send you a model, so often is it varied in color
and form. To-day the brim of his hat will extend beyond his shoulders;
to-morrow his hat or cap will scarce cover the top of his head. His
mantle sometimes reaches to his ankles; at others no lower than his
loins. His shoes are either in the Greek fashion, or that of Savoy,—so
wide and so high that they reach the middle of the leg, or so short
and so narrow that they resemble tubes. If the form of the garments
is frequently changed, no less so is the ridiculous manner of wearing
them, as buttoning one sleeve and leaving the other open. When on
horseback, these young warriors carry the sword in the hand, and gallop
through the city as if in pursuit of an enemy, after the manner of the
Polish cavaliers.”
“Twenty-five to thirty dresses of different form, and all elaborately
embroidered, with an ample stock of fine laces, feathers, and jewels,
scarcely sufficed to make a decent appearance at this luxurious and
extravagant court. The ladies cared not to bestow their smiles on a
cavalier who proclaimed his poverty by the scantiness of his wardrobe.”
So great was the cost of living at the court that the courtiers took
turns of three months each in the court service, and then retired to
their châteaux, that they might retrench in their expenses, and so save
enough money to again make a brilliant appearance when attendance at
court was imposed upon them.
Meanwhile Charles V. had retired to a monastery and abdicated in
favor of his son, Philip II. of Spain. Philip had married Mary Tudor
of England. Mary Stuart of Scotland, a niece of the powerful House
of Guise, had been married to Francis, the Dauphin of France. Philip
II. had continued his father’s hostility to France, and the desperate
battle of Saint Quentin had not only defeated the French, but had
placed Montmorency, King Henry’s favorite “good gossip,” a prisoner in
the hands of Philip.
It was at this time that Catherine de’ Medici first displayed her
political tact and courage. Henry had gone to Compiègne, to raise
troops, when the news reached Paris of the capture of Saint Quentin. A
great panic ensued. Many fled from the city in fear, thinking the enemy
were approaching.
Catherine de’ Medici went to the parliament in full state, accompanied
by the cardinals, princes, and princesses, and made such a stirring
appeal to the authorities, showing them the urgent necessity for an
immediate levy of troops, that parliament granted her 100,000 crowns
for that purpose.
From that day the position of Catherine de’ Medici was changed. King
Henry returning and learning of her prudent measures, for the first
time showed her some attention, and thenceforward she assumed her place
in the court. The Duke of Guise was now put at the head of an army by
Henry, and Calais was speedily captured, to the surprise and chagrin of
Queen Mary of England and her husband Philip II. of Spain.
But Philip’s army was now required elsewhere. The inquisition gave him
much work in Spain. His wife Mary had died, and Elizabeth had ascended
the English throne. As she would not listen to his suit, he turned
his eyes towards France, and as Henry II. also desired peace, that
his “good gossip” might be liberated, the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis
was concluded, and Philip II. of Spain married for his third wife
Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry II. and Catherine de’ Medici, then in
her thirteenth year. At the marriage tournament, the queens of France,
Spain, and Scotland were seated in the royal pavilion. In another, no
less gorgeous, sat Diana, still fair and fascinating, though surrounded
by daughters and granddaughters.
King Henry still wore Diana’s colors in the mock combats. The king then
invited Montgomery to break a lance with him; Montgomery endeavored
to excuse himself, but Henry insisted. It was a fatal encounter. The
two combatants coming violently together, broke their lances, and that
of Montgomery pierced King Henry’s eye. He was taken wounded to his
palace, but the wound was mortal. In eleven days Henry II. was dead.
The young prince ascended the throne as Francis II.; but in less than
a year he died, and his brother Charles was proclaimed king as Charles
IX. Over Francis II., Catherine de’ Medici did not have much power,
for he was absorbed in his love for his beautiful young wife, Mary,
Queen of Scots. But with the ascension of Charles, then ten years
old, Catherine de’ Medici as regent held in her hands the reins of
government, and soon unmasked her true character.
At the close of the sixteenth century all Europe was agitated by the
controversy between the Catholics and Protestants. The writings of
Luther and Calvin and other reformers had aroused the Christian world.
Scotland and England had established the reformed faith, and in France
the Protestant Huguenots had become quite numerous. Their leaders were
the Prince of Condé, Admiral Coligni, and the House of Navarre. They
were opposed by the crown and many of the French nobles, the foremost
being the powerful House of Guise.
At this time Jeanne d’Albret comes prominently to the front. This
Jeanne d’Albret, now queen of Navarre, married to a husband pitiably
weak and vacillating, utterly incapable of comprehending her nobility
of soul, was forced to take into her own hands the reins of government.
Surrounded by enemies on every side, she made no mistakes in political
measures, sustained her ancestral rights, battled for the cause of
Protestantism, and was at this time its most powerful protector.
Catherine de’ Medici worshipped no deity but ambition. Jeanne d’Albret
was ready to sacrifice her throne and her life in the support of the
glorious cause of the Reformation.
Catherine espoused the cause of the Catholics because she deemed them
the stronger party, but she treacherously endeavored to win to her side
the young Prince Henry, the son of Jeanne d’Albret, who had been taken
to Catherine’s court by his father, who was a Catholic. After the death
of her husband, Antoine de Bourbon, Jeanne succeeded in bringing her
son back to Navarre, where his mother watched his character carefully,
endeavoring to uproot the evil tendencies which had been planted by the
corruption at the court of Catherine de’ Medici.
The first of the religious wars during the reign of Charles IX. began
in 1562. During this campaign the Duke of Guise, who was the chief
leader in the Catholic party, was waylaid and killed by a young
Protestant noble, who had been persecuted, and therefore believed he
was justified in assassinating the leader of the Catholics, who was
considered the most formidable foe of the reformed religion.
“France was the arena of woe upon which the Catholics and Protestants
of Europe hurled themselves against each other. Catherine, breathing
vengeance, headed the Catholic army. Jeanne, calm yet inflexible, was
recognized as the head of the Protestant leaders.”
There were frequent skirmishes and battles. Many thousand Protestants
had perished. The Catholics now waxing stronger, prepared for a
decisive engagement. The two forces met upon the field of Jarnac, in
1568. In this dreadful contest the Protestants were defeated, and
their brave leader, Prince of Condé, was slain.
But at this critical moment, the heroic courage of Jeanne d’Albret was
undaunted. Presenting herself before the terror-stricken Huguenots,
she personally encouraged the panic-stricken soldiers. This masterly
address of a woman to the soldiers of the Reformation has something
truly Napoleonic in its clear ringing cadences, and something vastly
grander than Napoleon’s aim, for it was inspired by a desire to
uphold and advance God’s kingdom, rather than an ambitious thirst for
increased power. Whatever we may think of upholding any cause by the
use of the sword, we must admire these soul-stirring words of this
great and dauntless woman.
“Soldiers, you weep! But does the memory of Condé demand nothing more
than tears? Will you be satisfied with profitless regrets? No! Let us
unite and summon back our courage to defend a cause which can never
perish. Does despair overpower you? _Despair!_ that shameful failing of
weak natures! Can it be known to you, noble warriors and Christian men?
When I, the queen, hope still, is it for you to fear? Because Condé
is dead, is all therefore lost? Does our cause cease to be just and
holy? No! God, who placed arms in his hand for our defence, and who has
already rescued you from perils innumerable, has raised us up brothers
in arms worthy to succeed him, and to fight for the cause of our
country and the truth!... To these brave warriors I add my son; make
proof of his valor. Soldiers, I offer you everything in my power to
bestow,—my dominions, my treasures, my life, and that which is dearer
to me than all—my children! I make here solemn oath before you all, and
you know me too well to doubt my word; I swear to defend to my last
sigh the holy cause which now unites us, which is that of honor and of
truth.”
Around this brave queen of Navarre the Protestants rallied their forces
anew. Her son, Prince Henry, pledged himself to consecrate all his
energies to the defence of the Reformation. Jeanne d’Albret presented
a gold medal to each of the chiefs of the army, with her own name,
together with that of her son, upon one side, while on the other were
inscribed the words, “Certain peace, complete victory, or honorable
death.” The heroic queen became almost an object of adoration in the
enthusiastic hearts of her soldiers.
Catherine de’ Medici, noting the effect of the presence of the queen of
Navarre upon the Protestant troops, also visited her army; and though
she lavished presents and harangued the soldiers, none admired and all
secretly despised her, even though they courted her through fear.
Again the opposing forces met upon the field of battle. The Protestants
were defeated with awful carnage. Coligni, who led the soldiers of
the Reformation, was severely wounded, and carried off the field as
dying, having received a bullet wound in the jaw. The Catholics were
jubilant, but much to their surprise, in a few weeks Coligni, whom they
supposed to be dead, headed another force against them. The brave queen
of Navarre had rallied a third army, and this time the tide turned in
favor of the reformers. Prince Henry of Navarre himself took part in
this battle, which was so greatly to the advantage of the Protestants
that Catherine offered them peace, which was gladly accepted. This
perfidious peace on Catherine’s side “was but the first act in the
awful tragedy of St. Bartholomew.”
And now Catherine de’ Medici entered upon the second act of this
bloody drama. Death and a marriage were to be her weapons in this
scene. With flattering caresses she lavished attentions upon the young
prince of Navarre, inviting him to her court, where she and her son
Charles, whom by this time she had so corrupted in mind and morals that
he was a submissive dupe in her Mephistophelian plans, concocted their
criminal schemes to entrap him. About this time Charles was married
to Elizabeth, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian II. of Austria; and
Catherine improved the opportunity of the nuptial festivities to lure
Prince Henry and Jeanne d’Albret into her power. Having secured this
marriage for Charles, Catherine now declared that Henry must be her
son, and offered him the hand of her daughter Marguerite. This princess
was beautiful, but was as devoid of principle as her unrighteous mother.
Jeanne d’Albret was much opposed to this match, but state
considerations prevailed at last to gain her consent. It was urged upon
her that this marriage would protect the Protestants from persecution,
and save France from further bloodshed. Thus did the malevolent but
cunning Catherine lure Jeanne to her doom, and entangle Henry in the
strong net of her evil designs, which should so long imprison him.
Even the Admiral Coligni was deceived by the friendly protestations of
Catherine de’ Medici, and her son, Charles IX., who by this time had
become almost evil enough in nature to suit the satanic desires of his
atrocious mother.
Though Catherine and Charles IX. were plotting the entire destruction
of the Protestants, using this marriage but as a cloak to cover their
sinister plans, Charles IX. with consummate perjury declared:—
“I give my sister in marriage, not only to the prince of Navarre, but,
as it were, to the whole Protestant party. This will be the strongest
and closest bond for the maintenance of peace between my subjects, and
a sure evidence of my good-will towards the Protestants.”
At this very time he and his mother had planned to lure the leaders of
the Protestants to Paris as their guests for the celebration of the
wedding festivities; when at the dire signal they were to be butchered
in cold blood. After receiving the queen of Navarre with every
manifestation of love, when the French king quite overacted his part,
calling Jeanne d’Albret, “his great aunt, his all, his best beloved,”
the following dialogue is said to have occurred between Catherine and
Charles, after the queen of Navarre had retired.
“Well, mother,” said Charles laughing, “what do you think of it? Do I
play my little part well?”
“Yes,” replied Catherine, “well; but it is of no use unless it
continues.”
“Allow me to go on,” said this debased king, “and you will see that I
shall ensnare them.”
And ensnare them they did truly. Hardly had the queen of Navarre
entered the sumptuous apartments provided for her in the court of
Catherine, ere she was seized with a violent fever which continued nine
days, when she died.
Henry, her son, had not yet arrived in Paris, but was travelling there
more slowly with his retinue. Catherine exhibited the most ostentatious
demonstrations of grief. Charles IX. uttered the loudest lamentations,
and displayed the most poignant sorrow. Notwithstanding these efforts
to allay suspicions, the report spread through France and Europe that
the queen of Navarre had been perfidiously poisoned by Catherine de’
Medici. The Protestant writers assert that Jeanne d’Albret fell a
victim to poison, communicated by a pair of perfumed gloves. The
Catholics as firmly declare that she died from natural causes. The
truth cannot be ascertained.
But after events make the supposition very strong that Jeanne d’Albret
was the first victim in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Her death
necessarily delayed the marriage for a short time, but at length the
nuptial day arrived. The Admiral Coligni was with other prominent
Protestants lured to Paris. When friends urged him to remain at home
and not trust the protestations of the perfidious queen, Coligni, who
was much attached to Henry, now the king of Navarre, replied:—
“I confide in the sacred word of his majesty.”
But poor Henry was as great a dupe as any, and he was completely
deceived by the cunning wiles of this diabolical mother and son.
Protestants and Catholics of the highest rank, from all parts of
Europe, gathered in Paris to celebrate this marriage, which was
looked upon as a great stroke of policy for the furtherance of peace
between the conflicting parties. But the haughty spirit of the
Princess Margaret had well-nigh defeated the nefarious schemes of her
unprincipled mother and brother. Piqued that Henry of Navarre should
show so little admiration for his betrothed, whom he married only for
state reasons, she vowed vengeance, and took a peculiar time to display
her unconquerable pride. In the midst of the imposing nuptial ceremony,
when the officiating bishop asked her if she willingly received Henry
of Bourbon for her husband, she pouted coquettishly, threw back her
proud head in defiance, and remained silent. Again the question was
repeated; but not all the powers of Europe could break her will. Her
brother, Charles IX., knowing well his sister’s obstinacy, relieved
this embarrassing situation by coolly walking up behind the haughty
beauty, and placing his hand upon the back of her head, compelled
an involuntary nod. The confused bishop quickly took the hint, and
smilingly proceeded with the ceremony. And thus this fatal marriage was
completed.
The Pope, not aware of the treachery which had been planned, was
aghast at such friendly relations between the Catholics and the hated
Protestants, and he sent a legate to remonstrate with the French king.
As the moment had not arrived to reveal the hellish plot, Charles
replied: “I do wish that I could tell you all; but you and the Pope
shall soon know how beneficial this marriage shall prove to the
interests of religion. Take my word for it, in a little time the holy
father shall have to praise my designs, my piety, and my zeal in behalf
of the faith.”
Thus did Catherine de’ Medici and Charles dare to mask their infernal
schemes under the sacred name of religion. But the end was not yet.
Admiral Coligni was the next victim. As he was passing through the
streets of Paris, a musket was discharged from the window of a house,
and two balls struck Coligni, one entering his left arm and the other
cutting off a finger of his right hand. The assassin escaped. The
wounded admiral was conveyed to his apartments, and Henry of Navarre
and his Protestant friends gathered around the suffering Coligni. Again
Catherine and Charles declared their utter abhorrence of the deed, and
were even blasphemous in their noisy protestations of sorrow.
Meanwhile this guilty pair thus consulted together. Some circumstances
seem to indicate that Charles was not a party to the attempt on the
life of the admiral; but Catherine is said to have thus moved him to
enter into her brutal plots:—
“Notwithstanding all your protestations, the deed will certainly be
laid to your charge. Civil war will be again enkindled. The chiefs of
the Protestants are now all in Paris. You had better gain the victory
at once here than incur the hazard of a new campaign.”
“Well, then,” replied Charles, petulantly, “since you approve the
murder of the admiral, I am content. But let all the Huguenots also
fall, that there may not be one left to reproach me.”
While the young king of Navarre was by the bedside of his wounded
friend, the Admiral Coligni, recounting to him the assurances of faith
and honor given by Catherine and Charles IX., these two were in secret
council, debating whether this Henry, the newly-made husband of the
daughter of one and the sister of the other, should be included in the
dreadful doom appointed for the Protestants. It was at length decided
that his life should be spared, but that he should be kept in a kind
of imprisonment, and that he should be forced to abjure his Protestant
faith.
The young Duke of Guise was to take the lead of this terrible carnage.
As he believed that Coligni was a party to the murder of his father,
some years before, he determined that he should be the first victim of
this awful night. He had issued secret orders for all the Catholics
“to wear a white cross on the hat, and to bind a piece of white cloth
around the arm,” that they might be thus distinguished in the darkness
of the night. The alarm-bell in the tower of the Palace of Justice
was to toll the dire signal for the indiscriminate massacre of the
Protestants. The conspiracy extended throughout the provinces of
France. Men, women, and children were to be cut down without mercy.
“The storm was to burst at the same moment upon the unsuspecting
victims in every city and village of the kingdom. Beacon-fires, with
their lurid midnight glare, were to flash the tidings from mountain
to mountain. The peal of alarm was to ring along from steeple to
steeple, from city to hamlet, from valley to hillside, till the whole
Catholic population should be aroused to obliterate every vestige of
Protestantism from the land.”
While Catherine and Charles were arranging every detail of this
monstrous crime, they lavished the warmest and most flattering
attention upon the Protestant generals and nobles, whom they had lured
within their insidious power. The very day before that dreadful night
Charles entertained many of the most illustrious of the doomed guests
at a sumptuous feast in the Louvre, and detained them in the palace
all night by the most courteous and pressing invitations to accept his
hospitality.
Henry of Navarre had his suspicions aroused; but though he was well
aware of the utter depravity of Catherine and Charles, he knew not
where the blow would fall. The young bride of Henry had not been
informed of this vile plot, and when about to retire to her apartments
in the palace, her sister Claude, who knew of the coming danger, tried
to detain her lest she might suffer harm. Catherine sternly rebuked
her daughter, and bade her be silent. But Claude still held Margaret
by the arm, and said to Catherine, “It is a shame to send her to be
sacrificed, for if anything is discovered, they (meaning the Catholics)
will be sure to avenge themselves upon her.” But the fiend-like
Catherine, preferring that her own child should risk danger and
perhaps death, rather than that her hellish work should be thwarted,
replied:—
“No harm will befall the queen of Navarre, and it is my pleasure that
she retire to her own apartments, lest her absence should create
suspicion.” Henry, Prince of Joinville, who now held the title of the
Duke of Guise, was to be the chief leader of this infernal massacre.
He had ordered the tocsin, the signal for the massacre, to be tolled at
two o’clock in the morning. Meanwhile Catherine and Charles watched in
one of the apartments of the Louvre for the fatal knell. Charles was
wildly excited. And at last, his mother fearing that his determination
to carry out this night’s hellish work was wavering, she urged him
to send a servant at once to sound the alarm. Charles hesitated, and
a cold sweat covered his forehead. For with all his depravity he had
still remaining a slight spark of humanity; but the fiend incarnate,
his shameful mother, tauntingly exclaimed: “Are you a coward?”
Whereupon the tortured king cried, “Well, then begin.”
And so upon the early morning air of a calm Sabbath, Aug. 24, 1572, the
direful tocsin pealed forth its death-doom; and at this signal armed
men rushed forth into the streets shouting, “_Vive Dieu et le roi!_”
The awful carnage which followed is known in history as the Massacre of
St. Bartholomew, because it occurred upon the anniversary of a festival
in honor of St. Bartholomew, which had long been celebrated.
As the solemn dirge from the steeple rang out upon the air, the king
stood at the window of the palace trembling in every limb, but the
demoniacal Catherine was aroused to a frenzy of delight. The first
victim was the wounded Coligni. The Duke of Guise with three hundred
soldiers hastened to the lodgings of the admiral, and the gates were
forced and the assassins entered the sick man’s chamber. Helpless,
and abandoned by his frightened servants, he was brutally butchered,
and his bleeding body was thrown out of the window at the command of
the Duke of Guise, who desired to look upon his dead enemy. Giving
the mangled corpse a kick in the face, the duke exclaimed: “Courage,
comrades, we have happily begun. Let us now go for others. The king
commands it.”
Sixteen years from that time the Duke of Guise was himself
assassinated, and received a kick in the face from Henry III., the
brother of Charles IX., in whose service he was performing these
diabolical deeds.
The streets everywhere resounded with the cries of “Kill! kill!”
At the commencement of the carnage, the queen of Navarre was awakened
by a cry at her door: “Navarre! Navarre!” Supposing it was her husband,
she ordered her attendants to open the door, whereupon a bleeding
Huguenot rushed to her bedside and clasped the queen’s arm, begging for
his life. He was followed by Catholic soldiers; but at the entreaty
of the princess his life was spared. Words are weak to describe the
horrors of that direful night. Gory bodies were suspended from the
windows; the dead were piled in heaps in the streets; the pavements
were slippery with the streaming blood; human heads were kicked as
footballs along the boulevards, by the bestial fiends who had become
frenzied with the sight of blood. And in the midst of this awful scene
of terror, priests paraded in their sacerdotal robes, bearing aloft
the crucifixes, and shouting their blasphemous hymns of rejoicing,
and inciting the demoniacal murderers to fresh deeds of hellish hate.
Catholic nobles and generals rode through the streets with gorgeous
retinues, and called upon the people to wreak their vengeance upon the
helpless Protestants. For a whole week the massacre continued, and it
is estimated that one hundred thousand Protestants perished throughout
the kingdom.
When the morning was well advanced, Catherine, Charles, and a
profligate band of lords and ladies walked through the reeking streets,
and gazed with calmness and satisfaction upon the heaps of dead piled
up before the Louvre; and they even indulged in ribald jest and
merriment.
The Catholic pulpits resounded with exultant harangues after this
hellish work was ended, and in honor of the event a medallion was
struck off, with the inscription, “_La Piété a reveillé la Justice_.”
From every part of Protestant Europe arose a cry of horror. Queen
Elizabeth shrouded her court in mourning, and refused to give audience
to the French ambassador, who exclaimed in mortification and chagrin,
“I am ashamed to acknowledge myself a Frenchman.”
But Philip of Spain, the “Demon of the South,” wrote to the infamous
Catherine de’ Medici:—
“These tidings are the greatest and the most glorious I could have
received.”
Amid all the fiend-like deeds of men on earth, the awful Massacre of
St. Bartholomew stands without a parallel.
The massacre of the priests of France during the dreadful tragedy of
the Revolution was human retaliation. In the mysterious providence of
God, the “iniquities of the fathers are visited upon the children.”
“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.”
Upon the morning of St. Bartholomew’s day a band of armed men entered
the apartments of the king of Navarre, and conveyed him to the presence
of the king of France. Frenzied with the scenes of blood he had already
witnessed, Charles with curses and blasphemous imprecations commanded
the king of Navarre, as he valued his life, to abjure the Protestant
faith. Charles gave him three days to consider the question, and
declared that at the end of that time if he did not obey he should be
strangled. Henry yielded, and this blot upon his name was only removed
when, in 1598, as Henry IV. of France, he issued his famous Edict of
Nantes, which granted the Protestants full liberty of conscience.
Two years after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, Charles IX. lay upon
his death-bed. Not one hour of peace had he known since that fatal
event. His nights had been filled with spectres of blood and murder,
his troubled sleep had been haunted with visions of horror. His old
nurse, though a Huguenot, had been saved by the king’s order, and she
now watched with him in these last moments. One night, hearing the king
moaning, weeping, and sighing, she went gently up to his bed and drew
aside the curtains. “Ah, nurse, nurse,” cried the king, “what bloodshed
and what murders! Ah, what evil counsel have I followed! O, my God!
forgive me them, and have mercy upon me! What shall I do? I am lost;
I see it well!” And with this hopeless wail of remorse, Charles IX.
expired.
But no emotions of regret or sorrow moved the stony heart of Catherine
de’ Medici. Having debased this son to her foul designs, she now
spurned him in contempt for his exhibitions of remorse. When her
third and favorite son, Henry, departed for Poland, of which kingdom
he had been elected king, she said to him: “Go, you will not be long
away.” For even before Charles was dead she was looking forward with
satisfaction to that probable event, as a means of giving the throne
of France to her favorite child. But when, in 1574, Henry ascended the
French throne as Henry III., Catherine’s power was already weakened,
and she found that her son would not be a pliant tool in her wicked
hands. Not that he was aught but worthless and vicious, but their evil
plans no longer harmonized. Their government for fifteen years served
only to make them lose their reputation for ability. The tact of this
utterly corrupted woman, and the weakness of this irresolute prince,
were feeble instruments in taming the Catholics and Protestants who
were now both rising in rebellion around them.
The Catholics formed a League under the brave but infamous Duke of
Guise.
There were now three Henrys. Henry III., king of France, Henry, king of
Navarre, and Henry, duke of Guise. The war which followed between those
parties is called the _War of the Three Henrys_.
We cannot give details, but during these contests, which became
religious wars, Henry of Guise was assassinated and the corpse was
kicked in the face by Henry III., who afterwards repaired to the
sick-bed of Catherine de’ Medici, and exclaimed:—
“I have made myself this morning king of France by putting to death the
king of Paris,” which was the title given to the Duke of Guise.
“Take care,” replied his heartless mother, “that you do not soon find
yourself _king of nothing_!”
And king of nothing he soon was, though Catherine de’ Medici did not
live to see his downfall. In twelve days after she had thus heard,
without the slightest emotion, of the assassination of the duke who
had been her most zealous worker in the infamous Massacre of St.
Bartholomew, this iniquitous queen,—the personification of every vice,
who had lured all around her to destruction, who had been always
accompanied by bands of the most profligate but beautiful women,
known as her infamous _Flying Squadron_, who by their fascinating
wiles should secure the victims her own cunning could not reach; this
woman,—without a single redeeming virtue, despised by the Catholics,
and hated by the Protestants, and execrated by the world,—this fiendish
spirit was at length the prey of the grim conqueror, Death.
Seven months after the death of Catherine de’ Medici, Henry III. was
assassinated by a monk, and Henry of Navarre was proclaimed king of
France as Henry IV. Thus had all Catherine de’ Medici’s vile scheming
come to naught. She and her sons died with the curses of the nation on
their heads, while the son of the illustrious and faithful Huguenot,
Jeanne d’Albret, sat upon the throne of France.