government. On the contrary, the two courts were at the moment bitterly
hostile to each other. In the beginning of the summer, Charles IX. and
his advisers were as false to Philip, as at the end of it they were
treacherous to Coligny and Orange. The massacre of the Huguenots had
not even the merit of being a well-contrived and intelligently executed
scheme. We have seen how steadily, seven years before, Catharine de
Medici had rejected the advances of Alva towards the arrangement of a
general plan for the extermination of all heretics within France and the
Netherlands at the same moment. We have seen the disgust with which Alva
turned from the wretched young King at Bayonne, when he expressed the
opinion that to take arms against his own subjects was wholly out of the
question, and could only be followed by general ruin. "'Tis easy to see
that he has been tutored," wrote Alva to his master. Unfortunately,
the same mother; who had then instilled those lessons of hypocritical
benevolence, had now wrought upon her son's cowardly but ferocious nature
with a far different intent. The incomplete assassination of Coligny,
the dread of signal vengeance at the hands of the Huguenots, the
necessity of taking the lead in the internecine snuggle; were employed
with Medicean art, and with entire success. The King was lashed into a
frenzy. Starting to his feet, with a howl of rage and terror, "I agree
to the scheme," he cried, "provided not one Huguenot be left alive in
France to reproach me with the deed."
That night the slaughter commenced. The long premeditated crime was
executed in a panic, but the work was thoroughly done. The King,
who a few days before had written with his own hand to Louis of Nassau,
expressing his firm determination to sustain the Protestant cause both in
France and the Netherlands, who had employed the counsels of Coligny in
the arrangement, of his plans, and who had sent French troops, under
Genlis and La None, to assist their Calvinist brethren in Flanders, now
gave the signal for the general massacre of the Protestants, and with his
own hands, from his own palace windows, shot his subjects with his
arquebuss as if they had been wild beasts.
Between Sunday and Tuesday, according to one of the most moderate
calculations, five thousand Parisians of all ranks were murdered. Within
the whole kingdom, the number of victims was variously estimated at from
twenty-five thousand to one hundred thousand. The heart of Protestant
Europe, for an instant, stood still with horror. The Queen of England
put on mourning weeds, and spurned the apologies of the French envoy with
contempt. At Rome, on the contrary, the news of the massacre created a
joy beyond description. The Pope, accompanied by his cardinals, went
solemnly to the church of Saint Mark to render thanks to God for the
grace thus singularly vouchsafed to the Holy See and to all Christendom;
and a Te Deum was performed in presence of the same august assemblage.
But nothing could exceed the satisfaction which the event occasioned in
the mind of Philip the Second. There was an end now of all assistance
from the French government to the Netherland Protestants. "The news of
the events upon Saint Bartholomew's day," wrote the French envoy at
Madrid, Saint Goard, to Charles IX., "arrived on the 7th September. The
King, on receiving the intelligence, showed, contrary to his natural
custom, so much gaiety, that he seemed more delighted than with all the
good fortune or happy incidents which had ever before occurred to him.
He called all his familiars about him in order to assure them that your
Majesty was his good brother, and that no one else deserved the title of
Most Christian. He sent his secretary Cayas to me with his felicitations
upon the event, and with the information that he was just going to Saint
Jerome to render thanks to God, and to offer his prayers that your
Majesty might receive Divine support in this great affair. I went to
see him next morning, and as soon as I came into his presence he began
to laugh, and with demonstrations of extreme contentment, to praise your
Majesty as deserving your title of Most Christian, telling me there was
no King worthy to be your Majesty's companion, either for valor or
prudence. He praised the steadfast resolution and the long dissimulation
of so great an enterprise, which all the world would not be able to
comprehend."
"I thanked him," continued the embassador, "and I said that I thanked
God for enabling your Majesty to prove to his Master that his apprentice
had learned his trade, and deserved his title of most Christian King.
I added, that he ought to confess that he owed the preservation of the
Netherlands to your Majesty."
Nothing certainly could, in Philip's apprehension, be more delightful
than this most unexpected and most opportune intelligence. Charles IX.,
whose intrigues in the Netherlands he had long known, had now been
suddenly converted by this stupendous crime into his most powerful ally,
while at the same time the Protestants of Europe would learn that there
was still another crowned head in Christendom more deserving of
abhorrence than himself. He wrote immediately to Alva, expressing his
satisfaction that the King of France had disembarrassed himself of such
pernicious men, because he would now be obliged to cultivate the
friendship of Spain, neither the English Queen nor the German Protestants
being thenceforth capable of trusting him. He informed the Duke,
moreover, that the French envoy, Saint Goard, had been urging him to
command the immediate execution of Genlis and his companions, who had
been made prisoners, as well as all the Frenchmen who would be captured
in Mons; and that he fully concurred in the propriety of the measure.
"The sooner," said Philip, "these noxious plants are extirpated from the
earth, the less fear there is that a fresh crop will spring up." The
monarch therefore added, with his own hand, to the letter, "I desire that
if you have not already disembarrassed the world of them, you will do it
immediately, and inform me thereof, for I see no reason why it should be
deferred."
This is the demoniacal picture painted by the French ambassador, and by
Philip's own hand, of the Spanish monarch's joy that his "Most Christian"
brother had just murdered twenty-five thousand of his own subjects. In
this cold-blooded way, too, did his Catholic Majesty order the execution
of some thousand Huguenots additionally, in order more fully to carry out
his royal brother's plans; yet Philip could write of himself, "that all
the world recognized the gentleness of his nature and the mildness of his
intentions."
In truth, the advice thus given by Saint Goard on the subject of the
French prisoners in Alva's possessions, was a natural result of the Saint
Bartholomew. Here were officers and soldiers whom Charles IX. had
himself sent into the Netherlands to fight for the Protestant cause
against Philip and Alva. Already, the papers found upon them had placed
him in some embarrassment, and exposed his duplicity to the Spanish
government, before the great massacre had made such signal reparation for
his delinquency. He had ordered Mondoucet, his envoy in the Netherlands,
to use dissimulation to an unstinted amount, to continue his intrigues
with the Protestants, and to deny stoutly all proofs of such connivance.
"I see that the papers found upon Genlis;" he wrote twelve days before
the massacre, "have been put into the hands of Assonleville, and that
they know everything done by Genlis to have been committed with my
consent."
[These remarkable letters exchanged between Charles IX. and
Mondoucet have recently been published by M. Emile Gachet (chef du
bureau paleographique aux Archives de Belgique) from a manuscript
discovered by him in the library at Rheims.--Compte Rendu de la Com.
Roy. d'Hist., iv. 340, sqq.]
"Nevertheless, you will tell the Duke of Alva that these are lies invented
to excite suspicion against me. You will also give him occasional
information of the enemy's affairs, in order to make him believe in your
integrity. Even if he does not believe you, my purpose will be answered,
provided you do it dexterously. At the same time you must keep up a
constant communication with the Prince of Orange, taking great care to
prevent discovery of your intelligence with King."
Were not these masterstrokes of diplomacy worthy of a King whom his
mother, from boyhood upwards, had caused to study Macchiavelli's
"Prince," and who had thoroughly taken to heart the maxim, often repeated
in those days, that the "Science of reigning was the science of lying"?
The joy in the Spanish camp before Mons was unbounded. It was as if the
only bulwark between the Netherland rebels and total destruction had been
suddenly withdrawn. With anthems in Saint Gudule, with bonfires, festive
illuminations, roaring artillery, with trumpets also, and with shawms,
was the glorious holiday celebrated in court and camp, in honor of the
vast murder committed by the Most Christian King upon his Christian
subjects; nor was a moment lost in apprising the Huguenot soldiers shut
up with Louis of Nassau in the beleaguered city of the great catastrophe
which was to render all their valor fruitless. "'T was a punishment,"
said a Spanish soldier, who fought most courageously before Mons, and who
elaborately described the siege afterwards, "well worthy of a king whose
title is 'The Most Christian,' and it was still more honorable to inflict
it with his own hands as he did." Nor was the observation a pithy
sarcasm, but a frank expression of opinion, from a man celebrated alike
for the skill with which he handled both his sword and his pen.
The, French envoy in the Netherlands was, of course, immediately informed
by his sovereign of the great event: Charles IX. gave a very pithy
account of the transaction. "To prevent the success of the enterprise
planned by the Admiral," wrote the King on the 26th of August, with hands
yet reeking, and while the havoc throughout France was at its height,
"I have been obliged to permit the said Guises to rush upon the said
Admiral,--which they have done, the said Admiral having been killed and
all his adherents. A very great number of those belonging to the new
religion have also been massacred and cut to pieces. It is probable that
the fire thus kindled will spread through all the cities of my kingdom,
and that all those of the said religion will be made sure of." Not
often, certainly, in history, has a Christian king spoken thus calmly
of butchering his subjects while the work was proceeding all around
him. It is to be observed, moreover, that the usual excuse for such
enormities, religious fanaticism, can not be even suggested on this
occasion. Catharine, in times past had favored Huguenots as much as
Catholics, while Charles had been, up to the very moment of the crime,
in strict alliance with the heretics of both France and Flanders, and
furthering the schemes of Orange and Nassau. Nay, even at this very
moment, and in this very letter in which he gave the news of the
massacre, he charged his envoy still to maintain the closest but most
secret intelligence with the Prince of Orange; taking great care that
the Duke of Alva should not discover these relations. His motives were,
of course, to prevent the Prince from abandoning his designs, and from
coming to make a disturbance in France. The King, now that the deed was
done, was most anxious to reap all the fruits of his crime. "Now, M. de
Mondoucet, it is necessary in such affairs," he continued, "to have an
eye to every possible contingency. I know that this news will be most
agreeable to the Duke of Alva, for it is most favorable to his designs.
At the same time, I don't desire that he alone should gather the fruit.
I don't choose that he should, according to his excellent custom, conduct
his affairs in such wise as to throw the Prince of Orange upon my hands,
besides sending back to France Genlis and the other prisoners, as well
as the French now shut up in Mons."
This was a sufficiently plain hint, which Mondoucet could not well
misunderstand. "Observe the Duke's countenance carefully when you
give him this message," added the King, "and let me know his reply."
In order, however, that there might be no mistake about the matter,
Charles wrote again to his ambassador, five days afterwards, distinctly
stating the regret which he should feel if Alva should not take the city
of Mons, or if he should take it by composition. "Tell the Duke," said
he, "that it is most important for the service of his master and of God
that those Frenchmen and others in Mons should be cut in pieces." He
wrote another letter upon the name day, such was his anxiety upon the
subject, instructing the envoy to urge upon Alva the necessity of
chastising those rebels to the French crown. "If he tells you,"
continued Charles, "that this is tacitly requiring him to put to death
all the French prisoners now in hand as well to cut in pieces every man
in Mons, you will say to him that this is exactly what he ought to do,
and that he will be guilty of a great wrong to Christianity if he does
otherwise." Certainly, the Duke, having been thus distinctly ordered,
both by his own master and by his Christian Majesty, to put every
one of these Frenchmen to death, had a sufficiency of royal warrant.
Nevertheless, he was not able to execute entirely these ferocious
instructions. The prisoners already in his power were not destined to
escape, but the city of Mons, in his own language, "proved to have
sharper teeth than he supposed."
Mondoucet lost no time in placing before Alva the urgent necessity of
accomplishing the extensive and cold-blooded massacre thus proposed.
"The Duke has replied," wrote the envoy to his sovereign, "that he is
executing his prisoners every day, and that he has but a few left.
Nevertheless, for some reason which he does not mention, he is reserving
the principal noblemen and chiefs." He afterwards informed his master
that Genlis, Jumelles, and the other leaders, had engaged, if Alva would
grant them a reasonable ransom, to induce the French in Mons to leave
the city, but that the Duke, although his language was growing less
confident, still hoped to take the town by assault. "I have urged him,"
he added, "to put them all to death, assuring him that he would be
responsible for the consequences of a contrary course."--"Why does not
your Most Christian master," asked Alva, "order these Frenchmen in Mons
to come to him under oath to make no disturbance? Then my prisoners will
be at my discretion and I shall get my city."--"Because," answered the
envoy, "they will not trust his Most Christian Majesty, and will prefer
to die in Mons."--[Mondoucet to Charles IX., 15th September, 1572.]
This certainly was a most sensible reply, but it is instructive to
witness the cynicism with which the envoy accepts this position for his
master, while coldly recording the results of all these sanguinary
conversations.
Such was the condition of affairs when the Prince of Orange arrived at
Peronne, between Binche and the Duke of Alva's entrenchments. The
besieging army was rich in notabilities of elevated rank. Don Frederic
of Toledo had hitherto commanded, but on the 27th of August, the Dukes of
Medina Coeli and of Alva had arrived in the camp. Directly afterwards
came the warlike Archbishop of Cologne, at the head of two thousand
cavalry. There was but one chance for the Prince of Orange, and
experience had taught him, four years before, its slenderness. He might
still provoke his adversary into a pitched battle, and he relied upon God
for the result. In his own words, "he trusted ever that the great God of
armies was with him, and would fight in the midst of his forces." If so
long as Alva remained in his impregnable camp, it was impossible to
attack him, or to throw reinforcements into Mons. The Prince soon found,
too, that Alva was far too wise to hazard his position by a superfluous
combat. The Duke knew that the cavalry of the Prince was superior to his
own. He expressed himself entirely unwilling to play into the Prince's
hands, instead of winning the game which was no longer doubtful. The
Huguenot soldiers within Mons were in despair and mutiny; Louis of Nassau
lay in his bed consuming with a dangerous fever; Genlis was a prisoner,
and his army cut to pieces; Coligny was murdered, and Protestant France
paralyzed; the troops of Orange, enlisted but for three months, were
already rebellious, and sure to break into open insubordination when the
consequences of the Paris massacre should become entirely clear to them;
and there were, therefore, even more cogent reasons than in 1568, why
Alva should remain perfectly still, and see his enemy's cause founder
before his eyes. The valiant Archbishop of Cologne was most eager for
the fray. He rode daily at the Duke's side, with harness on his back and
pistols in his holsters, armed and attired like one of his own troopers,
and urging the Duke, with vehemence, to a pitched battle with the Prince.
The Duke commended, but did not yield to, the prelate's enthusiasm.
"'Tis a fine figure of a man, with his corslet and pistols," he wrote to
Philip, "and he shows great affection for your Majesty's service."
The issue of the campaign was inevitable. On the 11th September, Don
Frederic, with a force of four thousand picked men, established himself
at Saint Florian, a village near the Havre gate of the city, while the
Prince had encamped at Hermigny, within half a league of the same place,
whence he attempted to introduce reinforcements into the town. On the
night of the 11th and 12th, Don Frederic hazarded an encamisada upon the
enemy's camp, which proved eminently successful, and had nearly resulted
in the capture of the Prince himself. A chosen band of six hundred
arquebussers, attired, as was customary in these nocturnal expeditions,
with their shirts outside their armor, that they might recognize each
other in the darkness, were led by Julian Romero, within the lines of the
enemy. The sentinels were cut down, the whole army surprised, and for a
moment powerless, while, for two hours long, from one o'clock in the
morning until three, the Spaniards butchered their foes, hardly aroused
from their sleep, ignorant by how small a force they had been thus
suddenly surprised, and unable in the confusion to distinguish between
friend and foe. The boldest, led by Julian in person, made at once for
the Prince's tent. His guards and himself were in profound sleep, but a
small spaniel, who always passed the night upon his bed, was a more
faithful sentinel. The creature sprang forward, barking furiously at the
sound of hostile footsteps, and scratching his master's face with his
paws.--There was but just time for the Prince to mount a horse which was
ready saddled, and to effect his escape through the darkness, before his
enemies sprang into the tent. His servants were cut down, his master of
the horse and two of his secretaries, who gained their saddles a moment
later, all lost their lives, and but for the little dog's watchfulness,
William of Orange, upon whose shoulders the whole weight of his country's
fortunes depended, would have been led within a week to an ignominious
death. To his dying day, the Prince ever afterwards kept a spaniel of
the same race in his bed-chamber. The midnight slaughter still
continued, but the Spaniards in their fury, set fire to the tents. The
glare of the conflagration showed the Orangists by how paltry a force
they had been surprised. Before they could rally, however, Romero led
off his arquebusiers, every one of whom had at least killed his man.
Six hundred of the Prince's troops had been put to the sword, while many
others were burned in their beds, or drowned in the little rivulet which
flowed outside their camp. Only sixty Spaniards lost their lives.
This disaster did not alter the plans of the Prince, for those plans had
already been frustrated. The whole marrow of his enterprise had been
destroyed in an instant by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. He
retreated to Wronne and Nivelles, an assassin, named Heist, a German,
by birth, but a French chevalier, following him secretly in his camp,
pledged to take his life for a large reward promised by Alva--an
enterprise not destined, however, to be successful. The soldiers flatly
refused to remain an hour longer in the field, or even to furnish an
escort for Count Louis, if, by chance, he could be brought out of the
town. The Prince was obliged to inform his brother of the desperate
state of his affairs, and to advise him to capitulate on the best terms
which he could make. With a heavy heart, he left the chivalrous Louis
besieged in the city which he had so gallantly captured, and took his way
across the Meuse towards the Rhine. A furious mutiny broke out among his
troops. His life was, with difficulty, saved from the brutal soldiery--
infuriated at his inability to pay them, except in the over-due
securities of the Holland cities--by the exertions of the officers who
still regarded him with veneration and affection. Crossing the Rhine at
Orsoy, he disbanded his army and betook himself, almost alone, to
Holland.
Yet even in this hour of distress and defeat, the Prince seemed more
heroic than many a conqueror in his day of triumph. With all his hopes
blasted, with the whole fabric of his country's fortunes shattered by the
colossal crime of his royal ally, he never lost his confidence in himself
nor his unfaltering trust in God. All the cities which, but a few weeks
before, had so eagerly raised his standard, now fell off at once. He
went to Holland, the only province which remained true, and which still
looked up to him as its saviour, but he went thither expecting and
prepared to perish. "There I will make my sepulchre," was his simple and
sublime expression in a private letter to his brother.
He had advanced to the rescue of Louis, with city after city opening its
arms to receive him. He had expected to be joined on the march by
Coligny, at the head of a chosen army, and he was now obliged to leave
his brother to his fate, having the massacre of the Admiral and his
confederates substituted for their expected army of assistance, and with
every city and every province forsaking his cause as eagerly as they had
so lately embraced it. "It has pleased God," he said, "to take away
every hope which we could have founded upon man; the King has published
that the massacre was by his orders, and has forbidden all his subjects,
upon pain of death, to assist me; he has, moreover, sent succor to Alva.
Had it not been for this, we had been masters of the Duke, and should
have made him capitulate at our pleasure." Yet even then he was not cast
down.
Nor was his political sagacity liable to impeachment by the extent to
which he had been thus deceived by the French court. "So far from being
reprehensible that I did not suspect such a crime," he said, "I should
rather be chargeable with malignity had I been capable of so sinister a
suspicion. 'Tis not an ordinary thing to conceal such enormous
deliberations under the plausible cover of a marriage festival."
Meanwhile, Count Louis lay confined to his couch with a burning fever.
His soldiers refused any longer to hold the city, now that the altered
intentions of Charles IX. were known and the forces of Orange withdrawn.
Alva offered the most honorable conditions, and it was therefore
impossible for the Count to make longer resistance. The city was so
important, and time was at that moment so valuable that the Duke was
willing to forego his vengeance upon the rebel whom he so cordially
detested, and to be satisfied with depriving, him of the prize which he
had seized with such audacity. "It would have afforded me sincere
pleasure," wrote the Duke, "over and above the benefit to God and your
Majesty, to have had the Count of Nassau in my power. I would overleap
every obstacle to seize him, such is the particular hatred which I bear
the man." Under, the circumstances, however, he acknowledged that the
result of the council of war could only be to grant liberal terms.
On the 19th September, accordingly, articles of capitulation were signed
between the distinguished De la None with three others on the one part,
and the Seigneur de Noircarmes and three others on the side of Spain.
The town was given over to Alva, but all the soldiers were to go out with
their weapons and property. Those of the townspeople who had borne arms
against his Majesty, and all who still held to the Reformed religion,
were to retire with the soldiery. The troops were to pledge themselves
not to serve in future against the Kings of France or Spain, but from
this provision Louis, with his English and German soldiers, was expressly
excepted, the Count indignantly repudiating the idea of such a pledge, or
of discontinuing his hostilities for an instant. It was also agreed that
convoys should be furnished, and hostages exchanged, for the due
observance of the terms of the treaty. The preliminaries having been
thus settled, the patriot forces abandoned the town.