RISE OF THE GUISES--HUGUENOT AND CATHOLIC--THE MASSACRE OF ST.
BARTHOLOMEW
"Beware of Montmorency and curb the power of the Guises," was the
counsel of the dying Francis to his son. Henry II., dull and
heavy-witted that he was, neglected the advice, and the Guises
flourished in the sun of royal favour. The first Duke of Guise and
founder of his renowned house was Claude, a poor cadet of René II., Duke
of Lorraine. He succeeded in allying by marriage his eldest son and
successor, Francis, to the House of Bourbon; his second son, Charles,
became Cardinal of Lorraine, and his daughter, wife to James V. of
Scotland. Duke Francis, by his military genius and wise statesmanship;
Charles, by his learning and subtle wit, exalted their house to the
lofty eminence it enjoyed during the stirring period that now opens. In
1558, after the disastrous defeat of Montmorency at St. Quentin, when
Paris lay at the mercy of the Spanish and English armies, the duke was
recalled from Italy and made Lieutenant-General of the realm. By a
short and brilliant campaign, he expelled the English from Calais, and
recovered in three weeks the territory held by them for more than two
hundred years. Francis gained an unbounded popularity, and rose to the
highest pinnacle of success; but short time was left to his royal master
wherein to enjoy a reflected glory. On the 27th June 1559, lists were
erected across the Rue St. Antoine, between the Tournelles and the
Bastille. The peace with Spain, and the double marriage of the king's
daughter to Philip II. of Spain and of his sister to the Duke of Savoy,
were to be celebrated by a magnificent tournament in which the king,
proud of his strength and bodily address, was to hold the field with the
Duke of Guise and the princes against all comers. For three days the
king distinguished himself by his triumphant prowess, and at length
challenged the Duke of Montgomery, captain of the Scottish Guards; the
captain prayed to be excused, but the king insisted and the course was
run. Several lances were broken, but in the last encounter the stout
captain failed to lower his shivered lance quickly enough, and the
broken truncheon struck the royal visor, lifted it and penetrated the
king's eye. Henry fell senseless and was carried to the palace of the
Tournelles, where he died after an agony of eleven days. Fifteen years
later, Montgomery was captured fighting with the Huguenots, and beheaded
on the Place de Grève while Catherine de' Medici looked on "_pour
goûter_," says Félibien quaintly, "_le plaisir de se voir vangée de la
mort de son mary_." The tower in the interior of the Palais de Justice,
where the unhappy Scottish noble was imprisoned after his capture, was
known as the Tour Montgomery, until demolished in the reign of Louis
XVI. There was, however, little love lost between Henry's queen,
Catherine de' Medici, and her royal husband, who had long neglected her
for the maturer charms of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers.
[Illustration: WEST WING OF LOUVRE BY PIERRE LESCOT.]
Henry saw Lescot's admirable design for the reconstruction of the west
wing of the Louvre completed. The architect had associated a famous
sculptor, Jean Goujon, with him, who executed the beautiful figures in
low relief which still adorn the quadrangle front between the Pavilion
de l'Horloge and the south-west angle, and the noble Caryatides, which
support the musicians' gallery in the Salle Basse, or Salle des Fêtes,
now known as the Salle des Caryatides. The agreement, dated 5th
September 1550, awards forty-six livres each for the four plaster models
and eighty crowns each for the four carved figures. Lescot preserved the
external wall of the old château as the kernel of his new wing, and the
enormous strength of the original building of Philip Augustus may be
estimated by the fact that the embrasures of each of the five casements
of the first floor looking westwards now serve as offices. So
_grandement satisfait_ was Henry with the perfection of Lescot's work,
that he determined to continue it along the remaining three wings, that
the court of the Louvre might be a _cour non-pareille_. The south wing
was, however, only begun when his tragic death occurred, and the present
inconsequent and huge fabric is the work of a whole tribe of architects,
whose intermittent activities extended over the reigns of nine French
sovereigns.
Lescot and Goujon were also associated in the construction of the most
beautiful Renaissance fountain in Paris, the Fontaine des Innocents,
which formerly stood against the old church of the Innocents at the
corner of the Rue aux Fers. Pajou added a fourth side in 1786, when the
fountain was removed to the Square des Innocents. It was while working
on one of the figures of this fountain that Jean Goujon is said to have
been shot as a Huguenot during the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
[Illustration: LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.]
Europe was now in travail of a new era, and unhappy France reeled under
the tempest of the Reformation. A daring spirit of enquiry and of revolt
challenged every principle on which the social fabric had been based,
and the only refuge in the coming storm in France was the Monarchy.
Never had its power been more absolute. The king's will was law--a
harbour of safety, indeed, if he were strong and wise and virtuous: a
veritable quicksand, if feeble and vicious. And to pilot the state of
France in these stormy times, Henry II. left a sickly progeny of four
princes, miserable puppets, whose favours were disputed for thirty years
by ambitious and fanatical nobles, queens and courtesans.
Francis II., a poor creature of sixteen years, the slave of his wife
Marie Stuart and of the Guises, was called king of France for seventeen
months. He it was who sat daily by Mary in the royal garden, on the
terrace at Amboise overlooking the Loire, and, surrounded by his
brothers and the ladies of the court, gazed at the revolting and
merciless executions of the Protestant conspirators,[108] who, under the
Prince of Condé, had plotted to destroy the Guises and to free the king
from their influence. It was the first act in a horrible drama, a dread
pursuivant of the civil and religious wars in France. The stake was a
high one, for the victory of the reformers would sound the death-knell
of the Catholic cause in Europe. There is little reason to doubt that
the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, who now emerges into prominence,
was genuinely sincere in her disapproval of the horrors of Amboise, and
in her efforts to bring milder counsels to bear in dealing with the
Huguenots; but the fierce passions roused by civil and religious hatred
were uncontrollable. When the Huguenot noble, Villemongis, was led to
the scaffold at Amboise, he dipped his hands in the blood of his
slaughtered comrades, and, lifting them to heaven, cried: "Lord, behold
the blood of Thy children; Thou wilt avenge them." A savage lust for
blood among the Christian sectaries on either side, drawing its stimulus
from the records of the ferocity of semi-barbarian Jewish tribes,
smothered the gentle voice of Jesus, and during thirty years was never
slaked. Treachery and assassination were the interludes of plots and
battles. In 1563 the Duke of Guise was shot by a fanatical Huguenot
with a pistol loaded with poisoned balls. In 1569, when the Protestant
leader, Admiral Coligny, was surprised and attacked by the forces of the
Duke of Anjou, Prince Condé, although wounded in the arm, hastened to
his succour. As the prince passed on, his leg was broken by a kick from
a vicious horse. Still charging forward, he cried: "Remember how a Louis
of Bourbon goes to battle for Christ and Fatherland!" His horse was
killed, himself captured; as he was handing over his sword to his
captors, the Baron de Montesquieu, "_brave et vaillant gentilhomme_,"
says Brantôme, arrived on the scene, and, on learning what was passing,
exclaimed, "_Mort Dieu!_ kill him! kill him!" and blew out Condé's
brains with a pistol. The body of the heroic Bourbon was then tied on an
ass, and a mocking epitaph set upon it:--
"L'an mil cinq soixante neuf,
Entre Jarnac et Château neuf;
Fut porté mort sur une ânesse,
Cil qui voulait ôter la messe."
The defeated Protestants were, however, soon roused to enthusiasm by the
arrival of Jeanne of Navarre at their camp, leading her son Henry by one
hand and the eldest son of Condé by the other. "Here," cried the widowed
queen, "are two orphans I confide to you; two leaders that God has given
you." One of these orphans was to become Henry IV. of France.
[Illustration: TRITONS AND NEREIDS FROM THE OLD FONTAINE DES INNOCENTS.
JEAN GOUJON.]
The treaty of St. Germain, which has so often been charged on Catherine
as an act of perfidy, was rather an imperative necessity, if respite
were to be had from the misery into which the land had fallen. Its
conditions were honourably carried out, and Catholic excesses were
impartially and severely repressed. Charles IX., who was now twenty
years of age, began to assert his independence of the queen-mother and
of the Guises,[109] and his first movement was in the direction of
conciliation. The young king offered the hand of his sister, Princess
Marguerite, to Henry of Navarre, and received Coligny and Jeanne of
Navarre with much honour at court. Pressure was brought to bear upon
him, but, pope or no pope, the king said he was determined to conclude
the marriage. The Catholic party, and especially Paris, were furious.
The capital, with the provost, the Parlement, the university, the
prelates, the religious orders, had always been hostile to the
Huguenots. The people could with difficulty be restrained at times from
assuming the office of executioners as Protestants were led to the
stake. Any one who did not uncover as he passed the image of the Virgin
at the street corners, or who omitted to bend the knee as the Host was
carried by, was attacked as a Lutheran. When the heralds published the
peace with the Huguenots at the crossways of Paris, filth and mud were
thrown at them, and they went in danger of their lives: now Coligny and
his Huguenots were holding their heads high in Paris, proud and
insolent, and the heretic prince of Navarre was to wed the king's
sister.
Jeanne of Navarre died soon after her arrival at court,[110] but the
alliance was hurried on. The betrothal took place in the Louvre, and, on
Sunday, 17th August 1572, a high daïs was erected outside Notre Dame for
the celebration of the marriage. When the ceremony had been performed by
the Cardinal de Bourbon, Henry conducted his bride to the choir of the
cathedral, and went walking in the bishop's garden while mass was sung.
The office ended, he returned and led his wife to the bishop's palace to
dinner, and a magnificent state supper at the Louvre concluded this
momentous day. Three days of balls, masquerades and tourneys followed,
amid the murmuring of a sullen populace. These were the _noces
vermeilles_--the red nuptials--of Marguerite of France and Henry of
Navarre.
Meanwhile Catherine and Coligny had differed on a matter of foreign
policy, and the king, bent on freeing himself from his mother's yoke,
openly favoured the Huguenot leader. Catherine, terrified at the result
of her own work, determined to regain her ascendency, and she conspired
with her third son, the Prince of Anjou (later Henry III.), to destroy
and have done with the Protestants. Coligny had often been warned of the
danger he would run in Paris, but the stout old soldier knew no fear,
and came to take part in the festivities of the wedding. The sounds of
revelry had barely died away when Coligny, who was returning from the
Louvre to his hotel, walking slowly and reading a petition, was fired at
from a window as he passed the cloister of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and
wounded in the arm. He stopped and noted the house whence the shot came:
it was the house of the preceptor of the Duke of Guise. The king was
playing at tennis when the news came to him: he flung down his racquet,
exclaiming, "What! shall I never be in peace? must I suffer new trouble
every day?" and went moody and pensive to his chamber. In a few moments
Prince Condé and Henry of Navarre burst in, uttering indignant protests,
and begged permission to leave Paris. Charles assured them he would do
justice, and that they might safely remain. In the afternoon the king,
his mother and the princes, went to visit the admiral. The king asked to
be left alone in the wounded man's chamber, remained a long time with
him, and protested that though the wound was his friend's, the grief was
his own, and he swore to avenge him.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH OF AUSTRIA, WIFE OF CHARLES IX.
FRANÇOIS CLOUET.]
Coligny once again was warned by his friends to beware of the court, but
he refused to distrust the king. Many and conflicting are the reports of
what followed. We shall not be accused of any Protestant bias if we base
our story mainly on that of the two learned Benedictines[111] who are
responsible for five solid tomes of the _Histoire de la Ville de Paris_.
On the morrow of the attempt on Coligny's life, the queen-mother invited
Charles and his brother of Anjou to walk, after dinner, in the garden of
her new palace in the Tuileries: they were joined by the chief Catholic
leaders, and a grand council was held. The queen dwelt on the perilous
situation of the monarchy and the Catholic cause, and urged that now was
the time to act: Coligny lay wounded; Navarre and Condé were in their
power at the Louvre; for ten Huguenots in Paris the Catholics could
oppose a thousand armed men; rid France of the Huguenot chiefs and a
formidable evil were averted. Her course was approved, but the leaders
shrank from including the two princes of Navarre and Condé: they were to
be given their choice--recantation or death. By order of the king 12,000
arquebusiers were placed along the river and the streets, and arms were
carried into the Louvre. The admiral's friends, alarmed at the sinister
preparations, protested to Charles but were reassured and told to take
Cosseins and fifty arquebusiers to guard his house. The provost of Paris
was then summoned by the Duke of Guise and ordered to arm and organise
the citizens and proceed to the Hôtel de Ville at midnight. The king,
Guise said, would not lose so fair an opportunity of exterminating the
Huguenots. The Catholic citizens were to tie a piece of white linen on
their left arm and place a white cross in their caps that they might be
recognised by their friends. At midnight the windows of their houses
were to be illuminated by torches, and at the first sound of the great
bell at the Palais de Justice the bloody work was to begin. Midnight
drew near. Catherine was not sure of the king, and repaired to his
chamber with Anjou and her councillors to fix his wavering purpose; she
heaped bitter reproaches upon him, worked on his fears with stories of a
vast Huguenot conspiracy and hinted that cowardice prevented him from
seizing the fairest opportunity that God had ever offered, to free
himself from his enemies. She repeated an Italian prelate's vicious
epigram: "_Che pietà lor ser crudel, che crudeltà, lor ser
pietosa_,"[112] and concluded by threatening to leave the court with the
Duke of Anjou rather than witness the destruction of the Catholic cause.
Charles, who had listened sullenly, was stung by the taunt of cowardice
and broke into a delirium of passion; he called for the death of every
Huguenot in France, that none might be left to reproach him afterwards.
Catherine gave him no time for farther vacillation. The great bell of
St. Germain l'Auxerrois was rung, and at two in the morning of Sunday,
St. Bartholomew's Day, 24th August 1572, the Duke of Guise and his
followers issued forth to do their Sabbath morning's work. Cosseins saw
his leader coming and knew what was expected of him. Coligny's door was
forced, his servants were poignarded, and Besme, a German in the service
of Guise, followed by others, burst into the admiral's room. The old man
stood erect in his _robe de chambre_, facing his murderers. "Art thou
the admiral?" demanded Besme. "I am he," answered Coligny with
unfaltering voice and, gazing steadily at the naked sword pointed at his
breast, added, "Young man, thou shouldst show more respect to my white
hairs; yet canst thou shorten but little my brief life." For answer he
was pierced by Besme's sword and stabbed to death by his companions.
Guise stood waiting in the street below and the body was flung down to
him from the window. He wiped the blood from the old man's face, looked
at it, and said, "It is he!" Spurning the body with his foot he cried,
"Courage, soldiers! we have begun well; now for the others, the king
commands it. "Meanwhile the bell of the Palais de Justice, answering
that of St. Germain, was booming forth its awful summons, and the
citizens hastened to perform their part. Some passing the body of
Coligny cut off the head and took it to the king and queen, others
mutilated the trunk, which, after being dragged about the streets for
three days, was hanged by the feet on the gibbet at Montfaucon, where
Charles and Catherine are said to have come to gaze on it.
All the Huguenot nobles dwelling near the admiral were pitilessly
murdered, and a similar carnage took place at the Louvre. Marguerite,
the young bride of Navarre, in her Memoirs, tells of the horrors of that
morning, how, when half-asleep, a wounded Huguenot nobleman rushed into
her chamber, pursued by four archers, and flung himself on her bed
imploring protection. A captain of the guard entered, from whom she
gained his life. She entreated the captain to lead her to her sister's
room, and as she fled thither, more dead than alive, another fugitive
was hewn down by a hallebardier only three paces from her; she fell
fainting in the captain's arms. Meanwhile Charles, the queen-mother, and
Henry of Anjou, after the violent scene in the king's chamber, had lain
down for two hours' rest and then went to a window which overlooked the
_basse-cour_ of the Louvre, to see the "beginning of the executions." If
we may believe Henry's story, they had not been there long before the
sound of a pistol shot filled them with dread and remorse, and a
messenger was sent to bid Guise to spare the admiral and to stay the
whole undertaking; but the nobleman who had been sent returned saying
that Guise had told him it was too late: the admiral was dead, and the
executions had begun all over the city. A dozen Protestant nobles of the
suites of Condé and Navarre, who had taken refuge in the Louvre, were
seized; one was even dragged from a sick-bed: all were taken to the
courtyard and hewn in pieces by the Swiss guards under the eyes of
Charles, who cried: "Let none escape." Meantime the Catholic leaders had
been scouring the streets on horseback, shouting to the people that a
Huguenot conspiracy to murder the king had been discovered, and that it
was the king's wish that all the Huguenots should be destroyed.
A list of the Huguenots in Paris had been prepared and all their houses
marked. None was spared. Old and young, women and children, were
pitilessly butchered. All that awful Sunday the orgy of slaughter and
pillage went on; every gate of the city had been closed and the keys
brought to the king. Night fell and the carnage was not stayed. Two days
yet and two nights the city was a prey to the ministers of death, and
some Catholics, denounced by personal enemies, were involved in the
massacre. The resplendent August sun, the fair sky and serene atmosphere
were held to be a divine augury, and a whitethorn in the cemetery of the
Innocents blooming out of season was hailed as a miracle and a visible
token from God that the Catholic religion was to blossom again by the
destruction of the Huguenots. A famous professor at the university was
flung out of a window by the scholars, his body insulted and dragged in
the mud. The murders did not wholly cease until 17th September. Various
were the estimates of the slain--20,000, 5,000, 2,000. A goldsmith named
Cruce went about displaying his robust arm and boasting that he had
accounted for 400 Huguenots. The streets, the front of the Louvre, the
public places were blocked by dead bodies; tumbrils[113] were hired to
throw them into the Seine, which literally for days ran red with blood.
The princes of Navarre and Condé saw the privacy of their chambers
violated by a posse of archers on St. Bartholomew's morning; they were
forced to dress and were haled before the king, who, with a fierce look
and glaring eyes, swore at them, reproached them for waging war upon
him, and ordered them to change their religion. On their refusal he grew
furious with rage, and by dint of threats wrung from them a promise to
go to mass.
[Illustration: THE LOUVRE--GALERIE D'APOLLON.]
Charles is said to have stood at a window in the Petite Galerie of
the Louvre and to have fired across the river with a long arquebus on
some Huguenots who, being lodged on the southern side, had escaped
massacre, and were riding up to learn what was passing. The statement is
much canvassed by authorities. It is at least permissible to doubt the
assertion, since the first floor[114] of the Petite Galerie, where the
king is traditionally believed to have placed himself, was not in
existence before the time of Henry IV. If the ground floor be meant, a
further difficulty arises from the fact that the southern end was not
furnished with a window in Charles IX.'s time.
On the 26th of August the king boldly avowed responsibility before the
Parlement for measures which he alleged had been necessary to suppress a
Huguenot insurrection aiming at the assassination of himself and the
royal family and the destruction of the Catholic religion in France. The
ears of the Catholic princes of Europe and of the pope were abused by
this specious lie; they believed that the Catholic cause had been saved
from ruin; the so-called victory was hailed with transports of joy, and
a medal was struck in Rome to celebrate the defeat of the
Huguenots.[115]
Similar horrors were enacted in the chief provincial towns. Some few
governors, to their honour, declined to carry out the orders of the
court, and the public executioner at Troyes refused to take part in the
butchery, protesting that his office was not to kill untried persons. At
Angers some of the rich Huguenots were imprisoned and their property
confiscated by order of Henry of Anjou. "Monseigneur, we can make more
than 150,000 francs out of them," wrote his agent.
Such was the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The death-roll of the victims
is known to the Recording Angel alone. It was a tremendous folly no less
than an indelible crime, for it steeled the heart of every Protestant to
avenge his slaughtered brethren.
[Illustration: PETITE GALERIE OF THE LOUVRE.]
Many of the Huguenot leaders escaped from Paris while the soldiers sent
to despatch them were pillaging, and the flames of civil strife burst
forth fiercer than ever. The court had prepared for massacre, not for
war; and while the king was receiving the felicitations of the courts of
Spain and Rome, he was forced by the Peace of La Rochelle to concede
liberty of conscience to the Protestants and to restore their
sequestered estates and offices. After two years of agony of mind and
remorse, Charles IX. lay dying of consumption, abandoned by all save his
faithful Huguenot nurse. The blood flowing from his nostrils seemed a
token of God's wrath; and moaning "Ah! _ma mie_, what bloodshed! what
murders! I am lost! I am lost!" the poor crowned wretch passed to his
account. He had not yet reached his twenty-fourth year.
[Illustration: PLAN OF PARIS WHEN BESIEGED BY HENRY IV. IN 1590.]