THE FESTIVAL OF BLOOD.
[August and September, 1572.]
The Huguenot Gentleman Killed--Midnight at the Louvre--Charles
still hesitates--The Conspirators at the window--The
pistol-shot--Guise recalled too late--Scene at Coligny’s
Hotel--The assault and murder--Indignities--Montfauçon--Scene at
the Louvre--Queen Margaret’s alarm--Proclamations--Salviati’s
letter--List of Atrocities--Death of Ramus and La
Place--Charles fires upon the Fugitives--Escape of Montgomery,
Sully, Duplessis-Mornay, Caumont--The Miracle of the White
Thorn--Charles conscience-stricken--Thanksgiving and
Justification--Execution of Briquemaut and Cavaignes--Abjuration
of Henry and Condé.
It is strange that the arrangements in the city, which must have been
attended with no little commotion, did not rouse the suspicion of the
Huguenots. Probably, in their blind confidence, they trusted implicitly
in the king’s word that these movements of arms and artillery, these
postings of guards and midnight musters, were intended to keep the
Guisian faction in order. There is a story that some gentlemen, aroused
by the measured tread of soldiers and the glare of torches--for no
lamps then lit up the streets of Paris--went out-of-doors and asked
what it meant. Receiving an unsatisfactory reply, they proceeded to
the Louvre, where they found the outer court filled with armed men,
who, seeing them without the white cross and the scarf, abused them
as “accursed Huguenots,” whose turn would come next. One of them, who
replied to this insolent threat, was immediately run through with a
spear. This, if the incident be true, occurred about one o’clock on
Sunday morning, 24th August, the festival of St. Bartholomew.
Shortly after midnight the queen-mother rose and went to the king’s
chamber,[588] attended only by one lady, the Duchess of Nemours, whose
thirst for revenge was to be satisfied at last.[589] She found Charles
pacing the room in one of those fits of passion which he at times
assumed to conceal his infirmity of purpose. At one moment he swore he
would raise the Huguenots, and call them to protect their sovereign’s
life as well as their own. Then he burst out into violent imprecations
against his brother Anjou, who had entered the room but did not dare
say a word. Presently the other conspirators arrived: Guise, Nevers,
Birague, De Retz, and Tavannes. Catherine alone ventured to interpose,
and in a tone of sternness well calculated to impress the mind of her
weak son, she declared that there was now no turning back: “It is too
late to retreat, even were it possible. We must cut off the rotten
limb, hurt it ever so much. If you delay, you will lose the finest
opportunity God ever gave man of getting rid of his enemies at a blow.”
And then, as if struck with compassion for the fate of her victims, she
repeated in a low tone--as if talking to herself--the words of a famous
Italian preacher, which she had often been heard to quote before: “É
la pietà lor ser crudele, e la crudeltà lor ser pietosa” (Mercy would
be cruel to them, and cruelty merciful). Catherine’s resolution again
prevailed over the king’s weakness, and the final orders being given,
the Duke of Guise quitted the Louvre, followed by two companies of
arquebusiers and the whole of Anjou’s guard.
As soon as Guise had left, the chief criminals--each afraid to lose
sight of the other, each needing the presence of the other to keep his
courage up--went to a room adjoining the tennis-court overlooking the
Place Bassecour.[590] Of all the party, Charles, Catherine, Anjou, and
De Retz, Charles was the least guilty and the most to be pitied. They
went to the window, anxiously listening for the signal that the work
of death had begun. Their consciences, no less than their impatience,
made it impossible for them to sit calmly within the palace. Anjou’s
narrative continues: “While we were pondering over the events and
the consequences of such a mighty enterprise, of which (to tell the
truth) we had not thought much until then, we heard a pistol-shot. The
sound produced such an effect upon all three of us, that it confounded
our senses and deprived us of judgment. We were smitten with terror
and apprehension of the great disorders about to be perpetrated.”
Catherine, who was a timid woman (adds Tavannes), would willingly
have recalled her orders, and with that intent hastily dispatched a
gentleman to the Duke of Guise, expressly desiring him to return and
attempt nothing against the admiral.[591] “It is too late,” was the
answer brought back: “the admiral is dead”--a statement at variance
with other accounts. “Thereupon,” continues Anjou, “we returned to our
former deliberations, and let things take their course.”
Between three and four o’clock in the morning, the noise of horses and
the measured tramp of foot-soldiers broke the silence of the narrow
street in which Coligny lay wounded. It was the murderers seeking
their victim: they were Henry of Guise with his uncle the Duke of
Aumale, the Bastard of Angoulême, and the Duke of Nevers, with other
foreigners, Italian and Swiss, namely, Fesinghi (or Tosinghi) and
his nephew Antonio, Captain Petrucci, Captain Studer of Winkelbach
with his soldiers, Martin Koch of Freyberg, Conrad Burg,[592] Leonard
Grunenfelder of Glaris, and Carl Dianowitz, surnamed Behm (the
Bohemian?). There were besides one Captain Attin, in the household of
Aumale, and Sarlabous, a renegade Huguenot and commandant of Havre.
It is well to record the names even of these obscure individuals who
stained their hands in the best blood of France. De Cosseins, too, was
there with his guard, some of whom he posted with their arquebuses
opposite the windows of Coligny’s hotel, that none might escape.
Presently there was a loud knock at the outer gate: “Open in the king’s
name.” La Bonne, imagining it to be a message from the Louvre, hastened
with the keys, withdrew the bolt, and was immediately butchered by
the assassins who rushed into the house. The alarmed domestics ran
half awake to see what was the uproar: some were killed outright,
others escaped up stairs, closing the door at the foot and placing
some furniture against it. This feeble barrier was soon broken down,
and the Swiss who had attempted to resist were shot. The tumult woke
Coligny from his slumbers, and divining what it meant--that Guise had
made an attack on the house--he was lifted from his bed, and folding
his robe-de-chambre round him, sat down prepared to meet his fate.[593]
Cornaton entering the room at this moment, Ambrose Paré asked him
what was the meaning of the noise. Turning to his beloved master, he
replied: “Sir, it is God calling us to himself. They have broken into
the house, and we can do nothing.” “I have been long prepared to die,”
said the admiral. “But you must all flee for your lives, if it be not
too late; you can not save me. I commit my soul to God’s mercy.” They
obeyed him, but only two succeeded in making their way over the roofs.
Pastor Merlin lay hid for three days in a loft, where he was fed by a
hen, who every morning laid an egg within his reach.[594]
Paré and Coligny were left alone--Coligny looking as calm and collected
as if no danger impended. After a brief interval of suspense the door
was dashed open, and Cosseins, wearing a corslet and brandishing a
bloody sword in his hand, entered the room, followed by Behm, Sarlabous
and others, a party of Anjou’s Swiss guard, in their tricolored
uniform of black, white, and green, keeping in the rear. Expecting
resistance, the ruffians were for a moment staggered at seeing only two
unarmed men. But his brutal instincts rapidly regaining the mastery,
Behm stepped forward, and pointing his sword at Coligny’s breast,
asked: “Are you not the admiral?” He replied: “I am; but, young man,
you should respect my grey hairs,[595] and not attack a wounded man.
Yet what matters it? You can not shorten my life except by God’s
permission.” The German soldier, uttering a blasphemous oath, plunged
his sword into the admiral’s breast.
Jugulumque parans, immota tenebat
Ora senex.[596]
Others in the room struck him also, Behm repeating his blows until
the admiral fell on the floor. The murderer now ran to the window
and shouted into the court-yard: “It is all over.” Henry of Guise,
who had been impatiently ordering his creatures to make haste, was
not satisfied. “Monsieur d’Angoulême will not believe it unless he
sees him,” returned the duke.[597] Behm raised the body from the
ground, and dragged it to the window to throw it out; but life was
not quite extinct, and the admiral placed his foot against the wall,
faintly resisting the attempt.[598] “Is it so, old fox?” exclaimed
the murderer, who drew his dagger and stabbed him several times. Then
assisted by Sarlabous, he threw the body down. It was hardly to be
recognized. The Bastard of Angoulême--the chevalier as he is called in
some of the narratives--wiped the blood from the face of the corpse.
“Yes, it is he; I know him well,” said Guise, kicking the body as he
spoke.[599] “Well done, my men,” he continued, “we have made a good
beginning. Forward--by the king’s command.” He mounted his horse and
rode out of the court-yard, followed by Nevers, who cynically exclaimed
as he looked at the body: _Sic transit gloria mundi_. Tosinghi
took the chain of gold--the insignia of his office--from the admiral’s
neck, and Petrucci, a gentleman in the train of the Duke of Nevers, cut
off the head and carried it away carefully to the Louvre.[600] Of all
who were found in the house, not one was spared, except Ambrose Paré,
who was escorted in safety to the palace by a detachment of Anjou’s
guard.[601]
Thus died, in the fifty-sixth year of his age,[602] one of the noblest
men of whom France, so rich in great men, can boast. His character has
been described in his actions. In stature he was of middle height, of
ruddy complexion, and well proportioned. His countenance was serene,
his voice soft and pleasant, but his utterance was rather slow. His
habits were temperate: he drank but little wine, and ate sparingly.
He had been blessed with five children: Louisa, who married Teligny,
and afterward William of Orange, ancestor of our William III.; Francis
and Odet, who escaped the massacre; Charles, who fell a victim in
the general massacre; his other son had died in battle. A posthumous
daughter was born to him, of whose fate nothing is known.
Le Laboureur, a Catholic priest, says of Coligny: “He was one of the
greatest men France ever produced, and I venture to say farther,
one of the most attached to his country.” The papal legate Santa
Croce describes him as “remarkable for his prudence and coolness.
His manners were severe; he always appeared serious and absorbed in
his meditations. His eloquence was weighty. He was skilled in Latin
and divinity, and he grew in people’s love the more they knew his
frankness and devotedness to his friends.” He never told a lie (minime
mentiretur); but then, adds the legate, “he had no pretensions to
refined manners, and always kept a straw in his mouth to clean his
teeth with.”[603]
Il est mort toutefois, non au combat vaincu,
Non en guerre surprins, non par ruze déceu,
Non pour avoir trahi son roy où sa province;
Mais bien pour aymer trop le repos des Françoys,
Servir Dieu purement, et révérer ses loix,
Et pour s’estre fié de la foy de son Prince.[604]
Coligny’s headless trunk was left for some hours where it fell, until
it became the sport of rabble children, who dragged it all round
Paris. They tried to burn it, but did little more than scorch and
blacken the remains, which were first thrown into the river, and then
taken out again “as unworthy to be food for fish,” says Claude Haton.
In accordance with the old sentence of the Paris Parliament, it was
dragged by the hangman to the common gallows at Montfauçon,[605] and
there hung up by the heels.[606] All the court went to gratify their
eyes with the sight, and Charles, unconsciously imitating the language
of Vitellius,[607] said, as he drew near the offensive corpse, “The
smell of a dead enemy is always sweet.”[608] The body was left hanging
for a fortnight, or more, after which it was privily taken down by
the admiral’s cousin, Marshal Montmorency, and it now rests, after
many removals, in a wall among the ruins of his hereditary castle
of Chatillon-sur-Loing. What became of the head no one knows. It was
intended to be sent to Rome as a peace-offering to the pope; but it
probably never got farther than Lyons, Mandelot, the governor of that
city, having received orders to stop the messenger--one of Guise’s
servants--and take it away. What can have been the king’s object? Was
he conscience-stricken, and did he repent of the foul indignities
offered to the man for whom he had once professed such love? Or was
he jealous of the credit Duke Henry might acquire by laying the
arch-Huguenot’s head at the feet of the holy father? All that appears
certain is--that the head never reached Rome. The Abbé Caveyrac states
that he saw fragments of a skull in a coffin at Chatillon containing
the admiral’s remains; but, accepting the abbé’s testimony as to what
he saw, it by no means follows that the bones were a part of Coligny’s
head.
When Guise left the admiral’s corpse lying in the court-yard, he went
to the adjoining house in which Teligny lived. All the inmates were
killed, but he escaped by the roof. Twice he fell into the hands of the
enemy, and twice he was spared; he perished at last by the sword of a
man who knew not his amiable inoffensive character.[609] His neighbor
La Rochefoucault was perhaps more fortunate in his fate. He had hardly
fallen asleep, when he was disturbed by the noise in the street. He
heard shouts and the sound of many footsteps; and scarcely awake and
utterly unsuspicious, he went to his bedroom door at the first summons
in the king’s name. He seems to have thought that Charles, indulging
in one of his usual mad frolics, had come to punish him, as he had
punished others, like school-boys. He opened the door and fell dead
across the threshold, pierced by a dozen weapons.
When the messenger returned from the Duke of Guise with the answer that
it was “too late,” Catherine, fearing that such disobedience to the
royal commands might incense the king and awaken him to a sense of all
the horrors that were about to be perpetrated in his name, privately
gave orders to anticipate the hour.[610] Instead of waiting until the
matin-bell should ring out from the old clock-tower of the Palace of
Justice, she directed the signal to be given from the nearer belfry of
St. Germain l’Auxerrois.[611] As the harsh sound rang through the air
of that warm summer night,[612] it was caught up and echoed from tower
to tower, rousing all Paris from their slumbers.
Immediately from every quarter of that ancient city uprose a tumult as
of hell. The clanging bells, the crashing doors, the musket-shots, the
rush of armed men, the shrieks of their victims, and high over all the
yells of the mob, fiercer and more pitiless than hungry wolves--made
such an uproar that the stoutest hearts shrank appalled, and the sanest
appear to have lost their reason.[613] Women unsexed, men wanting every
thing but the strength of the wild beast, children without a single
charm of youth or innocence, crowded the streets where the rising day
still struggled with the glare of a thousand torches.[614] They smelled
the odor of blood, and thirsting to indulge their passions for once
with impunity, committed horrors that have become the marvel of history.
Within the walls of the Louvre, within the hearing of Charles and his
mother, if not actually within their sight, one of the foulest scenes
of this detestable tragedy was enacted. At day-break, says Queen
Margaret of Navarre,[615] her husband rose to go and play at tennis,
with a determination to be present at the king’s _lever_, and
demand justice for the assault on the admiral. He left his apartment,
accompanied by the Huguenot gentlemen who had kept watch around him
during the night. At the foot of the stairs he was arrested,[616] while
the gentlemen with him were disarmed, apparently without any attempt
at resistance. A list of them had been carefully drawn up, which the
Sire d’O, quarter-master of the Guards, read out. As each man answered
to his name, he stepped into the court-yard, where he had to make his
way through a double line of Swiss mercenaries. Sword, spear, and
halberd made short work of them, and two hundred[617] (according to
Davila) of the best blood of France soon lay a ghastly pile beneath the
windows of the palace[618] Charles (it is said) looked on coldly at the
horrid deed,[619] the victims appealing in vain to his mercy. Among
the gentlemen they murdered were the two who had been boldest in their
language to the king not many hours before: Segur, Baron of Pardaillan,
and Armand de Clermont, Baron of Pilles, who with stentorian voices
called upon the king to be true to his word. De Pilles took off his
rich cloak and offered it to some one whom he recognized: “Here is a
present from the hand of De Pilles, basely and traitorously murdered.”
“I am not the man you take me for,” said the other, refusing the
cloak.[620] The Swiss plundered their victims as they fell; and
pointing to the heap of half-naked bodies, described them to the
spectators as the men who had conspired to kill the king and all the
royal family in their sleep, and make France a republic.[621] But more
disgraceful even than this massacre was the conduct of some of the
ladies in Catherine’s train, of her “flying squadron,” who, later in
the day, inspected and laughed[622] at the corpses as they lay stripped
in the court-yard, being especially curious about the body of Soubise,
from whom his wife had sought to be divorced on the ground of nullity
of marriage.
A few gentlemen succeeded in escaping from this slaughter. Margaret,
“seeing it was day-light,” and imagining the danger past of which
her sister had told her, fell asleep. But her slumbers were soon
rudely broken. “An hour later,” she continues, “I was awoke by a man
knocking at the door and calling, _Navarre! Navarre!_ The nurse,
thinking it was my husband, ran and opened it. It was a gentleman
named Léran,[623] who had received a sword-cut in the elbow and a
spear-thrust in the arm; four soldiers were pursuing him, and they all
rushed into my chamber after him. Wishing to save his life, he threw
himself upon my bed. Finding myself clasped in his arms, I got out on
the other side, he followed me, still clinging to me. I did not know
the man, and could not tell whether he came to insult me, or whether
the soldiers were after him or me. We both shouted out, being equally
frightened. At last, by God’s mercy, Captain de Nançay of the Guards
came in, and seeing me in this condition, could not help laughing,
although commiserating me. Severely reprimanding the soldiers for
their indiscretion, he turned them out of the room, and granted me the
life of the poor man who still clung to me. I made him lie down and
had his wounds dressed in my closet, until he was quite cured. While
changing my night-dress, which was all covered with blood, the captain
told me what had happened, and assured me that my husband was with
the king and quite unharmed. He then conducted me to the room of my
sister of Lorraine, which I reached more dead than alive. As I entered
the anteroom, the doors of which were open, a gentleman named Bourse,
running from the soldiers who pursued him, was pierced by a halberd
three paces from me. I fell almost fainting into Captain de Nançay’s
arms, imagining the same thrust had pierced us both. Being somewhat
recovered, I entered the little room where my sister slept. While
there, M. de Miossans, my husband’s first gentleman, and Armagnac, his
first valet-de-chambre, came and begged me to save their lives. I went
and threw myself at the feet of the king and the queen my mother to ask
the favor, which at last they granted me.”
When Captain de Nançay arrived so opportunely, he was leaving the
king’s chamber, whither he had conducted Henry of Navarre and the
Prince of Condé. The tumult and excitement had worked Charles up to
such a pitch of fury, that the lives of the princes were hardly safe.
But they were gentlemen, and their first words were to reproach the
king for his breach of faith. Charles bade them be silent: “_Messe
ou mort_,”--Apostatize or die. Henry demanded time to consider;
while the prince boldly declared that he would not change his religion:
“With God’s help it is my intention to remain firm in my profession.”
Charles, exasperated still more by this opposition to his will, angrily
walked up and down the room, and swore that if they did not change in
three days he would have their heads. They were then dismissed, but
kept close prisoners within the palace.[624]
The houses in which the Huguenots lodged having been registered, were
easily known. The soldiers burst into them, killing all they found,
without regard to age or sex, and if any escaped to the roof they were
shot down like pigeons. Day-light served to facilitate a work that was
too foul even for the blackest midnight. Restraint of every kind was
thrown aside, and while the men were the victims of bigoted fury, the
women were exposed to violence unutterable. As if the popular frenzy
needed excitement, Marshal Tavannes, the military director of this deed
of treachery, rode through the streets with dripping sword, shouting:
“Kill! kill! blood-letting is as good in August as in May.”[625] One
would charitably hope that this was the language of excitement, and
that in his calmer moods he would have repented of his share in the
massacre. But he was consistent to the last. On his death-bed, he made
a general confession of his sins, in which he did not mention the
day of St. Bartholomew; and when his son expressed surprise at the
omission, he observed: “I look upon that as a meritorious action, which
ought to atone for all the sins of my life.”
The massacre soon exceeded the bounds upon which Charles and his mother
had calculated. They were willing enough that the Huguenots should
be murdered, but the murderers might not always be able to draw the
line between orthodoxy and heresy. Things were fast getting beyond
all control; the thirst for plunder was even keener than the thirst
for blood. And it is certain that among the many ignoble motives by
which Charles was induced to permit the massacre, was the hope of
enriching himself and paying his debts out of the property of the
murdered Huguenots. Nor were Anjou and others insensible to the charms
of heretical property. Hence we find the Provost of Paris remonstrating
with the king about “the pillaging of houses and the murders in the
streets by the guards and others in the service of his majesty and the
princes.” Charles, in reply, bade the magistrates “mount their horses,
and with all the force of the city put an end to such irregularities,
and remain on watch day and night.” Another proclamation, countersigned
by Nevers, was issued about five in the afternoon, commanding the
people to lay down the arms which they had taken up “that day by the
king’s orders,” and to leave the streets to the soldiers only--as if
implying that they alone were to kill and plunder.[626]
The massacre, commenced on Sunday, was continued through that and the
two following days. Capilupi tells us, with wonderful simplicity, “that
it was a holiday, and therefore the people could more conveniently
find leisure to kill and plunder.” It is impossible to assign to each
day its task of blood: in all but a few exceptional cases, we know
merely that the victims perished in the general slaughter. Writing in
the midst of the carnage, probably not later than noon of the 24th,
the nuncio Salviati says: “The whole city is in arms; the houses of
the Huguenots have been forced with great loss of lives, and sacked by
the populace with incredible avidity. Many a man to-night will have
his horses and his carriage, and will eat and drink off plate, who had
never dreamt of it in his life before. In order that matters may not
go too far, and to prevent the revolting disorders occasioned by the
insolence of the mob, a proclamation has just been issued, declaring
that _there shall be three hours in the day during which it shall
be unlawful to rob and kill_; and the order is observed, though
not universally. You can see nothing in the streets but white crosses
in the hats and caps of every one you meet, which has a fine effect!”
The nuncio says nothing of the streets encumbered with heaps of naked
bleeding corpses, nothing of the cart-loads of bodies conveyed to the
Seine, and then flung into the river, “so that not only were all the
waters in it turned to blood,” but so many corpses grounded on the
bank of the little island of the Louvre, that the air became infected
with the smell of corruption.[627] The living, tied hand and foot,
were thrown off the bridges. One man--probably a rag-gatherer--brought
two little children in his creel, and tossed them into the water as
carelessly as if they had been blind kittens. An infant, as yet unable
to walk, had a cord tied round its neck, and was dragged through the
streets by a troop of children nine or ten years old. Another played
with the beard and smiled in the face of the man who carried him; but
the innocent caress exasperated instead of softening the ruffian, who
stabbed the child, and with an oath threw it into the Seine. Among the
earliest victims was the wife of the king’s plumassier. The murderers
broke into her house on the Notre Dame bridge, about four in the
morning, stabbed her, and flung her still breathing into the river. She
clung for some time to the wooden piles of the bridge, and was killed
at last with stones, her body remaining for four days entangled by her
long hair among the wood-work. The story goes that her husband’s corpse
being thrown over fell against hers and set it free, both floating
away together down the stream. Madeleine Briçonnet, widow of Theobald
of Yverni, disguised herself as a woman of the people, so that she
might save her life, but was betrayed by the fine petticoat which hung
below her coarse gown. As she would not recant, she was allowed a few
moments’ prayer, and then tossed into the water. Her son-in-law, the
Marquis of Renel, escaping in his shirt, was chased by the murderers
to the bank of the river, where he succeeded in unfastening a boat.
He would have got away altogether but for his cousin Bussy d’Amboise,
who shot him down with a pistol.[628] One Keny, who had been stabbed
and flung into the Seine, was revived by the reaction of the cold
water. Feeble as he was he swam to a boat and clung to it, but was
quickly pursued. One hand was soon cut off with a hatchet, and as he
still continued to steer the boat down stream, he was “quieted” by a
musket-shot. One Puviaut or Pluviaut, who met with a similar fate,
became the subject of a ballad.[629]
Captain Moneins had been put into a safe hiding-place by his friend
Fervacques, who went and begged the king to spare the life of the
fugitive. Charles not only refused, but ordered him to kill Moneins if
he desired to save his own life. Fervacques would not stain his own
hands, but made his friend’s hiding-place known.
Brion, governor of the Marquis of Conti, the Prince of Condé’s brother,
snatched the child from his bed, and without stopping to dress him,
was hurrying away to a place of safety, when the boy was torn from his
arms, and he himself murdered before the eyes of his pupil. We are told
that the child “cried and begged they would save his tutor’s life.”
The houses on the bridge of Notre Dame, inhabited principally by
Protestants, were witnesses to many a scene of cruelty. All the inmates
of one house were massacred, except a little girl, who was dipped,
stark naked, in the blood of her father and mother, and threatened to
be served like them if she turned Huguenot. The Protestant book-sellers
and printers were particularly sought after. Spire Niquet was burned
over a slow fire made out of his own books, and thrown lifeless,
but not dead, into the river. Oudin Petit[630] fell a victim to the
covetousness of his son-in-law, who was a Catholic book-seller. René
Bianchi, the queen’s perfumer, is reported to have killed with his
own hands a young man, a cripple, who had already displayed much
skill in goldsmith’s work. This is the only man whose death the
king lamented, “because of his excellent workmanship, for his shop
was entirely stripped.” One woman was betrayed by her own daughter.
Another, whose twenty-first pregnancy was approaching its term, was
exposed to tortures unutterable. Another pregnant woman was drowned,
after she had been compelled to walk over the face of her husband.
Another woman, in a similar state, was shot as she tried to escape by
the roof of her house, and the immature fruit of her womb was dashed
against the wall. Frances Baillet, wife of the queen’s goldsmith, after
seeing her husband and her son murdered, leaped out of the window,
and broke both her legs by falling into the court beneath. A neighbor
had compassion on her, and hid her in his cellar; but being “less
brave than tender-hearted,” he was frightened by the threats of the
assassins, and gave up the poor woman to them. The brutes dragged her
through the streets by the hair, and in order to get easily at her gold
bracelets, they chopped off both her hands, and left her all bleeding
at the door of a cook-shop. The cook, annoyed by her groans, ran a
spit into her body and left it there. Some hours later, her mutilated
remains were thrown into the river, and dogs gnawed her hands which
had been left in the street. In the list of victims we find the name
of Gastine--a widow, and mother of two young children. Hers had been
a life of suffering: her husband, father-in-law, and uncle had been
hanged; one relative banished, another sent to the galleys, their goods
confiscated, and their house leveled to the ground.[631]
Few of the Huguenots attempted any resistance, though many of them
were veteran soldiers. Had they done so, the whole body might have
found time to rally. As it was, they were equally unable to defend
themselves or to fly: their faculties seemed benumbed. Agrippa
d’Aubigné gives a curious instance of the panic felt by the Huguenots.
He was riding along the high-road several days after the massacre,
accompanied by fourscore soldiers, among whom were some of the most
daring in France, when a man shouted out: “There they are,” and
immediately they galloped off, as fast as their horses could carry
them. The next day half of the same panic-stricken men routed 600
Catholics. In the memoirs of Gamon we read that the Huguenots of
Annonay (Ardèche) were so terrified by the massacre, that at the least
noise or movement among the Catholics they would run away, though no
one pursued them.
Three men only in Paris are recorded as having fought for their
lives. Taverny, a lieutenant of Maréchaussée, stood a regular siege
in his house. For eight or nine hours he and one servant kept the mob
at bay, and when his leaden bullets were exhausted, he used pellets
of pitch.[632] As soon as these were spent, he rushed out, and was
overwhelmed by numbers. His wife was taken to prison; but his invalid
sister was dragged naked through the streets, until death ended her
suffering and her ignominy. Guerchy also struggled unsuccessfully for
his life, his only weapon being a dagger against men protected with
cuirasses. Soubise also fought like a hero--one against a host--and
died beneath the windows of the queen’s apartments, among the earliest
of the victims.
Jean Goujon, the sculptor, was killed while at work. Another victim,
less widely known except among scholars, was Peter Ramus. He was a man
of poor parentage: his grandfather had been a charcoal-burner, and his
father a ploughman. By day he worked with his hands, and studied by
night, rising by degrees to be professor of philosophy and eloquence
at the College of Presle.[633] He made many enemies by attacking the
authority of Aristotle, and more than once had to fly for his life.
During the horrors of the massacre he had hidden himself in a cellar,
where he was discovered by the assassins whom his rival Charpentier
had sent to murder him. He was robbed of his little wealth, and then
thrown from a window. Some of the youths of the university, urged by
other tutors, dragged his body through the streets, inflicting on it
various indignities.[634] A surgeon passing by cut off the head and
carried it away, while the trunk was tossed into the river. Gilbert
Genebrad, Archbishop of Aix, speaking of the “guilty victims” of the
St. Bartholomew, declares Ramus to have been “justly punished for his
turbulence and folly, which dared attack languages, arts, science,
and even theology.”[635] Charpentier exults over his death as “making
ample atonement to us or rather to the republic.”[636] Lambin, a rigid
Catholic and “royal reader,” was so horror-stricken on being told of
the murder, that he could not survive it.
Another distinguished victim was Pierre de la Place, president of the
Court of Aids. He lived in an isolated house at the extreme border of
the Marais, and the first news he had of the massacre was from one
Captain Michel, who with arquebuse on his shoulder, white ribbon on
his left arm, and pistol at his belt, entered the library at six in
the morning and said: “M. de Guise has just killed the admiral by the
king’s order. All the Huguenots, of whatever rank or station, are
destined to die. I have come hither expressly to save you from this
calamity; but you must show me what gold and silver you have in the
house.” “Where do you think you are?” returned La Place. “Have we no
longer a king?” Michel answered with an oath: “Come with me and speak
to the king, that you may know his pleasure.” La Place did not follow
his advice, but made his escape by the back door; while Michel, for a
consideration of 1000 crowns, put the president’s wife and children
in safety with a Catholic family. La Place had not benefited by his
escape; he had wandered up and down, but could find no asylum; all
doors were closed against him, and he was glad at last to return home.
His wife, a lady adorned with every grace of mind and person, had
returned before him, hoping to find him, and resolved (now that her
children were in safety) to stay at the head of her little household.
In the evening--for it was Sunday--the servants and relations assembled
for divine worship. After reading and commenting on a chapter of Job,
La Place prayed and prepared his little congregation for the worst.
“Let us learn (he said) how to conduct ourselves firmly and temperately
in this condition of trial. Let us show that God’s word has been
copiously poured into our souls.” He had not ended his exhortation when
he was told that Provost Senescay was at the door with archers sent to
protect him and escort him to the Louvre. He feared to go, the danger
was too great, but eight men were left with him to garrison the house.
On Monday Senescay returned with express orders to take him to the
king. His wife, suspecting treachery, fell at his knees and prayed to
accompany her husband. Raising her up, he said cheerfully: “My dear,
we must not have recourse to the arm of man, but to God alone.” Seeing
his son with a paper cross in his hat, which had been put there as a
precaution, he added: “Take it out, my child, take out that mark of
sedition; the true cross which you must now wear is the affliction
which God sends as a sure earnest of life eternal.” The president then
took up his cloak, embraced his wife, and bidding her have the honor
and fear of God before her eyes, departed in a cheerful humor. He was
escorted by twelve armed archers, but at the corner of the street was
stopped by four men with daggers. The escort made no resistance, and La
Place fell to the ground, stabbed through the heart.[637] His body was
taken to a stable at the Hotel-de-Ville, whence it was afterward thrown
into the Seine, and his house was pillaged. He was probably a victim of
private vengeance, murdered by the hirelings of Stephen de Neuilly, who
succeeded to his various charges.
Mezeray writes that 700 or 800 people had taken refuge in the
prisons, hoping they would be safe “under the wings of justice;” but
the officers selected for this work had them brought out into the
fitly-named “Valley of Misery,”[638] and there beat them to death
with clubs and threw their bodies into the river.[639] The Venetian
embassador corroborates this story, adding that they were murdered in
batches of ten. Where all were cruel, some few persons distinguished
themselves by especial ferocity. A gold-beater, named Crozier, one of
those prison-murderers, bared his sinewy arm and boasted of having
killed 4000 persons with his own hands.[640] Another man--for the sake
of human nature we would fain hope him to be the same--affirmed that
unaided he had “dispatched” 80 Huguenots in one day. He would eat his
food with hands dripping with gore, declaring “that it was an honor
to him, because it was the blood of heretics.” On Tuesday a butcher,
Crozier’s comrade, boasted to the king that he had killed 150 the night
before. Coconnas, one of the _mignons_ of Anjou, prided himself on
having ransomed from the populace as many as thirty Huguenots, for the
pleasure of making them abjure and then killing them with his own hand,
after he had “secured them for hell.”[641]
About seven o’clock the king was at one of the windows of his palace,
enjoying the air of that beautiful August morning, when he was startled
by shouts of “Kill! kill.” They were raised by a body of 200 Guards,
who were firing with much more noise than execution at a number of
Huguenots who had crossed the river: “to seek the king’s protection,”
says one account: “to help the king against the Guises,” says another.
Charles, who had just been telling his mother that “the weather seemed
to rejoice at the slaughter of the Huguenots,”[642] felt all his savage
instincts kindle at the sight. He had hunted wild beasts, now he would
hunt men: and calling for an arquebuse, he fired at the fugitives, who
were fortunately out of range. Some modern writers deny this fact,
on the ground that the _balcony_ from which Charles is said to
have fired was not built until after 1572. Were this true, it would
only show that tradition had misplaced the locality. Brantome[643]
expressly says the king fired on the Huguenots--not from a balcony,
but “from his bedroom window.” Marshal Tesse heard the story (according
to Voltaire) from the man who loaded the arquebuse. Henault, in
his “Abrégé Chronologique,” mentions it with a “dit-on,” and it is
significant that the passage is suppressed in the Latin editions.
Simon Goulart, in his contemporary narrative,[644] uses the same words
of caution. In Barbier’s “Journal” we read of the destruction of the
former Garde Meuble in the Rue des Poulies on the quay, in which there
was a balcony whence the king fired. Agrippa d’Aubigné speaks in his
“Universal History” of letters written by the same hand “with which
he brought down the fugitives.”[645] As for the date of the building,
the king’s bed-chamber in the south-west pavilion of the Louvre
(not the balcony) was completed in 1556, and so far as regards the
pavilion itself, it is represented in the “Bastiments de France” of
Androuet de Cerceau, published in 1576. Now if any one will consider
the time it must necessarily have taken to get up such a work as the
“Bastiments”--a conscientious undertaking of great labor--he can not
but come to the conclusion that the pavilion was in existence four
years earlier.[646] There is no good reason, therefore, to regard this
story of the king’s ferocity as unhistoric.
Not many of the Huguenot gentlemen escaped from the toils so skillfully
drawn around them on that fatal Saturday night: yet there were a few.
The Count of Montgomery--the same who was the innocent cause of the
death of Henry II.--got safe away, having been forewarned by a friend
who swam across the river to him.[647] Guise set off in hot pursuit,
and would probably have caught him up, had he not been kept waiting for
the keys of the city gate. Some sixty gentlemen also, lodging near him
in the Faubourg St. Germain, were the companions of his flight.
Sully, afterward the famous minister of Henry IV., had a narrow escape.
He was in his twelfth year, and had gone to Paris in the train of Joan
of Navarre for the purpose of continuing his studies. “About three
hours after midnight,” he says, “I was awoke by the ringing of bells,
and the confused cries of the populace. My governor, St. Julian, with
my valet-de-chambre, went out to know the cause; and I never heard of
them afterward. They no doubt were among the first sacrificed to the
public fury. I continued alone in my chamber dressing myself, when in a
few moments my landlord entered, pale and in the utmost consternation.
He was of the Reformed religion, and having learned what was the
matter, had consented to go to mass to save his life, and preserve his
house from being pillaged. He came to persuade me to do the same, and
to take me with him. I did not think proper to follow him, but resolved
to try if I could gain the College of Burgundy, where I had studied;
though the great distance between the house in which I then was and the
college made the attempt very dangerous. Having disguised myself in a
scholar’s gown, I put a large prayer-book under my arm, and went into
the street. I was seized with horror inexpressible at the sight of the
furious murderers, running from all parts, forcing open the houses,
and shouting out: _Kill, kill! Massacre the Huguenots!_ The blood
which I saw shed before my eyes redoubled my terror. I fell into the
midst of a body of Guards, who stopped and questioned me, and were
beginning to use me ill, when, happily for me, the book that I carried
was perceived and served me for a passport. Twice after this I fell
into the same danger, from which I extricated myself with the same good
fortune. At last I arrived at the College of Burgundy, where a danger
still greater than any I had yet met with awaited me. The porter having
twice refused me entrance, I continued standing in the midst of the
street, at the mercy of the savage murderers, whose numbers increased
every moment, and who were evidently seeking for their prey, when it
came into my head to ask for La Faye, the principal of the college, a
good man by whom I was tenderly beloved. The porter, prevailed upon
by some small pieces of money which I put into his hand, admitted me;
and my friend carried me to his apartment, where two inhuman priests,
whom I heard mention _Sicilian Vespers_, wanted to force me from
him, that they might cut me in pieces, saying the order was--not to
spare even infants at the breast. All the good man could do was to
conduct me privately to a distant chamber, where he locked me up. Here
I was confined three days, uncertain of my destiny, and saw no one
but a servant of my friend’s, who came from time to time to bring me
provisions.”[648]
Philip de Mornay, or, as he was usually designated, Duplessis-Mornay,
was among those who suspected treachery, and refused to take part in
the rejoicings on the marriage of Henry with Margaret. He got his
mother out of Paris, but not seeing how he could honorably leave the
city himself, while the chiefs of the Huguenot cause remained, he
resolved to share the perils of his leaders. His resolution well-nigh
proved fatal to him. He had scarcely time to burn his papers and hide
between the two roofs of the house in which he lived. On Monday, as the
mob became more furious, his host, a conscientious Catholic, begged
him flee, as his continuance there might prove the ruin of both,
adding that “he should have disregarded his own danger, if it could
have secured the safety of the other.” Duplessis, therefore, assumed
a plain black dress, girded on his sword and departed, while the mob
were plundering the next house, whose owner they murdered and threw
out of the window. He got safely to his law-agent, by name Girard,
who received him favorably and set him to work in the office. This
place of refuge being discovered, early next day he had to leave the
house conducted by one of the clerks. They were stopped and questioned
at the St. Denis gate, when Duplessis represented himself to be a
lawyer’s clerk going to spend the holidays with his family at Rouen.
They were allowed to pass, but had scarcely reached Villette, between
Paris and St. Denis, when farther progress was checked by the “carters,
quarrymen, and plasterers of the faubourg.” They dragged Duplessis
toward the river, and he was saved only by the cool assurance of his
companion, who asserted that the men were mistaken, that the other
really was a lawyer’s clerk going to Rouen, and that he was well known
in the environs of Paris. “Surely,” interposed young Mornay, “you do
not want to kill one man for another.” He referred them to several
individuals, among others to Girard, and then they all went off to
breakfast. Just at this moment the Rouen coach passed along; the
mob stopped it to ascertain if the fugitive was known to any of the
passengers, and being recognized by no one, they called him a liar and
again threatened to drown him. After being kept some time in suspense
he was released, the messengers who had been dispatched to Mr. Girard
having returned with a certificate that “Philip Mornay his clerk was
neither rebellious nor disaffected.” But all was not over yet. At
Ivry-le-Temple, where he passed the night of Thursday, some persons,
who probably suspected him, entered the room in which he was sitting,
observing to each other that they smelled a Huguenot. On his way to
Buhy, his birthplace, he narrowly escaped falling into the hands of a
one-eyed monster named Montafié, who at the head of a band of ruffians
was scouring the French Vexin. His house he found desolate, his family
dispersed no one could tell where. At length, after undergoing many
privations and more perils, he escaped from Dieppe to England. It was
nine days after the massacre.[649]
Madame de Mornay herself had to undergo many dangers. Her cook, a
Huguenot, awoke her in the morning with cries that “they were murdering
every body.” From her window, which looked into the Rue St. Antoine,
she saw an excited restless crowd and several soldiers with white
crosses in their hats. Hastily secreting some of her valuables, she
sent the maid away with her little girl, and at eight in the morning
took shelter with one of the king’s household. More than forty persons
found refuge in the same charitable asylum; the owner, M. de Perreuze,
or his wife, standing occasionally at the door to exchange a word
with Guise, Nevers, and other lords, as they passed to and fro; and
also with the “captains of Paris,” who were sacking the adjoining
houses belonging to Huguenots. On Tuesday the house was searched,
and Madame Duplessis (or to speak more correctly, the young widow of
M. de Feuquères) had to conceal herself. From her hiding-places she
could hear “the strange cries of the men, women, and children they
were murdering in the streets.” Her next refuge was in the house of a
blacksmith, a seditious fellow and the captain of his ward, who had
married her waiting-maid. “He passed the night,” says the lady, “in
cursing the Huguenots and seeing to the booty that was brought in
from the plundered houses.” After various changes of refuge, eleven
days after the massacre she went on board the passage-boat for Sens,
where she was accused of being a Huguenot and told that she ought to
be drowned. A woman came up and asked what they were going to do with
her. “Why, this is a Huguenot, and we intend to throw her into the
river.” The woman replied: “You know me well; I am no Huguenot; I go
every day to mass; but I am so frightened, that I have had a fever this
week past.” “And I too,” rejoined one of the soldiers: “j’en ai le bec
tout galeux.” This saved her life; but she had the horror of listening
to the rejoicings of her fellow-passengers (there were two monks and
a priest among them) over what they had seen in Paris. Twenty-seven
days after the massacre a body of soldiers, the Swiss guard of Queen
Elizabeth, searched the village where she lay hid, but did not find
any Huguenots. It was not until the 1st November that she got beyond
all danger by reaching the town of Sedan. In her flight, she had gone
near the country seat of the Chancellor de l’Hopital. This, by the
king’s express order, was held by a strong garrison, possibly by way
of protection; but the lawless soldiers compelled Madame de l’Hopital,
who had been converted to the new religion, to go to mass; and the
ex-chancellor assured the fugitive that if he received her beneath his
roof, she would have to do the same.[650]
Young Caumont, a boy about twelve years old, and better known in after
life as the Duke of La Force, escaped in a singular manner. A number
of dead bodies had been thrown upon him, those of his father and
brother being among them. He lay for some hours beneath this horrible
load, when the marker from an adjoining tennis-court, attracted by one
of his stockings, tried to pull it off. While doing so, he uttered
an exclamation of pity, which the boy heard. “I am not dead,” he
whispered; “pray save me.” He was saved, but, as the murderous ruffians
were still in sight, he had to remain some time longer beneath the
bloody heap. He was taken, not without difficulties, to the arsenal,
where Marshal de Biron, as master of the ordnance, commanded. Here
young Caumont was kept several days disguised as a page. This was told
the king, with the addition that several other Huguenots had found
refuge in the same place. Charles determined to have it searched; and
when the marshal heard of it, he declared angrily “he would take very
good care to hinder any one from entering who wanted to control his
actions,” and “thereupon pointed three or four pieces of cannon toward
the gate of the arsenal.”[651]
The Duchess René of Ferrara, daughter of Louis XII., sheltered many in
her hotel, and among them were the wife and child of Pastor Merlin.
Even the Duke of Guise was not all blood-thirsty, at least one Huguenot
owing his life to him.[652] Some were saved at the house of the English
embassador, although a guard had been set over it, as much to keep
out refugees as to protect the English who had been hastily collected
within its walls.[653] Two or three are reported to have fallen in
the massacre, from not receiving the warning early enough. Kirkaldy,
so famous in the history of Mary Stuart, had a narrow escape for his
life.[654] Hubert Languet was saved by Jean de Morvilliers, Bishop of
Orleans, who sheltered him in his own house. Anne d’Este, widow of the
Duke of Guise, saved the life of L’Hopital’s daughter, for which the
father thanked her:
Vivit adhuc, vivitque tuo servata recenti
Munere, dum tota cædes flagraret in urbe,
Præterea nec spes occurreret ulla salutis.[655]
In the very height of the massacre, the rumor of a miracle revived
the flagging zeal of the Parisians. In the ancient cemetery of the
Innocents there stood a small chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary,
and in front of it a white-thorn bush which for four years had shown
neither leaf nor flower. All of a sudden, on the morning of the
massacre, it became covered with beautiful white blossoms, filling
the air with their delicious perfume. It continued in bloom for a
fortnight, and every body went to see it. The king and his court
proceeded thither in long procession. Sick persons were healed by
merely looking at it; and the superstitious crowd, which included
nearly every one in Paris, believed that it was “a sign from heaven of
God’s approval of the Catholic uprising and the admiral’s death.” All
the city guilds and companies, all the ecclesiastical fraternities,
marched out to the cemetery with much pomp and loud music, killing
the Huguenots they found in their road. The nuncio Salviati, who had
probably formed one of the royal procession, writes very incredulously
to the Papal Secretary of State: “The people ran to see it with such
eagerness, that should any of the priests who live in the convent dare
say publicly that it had blossomed some days before the event, he would
be stoned and flung into the river.”[656]
Not until the second day does there appear to have been any remorse or
pity for the horrors inflicted upon the wretched Huguenots. Elizabeth
of Austria, the young queen who hoped shortly to become a mother,
interceded for Condé, and so great was her agitation and distress
that her “features were quite disfigured by the tears she had shed
night and day.” And the Duke of Alençon, a youth of by no means
lovable character, “wept much,” we are told, “over the fate of those
brave captains and soldiers.” For this tenderness he was so bitterly
reproached by Charles and his mother, that he was forced to keep out
of their sight. Alençon was partial to Coligny, and when there was
found among the admiral’s papers a report in which he condemned the
appanages, the grants usually given by the crown to the younger members
of the royal family, Catherine exultingly showed it to him: “See what
a fine friend he was to you.” “I know not how far he may have been my
friend,” replied the duke, “but the advice he gave was very good.”[657]
If Mezeray is to be trusted, Charles broke down on the second day of
the massacre. Since Saturday he had been in a state of extraordinary
excitement, more like madness than sanity, and at last his mind gave
way under the pressure. To his surgeon Ambrose Paré, who kept at his
side all through these dreadful hours, he said:[658] “I do not know
what ails me. For these two or three days past, both mind and body
have been quite upset. I burn with fever: all around me grin pale
blood-stained faces. Ah! Ambrose, if they had but spared the weak
and innocent!” A change indeed had come over him; he became more
restless than ever, his looks savage, his buffoonery coarser and more
boisterous. “Nè mai poteva pigliar requie,” says Sigismond Cavalli.
Like Macbeth, he had murdered sleep. “I saw the king on my return
from Rochelle,” says Brantome, “and found him entirely changed. His
features had lost all the gentleness (_douceur_) usually visible
in them.”[659]
“About a week after the massacre,” says a contemporary, “a number of
crows flew croaking round, and settled on the Louvre. The noise they
made drew every body out to see them, and the superstitious women
infected the king with their own timidity. That very night Charles
had not been in bed two hours, when he jumped up and called for the
King of Navarre, to listen to a horrible tumult in the air: shrieks,
groans, yells, mingled with blasphemous oaths and threats, just as they
were heard on the night of the massacre. The sound returned for seven
successive nights, precisely at the same hour.”[660] Juvenal des Ursins
tells the story rather differently. “On the 31st August I supped at
the Louvre with Madame de Fiesque. As the day was very hot, we went
down into the garden and sat in an arbor by the river. Suddenly the
air was filled with a horrible noise of tumultuous voices and groans,
mingled with cries of rage and madness. We could not move for terror;
we turned pale and were unable to speak. The noise lasted for half an
hour, and was heard by the king, who was so terrified that he could not
sleep the rest of the night.” As for Catherine, knowing that strong
emotions would spoil her digestion and impair her good looks, she kept
up her spirits: “For my part,” she said, “there are only six of them on
my conscience;”[661] which is a lie, for when she ordered the tocsin
to be rung, she must have foreseen the horrors--perhaps not all the
horrors--that would ensue.
Before the bodies of their first victims were cold, Catherine and
her advisers became aware of the great political blunder they had
committed. That it was a crime affected them little, if at all; but
they had perpetrated an act of treachery which they would have to
justify in the eyes not only of France, but of the civilized world.
Thousands shrank with horror from the deed and its perpetrators; and
many even of those who applauded the end, could not vindicate the
means.[662] Catherine and her Italians--for Charles was now the merest
puppet in their hands--hastily made up their minds to throw upon the
Duke of Guise the blame of the attempt upon the admiral’s life, and
the massacre as the result of a riot between the two parties, in which
the Huguenots were the weakest. They also represented that the king
himself was hardly safe in the Louvre. “I am here with my brother of
Navarre and my cousin of Condé, ready to share the same fortune with
them,” wrote Charles.[663] On the evening of the massacre a circular
note was issued, ascribing all the mischief to “the private quarrel
which had long existed between the houses of Lorraine and Chatillon,”
and which the king had vainly tried to arrange. It went on to say that
the Edict of Pacification must be observed as strictly as ever. On the
next day, Charles wrote to Schomberg, “bitterly deploring what had
happened;” while to La Mothe-Fénelon he said that he was exceedingly
vexed (_infiniment marry_) at the assault upon the admiral, and
promised to investigate the case and punish the offender. On the 24th
he wrote that the Guises had begun the massacre, “because they had
heard that Coligny’s friends would retaliate;” and that he had been
compelled to employ guards to keep the Louvre safe; and on the 27th he
wrote again to the same effect, but with a significant variation in the
phraseology.[664]
But by this time the massacre had assumed such enormous proportions,
that the Duke of Guise, who had returned from the pursuit of
Montgomery, refused to bear the odium of it alone. Besides, the
excuse was such an acknowledgment of weakness, that in the eyes of
the orthodox it elevated the duke into the position of the true
defender of the Church. The only way to remedy the blunder was for
Charles boldly to assume the responsibility. Catherine dreaded Henry
of Guise fully as much as she had hated the admiral. The new policy
would indeed compel them to tell another lie; but lying carried no
disgrace with it at the court of France. On the 25th the king hinted
something about a conspiracy to the Spanish embassador;[665] on the
26th all timidity and hesitation had disappeared. Charles, accompanied
by his mother and brothers, attended by a numerous crowd of ladies and
gentlemen, moved in stately procession through the streets of Paris.
The populace welcomed the king with shouts of joy, and some of the more
villainous of the ruffians pushed their way through the Guards, and
displaying their bloody weapons and ensanguined arms, boasted to him of
the numbers they had killed. One Protestant gentleman was hunted out
and murdered before his very eyes: “Would to God he were the last!”
exclaimed Charles fiercely. He went to the cathedral Church of Notre
Dame to return thanks to God, as was his duty (says Capilupi) for such
a happy issue, that without shedding the blood of a single believer,
the kingdom had been so graciously delivered from those pernicious and
wicked people. From the church he proceeded to the Palace of Justice,
where, before the foreign embassadors and parliament assembled in the
Gilded Chamber, he declared that the massacre had taken place “by his
express orders, not from any religious motive, or in contravention
of his Edicts of Pacification, which he still intended to observe,
but to prevent the carrying out of a detestable conspiracy, got up
by the admiral and his followers against the person of the king, the
queen-mother, her other sons, and the King of Navarre.”[666] The story
deceived none but the most ignorant and fanatical. Salviati declared at
once that it was “false in every respect,” and that a man of the least
“experience in worldly matters would be ashamed to believe it.”[667]
This is the “third lie” they were obliged to invent, says Tavannes.
The royal speech was afterward amplified, and published as a
manifesto.[668] It accused the Huguenots of infringing the Edict in
various ways, and murdering Catholics; of threatening war, if their
importunities were not attended to; and of plotting against the king
and his mother, declaring all the while that the king was plotting
against them. “All these inventions were forged in the admiral’s
shop.” He was trying to cause a rupture with Spain by giving succor to
the rebels in the Low Countries, when a man, whom he had threatened
to hang, shot him as he was leaving the palace. His majesty was
deliberating how he could execute prompt and exemplary justice on the
author of such a wicked deed, when the admiral resolved to avenge
himself at one blow upon the king and the royal family, so that he
might the easier make himself sole master of the kingdom. “If my arm
is wounded,” he said, “my head is not;[669] if I must lose my arm, I
shall have the heads of those who caused the loss. They thought to kill
me, but I shall be beforehand with them.” When he was told that the
king was sorry for his suffering: “It is all made up,” he replied; “I
understand their tricks. I know how to catch them all.” On Saturday,
after dinner, the admiral held a secret council of his friends, at
which it was resolved to kill the king and all who were opposed to
their designs.[670] His majesty was informed of this in the evening by
“some trustworthy persons,” and even by some of the conspirators, who
would not join in “so barbarous and enormous a crime.” The king thought
he must apply a “prompt, sovereign, and vigorous remedy to so cruel
a plot;” for in matters where the lives of princes are concerned,
punishment and “execution must precede inquiry:” in plain English,
hang first and try afterward. He therefore resolved, in council with
his mother and others, “to anticipate the conspiracy by a prompt and
sovereign execution,” and accordingly gave orders that on Sunday
morning at day-break they should commence the punishment by killing
the admiral and all his faction, which was done with such “felicity,
diligence, and celerity,” that by seven o’clock the admiral, his
chief officers, and others were put to death, very few escaping with
their lives. Hence the king argued the goodness of God, who kept the
Huguenots in ignorance of the design against them. The people of Paris,
who are stanch Catholics, and very fond of their prince, remembering
their past sufferings, and exasperated by the story of the plot, “fell
upon the Huguenots, killed many, and sacked their houses,” in their
praiseworthy desire to support and defend their prince. If a few
robberies were committed, “we must excuse the fury of a people impelled
by honest zeal--a fury hard to restrain when once aroused.” Such was
the defense of the massacre put forward at the time.[671] To us, who
know its weakness and the falsehood of its chief point, it seems
contemptible enough; but to the fanatics of those days, it must have
been an appeal thrilling every nerve in their bodies.
The obsequious parliament, by the mouth of their president De Thou,
thanked the king for his gracious communication, and for the vigor
he had shown in crushing the conspiracy not only against the throne
but against the Church. He quoted with approbation the villainous
maxim of Louis XI., “Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare” (He who
knows not how to dissemble knows not how to reign): his whole speech
being a cowardly defense and eulogy of the massacre.[672] That the
chief magistrate of France should stoop so low, is one of the saddest
incidents of the time; but the French have always been too prone to
worship the _fait accompli_, to become the servile flatterers of
success. There can be no hope for the political life of a nation, until
it learns to apply the same rules of morality to public as to private
affairs. At that moment Charles was nobler than De Thou.[673] There is
something in great crimes which fascinates and attracts. The king had
struck a desperate blow, which, had it failed, might have cost him his
throne and perhaps his life. The first president of the Parliament of
Paris ostentatiously defended and extolled in public a deed which he
condemned in private. His son tells us that in his copy of Statius he
marked the following lines, giving them a significance of which the
poet never dreamed:
Excidat illa dies ævo, nec postera credant
Sæcula! nos certe taceamus; et obruta multa
Nocte tegi propriæ patiamur crimina gentis.[674]
At the suggestion of Pibrac the king’s words were entered in the
register of minutes; and then the same man, braver and more humane than
his fellows, prayed that Charles would order the massacre to cease. The
king seems immediately to have issued the necessary directions, that no
one should from that hour presume to kill or plunder a fellow-citizen
under pain of death. But another advocate of the same court, by name
Morvilliers,[675] had the baseness to propose that Coligny should be
tried and attainted for the plot he had contrived against the king. At
the same time the castle of Chatillon was ordered to be razed to the
ground, one tower alone remaining of that princely mansion.
Although nothing had been found in the admiral’s papers to justify
the charge of conspiring against the throne, there were two prisoners
in custody who, it was hoped, might be induced to save their lives
by confessing the existence of a plot. They were Briquemaut and
Cavaignes, with whose judicial execution the horrors of the massacre
may be considered to have terminated. Colonel Briquemaut, who was
upward of seventy years old (he had served in the Italian wars of
Francis I.), had saved himself in the night of the 24th by stripping
and hiding under a pile of dead bodies, from which horrible shelter
he made his escape to the house of the English embassador, where he
was discovered in the disguise of a groom.[676] Cavaignes, “chancellor
of the cause,” had recently been appointed Master of Requests at the
admiral’s petition. A few days before the massacre, Charles had begged
him not to leave the court, as he required his advice to perpetuate the
happy peace which he (Cavaignes) had helped to negotiate. A special
commission was appointed to try the prisoners, but their innocence was
so manifest that the judges ordered their discharge. This decision was
appealed against, and after another trial they were found guilty and
condemned to die. It was hoped they would confess. Tavannes asserts
that they were promised life and liberty if they would only say what
they were asked; but they refused; and Walsingham thus describes the
closing scene of their life: “On October 22, the young queen was
brought to bed of a daughter; and the same day, between five and six
in the evening, Briquemaut and Cavaignes were hanged by torch-light,
the king, the queen-mother, and the King of Navarre, with the king’s
brothers and the Prince of Condé, being lookers-on. As Briquemaut was
going up the ladder, the under-provost of the town said that the king
had sent him to know whether he could say any thing touching the late
conjuration, which, if he would confess, he should save his life.
He answered, that the king had never a more faithful subject than he
was; but this I know proceeded not of himself, but of evil councilors
about him; and so lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, ‘Oh my God,
upon whose tribunal seat I stand, and whose face I hope shortly to
see, thou knowest well that I know nothing nor did not so much as ever
think of any conjuration against the king nor against his estate;
though contrariwise they have entirely put the same in my process; but
I beseech my God that he will pardon the king and all those that have
been the cause of this my unjust death, even as I desire pardon at thy
hands for my sins and offenses committed against thy divine majesty.’
Being then drawn up another step on the ladder, he uttered only these
words: ‘I have somewhat to utter unto the king, which I would be glad
to communicate unto him, but see that I may not.’ And so shrunk up
his shoulders to forbear to use any farther speech. As his constancy
was much commended, so was his death much bewailed of many Catholics
that were beholders of the same. Cavaignes used no speech, but showed
himself void of all magnanimity, who before his death, in hope of
life, made some show to relent in religion. Two things were generally
much misliked at this execution: the one the presence of the king,
as a thing unworthy of the head of justice to be at the execution of
justice; the other that Briquemaut, being a gentleman, was hanged, a
thing very rare in France, especially he being reputed by his enemies
to be innocent.” Charles’s presence at the execution added a new horror
to the pangs of death: “Nero tamen subtraxit oculos jussitque scelera,
non spectavit: præcipua sub Domitiano miseriarum erat, videre et
aspici.”[677]
Walsingham continues his narrative: “About an hour after the execution,
the cruel and bloody people of this town, not content with their death,
took [their bodies] down from the gallows, and drew them about the
streets, thrusting them through with daggers and shooting of dags
[pistols] at them, cutting off their ears, and omitting no other kind
of villainous and barbarous cruelty.” There were others to be executed,
but the queen-mother “with no small difficulty,” persuaded her son to
respite them for awhile. “The king is now grown so bloody-minded,”
concludes Walsingham, “that they who advised him thereto do repent
the same, and do fear that the old saying will prove true--_malum
consilium consultori pessimum_.”[678] After this we can well believe
the story that Charles ordered torches to be held near the faces of
his two victims, that he might the clearer see their dying agonies.
When the cruel tragedy on the Grève was over, the royal spectators,
including Henry of Navarre, retired to a magnificent supper provided
for them at the Hotel-de-Ville, at the windows of which they had been
sitting.[679]
About a month after the massacre, Henry of Navarre and the Prince of
Condé both abjured. The instrument of their conversion to orthodoxy
was Sureau du Rozier, at one time minister at Orleans, and the fanatic
apologist of Poltrot’s crime; but yielding to temptation, and partly
also to fear, he abjured Protestantism, and, like all new converts,
was eager to show his zeal by converting his late brethren. The two
princes listened to his arguments, and professed themselves convinced;
but they only temporized with a king who was capable, in one of his
mad bursts of passion, of ordering them to execution. At the beginning
of October the princes wrote to the pope, expressing sorrow for their
past errors and promising to be faithful sons of the Catholic Church in
future. The pope graciously accepted their recantations, and returned
them the necessary dispensations for their marriages.[680] Henry went
farther than was necessary to show his new zeal, by abolishing the
Reformed religion in his maternal states. “M. Grammont hath commission
from the king,” writes Walsingham, “to suppress all preaching in Bearn,
and to plant there the Catholic religion, which is a verification of
the king’s [Charles] intention touching the observation of his edict
irrevocable for the toleration of religion.”[681] But the Bearnese
stoutly refused to act upon the order, on the ground that the king was
a prisoner in Paris and under constraint.