ON the 24th of August, St. Bartholemew's day, 1572, the massacre of the
Hugonots or or Calvinists, began by the murder of Admiral _Coligni_ the
signal was to have been given at midnight; but _Catherine of Medicis_,
mother to the then King Charles IX. (who was only two and twenty years
of age) _hastened the signal more than an hour_, and endeavoured to
encourage her son, by quoting a passage from a sermon: "What pity do we
not shew in being cruel? what cruelty would it not be to have pity?"
In _Mr. Wraxall's_ account of this massacre, in his _Memoirs of the
Kings of France of the Race of Valois_, compiled from all the French
historians, he says, _Soubise_, covered with wounds, after a long and
gallant defence, was finally put to death under the queen-mother's
windows. The ladies of the court, from a savage and horrible curiosity,
went to view his naked body, disfigured and bloody.
"An Italian first cut off _Coligni's_ head, which was presented to
_Catherine of Medicis_. The populace then exhausted all their brutal and
unrestrained fury on the trunk. They cut off the hands, after which it
was left on a dunghill; in the afternoon they took it up again, dragged
it three days in the dirt, then on the banks of the _Seine_, and lastly
carried it to _Montfaucon_ (an eminence between the _Fauxbourg St.
Martin_ and the _Temple_, on which they erected a gallows.) It was here
hung by the feet with an iron chain, and a fire lighted under it, with
which it was half roasted. In this situation the King and several of the
courtiers went to survey it. These remains were at length taken down
privately in the night, and interred at _Chantilly_."
"During seven days the massacre did not cease, though its extreme fury
spent itself in the two first."
"Every enormity, every profanation, every atrocious crime, which zeal,
revenge, and cruel policy are capable of influencing mankind to commit,
stain the dreadful registers of this unhappy period. More than five
thousand persons of all ranks perished by various species of deaths. The
_Seine_ was loaded with carcases floating on it, and _Charles_ fed his
eyes from the windows of the _Louvre_, with this unnatural and
abominable spectacle of horror. A butcher who entered the palace during
the heat of the massacre, boasted to his sovereign, baring his bloody
arm, that he himself had dispatched an hundred and fifty."
"_Catherine of Medicis_, the presiding demon, who scattered destruction
in so many shapes, was not melted into pity at the view of such
complicated and extensive misery; she gazed with savage satisfaction on
the head of _Coligni_ which was brought her."
_Sully_ only slightly mentions this massacre of which he was
notwithstanding an eye-witness, because he was but twelve years of age.
_Mezeray_ gives the most circumstantial account of it; he says, "The
streets were paved with dead or dying bodies, the _portes-cochêres_,
(great gates of the hotels) were stopped up with them, there were heaps
of them in the public squares, the street-kennels overflowed with
blood, which ran gushing into the river. Six hundred houses were
pillaged at different times, and four thousand persons were massacred
with all the inhumanity and all the tumult than can be imagined."
"Among the slain was _Charles de Quelleue Pontivy_, likewise called
_Soubise_, because he had married _Catherine_, only daughter and heiress
of _Jean de Partenay_ Baron _de Soubise_: this Lady had entered an
action against him for impotence; His naked dead body being among others
dragged before the _Louvre_, there were ladies curious enough to examine
leisurely, if they could discover the cause or the marks of the defeat
of which he had been accused."
_Brantome_, in his memoirs of _Charles IX._ says, "As soon as it was day
the king looked out of the window, and seeing that many people were
running away in the _fauxbourg St. Germain_, he took a large hunting
_arquebuse_, and shot at them many times, but in vain, for the gun did
not carry so far."[30]
[Note 30: The king was shooting from the _Louvre_, and the
_Fauxbourg_ St. _Germain_ is on the other side of the river.]
"He took great pleasure in seeing floating in the river, under his
windows, more than four thousand dead bodies."
A French writer, _Mr. du Laure_, in a Description of Paris, just
published, says, "About thirty thousand persons were killed on that
night in Paris and in the country; few of the citizens but were either
assassins or assassinated. Ambition, the hatred of the great, of a
woman, the feebleness and cruelty of a king, the spirit of party, the
fanaticism of the people, animated those scenes of horror, which do not
depose so much against the French nation, at that time governed by
strangers, as against the passions of the great, and the ill-directed
zeal of the religion of an ignorant populace."