friends, who would not leave him, though he bade them do so to escape
falling into the enemy's hands. They had nothing to fear. Both armies
mourned the loss of the good knight, with equal grief. Five days after
his death, on May 5, 1524, Beaurain wrote to Charles V.,--
"Sir, albeit Sir Bayard was your enemy's servant, yet was it pity of his
death, for he was a gentle knight, well beloved of every one, and one
that lived as good a life as ever any man of his condition. And, in
truth, he fully showed it by his end, for it was the most beautiful that
I ever heard tell of."
So passed away a man who lived fully up to the principles of chivalry,
and whose honesty, modesty, sympathy, and valor have given him undying
fame. His name survives as an example of what chivalry might have been
had man been as Christian in nature as in name, but of what it rarely
was, except in theory.
The next picture we shall draw belongs to the date of February 24, 1525.
Francis I. had for months been besieging Pavia. Bourbon came to its
relief. A battle followed, which at first seemed to favor the French,
but which Bourbon's skill soon turned in favor of the Imperialists.
Seeing his ranks breaking on all sides, Francis, inspired by fury and
despair, desperately charged the enemy with such knights and men-at-arms
as he could get to follow him. The conflict was fierce and fatal. Around
the king fell his ablest warriors,--Marshal de Foix, Francis of
Lorraine, Bussy d'Amboise, La Trémoille, and many others. At sight of
this terrible slaughter, Admiral Bonnivet, under the king the leader of
the French host, exclaimed, in accents of despair, "I can never survive
this fearful havoc." Raising the visor of his helmet, he rushed
desperately forward where a tempest of balls was sweeping the field, and
in a moment fell beside his slain comrades.
Francis fought on amid the heaps of dead and dying, his soul filled with
the battle rage, his heart burning with fury and desperation. He was
wounded in face, arms, and legs, yet still his heavy sword swept right
and left, still men fell before his vigorous blows. His horse, mortally
wounded, sank under him, dragging him down. In an instant he was up
again, laying about him shrewdly. Two Spaniards who pressed him closely
fell before the sweep of that great blade. Alone among his foes he
fought on, a crowd of hostile soldiers around him. Who he was they knew
not, but his size, strength, and courage, the golden lilies which
studded his coat of mail, the plume of costly feathers which waved from
his helmet, told them that this must be one of the greatest men in the
French array.
Despite the strength and intrepid valor of the king, his danger was
increasing minute by minute, when the Lord of Pompérant, one of
Bourbon's intimate friends, pressed up through the mass and recognized
the warrior who stood like a wounded lion at bay amid a pack of wolves.
"Back! back!" he cried, springing forward, and beating off the soldiers
with his sword. "Leave this man to me."
Pressing to the king's side, he still beat back his foes, saying to
him,--
"Yield, my liege! You stand alone. If you fight longer, I cannot answer
for your life. Look! there is no hope for you. The Duke of Bourbon is
not far off. Let me send for him to receive your sword."
The visor of the king hid the look with which he must have received
these words. But from the helmet's iron depths came in hollow tones the
reply of Francis of France to this appeal.
"No," he cried, sternly, "rather would I die the death than pledge my
faith to Bourbon the traitor! Where is the Viceroy of Naples?"
Lannoy, the viceroy, was in a distant part of the field. Some time was
lost in finding and bringing him to the spot. At length he arrived, and
fell upon one knee before Francis, who presented him his sword. Lannoy
took it with a show of the profoundest respect, and immediately gave him
another in its place. The battle was over, and the king of France was a
prisoner in the hands of his rebellious subject, the Duke of Bourbon.
The wheel of fate had strangely turned.
The captive king had shown himself a poor general, but an heroic
soldier. His victors viewed him with admiration for his prowess. When he
sat at table, after having his wounds, which were slight, dressed,
Bourbon approached him respectfully and handed him a dinner napkin.
Francis took it, but with the most distant and curt politeness. The next
day an interview took place between Bourbon and the king, in reference
to the position of the latter as captive. In this Francis displayed the
same frigidity of manner as before, while he was all cordiality with
Pescara, Bourbon's fellow in command. The two leaders claimed Francis as
their own captive, but Lannoy, to whom he had surrendered, had him
embarked for Naples, and instead of taking him there, sent him directly
to Spain, where he was delivered up to Charles V. Thus ended this
episode in the life of the Constable de Bourbon.
We have still another, and the closing, scene to present in the life of
this great soldier and traitor. It is of no less interest than those
that have gone before. Historically it is of far deeper interest, for it
was attended with a destruction of inestimable material that has rarely
been excelled. The world is the poorer that Bourbon lived.
In Spain he had been treated with consideration by the emperor, but with
disdain by many of the lords, who despised him as a traitor. Charles V.
asked the Marquis de Villena to give quarters in his palace to the duke.
"I can refuse the emperor nothing," he replied; "but as soon as the
_traitor_ is out of my house I shall set it on fire with my own hand. No
man of honor could live in it again."
Despite this feeling, the military record of Bourbon could not be set
aside. He was the greatest general of his time, and, recognizing this,
Charles again placed him in command of his armies in Italy. On going
there, Bourbon found that there was nothing that could be called an
army. Everything was in disorder and the imperial cause almost at an
end. In this state of affairs, Bourbon became filled with hopes of great
conquests and high fame for himself. Filled with the spirit of
adventure, and finding the Spanish army devoted to him, he added to it
some fifteen thousand of German lanzknechts, most of them Lutherans.
Addressing this greedy horde of soldiers of fortune, he told them that
he was now but a poor gentleman, like themselves, and promised that if
they would follow him he would make them rich or die in the attempt.
Finishing his remarks, which were greeted with enthusiastic cheers, he
distributed among them all his money and jewels, keeping little more
than his clothes and armor for himself.
"We will follow you everywhere, to the devil himself!" shouted the wild
horde of adventurers. "No more of Julius Cæsar, Hannibal, and Scipio!
Hurrah for the fame of Bourbon!"
Putting himself at the head of this tumultuous array, the duke led them
southward through Italy, halting before Bologna, Florence, and other
towns, with a half-formed purpose to besiege them, but in the end
pushing on without an assault until, on the 5th of May, 1527, his horde
of land pirates came in sight of Rome itself.
The imperial city, after being sacked by the Goths, Vandals, and other
barbarians, had remained without serious damage for a thousand years,
but now another army was encamped under its walls, and one equally bent
on havoc and ruin with those of the past.
"Now is the time to show courage, manliness, and the strength of your
bodies," said Bourbon to his followers. "If in this bout you are
victorious, you will be rich lords and well off for the rest of your
lives. Yonder is the city whereof, in times past, a wise astrologer
prophesied concerning me, telling me that I should die there; but I
swear to you that I care but little for dying there if, when I die, my
corpse be left with endless glory and renown throughout the world."
He then bade them to retire for the night, ordering them to be ready
betimes in the morning for the assault, which would take place at an
early hour on that day. Hardly, indeed, had the stars faded before the
sunrise of May 6, when the soldiers were afoot and making ready for the
assault. Bourbon placed himself at their head, clad all in white that he
might be better seen and known. To the walls they advanced, bearing
scaling ladders, which they hastened to place. On the first raised of
these Bourbon set foot, with the soldier's desire to be the earliest in
the assault. But hardly had he taken two steps up the ladder than his
grasp loosened and he fell backward, with blood gushing from his side.
He had been hit with an arquebuse-shot in the left side and mortally
wounded.
He had but voice enough left to bid those near him to cover his body
with a cloak and take it away, that his followers might not know of his
death. Those were the last words recorded of the Duke of Bourbon. He
died as he had lived, a valiant soldier and a born adventurer, hurling
havoc with his last words on the great city of the Church; for his
followers, not knowing of his death, attacked so furiously that the
walls were soon carried and the town theirs. Then, as news came to them
that their leader had fallen, they burst into the fury of slaughter,
shouting, "Slay, slay! blood, blood! Bourbon! Bourbon!" and cutting down
remorselessly all whom they met.
The celebrated artist, Benvenuto Cellini, tells us in his autobiography
that it was he who shot Bourbon, aiming his arquebuse from the wall of
the Campo Santo at one of the besiegers who was mounted higher than the
rest, and who, as he afterwards learned, was the leader of the assailing
army.
Whoever it was that fired the fatal shot, the slain man was frightfully
avenged, Rome being plundered, ravaged, and devastated by his brutal
followers to a degree not surpassed by the work of the Vandals of old.
For several months the famous city remained in the hands of this
licentious soldiery, and its inhabitants were subjected to every
outrage and barbarity which brutal desire and ungoverned license could
incite, while in none of its former periods of ravage were so many of
the precious relics of antiquity destroyed as in this period of
occupation by men who called themselves the soldiers of civilized and
Christian lands.
_ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY._
"Kill! kill! kill!" was the cry in Paris. "Blood! blood! death to the
Huguenots!" came from the lips of thousands of maddened murderers. Blood
flowed everywhere; men dabbled in blood, almost bathed in blood. A
crimson tide flowed in the streets of Paris deep enough to damn the
infamous Catherine de' Medici and her confederates. To the crime of
assassination on that direful day of St. Bartholomew must be added that
of treachery of the darkest hue. Peace had been made between the warring
parties. The Protestant chiefs had been invited to Paris to witness the
marriage of the young King Henry of Navarre with Marguerite de Valois,
sister of the king of France, which was fixed for the 18th of August,
1572. They had been received with every show of amity and good-will. The
great Huguenot leader, Admiral de Coligny, had come, confiding in the
honor of his late foes, and had been received by the king, Charles IX.,
with demonstrations of sincere friendship, though the weak monarch
warned him to beware of the Guises, his bitter enemies and the
remorseless haters of all opponents of the Catholic party.
On the 22d of August the work of treachery began. On that day a
murderous shot was fired at Coligny as he stood by the window of his
room engaged in reading a letter. It smashed two fingers of his right
hand, and lodged a ball in his left arm. The would-be murderer escaped.
"Here is a fine proof of the fidelity to his agreement of the Duke of
Guise," said Coligny, reproachfully, to the king.
"My dear father," returned the king, "the hurt is yours, the grief and
the outrage mine; but I will take such vengeance that it shall never be
forgotten."
He meant it for the moment; but his mind was feeble, his will weak,
himself a mere puppet in the hands of his imperious mother and the
implacable Guises. Between them they had determined to rid themselves of
the opposing party in the state on the death of the admiral and the
other Protestant leaders. Sure of their power over the king, the orders
for the massacre were already given when, near midnight of August 24,
St. Bartholomew's day, the queen, with some of her leading councillors,
sought the king's room and made a determined assault upon the feeble
defences of his intellect.
"The slaughter of many thousands of men may be prevented by a single
sword-thrust," they argued. "Only kill the admiral, the head and front
of the civil wars, and the strength of his party will die with him. The
sacrifice of two or three men will satisfy the loyal party, who will
remain forever your faithful and obedient subjects. War is inevitable.
The Guises on one side, and the Huguenots on the other, cannot be
controlled. Better to win a battle in Paris, where we hold all the
chiefs in our clutches, than to put it to hazard in the field. In this
case pity would be cruelty, and cruelty would be pity."
For an hour and a half the struggle with the weak will of the king
continued. He was violently agitated, but could not bring himself to
order the murder of the guest to whom he had promised his royal faith
and protection. The queen mother grew alarmed. Delay might ruin all, by
the discovery of her plans. At length, with a show of indignation, she
said,--
"Then, if you will not do this, permit me and your brother to retire to
some other part of the kingdom."
This threat to leave him alone to grapple with the difficulties that
surrounded him frightened the feeble king. He rose hastily from his
seat.
"By God's death!" he cried, passionately, "since you think proper to
kill the admiral, I consent." With these words he left the room.
The beginning of the work of bloodshed had been fixed for an hour before
daybreak. But the king had spoken in a moment of passion and agitation.
An hour's reflection might change his mind. There was no time to be
lost. The queen gave the signal at once, and out on the air of that
dreadful night rang the terrible tocsin peal from the tower of the
church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the alarm call for which the
white-crossed murderers waited.
Quickly the silence of the night was broken by loud cries, shouts of
vengeance, the tramp of many feet, the sharp reports of musketry. The
work was begun. Every man not marked by a cross was to be slaughtered.
The voice of murder broke fearfully upon the peacefulness of the
recently quiet midnight hour.
The noise roused Coligny. He rose hastily and threw on his
dressing-gown. The cries and shots told him what was going on. He had
trusted the faithless Guises and the soulless De' Medici, and this was
what came of it.
"M. Merlin," he said to a clergyman who was with him, "say me a prayer;
I commit my soul to my Saviour."
Some of his gentlemen entered the room.
"What is the meaning of this riot?" asked Ambrose Paré.
"My lord, it is God calling us," said Cornaton.
"I have long been ready to die," said the admiral; "but you, my friends,
save yourselves, if it is still possible."
They left him, and escaped, the most of them by the roof. Only one man
stayed with him, Nicholas Muss, a German servant, "as little concerned,"
says Cornaton, "as if there was nothing going on around him."
The flight had been made barely in time. Hasty footsteps were heard
below. The assassins were in the house. In a moment more the chamber
door was flung open and two servants of the Duke of Guise entered.
"Art not thou the admiral?" asked one of them, Behme by name.
"Young man," answered Coligny, "thou comest against a wounded and aged
man. Thou'lt not shorten my life by much."
Behme's answer was to plunge a heavy boar-spear which he held into the
body of the defenceless veteran. Withdrawing it, he struck him on the
head with it. Coligny fell, saying,--
"If it were but a man! But it is a horse-boy."
Others rushed into the room and thrust their weapons into the dying man.
"Behme," cried the duke of Guise from the court-yard, "hast thou done?"
"It is all over, my lord," answered the assassin.
The murderers flung the body from the window. It fell with a crash at
the feet of Guise and his companions. They turned it over, wiped the
blood from the face, and said,--
"Faith, it is he, sure enough!"
Some say that Guise kicked the bleeding corpse in the face.
Meanwhile, murder was everywhere. The savage lower orders of Paris, all,
high and low, of the party of the Guises, were infected with the thirst
for blood, and the streets of the city became a horrible whirlpool of
slaughter, all who did not wear the saving cross being shot down without
mercy or discrimination.
The anecdotes of that fatal night and the succeeding day are numerous,
some of them pathetic, most of them ferocious, all tending to show how
brutal man may become under the inspiration of religious prejudice and
the example of slaughter,--the blood fury, as it has been fitly termed.
Téligny, the son-in-law of Coligny, took refuge on a roof. The guards of
the Duke of Anjou fired at him as at a target. La Rochefoucauld, with
whom the king had been in merry chat until eleven o'clock of the
preceding evening, was aroused by a loud knocking upon his door. He
opened it; six masked men rushed in, and instantly buried their poniards
in his body. The new queen of Navarre had just gone to bed, under
peremptory orders from her mother, Catherine de' Medici. She was wakened
from her first slumber by a man knocking and kicking at her door, with
wild shouts of "Navarre! Navarre!" Her nurse ran to open the door,
thinking that it was the king, her lady's husband. A wounded and
bleeding gentleman rushed in, blood flowing from both arms, four archers
pursuing him into the queen's bedchamber.
The fugitive flung himself on the queen's couch, seizing her in his
alarm. She leaped out of bed towards the wall, he following her, and
still clasping her round the body. What it meant she knew not, but
screamed in fright, her assailant screaming as loudly. Their cries had
the effect of bringing into the room M. de Nançay, captain of the
guards, who could not help laughing on seeing the plight of the queen.
But in an instant more he turned in a rage upon the archers, cursed them
for their daring, and harshly bade them begone. As for the fugitive, M.
de Leran by name, he granted him his life at the queen's prayer. She
put him to bed, in her closet, and attended him until he was well of his
wounds.
Such are a few of the anecdotes told of that night of terror. They might
be extended indefinitely, but anecdotes of murder are not of the most
attractive character, and may profitably be passed over. The king saved
some, including his nurse and Ambrose Paré his surgeon, both Huguenots.
Two others, destined in the future to play the highest parts in the
kingdom, were saved by his orders. These were the two Huguenot princes,
Henry of Navarre, and Henry de Condé. The king sent for them during the
height of the massacre, and bade them recant or die.
"I mean, for the future," he said, "to have but one religion in my
kingdom; the mass or death; make your choice."
The king of Navarre asked for time to consider the subject, reminding
Charles of his promised protection. Condé was defiant.
"I will remain firm in what I believe to be the true religion," he said,
"though I have to give up my life for it."
"Seditious madman, rebel, and son of a rebel," cried the king,
furiously, "if within three days you do not change your language, I will
have you strangled."
In three days Charles himself changed his language. Remorse succeeded
his insensate rage.
"Ambrose," he said to his surgeon, "I do not know what has come over me
for the last two or three days, but I feel my mind and body greatly
excited; in fact, just as if I had a fever. It seems to me every moment,
whether I wake or sleep, that these murdered corpses appear to me with
hideous and blood-covered faces. I wish the helpless and innocent had
not been included."
On the next day he issued orders, prohibiting, on pain of death, any
slaying or plundering. But he had raised a fury not easily to be
allayed. The tocsin of death still rang; to it the great bell of the
palace added at intervals its clanging peal; shouts, yells, the sharp
reports of pistols and arquebuses, the shrieks of victims, filled the
air; sixty thousand murderers thronged the streets, slaying all who wore
not the white cross, breaking into and plundering houses, and
slaughtering all within them. All through that dreadful Sunday the
crimson carnival went on, death everywhere, wagons loaded with bleeding
bodies traversing the streets, to cast their gory burdens into the
Seine, a scene of frightful massacre prevailing such as city streets
have seldom witnessed. The king judged feebly if he deemed that with a
word he could quell the storm his voice had raised. Many of the nobles
of the court, satisfied with the death of the Huguenot leaders,
attempted to stay the work of death, but a report that a party of
Huguenots had attempted to kill the king added to the popular fury, and
the sanguinary work went on.
It is not known how many were slain during that outbreak of slaughter.
It was not confined to Paris, but spread through France. Thousands are
said to have been killed in the city. In the kingdom the number slain
has been variously estimated at from ten to one hundred thousand. Such
was the frightful result of a lamentable event in which religious
animosity was taken advantage of to intensify the political enmity of
the warring parties of the realm.
It proved a useless infamy. Charles IX. died two years afterwards, after
having suffered agonies of remorse. Despite the massacre, the Huguenots
were not all slain. Nor had the murder of Coligny robbed them of a
leader. Henry of Navarre, who had narrowly escaped death on that fearful
night, was in the coming years to lead the Protestants to many a
victory, and in the end to become king of France, as Henry IV. By his
coronation, Coligny was revenged; the Huguenots, instead of being
exterminated by the hand of massacre, had defeated their foes and raised
their leader to the throne, and the Edict of Nantes, which was soon
afterwards announced, gave liberty of conscience to France for many
years thereafter.
_KING HENRY OF NAVARRE._
For the first time in its history France had a Protestant king. Henry
III. had died by the knife of an assassin. Henry of Navarre was named by
him as his successor. But the Catholic chiefs of France, in particular
the leaders of the League which had been banded against Henry III., were
bitterly opposed to the reign of a Huguenot in a realm that had always
been governed by Catholic kings, and it was evident that only by the
sword could the throne be secured.
The League held Paris and much of France. Henry's army was too weak to
face them. He fell back on Dieppe, that he might be near the coast, and
in position to receive reinforcements and supplies promised him by Queen
Elizabeth. The Duke of Mayenne pursued him with an army of some
thirty-five thousand men. Such was the situation at the date of the
opening of our story.
Henry III. had been killed on the 1st of August, 1589. Henry IV. was
proclaimed king on the 2d of August. On the 26th of the same month he
reached Dieppe, where he was met by the governor, Aymar de Chastes, and
the leading citizens, who brought him the keys of the place.
"I come to salute my lord and hand over to him the government of this
city," said Aymar, who was a Catholic noble.
"Ventre-saint-gris!" cried Henry, with his favorite exclamation; "I know
none more worthy of it than you are."
The citizens crowded round the king, profuse in their expressions of
loyalty.
"No fuss, my lads," said Henry, who was the embodiment of plain common
sense; "all I want is your affection, good bread, good wine, and good
hospitable faces."