ELIZABETH (iii), 1568-72--THE CATHOLIC CHALLENGE
[Sidenote: 1568 May, Elizabeth and Mary]
Before crossing the Solway, Mary wrote to Elizabeth throwing herself on
her hospitality. She followed hard on the heels of her missive, and
awaited the reply at Carlisle, where the Catholic gentlemen of the
North rallied to receive her. The situation indeed was a singularly
embarrassing one for the English Queen. Mary claimed in fact that
Elizabeth should either restore her, or allow her to appeal to those
who would do so--that is, to France. To take her part unconditionally
had its obvious dangers; not less obvious were the dangers of acceding
to the alternative demand. To detain her in England, on the other hand,
would inevitably make her the centre of Catholic intrigue. The most
convenient arrangement would be to restore her under conditions which
would minimise her power of becoming dangerous; and, in the meantime,
she was perhaps less to be feared under careful supervision in England
than anywhere else. So Elizabeth took the line of informing her that if
she cleared herself of the charges of crimes such as made it impossible
to support her if she were guilty, she should be restored; which being
interpreted meant that there was to be an investigation, and Elizabeth
would act on the findings. Murray on the other hand was in effect
advised that the English Queen would not countenance him in levying war
but that he might read between the lines of her instructions; in view
of course of the fear that the party opposed to Murray might seek to
procure French intervention.
[Sidenote: A Commission of enquiry]
Elizabeth was in fact in a position to dictate her own terms. Whatever
right she might think fit to assume, whatever technical grounds she
might assert for that right, Mary was effectively in her power. The
Scots Queen--transferred for greater safety to Bolton, away from the
dangerous proximity of the Border--indignantly repudiated the
jurisdiction, demanded to be set at liberty, asseverated her own
innocence. Elizabeth could not afford to set her at liberty; and with
some plausibility declared that the innocence must be proved, before
her rule could be re-imposed on a nation which had rejected it.
Elizabeth quite evidently intended that the investigation should
neither clear nor condemn her. Mary's objections were perfectly
compatible with innocence. Submission might be taken as implying the
recognition of English suzerainty; and if the investigation was to be
earned just so far as suited her sister sovereign, if evidence was to
be admitted, tested, or sup-pressed, with a view not to ascertaining
truth but to securing a convenient judgment, innocence was no sort of
reason for welcoming enquiry. [Footnote: Mr Froude (viii., Ed. 1866)
informs us in one breath that Mary was impelled to protest by the
consciousness of guilt (p. 253), but admits in the next that Elizabeth
had no intention of allowing either her guilt or her innocence to be
definitely proved (pp. 262, 270, 277).]
The plan of operations was that a Commission should be appointed,
before whom the Scots lords should answer for their rebellion;
obviously they would defend themselves on the ground of Mary's guilt of
which they professed to hold ample proof in the casket of letters,
which if genuine were assuredly damning. On the other hand, Maitland
and others of the lords must have suspected at least that evidence of
their own complicity in Darnley's murder would be forthcoming. The
English Protestants were convinced beforehand of Mary's guilt; they
were too much interested in preventing her succession to the English
throne to form an unbiased judgment; whereas her condemnation would
have been a serious blow to the Catholic party, which included
professing Protestants like Norfolk. Altogether, what Elizabeth desired
was a compromise between Mary and the Scots lords, by which both should
assent to her restoration as queen with Murray as actual ruler, coupled
with the confirmation of the unratified Treaty of Edinburgh, and the
establishment of the Anglican form of worship as Elizabeth's price. Her
real difficulty perhaps was that she did not want Mary cleared to the
world by the definite withdrawal of the charge of murder; she wanted
the charge to be made and to be left indefinitely not-proven.
[Sidenote: Oct. Proceedings at York]
The commission--Norfolk, Sussex, and Sadler, who had spent many years
in Scotland as ambassador--was to sit at York in October. Thither came
the Scots lords. Murray was prepared to rely upon the general charges
of misgovernment, while privately submitting the evidence as to the
murder to the Commissioners. Norfolk was staggered by the letters, and
very nearly threw up a scheme which the Catholic party had been
hatching for his own marriage with Mary. But Elizabeth's sudden
discovery that this scheme existed filled her with alarm, and for the
moment she cancelled the Commission.
[Sidenote: Doubts of Philip's attitude]
For the course of events on the Continent was making the outlook more
complicated. The initial success of the Netherlanders had been very
soon followed by the crushing disaster of Jemmingen, and the country
seemed to be under Alva's heel. Catholicism in its most militant and
merciless form was predominant; what if Philip, irritated by the
practically open piracy of English ships in the Channel and elsewhere,
should espouse the cause of Mary? De Silva, the ambassador whose
relations with the English court were highly satisfactory, was replaced
by the less diplomatic and more aggressive Don Guerau de Espes. The
English envoy in Spain was so unguarded in his own religious
professions as to give Philip fair ground for handing him his passports.
If the English Catholics, irritated by the growth of Calvinism and the
increased vigilance of Protestantism in England, founded new hopes on
these signs of a changing attitude in Philip, their present loyalty
might very soon alter its colour with Mary Stewart in England.
[Sidenote: Nov. The Commission at Westminster]
It seemed safer then that the enquiry should be held in London, with a
large increase in the number of the Commissioners. Of the Scots lords,
Lethington was undoubtedly anxious that the murder charge should be
withdrawn. Nevertheless, at the sitting held at the end of November,
Murray definitely put in the charge, producing copies or translations
of the Casket Letters. These the commissioners examined; later on, they
were shown the originals, which they judged to be genuine documents in
the Queen's hand. Whether they were competent to test forgeries
executed with tolerable skill is at least open to question. The rest of
the evidence produced was not only that of interested persons, but
contained inconsistencies; neither Mary herself nor her agents were
ever put in possession of copies of the incriminating documents; one
side only was heard. If it was Elizabeth's object to create in the
minds of the English lords a strong presumption that Mary was guilty,
that purpose was successfully effected. Under such conditions Mary
declined compromises. The Commission was broken up. The farce was over.
Murray returned to Scotland: the Queen remained a prisoner in England,
to be--with or without her own complicity--the centre of every papist
plot till the final tragedy.
[Sidenote: Comment on the enquiry]
So the mystery of Mary Stewart remains a mystery to this day. That she
was cognisant of the plot to murder Darnley is the more probable theory,
in view of facts which no one denies; yet those facts remain
intelligible if she was innocent. There are no admitted facts which
preclude her guilt: none which prove it conclusively. The various
confessions of interested witnesses, voluntary or extorted, are
untrustworthy. The genuineness of the Casket Letters is doubtful. No
opportunity was given for cross-examining the witnesses or examining
the letters. The world believed that Mary was guilty, however it may
have been disposed to condone the guilt. The world was probably right.
But to pretend that there was a fair or complete investigation--that
Mary's guilt was proved before the Commission--is absurd. That Mary
from first to last protested against being brought to the bar of an
English tribunal--whose authority she could not acknowledge without
implying a recognition of that suzerainty which Edward I of England had
claimed, and Robert I of Scotland had wiped out at Bannockburn--was
entirely compatible with the innocence of a high-spirited and
courageous princess: and would have been so, even if she could have
counted on the absolute impartiality of her judges. Knowing that she
could count on nothing of the kind, fully aware that Elizabeth herself
would in fact be the judge, and suspecting with very good reason that
any verdict pronounced by her would be shaped strictly with a view to
her own political convenience, it is almost inconceivable that Mary
should have acknowledged the jurisdiction merely because Innocence in
the abstract ought to invite enquiry. Had Mary been less beautiful,
less unfortunate, less of a heroine of romance, it is likely enough
that she would find few champions; but the pretence that she had a fair
trial would still be none the less untenable.
[Sidenote: Dec. Seizure of Spanish Treasure]
In the meantime, an incident had occurred which shows what an immense
change had been taking place in England during the ten years of
Elizabeth's reign; how completely the nation had recovered confidence
in itself. Throughout these years, English ships had been multiplying,
English sailors had been ignoring the Spanish and Portuguese monopolies
of ocean traffic, and English captains had been, with only the most
perfunctory official discouragement, and under colour of the flimsiest
pretexts or of no pretext at all, indulging in what was virtually
piracy. Now, the religious struggle, after a few months' smouldering,
had again broken out in France. La Rochelle, the Huguenot head-quarters,
was a nest of privateers, with whom the English adventurers consorted,
and the water-way for Spanish ships to the Netherlands was infested
with dangers. Alva was in want of money. Philip borrowed a great sum
from the Genoese bankers. The vessels conveying the bullion were forced
to put into English ports, in fear of capture. Elizabeth was not ready
to declare war in favour of the revolted provinces; but Cecil was
extremely anxious to render them all the help possible short of
declaring war. The treasure-ships had sailed into a trap. Don Guerau
invited Elizabeth to send them on under escort to the Netherlands; she
replied that as the money belonged not to Philip but to the Genoese
bankers, who would not object, she intended to borrow it herself. Don
Guerau was furious, and sent messages to Alva, who promptly seized all
English goods and persons in the Netherlands. With equal promptitude,
all Spaniards and Spanish goods were seized in England. The balance of
loss was heavily in favour of the English.
It seemed most probable that this astonishingly audacious proceeding
must result either in the fall of Cecil, to whom it was due, or in open
war with Spain, and the immediate committal of England to the formation
of a Protestant League; which might force the English Catholics in
their turn directly to espouse the cause of Mary. The reception given
in this country shortly before to the Cardinal of Chatillon, Coligny's
brother, was a symptom of Cecil's Protestant policy, and he at least
was probably willing enough that any tendency of the English Catholics
towards revolt should be precipitated rather than delayed.
[Sidenote: 1569 The incident passed over]
Even Cecil however was not anxious for open war, while Elizabeth always
shrank from that last extremity. On the other side, Philip had three
very good reasons for passing over the affront he had received. First,
the Netherlands were giving him enough to do for the time. Secondly,
Don Guerau was satisfied that the downfall of Cecil and the reversal of
his policy were imminent. Thirdly, the French court would assuredly
subordinate religious questions to the political gain of uniting with
England against him. A definite league between Condé and the English
might have averted that danger, by driving the French Catholics to make
common cause with Spain; but any immediate prospect of such a solution
of the entanglement vanished when the Huguenots were defeated and Condé
himself killed at the battle of Jarnac in May. The result of that event
was the immediate prohibition of the English adventurers from joining
the Huguenot fleet of Rochelle and sailing under the Huguenot flag; as
many of them had been in the habit of doing.
In May, then, the risk of a rupture between the French Government and
England, and of the formation of a universal Protestant league, was
over for the time at least; and within a few months, in England, the
Northern Earls, by a premature rising, inflicted a severe blow on their
own party, and decided large numbers of the Catholics to take their
stand as in the first place patriots and loyalists.
[Sidenote: The Northern Rebellion]
What we have called the Catholic party included many professing
Protestants--_i.e._ men who conformed with entire equanimity, yet
would have preferred to see the old worship restored; such as Norfolk.
Extreme men saw in the union of the Duke with Mary a prospect of
immediately placing the captive Queen on the English throne. The
moderate men wanted the marriage, accompanied by her recognition as
heir presumptive. There were others outside the Catholic connexion who
dreamed rather of Mary under the circumstances conforming to the
Anglican faith. Norfolk dallied with all three. There was a moment when
Elizabeth herself might have been persuaded to assent; but the Duke
missed his opportunity, and she, reverting to a conviction that the
marriage would soon be followed by her own assassination, presently
forbade it, and summoned Norfolk to answer for his loyalty. After brief
hesitation he surrendered himself and was confined in the Tower: but
the Northern Earls, Northumberland and Westmorland, believing that they
must strike at once if at all, rose and marched to deliver Mary from
Tutbury--whither she had been suddenly conveyed to safe keeping, in the
expectation of some such event. The rest of the Catholics however were
not ready for such a venture; being forced to make up their minds, they
resolved to stand loyal. The royal musters were quickly advancing to
meet the insurgents, who presently concluded that the cause was
hopeless, and fled. Northumberland was subsequently arrested and
detained by Murray in Scotland: Westmorland made his way to Spain.
Sussex received and carried out orders to punish with a heavy hand
those who had taken part in the rebellion; and so without any great
difficulty the one serious revolt of the reign was stamped out.
[Sidenote: 1570 Murder of Murray]
The year 1570 had hardly opened when Elizabeth lost one of her most
valuable allies by the murder of the Regent Murray, assassinated by
Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh. Murray's figure in history is a sombre one,
and the sombreness is thrown into the greater relief by the picturesque
brilliancy of his hapless sister. It was his fate to fight on the
gloomy side; to stand at the head of a nobility conspicuously sordid
and unprincipled, half of whom, when not occupied in plotting against
the life of a hereditary foe or a political rival, were posing as
representatives of the "godly"--an attitude held to be entirely
compatible with a total disregard for the decalogue. Perhaps there is
no prominent statesman of his times who came through the heavy ordeal
of public life with cleaner hands. There is no fair ground for
associating him directly and actively with any of the great crimes in
one or another of which almost every one of the Scots lords had a share.
When his sister married Darnley, he took up arms against her: he did so
again when she married Bothwell: and on both occasions he was probably
obeying an elastic conscience. While he was endeavouring to fix the
odium of the Darnley murder on Mary, he must have been quite aware that
both Lethington and Morton, his allies, were steeped in the guilt of it.
But he could neither stand aside from the turmoil, nor pick and choose
his associates. The political support or countenance of Elizabeth
seemed absolutely necessary to the cause of the Reformation in Scotland.
A man of a more generous spirit would more than once have felt that the
price was too high, that he was accepting a too ignominious position;
he stooped to a course which if not exactly dishonourable was
perilously near it. But the part he was forced to play was the hardest
and the most thankless imaginable; and he played it with a constant
effort to be tolerant, to be as just as circumstances permitted, to be
true to himself. He was the one man in Scotland who had striven
resolutely amid the kaleidoscopic chaos of factions to maintain some
sort of order, some sort of liberty, some sort of standard of public
spirit. With his fall, anarchy became more rampant than ever. Elizabeth
lamented, not without reason, that she had lost her best friend; but
while he lived she had not made his task the easier.
[Sidenote: March The Bull of Deposition]
In March, the Pope took the step which paralysed Catholicism as an open
political force in England, by issuing a Bull against Elizabeth which
virtually declared loyalty to the Queen and loyalty to the Faith to be
incompatible; yet since the profession of loyalty was to be condoned,
every Catholic was _ipso facto_ rendered suspect. The suspicion of
disloyalty breeds the disease. Englishmen of the Roman Communion have a
right to be proud that so many in those years of storm and stress
neither relinquished their faith nor forgot their patriotism; yet when
their fellow-subjects had been thus absolved of their allegiance, the
Protestants can hardly be blamed for being over-ready to assume that
they were in league with the Queen's enemies. The Pope could have done
nothing calculated more thoroughly to translate the ordinary sentiment
of loyalty into a passion of resentment against its opposite.
[Sidenote: The Anjou Match]
The immediate situation however was fraught with sufficient peril. Mary
for the sake of liberty was by this time fairly ready to promise
anything, and trust to the chapter of accidents to find some plausible
ground for repudiating her promises later. Elizabeth would have been
glad enough to get her out of the country if she could by any means be
rendered harmless. Once again, to the dismay of Cecil, a restoration,
on terms, seemed probable, while the Queen herself showed a tendency to
try at any cost to recover the support of the Catholics. In fact
however, she would make up her mind to no decided course. But affairs
in France suggested to her a new scheme which could be played with
indefinitely. In spite of Jarnac, and of another defeat later in the
year at Montcontour, Coligny and the Huguenots remained unvanquished in
1570. In the autumn, there was a fresh pacification, and Coligny became
once more a power at Court as well as in the country. The younger
brother of the young French King, Henry Duke of Anjou, was now old
enough to marry. There had been talk of uniting him to Mary. But if he
were to marry Elizabeth, who was only some seventeen years his senior,
Protestants and Catholics in both countries might make their peace, and
all present a united front to Philip and to Papal aggression--for even
the Cardinal of Lorraine had dallied with the notion of Nationalism in
matters ecclesiastical. Cecil and Walsingham, who had recently come to
the front and now represented England in Paris, were keenly in favour
of the scheme. As for the Queen she probably intended to use it
precisely as she had used all the previous marriage schemes, simply as
an instrument for manipulating foreign courts and her own ministers.
[Sidenote: 1570-71 The Ridolfi plot initiated]
Under these conditions, a new plot was initiated for the liberation of
Mary, her marriage to Norfolk, and the removal of Elizabeth; to be at
last actively if secretly aided by Alva and Philip, on whom the
vehement remonstrances of the Pope were now taking effect--in view of
the threatened alliance between England and France. The agent was one
Ridolfi, who combined cleverness sufficient to deceive even Walsingham
for a time with a garrulity and carelessness which proved ruinous in
the long run. It was fortunate for Elizabeth that of the two necessary
figure-heads for any conspiracy, Mary and Norfolk, one was more than
half-believed even by her own party to be stained by the grossest
crimes, while the other was nerveless and vacillating.
[Sidenote: 1571 April, Parliament]
At this juncture, need of funds made it impossible for Elizabeth to
continue longer without calling a Parliament, which met early in April
(1571). The bulk of the peers were still in sympathy with Catholicism
and the ideas associated therewith; the lower House, always Protestant,
was now more emphatically so than ever. The Puritan element, naturally
enough, had come to regard Catholicism as _prima facie_ evidence
of treason, and was bent on enforcing a more uncompromising conformity,
with a greater severity, than heretofore. The Commons insisted on
discussing religious matters, and ignored the Queen's attempts to
silence them. They gave, what the last parliament had refused, their
sanction to the Thirty-nine Articles. The effect of the Papal
excommunication was seen in an Act making it high Treason to question
the Queen's title, or to call her a heretic, and disqualifying from the
succession any one who laid claim to the crown; they sought even to
make the Act retrospective, which would have forthwith excluded Mary
permanently. They submitted however to some modification of the
original harshness of their intentions; whereby it is probable that not
a few Catholics, who would otherwise have been fatally alienated, did
as matters turned out remain loyal. Finally, a substantial grant of
money was made. The Commons in short were thoroughly at one with Cecil,
now known as Lord Burghley. They were intensely loyal, and showed their
loyalty none the less emphatically because they ignored the Queen's
predilections in the manner of doing it.
[Sidenote: Collapse of Anjou marriage]
At the end of May, Parliament was dissolved. In the meantime, and for some
months longer, the affair of the Anjou marriage was running the usual
course. As mere postponement seemed to become impossible, the old pretended
difficulties by which the Archduke Charles had been finally evaded were
rehabilitated. Anjou must not have even his private Mass. The Queen's
Ministers understood the position, and their one object became the
avoidance of a breach with France. By the exercise of much dexterity, Anjou
was drawn into taking the initiative in breaking off the match in a quite
complimentary manner; and there was even discussion of the substitution for
him of his still younger brother Alençon. France, in fact, at this time was
swaying strongly towards antagonism to Spain, at any price which would
secure English support; the idea of partitioning the Netherlands being part
of the programme. Cecil and Walsingham, believing with reason that an
accident might again turn the balance with the French government, and
painfully distrustful of Elizabeth's endless vacillations, were on
tenterhooks till the amicable conclusion of the Anjou affair.
[Sidenote: Developments of the Ridolfi plot]
They had also been on the alert over the Ridolfi plot. In the spring,
Ridolfi was concocting with Alva designs for an invasion; in the summer he
was in Spain. In the meantime, the capture of an agent, and the liberal use
of spies and of the rack, placed important clues in Burghley's hands. At
this juncture the famous seaman Sir John Hawkins, in collusion with
Burghley, placed himself at the service of Mary and Philip, in the
character of an ill-used and revengeful servant of Elizabeth. Yet it was
only by another accidental capture, and more use of the rack, that
complicity was actually brought home to Norfolk, who was arrested in
September. Norfolk once arrested, traitors and spies soon did what else was
necessary to reveal the whole plot, in which invasion and assassination
were combined. It was no longer possible to account Spain and the Spanish
King as anything but mortal enemies to England and the English Queen. Don
Guerau was ordered to leave the country; his parting move was a plot for
Burghley's assassination, duly detected by spies, Norfolk was convicted for
treason, and condemned to a death which was deferred for some months. Mary
Stewart expected a like fate. Elizabeth however still rejected the extreme
measure. But the _Detectio_ of George Buchanan--in other words a
complete _ex parte_ statement of the case against Mary, including the
contents of the Casket Letters--was published.
[Sidenote: 1572 Parliament and Mary (May)]
The effect was seen when a new Parliament met in May. The people of England
believed with an absolute conviction in the truth of the whole indictment
against the Scots Queen. Nor was there any question that she had appealed
both to France and Spain to liberate her; so far at least she was
implicated in the Ridolfi plot, even if the assassination proposals had not
come within her ken. She was believed to be a criminal, who had forfeited
all right to sympathy and consideration; she was palpably a standing menace
to the internal peace of the realm, a standing incitement to its enemies
abroad. The Commons therefore demanded her attainder; as for the technical
right, no sovereign at the time or in the past would have hesitated to
ignore or evade the point. The question was outside the range of
technicalities. The plea that England had no right to detain her, or to
judge her, that she had a right to seek her own release by any available
means, was perfectly sound; the counter-plea that the safety of the State
forbade her release, and her attempts to procure war against it justified
her destruction, was equally unanswerable. But Elizabeth could not resolve
to act upon either plea, ignoring the other. So Mary remained a prisoner,
and the centre of intrigue. Even an alternative Bill, supposed to have
Elizabeth's approval, which merely excluded Mary from the succession, never
reached the statute book.
[Sidenote: Lepanto; April Revolt of the Netherlands]
A notable triumph had recently been achieved for Philip's arms, in the
crushing defeat of the Turks at Lepanto by the combined Venetian and
Spanish fleets commanded by the Spanish King's half-brother, Don John of
Austria. To this perhaps may be attributed the less defiant tone of
communications with Spain. The narrow seas were swarming not only with
English privateering craft, but with Dutchmen commanded by the privateer De
la Marck on behalf of William of Orange, who were habitually succoured in
English harbours. But though these were now ordered to depart, and the
English mariners aboard them were commanded to leave them, there is no
doubt that their privy equipment was deliberately connived at, in the
flattest possible contradiction to the public declarations. At the close of
March, De la Marck's fleet sailed from Dover to fall upon a Spanish convoy;
a few days later, it appeared in the Meuse before Brille. The town promptly
surrendered. The whole of the Netherlands was seething under Alva's savage
rule; trade, already in a fair way to be ruined by the cessation of
commerce with England since the seizure of the treasure ships, was being
throttled also by the system of taxation which Alva had recently
instituted. The capture of Brille fired the train. City after city raised
the standard of revolt. The rebellion which Alva fancied he had utterly
stamped out was suddenly in full blaze once more; and on the south, Mons,
like Brille, was seized by a rapid dash of Lewis of Nassau, operating from
French territory.
[Sidenote: The Alençon marriage]
In the meantime also the Alençon marriage project seemed to be
advancing, and in April a defensive treaty was struck between England
and France, where it appeared that Coligny was paramount at court. Both
English and French volunteers were fighting in the Netherlands. Small
wonder that Burghley and Walsingham believed that a French marriage
would clinch matters, make France a virtually Huguenot Power, and
secure a combination which would bring the Pope and the King of Spain
to their knees. The approaching marriage of the French King's sister,
Margaret, to young Henry of Navarre--now standing next after the King's
brothers in the line of succession--pointed emphatically in the same
direction.
Walsingham however also knew that, to achieve the desired end, the
Huguenots must at once have convincing proofs that they could depend on the
English alliance. The marriage, and concerted armed intervention in the
Netherlands, were the conditions. But Alençon [Footnote: He was singularly
ugly, and Elizabeth who had nicknames for many of her Court, used to call
him her "Frog" when he was wooing her, later.] was an incredibly
distasteful husband; and however near Elizabeth might suffer herself to be
brought to the brink of war, she hung back when the time came. There was
very good reason [Footnote: _State Papers: Spanish,_ ii., 338.] for
believing that even now she was secretly negotiating with Alva, and in a
very short time the English and French volunteer contingents in Flushing
[Footnote: _S.P., Foreign,_ x., 491, 530.] were on the verge of
hostilities. The power of the Huguenots was on the surface; fanatics
themselves when their religion was not merely political, they were the
objects of savagely fanatical hatred. The queen-mother, who had always
striven to preserve her own domination by holding the balance between
Guises and Huguenots, saw Charles falling more and more under Coligny's
influence instead of her own. It may be that if she had felt sure of
Elizabeth, she would have gone through with the proposed policy;
distrusting the English Queen she resolved to end it. She made a desperate
and successful attempt to recover her ascendancy over her weak-minded
son. She played upon his terrors, and prepared for one of the most
appalling tragedies in all history.
[Sidenote: Aug. St. Bartholomew]
A plot for the assassination of Coligny failed, the Admiral being but
slightly wounded. Paris was full of Huguenots, who had gathered for the
celebration of Navarre's marriage on August 18th; the attempt on Coligny
led to threatening language against the Guises. Katharine stirred her son
into a sudden panic. The attack on the Admiral had taken place on August
22nd; with the booming of a bell on the early morning of the 24th, St.
Bartholomew's day, the most recklessly devastating mob in the world found
itself let loose on its prey, headed and urged on by the Guises and other
Catholic chiefs. The Huguenots, utterly surprised, were slaughtered from
house to house; with the taste of blood the populace went mad; Paris was a
shambles. How many thousands were massacred in that awful frenzy none can
tell. The tale of the tragedy flew from end to end of France; all over the
country, wherever the Catholics were in a majority, like scenes were
enacted. The total of the victims has been computed as high as a hundred
thousand; a fourth of that number would certainly not be an exaggerated
estimate. In England, all the martyrs for religion in the century did not
amount to a thousand, on both sides; in France, twenty thousand at least
were slain in a few days' orgy of fanaticism. And the new Pope Gregory sang
_Te Deum_ in solemn state; and the morose monarch of Spain laughed
aloud in unwonted glee; but Charles of France, men said, was haunted to the
hour of his death by red visions of that ghastly carnival of blood.