Chapter I: Preface

History is our Heaven-appointed instructor. It is the guide for the future. The calamities of yesterday are the protectors of to-day.

The sea of time we navigate is full of perils. But it is not an unknown sea. It has been traversed for ages, and there is not a sunken rock or a treacherous sand-bar which is not marked by the wreck of those who have preceded us.

There is no portion of history fraught with more valuable instruction than the period of those terrible religious wars which desolated the sixteenth century. There is no romance so wild as the veritable history of those times. The majestic outgoings of the Almighty, as developed in the onward progress of our race, infinitely transcend, in all the elements of profoundness, mystery, and grandeur, all that man's fancy can create.

The cartoons of Raphael are beautiful, but what are they when compared with the heaving ocean, the clouds of sunset, and the pinnacles of the Alps? The dome of St. Peter's is man's noblest architecture, but what is it when compared with the magnificent rotunda of the skies?

JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.

Brunswick, Maine, 1856.

CONTENTS.

Chapter Page

I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 13

II. CIVIL WAR 45

III. THE MARRIAGE 68

IV. PREPARATIONS FOR MASSACRE 93

V. MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW 109

VI. THE HOUSES OF VALOIS, OF GUISE, AND OF
BOURBON 137

VII. REIGN OF HENRY III 167

VIII. THE LEAGUE 196

IX. THE ASSASSINATION OF THE DUKE OF GUISE
AND OF HENRY III 220

X. WAR AND WOE 256

XI. THE CONVERSION OF THE KING 281

XII. THE REIGN OF HENRY IV. AND HIS DEATH 306

ENGRAVINGS.

Page

THE BIRTH OF HENRY OF NAVARRE 19

THE FLIGHT OF THE QUEEN OF NAVARRE 52

THE MARRIAGE 87

THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW 115

THE ASSASSINATION OF FRANCIS, DUKE OF GUISE 161

THE ASSASSINATION OF HENRY, DUKE OF GUISE 228

THE ASSASSINATION OF HENRY III. 238

THE ACT OF ABJURING PROTESTANTISM 292

THE RECONCILIATION WITH MAYENNE 309

KING HENRY IV.