Chapter XVIII: The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day (3)

From such instances of inhumanity it is a relief to turn to one of a few incidents wherein the finer feelings triumphed over prejudice, difference of religious tenets, and even personal hatred. There were in Paris two gentlemen, named Vezins and Regnier, of good families in the province of Quercy in southern France. Both were equally distinguished for their valor; but their dispositions were singularly unlike, for while the Huguenot Regnier was noted for his gentle manners, the Roman Catholic Vezins, who was lieutenant of the governor, the Viscount of Villars, had acquired unenviable notoriety because of his ferocity. Between the two there had for some time existed a mortal feud, which their common friends had striven in vain to heal. While the massacre was at its height, Regnier was visited by his enemy, Vezins. The latter, after effecting an entrance into the house by breaking down the door, fiercely ordered the Huguenot--who, well assured that his last hour was come, had fallen upon his knees to implore the mercy of God--to rise and follow him. A horse stood saddled at the door, upon which Regnier was told to mount. In his enemy's train he rode unharmed through the streets of Paris, then through the gates of the city. Still Vezins, without vouchsafing a word of explanation, kept on his way toward Cahors, the capital of Quercy, whither he had been despatched by the government.[1039] For many successive days the journey lasted. The prisoner was well guarded, but he was also well lodged and fed. At last the party reached the very castle of Regnier, and here his captor broke the long silence. "As you have seen," said he, "it would have depended only on myself to take advantage of the opportunity which I have long been seeking; but I should be ashamed to avenge myself in this way upon a man so brave as you. In settling our quarrel I desire that the danger shall be equal. Be well assured that you will find me as ready to decide our dispute in a manner becoming gentlemen, as I have been eager to save you from inevitable destruction." It need scarcely be said that the Huguenot could not find words sufficiently strong to express his gratitude; but Vezins merely replied: "I leave it to you to choose whether you wish me to be your friend or your enemy; I saved your life only to enable you to make your election." With these words he abruptly left him and rode away, nor would he ever consent even to take back the horse upon which he had brought Regnier in safety so many leagues.[1040]

[Sidenote: Escape of Montgomery and Chartres.]

[Sidenote: Charles himself fires at them from the Louvre.]

A number of the Huguenot noblemen were lodged on the southern side of the Seine, outside of the walls, in the Faubourg Saint Germain. Count Montgomery, the Vidame of Chartres, Beauvoir la Nocle, and Frontenay, a member of the powerful Rohan family, were among the most distinguished. After the admiral, there were certainly no Huguenots whom Catharine was more anxious to destroy than Montgomery and Chartres. Accordingly the massacre, which began near the Louvre, was to have been executed simultaneously upon them, and the work was intrusted to M. de Maugiron. But the delay of the Roman Catholics saved them. Marcel, the former prevot des marchands, who had been instructed to furnish one thousand men, was not ready in time; and Dumas, who was to have acted as guide, overslept the appointed hour. About five o'clock in the morning a Huguenot succeeded in swimming across the river, and carried to Montgomery the first tidings of the events of the last two hours. The count at once notified his comrades, but, although there were among them those who had been most urgent to leave Paris immediately after Maurevel's attack upon Coligny, few of the nobles would harbor the thought that Charles was so lost to honor as to have plotted the assassination of his invited guests. They preferred to believe that the king was himself in danger through a sudden commotion occasioned by the Guises. Acting upon this theory, the Huguenots proceeded in a body toward the Seine, intending to cross and lend assistance to the royal cause; but, on reaching the river's bank, they were speedily undeceived. They saw a band of two hundred soldiers of the royal guard coming toward them in boats, and discharging their arquebuses, with cries of "_Tue! Tue!_"--"Kill! Kill!" Charles himself was descried at a window of the Louvre, looking with approval upon the scene. There is good authority also, for the story that, in his eagerness to exterminate the Huguenots, Charles snatched an arquebuse from the hand of an attendant, and fired at them, exclaiming, "Let us shoot, _mort Dieu_, they are fleeing!"[1041]

Montgomery and his companions had by this time recognized their mistake, and hesitated no longer to flee from the perfidious capital. They promptly took to horse, and rode hard to reach Normandy and the sea. This part of the prey was, however, too precious to be permitted to escape. Accordingly, Guise, Aumale, the Bastard of Angouleme, and a number of "gentilhommes tueurs," started in pursuit. But an accident prevented them from overtaking the Huguenots. When Guise and his party reached the Porte de Bussy[1042]--the gate leading from the city into the faubourg in which the Protestants had been lodging--which was closed in accordance with the king's orders, they found that they had been provided by mistake with the wrong key, and the delay experienced in finding the right one afforded Montgomery an advantage in the race, of which he made good use.[1043]

[Sidenote: The massacre continues.]

The carnival of blood, which had been so successfully ushered in on that ill-starred Sunday of August, was maintained on the succeeding days with little abatement of its frenzied excitement. Paris soon resembled a vast charnel-house. The dead or dying lay in the open streets and squares, they blocked the doors and carriage-ways, they were heaped in the courtyards. When the utmost that impotent passion could do to these lifeless remains was accomplished, the Seine became the receptacle. Besides those Huguenots whom their murderers dragged to the bridges or wharves to despatch by drowning, both by day and by night wagons laden with the corpses of men and women, and even of young children, were driven down to the river and emptied of their human freight. But the current of the crooked Seine refused to carry away from the capital all these evidences of guilt. The shores of its first curve, from Paris to the bridge of St. Cloud, were covered with putrefying remains, which the municipality were compelled to inter, through fear of their generating a pestilence. And so we read, in the registers of the Hotel-de-Ville, of a payment of fifteen livres tournois, on the ninth of September, for the burial of the dead bodies found near the Convent of Chaillot, and of a second payment of twenty livres on the twenty-third, for the burial of eleven hundred more, near Chaillot, Auteuil, and St. Cloud.[1044]

[Sidenote: Not a popular movement.]

[Sidenote: Plunder of the rich.]

The massacre was not in its origin a popular outbreak. It sprang from the ambition and vindictive passions of the queen mother, and others, whom the ministers of a corrupt religion had long accustomed to the idea that the extermination of heretics is not a sin, but the highest type of piety. The people were called in only as assistants. Probably the first intention was only to hold the municipal forces in readiness to overcome any resistance which the Protestants might offer. But the massacre succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectations of the conspirators. Very few of the victims defended themselves or their property; scarcely one Roman Catholic was slain. And now the populace, having had a taste of blood, could no longer be restrained. Whether the plunder of the Protestants entered into the original calculations of Catharine and her advisers, may perhaps be doubted. But there is no question as to the turn which the affair soon took in the minds of those engaged in it. Pillage was not always countenanced by church and state: as a violation of the second table of the Law, it was, under ordinary circumstances, atoned for by penance and ecclesiastical censures; as a breach of the royal edicts, it was likely to be punished with hanging or still more painful modes of execution. Consequently, when by furnishing arms the civil power authorized the most severe measures against those whom it accused of foul conspiracy against the king, and when the professed minister of Christ and His gospel of peace blessed the work of exterminating God's enemies and the king's, there was no lack of men willing to profit by the rare and unexpected opportunity. Nor did the courtiers disdain dishonest gain. The Duke of Anjou was known to have enriched himself by the plunder of the shop of Baduere, the king's jeweller.[1045] Noblemen, besides robbing their victims of money, extorted from them, in return for a promise to spare their lives, deeds of valuable lands, or papers resigning in their favor high offices in the government. It was frequently the case that, after giving such presents, the Huguenot was put out of the way at once, in order to prevent him from ever retracting. Thus, Martial de Lomenie, a secretary of the king, was murdered in prison, after having resigned his office in favor of Marshal Retz, and sold to him his estate of Versailles, at such a price as the latter chose to name, in the vain hope that this would secure him liberty and life.[1046] The extent to which robbery was carried on the occasion of the massacre is reluctantly conceded in the pamphlet, which was published immediately after, as an apology of the court for the hideous crime; and an attempt is made to justify it, which is worthy of the source from which it drew its inspiration: "Now this good-will of the people to sustain and defend its prince, to espouse his quarrel, and to hate those who are not of his religion, is very praiseworthy; and if in this execution [the massacre] some pillaging has taken place, we must excuse the fury of a people impelled by a worthy zeal--a zeal hard to be restrained and bridled when once excited."[1047]

[Sidenote: Orders issued to lay down arms.]

[Sidenote: Little heed given to them.]

But, despite panegyrists, the massacre had not been in progress many hours before the very magistrates of the city appear to have become apprehensive lest the movement might assume dangerous dimensions. It was only about eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, as the registers of the Hotel de Ville inform us, when Charles was waited upon by the prevot des marchands and the echevins. They came to inform him that "a number of persons, partly belonging to the suite of his Majesty, partly to that of the princes, princesses, and lords of the court--gentlemen, archers of the king's body-guard, soldiers of his suite, as well as all sorts of people mingled with them and under their authority--were plundering and pillaging many houses and killing many persons in the streets." This was certainly no news to Charles; but as he desired, now that the massacre had begun, not to enrich the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Paris, but to fill his own coffers, he deemed it best to prohibit any further action on their part, and to leave the rest of the work to his own commissioned servants. Accordingly the municipal authorities were directed to ride through the city with all the troops at their disposal, and to see to it, both by day and night, that the bloodshed and robbery should cease. "Sir William Guerrier"--thus runs one of the commissions to the "quarteniers" issued from the central bureau of the city, in pursuance of these directions--"give commandment to all burgesses and inhabitants of your quarter, who to-day have taken up arms _according to the king's order_, to lay them down, and to retire and remain quietly in their houses, ... according to the king's command conveyed to us by my Lord of Nevers." And this document is accompanied with another, of the same date, applying to soldiers of the guard or others, who should pillage or maltreat Protestants, and threatening them with punishment. Such a proclamation, it is well known, was made by trumpet at about five o'clock that afternoon. The registers tell us that the instructions were so well carried out that all disorder "was at once appeased and ceased." They contain, however, a distinct refutation of this falsehood, in the frequent repetition of similar orders and the variety of forms in which the same statements are made on subsequent days. Again and again does the king direct that soldiers be placed at the head of every street to prevent robbery and murder;[1048] the guards either were never posted, or, as is more likely, became foremost in the work which they were sent to repress. Indeed, the instructions given on Monday to visit all the houses in the city and its suburbs where there were any Protestants, and obtain their names and surnames,[1049] afforded an opportunity which was not permitted to slip by unimproved, for the exaction of heavy bribes, as well as for more open plunder and violence. So notorious was it, nearly a week after the butchery began, that the massacre had only abated in intensity, that, on the thirtieth of August, measures were adopted to prevent any wrong from being done to foreign merchants sojourning in Paris, and especially to the German, English, and Flemish students of the university.[1050]

[Sidenote: Miracle of the "Cimetiere des Innocents."]

The smile of Heaven, it was said by the Roman Catholic clergy, rested upon the effort to extirpate heresy in France. They convinced the people of the truth of their assertion by pointing to an unusual phenomenon which they declared to be evidently miraculous. In the Cimetiere des Innocents and before a small chapel of the Virgin Mary, there grew a white hawthorn, which, according to some accounts, had for several years been to all appearance dead. Great then was the surprise of those who, on the eventful St. Bartholomew's Day, beheld the tree covered with a great profusion of blossoms as fragrant as those flowers which the hawthorn usually puts forth in May. It was true that no good reason could be assigned why the wonder might not with greater propriety be explained, as the Protestants afterward suggested, rather as a mark of Heaven's sympathy with oppressed innocence. But no doubts entered the minds of the Parisian ecclesiastics. They spread abroad the fame of the prodigy. They rang the church-bells in token of joy, and invited the blood-stained populace to witness the sight, and gain new courage in their murderous work. It may well be doubted whether either the hawthorn or the virgin of the neighboring chapel wrought the wonderful cures recorded by the curate of Meriot.[1051] But certainly the reported intervention of Heaven setting its seal upon treacherous assassination prolonged the slaughter of Huguenots. "It seemed," says Claude Haton, reflecting the popular belief, "that God, by this miracle, approved and accepted as well-pleasing to Him the Catholic uprising and the death of His great enemy the admiral and his followers, who for twelve years had been audaciously rending His seamless coat, which is His true Church and His Bride."[1052] And so, what with the encouragement afforded by the wonderful thorn-tree of the Cimetiere des Innocents--what with the continuous fair weather, which was interpreted after the same manner, the task of extirpating the heretical Huguenots was prosecuted with a perseverance that never flagged. It is true that the greater part of the work was done in the first three or four days; but it was not terminated for several weeks, and many a Huguenot, coming out of his place of concealment with the hope that time might have caused the passions of his enemies to become less violent, was murdered in cold blood by those who coveted his property. Several thousand persons were butchered in Paris alone during the first few days, besides these later victims; precisely how many, it is useless and perhaps impossible to fix with certainty.[1053]

[Sidenote: The king's first letter to Mandelot.]

Meantime it became necessary to explain to the world the extraordinary tragedy which had been enacted on so conspicuous a stage. Each of the different parties to the nefarious compact, with that easy faith which characterizes great criminals, had expected to satisfy its own resentment at the sole expense of the honor and reputation of the others. The king and his mother, while securing the death of Coligny and a few other personal enemies, were not unwilling to have the world believe that the entire occurrence had been an outburst of the old animosity of the Guises against the Chatillons. In fact, this was distinctly stated in the circular letter of Charles IX., despatched on the very Sunday on which the massacre began, to the governors of the principal cities of the realm. "Monsieur de Mandelot"--so runs one of these extraordinary epistles--"you have learned what I wrote to you, the day before yesterday, respecting the wounding of the admiral, and how that I was about to do my utmost in the investigation of the case and the punishment of the guilty, wherein nothing has been forgotten. Since then it has happened that the members of the house of Guise, and the other lords and gentlemen who are their adherents, and who have no small influence in this city, as everybody knows, having received certain information that the friends of the admiral intended to avenge this wound upon them--since they suspected them of being its cause and occasion--became so much excited that, between the one party and the other, there arose a great and lamentable commotion. The body of guards which had been posted around the admiral's house was overpowered, and he was killed with some other gentlemen, as there have also been others massacred in various parts of this city. This was done so furiously that it was impossible to apply such a remedy as could have been desired; for I had as much as I could do in employing my guards and other forces to retain my superiority in this castle of the Louvre,[1054] so as afterward to take measures for allaying the commotion throughout the city. At the present hour it has, thank God, subsided! It occurred through the private quarrel which has long existed between these two houses. Always foreseeing that some bad consequences would result from it, I have heretofore done all that I could to appease it, as every one knows. There is in this nothing leading to the rupture of the Edict of Pacification, which, on the contrary, I intend to be maintained as much as ever."[1055]

In view of the undeniable fact that Charles affixed his signature to this letter in the midst of a horrible massacre for which he himself had given the signal, which he still directed, and concerning whose progress he received hourly bulletins from the municipal authorities, it must be admitted that the king showed himself no novice in the ignoble art of shameless misrepresentation.

[Sidenote: Guise throws the responsibility on the king.]

Guise, on his part, was not less solicitous to relieve himself of responsibility, and to lay the burden upon the king's shoulders. We have seen that, at the very moment of Coligny's assassination, he began to repeat the words: "It is the king's pleasure; it is his express command!" as his warrant for the crime. As the massacre grew in extent he and his associates became more reluctant to be held accountable for it,[1056] and at last they forced Charles to acknowledge himself its sole author. The queen mother and Anjou, it is said, were mainly instrumental in leading the monarch to take this unexpected step. His original intention had been to compel the Guises to leave the capital immediately after the death of Coligny--a movement which would have given color to the theory of their guilt. But it was not difficult for Catharine and Henry to convince him that by so doing he would only render more irreconcilable the enmity between the Guises and the Montmorencies, who plainly exhibited their intention to exact vengeance for the death of their illustrious kinsman, the admiral. In short, he would purchase brief respite from trouble at the price of a fresh civil war, more cruel than any which had preceded.[1057]

[Sidenote: The king accepts it.]

[Sidenote: The "Lit de Justice."]

It was on Tuesday morning, the twenty-sixth of August, that the king formally and publicly assumed the weighty responsibility. After hearing a solemn mass, to render thanks to Almighty God for his happy deliverance from his enemies, Charles, accompanied by his brothers, the Dukes of Anjou and Alencon, by the King of Navarre, and by a numerous body of his principal lords, proceeded to the parliament house, and there, in the presence of all the chambers, held his "Lit de Justice."[1058] He opened this extraordinary meeting by an address, in which he dilated upon the intolerable insults he had, from his very childhood, experienced at the hands of Coligny, and many other culprits, who had made religion a pretext for rebellion. His attempts to secure peace by large concessions had emboldened Coligny so far that he had at last ventured to conspire to kill him, his mother, and his brothers, and even the King of Navarre, although a Huguenot like himself; intending to place the Prince of Conde upon the throne, and subsequently to put him also out of the way, and appropriate the regal authority after the destruction of the entire royal family. In order to ward off so horrible a blow, he had, he said, been compelled to resort to extreme measures of rigor. He desired all men to know that the steps taken on the preceding Sunday for the punishment of the guilty had been in accordance with his orders. He is even reported to have gone farther, and to have invoked the aid of parliament in condemning the memory and confiscating the property of those against whom he had alleged such abominable crimes.[1059]

[Sidenote: Servile reply of parliament.]

[Sidenote: Christopher de Thou.]

To this allocution the parliament replied with all servility. Christopher de Thou, the first president, lauded the prudence of a monarch who had known how to bear patiently repeated insults, and at last to crush a conspiracy so dangerous to the quiet of the realm. And he quoted with approval the infamous apothegm of Louis the Eleventh: "_Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare._" The solitary suggestion that breathed any manly spirit was that of Pibrac, the "avocat-general," to the effect that orders should be published to put an end to the work of murder and robbery--a request which Charles readily granted.[1060] Never had the supreme tribunal of justice abased itself more ignobly than when it listened so complaisantly to the king, and approved without qualification an organized massacre perpetrated unblushingly under its very eyes. As for the distinguished man who lent himself to be the mouthpiece of adulation worse than slavish, we are less inclined to commiserate the difficulty of his position than to pity the ingenuous historian who strives to touch leniently upon a fault of his father which he can neither conceal nor palliate.[1061] We may credit his assertion that his father remonstrated with the king in private with respect to that for which he had praised him in public, and that Christopher de Thou marked his detestation of that ill-starred day by applying to it the lines of Statius:

Excidat illa dies aevo, ne postera credant
Saecula: nos certe taceamus, et obruta multa
Nocte tegi propriae patiamur crimina gentis.

But we cannot forget that this was not the first time that Christopher de Thou "accommodated" his words or his actions to the supposed "exigencies of the times." He was a member of that commission that sentenced Louis of Conde to death, in deference to the desires of another king and his uncles, the Guises; and the prince would doubtless have lost his head in consequence, but for the sudden death of Francis the Second. Since that time he had repeatedly acquiesced in the bloody sentences of the Parisian parliament. His voice was never heard opposing the proscription instituted in the late civil wars, even in the case of the atrocious sentence against Gaspard de Coligny. If we concede to his son that no one was of a less sanguinary or of a milder disposition than President De Thou, we must also insist that few judges on the bench displayed less magnanimity or conscientiousness.[1062]

[Sidenote: Ineffectual effort to inculpate Coligny.]

But it was not a simple congratulatory address that Charles, or his mother, required of his parliament. Tyrannical power is rarely satisfied with the mere acquiescence of servile judges; it demands, and ordinarily obtains from them, a positive indorsement of its schemes of successful villainy. It was necessary--especially, as we shall see later, after the cry of horror was heard that rose toward heaven from all parts of Europe on receipt of the tidings of the massacre in Paris and elsewhere--to palliate its atrocity by affixing to the slain Huguenots, and above all to Coligny, a note of rebellious and murderous designs against the king and the royal family. And here again the Parliament of Paris was as pliant as its rulers could desire. Coligny's papers, both in Paris and at Chatillon-sur-Loing, were subjected to close scrutiny; but nothing could be discovered to warrant the suspicion that any seditious design had ever been entertained by him. In default of something better, therefore, the queen mother endeavored to make capital out of two passages of these private manuscripts. In one--it was, we are told, the will of the admiral, written toward the end of the third civil war[1063]--he dissuaded Charles from assigning to his brothers appanages that might diminish the authority of the crown. Catharine triumphantly showed it to Alencon. "See!" said she; "this is your good friend the admiral, whom you so greatly loved and respected!" "I know not," replied the young prince, "how much of a friend he was to me; but certainly he showed by this advice how much he loved the king."[1064] With Walsingham a similar attempt was made to deprive the murdered hero of Queen Elizabeth's sympathy, but with as little success. "To the end you may see how little your mistress was beholden to him," said Catharine de' Medici one day to the English ambassador, "you may see a discourse found with his testament, made at such time as he was sick at Rochel, wherein, amongst other advices that he gave to the king my son, this is one, that he willed him in any case to keep the queen, your mistress, and the King of Spain as low as he could, as a thing that tended much to the safety and maintenance of this crown." "To that I answered," says Walsingham, "that in this point, howsoever he was affected towards the queen my mistress, he showed himself a most true and faithful subject to the crown of France, and the Queen's Majestie, my mistress, made the more account of him, for that she knew him faithfully affected to the same."[1065]

[Sidenote: Coligny's memory declared infamous.]

[Sidenote: Petty indignities.]

The complete absence of proof of all designs save the most patriotic, and, on the other hand, the clear evidence that Coligny sought for the quiet and growth of the religious community to which he belonged, only in connection with the honor and prosperity of his own country, did not deter the pliant parliament from pursuing the course prescribed for it. A little more than two months after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day (October the twenty-seventh, 1572), the admiral's sentence was formally pronounced. He was proclaimed a traitor and the author of a conspiracy against the king; his goods were confiscated, his memory declared infamous. His children were degraded from their rank as nobles, and pronounced "ignoble, villains, _roturiers_, infamous, unworthy, and incapable of making a will, or of holding offices, dignities or possessions in France." It was ordered that his castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing should be razed to the ground, never to be rebuilt, and that the site should be sown with salt; that the trees of the park should be cut down to half their height, and a monumental pillar be erected on the spot, with a copy of this decree inscribed upon it. His portraits and statues were to be destroyed; his arms, wherever found, to be dragged at the horse's tail and publicly destroyed by the hangman; his body--if any fragments could be obtained, or, if not, his effigy--was to be dragged on a hurdle, and hung first on the Greve and then on a loftier gibbet at Montfaucon. Finally, public prayers and a solemn procession were ordered to take place in Paris on every successive anniversary of the feast of St. Bartholomew.[1066]

Thus was the memory of one of the noblest characters that illustrated the sixteenth century pursued with envenomed hatred, after death had placed Coligny himself beyond the power of the murderous queen mother to inflict more substantial injury upon him. To his mortal remains all that malice could do had already been done. What remained of a mutilated body had been taken from the hands of those precocious criminals, the boys of Paris, and hung up by the feet upon the gallows at Montfaucon.[1067] A great part of the capital had gone out to look upon the grateful sight. Charles the Ninth was of the number of the visitors, and, when others showed signs of disgust at the stench arising from the putrefaction of a corpse long unburied, is said to have exclaimed "that the smell of a dead enemy is very sweet."[1068] Great was the merriment of the low populace; copious were the effusions of wit. Jacques Copp de Vellay, in his poetical diatribe, published with privilege--"Le Deluge des Huguenotz"--sings with great delight of

Mont-Faulcon, ou les attend
Ce grand Gaspar au curedent,
Attache par les piedz sans teste.[1069]

At last, four or five days after Coligny's death, a body of thirty or forty horse, sent by Marshal Montmorency, took down the remains by night, and gave them decent burial.[1070]

[Sidenote: A jubilee procession.]

[Sidenote: Charles declares that he will maintain his edict.]

Not content with the public admission of his responsibility for the massacre which he had made before the parliament, Charles with his court participated two days later (Thursday, the twenty-eighth of August) in the celebration of a jubilee, and walked in a procession through the streets of Paris; at successive "stations" rendering thanks to Heaven, with fair show of devotion, for the preservation of his own life, and the lives of his brothers and of _the King of Navarre_. It would have served greatly to give a color of plausibility to the report of the conspiracy of the Huguenots, could Navarre and Conde have been prevailed upon to appear in the king's company on this occasion. But it must be mentioned to their honor, that they were proof against the persuasions as well as the threats of Charles.[1071] The same day a royal declaration was published, reiterating the allegations made in the Palais de Justice, but protesting that the king was determined to maintain his edict of pacification. As, however, the Protestants were forbidden for the present from holding any public or private assemblies for worship, it must be admitted that they were not far wrong in regarding the declaration as only another part of the trap cunningly devised for their destruction.[1072]

[Sidenote: Forced conversion of Navarre and Conde.]

Although the conversion of the young King of Navarre and his cousin, the Prince of Conde, did not occur until some weeks later, it may be appropriately mentioned here. No means were left untried to gain them over to the Roman Catholic religion. The sophistries of monks were supplemented by the more dangerous persuasions of a renegade Protestant minister, Hugues Sureau du Rosier, formerly one of the pastors of the church of Orleans.[1073] Whatever excuse his arguments may have furnished by covering their renunciation of their faith with the decent cloak of conviction, _fear_ was certainly the chief instrument in effecting the desired change in the Huguenot princes. There is no room for doubt that the character of Charles underwent a marked change, as we shall see later, from the time that he consented to the massacre. He became more sullen, more violent, more impatient of contradiction or opposition. It is not at all unlikely that a mind never fully under control of reason, and now assuredly thrown from its poise by a desperation engendered of remorse for the fearful crime he had reluctantly approved, at times formed the resolution to kill the obstinate King of Navarre and his cousin. On one occasion Charles is said to have been deterred by the supplications of his young wife from going in person to destroy them.[1074] At length, when the alternative of death or the Bastile was the only one presented, the courage of the Bourbons began to falter. Navarre was the first to yield, and his sister, the excellent Catharine de Bourbon, followed his example. On the thirteenth of September the ambassador Walsingham wrote: "They prepare Bastile for some persons of quality. It is thought that it is for the Prince of Conde and his brethren."[1075] But three days later (the sixteenth of September) he wrote again: "On Sunday last, which was the fourteenth of this month, the young Princess of Conde was constrained to go to mass, being threatened otherwise to go to prison, and so consequently to be made away. The Prince of Conde hath also yielded to hear mass upon Sunday next, being otherwise threatened to go to the Bastile, where he is not like long to serve."[1076] Such conversions did not promise to prove very sincere. They were accepted, however, by the king and his mother; although both Navarre and Conde were detained at court rather as prisoners than as free princes. Pope Gregory the Thirteenth received the submission of both cousins to the authority of the See of Rome, recognized the validity of their marriages, and formally admitted them to his favor, by a special bull of the twenty-seventh of October, 1572.[1077] In return for these concessions Henry of Navarre repealed the ordinances which his mother had made for the government of Bearn, and re-established the Roman Catholic worship.[1078]

FOOTNOTES:

[925] Memoires de Marguerite de Valois, 25, 26.

[926] No dispensation was ever granted until _after_ the marriage, and after Henry of Navarre's simulated conversion to Roman Catholicism. Then, of course, there was no need of further hesitation, and the document was granted, of which a copy is printed in Documents historiques inedits, i. 713-715. The bull is dated Oct. 27, 1572. There is, then, no necessity for Mr. Henry White's uncertainty (Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 370): "The new pope, Gregory XIII., appears to have been more compliant, or the letter stating that a dispensation was on the road must have been a forgery."

[927] De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.), 569; Lo stratagema di Carlo IX. re di Francia, contro gli Ugonotti, rebelli di Dio e suoi; descritto dal signor Camillo Capilupi, e mandato di Roma al signor Alfonzo Capilupi. Ce stratageme est cy apres mis en Francois avec un avertissement au lecteur. 1574. Orig. ed., p. 22.

[928] Memoires de l'estat de France sous Charles IX. (Cimber et Danjou, vii. 78.)

[929] "Avec certain formulaire que les uns et les autres n'improuvoyent point." Mem. de l'estat, _ubi supra_, vii. 79.

[930] As De Thou here speaks as an eye-witness of the marriage, I follow his description very closely. Histoire univ., iv. (liv. lii.) 469, 470. Agrippa d'Aubigne was not in Paris (Memoires, edit. Pantheon, p. 478), and his account is meagre and deficient in originality. Hist. univ., ii. 12 (liv. i., c. 3). It is quite in keeping with the brave Gascon's character, that, having come to Paris some days before, in order to obtain a commission to command a company of soldiers which he had raised for the war in Flanders, he had been obliged to leave almost instantly upon his arrival, because he had acted as the second of a friend in a duel, and wounded in the face an archer who endeavored to arrest him. Tavannes makes Coligny suggest the removal of the ensigns taken from the Protestants as "marques de troubles," and playfully claim for himself the 50,000 crowns promised to any one who should bring the admiral's head. Memoires, ed. Petitot, iii. 293.

[931] Memoires de l'Etat, _ubi supra_, pp. 79, 80; De Thou, _ubi supra_. I have not deemed it out of place to describe some of the diversions with which the French court occupied itself on the eve of the massacre. The connection between reckless merriment and cold-blooded cruelty is often startlingly close. Besides this, the finances of the country were so hopelessly involved, as the consequence of the late civil wars, that this lavish expenditure was particularly ill-timed. If old Gaspard de Tavannes was as blunt as his son represents him to have been, he gave Charles some good, but, like most good, unheeded advice. "Sire," said he, a propos of the extravagance of the court at Guise's marriage in 1570, "you should make a feast, and instead of the singers who are brought in artificial clouds, you should bring those who would tell you this truth: 'You are dolts! You spend your money in festivals, in pomps and masks, and do not pay your men-at-arms nor your soldiers; foreigners will beat you!'" Memoires, ed. Petitot, iii. 183.

[932] I had translated this letter from the copy given by the Memoires de l'estat de France (_apud_ Archives curieuses, vii. 80, 81), which agrees substantially with, and was probably derived from, the version given in Hotman's Gasparis Colinii Vita (1575), 106, 107. On comparing it, however, with the transcript of the original autograph in the remarkable collection of the late Col. Henri Tronchin, given by M. Jules Bonnet in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. francais, i. (1853), 369, I discover extraordinary discrepancies, and find that, in addition to a different phraseology in every sentence, one clause is inserted by Hotman of which there is not a trace in the Tronchin MS. I refer to the words: "Soyez asseuree de ma part que, parmi ces festins et passe-temps, _je ne donneray fascherie a personne_"--which would, of course, point to the prevailing fears of a collision between the admiral and the young Duke of Guise, or his retainers, whose hatred of Coligny was so well known that Charles IX. had issued a special injunction to the parties to keep the peace. The letter contains at the commencement of the postscript a playful allusion to the hope of his wife soon to be a mother.

[933] Mem. de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 88, 89; De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 570. The mechanical part of these exhibitions was well executed. In the "_enfer_" there were "un grand nombre de diables et petis diabloteaux faisans infinies singeries et tintamarres avec une grande roue tournant dedans ledit enfer, toute environnee de clochettes." The singer, Etienne le Roy, was again the "deus ex machina," coming from heaven and returning thither, in the character of Mercury mounted upon a gigantic bird. The final explosion inspired so much consternation among the spectators, that it effectually cleared the hall.

[934] They were married at Blandy, a castle belonging to the Marquise de Rothelin, near Melun, where its ruins are still to be seen (Saint-Fargeau, Dict. des communes de France, s. v.), about a week before the marriage of Navarre, August 10, 1572. Tocsain contre les massacreurs (Arch. curieuses, vii. 42). Marie of Cleves was a daughter of the Duke of Nevers, and sister of Catharine of Cleves, Prince Porcien's widow, whom Henry of Guise had married in Sept., 1570. Journal de Jehan de la Fosse, 146.

[935] It is astonishing to see what considerable distances the Protestants were obliged to go in order to enjoy any religious privileges, and what fatigue they willingly underwent in order to avail themselves of them. In 1563, immediately after the close of the first civil war, instead of being assigned a place for worship in the suburbs, according to the terms of the edict, the Protestants of Troyes were told to go to Ceant-en-Othe--full _eight leagues_, or about _twenty-four miles_; nor could they obtain justice by any remonstrances with the court! As they went to Ceant, in spite of its inconvenient distance, and of the death of several children taken thither to be baptized, the Romanists, in 1570, actually proposed to remove the Protestant _preche_ still farther off, to Villenauxe, _thirteen leagues from Troyes!_ Happily, after a while, they availed themselves of the hospitality of a feudal lord nearer by. Recordon, Le protestantisme en Champagne (MSS. of N. Pithou), 136, etc., 149, 163.

[936] Ibid., pp. 168, 169. The Roman Catholics of Troyes sent, about the middle of August, two deputies to get the Protestant place of worship removed from Isle-au-Mont, who were present at the massacre.

[937] Baschet, La diplomatie venitienne, p. 540.

[938] This confession exists in manuscript in the National Library of Paris (Fonds de Bouhier, 59), under the heading: "Discours du Roy Henry troisiesme a un personnage d'honneur et de qualite estant pres de sa majeste, sur les causes et motifs de la St. Barthelemy." It is printed in an appendix to the Memoires de Villeroy (Petitot ed., xliv. 496-510). Its authenticity is vouched for by Matthieu, the historiographer of Louis XIII., and is corroborated by its remarkable agreement with what we can learn from other sources. Cf., especially, Soldan, Frankreich und die Bartholomaeusnacht, 224-226. Some suppose that M. de Souvre, and not Miron, was the person with whom the conversation at Cracow was held. Martin, Hist. de France, x. 315.

[939] Discours du Roy Henry III., Mem. de Villeroy, 499, 500.

[940] See J. Bonnet, Vie d'Olympia Morata (Paris, 1850), 20, etc.

[941] Discours du Roy Henry III., ibid., p. 501. The nuncio, Salviati, informs us that young Guise urged his mother herself to kill Coligny.

[942] The article on the massacre in the North British Review for October, 1869--an article to which I shall have occasion more than once to refer--brings forward a number of passages in the diplomatic correspondence, especially of the minor Italian states, pointing in this direction. They can all, I am convinced, be satisfactorily explained, without admitting the conclusion, to which the writer evidently leans, of a _distinct_, though not a _long_ premeditation.

[943] "Mad. la Regente venuta in differenza di lui, risolvendosi pochi giorni prima, gli la fece tirare, e senza saputa del Re, ma con participatione di M. di Angiu, di Mad. de Nemours, e di M. di Guisa suo figlio; e se moriva subito non si ammazzava altri," etc. Salviati, desp. of Sept. 22, 1572, _apud_ Mackintosh, Hist. of England, vol. iii., Appendix K. It will be remembered that these despatches were given to Sir James Mackintosh by M. de Chateaubriand, who had obtained them from the Vatican. I need not say how much more trustworthy are the secret despatches of one so well informed as the nuncio, than the sensational "Stratagema" of Capilupi, which pretends (ed. of 1574, p. 26) that _Charles_ placed Maurevel in the house from which he shot at Coligny, on discovering that the admiral had formed the plan of firing Paris the next night. To believe these champions of orthodoxy, the Huguenots were born with a special passion for incendiary exploits. It does not seem to strike them that burning and pillaging Paris would not be likely to appear to Coligny a probable means of furthering the war in Flanders. Besides, what need is there of any such Huguenot plot, even according to Capilupi's own view, since he carries back the premeditation of the massacre on the part of Charles at least four years?

[944] Le Reveille-Matin des Francois, etc., Archives curieuses, vii. 173; Eusebii Philadelphi Dialogi (1574), i. 33. It has been customary to interpret this language and similar expressions as covertly referring to the massacre which was then four days off. But this seems absurd. Certainly, if Charles was privy to the plan for Coligny's murder, he must have expected him to be killed on Friday--that is, within less than two days. If so, what peculiar significance in the _four_ days? For, if a general massacre had been at first contemplated, no interval of two days would have been allowed. Everybody must have known that if the arquebuse shot had done its work, and Coligny had been killed on the spot, every Huguenot would have been far from the walls of Paris long before Sunday. As it was, it was only the admiral's confidence, and the impossibility of moving him with safety, that detained them.

[945] Capilupi, Lo stratagema di Carlo IX., 1574. Orig. ed., pp. 24, 25, and the concurrent French version, pp. 42, 43. This version is incorporated _verbatim_ in the Memoires de l'estat de France sous Charles IX. (Archives curieuses), vii. 89, 90. In like manner the "Memoires," which are in great part a mere compilation, take page after page from the "Reveille-Matin."

[946] "Ainsi qu'il sortoit presentement du Louvre, pour aller disner en son logis." Charles's letter of the same day to La Mothe Fenelon, Corresp. dipl., vii. 322.

[947] It is of little moment whether the assassin at his window was screened by a lattice, or by a curtain, as De Thou says, or by bundles of straw, as Capilupi states. I prefer the account of the "Reveille-Matin," as the author tells us that he was one of the twelve or fifteen gentlemen in Coligny's suite--"entre lesquels j'estoy" (p. 174). So the Latin ed., Euseb. Philad. Dialogi, i. 34.

[948] The Rue de Bethisy was the continuation of the Rue des Fosses Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, through which he was walking when he was shot. In the sixteenth century the street bore the former name, beginning at the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, at the corner of which Coligny appears to have lodged. In later times the name was confined to the part east of Rue de Roule. Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, iv. 259. The extension of the Rue de Rivoli, under the auspices of Napoleon III., has not only destroyed the house in which Coligny was murdered, but obliterated the Rue de Bethisy itself.

[949] "Qu'il n'aviendroit que ce qu'il plairoit a Dieu." Reveille-Matin, 175; Euseb. Philad. Dialogi (1574), i. 35; Memoires de l'estat, 94.

[950] See _ante_, chapter xvi.

[951] Reveille-Matin, _ubi sup._, 175; and Euseb. Philad. Dialogi. i. 34, 35; Memoires de l'estat, _ubi sup._, 93, etc.; Jean de Serres (1575), iv. fol. 25; Tocsain contre les Massacreurs (orig. ed.), 113, etc.; Registres du Bureau de la ville de Paris (Archives curieuses, vii. 211); despatch of Salviati of Aug. 22. App. F to Mackintosh, Hist. of England, iii. 354; De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 574; Jehan de la Fosse, 147, 148; Baschet. La diplomatie venit., 548.

[952] Memoires de l'estat, _ubi sup._, 94; Jean de Serres (1575), iv., fols. 25, 26; Reveille-Matin, 176; Euseb. Philad. Dial., i. 35; De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 574.

[953] Tocsain contre les massacreurs, Archives cur., vii. 45; Reveille-Matin, 177; Memoires de l'estat, 98.

[954] Gasparis Colinii Vita (1574), 108-110; Memoires de l'estat de Charles IX., _ubi supra_, 94-98. The two accounts are evidently from the same hand.

[955] Memoires de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 98.

[956] Damville, Meru and Thore, were sons of the constable. Their eldest brother, Marshal Francis de Montmorency, whose greatest vice was his sluggishness and his devotion to his ease, had left Paris a few days before, on the pretext of going to the chase. His absence at the time of the massacre was supposed to have saved not only his life, but that of his brothers. The Guises would gladly have destroyed a family whose influence and superior antiquity had for a generation been obnoxious to their ambitious designs; but it was too hazardous to leave the head of the family to avenge his murdered brothers.

[957] There was no need of going far, Coligny responded, to discover the author. "Qu'on en demande a Monsieur de Guise, il dira qui est celuy qui m'a preste une telle charite; mais Dieu ne me soit jamais en aide si je demande vengeance d'un tel outrage." Mem. de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 104, 105.

[958] Gasparis Colinii Vita, 114-121; Memoires de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 102-106. The two accounts agree almost word for word. There is a briefer narrative in Reveille-Matin, 178, 179; and Euseb. Philad. Dialogi, i. 37.

[959] Discours du roy Henry III., _ubi supra_, 502-505.

[960] Le roi a Mandelot, 22 aout, Correspondance du roi Charles IX. et du sieur de Mandelot (Paris, 1830), 36, 37.

[961] Corresp. dipl. de La Mothe Fenelon, vii. 322, 323.

[962] Memoires de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 106, 107.

[963] Ibid., 108.

[964] There is here, however, a direct contradiction, which I shall not attempt to reconcile, between the account of Henry and that of the younger Tavannes, who represents Retz as one of the most violent in his recommendations. According to Tavannes, it was his father, Marshal Tavannes, that advocated moderation. In other respects the two accounts are strongly corroborative of each other.

[965] Discours du roy Henry III., 505-508.

[966] Memoires de Gaspard de Saulx, seigneur de Tavannes, by his son, Jean de Saulx, vicomte de Tavannes (Petitot edition), iii. 293, 294.

[967] "Reginam quidem certum est dictitare solitam, edita strage, 'se tantum _sex_ hominum interfectorum sanguinem in suam conscientiam recipere.'" Jean de Serres (ed. of 1575), iv., fol. 29. The whole passage is interesting.

[968] "Le roy Henry quatriesme disoit que ce qu'il ne m'avoit tenu promesse estoit en vengeance des services faicts par le sieur de Tavannes mon pere aux batailles de Jarnac et Montcontour, mais le principal, parce qu'il l'accusoit d'avoir conseille la Sainct Barthelemy; ce qu'il disoit a ses familiers, et a tort, parce que ledict sieur de Tavannes en ce temps-la fut cause qu'il ne courust la mesme fortune que le sieur admiral de Coligny." Memoires de Tavannes (Petitot edit.), iii. 222.

[969] To ascribe the conduct of Catharine de' Medici herself to any such motive is the extreme of absurdity. Even the author of the "Tocsain contre les massacreurs" rejects the supposition without hesitation. (Original edition, p. 157.) Catharine was certainly a free-thinker, probably an atheist.

[970] Memoires de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 108.

[971] Ibid., 109.

[972] Memoires de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 110, 111.

[973] Ibid., 111; Gasparis Colinii Vita (1575), 124.

[974] Memoires de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 112.

[975] Reveille-Matin, _ubi supra_, 179; Memoires de l'estat, _ubi sup._, 113.

[976] Capilupi, 30, 31; Mem. de l'estat, _ubi sup._, 107, 108.

[977] Extrait des Registres et Croniques du Bureau de la ville de Paris, Archives curieuses, vii. 213.

[978] The successive orders are given in the Archives curieuses, vii. 215-217.

[979] Discours du roy Henry III., 509.

[980] Tocsain contre les massacreurs, 121; Mem. de l'estat, _ubi sup._, 116; Jean de Serres, iv. (1575), fol. 31.

[981] Jean de Serres, iv. (1575), fol. 30.

[982] Mem. de l'estat, _ubi sup._, 117, 118; Jean de Serres (1575), iv. 32.

[983] The startling inconsistency evidently struck Capilupi very strongly, for he tries to reconcile it, but succeeds only poorly. According to him, it was either a ruse to throw Charles IX. off his guard by a pretence of confidence in his good faith, or an act of consummate folly. Any way, great thanks are due to Heaven! "Et sia stato fatto questo da lui, o con arte, per dimostrar di non dubitare della fede del Re, per tanto piu assicurar sua Maesta, fin che fosse in termine d'effettuar i diabolici suoi pensieri; o vero scioccamente, non diffidando veramente di cosa alcuna; in tutti modi si ha da riconoscer da gratia particolare di Dio," etc. Lo stratagema di Carlo IX., 1574, 80.

[984] The topography of the massacre is made the subject of a paper, entitled: "Les victimes de la Saint-Barthelemy," Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., ix. (1860) 34-44.

[985] G. Colinii Vita (1575), 127. Mem. de l'estat, _ubi sup._, 114.

[986] Mem. de l'estat, 118, 119; Jean de Serres (1575), iv., fol. 32; Reveille-Matin, 180; Euseb. Philad. Dialogi (1574), 39, 40.

[987] Joh. Wilh. von Botzheim, in his narrative, gives several versions of the words. According to one they were: "_Behem_--'N'est tu pas Admiral?' _Admiralius_--'Ouy, je le suis. Mais vous estes bien un jeune souldat pour parler ainsi avec un vieil capitaine, pour le moins au respect de ma vielesse.' _Behem_--'Je suis assez aage (age) por te faire ta reste.'" Cyclopica illa atque inaudita hactenus detestanda atque execranda laniena, quae facta est Lutetia, Aureliis, etc., published in F. W. Ebeling, Archivalische Beitraege zur Geschichte Frankreichs unter Carl IX. (Leipsic, 1872), 107, 108.

[988] Capilupi puts in Besme's mouth the words: "Now, traitor, restore to me the blood of my master, which thou didst impiously take away from me!" It is not at all improbable that he used some such expression. Lo stratagema di Carlo IX., 34.