Chapter XIII: Catherine De’ Medici and the Religious Wars (2)

Meantime, at court the politicians had got the better of the Catholic zealots: little was wanting in order that a bloody tragedy should exhibit this at the expense of the house of Lorraine. Even before the peace was signed, the partisans of toleration had worked to prepare a complete understanding between the court and the Protestant leaders: the Montmorencys had proposed the marriage of Prince Henry of Navarre with the king’s third sister, Marguerite of France. This marriage had been talked of almost ever since the birth of the two young people; Charles IX eagerly recurred to the idea, but Marguerite, then aged eighteen years, had made another choice; she was beginning the series of her innumerable gallantries and had surrendered to the young duke of Guise, the most brilliant cavalier in France, all possible rights over her heart. Henry of Guise, encouraged by the cardinal De Lorraine, wished to turn the victory of his love to the profit of his ambition and aspired to the hand of the princess. In the month of May, 1570, the marriage of Marguerite and Guise was regarded at court as a thing decided on: suddenly, in the middle of June, the king, the queen-mother, and the duke of Anjou turned indignantly against the bold pretensions of Guise; the king, who knew no half measures, gave orders to his brother the bastard d’Angoulême to kill the duke of Guise at the hunt. The bastard, not from repugnance to the crime, but from cowardice, missed the opportunity for action: the reproaches made to him by the king were heard by a courtier who, perhaps at Catherine’s instigation, warned Guise: the murder of Guise would have thrown the king into the arms of the Huguenots and overturned the power of the queen-mother. The young duke, forced to renounce Marguerite, found no better expedient to appease the king than to marry another woman; he espoused Catherine of Cleves, countess d’Eu, sister of the duchess de Nevers and widow of the prince de Portien.

At this price Guise was restored to favour and followed the court to Champagne where the king, in his turn, was to be married: after long negotiations the emperor Maximilian II had granted Charles IX the hand of his second daughter, Elizabeth, without further insisting on the restoration of the Three Bishoprics to the empire. This alliance with the house of Austria in no way impelled France towards Spain: it made Charles IX for the second time brother-in-law of Philip II, who, the widowed husband of Elizabeth of France, had just taken as his fourth wife his niece, the eldest daughter of the emperor; but on the other hand it gave Charles a father-in-law from whom he had to expect no counsels but those of toleration and humanity. However, Elizabeth of Austria, a gentle, simple, and modest young woman, did not have, or seek to have, any share of influence in the events of her husband’s reign. The wedding was celebrated, November 26th, 1570, at Mézières, whither the archduchess Elizabeth had been conducted by the archbishop elector of Treves, chancellor of the empire. The princes and the great Huguenots had been invited to the marriage festivities. They excused themselves, and did not quit their refuge at La Rochelle, although the admiral had written in respectful terms to the queen-mother to protest his forgetfulness of the past and his devotion.[l]

[Sidenote: [1570-1572 A.D.]]

Almost two years of relative quiescence followed, during which the Huguenot party gained an increasing influence at court, chiefly through the favour shown Coligny by the king. The admiral, ever mindful of the interests of his fellow-Huguenots, attempted once more to put into execution a colonisation scheme that had long been a favourite project with him. He had made an effort to establish a colony in Brazil as early as 1555; and in 1562 and again in 1564 Charles IX had given him permission to found colonies in Florida; but all of these colonies had failed, nor did anything tangible come of his present effort.

This colonisation project tended to bring France into antagonism with Spain. But another plan of Coligny’s still more directly menaced that power; this plan involved nothing less than a direct attack upon the Spanish forces in the Netherlands. Charles IX lent an attentive ear to this idea, actuated in part, perhaps, by the desire for military glory, in part by Coligny’s belief that a foreign war would be the best possible means to harmonise the political factions at home. It will be understood that the Huguenot question at this time had come to be quite as much a political as a religious problem. The antagonism between the Guise faction and the Coligny faction, which led to the appalling scenes we are now fast approaching, was based by no means exclusively--perhaps not even prominently--upon differences of opinion regarding questions of doctrine. It was essentially a personal and political rivalry that actuated the chief personages in the drama. This, of course, does not necessarily impugn the sincerity of their religious differences; it was merely that these differences were not sufficient in themselves to supply motives for the bitter and ineradicable hatred with which Catherine de’ Medici and the Guises regarded Coligny.

The fact that the negotiations for the marriage of the king’s sister Marguerite with the Protestant Henry of Navarre were carried forward, sufficiently illustrates the superficiality of the religious element as a source of political jarrings. This marriage was, indeed, opposed by the pope, who declined to give to a heretic the dispensation necessary to legalise the marriage of second cousins. None the less were the negotiations carried forward at court in open defiance of the papal decision. Jeanne d’Albret, the mother of Henry, came to Paris and was received at court with at least the outward appearance of friendliness. Her death there in 1572 was probably due to natural causes, though the usual intimations of foul play--which the partisanship of that time never neglected as an aid to practical politics, however shadowy the evidence--were not wanting. The marriage of Henry, now king of Navarre, with the not over-willing Marguerite, took place on a specially erected platform in front of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris on the 22nd of August, 1572. The story goes that the bride refused to make the customary affirmations, and that her brother, Charles IX, pushed her head forward with his own hands; but this most likely is an embellishment suggested by the known preference of Marguerite for another lover, and by the uncongenial wedded life that followed the spectacular nuptials.

It may well be supposed that the Huguenots looked upon the marriage of their leader with the sister of the king of France as a great political triumph. Doubtless a large number of Huguenot nobles who had long been conspicuous by their absence from court came to Paris in honour of the occasion. To many of them it proved a fatal visit, for the awful tragedy of St. Bartholomew’s day followed hard upon the wedding, turning the seeming triumph of the Huguenots into disaster and threatening actual annihilation of their party. Such being the sequence of events, it is but natural that the surviving Huguenots should have tried to trace a causal connection between the marriage of Henry of Navarre and the massacre of St. Bartholomew. It has been alleged that the real pretext for the marriage was to beguile the Huguenot nobles into visiting Paris that they might be caught, as it were, in a trap and the more readily massacred. No one doubts that Catherine de’ Medici was quite capable of such a plan. But, on the other hand, it must not be overlooked that King Charles was most anxious for the consummation of the marriage; and all historical evidence tends to exonerate him from early complicity in the plot, if plot existed. Still the fact of so many enemies being at hand may no doubt have influenced Catherine to carry into effect an idea which had at least been dear to her heart. Just how much she was influenced by this; just when the first thought of it all came to her--these are questions which Catherine herself probably could not have answered, and which it is quite futile for any interpreter of her actions to attempt to solve. Here, as so often elsewhere, the threads of design make a web too intricate for disentangling. This much, however, seems sure: the tangled mesh, whatever relations of designs and of accident in its structure, was one of which Catherine de’ Medici was the main artificer; her chief assistants being her son the duke of Anjou, and the Guises.[a]

THE ATTACK ON COLIGNY

[Sidenote: [1572 A.D.]]

A murderous coil had been woven around the king and the admiral. Catherine had been for some time torn between her natural timidity and her ardent desire to free herself from Coligny: at one time she had hoped to obtain the admiral’s destruction from the king; after a first success she had failed; a scene of an opposite kind drove her to the last extremities. The duke of Anjou himself has revealed these mysteries of crime: in a night of trouble and fear if not of remorse he dictated with his own lips the history of his own and his mother’s guilt. “Every time,” he says, “that the queen had conferred privately with the admiral, the queen-mother and I had found him marvellously angry and sullen, rough in countenance and aspect and still more in his answers. One day when I entered the king’s room, without saying anything to me he walked up and down with long strides, often looking at me askance and putting his hand on his dagger with so much animosity that I expected to be poniarded. I managed so dexterously that while he was walking about and with his back turned to me I retreated to the door which I opened and, with a brief reverence, I made my exit.” Charles IX was nearer striking at Anjou than Coligny; the admiral certainly did not urge him to raise the dagger against his brother, but he conjured him to despatch him with all speed to Poland that there might no longer be two kings in France. Catherine and Anjou, brought to bay, took their resolution. They secretly sent for the duchess de Nemours, widow of the great Guise, the woman in whose veins flowed the blood of Louis XI mingled with that of the Borgia. She had continually professed an implacable hatred for Coligny. Catherine declared to her that she placed in her hands the vengeance so long pursued by the house of Guise. Catherine desired to profit by the murder but to impose the execution and the responsibility on someone else. Her Macchiavellian mind went further: she did not doubt that the Huguenots would rush to arms to avenge the murdered Coligny and attack the Guises even in their palaces; the people of Paris would go to the help of the Guises, the Montmorencys and their friends to the help of the Huguenots, all the great nobles, partisans of Lorraine, Huguenots and politicians, would cut each other’s throats; the Huguenots would finally be overwhelmed by numbers, the Guises would be exhausted by their very victory; and royalty, held in reserve during the conflict, would remain mistress of a field strewn with dead.

Whatever _arrière-pensées_ there may have been, an agreement was arrived at as to the action to be taken. Young Guise, in his furious joy, at first wished that his mother should herself kill the admiral with an arquebusade in the midst of the court; more practical means were resorted to; the blow was intrusted to a hand more expert in crime, that of the same Maurevert who had already been hired during the last war to assassinate Coligny, and who in his stead had killed one of his lieutenants under the most odious circumstances. He was sent for mysteriously and the duke d’Aumale’s maître d’hôtel concealed him in the house of a canon, a former tutor of the duke of Guise, in the cloister of St. Germain-l’Auxerrois, on the road from the Louvre to the rue de Béthisi, where the admiral was staying. Maurevert remained there three days on watch. On the morning of Friday the 22nd of August, as the admiral was returning from the Louvre on foot, walking slowly and reading a petition, a shot from an arquebuse came from behind the curtain of a window, carried off the first finger of his right hand, and lodged a ball in his left arm.

Coligny, with his mutilated hand indicating the place whence the shot had come, sent to tell the king what had occurred and to ask him to judge what fine fidelity that was, considering the understanding between him and the duke of Guise; then he returned to his hôtel, supported by some gentlemen, whilst his suite broke down the door of the dwelling in which the assassin had lain in wait; the arquebuse was found still smoking; “but not the arquebusier.” Maurevert had flung himself on a horse belonging to the duke of Guise which was held in readiness for him, and had fled by the rear of the house. He left Paris by the porte St. Antoine; two Protestant gentlemen had discovered his track and pursued him for several leagues, but without being able to come up with him.[l]

The king was playing at tennis when he was told that Coligny was wounded, and that the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé were coming to him to demand justice against the Guises. The circumstance both surprised and alarmed him. He threw away his racket in a passion, and after giving vent to a number of oaths, he declared he would have the assassin sought for, even in the recesses of Guise’s hôtel. Charles succeeded in satisfying the young princes that the assassins should meet with exemplary punishment, and immediately ordered the president De Thou, the provost of Morsan, and Veale, a counsellor, to commence an investigation; this calmed them in some measure, and made them give up the plan, which they had agreed on, of leaving Paris immediately.

But the king felt convinced that something more must be done. He announced his intentions of visiting the admiral in the afternoon. He could not with prudence go among the Huguenots unprotected, nor could he consistently be attended by his guards; he therefore desired that all the court should visit Coligny also.

Charles entered the admiral’s dwelling, accompanied by his mother, the duke of Anjou, De Retz, and his other counsellors, the marshals of France, and a numerous suite. He began by consoling the admiral, and then swore that the crime should be punished so severely that his vengeance should never be effaced from the memory of man. Coligny thanked his sovereign for such testimonials of his kindness, and conjured him to support with his authority the execution of the different edicts in favour of the Protestants, many points of which were violated, or misunderstood. “My father,” answered the king, “depend upon it, I shall always consider you a faithful subject, and one of the bravest generals in my kingdom; confide in me for the execution of my edicts, and for avenging you when the criminals are discovered.” “They are not difficult to find out,” said Coligny, “the traces are very plain.” “Tranquillise yourself,” said the king, “a longer emotion may hurt you and retard your cure.” The conversation then turned upon the war with Spain, and lasted nearly an hour. Coligny complained of the Spanish government being informed of whatever was decided on; and as the intimacy between the queen-mother and the Spanish ambassador was very great and caused suspicion, he spoke to the king in a low voice. The war in Flanders was a subject of great alarm for Catherine; she knew her son’s secret wishes, and she dreaded the effect which Coligny’s remarks might have upon him; she interrupted the conversation and prevailed upon the king to leave the place. Charles, who was exerting himself to efface any suspicion which might have arisen in Coligny’s mind, became vexed at the anxiety displayed by his mother; and as they were returning to the Louvre, being pressed to tell what Coligny had said, he declared, with an oath, that the admiral had said what was true--that he had suffered the authority to fall from his hands, and that he ought to become master of his own affairs. When the king and his suite retired, the admiral’s friends expressed great astonishment at his affability, and the desire he showed to bring the crime to justice. “But,” says Brantôme,[e] “all these fine appearances afterwards turned to ill, which amazed everyone very much how their majesties could perform so counterfeit a part, unless they had previously resolved on this massacre.”[k]

PREPARING FOR THE MASSACRE

Catherine and Anjou returned in consternation: “We remained,” said Anjou, “so bereft of counsel and knowledge of how to act that being, for the moment, unable to resolve on anything we retired, putting off our decision until the next day.” Meantime they despatched to the king the count de Retz, Gondi, the man who best knew how to manipulate that fiery and pliable mind, to endeavour to appease him. Retz made him uneasy, agitated him, but got nothing from him.

The king’s attitude towards the Huguenots remained the same: Charles IX launched great threats against the Guises, who were more and more compromised by the information collected by the commissioners: orders were given to arrest certain servants of their house. On the morning of Saturday the 23rd the dukes of Guise and Aumale came to seek the king and said to him, that it seemed to them that his majesty had not been well pleased with their service for some time, and that they would retire from court if their withdrawal was agreeable to him. The king “with an ill countenance and worse words,” answered that they might go whither they would, and that he would always be well disposed towards them if they were recognised as guilty of what had been done to the admiral. They left the Louvre about mid-day, mounted on horseback and with a good following took their way towards the porte St. Antoine; but they did not quit Paris, and shut themselves up in the hôtel de Guise.

Meantime the king was giving the Reformed fresh tokens of interest: he had a general list made of the Protestants who were present in Paris; he offered lodging to the Huguenot nobility about the admiral; he invited the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé to accommodate their friends at the Louvre. The security of the Protestant princes, of Téligny and almost all those about the admiral, was complete: the vidame de Chartres (Ferrières-Maligni) twice endeavoured to persuade them to leave Paris; his advice was rejected with impatience. Ambroise Paré answered for the life of the wounded man, and this great failure in crime seemed to promise the ruin of its authors.

Most of the Huguenots indulged in vain clamours against the house of Lorraine, passing and repassing “in great companies, in cuirasses, before the lodging of MM. de Guise and d’Aumale,” but they took no precautions for the night, trusting to the protection of a detachment of the king’s guard and in the tranquillity of the first night which had followed the wounding of the admiral.

In the afternoon the queen-mother and the duke of Anjou summoned the count de Retz, the chancellor Birague, Marshal de Tavannes, and the duke de Nevers to the garden of the Tuileries. Of the three advisers who helped the widow and sons of Henry II to soil the annals of France with an ineffaceable stain, three were foreigners. They arranged their plan, and then all six went to seek the king in his cabinet in the Louvre. Fatal hour, which decided for Charles IX between glory with Coligny and eternal shame with Catherine; between the redemption of his misguided youth and his eternal damnation in history. The destiny of France hung on a word, on the motion of a weak head, of a mind without compass and without curb, of one who was almost a madman. And the unhappy man was alone, abandoned, in the midst of these demons!

We have the account of this infernal council dictated by that one of the accomplices who became Henry III. A few other writings of the time almost complete our knowledge on the subject. We see this impious mother artfully distilling the poison into the shuddering soul of her son, and closing round him every other issue save that of crime. “The Huguenots,” she said to him, “are everywhere arming, not to serve you but to make themselves your masters: the admiral has sent for six thousand _reiters_ and ten thousand Swiss; at home their leaders have an understanding with a number of towns, communities, and peoples, all agreed to reduce your authority to nothingness under pretext of the public advantage. The Catholics, on the other hand, are resolved to put an end to this state of affairs. If you refuse their advice they have decided to elect a captain-general and to form an offensive and defensive league against the Huguenots. You will be left alone between the two. Already Paris is under arms.”

“How is that? I had forbidden them to arm in the _quartiers_.”

“The _quartiers_ are armed.”

In fact the demonstrations of the Huguenots and the rumour circulated by Anjou and the Guises that the marshal De Montmorency, who after the wedding had returned to his château of Chantilly for a few days, was about to re-enter Paris “with a great force,” had greatly excited the masses, and had brought out the citizen militia.

Fear began to take possession of the king. Anjou and others ardently supported Catherine. She continued, “One man is the leader and author of all this ruin and calamity; the admiral is deluding the king, making him the instrument of his ambitions and of his party, urging the state to its downfall while pretending to aggrandise it! Let the king remember the attempt of Amboise against his brother, and that of Meaux against himself when he saw himself constrained to flee before his revolted subjects!”

The memory of Meaux, as Catherine knew too well, always acted on the pride of Charles IX as a hot iron on a wound.

“The Huguenots,” she resumed, “demand vengeance on the Guises. Well, you cannot sacrifice the Guises; for they will exonerate themselves by accusing your mother and your brother! And they will accuse us with good reason. It was we who struck the admiral to save the king! The king must finish the work or he and we are lost!”

Charles IX seems to have lost his head. He was seized with a fit of blind, mad fury against all and everything; his only clear idea was that he would not “have the admiral touched”; then, sinking into a melancholy dejection, he conjured all these sinister advisers to seek some other means of salvation.

Tavannes, Birague, Nevers insisted on the death of the admiral and of all the principal leaders. Retz, if Anjou is to be believed, opposed himself, contrary to all expectation, to the execution of a design which he, more than anyone, had contributed to prepare. Was it fear or was it an awakening of conscience in this corrupt man? “You will dishonour the king and the French nation; you will plunge again into civil wars, and you will be able to speak no more of peace! You will summon again the arms of the foreigner, and calamities and ruin whose end we, and perhaps our children, shall never see.”

There was a moment of stupor amongst the conspirators. The man who had ruined the youth of Charles IX was holding out to him the plank of safety. The king was to escape!

They recovered themselves and made a simultaneous and desperate effort. “It is too late! The Guises are on the verge of denouncing the king himself with his mother and his brother! The Huguenots will not believe in the king’s innocence. They will turn their arms against all the royal family! War is inevitable! Better to gain a battle in Paris where we have all the leaders than to risk it in the open country!”

Retz was silent. The king resisted for more than an hour and a half. “But my honour!--but my friends! the admiral!--La Rochefoucauld!--Téligny--”

Catherine saw that he was panting and exhausted: “Sire, you refuse. Give us, myself and your brother, permission to take our leave of you--to go.”

He realised that Catherine and Anjou would not go far, and that the “captain-general” of the Catholics was already found. He shuddered.

“Sire, is it from fear of the Huguenots that you refuse?”

He arose; he sprang forward intoxicated and furious: “By the death of God,” he cried, “since you think good to kill the admiral, I will have it so; but kill all the Huguenots in France as well, that there may not be left one of them to reproach me with it afterwards! By the death of God give the order promptly!” And he went out like one frantic. Catherine had won--the race of Valois was devoted to the furies!

The conspirators passed the rest of the day, the evening, and a great part of the night in preparing for the enterprise. The king having gone they had discussed the heads to be proscribed. Should they strike at the princes--Henry of Navarre, a king, and the king’s brother-in-law? They shrank from this. Henry of Condé, son of him who died at Jarnac? The duke de Nevers, whose sister-in-law he had just married, had, it is said, great difficulty in obtaining his life. Catherine was aware that to kill the Bourbons would be to render the Guises too strong. Should they strike at the friends of the Huguenots, the Montmorencys? Retz, soon recovered from his scruples, advised it. Tavannes opposed it. The head of the house, who was at Chantilly, was not in their power; to kill the younger members in the absence of the eldest would be to give a leader to the civil war.

Thus it was agreed to kill only the Huguenots. All the Huguenots, as the king had exclaimed in his madness. Catherine afterwards pretended that she had the blood of only five or six on her conscience. Hypocrisy! She insisted on the deaths of only these five or six, but she foresaw and accepted the deaths of all the others. At the pass to which things had come it was no longer a question of isolated assassinations but of massacre--the massacre at least of the nobles who had come with the princes and the admiral.[l]

Everything was soon decided on; the duke of Guise was to begin the massacre by despatching the admiral directly he heard the signal given, by ringing the great bell of the palace, which was used only on public rejoicings. Tavannes in the meantime sent for the provost of the trades and some other persons of influence among the inhabitants; he ordered them to arm the companies and to be ready by midnight at the Hôtel-de-Ville. Those persons made some excuses and scruples of conscience, for which Tavannes abused them in the king’s presence. He told them that if they refused they should all be hanged and advised the king to threaten them too. The poor frightened men then yielded and promised to do such execution that it should never be forgotten. The instructions they received were that directly they heard the bell, torches were to be put in the windows and chains placed across the streets; pickets were to be posted in the open places; and, for distinction, they were to wear a piece of white linen on their left arms and put a white cross on their hats. Notwithstanding the awful crime in contemplation, the king rode out on horseback in the afternoon accompanied by the chevalier d’Angoulême, his natural brother: but the sight of his unsuspecting people had no effect upon him. The queen also showed herself at court as usual in order to avoid suspicion.

Secrecy was desirable till the last moment and no one was informed of the plan who was not necessary to its execution. But there were several persons who caused great concern and anxiety to both the king and queen. The queen of Navarre describes herself as altogether ignorant of the affair previous to the execution; and when she retired after supper to go to bed, her sister, the duchess of Lorraine, entreated her not to go. The queen-mother was angry at that and forbade her telling anything further. The duchess of Lorraine thought that it would be sacrificing her to let her go to bed; and the queen-mother said that if she did not go it might cause suspicion and observed that if it pleased God no harm would befall her.

The count de la Rochefoucauld was a great favourite with Charles, who took such delight in his company that he wished to save his life. He had passed the evening with the king, and when he prepared to go home Charles advised him to sleep in the Louvre. In vain did he press him; the count resolved to go; the king was grieved that he could not preserve him without violating his secret, and observed as his guest retired, “I see clearly that God wishes him to perish.” Ambrose Paré, his surgeon, was a person indispensable for the king’s health and comfort, and he used less ceremony with him. He sent for him in the evening into his chamber and ordered him not to stir from thence; he said, according to Brantôme,[e] “that it was not reasonable that one who was so useful should be massacred, and therefore he did not press him to change his religion.”

THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW, AUGUST 24TH, 1572

As midnight approached the armed companies were collecting before the Hôtel-de-Ville. They required some strong excitement to bring them to a proper mind, and in order to animate and exasperate them they were told that a horrible conspiracy was discovered which the Huguenots had made against the king, the queen-mother, and the princes, without excepting the king of Navarre, for the destruction of the monarchy and religion; that the king, wishing to anticipate so execrable an attempt, commanded them to fall at once upon all those cursed heretics (rebels against God and the king), without sparing one; and afterwards their property should be given up to plunder. This was sufficient inducement for a populace who naturally detested the Huguenots: everything being thus arranged, they impatiently waited the dawn and the signal which it was to bring with it.

The wretched king of France had gone so far that a retreat was impossible; but there is every reason to believe that even at the last moment he would gladly have obeyed the dictates of nature and have desisted from the cruel purpose. But the queen had perceived the inquietude which tormented him; she saw that if the signal depended upon him he would not have resolution enough to give it; she considered that the hour should be hastened to prevent any rising remorse from destroying her work: she therefore made another effort to inflame her son by telling him that the Protestants had discovered the plot; and then sent someone to ring the bell of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, an hour earlier than had been agreed upon. A few moments after was heard the report of a pistol, which had such an effect on the king that he sent orders to prevent the massacre; but it was then too late.

Guise, who had waited with impatience for the signal, went at once to Coligny’s house accompanied by his brother Aumale, Angoulême, and a number of gentlemen. Cosseins, who commanded the guards posted there, broke open the doors in the king’s name and murdered some Swiss who were placed at the bottom of the stairs. Besme, a Lorrainer, and Pestrucci, an Italian, both in Guise’s pay, then went upstairs to the admiral, followed by some soldiers. He was awakened by the noise, asked one of his attendants what it was: he replied, “My lord, God calls us to himself.” Coligny then said to his attendants: “Save yourselves, my friends; all is over with me. I have been long prepared for death.” They all quitted him but one, and he betook himself to prayer, awaiting his murderers. Every door was soon broken open, and Besme presented himself. “Art thou Coligny?” said he. “I am he indeed,” said the admiral; “young man, respect my gray hairs; but do what you will you can shorten my life only by a few days.” Besme replied by plunging his sword into Coligny’s body; his companions then gave him numerous stabs with their daggers. Besme then called out of the window to Guise that it was done: “Very well,” replied he, “but M. d’Angoulême will not believe it unless he sees him at his feet.” The corpse was then thrown out into the court from the window; and the blood spurted out on the faces and clothes of the princes. Guise wiped the murdered man’s face in order to recognise him, and then gave orders to cut off his head.

The ringing of the bell of St. Germain l’Auxerrois was answered by the bells of all the churches, and the discharge of firearms in different parts. Paris resounded with cries and howlings which brought the defenceless people out of their dwellings, not only unarmed, but half naked. Some tried to gain Coligny’s house in the hope of obtaining protection, but the companies of guards quickly despatched them; the Louvre seemed to hold out a refuge; but they were driven away by men armed with spears and musketry. Escape was almost impossible; the numerous lights placed in the windows deprived them of the shelter which the darkness would have afforded them; and patrols traversed the streets in all directions killing everyone they met. From the streets they proceeded to the houses; they broke open the doors and spared neither age, sex, nor condition. A white cross had been put in their hats to distinguish the Catholics, and some priests holding a crucifix in one hand and a sword in the other preceded the murderers and encouraged them, in God’s name, to spare neither relatives nor friends. When the daylight appeared, Paris exhibited a most appalling spectacle of slaughter: the headless bodies were falling from the windows; the gateways were blocked up with dead and dying, and the streets were filled with carcasses which were drawn on the pavement to the river.

Even the Louvre became the scene of great carnage; the guards were drawn up in a double line, and the unfortunate Huguenots who were in that place were called one after another and were killed with the soldiers’ halberts. Most of them died without complaining or even speaking; others appealed to the public faith and the sacred promise of the king. “Great God,” said they, “be the defence of the oppressed. Just judge! avenge this perfidy.” Some of the king of Navarre’s servants who lived in the palace were killed in bed with their wives. Tavannes, Guise, Montpensier, and Angoulême rode through the streets encouraging the murderers; Guise told them that it was the king’s wish; that it was necessary to kill the very last of the heretics, and crush the race of vipers. Tavannes ferociously exclaimed, “Bleed! Bleed! the doctors tell us that bleeding is as beneficial in August as in May.” These exhortations were not lost upon an enraged multitude, and the different companies emulated each other in atrocity. One Crucé, a goldsmith, boasted of having killed four hundred persons with his own hands.

The massacre lasted during the whole week, but after the third day its fury was considerably abated; indeed, on the Tuesday, a proclamation was issued for putting an end to it, but no measures were taken for enforcing the order; the people however were no longer urged on to the slaughter. What horrors were endured during that time can be best described by those who were present, or by contemporaries.

(1560-1641)]

Sully[j] gives the following account of his suffering: “I went to bed the night before, very early. I was awakened about three hours after midnight by the noise of all the bells and by the confused cries of the populace. St. Julien, my governor, went out hastily with my valet-de-chambre to learn the cause, and I have never since heard anything of those two men, who were, without doubt, sacrificed among the first to the public fury. I remained alone dressing myself in my chamber where a few minutes after I observed my host enter, pale and in consternation. He was of the religion, and having heard what was the matter he had decided on going to mass to save his life and preserve his house from plunder. He came to persuade me to do the same and to take me with him. I did not think fit to follow him. I resolved on attempting to get to the college of Burgundy where I studied, notwithstanding the distance of the house where I lived from that college, which made my attempt very dangerous. I put on my scholar’s gown, and taking a pair of large prayer books under my arm, I went down stairs. I was seized with horror as I went into the street at seeing the furious men running in every direction, breaking open the houses and calling out, ‘Kill! Massacre the Huguenots!’ and the blood which I saw shed before my eyes redoubled my fright; I fell in with a body of soldiers, who stopped me. I was questioned; they began to ill-treat me, when the books which I carried were discovered, happily for me, and served me for a passport. Twice afterwards I fell into the same danger, from which I was delivered with the same good fortune. At length I arrived at the college of Burgundy; a still greater danger awaited me there; the porter having twice refused me admittance, I remained in the middle of the street at the mercy of the ruffians, whose numbers kept increasing and who eagerly sought for their prey, when I thought of asking for the principal of the college, named Lafaye, a worthy man who tenderly loved me. The porter, gained by some small pieces of money, which I put into his hand, did not refuse to fetch him. This good man took me to his chamber, where two inhuman priests whom I heard talk of the Sicilian Vespers tried to snatch me from his hands to tear me to pieces, saying that the order was to kill even the infants at the breast. All that he could do was to lead me with great secrecy to a remote closet, where he locked me in. I remained there three whole days, uncertain of my fate and receiving no assistance but from a servant of this charitable man who came from time to time and brought me something to live upon.”[k]

EFFECTS OF THE MASSACRE

No allowable space would suffice for the records of such indiscriminate massacre. Charles, by his missives, ordered the same scene to be renewed in every town throughout his dominions. And the principal cities but too zealously responded. Fifty thousand Protestants are said to have fallen victims of the monarch’s order.[76] A few commanders refused. The viscount d’Orthe wrote back to the court, that he “commanded soldiers, not assassins.” And even the public executioner of a certain town, when a dagger was put into his hands, flung it away, and declared himself above the crime. The family of the Montmorencys, though Catholic, showed their abhorrence of these acts, and had the courage to take down the body of the admiral, which had been hung to the common gibbet, and to give it burial at Chantilly. Charles IX had not failed to visit it, while yet suspended. His followers complained of the odour. “The body of a dead enemy cannot smell otherwise than sweet,” was his reply. He now avowed that all was committed by his orders; and even held a “bed of justice” in his parliament for the very purpose. The trembling judges, with De Thou, their president, could not but applaud his zeal. As for De l’Hôpital, who had long been banished from court, and who had abandoned the friendship of Catherine since she had joined the Guises, he expected not to be spared, and ordered his domestics to throw open the gates. They disobeyed, and the murderers were unable to reach him. But De l’Hôpital did not long survive to deplore the miseries of his country. His words were, “After such horrors, I do not wish to live.” The joy of the pope, on the other hand, and of Philip of Spain, knew no bounds. The supreme pontiff went in state to his cathedral, and returned public thanks to heaven for this signal mercy.

(1505-1573)]

Charles had spared his sister’s husband, the young king of Navarre, and his companion the prince of Condé. It was only at the price of being converted. Death or the mass was the alternative offered to them; and both, after some resistance, yielded in appearance. On the other hand, mere abhorrence of the massacre caused many Catholic gentlemen to turn Huguenots. Amongst these was Henry de la Tour d’Auvergne, viscount de Turenne. After all, the crime, from which so much was expected, produced neither peace nor advantage. The Huguenots were, indeed, paralysed by the blow; but the Catholics were no less stupefied by remorse and shame. King Charles himself seemed stricken already by avenging fate. He was nervous and agitated. The blood he had spilled seemed ever to stream before his eyes. A continual fever took possession of him, and henceforth never ceased to consume him. The chiefs were equally languid, equally disunited. The Huguenots had time to rally, and to prepare for defence. Rochelle and Montauban shut their gates. Charles in his blindness sent La Noue, the Huguenot, to Rochelle; he became its commander. The town was at length besieged, and thousands of the Catholics fell before it; among them, not a few of the murderers who assisted in the massacre on St. Bartholomew’s eve. At length Charles, unable to conquer, and incompetent to carry on the war with vigour, granted the Huguenots a peace. Rochelle and Montauban preserved the freedom of their religion; and Charles had the pain of perceiving that the grand and sweeping crime to which he had been impelled had but enfeebled the Catholic party, instead of insuring its triumph.

LAST YEARS, DEATH, AND CHARACTER OF CHARLES IX

[Sidenote: [1572-1574 A.D.]]

Catherine, in the meantime, had the address to procure the crown of Poland for the son of her predilection, Henry duke of Anjou. She had lavished her wealth upon the electors for this purpose. No sooner was the point gained than she regretted it. The health of Charles was now manifestly on the decline, and Catherine would fain have retained Henry; but the jealousy of the king forbade. After conducting the duke on his way to Poland the court returned to St. Germain, and Charles sank, without hope or consolation, on his couch of sickness. Even here he was not allowed to repose. The young king of Navarre formed a project of escape with the prince of Condé. The duke of Alençon, youngest brother of the king, joined in it. A body of horse were to wait in the forest of St. Germain for the princes, and protect them in their flight. The vigilance of the queen-mother discovered the enterprise, which, for her own purposes, she magnified into a serious plot. Charles was informed that a Huguenot army was coming to surprise him, and he was obliged to be removed into a litter, in order to escape. “This is too much,” said he; “could they not have let me die in peace?”

Condé was the only prince that succeeded in making his escape. The king of Navarre and the duke of Alençon were imprisoned. The former, accused of conspiring against the king’s life, defended himself with magnanimity, and asked if it were a crime, that he, a king, should seek to free himself from durance? This young prince had already succeeded by his address, his frankness, and high character in rallying to his interests the most honourable of the noblesse, who dreaded at once the perfidious Catherine and her children; who had renounced their good opinion of young Guise after the day of St. Bartholomew; and who, at the same time professing Catholicism, were averse to Huguenot principles and zeal. This party, called the _politiques_, professed to follow the middle or neutral course, which at one time had been that of Catherine de’ Medici; but she had long since deserted it, and had joined in all the sanguinary and extreme measures of her son and of the Guises. Hence she was especially odious to the new and moderate party of the _politiques_, among whom the family of Montmorency held the lead. Catherine feared their interference at the moment of the king’s death, whilst his successor was absent in a remote kingdom; and she swelled the project of the princes’ escape into a serious conspiracy, in order to be mistress of those whom she feared. Lamole and Coconas, both confidants of the princes, were executed for favouring their escape. The marshals De Cossé and De Montmorency were sent to the Bastille.

In this state of the court Charles IX expired on the 30th of May, 1574, after having nominated the queen-mother to be regent during his successor’s absence.[d] His end was so miserable that even Huguenot writers express pity for it. His short and infrequent sleeping moments were troubled by hideous visions. Exhausted by violent hæmorrhages, he sometimes waked up bathed in his own blood, and this blood reminded him of that of his subjects which had been shed in streams by his orders. He saw again in his dreams all their dead bodies floating with the current of the Seine; he heard mournful lamentations in the air. The night before his death, his nurse, of whom he was very fond, although she was a Huguenot, heard him complaining, weeping, and sighing: “Ah nurse,” he cried, “what streams of blood, how many murders! What wicked counsel I have had! O my God, pardon me and grant me mercy! I know not where I am, so much do they agitate and perplex me! What will become of all this country? What will become of me, to whom God intrusts it? I am lost, I know it well!” Then his nurse said to him: “Sire, the murders and the blood shall be on the head of those who influenced you, and on your evil counsellors.” His last words were that he was glad he left no male child to wear the crown after him.

This prince, who was so guilty and so unhappy, whose name has been handed down from generation to generation, loaded with anathemas, was born with the most brilliant gifts of mind and imagination, and with less inclination to vice than most of his race. He had that real love of art which had been the glory of his ancestor, Francis I, and verses of his have been preserved, which are far superior to those of the captive at Pavia--beautiful verses, addressed to Ronsard, who might have taken lessons in good taste and spontaneity from this essay of royal genius. He loved music no less than poetry, and during his last illness melody alone had the power to soothe his pain for a moment. A detestable education had destroyed all the gifts of nature in Charles IX. When real glory was offered to him, when the chance was given him to snatch France from factions, to make her enter upon her real destiny by a bound towards her natural frontiers, by a brilliant and legitimate conquest, the unfortunate man did not have the strength to seize this unique opportunity. It came too late for him; his soul was confused and without a guide, his mind vacillating. After long struggles he became a prey to the infernal inspirations of his mother, and, as if carried away by furies, he leaped into the gulf of shame and of blood, into which he was followed by the rest of his race, and in which France came near being destroyed with the Valois.[l]

The above version of the end of Charles IX expresses the opinion held by most of the historians. Dareste,[m] however, finishes the reign of Charles IX with the following remark in regard to this generally accepted description: “During his last days there were current rumours which have been transmitted to us by D’Aubigné,[n] L’Estoile,[o] and other contemporaries. They recount his great inquietude, his idea that the phantoms of the victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew besieged his death-bed; they tell us that he succumbed to his great remorse and these avenging hallucinations. All these accounts, of doubtful origin, are at least greatly exaggerated. His last illness, the phases and progress of which were followed by the Venetian envoys,[77] was of a most natural character. Cavalli[p] contents himself with saying that the plots during the last days of his life caused him great torture of mind and prevented his tasting an instant’s repose.”

Charles IX does not lack defenders. In great contrast to the almost universal condemnation of him are the writings of some of his contemporaries. Sorbin,[t] after a description of his physical qualities, goes on to express his admiration of him in these words: “His manners were the most gentle in the world; he loved peace and quiet for his people, and desired nothing so much as to see his subjects reunited in the faith and religion of the Catholic church, which made apparent to everyone his great generosity, and showed how worthy he was to have reigned in a more happy period than the one he lived in, when the malice of his subjects kept him in difficulties. Had he reigned in a more fortunate time, the opinion of his intimate friends and his most faithful subjects and servants would have been correct, for they called it a golden age. He would have been loved by all in a good and virtuous age.”[a]

THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III (1574-1589 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1574-1575 A.D.]]

The duke of Anjou,[78] heir presumptive of Charles IX, was in Poland at the time of his brother’s death. Henry was no sooner in possession of this crown than he took a dislike to the “land of the Sarmatians,” where the rough and virile nobles knew nothing of the refinements of luxury and vice which the corrupt civilisation of Italy had inoculated upon France. Upon the news of his brother’s death he fled from his capital at night, like a malefactor. Pursued by his subjects, who wished to keep him, he did not stop until he was on Austrian soil. The pleasures of Vienna and of Venice captivated him for a long time; he did not set foot within his new kingdom until two months after he had secretly left the old one.

The prince was ill-fitted to master the situation that his brother had left him. The victories won in his name by Tavannes had given him a great reputation; but abuse of pleasure had cooled that early ardour which had at first made him as brave as his ancestors. He no longer had a taste for any but childish or effeminate pastimes, when he did not surrender himself to horrible debauchery. It could hardly be said that his ostentatious devotion was a trick of impiety, but all his religion consisted in certain external practices. He thought that all his accounts with heaven and his own conscience could be settled by a fast and a few penances. Charles IX, his brother, had sometimes had ideas and plans worthy of a king. Henry had almost puerile occupations; and D’Aubigné,[n] seeing this man so careful of his toilet, his complexion, the whiteness of his hands and face, was uncertain whether he beheld “a woman-king or a man-queen.” Charles IX was vicious in anger and on occasion; Henry in character and constantly. He read nothing but Macchiavelli, and, in a word, he never knew that which makes pardonable much of his brother’s conduct--remorse.