BOOK II. FROM THE OPENING OF THE CONFERENCE OF POISSY TO THE EDICT OF NANTES. (1561-1598.) (continued 2)

But pitiless as he was, he once encountered men who surpassed him. They were Spaniards, whom Philip II. had sent to the assistance of the (Roman) Catholic party. Having taken a little town in Agenois, Montluc put all those to the sword who had defended the castle, and sent back the women by a staircase hollowed out of the wall. The Spaniards, who were waiting for them in the court, butchered them all together, with the little children they carried in their arms. When Montluc reproached them for this, they answered with sang-froid, “We thought they were Lutherans in disguise (todos Luteranos tapados).”

The Baron des Adrets, who led some of the Huguenot bands, showed himself no less barbarous than Montluc. He had embraced the new religion on account of an action, which he accused the duke of Guise of having caused him to lose. He spread terror in the Lyonnais, Dauphiné, Provence, and the county of Avignon. But the chiefs of the Calvinist party were soon ashamed of, and shocked at his crimes, and sent Soubise to Lyons to restrain him. They even made him prisoner at Valence, and he was only set at liberty at the conclusion of the peace, which he resented so much, that he returned to the Romish communion and died a Papist.

IX.

Catherine de Medicis did not, as she had promised, make the prince of Condé lieutenant-general of the kingdom. She caused her son to be declared to have attained his majority, in a lit de justice held at the Parliament of Rouen, on the 17th of August, 1563. Charles IX. was then thirteen years and two months old. This prince was not deficient in natural intelligence; he was fond of literature, and, under better discipline, might have prepared himself to have worn the crown worthily. But his mother had early trained him to be treacherous, dissimulating, suspicious, and eager for bloody spectacles. She had given him for his preceptor a man from her town of Florence, Albert Gondi, afterwards named Marshal de Retz, who, according to Brantôme, was cunning, cautious, corrupt, lying, a great dissembler, swearing, and denying God like a porter.

The Edict of Pacification was not executed. Several Parliaments would only consent to register it after long resistance. The governors of the provinces relaxed or tightened the clauses of the edict at their pleasure; and the states of Burgundy, directed by the Duke d’Aumale, even dared to declare that they could no more endure two religions, than heaven could bear two suns.

In the districts where the (Roman) Catholics were the strongest, they represented themselves as defiled by the neighbourhood of heresy, and gave themselves up to shameful acts of violence against the faithful, who went to the assemblies. They violated even the sanctity of the domestic hearth, maltreating those who sung psalms, compelling the Huguenots to furnish bread for the parochial masses, and to give money to the church societies. When the oppressed appealed to the laws, they were answered by blows, sometimes by assassinations. More than three thousand of them perished by a violent death after the signing of the peace.

Where, on the other hand, the Calvinists were in the majority, they did not obey the Edict of Amboise, nor could they have done so, had they wished; for this treaty had been made rather for the north, than for the south of France. Imagine fifty to a hundred thousand persons compelled to take a journey of several leagues to celebrate their worship in a privileged town!

(Roman) Catholics and the Reformed were not united in the same society: they were encamped face to face, erect, and with arms in their hands. The (Roman) Catholics began, from the year 1563, under the influence of the cardinals and bishops, to form themselves into leagues or private associations for the extirpation of heresy. They bound themselves to devote their persons and their goods, without reservation, [to their cause]. The Calvinists, on their side, had their battle-fields, their rallying-signs, watchwords, and plans of campaign. They were two great armies, who were engaged in constant skirmishes, while waiting for the hour and the place of battle.

In 1564, Catherine de Medicis made Charles IX. traverse the provinces of his kingdom, in order to rekindle the affection of the (Roman) Catholics, and to intimidate the Huguenots. When she arrived at Roussillon, a little town of Dauphiné, she published, on the 4th of August, an interpretative declaration of the Edict of Amboise. The lords haut-justiciers were no longer to admit any but the members of their families, and their immediate vassals, to their assemblies. It was forbidden to the churches to hold synods, and to make collections of money. The pastors had no longer the right to leave their place of residence, or to open schools. The priests, monks, and nuns who had married, were commanded instantly to separate themselves from their consorts, or to quit the kingdom with the least possible delay. Thus was the iron circle which surrounded the Huguenots, tightened until they should be stifled by it.

The queen-mother held a conference at Bayonne, with the Duke d’Albe, in the month of June, 1565. This interview has been celebrated, because, according to the testimony of several historians, the plot of the Saint Bartholomew massacre was there laid down. The ferocious envoy of Philip II. told Catherine that a sovereign could do nothing more damaging to his interests, or more degrading to his subjects, than to give them liberty of conscience, and he counselled her to cut down the highest heads of the Huguenots, for then the rest might be easily managed. “Ten thousand frogs,” he continued in his coarse language, “are not worth the head of a salmon.”

We are assured that the plot was to have been carried out in 1566, during the session of the assembly of Notables at Moulins. But Coligny and the other chiefs came well attended, and the bloody deed was adjourned to a better opportunity.

The court having brought six thousand (Roman) Catholic soldiers from Switzerland, the Huguenots saw they had to fear the worst, and the prince of Condé held a council with the chiefs of his party. The Admiral was of opinion that they should still have patience, and wait till things had come to the last extremity. “I see very well,” he said, “how we may light up the fire, but not where to find water to quench it.”

His brother D’Andelot thought differently. “If you wait,” he said, “until we are banished into foreign lands, bound in prison, pursued by the people, despised by the soldiers, what will our patience or our past humility have availed us? What will our innocence profit us? Who will so much as listen to us? Those have already declared war, who have thrust in amongst us six thousand foreign soldiers. If we also give them the advantage of striking the first blow, our misfortune will be without a remedy.”

The prince of Condé went once more with the admiral to the queen, to entreat her to be more just to the Reformed. They were badly received. Seeing that their complaints were useless, they resolved to follow the example given them five years before by the duke of Guise, and to seize the young king, who was then in the castle of Monceaux, in Brie (September, 1567).

The plot was discovered, and the court fled precipitately to Meaux. The Chancellor l’Hospital, always favourable to measures of justice and moderation, proposed to send the Swiss home, to carry out the Edict of Amboise faithfully, and promised that on these conditions the Huguenots should lay down their arms. “Eh! Monsieur le Chancelier,” said the queen, “will you answer that they have no other end than to serve the king?” “Yes, madame,” answered L’Hospital, “if I am assured that there is no intention to deceive them.” But the Cardinal de Lorraine and the Constable were of opinion that no concession should be made.

Nevertheless it was necessary to gain time; for the Swiss had not yet arrived. Catherine therefore cajoled the chiefs of the Calvinists by negotiations; she sent the Marshal de Montmorency to them, as a man of the Third Party. He was well received. The Reformed repeated to him the cry, which was uttered in all their complaints: “The free exercise of our religion!” While this was going on, the Swiss arrived; the conference was broken off, and the opportunity lost. A (Roman) Catholic historian of our own time expresses astonishment at “the credulity of these country gentlemen who were ready to disperse upon the faith of a simple promise.” It appears to us, that this remark does as much honour to the good faith of the Calvinist party, as it does little credit to that of the (Roman) Catholic court of Charles IX.

After this undertaking, nothing was left but to resort to the hazard of arms. Condé encamped in the environs of Paris, with one thousand infantry and fifteen hundred cavalry. The Constable offered him battle in the plain of Saint Denis, on the 10th of November, 1567. He had eighteen thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry, but they were for the most part recruits of Parisian volunteers.

A crowd of idlers, and ladies dressed as Amazons, wished to enjoy the spectacle of the fight. Monks distributed beads, and chanted litanies. The action commenced towards the end of the day. At the first shock, the Parisians, who were known by their embroidered dresses and brilliant armour, gave way. The Constable, with the Swiss and the cavalry, defended himself vigorously. At the end of two hours, the Huguenots retreated in good order, and their adversaries dared not pursue them further than a quarter of a league from the field of battle.

Anne de Montmorency, covered with wounds, had been summoned by a Scottish gentleman to surrender. “Dost thou know me?” the Constable asked. “It is because I know thee, that I bring thee this,” answered the other, and fired a pistol at him. Montmorency, the last of the triumvirate, died of his wound a few days after. He obtained from Catherine de Medicis nothing but feigned tears, from the bigoted (Roman) Catholics a cold indifference, and from the Reformed a well-deserved resentment. The accident of his birth had placed his fortune too high. In all his great employments he wanted one quality, for which nothing can compensate—a breadth of understanding.

A man of sense, the Marshal de Vielleville, spoke, indeed, truly [to the king] of the affair of Saint Denis. “It is not your majesty who has gained the battle, and still less the prince of Condé.” “And who then?” asked Charles IX. “Sire, it is the king of Spain.”

On the very day following, the Calvinist army presented itself before the faubourgs of Paris, but no one came out to encounter them. They then retired on the side of Lorraine, to meet the auxiliaries, which were led by Jean Casimir, the son of the Elector Palatine. The two armies united at Pont-à-Mous-son, on the 11th of January, 1568. Here an event, probably without example in military annals, happened. The German Protestants claimed a hundred thousand crowns as their arrears of pay, and Condé had not two thousand. What was to be done? To whom apply? It was then that one army, which had itself received nothing, mulcted itself to pay another.

The historian Jean de Serres relates this singular incident in energetic terms: “The Prince and the Admiral influenced great and small by their example; the ministers in their sermons moved the men, and the captains prepared their people. Every one contributed, one from zeal, another from love; one from fear, another for shame of reproach; they collected in money, plate, chains and rings of gold, about eighty thousand francs, and by this voluntary liberality they subdued the first and pressing avidity of the mercenaries.”[48]

The war was rekindled all over France. Montluc recommenced his ravages in Guienne and Saintonge, and, after having failed before the walls of La Rochelle, put almost the whole of the Calvinist population of the island of Ré to the sword. An army of seven thousand Huguenots overran Gascony, Quercy, and Languedoc, and traversed the entire kingdom as far as Orleans. It was called the army of the Viscounts, because it had for leaders the viscounts Monclar, Bruniquel, Caumont, Rapin, and other gentlemen.

The towns of Montauban, Nismes, Castres, Montpellier, Uzès, remained or fell into the power of the Calvinists, who were then in a great majority. At Nismes, from the beginning of the war the Huguenot populace had committed, in spite of the exhortations of the pastors and notables, a frightful massacre of seventy-two prisoners. The following day forty-eight more (Roman) Catholics were slaughtered in the fields. This crime bore the name of Michelade, because it took place on the day of Saint Michel, 1567.

The prince of Condé commenced his march across Burgundy, Champagne, Beauce, and began the siege of Chartres, one of the granaries of Paris. The affairs of the Huguenots now assumed a favourable turn. The queen-mother, who was accustomed to say she could do more with three sheets of paper and her tongue than the soldiers with their lances, recommenced negotiations. The chiefs of the Calvinists, who had learned to their cost the value of Catherine’s word, wished for guarantees. But the queen had it published in the army that the Edict of Pacification should be re-established without interpretations or reservations, that a full amnesty should be given to all who had had recourse to arms, and that the chiefs alone refused this equitable arrangement from ambitious motives.

This trick succeeded. Whole companies of Calvinists, without the leave of their chiefs, took the road to their homes; and the prince of Condé, seeing his entire army thus melting away, signed, on the 20th of March, 1568, the peace of Longjumeau. It was named “the lame and badly-seated peace,” because, of the two negotiators of the queen, one was the lord of Malassise and the other was lame. Frenchmen like to be merry upon everything; but truly there was little cause for merriment at that moment. “That peace,” says Mézeray, “left the Huguenots at the mercy of their enemies, with no other surety than the word of an Italian woman.”[49]

X.

The treaty of Longjumeau lasted but six months, or rather it never existed but on paper. Whilst the Calvinists were sending home their foreign troops, Catherine de Medicis kept hers. She took possession of the strong places, had the bridges and passes guarded, and took every measure to crush the Huguenots.

The (Roman) Catholic pulpits still thundered imprecations and anathemas against them. “They boldly advanced,” says the Abbé Anquetil, “those abominable maxims, that they ought not to keep faith with heretics, and that it is a just, pious, and useful act, leading to salvation, to massacre them. The fruits of these discourses were either public riots, or assassinations, for which no justice could be obtained.”[50]

There is a sort of frightful monotony in these scenes of murder, which stained peace no less than war with blood. Lyons, Bourges, Troyes, Auxerre, Issoudun, Rouen, Amiens, and other towns were strewed with the corpses of Huguenots. Nearly ten thousand perished in three months. At Orleans two hundred had been cast into prison. The mob set fire to the prison, and drove back those who tried to escape, into the flames: “A part of them were seen,” says Crespin, “joining hands in the fire, and were heard to call upon the Lord with a loud voice.”[51]

The Chancellor de l’Hospital made loud complaints of the impunity accorded to these butchers. He was not listened to; and seeing that he could no longer usefully serve the state, he withdrew to his property at Vignay. Catherine de Medicis gave the seals to Jean de Morvilliers, a creature of the Cardinal de Lorraine. The Marshal de Montmorency, suspected of moderation and humanity, was also superseded from his office as governor of Paris.

Even those sacred rights, which savages would blush to infringe, were no longer respected. The Baron Philibert de Rapin, maître d’hôtel to the prince of Condé, having been sent to Languedoc to carry out the treaty of peace, was seized by order of the Parliament of Toulouse, and beheaded three days afterwards.

Condé, Coligny, and D’Andelot, threatened with ruin and death, fled to La Rochelle. They left the Château of Noyers in Burgundy with their wives and children at midnight, on the 25th August, 1568, and travelled a hundred leagues in twenty-four hours through bands of enemies.

The queen of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, went to join them with four thousand men. As many more came from Normandy, the Maine, and Anjou. The most famous captains of the party hastened thither with their companies, so that these fugitives of yesterday found themselves at the head of the strongest army they had yet commanded, and Coligny repeated the saying of Themistocles: “My friends, we had perished, if we had not been lost.” Thus commenced the third religious war.

Catherine de Medicis put forth edicts which annulled that of January; she also forbade the exercise of the pretended Reformed religion under pain of death, and ordered all its ministers to depart from the kingdom in fifteen days. At the same time the duke of Anjou, the next brother of Charles IX., and the favourite son of Catherine, afterwards known as Henry III., was placed at the head of the (Roman) Catholic army; but although he had twenty-four thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry under his command, he dared not offer battle. The very severe winter of 1568 was passed in marches and countermarches, without any decisive event taking place.

On the 16th of March following, the two armies met at Jarnac. It was less a battle than a surprise. The different bodies of the Calvinists fell into line successively, and were cut to pieces one after the other. The prince of Condé performed prodigies of valour; but, being thrown from his horse, and carrying his arm in a sling from the beginning of the affair, he surrendered to a (Roman) Catholic gentleman. At the same instant Montesquieu, one of the officers of the duke of Anjou, coming up behind him, fired a pistol at his head. “This action, which might have passed in the affray for a splendid feat of arms,” says Mézeray, “being done in cold blood, appeared to all good men as an execrable parricide.”[52] The duke of Anjou caused the corpse of Condé to be carried upon an ass, whilst he himself joined in the infamous jestings of the soldiers, and wanted to have a triumphal column raised on the spot where the prince had been assassinated. He acted as a worthy son of Catherine.

The news of the death of Condé and the victory of Jarnac, raised transports of joy amongst the (Roman) Catholics, and Charles IX. sent to the pope the standards that had been taken from the Huguenots.

Michel Ghisleri then occupied the pontifical throne under the name of Pius V. He had entered a convent of Dominicans when only fifteen years of age, and had afterwards been intrusted with the office of Inquisitor-General in the Milanais, whence he had been expelled on account of his implacable severity. He only knew Luther under the name of “the ferocious beast” (bellua), and saw in heresy the summary of every crime. His letters were printed at Antwerp in 1640, and are a standing monument of infuriate madness against heretics. Pius V. wrote to Charles IX. to be deaf to every prayer, to stifle every tie of blood or affection, and to extirpate the roots of heresy to the very last fibres. He cited the example of Saul slaying the Amalekites, and represented every feeling of clemency as a snare of the devil. At such moral aberrations it is impossible to feel anger; we are rather moved by a feeling of deep and sad compassion.

Pius V. and Charles IX. had been too precipitate in regarding the position of the Huguenots as desperate. Coligny still remained to them. He was seconded by Jeanne d’Albret, who, holding in her hand her son, Henry of Béarn, then fifteen years of age, and her nephew Henry, son of the prince of Condé, came to Saintes to “offer to the cause,”—an expression in vogue among the Calvinists—and prayed to God never to suffer them to swerve from their duty. The young Béarnais was proclaimed generalissimo and protector of the churches. “I swear,” said he, “to defend the religion, and to persevere in the common cause, until either death or victory has restored to us the liberty we seek.”

On the 23rd June, 1569, Coligny gained the advantage in the fight of the Roche-Abeille; but he lost many of his men at the siege of Poitiers, which he had been forced to undertake at the instance of the gentlemen of the province. On the 3rd of October following, he was beaten at Moncontour. The German soldiers had mutinied, and the Admiral could not avoid a conflict with the enemy, as he had intended. The battle lasted but three-quarters of an hour, and the disaster was terrible. Out of twenty-five thousand soldiers, only six or eight thousand remained under his standard. Entire companies had been put to the sword. The lansquenets cried for mercy, saying, “I am a good Papist! I am a good Papist!” but no one was spared.

Coligny received three wounds at the commencement of the action, and the blood which flowed under his visor was nigh choking him. He had to be carried off the field. In the evening, when some officers proposed to embark, he roused their courage by his calm and decisive words. Never was Coligny so great as in misfortune; he had always calculated the consequences beforehand.

Another trait of his character deserves to be recorded. “As the Admiral was carried in a litter,” says Agrippa D’Aubigné, “Lestrange, an old gentleman, and one of his principal councillors, also wounded and borne in a similar equipage, had it brought up in front of the other at a point where the road widened, and then putting his head out of the curtain, he looked intently upon his chief, and parted from him with tears in his eyes, with these words: ‘God is very good.’ They then bade each other farewell, united in thought, but unable to say more. This great captain confessed to his intimate friends that this little word from such a friend had raised him up, and turned him into the path of good thoughts and firm resolutions for the future.”[53]

Every misfortune seemed to fall at once upon Coligny. He had lost his brother D’Andelot. The Parliament of Paris had just declared him guilty of lèse-majesté, a traitor and a felon, inviting any one to attack him, with a promise of fifty thousand crowns to any one who should deliver him up, dead or alive; in fact, he had been exposed to several attempts at assassination. Bands of miscreants had burned his château and devastated his domains. Lastly, as if to overwhelm him with a final blow, Pius V. had addressed letters to the king and queen-mother, in which he described him as “a detestable, infamous, and execrable man, if indeed he deserved the name of man!”

Behold, then, this great unfortunate, outlawed by the government of his country, and, in a manner, by the human and divine law, by the chief of (Roman) Catholicity, covered with wounds, despoiled of all he possessed, with mutinied mercenaries, an army struck down by defeat, abandoned by many of his friends, blamed by a great number, and having to contend against adversaries without mercy and without faith! Behold him thus, and then read this letter, so pious and so calm, which he wrote to his children on the 16th of October, 1569, thirteen days after the disaster of Moncontour: it is one of the most beautiful pages of the history of humanity:—

“We must not count upon what is called property, but rather place our hope elsewhere than on earth, and acquire other means than those which we see with our eyes, or touch with our hands. We must follow Jesus Christ, our Chief, who has gone before us. Men have taken from us all they can; if such is always the will of God, we shall be happy, and our condition good, since this loss has happened to us through no injury that has been done to those who caused it, but simply for the hatred borne to me, because it has pleased God to make use of me to help His Church.... For the present, it is enough for me to admonish and conjure you, in the name of God, to persevere with courage in the practice of virtue.”

Coligny did not confine himself to writing: he collected together another army. At his voice, from every mountain of Béarn, of Cevennes, of Dauphiné, of Vivarais, of the county of Foix, there came down intrepid gentlemen, and warlike peasants, who promised to defend their faith and their liberty to the death. He traversed the half of France, passed the Loire, defeated the (Roman) Catholics near Arnay-le-Duc, and marched towards Paris, saying, “The Parisians would incline to peace when they found the war at their gates.”

The court was seized as much with astonishment as with fear, at finding Coligny at the head of a third army, as numerous as those he had lost, and better disciplined. It once more offered conditions of peace, and a treaty was signed at St. Germain-en-Laye, on the 8th of August, 1570. It was more favourable to the Reformed than the preceding ones. It gave them liberty of worship in all the places which were in their possession; in addition, two towns for every province for the celebration of service, an amnesty for the past, equal right of admission to public offices, permission to reside in any part of the kingdom without being molested on account of religion, and four hostage-towns,—La Rochelle, La Charité, Cognac, and Montauban.

The queen Catherine showed herself generous. The (Roman) Catholic historian Davila, who well knew the secrets of this court, assures us that she was agreed with the Cardinal de Lorraine and the duke of Anjou about the project of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. “It was determined,” he says, “to return to the project already formed so many times, and so often abandoned, to free the country of foreign troops, and then to employ artifices to get rid of the chiefs, in the hope that the party would yield of itself, as soon as they saw themselves deprived of this support.”[54]

The Admiral, who suspected nothing, signed the peace with joy. “Rather than again fall back into these disorders,” he said, “I would die a thousand deaths, and be dragged through the streets of Paris.” And so, in effect, he was; but the disorders, far from ceasing, recommenced with fury, and lasted twenty-five years.

XI.

This is the proper place to point out the changes, which had been effected since the wars of religion had begun, both in the position and character of the Reformed, and in their relations with the (Roman) Catholics.

Although still numerous on the south of the Loire, the Reformed had lost much ground. Paris, henceforth, belonged exclusively to the Romish church. Picardy, Normandy, Orleanais, Champagne, all the north, and a considerable portion of the centre of France, now possessed only scattered and timid flocks. The boldest had perished; the least courageous had returned to the dominant communion. A crowd of those who filled public offices, gentlemen and rich citizens, had done the same. The women, also, in order to escape from the brutal violence to which they were subjected, had taken refuge in great number in (Roman) Catholicism, as the last asylum for their chastity.

Another difference, equally important, must be related. At the States-General of Orleans, and at the conference of Poissy, the Reformed might hope to draw the masses to themselves, the Parliaments, even royalty itself; in 1570 they could do so no longer. Every one had clearly chosen his side for the one church or for the other; opinions had become sharply defined and matured; the floating population had disappeared.

Before the wars, proselytism was wholesale; it embraced towns and entire provinces; afterwards, proselytes were rare, being only made one by one, and with infinite trouble: so many were the corpses piled up between the two communions! So many were the bitter enmities and cruel remembrances around the two camps, forbidding communication!

The destiny of the Reformed in France was truly strange and deplorable. Had they not taken arms, they would probably have been exterminated like the Albigeois. In taking up arms, they kindled the fiercest hatred, and dug a pit, which no longer permitted the (Roman) Catholics to approach them.

But even these calamities might have become the source of good for both communions. The Reformed had been instructed by misfortunes. They now understood and proclaimed that two religions might exist in the same state. Resigned to being only a minority, they cited in their writings the arrangements concluded between the rival churches in Germany. They went so far as to invoke the toleration of the Roman pontiff for the Jews, and of the Turks for the Christians. They had renounced the pretension to reign; they only asked for the right to live, and (Roman) Catholicism might have given them that, without putting its ancient prerogatives in danger.

A respected modern historian says upon this subject: “The experience of the edicts of toleration during the peace, and of the mutual efforts of the two parties during the war, had extinguished in them (the Reformed) many illusions as to their strength. They could no longer believe that they were the more numerous, and that fear alone held the masses in apparent conformity with the Romish church. They had, on the contrary, become convinced, that progressive opinions, which called for the exercise of the understanding and of judgment, could only be dominant among the élite of the nation.”[55]

It is therefore a grave error to advance either religious or political necessity in justification of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. Rome had no longer anything to fear for her supremacy, nor the crown for the maintenance of its political power. It was fanaticism, it was the resentment of the past struggles, which led to the crushing of the minority in 1572: it was no state reason.

The piety and the manners of the Reformed had also suffered much from the misfortunes of the time. Without having fallen into the hideous corruption of the court of Catherine, and without giving themselves up to the irregularities, which defiled the (Roman) Catholic clergy, they had lost much of their fervid and simple faith, and of the pious severity of conduct of their earlier years. In surrendering themselves to the spirit of party, religion had been degraded; they adhered, perhaps, the more strongly to their sect; they belonged less to Christianity.

Some Huguenots, who had been incessantly under arms for eight years, could not again settle quietly under their own roofs. They only lived, they only breathed in freedom, in the tumult of camps and the madness of battles. For this reason, Coligny wished to employ them in the war of Brabant. Others, who had only assumed the trade of the soldier for the moment, had learned from it less of brotherly love, and more of the thirst for revenge. Avarice and ambition had returned with the rest. “The consciences of several,” says a contemporary, “began to shake, and there were few who evinced a strong affection for religion; both great and small already thought much of the world, and built many castles in the air.”[56]

The pastors applied themselves to cure these wounds by means of the pious men of their consistories and synods; unhappily the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, and the fresh wars which it excited, left them but little leisure for so great a work.

We have made no mention of the national synods which were convoked after that of 1559, because their acts had no reference to general affairs, and because they were exclusively directed to points of discipline or to private matters, which have no interest for the present time. The second national synod was held at Poitiers, in 1561; the third at Orleans, in 1562; the fourth at Lyons, in 1563; the fifth at Paris, in 1565; the sixth at Verteuil, in 1567. These assemblies were properly severe concerning the preservation of the faith and good order of their flocks.

The seventh national synod, held at La Rochelle, in April, 1571, under the presidency of Theodore de Bèze, was the first of those great assemblies which took place with the full consent of the king. It deserves to be distinguished from the rest from its importance and the extraordinary solemnity, by which it was surrounded. The queen of Navarre, the princes Henry of Béarn and Henry of Condé, the Admiral de Coligny, and the Count Louis of Nassau, were present, and several of these distinguished personages took a direct part in the deliberation in their capacity as deputies of the churches.

The confession of faith of 1559 was then sanctioned and reduced to a uniform text: “Inasmuch as our confession of faith is printed in different ways,” said the members of the assembly, “the synod declares that that is the only true one which was drawn up at the first national synod.” It was determined to make three copies on parchment, of which one should be kept at La Rochelle, the second in Béarn, and the third at Geneva, after being signed by the members, ecclesiastic and lay, of the synod. The two copies of Béarn and La Rochelle were lost during the religious wars.

XII.

An illustrious magistrate of the sixteenth century said, in speaking of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew: “Let it be blotted out from the memory of man!” This wish has not been fulfilled, nor should it ever be; the great crimes of mankind are great lessons!

So far from this event being forgotten, a vast library might be filled with the books which have been written upon it. Authors of every nation—French, Italian, English, German—have devoted long and patient research to this subject. Every word has been weighed, every act commented on; and they have striven to assign to each person his due share of responsibility.

These are questions, which in our day are exhausted in the estimation of the enlightened and honest men of every opinion. Thus no one would now dare to maintain the fable of a plot by Coligny against the king’s life. The thesis of the Abbé de Caveyrac upon salutary rigours, will not be reproduced. The premeditation of the massacre can be no longer seriously denied. The (Roman) Catholic French historians, De Thou, Mézeray, Péréfixe, Maimbourg, all admit it; the Italian historians, Davila, Capilupi, Adriani, Catena, these confidants of Catherine de Medicis, or of the Roman conclave, do more; they admire and extol the premeditation, and see in it a marvellous effect of the blessing of heaven. These, then, are settled points.[57]

But there is another question, which, as it concerns the honour of the French name, as well as the rights of truth, must be considered. Who were the first, and the real authors of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew? We make answer, from researches, of which we will here give a short analysis.

The popes and the king of Spain, who never ceased to demand by their legates, their ambassadors, their public and secret agents, the extermination of the chiefs of the Huguenot party;

Catherine de Medicis, the niece of Clement VII., the woman of Florence, who had been nurtured in the precepts of Machiavel;

The Cardinal de Lorraine, doubly a foreigner by his birth, and in his quality of prince of the Roman church;

His nephew, Henry of Guise, a Lorraine, a young man of twenty-two, who sought to persuade himself that the Admiral was guilty of the death of his father, in order to incite himself to assassinate him, and to become, after his death, the first person in the state;

Albert de Gondi, the Florentine, whom we have already named, who cited the murder of the duke of Orleans, by the duke of Burgundy, as an example to Charles IX., and said it was necessary not to do things by halves, but to kill all, even the young Bourbon princes, the sin being as great for a small as for a great crime;

René Birago, or de Birague, a Milanese adventurer, whom Francis I. had brought to France; he had risen by climbing to the highest offices of the magistracy, and received a cardinal’s hat, as a reward for the part he took in the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. It was this Birago, who went about repeating the atrocious phrase, that to terminate the religious wars “cooks were needed more them soldiers;”

Lastly, Louis de Gonzague, a native of Mantua, and duke of Nevers, a skilful courtier, an indifferent captain, and one of the most eager of his day in promoting assassinations.

Up to this point there was not a single Frenchman [connected with the plot]. But besides Spain and the Papacy, there were two Lorraines, three Italian men, and one Italian woman[58] [engaged in it]. Albert de Gondi was the most intimate of the confidants of Catherine de Medicis. The duke of Guise, Birago, and Louis de Gonzague, formed a second secret council, which decided everything.

There remains, however, three Frenchmen [to be named]: the Marshal de Tavannes, the duke of Anjou, and Charles IX. These alone, with the Lorraines and the Italians, had any influence in the deliberations; the other Frenchmen were but creatures and tools.

The Marshal de Tavannes authorized the crime and helped in its consummation; he even showed himself, after the affair was begun, extremely violent; but in the councils he had spoken with more moderation than his accomplices, and had rejected the proposal to kill the two Bourbon princes.

The duke of Anjou, then in his twentieth year, had been brought up, like his brother, by Gondi, who had taught him to violate faith and to feast himself with spectacles of blood. He was already given up to those unbridled debaucheries, and to those ignoble superstitions, which made him a modern Heliogabalus, and the most abject prince ever seen upon the throne of France. “As for me,” said Charles IX. to Coligny, “I am a Frenchman and king of the French; my brother, the duke of Anjou, speaks only with his head, his eyes, and his shoulders; he is an Italian.”

Charles IX. was the last [to give his adhesion]. The execration of the human race has fallen upon his head, because he held the sceptre on the fatal day, and because, as soon as he smelt the odour of blood, he was maddened to become the executioner of his subjects. But he was not the most guilty. He had moments of candour and generosity; he alone hesitated, and was the only one of this infamous court who felt the pangs of remorse.

“Will there be no pity,” asks M. de Châteaubriand in his Etudes historiques, “for this monarch of twenty-three years of age, born with good talents, with a taste for literature and the arts, a character naturally generous, whom a detestable mother had delighted to deprave by all the abuses of debauchery and power?” Yes, there will be pity for him, even amongst those Huguenots whose fathers he caused to be slaughtered, and with a pious hand they will wipe off the blood which covers his face, to discover in it something that is human.

These were the real authors of the Saint Bartholomew massacre, and this is the manner in which they prepared and accomplished it.

The court saw with displeasure that the chiefs of the Reformed, Jeanne d’Albret, Henry of Bourbon, Henry of Condé, Coligny, Larochefoucauld, Lanoue, Briquemant, and Cavagnes, had retired to La Rochelle, or to their provinces. It was necessary to draw them out, in order to get them into their power. Men of the third party were sent to them, who, without raising their distrust, might induce them to approach nearer to Paris. The Calvinist deputies positively went to court, where they experienced the most favourable reception. Charles IX. behaved not only as a king, who forgets and pardons, but as a prince who was anxious to gratify his discontented subjects. He gave much and promised more; he especially heaped favours upon Téligny, son-in-law of the Admiral, a young man of frank and amiable character, who almost thought that he had found a friend in his master.

However, these chiefs of the second rank were not enough; those of the first rank were necessary, and in order to succeed, the marriage of Margaret of Valois, the sister of Charles IX., with Henry of Béarn was brought forward, a brilliant alliance for the poor house of Navarre, but one which dazzled Jeanne d’Albret but little, because she balanced the vices of the Valois against their fortune. “I would rather,” she said, “descend to be the most humble maiden of France, than sacrifice my soul and that of my son to grandeur.”

The envoys of the court set before her and the chiefs of the party, considerations of another kind. They represented that this marriage would be the best guarantee of a solid peace between the two religions. Coligny allowed himself to be deceived,—he came to believe, in the simplicity of his great heart, that the entire kingdom would be united at the same time as the royal family. Charles IX. indeed declared that he married his sister not only to the prince of Navarre, but to the whole party. “It will be,” he said, “the strongest and the closest bond of peace between my subjects, and a sure testimony of my good-will towards those of the religion.”

Jeanne d’Albret dared resist no longer, she went to Blois in the month of May, 1572, leaving her son behind her, out of a lingering feeling of distrust. “On the day of her arrival,” says L’Estoile, “the king and the queen-mother caressed her with much [apparent tenderness], especially the king, who called her his great-aunt, his all, his best-beloved, and never left her side, and entertained her with so much honour and respect, that every one was astonished.” In the evening, on retiring, he said to the queen his mother, laughing, “And now, madam, what do you say, do I not play my part well?” “Yes,” she answered, “very well; but nothing is well which is not kept up.” “Leave me alone,” said the king, “and you shall see how I will put the bit on them.”[59]

Jeanne d’Albret set out on her journey for Paris on the 15th May. On the 4th June she fell ill; on the 9th she was dead. Had she been poisoned? Many believed so. It was said that a Florentine perfumer, Master René, known by the name of the queen’s poisoner, had sold her some poisoned gloves.

She showed in her last days the same consistent piety, which had adorned her life. She uttered neither complaints nor murmurs in the most cruel accessions of pain; a faith resigned and serene shone through all her sufferings. Her tranquil heroism astonished that court, when in dying they could laugh, but knew not how peacefully to collect themselves before God. She had no regret for her life, but in reflecting on the youth of her son and of her daughter Catherine. “In any case,” she said, “my trust is that God will be to them a father and protector, as He has been to me in my greatest afflictions; I commit them to His Providence to provide for them.” She died at the age of forty-four.

The Admiral Coligny had already gone to court in the autumn of 1571; he returned in July, 1572, in spite of the warnings of many of his friends. “I trust,” he answered them, “to the sincerity and the oath of his majesty.”

In his first interview, Coligny knelt before the king. Charles IX. raised him up, called him his father, and embracing the illustrious old man thrice, said to him, “We have got you now; you shall not escape when you wish; this is the happiest day of my life.”

He opened his councils to the Admiral, and seemed to listen to him with the deference of a son. Coligny laid before him the political plans which had long occupied his thoughts, and which were afterwards adopted by Henry IV. and Cardinal Richelieu—humiliation of the house of Spain; aid to the insurgents of the Low Countries; alliance with the Protestant princes of the empire and of Sweden, in order to become the arbiter of peace and war in Europe. The conquest of the Low Countries was then easy; for the Belgians, out of hatred to Philip II. and the duke of Alba, would have joyfully offered to become an integrant part of the kingdom. If the Admiral’s plan had been followed, France from the sixteenth century would have become the first power in the world, and the entire pages of modern history would have been changed. But the popes, the queen-mother, her advisers, and the Guises prevented it, in spite of Charles IX., who felt at last the instinct of national honour.

The marriage of Margaret of Valois with Henry of Béarn, who had just taken the title of king of Navarre, was celebrated on the 18th August, 1572, and four days were spent in games, festivals, masquerades, and ballets.

On Friday, the 22nd August, Coligny was returning from the Louvre, accompanied by twelve or fifteen gentlemen. He was walking slowly, being engaged in reading a petition, when passing in front of the cloister of Saint Germain, he was struck by three balls shot from an arquebuse, which shattered the forefinger of his left hand, and wounded his left arm. The door of the house whence the arquebuse had been fired, was burst open, but only a laquais and a female servant were found. The murderer had had time to escape: it was Maurevel, formerly a page of the dukes of Guise, and one of their intimates; “the slayer on the king’s wages, the common assassin,” as he is styled by the historians of the epoch.

The surgeon Ambrois Paré examined the Admiral’s wound. It was feared that the copper balls had been poisoned, and Coligny believed he was approaching his last hour. “My friends,” he said, “why do you weep? as for me, I hold myself happy to have received these wounds for the cause of God; pray to Him to strengthen me.”

The news of the crime was spread in a moment throughout Paris, and excited the greatest agitation. The sheriffs (échevins) ordered the captains of the militia to assemble their companies, and to guard the Hôtel de Ville. The king was playing at tennis when he heard of the event, and angrily throwing down his racket, exclaimed, “Shall I never have any peace? Must I witness fresh troubles every day?” This first utterance of his conscience tends to clear his memory; the assassination was the work of the duke of Guise, supported by Catherine and her confidants; it had not been ordered by Charles IX.

The Calvinists gathered in consternation at the dwelling of the Admiral, and held counsel together. They wished to remove him instantly from Paris, but the physicians would not permit it.

The marshals Damville and De Cossé, men of the third party, also came to offer their services to the Admiral. “I have no other regret for what has happened to me,” he said, “but that of being deprived of the opportunity of showing the king the affection I bear to his service. I could have wished,” he added, “to converse a while with the king upon things of great moment for him to know, and which I think there is no one who would dare to tell him.”

In the afternoon, Charles IX. came with the queen-mother, the duke of Anjou, and other personages of the court, to see him. The occurrences at this interview are variously related. Coligny spoke to the king concerning the war of the Low Countries, and the Edict of Pacification; then he discoursed with him for some minutes, in a low voice. Charles IX. and his mother wished to see the ball, which had been extracted from the wound. “You bear the wound,” said the king, “and I the perpetual pain; but, by God’s death, I will take such terrible revenge, that it shall never be forgotten!”

Was his indignation sincere? From the manner in which he addressed the duke Henry of Guise, and from the order given him to quit the court without delay, it may be supposed to have been so. But Catherine and the duke of Anjou represented to the king that the accusation of the murder of the Admiral would certainly ascend to him, notwithstanding anything he might do; that civil war was about to be renewed; and that it was better to fight the battle in Paris, where all the chiefs were assembled, than to encounter the risk of a new campaign. “Well,” said Charles IX., in a fit of frenzy, “since you think the Admiral must be killed, I am willing; but it must be with all the Huguenots, so that there be not one left to reproach me.”

The day of Saturday was spent in preparations, and secret councils. The duke of Guise, who had speedily returned after feigning to depart, arranged matters with the sheriffs, the captains of the quartiers, and the Swiss. “Let every good Catholic,” he said to them, “tie a strip of white linen round his arm, and wear a white cross in his hat.”

The hour drew nigh. Catherine declared to Charles IX. that it was too late to go back; that the moment had come to lop off the gangrened limbs; and, recurring to the language of her cradle, as will happen under the dominion of powerful emotions: “E pietà,” she said, “lor ser crudele, e crudeltà lor ser pietoso (it is pity to be cruel to them, and it would be cruelty to show them pity).”

Charles still hesitated; a cold sweat stood upon his forehead. His mother struck a blow upon the point, on which he was most sensitive. She asked if by his irresolution he would have his courage called in question. The king was indignant at the thought of a suspicion of cowardice. He rose, and cried out: “Well, begin!” It was then half-past one in the morning.

In the king’s chamber there were now only Catherine, Charles IX., and the duke of Anjou. All three preserved a sullen silence. The report of the first pistol was heard. Charles started, and sent word to the duke of Guise to precipitate nothing. It was too late. The queen-mother, distrusting the hesitation of her son, had commanded that the hour for the signal should be anticipated. The great bell of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois began to toll between two and three in the morning of Sunday, the 24th of August. At the sound of the tocsin, armed men rushed out from every door, shouting, “For God and the King!”

The duke of Guise, accompanied by his uncle, the Duke d’Aumale, the Chevalier d’Angoulême, and three hundred soldiers, hastened to the dwelling of the Admiral. They knocked at the first gate in the king’s name. A gentleman opened it: he fell stabbed. The inner gate was then burst in. At the noise of firing Coligny and all his people got up. They attempted to barricade the entry to the apartments; but this feeble rampart crumbled before the onset of the aggressors.

The Admiral had invited his minister Merlin to pray with him. A servant hurried to him terror-stricken: “Sir,” cried he, “the house is broken into, and there are no means of resistance.” “I have long been prepared to die,” answered Coligny. “As for you, save yourselves if you can; for you cannot secure my life. I commend my soul to the mercy of God.”

All reached the upper part of the house, except Nicolas Muss, his German interpreter. Coligny rested against the wall; his wound prevented him from standing upright. The first who entered the room was a Lorraine, or German, named Behem, Besme, a servant of the duke of Guise. “Are you not the Admiral?” he demanded. “Yes, I am,” replied Coligny; and looking without discomposure upon the naked sword of the assassin, [he added]: “Young man, you ought to consider my age and my infirmity; but you will not make my life shorter.” Besme plunged his sword into his breast, and gave him a second blow upon the head. The others finished the murder with their daggers.[60]

Guise was waiting impatiently in the courtyard. “Besme, hast thou done it?” [he shouted]. “It is done, my lord,” [was the reply given]. Monsieur le Chevalier would not believe it unless he saw it with his eyes; “Throw him out of the window,” [was, therefore, the command]. Besme and one of his companions lifted up the body of the Admiral, who still breathing, clutched the window-frame. They flung him into the courtyard. The duke of Guise, wiping off the blood from his face with a handkerchief, said: “I know him, it is he;” and kicking the dead body with his foot, he hastened into the street, exclaiming: “Courage, comrades; we have begun well—now for the rest; the king commands it.”

Sixteen years and four months afterwards, on the 23rd of December, 1588, in the castle of Blois, the corpse of this same Henry of Guise was lying before Henry III., who, in like manner, kicked it in the face. Sovereign justice of God!

Coligny was fifty-five years and a half old. Since the peace of 1570, he every morning and evening read the sermons of Calvin upon the book of Job, saying that this history was his help and consolation in all his troubles. He also spent several hours of the day in writing his memoirs. These papers having been brought to the council after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, were burned by the king’s order, lest they might increase regret for his death.

Some time after this event, when the English ambassador expressed his grief for the murder of Coligny, Catherine made answer to him: “Do you know that the Admiral recommended the king, as a matter of the last importance, to keep under the king of Spain, and also your mistress (Queen Elizabeth), as much as possible?” “Very true, madam,” replied the ambassador; “he was a bad Englishman, but a good Frenchman.”

Let us also cite a saying of Montesquieu: “The Admiral Coligny was assassinated, having only had the glory of the state at heart.”

XIII.

We are willing, whilst fulfilling our task, to abridge as far as possible the details of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.

When the sun of the 24th of August rose upon Paris, all was tumult, disorder, and carnage; rivers of blood flowed in the streets; corpses of men, women, and children blocked up the doorways; on all sides groans, blasphemies, death-cries, and imprecations, were heard; ruffians by thousands insulted their victims before butchering them, and then loaded themselves with the spoils; the poniard, the pike, the knife, the sword, the arquebuse, every weapon of the soldier and the brigand, were brought into the service of this execrable slaughter; and the vile populace running after the murderers, finished the Huguenots, by mutilating them and dragging them in the mire, by a cord round the neck, to have their share also in this feast of cannibals.

At the Louvre, the Huguenots, brought up one after another between a double line of halberts, fell bleeding before they reached the end; and the ladies of the court, well worthy to be the mothers, the wives, and the sisters of assassins, came to gloat over the bodies of the victims.

It has been remarked that of so many brave men, who had a thousand times faced death on the field of battle, there was but one, Taverny, who sought to defend himself; and even he was a lawyer. The rest presented their throats to the poniard like women. A crime so monstrous overwhelmed their minds, and paralyzed their hands; and before they could recover themselves, they were no more.

Some, however, who lived on the other side of the Seine, in the faubourgs Saint Germain, Montgomery, Rohan, Ségur, and La Ferrière, had time to comprehend their position and to escape. It was then that the king, maddened with fury, seized an arquebuse and fired at Frenchmen. Two hundred and twenty-seven years afterwards, Mirabeau picked the arquebuse of Charles IX. out of the dust of centuries, to turn it against the throne of Louis XVI.

On the same Sunday morning, the king sent for Henry of Navarre and Henry of Condé. He said to them in a ferocious tone: “The mass, death, or the Bastille.” After some resistance, the princes consented to make profession of the Romish faith; but neither the court nor the people believed in the sincerity of their abjuration.

The massacre lasted four days. It was necessary to clothe it with a pretext before France and Europe. At first it was endeavoured to throw the burthen upon the Guises, but they refused [to bear it]. Next a pretended conspiracy of the Huguenots against Charles IX. and his family was invented. There were tergiversations of every kind, fabrications, which could not be maintained for an hour, confessions, which were retracted on the following day, orders and counter-orders to the governors in the provinces: a miserable play of the actors after the tragic scene.

On Thursday, when the blood of the victims deluged the streets of Paris, the clergy celebrated an extraordinary jubilee, and made a general procession. They even determined to consecrate an annual feast to a triumph so glorious; and whilst the (Roman) Catholic pulpits re-echoed with thanksgivings, a medal was struck with this legend: “Piety has awakened Justice!” The massacre of Saint Bartholomew was renewed in the provinces, and horrible to say, it lasted more than six weeks.

We would collect with a religious care the names of those governors who refused to imbrue their hands in these massacres. The Viscount d’Orte, at Bayonne; the Count de Tende, in Dauphiné; Saint Héran, in Auvergne; Chabot Charny and the President Jeannin, at Dijon; La Guiche, at Mâçon; de Rieux, at Narbonne; Matignon, at Alençon; Villars, at Nismes; the Count de Carce, in Provence; and the Montmorencys in their demesnes and governments.

We delight also, to be able to inscribe in this list the name of a priest, Jean Hennuyer, bishop of Lisieux. When the lieutenant of the king imparted to him the order for the massacre of the Huguenots, he answered: “No, no, sir, I oppose, and will always oppose the execution of such an order. I am the pastor of Lisieux, and these people, whom you command me to slaughter, are my flock. Although they have at present strayed, having quitted the pasture which Jesus Christ, the Sovereign Shepherd, has confided to my care, they may still come back. I do not see in the Gospel that the shepherd can permit the blood of his sheep to be shed; on the contrary, I find there, that he is bound to give his blood and his life for them.” Upon this the governor asked him for his own acquittance for a refusal in writing, and this the bishop Hennuyer gave him.[61]

The blow fell upon the provinces with a variable force. In those where the Reformed were few in number, as in Brittany, Picardy, Champagne and Burgundy, no great excesses were committed. In certain cantons of the provinces, on the contrary, where they were very numerous, as in Saintonge, and in Lower Languedoc, they did not dare to attack them. It is important also to observe, that in general, Saint Bartholomew’s day was nowhere so kept, but in the towns. This explains why so many Calvinists escaped death.

The faithful of Meaux were butchered in the prisons during several days, and the sword being too slow, iron hammers were employed. Four hundred houses, in the most handsome quarter of the town, were pillaged and devastated.

At Troyes, the executioner had more humanity than the governor, who gave him the command to massacre the prisoners. “It is against my duty,” said he, “for I have not learned to execute any one without a sentence of condemnation being first passed.” There were other executioners, who, finding their hearts fail them in the midst of the butchery, sent for wine to strengthen them for their work.

At Orleans, where there still remained three thousand Calvinists, men on horseback cried throughout the streets: “Courage, friends, kill all, and then you shall pillage their goods.” The most ruffianly were those who had abjured in the last wars; they parodied the psalms, whilst they immolated those whose faith they had forsworn.

At Rouen, many Huguenots took to flight; the rest were cast into prison. The massacre began only on the 17th September, and lasted four days. The prisoners were called over by their names, from a list given to the murderers. There perished, according to the relation of Crespin, near six hundred persons.

At Toulouse, the events of Paris were made known on Sunday, the 31st August. The gates of the town were instantly closed, and the Reformed, who had gone to celebrate their worship at the village of Castanet, were only admitted one by one, by little posterns. They were taken to the prisons and the convents. There they remained a month. It was not till the 3rd October that they were executed, by order of the chief president Dafis. Three hundred perished, amongst whom were five councillors, who after they were killed, were hanged in their robes on the great elm, which stood before the court of the palace.

The massacre of Bordeaux was delayed like that of Toulouse, and during these hesitations, a Jesuit named Augier declaimed every day from his pulpit against the pusillanimity of the governor. At length, companies of assassins were organized: they had the name of “the red, or cardinal band,” bestowed upon them.

The towns of Bourges, Angers, and many others, witnessed similar scenes. But these were trifling by the side of the massacres of Lyons: here there was a second Saint Bartholomew, more frightful still than that of Paris, because it was conducted with a sort of regularity. The governor Mandelot gave orders that the Calvinists should be shut up in the prisons of the Archbishoprics, of the Cordeliers, and of the Célestins, and be slaughtered in detachments. The executioner of Lyons, like his brother of Troyes, refused to lend his hand to the work. “After sentence,” said he, “I will do what I have to do; there are but too many such executioners as are needed residing in the town.” A writer says upon this subject: “What a re-establishment of order it would have been, if in this unhappy city the governor had been the executioner, and the executioner the governor!”[62]

There perished at Lyons, according to some, eight hundred, according to others, thirteen hundred, fifteen hundred, or eighteen hundred, Huguenots. The dwellers on the borders of the Rhone, in Dauphiné, and in Provence, stood aghast at the sight of so many corpses floating on the waters, or thrown up on the banks of the river; many were tied to long poles, and horribly mutilated. “At Lyons,” says Capilupi, a gentleman attached to the court of the pope, “thanks to the excellent order and singular prudence of M. de Mandelot, governor of the town, all the Huguenots were taken one after the other like sheep.”[63]

The correspondence of Mandelot has recently been published. He expressed his deep regret to Charles IX. that a few Huguenots had escaped, and supplicated his majesty to grant him a share of the spoils of the dead. Lyons has witnessed other massacres, but we have not learned that the proconsuls of the Convention held out their hands to clutch the wages of blood.

What was the number of victims throughout France? De Thou says 30,000; Sully, 70,000; the bishop Péréfixe, 100,000. This last figure is probably exaggerated, if we reckon those only who met with a violent death. But if there be added those who died of misery, hunger, grief, the aged, who were helpless and abandoned, women without shelter, children without bread, the many wretched beings, whose lives were shortened by this great catastrophe, it will be confessed that the number given by Péréfixe is still below the truth.

The sensation produced by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew throughout Europe was immense. Men were unwilling to believe the first accounts. When they were confirmed, all the courts, all the churches, all the public places, every house resounded with acclamations; and there was not a hut, into which the deeds done on that day did not carry, according to the sentiments of the inhabitants, the exultations of joy, or the stupor of overwhelming grief.

Many thought, at first, that it was only the first scene of a vast conspiracy, and that the (Roman) Catholic powers had resolved to exterminate all the Protestants of Europe. The Papacy, Philip II., and the court of Charles IX., in fact never ceased to talk of the complete extirpation of heretics: the power, not the will, was wanting.

At Rome, the news of the massacre, which Charles IX. had announced in ambiguous words to the legate, was expected, and received with transports of joy. The messenger was gratified with a present of a thousand pieces of gold. He brought a letter from the nuncio Salviati, written on the very day, the 24th August, in which this priest said to Gregory XIII., that “he blessed God to see his pontificate commence so auspiciously.” The king Charles IX., and the queen Catherine, were praised for having shown so much prudence in extirpating this pestilent race, and for having so well chosen their time that all the rebels had been secured under lock and key, as in a dovecot (sotto chiave, in gabbia).

After having offered up solemn thanksgivings with the college of cardinals, the pope caused the guns of the castle of Saint Angelo to be fired, declared a jubilee, and struck a medal in honour of the great event. The Cardinal de Lorraine, who had gone to Rome on the election of the new pontiff, also celebrated the massacre by a great procession to the French church of Saint Louis. He caused an inscription to be written on the gates in letters of gold, in which he said that “the Lord had granted the prayers, which he had offered to Him for twelve years!”

Madrid shared in the rejoicings of Rome. Philip II. wrote to Catherine that this was the greatest and best news that could ever be announced to him. This prince, who has been surnamed “the Demon of the South,” had other reasons for his joy besides fanaticism.

In the Low Countries, the duke of Alba cried out, on learning the assassination of Coligny: “The Admiral is dead; there is a great captain the less for France, and a great enemy the less for Spain.”

But how shall we relate the impression produced by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew in Protestant countries? It may be seen in the letters of Theodore de Bèze, and others of his contemporaries, that, for more than a year, they could not chase from their minds that bloody and horrible image, and that they spoke of it with a trembling, which attested the profound shock which their souls [had sustained].

Germany, England, Switzerland, in witnessing the arrival of a multitude of fugitives appalled and half-dead, and on hearing from their mouth the narrative of the massacres, cursed the name of France. At Geneva, a day of abstinence and prayer was instituted, which has been kept up to this day. In Scotland, all the pastors preached upon the massacre of Saint Bartholomew; and the aged Knox, borrowing the language of the prophets, pronounced in a church at Edinburgh the following words: “The sentence is gone forth against this murderer, the king of France, and the vengeance of God will not be withdrawn from his house. His name shall be held in execration by posterity; and no one who shall spring from his loins, shall possess the kingdom in peace, unless repentance come to prevent the judgment of God.”

The ambassador Lamothe-Fénélon, charged to justify the massacre at the court of London, on accusing the Admiral of having conspired against Charles IX., cried out in the bitterness of his spirit that he blushed to bear the name of a Frenchman. “Never,” says Hume, “was there a spectacle more terrible and more touching than that of the solemnity of this audience. A gloomy grief sat on every countenance; the profound silence of night seemed to reign in all the apartments of the queen. The lords and ladies of the court, in long mourning apparel, suffered the ambassador to pass between them without saluting him, or deigning to give him so much as a look.”[64] On coming near the queen, Lamothe-Fénelon stammered out his odious apology, and retired in confusion.

The justification of the massacre was not an easier matter in Germany. The ambassador Schomberg did what he could to support the fable of the plot of Coligny. They refused even to treat with him otherwise than in writing, so much did they mistrust an envoy of Charles IX.; so deeply degraded was the word, the honour, and the name of France! When the duke of Anjou traversed Germany in 1573, the Elector Palatine led him into his cabinet, and showing him the portrait of Coligny, said to him, “You know this man; you have killed the greatest captain of Christendom, and you ought not to have done it; for he had rendered great services to you and the king.” The duke of Anjou answered that it was the Admiral who had sought to destroy them all. “We know that tale, sir,” was the cold reply of the Elector.

If all the circumstances of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew be well weighed,—the premeditation, the intervention of the court and of the councils of the king, the snares that were laid to entrap the Calvinists, the solemn oaths which had drawn them to Paris, the royal marriage ceremony stained with blood, the dagger put into the hands of the people by the chiefs of the state, the hecatombs of human victims immolated at a time of universal peace, the carnage prolonged for two months in the provinces, and lastly, the priests and the princes of the priests, ankle-deep in blood, lifting their hands to heaven to thank God,—if, we say, we ponder upon all these circumstances, we cannot escape the conviction that the slaughter of Saint Bartholomew is the greatest crime of the Christian era since the invasion of the men of the North. The Sicilian Vespers, the extermination of the Albigeois, the tortures of the Inquisition, the murders committed by the Spaniards in the New World, odious though they be, do not unite in the same degree the violation of all laws, human and divine. And frightful calamities have sprung from this monstrous crime. Individuals may indeed commit crimes, which remain unpunished in this world; but dynasties, castes, and nations, never go unrewarded.

The race of the Valois was exterminated by the poniard, and nearly every actor in the massacre of Saint Bartholomew perished by a violent death.[65]

In France, the detestable reign of Henry III. followed, together with ignoble and brutal manners, laws despised, the madness of the League, and twenty-five years of civil war. Abroad, every old and natural alliance was broken off; Protestant Switzerland, Germany, England, were against France, or wrapped themselves in a suspicious neutrality; the country was at length reduced to a depth of opprobrium, submitting to the tutelage of the king of Spain, and of humbly begging for an army at Madrid. The great reigns of Henry IV. and of Richelieu could scarcely restore her to that place in Europe which she had lost, and they only restored her by a policy diametrically opposed to that of Saint Bartholomew’s day.

Where then was the compensation for so much disgrace, and so many misfortunes? One there was, if any chose to invoke it. Without the deeds of Saint Bartholomew’s day, the French Reformation, notwithstanding the losses it had suffered, would still have constituted an imposing minority; half the nobility of the kingdom would have remained in the new communion. It is doubtful whether Henry IV. would have abjured. In any case, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes would have been impossible, and there might have been, in our time, with the progress of population, five or six millions of the Reformed in France. The massacre of that day, by murder, emigration, and abjuration, inflicted a wound, from which France has never recovered. Is this a justification of the crime?

But we would deprive those, who would dare appeal to it, of even this resource. “The execrable day of Saint Bartholomew,” says Châteaubriand, “only made martyrs; it gave to philosophical ideas an advantage over religious ideas, which have never since been lost.”[66]

Thus there have been some millions of Protestants the less, and several millions of philosophers or atheists the more; that is the balance of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. What then did the priests gain by diminishing the number of the disciples of Luther and Calvin, in order to increase that of the followers of Montaigne and Voltaire? They gained the anti-Catholic reaction of the eighteenth century, the hostility of the Constituent Assembly, the massacres of the Abbaye, the proscriptions of 1793; and what besides?—the spirit of our own epoch. This spirit, which has passed from France into Italy, has not yet said its last word to (Roman) Catholicism!

XIV.

The Calvinists, who had survived the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, now only thought of organizing their means of defence. In Cevennes, Rouergue, Vivarais, and Dauphiné, they had the refuge of their mountains. In the plains of the south, fifty towns, large and small, Aubenas, Anduze, Milhau, Sommières, Privas, closed their gates, and resolved to oppose a desperate resistance to the king’s troops. At Nismes, the inhabitants were summoned to admit a garrison, but they refused, notwithstanding they were most vehemently threatened. A councillor, M. de Clausonne, “a man of great credit in the district,” says Jean de Serres, “had made them understand that firmness alone could save them.”

Some gentlemen and pastors, gathered together at Montauban, even drew up a project of religious and political federation, “until it should please God to change the heart of the king, or to raise up a liberator for this poor afflicted people.” Every town was to appoint a council of one hundred persons, without distinction of nobles, citizens, or peasants, to direct all affairs of justice, police, taxes, and war, and these councils were to elect a general chief. The utmost severity was recommended to be employed towards the seditious in arms; but they were to exercise moderation and gentleness towards peaceable (Roman) Catholics.

Catherine de Medicis and Charles IX. were then in a condition to become convinced that they were egregiously deceived in supposing that all would be at an end when the principal Calvinist leaders were no more. They had reckoned too much upon the strength of the old principle of vassalage, and not enough on the power of religious principle. The Reformation had given the feeling of a personal conscience to the humblest, which could but emanate from God, and this new sort of independence prepared the way for the advent of modern right.

Wheresoever resistance was possible, it showed itself, more decisively and obstinately than before; for in the prince they now saw only an enemy. The siege of Sancerre has remained famous. This little town held out for more than ten months against the royalist army, although the inhabitants, wanting fire-arms, were compelled to defend themselves with simple slings, which were called the arquebuses of Sancerre. It endured a famine, which brought back the recollection of that of Jerusalem, in the time of Titus and Vespasian. An eyewitness, the pastor Jean de Léry, has written the details of this siege, day by day. The inhabitants were reduced to feed upon snails, moles, and wild herbs, upon bread made with the flour of straw, mixed with slate-dust, harness of horses, and even the parchment of old books and title-deeds, which were steeped in water. “I have seen some served up,” says Léry, “on which the printed and written characters were still visible, and one might read from the pieces placed upon the table to be eaten.”

Moreover, from hour to hour the besieged fell from inanition. The war killed but eighty-four; hunger destroyed more than five hundred. “The young children under twelve years,” says Jean de Serres, “almost all died. It was lamentable to hear the wailings of the poor fathers and mothers, of whom nevertheless the greater part fortified themselves by the assurance of the grace of God. A boy of ten years old, drawing nigh unto death, seeing his parents weeping near him, and handling his arms and legs, which were as dry as wood, said to them: ‘Why do you weep to see me die of hunger? I do not ask you for bread, mother. I know you have none. But since God wills that I must thus die, we must be content. The holy Lazarus, did he not suffer hunger? Have I not read that in the Bible?’ Saying these words, he gave up his soul to God.”[67]

The inhabitants had resolved to perish to the last man, sooner than give themselves up to the cut-throats of Saint Bartholomew’s day. “Here we fight,” they said; “go and assassinate elsewhere.” An unexpected event delivered them. Deputies, who came from Poland to offer the crown of Jagellons to the duke of Anjou, interceded in their behalf, and the sureties they demanded were granted to them.

It was the same at La Rochelle. This town, which by its ancient municipal franchises, formed a kind of republic, and by its numerous vessels, equalled the forces of the royal navy, refused to receive a garrison. Fifty-five pastors of Poitou and of Saintonge, and a multitude of gentlemen, citizens, and peasants, had, on the first news of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, sought an asylum behind its lofty walls, all of whom were determined to defend themselves to the death. The proposals made to the people of La Rochelle having ended in nothing, and the besieging army having lost many men, Charles IX. took the strange course of sending a Calvinist negotiator and governor into the town, the upright Lanoue.

François de Lanoue, surnamed Bras-de-Fer, who had only figured in the second rank in the Huguenot armies, became their most distinguished chief after the death of Coligny. He was a man of a wise and penetrating mind, of a generous character, and of perfect loyalty. He was ever seen in these unhappy wars, forgetful of danger, intrepid without boasting, modest in victory, calm and serene under reverses. He was the Catinat of the sixteenth century.

From the peculiarity of his military life, Lanoue was four or five times made a prisoner. He bore this misfortune like a soldier who had deserved a better fate, and the (Roman) Catholics had learned to esteem him. Not one of the Reformed, without excepting even Coligny, has obtained from them so much praise. Two Jesuits, Maimbourg and Daniel, do homage to his rare virtues; they regret nothing in him but his heresy. The ferocious Montluc calls him as valiant and prudent a man as any captain in France; the frivolous Brantôme says it was impossible to grow tired of recounting his virtues, his valour, and his merits; the sceptic Montaigne praises his constancy as well as the gentleness of his manners. Lastly, when Lanoue died, Henry IV. pronounced over him, in a few words, the most beautiful of funeral orations: “He was a great warrior, and a still better man!”

During one of his long captivities, he composed some political and literacy discourses, of which a part form what are called his Memoirs. They are written in a terse, nervous style, in the language of a soldier and of an honest man, who speaks to do good, not to acquire applause.

Lanoue was a prisoner of the duke of Alva during the days of the Saint Bartholomew slaughter: it was this that saved him. Restored to liberty, he was charged by the king with the duty of offering conditions of peace to La Rochelle. He was personally well received, but his mission was rejected, and the inhabitants defended themselves until the arrival of the Polish deputies.

The duke of Anjou, who commanded the royal army, was annoyed at losing his troops and his reputation in this long siege, and waited impatiently for an opportunity of withdrawing without excessive disgrace. This was offered him by his election to the crown of Poland.

A new edict, published the 11th August, 1573, authorized the public exercise of the Reformed religion, but in three towns only—La Rochelle, Montauban, and Nismes. The lords high-justices were only allowed to celebrate marriages, baptisms, and sacraments, at private meetings, which were not to exceed ten persons. For all other Calvinists, nothing but the simple liberty of household worship was permitted. It was in this edict that the expression of “pretended Reformed religion,” was first used.

This was but one of those half-measures, contradictory in principle, and impracticable in action, which only served to exasperate the minds [of the persons concerned], and to augment the embarrassments of the case. If the worship of the Reformed religion was a crime, it ought to have been everywhere forbidden; if not, it should have been nowhere forbidden. And what was this arbitrary limitation of certain assemblies to ten persons? How could Calvinists be prevented from meeting together in places where they were in power? Did they purpose to place a garrison in every town and every village of the south, and post soldiers in all the gorges of the mountains?

The Reformed of Montauban drew up, on the 24th August, a year after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, energetic remonstrances, day by day, in which they re-demanded all that had been accorded them by the treaty of 1570, and three noblemen undertook to present this petition to Charles IX. The king, whom they met at Villers-Coterets, contrary to his usual habit, listened to the reading of the memorial without giving utterance to a word. But Catherine exclaimed, in an irritated tone of voice, “If your prince Condé were still alive, and if he were in the heart of France with twenty thousand cavalry and fifty thousand infantry, he could not demand one-half of what these people have the insolence to propose to us.”

This was haughty language; but pride tells badly after infamous assassinations, and Catherine de Medicis was in no position to speak in so high a tone. There was nothing but trouble and anarchy throughout the kingdom; and even in the royal family division and disorder prevailed. The queen-mother feared the eldest of her sons, despised the youngest, loved only the second, who was on the point of starting for Poland, and was distrusted by all of them.

The three brothers were enemies, and their sister Margaret of Valois was stained with adultery and incest.

The party of the Politicians, or the Third Estate, was growing. It was composed of those, who had retained some remembrance of ancient national honour, and who felt profound disgust for a court filled with hired assassins, poisoners, astrologers, and prostitutes. The three sons of the Constable, François de Montmorency, Damville, and Thoré, the marshals Cossé and Biron, several provincial governors, magistrates, and members even of the privy council, were among the number of these politicians or malcontents. Their chief was the Duke d’Alençon, since known under the name of Duke d’Anjou, the last of Queen Catherine’s sons. His position as the king’s brother gave him credit; but this prince, then in his twentieth year, was wanting both in mental and bodily vigour, he was fickle, presumptuous, faithless to his word, and ready to throw himself into great enterprises, which he was incapable of carrying out to a successful issue.

He even circulated among the citizens new maxims of law and political liberty. It was at this period that La Boëtie published his treatise on Voluntary Servitude, which even now astonishes us by its boldness; and François Hotman his Franco-Gallia, in which he maintained that the States-General might depose bad princes, and appoint their successors.

These malcontents opened negotiations with the Calvinists, who had strengthened their bond of union at Milhau, on the 16th of December, 1573, by promising fraternity, mutual, perfect, and eternal, in all things, civil and religious. They had provided in their act of union for the regular convocation of their assemblies every six months, a new judicial code, and the course to be adopted in raising men and money. This was a state within the state; a sad but inevitable consequence of the overthrow of all law by the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. Charles IX. died in the midst of these troubles, beset by vague and sombre terrors, believing that he heard groans in the air, starting up out of his sleep at night, and affected with a strange malady, which caused his blood to ooze through every pore.

“Two days before his death, he had near him,” says D’Estoile, “his nurse, whom he much loved, although she was a Huguenot. As she was seated upon a box, and was just beginning to doze, she heard the king murmur, weep, and sigh, which induced her softly to approach his bed, when, drawing aside the curtains, the king, heaving a profound sigh, and weeping so much that his sobs interrupted his utterance, began to say to her: ‘Ah! my nurse, my nurse, what blood and what murders! Oh! that I should have followed such wicked counsel! O my God! pardon me, and have mercy upon me, if it please Thee; I know not where I am. What shall I do? I am lost, I see plain enough.’ The nurse replied to him: ‘Sire, these murders are upon those, who have caused you to commit them! And since you did not give your consent, and you now regret them, believe that God will not impute them to you, but will cover them with the mantle of His Son’s righteousness, in which alone you must take refuge.’ After this, she having fetched him a pocket-handkerchief, because his own was wet with tears, and his majesty having taken it in his hand, he signed her to retire and leave him to repose.”[68]

Charles IX. died on the 30th of May, 1574, not having yet attained the age of twenty-four years, and rejoicing, he said, that he left no male heir of tender age, inasmuch as he would have had too much to suffer.

XV.

Catherine de Medicis resumed the regency, which she had never really abdicated, and endeavoured to negotiate with the Calvinistic party and the malcontents, until the arrival of her second son, whom we shall now call Henry III. He escaped from Poland as from a prison. During his journey he received some good advice from the Emperor Maximilian, the doge of Venice, and even from the dukes of Savoy, who recommended him to re-establish peace in his kingdom by equitable edicts, which should be faithfully observed; but he derived no profit from these counsels.

Arrived in France in the month of September, 1574, Henry III. was joined by his mother at Bourgoin, and made with her a triumphal entry into Lyons. The Duke d’Alençon and the king of Navarre, who were free in appearance, but in reality captives, followed them. It was there that the course of conduct to be pursued towards the Calvinists and the politicians was discussed. Several members of the council,—Pibrac, Bellegarde, Christophe de Thou, Paul de Foix,—inclined to the side of moderation and compromise; but Catherine and her Italian confidants, Retz, Nevers, and Birague, held opposite views, and their opinion biassed that of Henry III. This prince, who was but twenty-three years of age, had shown some marks of courage before the treaty of 1570. He did not want for ability in business, nor for dignity and grace when he appeared in public. Unhappily, he had been corrupted by the voluptuousness of the court. He passed long hours in bedecking himself like a woman, and dishonoured the dignity of his manhood, and the majesty of a king, by riotous debauchery. The creatures by whom he was surrounded, led him into a contemptible and shameful indolence, and the baseness of his vices was only equalled by the extravagance of his superstition.

On his return to France, he joined the brotherhood of the Flagellants or Frères-Battus of Avignon; and in a solemn procession, he led the white, Catherine the black, and Cardinal d’Armagnac the blue order of these Frères-Battus. They went through the city with naked feet, uncovered heads, with chaplets of death-bones at their girdles, and making blood spirt from their shoulders with cords. Some historians have been desirous of discovering political reasons under these ignoble masquerades. What is the use of going so far to seek for what is so near? Between the excess of depravity and the extreme of bigotry, there is a singular and close relationship.

In the month of December, the Cardinal de Lorraine caught a fever, from the effects of which he died. The queen-mother, whom history accuses of having been on too intimate terms with him, could not assume on this occasion her habitual dissimulation. On seating herself at table the same evening, as they handed her a glass, she began to tremble so much that it had almost fallen from her hands, and she exclaimed, “Jesus! it is the cardinal that I see.” During the night, for more than a month, she would not remain alone, being incessantly followed by this melancholy apparition, and saying to her women, “Drive away that cardinal; do you not see that he beckons me with his finger?” What was it that had passed between her and this priest that a woman like Catherine de Medicis should have been so terrified at his death?

At Paris Henry III. continued his devotional practices; his was the religion not of a king, but of a besotted monk. He caused oratories (otherwise called paradis) to be erected in the churches, where he took his place every day during Lent. He also followed the processions dressed in a false wig and ridiculous costume, and in the company of a fool called Sibillot, “the greatest scoundrel,” says Jean de Serres, “that could be found in France, who walked between his master and Cardinal de Ferrara; and whilst the priests sang the burden of their hymn Ora pro nobis, this fool was grinning and uttering silly jests, and playing ridiculous antics.” After this, Henry III. would proceed in his carriage with the queen his wife, through the streets, and by the houses of Paris, purchasing little dogs, monkeys, and other rare animals, for which he was made to pay their weight in gold.

At the end of six months he was despised even by the dregs of the people, and by his domestics. A placard in the following terms was distributed throughout the city: “Henry, by the grace of his mother, inert king of France, porter of the Louvre, churchwarden of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, harlequin of the churches of Paris, plaiter of his wife’s collars, and her hair-dresser, guardian of the four mendicants, conscript father of the Blancs-Battus, and protector of the Capuchins.”

The number of malcontents still increased, and made more direct proposals of alliance to the Calvinists. They were divided as to the course which they ought to adopt. On one side were the Consistorial Reformed, as they were called, on the other, the nobles, great personages, magistrates, and councillors of the towns. This distinction had already been made in the first wars, and it became more marked in those which followed.

The Consistorials, composed mostly of clergymen, principally occupied themselves with the interests of the faith, and only wished to perform their duties quietly. Tradesmen and merchants, for the most part considering these questions under their most simple aspect, and deciding upon them in a religious point of view, felt more repugnance than the others to taking up arms, and only did so at the last extremity, when they were absolutely prevented from serving God according to their conscience; nevertheless when they were once on the battle-field, they would not accept peace without a sufficient guarantee for the liberty of the church. The nobles, on the contrary, always on the alert to raise levies, were more ready to compromise religious differences, and looked mainly to their personal position in the state. The Consistorials were the strongest in number, but the weakest in rank; they were habitually compelled to submit to the domination of the Calvinist nobility, and to share their fortunes.

This was the result of their alliance with the malcontents. It was concluded in Languedoc, notwithstanding the opposition of the Consistorials, and the consequences of it were soon apparent. “The dissoluteness and strange scandals of the politicians, who were mixed with the religious orders,” says a contemporary, “finished by extinguishing whatever warmth of affection for piety and discipline remained to them. Marshal Damville cared but little to observe the conditions promised by him, and included in the association. However, he made use of fair expressions to the clergy and others; but debauchery advanced, and flowed along far and wide, like a torrent. Exactions and brigandage perceptibly increased.”[69] The war continued with varying results, and without any decisive battle being fought. The heroic defence of the small town of Livron, in Dauphiné, has been related. When Henry III. presented himself before its gates in the month of January, 1575, the besieged called out from the ramparts, “Ah! murderers, you shall not stab us in our beds, as you did the Admiral and others. Bring out these bedaubed and perfumed favourites; let them see if they can hold up their heads, even against our women!” Henry III. was compelled to swallow this insult; two-thirds of his little army perished before the town, and the siege was raised. The prince of Condé and the king of Navarre, who had been retained at court since the events of Saint Bartholomew’s day, succeeded in making their escape, and abjured ( one at Strasbourg, the other at Tours) the (Roman) Catholic faith, which, under fear of assassination, had been imposed upon them. The Duke d’Alençon himself took refuge in his appanage of Dreux, and published a manifesto, in which he took the French of both religions under his safeguard.

Having no longer either men or money wherewith to oppose the confederates, who threatened to march on Paris, the court endeavoured to gain over the chiefs of the Third Estate, by offering them personal advantages, and submitting very favourable articles of peace to the Calvinists—free exercise of their religion throughout the kingdom, except at Paris, and within a circle of two leagues; admission to all public offices; equal numbers in the Parliaments: eight places of surety; the right to open schools and convoke synods; the restoration of the memory of Coligny; and, in short, the re-establishment of the king of Navarre, of the prince of Condé, and of the nobles of the religion in their appanages and governments. This treaty, called the Peace of Monsieur, because it had been concluded under the guarantee of the king’s brother, was signed at Chastenoy, on the 6th of May, 1576.