Note 1041 — Chapter XVIII · (continued 2)

The incident of Charles IX.'s firing upon the Huguenots has been of late the subject of much discussion. M. Fournier and M. Méry have denied the existence, in 1572, of the pavilion at which tradition makes the king to have stationed himself. See Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. français, v. (1857) 332, etc. It has, I think, been conclusively shown that they are mistaken. The pavilion was in existence. But, besides, there is no reason why an incident should be deemed apocryphal because of a popular mistake in assigning the spot of its occurrence. The "Reveille-Matin" and the Eusebii Philadelphi Dialogi, published in 1574, are the earliest documents that refer to it. They place Charles at the window of his own room. So does Brantôme, writing considerably later. Jean de Serres (in the fourth vol. of his Commentaria de statu, etc. (fol. 37), published in 1575) says: "Regem quoque ex hypæthrio (i.e., from a covered gallery) aiunt, adhibitis, ut solebat, diris contenta voce conclamare, et tormento etiam ipsum ejaculari." Agrippa d'Aubigné alludes to it not only in his Histoire universelle (ii. 19, 21), but in his Tragiques (Bulletin, vii. 185), a poem which he commenced as early as in 1577 (See Bulletin, x. 202). M. Henri Bordier has been so fortunate as to discover and has reprinted a contemporary engraving of the massacre, in which Charles is represented as excitedly looking on the slaughter from a window in the Louvre, while behind him stand two halberdiers and several noblemen (Bulletin, x. 106, 107). The question is discussed in an able and exhaustive manner by MM. Fournier, Ludovic Lalanne, Bernard, Berty, Bordier, and others, in the Bulletin, v. 332-340; vi. 118-126; vii. 182-187; x. 5-11, 105-107, 199-204.