Volume 2 / Book 2 — CHAPTER XIX.

THE MASSACRE IN THE PROVINCES, AND THE RECEPTION OF THE TIDINGS ABROAD.

The massacre in the provinces.

The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day would have been terrible enough had it been confined to Paris, for its victims in that single city were to be reckoned by thousands. Charles the Ninth himself, on the third day, admitted in a letter to Mondoucet, his envoy in the Netherlands, that "a very great number of the adherents of the new religion who were in this city had been massacred and cut to pieces."[1079] But this was little in comparison with the multitudes that were yet to lose their lives in other parts of France. Here, however, the enterprise assumed a different character. Not only did it not commence on the same day as in the capital, but it began at different dates in different places. It is evident that there had been no well-concerted plan long entertained and freely communicated to the governors of the provinces and cities. On the contrary, the greatest variety of procedure prevailed—all tending, nevertheless, to the same end of the total destruction of the Protestants. And this was intended from the very moment the project of the Parisian butchery was hastily and inconsiderately adopted by the king. Charles meant to be as good as his word when he announced his determination that not a single Huguenot should survive to reproach him with what he had done. More frightful than his most passionate outburst of bloodthirsty frenzy is the cool calculation with which he, or the minister who wrote the words he subscribed, predicts the chain of successive murders in provincial France, scarcely one of which had as yet been attempted. "It is probable," he said, in the same letter of the twenty-sixth of August, that has just been cited, "that the fire thus kindled will go coursing through all the cities of my kingdom, which, following the example of what has been done in this city, will assure themselves of all the adherents of the said religion."[1080]

Verbal orders.

No mere surmise, founded upon the probable effects of the exhibition of cruelty in Paris, led to the penning of this sentence. Charles had purposely fired the train which was to explode with the utmost violence at almost every point of his wide dominions. "As it has pleased God," he wrote to Mondoucet, "to bring matters to the state in which they now are, I do not intend to neglect the opportunity not only to re-establish, if I shall be able, lasting quietness in my kingdom, but also to serve Christendom."[1081] Accordingly, secret orders, for the most part verbal, had already been sent in all directions, commanding the provinces to imitate the example set by Paris. The reality of these orders does not rest upon conjecture, but is attested by documentary evidence over the king's own hand. As we have seen in the last chapter, Charles published, on the twenty-eighth of August, a declaration of his motives and intentions. This was despatched to the governors of the provinces and to other high officers, in company with a circular letter, of which the final sentence deserves particular notice. "Moreover," says the king, "whatever verbal command I may have given to those whom I sent to you, as well as to my other governors and lieutenants-general, at a time when I had just reason to fear some inauspicious events, from having discovered the conspiracy which the admiral was making against me, I have revoked and revoke it completely, intending that nothing therein contained be put into execution by you or by others; for such is my pleasure."[1082]

Instructions to Montsoreau at Saumur.

What was the import of these orders? The manuscripts in the archives of Angers seem to leave no room for doubt. This city was the capital of the Duchy of Anjou, given in appanage to Henry, the king's brother, and was, consequently, under his special government. On Tuesday, the twenty-sixth of August, the duke sent to the Governor of Saumur a short note running thus: "Monsieur de Montsoreau, I have instructed the sieur de Puigaillard to write to you respecting a matter that concerns the service of the king, my lord and brother, as well as my own. You will, therefore, not fail to believe and to do whatever he may tell you, just as if it were I myself." In the same package with these credentials Montsoreau[1083] received a letter from Puigaillard, like himself a knight of the royal order of St. Michael, which reveals only too clearly the purpose of the king and his Brother. "Monsieur mon compagnon, I will not fail to acquaint you with the fact that, on Sunday morning the king caused a very great execution to be made against the Huguenots; so much so that the admiral and all the Huguenots that were in this city were killed. And his Majesty's will is that the same be done wherever there are any to be found. Accordingly, if you desire ever to do a service that may be agreeable to the king and to Monsieur (the Duke of Anjou), you must go to Saumur with the greatest possible number of your friends, and put to death all that you can find there of the principal Huguenots.... Having made this execution at Saumur, I beg you to go to Angers and do the same, with the assistance of the captain of the castle. And you must not expect to receive any other command from the king, nor from Monseigneur, for they will send you none, inasmuch as they depend upon what I write you. You must use diligence in this affair, and lose as little time as possible. I am very sorry that I cannot be there to help you in putting this into execution."[1084]

Two kinds of letters.

The statement of the author of the Mémoires de l'estat de France is, therefore, in full agreement with the ascertained facts of the case. He informs us that, soon after the Parisian massacre commenced, the secret council by which the plan had been drawn up despatched two widely differing kinds of letters. The first were of a private character, and were addressed to governors of cities and to seditious Roman Catholics where there were many Protestants, by which they were instigated to murder and rapine;[1085] the others were public, and were addressed to the same functionaries, their object being to amuse and entrap the professors of the reformed faith. And in addition to the double sets of written instructions, the same author says that messengers were sent to various points, to give orders for special executions.[1086] We shall not find it very difficult to account for the rapidity with which the massacre spread to the provincial towns—of which the secretary of the Spanish ambassador, in his hurried journey from Paris to Madrid, was an eye-witness[1087]—if we bear in mind the previous ripeness of the lowest classes of the Roman Catholic population for the perpetration of any possible acts of insult and injury toward their Protestant fellow-citizens. The time had come for the seed sown broadcast by monk and priest in Lenten and Advent discourses to bear its legitimate harvest in the pitiless murder of heretics.

The massacre at Meaux.

Meaux was naturally one of the first of smaller cities to catch the contagion from the capital. Not only was it the nearest city that contained any considerable body of Huguenots, but, if we may credit the report current among them, Catharine, in virtue of her rank as Countess of Meaux, had placed it first upon the roll. It is not impossible that the circumstance that this was the cradle of Protestantism in France may have secured it this distinction. About the middle of Sunday afternoon a courier reached Meaux, and at once made his way to the residence of the procureur-du-roi, one Cosset. The nature of the message he bore may be inferred from the fact that secret orders were at once given to those persons upon whom Cosset thought that he could rely, to be in readiness about nightfall. So completely had every outlet from Paris been sealed, that it had proved almost impossible for a Protestant to find the means of escaping to carry the tidings abroad. Consequently the adherents of the reformed faith were yet in ignorance of the impending catastrophe. At the time appointed, Cosset and his followers seized the gates of Meaux. It was the hour when the peaceable and unsuspecting people were at supper. The Protestants could now easily be found, and few escaped arrest, either that evening or on the succeeding day. Happily, however, a large number of Huguenots resided in a quarter of Meaux known as the "Grand Marché," and separated from the main part of the town by the river Marne. The inhabitants of the Grand Marché received timely warning of their danger; and the men fled by night for temporary refuge to the neighboring villages. It was scarcely dawn on Monday morning when the work of plunder begun. By eight o'clock little was left of the goods of the Huguenots on this side of the Marne, and the pillagers crossed the bridge to the Grand Marché. Finding only the women, who had remained in the vain hope of saving their family possessions, the papists wreaked their fury upon them. About twenty-five of these unhappy persons were murdered in cold blood;[1088] others were so severely beaten that they died within a few days; a few were shamefully dishonored. In most cases, if not in all, outward acquiescence in the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church would have saved the lives of the victims, but the Huguenot women were constant and would yield no hypocritical consent. One poor woman, the wife of "Nicholas the cap-maker," was being dragged to mass, when her bold and impolitic expressions of detestation of the service so enraged her conductors, that, being at that moment upon the bridge which unites the two portions of the city, they stabbed her and threw her body into the river. In a short time the Grand Marché, which the precise chronicler tells us contained more than four hundred houses, was robbed of everything which could be removed, for not the most insignificant article escaped the cupidity of the Roman Catholic populace.[1089]

These were but the preliminaries of the general massacre. The prisons were full of Huguenots, whom it was necessary to put out of the way. Late in the day, on Tuesday the twenty-sixth, Cosset and his band made their appearance. They were provided with a list of their destined victims, more than two hundred in number. Of a score or two the names have been preserved, with their respective avocations. They were merchants, judicial officers, industrious artisans—in short, the representatives of the better class of the population of Meaux. Not one escaped. The murderous band were stationed in the courtyard of the prison, while Cosset, armed with a pistol in either hand, mounted the steps, and by his roll summoned the Protestants to the slaughter awaiting them below. The bloody work was long and tedious. The assassins adjourned awhile for their supper, and, unable to complete the task before weariness blunted the edge of their ferocity, reserved a part of the Protestants for the next day. None the less was the task accomplished with thoroughness, and the exultant cutthroats now had leisure to pursue the fugitives of the Grand Marché to the villages in which they had taken refuge.[1090]

The massacre at Troyes.

The news of the Parisian massacre reached Troyes, the flourishing capital of Champagne, on Tuesday, the twenty-sixth of August, and spread great alarm among the Protestants, who, with the recent disturbances[1091] still fresh in their memories, apprehended immediate death. But their enemies for the time confined themselves to closing the gates to prevent their escape. It was not until Saturday, the thirtieth, that the "bailli," Anne de Vaudrey, sieur de St. Phalle, sent throughout the city and brought all the Protestants to the prisons. Meantime one of the most turbulent of the Roman Catholics, named Pierre Belin, had been in Paris, having been deputed, some weeks before, to endeavor to procure the removal of the place of worship of the reformed from the castle of Isle-au-Mont, two or three leagues from the city, to some more distant and inconvenient spot. He remained in the capital until the Saturday after the massacre, and started that day for Troyes, with a copy of the declaration of Thursday forbidding injury to the persons and goods of unoffending Protestants, and ordering the release of any that might have been imprisoned. It was believed, indeed, that he was commissioned to give the declaration to the bailli for publication. On Wednesday, the third of September, he reached Troyes. As he rode through the streets, he inquired again and again whether the Huguenots at Troyes were all killed as they were elsewhere. When interrogated by peaceable Roman Catholics respecting a rumor that the king had revoked his sanguinary orders, he boldly denied its truth, accompanying his words with oaths and imprecations. Finding the bailli, he had no difficulty in persuading him to suppress the royal order, and to convene a council, at which Belin was introduced as the bearer of verbal instructions, and a bishop was brought forward to confirm them. Belin and the bishop maintained that the royal pleasure was that the heretics of Troyes should all be murdered on the following Saturday night, without distinction of rank, sex, or age, and their bodies be exposed in the streets to the sight of those who should on the morrow join in a solemn procession to be held in honor of the achievement. A writing attached to the neck of each was to contain the words: "Seditious persons and rebels against the king, who have conspired against his Majesty."

The task of butchering the helpless Huguenots in the prison was first proposed to the public hangman. He refused to take any part in it: this, he said, was no duty of his office, and he would consent to perform it only when all the forms of law should have been observed. Other persons were found more pliable, and, under the leadership of one Perremet, the bloody scenes of the prison of Meaux were re-enacted, on Thursday, the fourth day of September, in that of Troyes. How many were the victims we know not; we have, however, the names of over thirty, apparently the most prominent of the number. Others were assassinated in the streets. At last, when all had been done that malice could effect, the king's declaration, which promised protection to the Huguenots, was published on Friday, the fifth of September.[1092]

The great bloodshed at Orleans.

In Orleans, a city once the headquarters of the Huguenots, where their iconoclastic assaults upon the churches during the first civil war had left permanent memorials of their former supremacy, the massacre assumed the largest proportions. One of the king's court preachers, Arnauld Sorbin, better known as M. de Sainte Foy, had written from Paris letters instigating the inhabitants of Orleans to imitate the example of the capital, and the letters came to hand with the earliest tidings of the Parisian massacre. The first murder took place on Monday. M. de Champeaux, a royal counsellor and a Protestant, who as yet was in ignorance of the events of St. Bartholomew's Day, received late on Monday the visit of Tessier, surnamed La Court, the leader of the assassins of Orleans, and some of his followers. Imagining it to be a friendly call—for they were acquaintances—Champeaux received them courteously, and invited them to sup with him. The meal over, his guests recounted the story of the tragic occurrence at Paris, and, before he was well over his surprise and horror, asked him for his purse. The unhappy host, still mistaking the character of those whom he had entertained, at first regarded the demand as a pleasantry; but when he had been convinced of his error and had complied, his treacherous visitors instantly stabbed him to death in his very dining-room.[1093] The general butchery began on Tuesday night, in the neighborhood of the ramparts, where the Protestants were most numerous, and from Wednesday to Saturday there was no intermission in the slaughter. Here, more even than elsewhere, the murderers distinguished themselves by their profanity and their undisguised hatred of the Protestant faith and worship. "Where is your God?" "Where are your prayers and your psalms?" "Where is the God they invoke so much? Let Him save, if He can." Such were the expressions with which the blows of the assassin were interlarded. At times he thought to aggravate his victim's sufferings by singing snatches of favorite psalms from the Huguenot psalm-book. It might be the forty-third, so appropriate to the condition of oppressed innocence, in its quaint old French garb:

Revenge-moi, pren la querelle De moi, Seigneur, de ta merci, Contre la gent fausse et cruelle: De l'homme rempli de cautelle, Et en sa malice endurci, Delivre moi aussi.

Or it might be the fifty-first—the words never more sincerely accepted, even when chanted to all the perfection of choral music, in the Sistine Chapel or in St. Peter's, than when, in the ears of constant sufferers for their Christian faith, ribald voices contemptuously sang or drawled the familiar lines:

Misericorde au povre vicieux, Dieu tout-puissant, selon ta grand' clemence.[1094]

"These execrable outrages," adds the chronicler who gives us this interesting information, "did not in the least unnerve the Protestants, who died with great constancy; and, if some were shaken (as were some, but in very small numbers), this in no wise lessened the patience and endurance of the rest."[1095] The number of the killed was great. The murderers themselves boasted of the slaughter of more than twelve hundred men and of one hundred and fifty women, besides a large number of children of nine years old and under. And there was a dreary uniformity in the method of their death. They were shot with pistols, then stripped, and dragged to the river, or thrown into the city moat.[1096] But it is, after all, not the numbers of nameless victims whose honorable deaths leave no distinct impression upon the mind, but the individual instances of Christian heroism, teaching lessons of imitable human virtues, that speak most directly to the sympathies of the reader of an age so long posterior. The records of French Protestantism are full of these, and one or two of the most striking that occurred in Orleans deserve mention. M. de Coudray—whom the Roman Catholics had in vain endeavored on previous occasions to shake—seeing his house beset and no prospect of deliverance, himself opened the door of his dwelling to the murderers, telling them, with wonderful assurance of faith: "You do but hasten the coming of that blessedness which I have long been expecting."[1097] Whereupon they killed him, in the midst of his invocation of his God. Another Huguenot, De St. Thomas, a schoolmaster, died uttering words as courageous as ever fell from lips of early Christian martyrs: "Why! do you think that you move me by your blasphemies and acts of cruelty? It is not within your power to deprive me of the assurance of the grace of my God. Strike as much as you please; I fear not your blows."[1098] Sometimes the dying men were allowed a few moments to utter a final prayer; but, if their zeal led them too far, their impatient murderers cut short their devotions with oaths and curses, and exclaimed: "Here are people that take a great while to pray to their God!"[1099] Of resistance there was little, so far were the Huguenots from having collected arms and prepared for such a conspiracy as was imputed to them. If a Huguenot teacher of fencing killed one or two of his assailants, or if a few gentlemen at different places kept them at bay awhile with stones or other missiles, this, so far from proving their evil intentions, on the contrary, furnishes undeniable proof of the very different results that might have ensued had their means of defence been equal to their courage. For fifteen days after the principal massacre the work went on more quietly, the dead bodies being still thrown into the ditch—where wolves, which in the sixteenth century abounded in the valley of the Loire, were permitted to feed upon them undisturbed—or into the river, of whose fish, fattened upon this human carrion, the people feared to eat.[1100]

Massacre at Bourges.

At Bourges the news of the massacre was received late on Tuesday. Meantime, some of the more sagacious of the Huguenots (among others, the celebrated Francis Hotman, at this time a professor of law in the University of Bourges), alarmed by the wounding of Admiral Coligny, had fled from the city. Even after the news came, the massacre was but partial. Although the mayor, Jean Joupitre, had received sealed orders (lettres de cachet) instructing him as to the part he was to take, the municipal officers, knowing the ill-will the Guises had always borne to the Huguenots, were in doubt how far the king countenanced the bloody work. But the royal letter of the thirtieth of August, accompanying the declaration of the twenty-eighth, to which reference was made above,[1101] so far from putting an end to the disorder, only rendered it more general. Bourges became the scene of another of those butcheries of Huguenots first gathered in the public prisons, of which there are so many similar instances that it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that the orders to effect them emanated from a single source at court.[1102]

At Angers.

We have already been admitted to the secret of the instructions sent by the Duke of Anjou, through Puigaillard, to M. de Montsoreau, for the destruction of the Huguenots of Saumur and Angers. Certainly there was on his part no lack of readiness to fulfil his sanguinary commission; but the local officers were less zealous, and many of the Protestants were merely thrown into prison. Montsoreau's first exploit at Angers deserves particular mention. M. de la Rivière, the first reformed pastor of Paris, of whom I have spoken in a previous chapter, was at this time residing in Angers, and Montsoreau seems to have been acquainted with him. Going straight to his house, the governor met the pastor's wife, whom, according to the gallant custom prevailing, especially among the Trench courtiers, he first kissed, and then inquired for her husband. He was told that he was walking in his garden, and thither his hostess led him. After courteously embracing him, Montsoreau thus abruptly disclosed the object of his visit: "Monsieur de la Rivière, do you know why I am come? The king has ordered me to kill you, and that at once. I have a special commission to this effect, as you will know from these letters." While saying this he exhibited a pistol which he held in his hand. "I know of no crime that I have done," calmly replied De la Rivière; and then, after obtaining permission to offer a brief prayer to God, he fearlessly presented his breast to the cowardly assassin. Montsoreau did not complete the extermination of the Huguenots of Angers, and Puigaillard soon after arrived to prosecute it; but the Protestant prisoners whom he was to have murdered knew his venal disposition, and found little difficulty in purchasing their liberation.[1103]

Butchery at Lyons.

The important city of Lyons, inhabited by a population intensely hostile to the Reformation, had for its governor M. de Mandelot, a decided partisan of the Roman Catholic faction. The municipal authorities, however, either surpassed him in zeal, or, as is more probable, were less apprehensive of the dangers to be incurred by assuming the responsibility of a massacre; for of all the "échevins," only two opposed the violent measures of their associates. The written protest which they insisted upon entering on the official records is still extant.[1104] The first tidings of the wounding of Coligny by Maurevel reached Lyons on Wednesday morning, the twenty-seventh of August, in a letter from Charles the Ninth to Governor Mandelot, similar in tenor to those which were despatched to every other part of France.[1105] Although the king spoke only of displeasure at the outrage, and of his determination to avenge it, the populace interpreted the event according to their wishes, and instantly circulated reports of the murder of the admiral and all his adherents. The Roman Catholics, long discontented with the toleration extended to those who dissented from the creed of the dominant church, were jubilant and menacing; the Protestants were disheartened, but exhibited a self-control only to be accounted for by the long years of oppression which had wellnigh broken their spirit. The next day came the news of the events of Sunday, and, in the afternoon, letters from Masso and Rubys, prominent citizens of Lyons then at Paris, who said that they had been instructed by the king to order the authorities to copy the example of the capital. The fanatical party was now clamorous; but Mandelot, cautious and politic, would act on no such instructions, although he had taken the precaution of closing the gates, and of commanding the Protestants, on pain of imprisonment, to remain in their houses. Friday morning came, and with it the arrival of Sieur du Peyrat from court, bearing the royal letter written on the day of the massacre, in which it was represented as the exclusive work of the Guises, and the king strenuously enjoined the maintenance of the Edict of Pacification.[1106] These were the public instructions sent to Mandelot; but they were not all. There is a suspicious little postscript to the letter: "Monsieur de Mandelot, you will give credit to the bearer respecting the matter which I have charged him to tell you."[1107] What these verbal orders were which the king, not venturing to commit to paper, commissioned Du Peyrat to communicate, the reply of the governor himself distinctly reveals; it was the arrest of the Protestants and the confiscation of their property.[1108] Still more perplexed as to what course to pursue, Mandelot held a long private conference with the messenger, while the échevins impatiently awaited its conclusion. The governor now called in the municipal officers for consultation, and with them agreed to order the immediate imprisonment of the Huguenots. He was not, however, even yet fully convinced of the propriety of this step, for scarcely had he given the order when he recalled it.[1109] Fearing that the troops at his disposal might prove insufficient, and dreading with good reason lest the employment of the city militia for this purpose might lead to scenes of disorder which he would find himself powerless to control, he preferred to send for such reinforcements as the neighboring noblemen of the province could furnish.[1110] Meantime, the commotion throughout Lyons had rapidly increased. On Thursday and Friday nights many members of the Reformed Church had been dragged from their houses as if to prison, but most of them had been barbarously despatched by the way. Among others, one of the ministers, Monsieur Jacques l'Anglois, was stabbed and thrown into the river. On Saturday morning Mandelot, seeing the confusion hourly increasing, deemed it impolitic to wait any longer for the troops he was expecting, and resolved upon effecting his purpose by ruse. He therefore published a proclamation by sound of trumpet, bidding all the Huguenots to assemble at his house to hear the good pleasure of the king. The Huguenots, deceived by the professions of his Majesty, came in great numbers; but no sooner had they all arrived, than they were seized by the soldiers and hurried away to prison. The common prison, "La Roanne," being too contracted to contain so large a multitude, three hundred or more were placed in that of the Archbishop's palace, and others in the cloisters of the Celestine Monks and the Gray Friars. At the same time an inventory was being made of all the goods belonging to Protestants throughout the city.

These measures, instead of allaying, only inflamed the passions of the populace the more. That night the murders surpassed those of the previous nights in number and atrocity, and when Sunday morning dawned the people were ready for still greater excesses. At about eight o'clock they entered unopposed the Gray Friars, and butchered every Huguenot they found. Two hours later, assuming the forms of law, a self-constituted commission, headed by André Mornieu, one of the échevins or aldermen, presenting themselves successively at the archiepiscopal prison and at the Roanne, summoned the inmates to abjure their faith and go to mass. Only thirty persons in the one, and about twenty in the other, consented. These were sent to the Celestine monastery and afterward released. Of the others a careful list was drawn up. Their fate was sealed; but an unexpected difficulty arose. The public hangman refused to execute the sentence of an unauthorized tribunal. So did the soldiers. At last assassins were obtained from the ranks of the turbulent inhabitants. About three o'clock that afternoon the archbishop's prison was visited. To describe with minuteness the scene of horror that ensued would scarcely be possible. Two hundred and sixty-three persons,[1111] of the very best and most industrious part of the population of Lyons,[1112] called by name according to the roll previously made, were murdered in rapid succession. Never was there an exhibition of more pitiless cruelty. Meanwhile, where was the governor? He had gone, in company with the commandant of the citadel, to suppress a threatened disturbance in the Faubourg de la Guillotière, on the left bank of the Rhône. He returned only in time to find the deed done, and to disperse those who had gone to the Roanne to repeat it there. His demonstrations of anger were loud, and a liberal reward was offered for the detection of any that had participated in the slaughter.[1113] But this did not prevent the same body of cutthroats from visiting the Roanne, soon after nightfall, and despatching all the Protestants that were there, to the number of about seventy. Many of them, by an excess of barbarity, the assassins tied together by a single rope, and threw, while yet alive, into the water. On the following day the bodies which had not yet found a watery grave were carried to the other side of the Saône, where, stripped and mangled, they were about to be buried in the cemetery of the Abbaye d'Esnay, when the monks refused them admission into the consecrated ground, and pointed to the Rhône as a more fitting destination. Even now they were not spared further mutilation; for an apothecary of Lyons, having initiated the murderers into the valuable properties of human fat as a medicinal substance, the miserable remains were put to new use before being consigned to the river. Down to the Mediterranean these ghastly witnesses of the ferocity of the passions of the Lyonnese Roman Catholics carried fear and disgust, and for weeks the inhabitants of Arles and other places carefully abstained from drinking the water of the polluted stream.[1114]

Responsibility of Mandelot.

The part which Mandelot took in this awful tragedy has been very differently estimated, but I am inclined to think that the governor is not chargeable with any direct responsibility for the butchery in the prisons of Lyons. Certainly this seems to be established by his letter to the king, written in the morning of the day on which it occurred; for he would scarcely have expressed his great desire and hope to be able to prevent any outbreak, if he had planned, or even foreseen, the events of the evening.[1115] The story must therefore be apocryphal, that Mandelot, in commissioning one of the chief assassins to execute the bloody work, blasphemously said: "I intrust the whole to you, and, as Jesus Christ said to Saint Peter, whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."[1116] It was, however, no conscientious scruple that deterred the governor from actively taking part. Mandelot was scandalously anxious to obtain his part of the plunder, and was not ashamed to appear as a suppliant for the confiscated property of the Huguenots almost before their bodies were cold.[1117] But he was unwilling, without the express orders of his sovereign, written with his own hand, to commit an act which, the more successful it might be, was the more certain to be disavowed and punished. He was right: a subordinate could not be too careful in dealing with so treacherous a court.

The massacre at Rouen.

Few cities were so ripe for the massacre of the Protestants as the capital of Normandy. There the passions of the Roman Catholics, inflamed by the civil wars, had not been suffered to cool. Even in the provincial parliament the papists could hardly submit to receive into their deliberations again the five or six Huguenot counsellors who had been expelled or had fled at the outbreak of hostilities, but whom the Edict of Pacification restored to their ancient functions and dignity; and the secret registers, among other unfortunate scenes, chronicle particularly a violent discussion, degenerating into angry altercation between President Vialard and the Huguenot member Maynet.[1118] The bloody assault of the populace of Rouen upon the reformed in March, 1571, mentioned in a previous page,[1119] had been but slightly punished. Few of the guilty failed to escape from the city, and the sole penalty suffered had been an execution in effigy. These turbulent men had ever since that time been watching an opportunity to return. They were now burning with a desire to signalize their advent by bloody reprisals. Monsieur de Carouge, governor of the city, was, however, a just and upright man,[1120] and they could not hope for countenance in their plans from him. In fact, the contemporary accounts inform us that he received from the king repeated orders to exterminate the Huguenots of Rouen,[1121] which he could not bring himself to execute, and that he sent messengers to remonstrate with his Majesty who returned without succeeding in shaking his determination; and hereupon the governor found himself obliged to shut himself up in the castle, and permit the work which had been intrusted to others also, to take its course.[1122] The secret records of parliament, however, reveal the fact that Carouge received from Paris the order to leave Rouen and visit other portions of Normandy, in order to restore the quiet and peace which had been much disturbed of late. The real, though perhaps not the ostensible object of this commission was to rid the city of the presence of a magistrate whose well known integrity might render it futile to attempt a massacre of the innocent. The records also show that, contrary to the current report, both the municipal authorities and the parliament, greatly alarmed at the danger menacing Rouen in case of his departure, implored him to remain;[1123] but that the king's peremptory commands left him no discretion, and he was obliged to leave the unhappy city to its fate. The able historian of the Norman Parliament has rightly observed that the governor, whether he left Rouen because he could not consent to execute the barbarous injunctions that were sent him, or because his character was so well known that the court was unwilling to intrust them to him, is equally deserving of praise; and not without reason does this writer claim similar respect for the judicial body which manifested its desire to save everything, by retaining him at Rouen.[1124] Here, as elsewhere, a great part of the Protestants had been arrested and placed in the prisons, to shield them from popular violence. The governor believed this to be the safest place for them; and at least one instance is known of a father who was so convinced of it that he brought thither his Huguenot son, whom he might have sent out of the city.[1125]

The storm, so long delayed, broke out at last on Wednesday, the seventeenth of September, and lasted four entire days. The gates were closed, and the organized bands of murderers, under the leadership of Laurent de Maromme, one of the most sanguinary of the turbulent men who had returned from banishment, and of a priest, Claude Montereul, curate of the church of St. Pierre, had undisputed possession of the city. First they slaughtered like sheep the prisoners in the spacious "conciergerie" of the parliament house and in the other prisons of the city. Next they burst into the houses, and nearly every atrocity which history is compelled at any time reluctantly to chronicle, was perpetrated on unresisting men, on tender women, on unoffending children. Not less than five hundred persons, and perhaps even more, perished in a butchery, whose details I gladly pass over in silence.[1126] Grim humor and charity were incongruously mingled with the most brutal inhumanity. The assassins jocularly denominated their work one of "accommodating" their victims;[1127] and the clothes of the Protestants—whose bodies were buried in great ditches outside of the Porte Cauchoise—after having been carefully washed, were piously distributed among the poor.[1128] The tragedy finished, the farce of an investigation was instituted by the officers of justice, but no punishment was ever inflicted upon any Roman Catholic, other than that which could be recognized in the retributive judgments befalling a few of the most notable, and especially the cruel Maromme, at the hand of God.[1129]

At Toulouse.

The previous character of Toulouse, as among the most sanguinary cities of France, was already sufficiently well established. If behind some of the rest on this occasion in the number of victims, Toulouse was inferior only because its previous massacres had rendered it a suspicious place of sojourn in the eyes of the Huguenots. Here, too, notwithstanding deceitful proclamations guaranteeing safety and protection, the Protestants were gathered into the public prisons and jails attached to monasteries; and after having been reserved for several weeks, on receipt of orders from Paris were butchered to the number of two or three hundred. Among others, some Protestant members of parliament were hung in their long red gowns to the branches of a great elm growing in the court of the parliament house.[1130] The miscreants that voluntarily assumed the functions of executioners were in this case drawn in great part from the more unruly class of the law students of the university.[1131] It is needless to add that here, as elsewhere, the opportunity for plunder was by no means neglected.

At Bordeaux.

The procedure in Bordeaux was so extraordinary, and is so authentically related in a letter of a prominent judicial officer who was present, as well as in the records of the Parliament of Guyenne, that the story of its massacre must be added to the notices already given. At first the city was quiet, and the friends of order congratulated themselves that their efforts had been successful in removing the stigma which previous transactions had affixed to its escutcheon. Meantime this policy, united to the fear of a fate similar to that which had befallen their fellow-believers elsewhere, is said to have led to a great number of conversions to the Roman Catholic Church.[1132] But there were those who were unwilling that their prey should so easily escape them. On the fifth of September, M. de Montferrand, Governor of Bordeaux, affecting to have information of a general plot on the part of the Huguenots of the city, had sought and obtained permission of the parliament to introduce three hundred soldiers from abroad. He had thereupon forbidden the celebration of Protestant worship, hitherto held at a distance of three leagues from Bordeaux, on the plain between the Garonne and the Jalle.[1133] Meantime the churches resounded with the violent denunciations of a famous preacher, Friar Edmond Auger or Augier, "a great scourge for heresy," as his partisans styled him. He exhorted his hearers to imitate the example of Paris, and accused the royal officers of indolence and pusillanimity. At this juncture the governor received a visit from Monsieur de Montpézat, son-in-law of Villars, the newly appointed admiral. What the latter told him is unknown. But, on the third of October, Montferrand having given out that he had received from the king a roll of names of forty of the chief men of the place, whom he was commissioned to put to death without judge or trial, set about his bloody work. Persistently refusing to exhibit his warrant, for three days the governor butchered the citizens at will.[1134] One member of parliament, against whom he bore a personal grudge, he stabbed with his own hand. The murderers wore red bonnets supplied by one of the "jurats" or aldermen of the city. They executed their commission so thoroughly that the number of the slain was reported as two hundred and sixty-four persons, all Protestants. If any one be mercifully inclined to regard this statement as an exaggeration, and to base upon this instance a general theory that throughout France the number of the victims has been grossly over-estimated, let him read the following entry made in the records of the Parliament of Bordeaux, and recently brought to light; he will learn from this not only the approximate number of the slain as given by the chief agent in the bloody work, but the anxiety which the latter felt that he should receive due credit for his share in the great undertaking of the destruction of the French Protestants: "On the ninth of October, the Sieur de Montferrand, having been summoned to the court, among other things said, 'that he had been informed that there were some members of the court who had written to the Sieur Admiral de Villars, royal lieutenant in Guyenne, that the said De Montferrand had killed, on the day of the execution by him made, October the third, only ten or twelve men, a thing (under correction of the court) wholly false, inasmuch as there had been more than two hundred and fifty slain; and he would show the list to any one who might desire to see it.'"[1135]

The same hand that placed upon the parliamentary registers this shameless and atrocious boast, for the benefit of those that should come after, has briefly noted the assassination of two members of parliament itself, with an absence of comment in which we can read the evidence of fear. "From the talk of to-day it appears that Messieurs Jean de Guilloche and Pierre de Sevyn were killed as belonging to the new religion."[1136] The tardy and flagrantly unnecessary effusion of blood at Bordeaux exercised no mean influence in emboldening the Huguenots of La Rochelle to persevere in their refusal to admit the emissaries of Charles the Ninth.

Why the massacre was not universal.

The massacre was, however, neither universal throughout France, nor equally destructive in all places where it occurred. The reason for this is to be found partly in the geographical distribution of the Huguenots, partly in the temper of the people, partly in the policy or the humanity of the governors of cities and provinces. Where the number of Protestants was small, and especially where they had never rendered themselves formidable, it was not easy for the clergy to excite the people to that frenzy of sectarian hatred under the influence of which they were willing to imbrue their hands in the blood of peaceable neighbors. In such places—in Provins, for instance—the Huguenots generally kept themselves as far as possible out of sight, while a few of the more timid consented to place a white cross on their hats, a convenient badge of Roman Catholicism which some were willing to assume, when they would rather have died than go to mass.[1137]

Policy of the Guises.

In the province of Champagne the Protestants were spared any general massacre by the prudent foresight of the Guises, to whom its government was confided. The duke, in order to free himself from the imputation of being the author of the bloody plot, and to prove that his private resentment did not extend beyond Admiral Coligny and a few other chiefs, had himself taken several Huguenots in Paris under his special protection. With the same object in view, he made his province an exception to the widespread slaughter.[1138]

Spurious accounts of clemency.

Bishop Le Hennuyer, of Lisieux.

Others, however, were, merciful from more honorable motives. A number of instances of clemency are mentioned. It is not, indeed, always safe to accept the stories, some of which are suspicious from their very form, while others are manifest inventions of an age when tolerance had become more popular than persecution. To the category of fable we are compelled to assign the famous response which Le Hennuyer, Bishop of Lisieux, is reported, by authors writing long after the event, as having returned to the lieutenant sent to him by Charles the Ninth. History is occasionally capricious, but she has rarely indulged in a more remarkable freak than when putting into the mouth of an advocate of persecution, a courtier and the almoner of the king, who was not even in his diocese, but undoubtedly in Paris itself, at the time the incident is said to have occurred, this declamatory speech: "No, no, sir; I oppose, and shall always oppose, the execution of such an order. I am the shepherd of the church of Lisieux, and the people I am commanded to slaughter are my flock. Although at present wanderers, having strayed from the fold intrusted to me by Jesus Christ the great shepherd, they may, nevertheless, return. I do not read in the Gospel that the shepherd should suffer the blood of his sheep to be shed; on the contrary, I find there that he is bound to pour out his own blood and give his own life for them. Take the order back, for it shall never be executed so long as I live."[1139]

Kind offices of Matignon at Caen and Alençon;

of Longueville and Gordes;

Fortunately, there are other instances on record which are not apocryphal. Monsieur de Matignon seems to have saved Caen and Alençon from becoming the scenes of general massacres, and thus to have endeared himself to the Protestants of both places.[1140] The Duke of Longueville prevented the massacre from extending to his province of Picardy.[1141] Gordes, Governor of Dauphiny, who had obtained advancement by the assistance of the Montmorency influence, excused himself, when repeatedly urged to kill the Huguenots, on the plea that Montbrun and others of their leaders were alive and out of his reach, and that any attempt of the kind would only lead to still greater difficulties. He therefore waited for more direct instructions. When, in his letter of the fifth of September, in reference to a clause in the king's letter just received, he stated that he had received no verbal orders, but merely his letters of the twenty-second, twenty-fourth, and twenty-eighth of August, Charles replied bidding him give himself no solicitude as to them, as they were addressed only to a few persons who happened to be near him,[1142] and enjoined upon him to enforce the royal "declaration," and cause all murder and rapine to cease in his government. Yet even here a number of Huguenots were imprisoned, and a few lost their lives at Romans.[1143]

of Tende in Provence.

The manly boldness of the Comte de Tende is said in like manner to have saved the Protestants of Provence. Receiving from the hands of La Mole, a gentleman of Arles and servant of the Duke of Alençon, a letter from the secret council ordering him to massacre all the Huguenots in his province, the governor replied: "I do not believe that such commands have emanated from the king's free will; but some of the members of his council have usurped the royal authority in order to satisfy their own passions. I need no more conclusive testimony than the letters which his Majesty sent me a few days ago, by which he threw upon the Guises the blame for this massacre of Paris. I prefer to obey these first letters, as more befitting the royal dignity. Besides, this last order is so cruel and barbarous, that even were the king himself in person to command me to put it into execution, I would not do it." The magnanimity of the count spared Provence the horrors of a repetition of the massacres of Mérindol and Cabrières, but perhaps cost him his own life, for he soon after died at Avignon, and rumor ascribed his death to poison. The infamous Count de Retz, Catharine's favorite, succeeded him as governor.[1144] Saint Héran, Governor of Auvergne, is said to have replied in very similar words; but as he managed to induce a great part of the Protestants within his jurisdiction to apostatize, less notice was taken of his insubordination.[1145]

Viscount D'Orthez at Bayonne.

Perhaps the most striking instance of a magnanimous refusal to comply with the bloody mandate of the Parisian court, was that of Viscount D'Orthez,[1146] Governor of Bayonne. This nobleman was not only of a violent and imperious temper, but on other occasions so severe in his treatment of the Protestants of the border city, that the king was obliged to write to him to moderate his rigor. When, however, the messenger from Paris (who on his way had caused an indiscriminate slaughter to be made of all the men, women and children who had taken refuge in the prisons of Dax) delivered his orders to the viscount, the latter returned the following laconic answer:

"Sire, I have communicated your Majesty's commands to your faithful inhabitants and warriors in the garrison. I have found among them only good citizens and brave soldiers, but not one hangman. For this reason they and I very humbly beg your Majesty to employ our arms and our lives in all things possible, however hazardous they may be, as we are, so long as our lives shall last, your very humble, etc."[1147]

The municipality of Nantes.

Nor were the municipal authorities in some places behind the royal governors in their determination to have no part in the nefarious designs of the court. At Nantes, the mayor, échevins, and judges received from Paris, on the eighth of September, a letter of the Duke of Montpensier-Bourbon, Governor of Brittany, in which, after narrating the discovery of the pretended conspiracy of Coligny and his adherents, and their consequent assassination, he added: "By this his Majesty's intention respecting the treatment which the Huguenots are to receive in the other cities is sufficiently evident, as well as the means by which some assured rest may be expected in our poor Catholic Church."[1148] But the municipal and judicial officers of Nantes, instead of following the bloody path thus marked out for them by the governor of their province, "held a meeting in the town hall, and swore to maintain their previous oath not to violate the Edict of Pacification published in favor of the Calvinists, and forbade the inhabitants from indulging in any excess against them."[1149]

Uncertain number of the victims.

Such are the general outlines and a few details of a massacre the full horrors of which it is outside of the province and beyond the ability of history to relate. Nor is it even possible to set down figures that may be relied upon as expressing the true number of those who were unjustly put to death. The difficulty experienced by a well informed contemporary, has not been removed; notwithstanding the careful investigations of those who earnestly desired "that posterity might not-be deprived of what it needed to know, in order that it might become wiser at the expense of others."[1150] We shall be safe in supposing that the number of Huguenot victims throughout France was somewhere between twenty thousand, as conjectured by De Thou and La Popelinière, and thirty thousand, as stated by Jean de Serres and the Mémoires de l'estat de France, rather than in adopting the extreme views of Sully and Perefixe, the latter of whom swells the count of the slain to one hundred thousand men, women, and children.[1151] It can scarcely have been much less than the lower number I have suggested.

News of the massacre received at Rome.

Public thanksgivings.

While the massacre begun on St. Bartholomew's Day was spreading with the speed of some foul contagion to the most distant parts of France, the tidings had been carried beyond its boundaries, and excited a thrill of delight, or a cry of execration, according to the character and sympathies of those to whom they came. Nowhere was the surprise greater, nor the joy more intense, than at Rome. Pope Gregory, like his predecessor, had been very sceptical respecting the pious intentions of the French court. Nuncios and legates brought them, it is true, a great profusion of brilliant assurances, on the part of Catharine and Charles, of devotion to the Roman Church, and to the interests of the Pontifical See, but accompanied by lugubrious vaticinations of their own, based upon the tolerant course on which the king, under Coligny's guidance, had entered. The Cardinal of Alessandria had made little account of the ring offered him by Charles as a pledge of his sincerity, and preferred to wait for the proof which the sequel might exhibit. The last defiant act of the French monarch, in marrying his sister to a professed heretic, and within the degrees of consanguinity prohibited by the Church, without obtaining the Pope's dispensation, served to confirm all the sinister suspicions entertained at Rome. Under these circumstances the papal astonishment and rejoicing can well be imagined, when couriers sent by the Guises brought the intelligence of the massacre to the Cardinal of Lorraine, and when letters from the King of France and from the Nuncio Salviati in Paris to the Pope himself confirmed its accuracy. Salviati's letters having been read in the full consistory, on the sixth of September, the pontiff and the cardinals resolved to go at once in solemn procession to the church of San Marco, there to render thanks to God for the signal blessing conferred upon the Roman See and all Christendom. A solemn mass was appointed for the succeeding Monday, and a jubilee published for the whole Christian world. In the evening the cannon from the Castle of San Angelo, and firearms discharged here and there throughout the city, proclaimed to all the joy felt for so signal a victory over the enemies of the Church. For three successive nights there was a general illumination. Cardinal Orsini, who seems to have been on the point of starting for France as a special legate to urge the court to withdraw from the course of toleration, now received different instructions, and was commissioned to congratulate Charles, and to encourage him to pursue the path upon which he had entered. Charles of Lorraine, as was natural, distinguished himself for his demonstrations of joy. He made a present of one thousand crowns to the bearer of such glad tidings.[1152] Under his auspices a brilliant celebration of the event took place in the church of San Luigi de' Francesi, which was magnificently decorated for the occasion. Gregory himself, attended by his cardinals and bishops, by princes, foreign ambassadors, and large numbers of nobles and of the people, walked thither under the pontifical canopy, and high mass was said. The Cardinal of Lorraine had affixed above the entrance a pompous declaration, in the form of a congratulatory notice from Charles the Ninth to Gregory and the "sacred college of cardinals," wherein the Very Christian King renders thanks to Heaven that, "inflamed by zeal for the Lord God of Hosts, like a smiting angel divinely sent, he had suddenly destroyed by a single slaughter almost all the heretics and enemies of his kingdom." The latinity of the placard might not be above reproach; but it is certain that its sentiments received the cordial approval of the assembled prelates.[1153] Set forth in golden characters, and decorated with festive leaves and ribbons,[1154] it proclaimed that the hierarchy of the Roman Church had no qualms of conscience in indorsing the traitorous deed of Charles and Catharine. But still more unequivocal proofs were not wanting. A well known medal was struck in honor of the event, bearing on the one side the head of the Pope and the words "Gregorius XIII. Pont. Max. An. I.," and on the other an angel with cross and sword pursuing the heretics, and the superscription, "Ugonottorum strages, 1572."[1155]

Paintings by Vasari in the Vatican.

By the order of the Pope, the famous Vasari painted in the Sala Regia of the Vatican palace several pictures representing different scenes in the Parisian massacre. Upon one an inscription was placed which tersely expressed the true state of the case: "Pontifex Colinii necem probat."[1156] The paintings may still be seen in the magnificent room which serves as antechamber to the Sistine Chapel.[1157]

To the French ambassador, M. de Ferralz, Gregory expressed in the most extravagant terms his satisfaction, and that of the college of cardinals, not only with the events of Paris, but with the news daily coming to Rome of similar massacres in progress in different cities of France. He convinced Ferralz that no more delightful tidings could have reached the pontifical court. The battle of Lepanto could not compare with it. "Tell your master," said he to the envoy at the conclusion of his audience, "that this event has given me a hundred times more pleasure than fifty victories like that which the League obtained over the Turk last year." In the excess of his joy he did not forget to enjoin on every one he spoke to, especially all Frenchmen, to light bonfires in honor of the massacre, hinting that whoever should fail to do so must be unsound in the faith.[1158] A few weeks later, the pontiff shocked even some devout Roman Catholics by allowing Cardinal Lorraine and the French ambassador to present to him Maurevel, the assassin who had fired the arquebuse shot at Admiral Coligny.[1159]

French boasts go for nothing.

"The pontiff," says his countryman, the historian Adriani, "and all Italy universally rejoiced greatly, and forgave the king and queen their previous dissimulation."[1160] For the French at Rome now pretended that the massacre had long been planned by their monarch, and that every favor to the Huguenots for the past two years had been shown to them merely for the purpose of lulling them into a false security. The Pope accepted the plea without troubling himself much whether it were true or not, satisfied as he was with the event. But not so the Spanish envoy at the Roman court, Don Juan de Cuñiga. "The French wish to give the impression," he wrote to his master, "that the king meditated this blow from the time he made peace with the Huguenots; and, in order that it may be believed that he was capable of preparing it and concealing it until the proper time for the execution, they attribute to him stratagems which do not seem allowable even against heretics and rebels. I deem it certain that, if the shooting of the arquebuse at the admiral was a thing projected a few days beforehand, and authorized by the king, all the rest was inspired by circumstances."[1161] Equally positive, though not at all doubtful respecting the morality of the transaction, and more jubilant, was the Nuncio Salviati, in Paris. While desiring that the cardinal secretary "should kiss the feet of his Holiness in his name," and "rejoicing with him in the bowels of his heart at the blessed and honorable commencement of his pontificate,"[1162] while declaring that, despite his previous belief that the court of France would not much longer tolerate the admiral's arrogance, he would never have imagined the tenth part of what he now saw with his own eyes, he also stated he could not bring himself to believe that, had the admiral been killed by Maurevel's shot, so much would have been done by a great deal.[1163] Now, however, "the queen intended not only to revoke the Edict of Pacification, but by means of justice to restore the ancient observance of the Catholic faith."

Catharine writes to Philip, her son-in-law.

There was another monarch whose joy was not less sincere than Gregory's. This was Philip of Spain. Catharine had not delayed writing to her royal son-in-law. In her endeavor to make capital out of the massacre she betrayed great satisfaction at her supposed masterly stroke of policy. Her letter—a misspelled scrawl—furnishes a fresh illustration of the fact that singular shrewdness in planning and executing criminal projects is not incompatible with a trust, amounting almost to fatuity, in the unsuspecting credulity of others. Catharine actually imagined that she could, by her counterfeit piety, impose upon one who knew her character so well as Philip of Spain. Therefore she was lavish of the use of the name of the Deity to cover her own villainy. "Monsieur my son," she wrote, "I entertain no doubt that you will appreciate, as we do, the happiness God has conferred upon us in giving the king, my son, the means of ridding himself of his subjects, rebels against God and himself, and [rejoice] that it has pleased Him graciously to preserve him and us all from the cruelty of their hands. For this we are assured that you will praise God with us, as well on our account as for the advantage that will accrue to all Christendom, and to the service, and honor, and glory of God. This, we hope, will soon be made known, and the fruit thereof be perceived.[1164] By this event we afford the testimony of our good and upright intentions, which have never tended but to His honor. And I rejoice still more that this occasion will confirm and augment the friendship between your Majesty and the king your brother—which is the thing I desire most of all in this world."[1165]

The delight of Philip the Second.

Philip had good reason to be glad. To all human appearance it had depended only upon the word of Charles to secure, at once and forever, the independence from the Spanish tyranny of the provinces on the lower Rhine, which, under William of Orange, were battling for religious and civil freedom. True, Genlis and his small forces had been captured or destroyed; but what were they in comparison with the men whom the French king could have marshalled under the command of Coligny, La Noue, and other experienced leaders? And now Charles, at a single stroke, had cut off all prospect of obtaining the sovereignty of the Netherlands or of any part, had assassinated his own generals in their beds, had butchered in cold blood those who would gladly have marched as soldiers to achieve his conquests, and had freed Philip from all fear of French interference in behalf of the Dutch patriots. No wonder then, that, when a courier, sent by the Spanish ambassador at Paris, with tidings of the events of St. Bartholomew's Day, reached Madrid, on the evening of Saturday, the seventh of September—so slowly did news travel in those days—Philip was almost beside himself with joy.[1166] "He showed so much gayety, contrary to his native temperament and custom," the French envoy, St. Goard, wrote to his master, "that he was evidently more delighted than with all the pieces of good fortune that had ever befallen him; and he called to him his familiars to tell them that he knew that your Majesty was his good brother, and that he saw that there was no one else in the world that deserved the title of 'Very Christian.'" Not content with gloating over the bloody bulletin with his cronies, he promptly sent his secretary, Cayas, to congratulate the French ambassador, and to inform him that "the king his master was going that very hour to St. Jerome, to render all manner of thanks to God, and to pray that in matters of so great importance his Majesty might be sustained by His hand." When, the next morning, St. Goard had been very graciously admitted to an audience, he tells us that Philip—the man who rarely or never gave a hearty or manly expression to his feelings—"began to laugh, and, with demonstrations of extreme pleasure and satisfaction, praised your Majesty as having earned your title of 'Very Christian,' telling me there was no king that could claim to be your companion, either in valor or in prudence." It was natural that Philip should chiefly extol Charles's alleged dissimulation, and dwell on the happiness of Christendom saved from a frightful war. It was equally politic for St. Goard to chime in, and echo his master's praise. But there was sound truth in the concluding remark he made to Philip: "However this may be, Sire, you must confess that you owe your Netherlands to his Majesty, the King of France."[1167]

Charles instigates the murder of French prisoners.

The Duke of Alva jubilant but wary.

We have also more direct testimony to Philip's delight at the Parisian massacre, in the form of a letter from the monarch to the Duke of Alva. In this extraordinary communication, worthy of the depraved source from which it emanated, the bloodthirsty king does not attempt to conceal the satisfaction with which he has received the tidings of Charles's "honorable and Christian resolution to rid himself of the admiral and other important personages," both for religion's sake and because the King of France will now be a firmer friend to the Spanish crown—since neither the German Protestants nor Elizabeth will trust him any longer—a circumstance which will have a decided influence upon the restoration of his authority in the Netherlands. Another matter upon which he touches, places in the clearest light the infamy to which Charles and his council had sunk, and the hypocrisy of Philip the Catholic himself. Until the very moment of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, Charles had been earnestly desirous of saving the lives of the French Huguenots who had been taken prisoners with Genlis near Mons; while, by the most barefaced assumptions of innocence, he endeavored to induce the Spaniard to believe that he was in no way responsible for Genlis's undertaking.[1168] Now, however, it is Charles himself who, by his envoys at Madrid and Brussels, begs from Philip the murder of his own French subjects, lest they return to do mischief in France. Not only the soldiers taken with Genlis, but the garrison of Mons, if that city, as now seemed all but certain, should fall into Alva's hands, must be put to death.[1169] "If Alva object," he wrote to Mondoucet, "that your request is the same thing as tacitly requiring him to kill the prisoners and cut to pieces the garrison of Mons, you will tell him that that is precisely what he ought to do, and that he will inflict a very great wrong upon himself and upon all Christendom if he shall do otherwise."[1170] Drawing his inspiration from the same source, St. Goard said to Philip himself: "One of the greatest services that can be done for Christendom, will be to capture Mons and put everybody to the edge of the sword."[1171] And so Philip thought too; for he not only wrote to Alva that the sooner the earth were freed of such bad plants, the less solicitude would be necessary in future, but he scribbled with his own hand on the draft of the letter: "I desire, if you have not already rid the world of them, you should do it at once and let me know, for I see no reason for delay."[1172] The more clear-headed Alva, however, saw reasons not only for delay, but for extending to some of the prisoners a counterfeit mercy; for he soon replied to his master, that "he was not at all of opinion that it was best to cut off the heads of Genlis and the other French prisoners, as the King of France asked him to do. He had resolved to do so before the admiral's death, but now things had changed. Charles must know that Philip has in his power men capable of giving him great trouble."[1173] None the less, however, did Alva communicate the glad tidings to all parts of the Netherlands, and cause solemn Te Deums to be sung in the churches.[1174] "These occurrences," he wrote to Count Bossu, Governor of Holland, "come so marvellously apropos in this conjunction for the affairs of the king our master, that nothing could be more timely. For this we cannot sufficiently render thanks to the Divine goodness."[1175] Philip promptly sent the Marquis d'Ayamonte to congratulate Charles and the queen mother.[1176] Alva had already a special envoy at the French court, who returned soon after the massacre to Brussels. On asking Catharine what reply he should carry back, the Italian princess, intoxicated with her success, impiously said: "I do not know that I can make any other answer than that which Jesus Christ gave to St. John's disciples, 'Go and show again those things which ye have seen and heard—the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.'" "And do not forget," she added, "to say to the Duke of Alva, 'Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.'"[1177] Such was the new gospel of blood and rapine with which it was proposed to replace the Bible in the vernacular, and the Psalms of David translated by Marot and Beza!

England's horror.

Perplexity of the French ambassador at London.

But Spain and Rome were only exceptions. From almost every part of the civilized world there arose a loud and unanimous cry of execration. It was natural, however, that the feeling of horror should be deepest in the neighboring Protestant countries, whose religion and liberties seemed to be menaced with destruction by the treacherous blow. Above all, in England with whose queen a matrimonial treaty had for months been pending, the abhorrence of the crime and its perpetrators was the more intense because of the violence of the revulsion. Resident Frenchmen were startled at the sudden change. The warmest friends of France became its open enemies, loudly reproaching the broken faith of the king, and pouring curses upon the people that had exercised such indignities upon unoffending citizens. If we may believe La Mothe Fénélon, the men who customarily wore arms indulged in much insulting bravado and in threats directed against any one that dared to gainsay them.[1178] The French ambassador has himself left on record the description of a remarkable interview which he had with Queen Elizabeth. Rarely had a diplomatic agent been placed in a more embarrassing position. His letters and despatches from home were of the most contradictory character. Scarcely had he, with protestations of sincerity and truthfulness, published the account of events in Paris which was sent him, when new instructions arrived recalling, modifying, or contradicting the former. First, with the startling news of the disturbance of the peace, by Admiral Coligny's wounding, came a letter from the king, expressing "infinite displeasure" at the "bad" and "unhappy" act, and a resolution to inflict "very exemplary justice." To which this postscript was appended: "Monsieur de la Mothe Fénélon, I will not forget to tell you that this wicked act proceeds from the enmity between the admiral's house and the Guises, and that I have taken steps to prevent their involving my subjects in their quarrels, for I intend that my edict of pacification shall be observed in every point."[1179] Two days later Charles wrote again, communicating intelligence of the massacre, beginning with the murder of Coligny, in almost the identical words of the circular he was sending to Mandelot and other governors of provinces and important cities.[1180] Still it is the work of the Guises, and he himself has had enough to do in protecting his own person in the castle of the Louvre. He wishes Queen Elizabeth to be assured that he has no part in the deed,[1181] and, in fact, that all should know that he entertains great displeasure for what has so unfortunately happened, and that it is the thing which he detests more than anything else.[1182] And he adds in a tone of well counterfeited innocence: "I have near me my brother the King of Navarre, and my cousin the Prince of Condé, to share in the same fortune with me."[1183] After receiving and spreading abroad these explanations, what must have been the unfortunate ambassador's perplexity and annoyance, when he received, but too late, a brief letter written on Monday, the day after the massacre began, containing these words: "As we are beginning to discover the conspiracy which the adherents of the pretended reformed religion had entered into against me, my mother and my brothers, you will not speak of the particulars of the disturbance, nor of its occasion until you receive fuller and more certain intelligence from me; for, by to-night or to-morrow morning, I hope to have cleared up the whole matter."[1184] No wonder the courier to whom the last letter was intrusted was bidden ride with all speed to overtake the other; nor that La Mothe Fénélon hardly knew how to extricate himself from the dilemma in which the king his master had placed him. Had not Charles, by throwing all the blame, in his first letter, upon the Guises and by positively denying any participation of his own, unambiguously proclaimed his ignorance up to that moment of any Huguenot conspiracy? How, then, could the French envoy go to the same Englishmen to whom he had made known the contents of this despatch, and tell them that the king was the author of the deed he had stigmatized as most detestable, and that the motive that had impelled him reluctantly to order the slaughter of the Huguenots was a conspiracy which he did not discover until a day or two after he gave the order? Yet this was the contradictory story which was sketched in the letter of the twenty-fifth of August, and more fully elaborated in subsequent despatches.[1185]

His cold reception by Queen Elizabeth.

The crestfallen ambassador is said—and the authority for the disputed statement is no less than that of the members of the queen's council, Burleigh, Leicester, Knowles, Thomas Smith, and Croft—to have exclaimed bitterly "that he was ashamed to be counted a Frenchman."[1186] At first he believed that an audience would be denied him; and when the queen at last vouchsafed to see him at Woodstock, it was only after he had waited three days in Oxford, while Elizabeth and her council met frequently to deliberate upon the contents of Walsingham's despatches. He was admitted to the private apartments of the queen, where he found her Majesty surrounded by the lords of the council and the principal ladies of the court, awaiting his coming in profound silence. Elizabeth advanced to meet him, and greeted him with a countenance on which sorrow and severity were mingled with more kindly feelings. Drawing the ambassador aside to a window, she began the discourse with a dignity which few sovereigns have ever known better how to assume. She gave particular expression to the regret she felt in hearing such tidings from a prince in whom she had had more confidence than in any other living monarch. And when the ambassador had stammered out the lying excuse based upon "the horrible ingratitude and perverse intentions of the Huguenots" against his master, and had tragically recounted the sorrow of Charles at being constrained to cut off an arm to save the rest of the body, she replied that she hoped that if the informations against the admiral and his were confirmed by investigation, the king "might be excused in some part, both toward God and the world, in permitting the admiral's enemies by force to prevent his enterprises." But she would not admit that even then the cruelty of the mode of punishment was capable of defence, most of all in the case of Coligny, who, "being in his bed, lamed both on the right hand and left arm, lying in danger under the care of chyrurgions, being also guarded about his private house with a number of the king's guard, might have been, by a word of the king's mouth, brought to any place to have answered when and how the king should have thought meet." But she preferred to ascribe the fault, not to Charles, but to those around him whose age and knowledge "ought in such case to have foreseen how offenders ought to be justified with the sword of the prince, and not with the bloody swords of murderers, being also the mortal enemies of the party murdered."[1187]

Elizabeth's council was even more outspoken. "Doubtless," said they, "the most heinous act that has occurred in the world, since the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, is that which has been recently committed by the French; an act which the Italians and the Spaniards, ardent as they are, are far from applauding in their heart, since it was a deed too full of blood, for the greater part innocent, and too much suspected of fraud, which had violated the pledged security of a great king, and disturbed the serenity of the royal nuptials of his sister, insupportable to be heard by the ears of princes, and abominable to all classes of subjects, perpetrated contrary to all law, divine or human, and without a parallel among all acts ever undertaken in the presence of any prince, and which has even rather involved the King of France in danger than rescued him from it."[1188]

The ambassador disheartened.

The success of the French ambassador, therefore, was not flattering. The most that he could do was to correct the impression that the massacre was only a part of a more general plan for the extirpation of Protestantism everywhere. But when the news came of the barbarous butchery of Huguenots in Lyons and elsewhere; when Villiers, Fuguerel, and other Protestant ministers escaping from France, brought to London the report that one hundred thousand victims to religious intolerance had fallen since St. Bartholomew's Day;[1189] when English merchants who had witnessed the scenes of horror at Rouen returned, bringing a true account of what had occurred; when they overturned the audacious assertion that religion had nothing to do with the deed, by declaring that the Huguenots whose lives were spared were constrained to go to mass; that numbers had lost their lives who might have saved them by consenting to take part in services which they regarded as idolatrous; that there were instances of children taken from their parents, and forcibly rebaptized; when, in short, every assertion of La Mothe Fénélon was disproved, the irritation of the English grew deeper. And at last the French ambassador was forced to confess that they would believe neither him nor the despatches that he occasionally produced, saying that the event, which is wont to give the lie to words and letters, showed them what they had to fear.[1190] The life of Mary, Queen of Scots, was in danger. There were many who regarded it as a measure of self-defence to put to death so open a sympathizer with the work of persecution. La Mothe Fénélon, disheartened, promised Catharine de' Medici to do all that he could to promote the interests of France, but the chief influence must come from the king and herself. "Otherwise," he said, "your word will come to be of no authority, and I shall become ridiculous in everything that I tell them or promise them in your name."[1191]

Letter of Sir Thomas Smith.

About the same time one of the most acute statesmen, one of the most vigorous writers of the age, Sir Thomas Smith, himself a former ambassador at the French court, correctly and eloquently expressed the universal feeling of true Protestants in England, in a letter to Walsingham which has become deservedly famous. "What warrant can the French make, now seals and words of princes being traps to catch innocents and bring them to the butchery? If the admiral and all those murdered on that bloody Bartholomew day were guilty, why were they not apprehended, imprisoned, interrogated, and judged, but so much made of as might be, within two hours of the assumation? Is that the manner to handle men either culpable or suspected? So is the journeyer slain by the robber; so is the hen of the fox; so is the hind of the lion; so Abel of Cain; so the innocent of the wicked; so Abner of Joab. But grant they were guilty—they dreamt treason that night in their sleep; what did the innocent men, women, and children at Lyons? What did the sucking children and their mothers at Roan (Rouen) deserve? at Cane (Caen)? at Rochel?... Will God, think you, still sleep? Will not their blood ask vengeance; shall not the earth be accursed that hath sucked up the innocent blood poured out like water upon it?... I am glad you shall come home, and would wish you were at home, out of that country so contaminate with innocent blood, that the sun cannot look upon it but to prognosticate the wrath and vengeance of God. The ruin and desolation of Jerusalem could not come till all the Christians were either killed there or expelled thence."[1192]

Catharine's unsuccessful representations.

Neither Catharine nor Charles was insensible to the impression made upon the English court by the French atrocities. It became important to furnish, if possible, some more convincing proofs of the existence of a Huguenot plot, since the assurances of both monarch and ambassador had lost all weight. The papers of the admiral, both in Paris and in his castle of Châtillon-sur-Loing, had been searched in vain for anything which, even after the murder, might seem to justify the king in violating his pledged word and every principle of law and right. Not a scrap of a letter could be found inculpating him. Not the slightest approach to a hint that it would be well to make way with the king or any of the royal family. The most private manuscripts of the admiral, unlike those of many courtiers even in our own day, contained not a disrespectful expression, nothing that could be twisted into a mark of disaffection or treason. Catharine could lay her hand upon nothing that suited her purpose better than the paper, which, as stated in a former chapter,[1193] she showed to Walsingham, wherein he advised Charles to keep Elizabeth and Philip "as low as he could, as a thing that tended much to the safety and maintenance of his crown." But the finesse of the queen mother failed of accomplishing its object; for neither Elizabeth nor Walsingham would think less of Coligny for proving himself faithful to his own sovereign's interests. Elizabeth's incredulity was, doubtless, enhanced by the hypocritical pretence of Catharine that her son intended to maintain his edict of pacification in full force.[1194] "The king's meaning is," the queen mother once said to the English envoy, "that the Huguenots shall enjoy the liberty of their conscience." "What, Madam," observed Walsingham, "and the exercise of their religion too?" "No," Catharine replied, "my son will have exercise but of one religion in his realm." "Then, how can it agree, that the observation of the edict, whereof you willed me to advertise the queen my mistress, that the same should continue in his former strength?" interposed Walsingham. To that Catharine answered "that they had discovered certain matters of late, that they saw it necessary to abolish all exercise of the same." "Why, Madam," said the puzzled and somewhat pertinacious diplomatist, "will you have them live without exercise of religion?" "Even," quoth Catharine, who fancied that she had discovered a pertinent retort, "even as your mistress suffereth the Catholics of England." But the ambassador could not be so easily silenced. Parrying the home thrust, and trenching on an uncourtly bluntness of speech, he quietly called attention to a distinction which her Majesty had not perhaps observed. "My mistress did never promise them anything by edict; if she had, she would not fail to have performed it." After that, there was plainly nothing more to be said, and Catharine resorted to the usual refuge of worsted argument, and said: "The queen your mistress must direct the government of her own country, and the king my son his own."[1195]

Briquemault and Cavaignes hung for alleged conspiracy.

Some victims were needed to be immolated upon the altar of justice to atone for the alleged Huguenot conspiracy. They were found in Briquemault and Cavaignes, two distinguished Protestants. The former, a knight of the royal order, had, contrary to all rules of international law, been forcibly taken from the house of the English ambassador, whither he had fled for refuge.[1196] It was not difficult for the court to obtain what was desired from the cowardly parliament over which Christopher de Thou presided. Convicted by false testimony, and complaining that even their own words were falsified by their partial judges, the two Protestants were publicly hung on the Place de Grève. It was noticed that they both died exhibiting great fortitude,[1197] and protesting to the last that they had neither taken part in, nor even heard of any plot against the king or the state. Charles, hardened by the sight of so much blood, wished to witness in person this new spectacle also, and not only looked on from a neighboring window, but, as it was too dark to see the sufferers distinctly, ordered torches to be lighted, and diverted himself with great laughter in observing their expiring agonies. The King of Navarre and the Prince of Condé were likewise forced to be present, in order to give color to the absurd story that one or both had been included among those whom Coligny and the Huguenots had intended to murder. An hour after, and the Parisian populace cut down the bodies, dragged them in contumely through the streets, and amused themselves by stabbing them, shooting at them, and maiming them. It was an additional aggravation of the judicial crime and the king's ill-timed merriment, that the execution took place on the evening of the day upon which the young Queen of France gave birth to Charles's only legitimate child—a daughter, whom the Salic law excluded from the succession to the throne. Still unconvinced of Coligny's guilt, even by the conviction and death of Briquemault and Cavaignes, Queen Elizabeth very frankly expressed to La Mothe Fénélon her deep regret that her brother, the French king, had profaned the day of his daughter's birth by the sanguinary spectacle he had that evening gone to behold.[1198]

The news in Scotland;

In Scotland, when the news of the massacre arrived, the aged reformer, John Knox, summoned all his remaining energy to preach a last time before the regent and the estates. In the midst of his sermon, turning to Du Croc, the French ambassador, who was present, he sternly addressed to him these prophetic words: "Go tell your king that sentence has gone out against him, that God's vengeance shall never depart from him nor his house, that his name shall remain an execration to the posterities to come, and that none that shall come of his loins shall enjoy that kingdom unless he repent." The indignant ambassador called upon the regent "to check the tongue which was reviling an anointed king;" but the regent refused to silence the minister of God, and suffered Du Croc to leave Edinburgh in anger.[1199]

in Germany;

Monsieur de Vulcob, the French ambassador at the court of the Emperor of Germany, was equally unsuccessful in convincing that monarch of the truth of the story contained in his despatches from Paris. The emperor did not disguise his great disappointment and sorrow, nor his belief that the murderous project had been known for weeks before at Rome.[1200] It need scarcely be said that the negotiations of Schomberg, who had been sent to procure an offensive and defensive alliance between the Protestant princes of Germany and the crown of France, were rendered abortive by the advent of tidings of the treacherous massacre at Paris. Like the rest of the diplomatists sent out from France, the able envoy to Germany had been left in profound ignorance of the blow that was to disturb all his calculations. He had even been empowered to promise that Charles would assume toward the enterprise of William of Orange the same position that the princes would take; and he seemed likely to be successful in inducing the princes to make common cause with his master.

To Schomberg, as to the rest, there had been despatched, on the very day that Coligny was wounded, a narrative of that event to be laid before the Protestant princes—a narrative wherein the occurrence was deplored; wherein Charles stated that he had taken just such measures for the apprehension of the perpetrator of the crime as he would have taken had the victim been one of his own brothers; wherein he promised to spare neither diligence nor trouble, and to inflict condign punishment, "in order that all men might know that no greater misdeed could have been committed in his kingdom, nor more displeasing to himself;" wherein he protested his unalterable determination to maintain completely and sedulously his edict of pacification.[1201] But to Schomberg, as to the other French ambassadors, there had come subsequent tidings and despatches giving the lie to all these assurances.

And now, as he wrote home with some bitterness, "all his negotiations had ended in smoke."[1202] Their Highnesses "could not get it out of their heads" that the events of St. Bartholomew's Day were premeditated, with the view of enabling the Duke of Alva to make way with the forces of the Prince of Orange. So high did feeling run, that the rumor prevailed that Schomberg had been thrown into prison as an accomplice in the perfidy, and that Coligny's death was about to be avenged upon him.[1203]

Instead of forming an alliance with Charles, the Landgrave of Hesse and the three Protestant electors began instantly to concert measures of defence against what they verily believed to be a general war of extermination, set on foot by the Pope and his followers, in pursuance of the resolutions of the Council of Trent. "The princes of the Augsburg Confession," wrote Landgrave William to the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, "can see in this inhuman incident, as in a mirror, how the papists are disposed toward all the professors of the pure doctrine. The Pope and his party follow even at this day the rule which they followed respecting John Huss in the Council of Constance. When it is their interest so to act, they do not deem themselves bound to keep any faith with heretics.... Last year the Pope and his followers obtained a glorious victory over the Turk. It is of the very nature of victories that they commonly make the victors more insolent." To Frederick the Pious, elector palatine, the landgrave wrote a day later: "There is nothing better for us Germans than to have nothing to do with them; for neither credit nor confidence can be reposed in them." "I marvel greatly," he added, "that the admiral and the other Huguenot gentlemen, although they, too, had doubtless studied Macchiavelli's 'Il Principe'—the Italian bible[1204]—should have been so trustful, and should not have been too much upon their guard to suffer themselves to be enticed unarmed into so suspicious a place."[1205]

In Poland.

Montluc, Bishop of Valence, had just been sent to Poland to endeavor to secure the vacant throne for Henry of Anjou. His ultimate success and its consequences will be seen in another place. But now the attempt seemed desperate. The bishop, who was the most wily and experienced negotiator the French court possessed, and was fully conscious of his rare qualifications, was vexed almost beyond endurance at the stupidity of the king and queen who had employed him. "By the despatch I send the king, and by what the Dean of Die will tell you," he wrote (on the twentieth of November) to one of the secretaries of state, "you will learn how this unfortunate blast from France has sunk the ship which we had already brought to the mouth of the harbor. You may imagine how well pleased the person who was in command of it has reason to be when he sees that by another's fault he loses the fruit of his labors. I say another's fault, for, since a desire was felt for this kingdom, the execution which has been made might and ought to have been deferred."[1206] Again and again Montluc begged that there might be no repetition of such cruelties, suggesting that an edict, guaranteeing that no one's conscience should be constrained, might be made or fabricated. If the king had no intention of carrying it into effect, he could at least send it to the governors, with private orders to make such disposition of it as he pleased.[1207] But, above all, there must be no fresh outrages done to the Protestants. "If between this and the day of the election there were to come the news of some cruelty," he wrote in midwinter, "we could do nothing, even had we here ten millions in gold with which to gain men over. The king and the Duke of Anjou will have to consider whether a purpose of revenge is of more moment to them, than the acquisition of a kingdom."[1208]

Sympathy of the Genevese.

The ministers of Geneva, somewhat removed from the mists that prevented the greater part of the Huguenot leaders from descrying the perils environing them, had long foreseen the coming catastrophe, and had in vain implored Admiral Coligny, in particular, to have a greater care for his safety. "How often have I predicted it to him! How often have I warned him!" exclaimed Theodore Beza, in the first paroxysm of grief at the assassination of his noble friend.[1209] The city government, participating in the same apprehensions, early in the fatal month of August, 1572, instructed some of the reformed ministers who had occasion to revisit their native land on private business, to hasten out of a country where they were exposed to the treachery of a Florentine woman.[1210] Their solicitude was only too well grounded. On Saturday, the thirtieth of August, some merchants arrived in Geneva from Lyons, with the appalling intelligence that their Protestant countrymen were everywhere the victims of unparalleled cruelty. From the inn they went on without delay to the city hall, and narrated to the magistrates the revolting atrocities of which they had been eye-witnesses. They besought the city to prepare hospitable shelter and food for the throng of refugees who would soon make their appearance, having scarce escaped the bloody snares in which their brethren in great numbers had lost their lives.[1211] "The frightful news," writes the historian of the Genevan church, describing the scene, "courses through the city with the speed of lightning: the shops are closed, and the citizens assemble on the public squares. They know, by past experience, the burdens and sacrifices that await men of good-will. Within doors, the women get in readiness an abundance of clothing, of medicines, and of food. The magistrates send wagons and litters to the villages of the district of Gex; and the peasants with their pastors take their station upon the border, to obtain intelligence and to render assistance to the first that may arrive. They have not long to wait. On the first of September a few travellers make their appearance, pale, worn out with fatigue, scarcely answering the greeting they receive. They cannot credit the reality of their deliverance. For days death has been lying in wait for them at the threshold of every village. Soon their numbers increase. The wounded uncover the wounds they have carefully concealed, that they might not be taken for reformers. They declare that, since the twenty-sixth of August, the country and the cities have been deluged with the blood of their brethren."[1212]