Note 10 — Chapter V

This accident was strangely commented on by the theologic writers of the time, as appears by the following extract from Cockburn:—

“There was another observation made of this (accident), not only by the Protestants, but some of the moderate Roman Catholics, and which disposed some to turn Protestants. For this King Henry, by the persuasion of Cardinal Lorrain, had begun a severe persecution of the Protestants; and said, as was reported of him, that he would raise a mountain out of the ashes of Protestants that should be burned, higher than any in France: and, a day or two before, the Count Montmorency, by an order brought him by Oliver the Chancellor, seized and committed to the Bastile eleven eminent councillors and members of the Parliament of Paris, who lay under suspicion of favouring the Protestant doctrine: wherefore it was concluded and believed a visible and just judgment of God for avenging the blood of some of his servants, and the intended cruelty against others, that the King should receive his death by the same hand which seized these innocent men, in the very face of the Bastile where they were imprisoned, and that he should die too between twelve and one, the same hour in which he signed the order for seizing them. Thuanus reports that it was given out that King Henry said to those who came to take him up, that ‘he was afraid he had been injurious to those innocent persons,’ pointing to the Bastile; which Cardinal Lorrain checked in great wrath, telling him that these thoughts proceeded from an evil spirit. It is also remarkable how that the same Count Montgomery had afterwards his head struck off publicly at Paris, being condemned for treason because he joined the Prince of Condé’s party against the Queen and the Regency.”