Henry IV, Makers of History

Signals.

The conspiracy extended throughout all the provinces of France. The storm was to burst, at the same moment, upon the unsuspecting victims in every city and village of the kingdom. Beacon-fires, with their lurid midnight glare, were to flash the tidings from mountain to mountain. The peal of alarm was to ring along from steeple to steeple, from city to hamlet, from valley to hill-side, till the whole Catholic population should be aroused to obliterate every vestige of Protestantism from the land.

Feast at the Louvre.

While Catharine and Charles were arranging all the details of this deed of infamy, even to the very last moment they maintained with the Protestants the appearance of the most cordial friendship. They lavished caresses upon the Protestant generals and nobles. The very day preceding the night when the massacre commenced, the king entertained, at a sumptuous feast in the Louvre, many of the most illustrious of the doomed guests. Many of the Protestant nobles were that night, by the most pressing invitations, detained in the palace to sleep. Charles appeared in a glow of amiable spirits, and amused them, till a late hour, with his pleasantries.

Embarrassment of Henry.

Henry of Navarre, however, had his suspicions very strongly aroused. Though he did not and could not imagine any thing so dreadful as a general massacre, he clearly foresaw that preparations were making for some very extraordinary event. The entire depravity of both Catharine and Charles he fully understood. But he knew not where the blow would fall, and he was extremely perplexed in deciding as to the course he ought to pursue. The apartments assigned to him and his bride were in the palace of the Louvre. It would be so manifestly for his worldly interest for him to unite with the Catholic party, especially when he should see the Protestant cause hopelessly ruined, that the mother and the brother of his wife had hesitatingly concluded that it would be safe to spare his life. Many of the most conspicuous members of the court of Navarre lodged also in the capacious palace, in chambers contiguous to those which were occupied by their sovereign.

The Duke of Lorraine.

His hatred toward the Protestants.

The assassin's revenge.

Marguerite's oldest sister had married the Duke of Lorraine, and her son, the Duke of Guise, an energetic, ambitious, unprincipled profligate, was one of the most active agents in this conspiracy. His illustrious rank, his near relationship with the king – rendering it not improbable that he might yet inherit the throne – his restless activity, and his implacable hatred of the Protestants, gave him the most prominent position as the leader of the Catholic party. He had often encountered the Admiral Coligni upon fields of battle, where all the malignity of the human heart had been aroused, and he had often been compelled to fly before the strong arm of his powerful adversary. He felt that now the hour of revenge had come, and with an assassin's despicable heart he thirsted for the blood of his noble foe. It was one of his paid agents who fired upon the admiral from the window, and, mounted upon one of the fleetest chargers of the Duke of Guise, the wretch made his escape.

Anxiety of the Duchess of Lorraine.

The conspiracy had been kept a profound secret from Marguerite, lest she should divulge it to her husband. The Duchess of Lorraine, however, was in all their deliberations, and, fully aware of the dreadful carnage which the night was to witness, she began to feel, as the hour of midnight approached, very considerable anxiety in reference to the safety of her sister. Conscious guilt magnified her fears; and she was apprehensive lest the Protestants, when they should first awake to the treachery which surrounded them, would rush to the chamber of their king to protect him, and would wreak their vengeance upon his Catholic spouse. She did not dare to communicate to her sister the cause of her alarm; and yet, when Marguerite, about 11 o'clock, arose to retire, she importuned her sister, even with tears, not to occupy the same apartment with her husband that night, but to sleep in her own private chamber. Catharine sharply reproved the Duchess of Lorraine for her imprudent remonstrances, and bidding the Queen of Navarre good-night, with maternal authority directed her to repair to the room of her husband. She departed to the nuptial chamber, wondering what could be the cause of such an unwonted display of sisterly solicitude and affection.

Scene in Henry's chamber.

Rumors of trouble.

When she entered her room, to her great surprise she found thirty or forty gentlemen assembled there. They were the friends and the supporters of Henry, who had become alarmed by the mysterious rumors which were floating from ear to ear, and by the signs of agitation, and secrecy, and strange preparation which every where met the eye. No one could imagine what danger was impending. No one knew from what quarter the storm would burst. But that some very extraordinary event was about to transpire was evident to all. It was too late to adopt any precautions for safety. The Protestants, unarmed, unorganized, and widely dispersed, could now only practice the virtue of heroic fortitude in meeting their doom, whatever that doom might be. The gentlemen in Henry's chamber did not venture to separate, and not an eye was closed in sleep. They sat together in the deepest perplexity and consternation, as the hours of the night lingered slowly along, anxiously awaiting the developments with which the moments seemed to be fraught.

Assembling for work.

Alarm in the metropolis.

In the mean time, aided by the gloom of a starless night, in every street of Paris preparations were going on for the enormous perpetration. Soldiers were assembling in different places of rendezvous. Guards were stationed at important points in the city, that their victims might not escape. Armed citizens, with loaded muskets and sabres gleaming in the lamplight, began to emerge, through the darkness, from their dwellings, and to gather, in motley and interminable assemblage, around the Hotel de Ville. A regiment of guards were stationed at the gates of the royal palace to protect Charles and Catharine from any possibility of danger. Many of the houses were illuminated, that by the light blazing from the windows, the bullet might be thrown with precision, and that the dagger might strike an unerring blow. Agitation and alarm pervaded the vast metropolis. The Catholics were rejoicing that the hour of vengeance had arrived. The Protestants gazed upon the portentous gatherings of this storm in utter bewilderment.

Inflexibility of Catharine.

All the arrangements of the enterprise were left to the Duke of Guise, and a more efficient and fitting agent could not have been found. He had ordered that the tocsin, the signal for the massacre, should be tolled at two o'clock in the morning. Catharine and Charles, in one of the apartments of the palace of the Louvre, were impatiently awaiting the lingering flight of the hours till the alarm-bell should toll forth the death-warrant of their Protestant subjects. Catharine, inured to treachery and hardened in vice, was apparently a stranger to all compunctious visitings. A life of crime had steeled her soul against every merciful impression. But she was very apprehensive lest her son, less obdurate in purpose, might relent. Though impotent in character, he was, at times, petulant and self-willed, and in paroxysms of stubbornness spurned his mother's counsels and exerted his own despotic power.

The faltering of Charles.

Charles was now in a state of the most feverish excitement. He hastily paced the room, peering out at the window, and almost every moment looking at his watch, wishing that the hour would come, and again half regretting that the plot had been formed. The companions and the friends of his childhood, the invited guests who, for many weeks, had been his associates in gay festivities, and in the interchange of all kindly words and deeds, were, at his command, before the morning should dawn, to fall before the bullet and the poniard of the midnight murderer. His mother witnessed with intense anxiety this wavering of his mind. She therefore urged him no longer to delay, but to anticipate the hour, and to send a servant immediately to sound the alarm.

Nerved for the work.

Charles hesitated, while a cold sweat ran from his forehead. "Are you a coward?" tauntingly inquired the fiendlike mother. This is the charge which will always make the poltroon squirm. The young king nervously exclaimed, "Well, then, begin."

The knell of death.

"Vive Dieu et le roi!"

There were in the chamber at the time only the king, his mother, and his brother the Duke of Anjou. A messenger was immediately dispatched to strike the bell. It was two hours after midnight. A few moments of terrible suspense ensued. There was a dead silence, neither of the three uttering a word. They all stood at the windows looking out into the rayless night. Suddenly, through the still air, the ponderous tones of the alarm-bell fell upon the ear, and rolled, the knell of death, over the city. Its vibrations awakened the demon in ten thousand hearts. It was the morning of the Sabbath, August 24th, 1572. It was the anniversary of a festival in honor of St. Bartholomew, which had long been celebrated. At the sound of the tocsin, the signal for the massacre, armed men rushed from every door into the streets, shouting, "Vive Dieu et le roi!" —Live God and the king!

Chapter V

Massacre of St. Bartholomew

1572

The commencement of the massacre.

As the solemn dirge from the steeple rang out upon the night air, the king stood at the window of the palace trembling in every nerve. Hardly had the first tones of the alarm-bell fallen upon his ear when the report of a musket was heard, and the first victim fell. The sound seemed to animate to frenzy the demoniac Catharine, while it almost froze the blood in the veins of the young monarch, and he passionately called out for the massacre to be stopped. It was too late. The train was fired, and could not be extinguished. The signal passed with the rapidity of sound from steeple to steeple, till not only Paris, but entire France, was roused. The roar of human passion, the crackling fire of musketry, and the shrieks of the wounded and the dying, rose and blended in one fearful din throughout the whole metropolis. Guns, pistols, daggers, were every where busy. Old men, terrified maidens, helpless infants, venerable matrons, were alike smitten, and mercy had no appeal which could touch the heart of the murderers.

The house forced.

The wounded Admiral Coligni was lying helpless upon his bed, surrounded by a few personal friends, as the uproar of the rising storm of human violence and rage rolled in upon their ears. The Duke of Guise, with three hundred soldiers, hastened to the lodgings of the admiral. The gates were immediately knocked down, and the sentinels stabbed. A servant, greatly terrified, rushed into the inner apartment where the wounded admiral was lying, and exclaimed,

"The house is forced, and there is no means of resisting."

"I have long since," said the admiral, calmly, "prepared myself to die. Save yourselves, my friends, if you can, for you can not defend my life. I commend my soul to the mercy of God."

Flight of the servants.

The companions of the admiral, having no possible means of protection, and perhaps adding to his peril by their presence, immediately fled to other apartments of the house. They were pursued and stabbed. Three leaped from the windows and were shot in the streets.

Coligni, left alone in his apartment, rose with difficulty from his bed, and, being unable to stand, leaned for support against the wall. A desperado by the name of Breme, a follower of the Duke of Guise, with a congenial band of accomplices, rushed into the room. They saw a venerable man, pale, and with bandaged wounds, in his night-dress, engaged in prayer.

"Art thou the admiral?" demanded the assassin, with brandished sword.

"I am," replied the admiral; "and thou, young man, shouldst respect my gray hairs. Nevertheless, thou canst abridge my life but a little."

Death of Admiral Coligni.

Breme plunged his sword into his bosom, and then withdrawing it, gave him a cut upon the head. The admiral fell, calmly saying, "If I could but die by the hand of a gentleman instead of such a knave as this!" The rest of the assassins then rushed upon him, piercing his body with their daggers.

The Duke of Guise, ashamed himself to meet the eye of this noble victim to the basest treachery, remained impatiently in the court-yard below.

"Breme!" he shouted, looking up at the window, "have you done it?"

"Yes," Breme exclaimed from the chamber, "he is done for."

"Let us see, though," rejoined the duke. "Throw the body from the window."

Brutality.

The mangled corpse was immediately thrown down upon the pavement of the court-yard. The duke, with his handkerchief, wiped the blood and the dirt from his face, and carefully scrutinized the features.

"Yes," said he, "I recognize him. He is the man."

Then giving the pallid cheek a kick, he exclaimed, "Courage, comrades! we have happily begun. Let us now go for others. The king commands it."

Fate of the Duke of Guise.

In sixteen years from this event the Duke of Guise was himself assassinated, and received a kick in the face from Henry III., brother of the same king in whose service he had drawn the dagger of the murderer. Thus died the Admiral Coligni, one of the noblest sons of France. Though but fifty-six years of age, he was prematurely infirm from care, and toil, and suffering.

For three days the body was exposed to the insults of the populace, and finally was hung up by the feet on a gibbet. A cousin of Coligni secretly caused it to be taken down and buried.

Excitement of the Parisians.

The tiger, having once lapped his tongue in blood, seems to be imbued with a new spirit of ferocity. There is in man a similar temper, which is roused and stimulated by carnage. The excitement of human slaughter converts man into a demon. The riotous multitude of Parisians was becoming each moment more and more clamorous for blood. They broke open the houses of the Protestants, and, rushing into their chambers, murdered indiscriminately both sexes and every age. The streets resounded with the shouts of the assassins and the shrieks of their victims. Cries of "Kill! kill! more blood!" rent the air. The bodies of the slain were thrown out of the windows into the streets, and the pavements of the city were clotted with human gore.

Fiendish spirit of Charles.

Fugitives butchered.

Charles, who was overwhelmed with such compunctions of conscience when he heard the first shot, and beheld from his window the commencement of the butchery, soon recovered from his momentary wavering, and, conscious that it was too late to draw back, with fiendlike eagerness engaged himself in the work of death. The monarch, when a boy, had been noted for his sanguinary spirit, delighting with his own hand to perform the revolting acts of the slaughter-house. Perfect fury seemed now to take possession of him. His cheeks were flushed, his lips compressed, his eyes glared with frenzy. Bending eagerly from his window, he shouted words of encouragement to the assassins. Grasping a gun, in the handling of which he had become very skillful from long practice in the chase, he watched, like a sportsman, for his prey; and when he saw an unfortunate Protestant, wounded and bleeding, flying from his pursuers, he would take deliberate aim from the window of his palace, and shout with exultation as he saw him fall, pierced by his bullet. A crowd of fugitives rushed into the court-yard of the Louvre to throw themselves upon the protection of the king. Charles sent his own body-guard into the yard, with guns and daggers, to butcher them all, and the pavements of the palace-yard were drenched with their blood.

Terror of Marguerite.

Just before the carnage commenced, Marguerite, weary with excitement and the agitating conversation to which she had so long been listening, retired to her private apartment for sleep. She had hardly closed her eyes when the fearful outcries of the pursuers and the pursued filled the palace. She sprang up in her bed, and heard some one struggling at the door, and shrieking "Navarre! Navarre!" In a paroxysm of terror, she ordered an attendant to open the door. One of her husband's retinue instantly rushed in, covered with wounds and blood, pursued by four soldiers of her brother's guard. The captain of the guard entered at the same moment, and, at the earnest entreaty of the princess, spared her the anguish of seeing the friend of her husband murdered before her eyes.

Flight of Marguerite.

Marguerite, half delirious with bewilderment and terror, fled from her room to seek the apartment of her sister. The palace was filled with uproar, the shouts of the assassins and the shrieks of their victims blending in awful confusion. As she was rushing through the hall, she encountered another Protestant gentleman flying before the dripping sword of his pursuer. He was covered with blood, flowing from the many wounds he had already received. Just as he reached the young Queen of Navarre, his pursuer overtook him and plunged a sword through his body. He fell dead at her feet.

Terrors of the night.

Remarkable escape of Maximilian.

No tongue can tell the horrors of that night. It would require volumes to record the frightful scenes which were enacted before the morning dawned. Among the most remarkable escapes we may mention that of a lad whose name afterward attained much celebrity. The Baron de Rosny, a Protestant lord of great influence and worth, had accompanied his son Maximilian, a very intelligent and spirited boy, about eleven years of age, to Paris, to attend the nuptials of the King of Navarre. This young prince, Maximilian, afterward the world-renowned Duke of Sully, had previously been prosecuting his studies in the College of Burgundy, in the metropolis, and had become a very great favorite of the warm-hearted King of Navarre. His father had come to Paris with great reluctance, for he had no confidence in the protestations of Catharine and Charles IX. Immediately after the attempt was made to assassinate the admiral, the Baron de Rosny, with many of his friends, left the city, intrusting his son to the care of a private tutor and a valet de chambre. He occupied lodgings in a remote quarter of the city and near the colleges.

Efforts to save his life.

Young Maximilian was asleep in his room, when, a little after midnight, he was aroused by the ringing of the alarm-bells, and the confused cries of the populace. His tutor and valet de chambre sprang from their beds, and hurried out to ascertain the cause of the tumult. They did not, however, return, for they had hardly reached the door when they were shot down. Maximilian, in great bewilderment respecting their continued absence, and the dreadful clamor continually increasing, was hurriedly dressing himself, when his landlord came in, pale and trembling, and informed him of the massacre which was going on, and that he had saved his own life only by the avowal of his faith in the Catholic religion. He earnestly urged Maximilian to do the same. The young prince magnanimously resolved not to save his life by falsehood and apostasy. He determined to attempt, in the darkness and confusion of the night, to gain the College of Burgundy, where he hoped to find some Catholic friends who would protect him.

The disguise.

Scene in the street.

The distance of the college from the house in which he was rendered the undertaking desperately perilous. Having disguised himself in the dress of a Roman Catholic priest, he took a large prayer-book under his arm, and tremblingly issued forth into the streets. The sights which met his eye in the gloom of that awful night were enough to appal the stoutest heart. The murderers, frantic with excitement and intoxication, were uttering wild outcries, and pursuing, in every direction, their terrified victims. Women and children, in their night-clothes, having just sprung in terror from their beds, were flying from their pursuers, covered with wounds, and uttering fearful shrieks. The mangled bodies of the young and of the old, of males and females, were strewn along the streets, and the pavements were slippery with blood. Loud and dreadful outcries were heard from the interior of the dwellings as the work of midnight assassination proceeded; and struggles of desperate violence were witnessed, as the murderers attempted to throw their bleeding and dying victims from the high windows of chambers and attics upon the pavements below. The shouts of the assailants, the shrieks of the wounded, as blow after blow fell upon them, the incessant reports of muskets and pistols, the tramp of soldiers, and the peals of the alarm-bell, all combined to create a scene of terror such as human eyes have seldom witnessed. In the midst of ten thousand perils, the young man crept along, protected by his priestly garb, while he frequently saw his fellow-Christians shot and stabbed at his very side.

The talisman.

Suddenly, in turning a corner, he fell into the midst of a band of the body-guard of the king, whose swords were dripping with blood. They seized him with great roughness, when, seeing the Catholic prayer-book which was in his hands, they considered it a safe passport, and permitted him to continue on his way uninjured. Twice again he encountered similar peril, as he was seized by bands of infuriated men, and each time he was extricated in the same way.

Arrival at the college.

His protection.

At length he arrived at the College of Burgundy; and now his danger increased tenfold. It was a Catholic college. The porter at the gate absolutely refused him admittance. The murderers began to multiply in the street around him with fierce and threatening questions. Maximilian at length, by inquiring for La Faye, the president of the college, and by placing a bribe in the hands of the porter, succeeded in obtaining entrance. La Faye was a humane man, and exceedingly attached to his Protestant pupil. Maximilian entered the apartment of the president, and found there two Catholic priests. The priests, as soon as they saw him, insisted upon cutting him down, declaring that the king had commanded that not even the infant at the breast should be spared. The good old man, however, firmly resolved to protect his young friend, and, conducting him privately to a secure chamber, locked him up. Here he remained three days in the greatest suspense, apprehensive every hour that the assassins would break in upon him. A faithful servant of the president brought him food, but could tell him of nothing but deeds of treachery and blood. At the end of three days, the heroic boy, who afterward attained great celebrity as the minister and bosom friend of Henry, was released and protected.

Henry taken before the king.

He yields.

The morning of St. Bartholomew's day had not dawned when a band of soldiers entered the chamber of Henry of Navarre and conveyed him to the presence of the king. Frenzied with the excitements of the scene, the imbecile but passionate monarch received him with a countenance inflamed with fury. With blasphemous oaths and imprecations, he commanded the King of Navarre, as he valued his life, to abandon a religion which Charles affirmed that the Protestants had assumed only as a cloak for their rebellion. With violent gesticulations and threats, he declared that he would no longer submit to be contradicted by his subjects, but that they should revere him as the image of God. Henry, who was a Protestant from considerations of state policy rather than from Christian principle, and who saw in the conflict merely a strife between two political parties, ingloriously yielded to that necessity by which alone he could save his life. Charles gave him three days to deliberate, declaring, with a violent oath, that if, at the end of that time, he did not yield to his commands, he would cause him to be strangled. Henry yielded. He not only went to mass himself, but submitted to the degradation of sending an edict to his own dominions, prohibiting the exercise of any religion except that of Rome. This indecision was a serious blot upon his character. Energetic and decisive as he was in all his measures of government, his religious convictions were ever feeble and wavering.