History of the Rise of the Huguenots

Entertainment in the Louvre.

Later in the day, a magnificent entertainment was given by Charles in the Louvre to the municipality of Paris, the members of parliament, and other high officers of justice. Supper was succeeded by a short ball, and this in turn by one of those allegorical representations in which French fancy and invention at this period ran wanton. Through the great vaulted saloon of the Louvre a train of wonderful cars was made slowly to pass. Some were rocks of silver, on whose summits sat in state the king's brothers, Navarre, Condé, the prince dauphin, Guise, or Angoulême. On others sea-monsters disported themselves, and the pagan gods of the water, somewhat incongruously clothed in cloth of gold or various colors, serenely looked on. Charles himself rode in a chariot shaped like a sea-horse, the curved tail of which supported a shell holding Neptune and his trident. When the pageant stopped for a moment, singers of surpassing skill entertained the guests. Étienne le Roy, the king's especial favorite, distinguished himself by the power and beauty of his voice.931

The entertainment was prolonged far into the night; but Admiral Coligny, before giving himself repose, snatched from sleep a few minutes to write a letter to his wife, whom he had left in Châtillon. It is the last which has been preserved, and is otherwise important because of the light it throws upon the hopes and fears of the great Huguenot at this critical time.

Coligny's letter to his wife.

"My darling," he said, "I write this bit of a letter to tell you that to-day the marriage of the king's sister and the King of Navarre took place. Three or four days will be spent in festivities, masks, and mock combats. After that the king has assured me and given me his promise, that he will devote a few days to attending to a number of complaints which are made in various parts of the kingdom, touching the infraction of the edict. It is but reasonable that I should employ myself in this matter, so far as I am able; for, although I have infinite desire to see you, yet should I feel great regret, and I believe that you would likewise, were I to fail to occupy myself in such an affair with all my ability. But this will not delay so much the departure from this city, but that I think that the court will leave it at the beginning of next week. If I had in view only my own satisfaction, I should take much greater pleasure in going to see you, than in being in this court, for many reasons which I shall tell you. But we must have more regard for the public than for our own private interests. I have many other things to tell you, when I am able to see you, for which I am so anxious that you must not think that I waste a day or an hour. What remains for me to say is that to-day, at four o'clock after noon, the bride's mass was said. Meanwhile, the King of Navarre walked about in a court with all those of the religion who accompanied him. Other incidents occurred which I will reserve to relate to you; but first I must see you. And meantime I pray our Lord, my darling, to keep you in His holy guard and protection. From Paris, this eighteenth day of August, 1572. Mandez-moy comme se porte le petit ou petite. … I assure you that I shall not be anxious to attend all the festivities and combats that are to take place during these next days. Your very good husband and friend, Châtillon."932

Festivities and mock combats.

The festivities and combats – so distasteful to a statesman who recognized the critical condition of French affairs, and regarded this merry-making as ill-timed – pursued their uninterrupted course through Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of that eventful week. But the description of most of the elaborate pageants would contribute little to the value of our conceptions of the character of the age. An exception may perhaps be made in favor of an ingenious tournament that took place on Wednesday in the Hôtel Bourbon. Here the Isles of the Blessed, the Elysian Fields, and Tartarus were represented by means of costly mechanisms. Charles and his brothers figured as knights defending Paradise, which Navarre and others, dressed as knights-errant, endeavored to enter by force of arms, but were repulsed and thrust into Tartarus. After some time the defeated champions were rescued from their perilous situation by the compassion of their victors, and the performance terminated in a startling, but harmless display of fireworks.933 As the assailants were mostly Protestants, the defenders Roman Catholics, it was not strange that a sinister interpretation was soon put upon the strange plot; but, unless we are to suppose the authors of the massacre, whose success depended upon the surprise of the victims, so infatuated as to wish to forewarn them of their fate, it is scarcely credible that they intended to prefigure the ruin of the reformed faith in France.

Huguenot grievances to be redressed.

The time that had been allotted to pleasure was fast passing. The king was soon to meet Coligny, according to his promise, for the transaction of important business relating both to the internal and to the foreign affairs of France. There were religious grievances to be redressed. The admiral was particularly anxious to bring to the king's notice the flagrant outrage recently perpetrated in Troyes, where a fanatical Roman Catholic populace, indignant that the Huguenots, through the kindness of Marie de Clèves, the betrothed of the Prince of Condé,934 had been permitted to hold their worship so near the city as her castle of Isle-au-Mont, scarcely three leagues distant,935 had met the Protestants on their return from service with aggravated insult, and had killed in the arms of its nurse an infant that had just been baptized according to the reformed rites.936 Catharine and her son Anjou saw with consternation that the impression made by the "tears of Montpipeau" was already in a great degree obliterated, and feared the complete destruction of their influence if Charles were longer permitted to have intercourse with Coligny. In that case a Flemish war would be almost inevitable. Charles's anger against the Spaniards had kindled anew when he heard of Alva's inhumanity to Genlis and his fellow-prisoners. But, when he was informed that Alva had put French soldiers to the torture, in order to extract the admission of their monarch's complicity in the enterprise, his passion was almost ungovernable, as he asked his attendants again and again: "Do you know that the Duke of Alva is putting me on trial?"937 It seems to have been at this juncture that Catharine and her favorite son came to the definite determination to put the great Huguenot out of the way. Henry of Anjou is here his own accuser. In that strange confession which he made to his physician, Miron,938 shortly after his arrival in Cracow – a confession made under the influence, not so much of remorse, as of the annoyance occasioned by the continual reminders of the massacre which were thrown in his way as he travelled to assume the throne of Poland – he gives us a partial view of the development of the murderous plot.

Jealousy of Catharine and Anjou.

The Duchess of Nemours and Henry of Guise.

Several times had Anjou and Catharine perceived that, whenever Charles had conversed in private with the admiral, his demeanor was visibly changed toward them. He no longer exhibited his accustomed respect for his mother or his wonted kindness for his brother. Once, in particular – and it was, so Anjou tells us, only a few days before St. Bartholomew's Day – Henry happened to enter the room just after Coligny had gone out. Instantly the king's countenance betrayed extreme anger. He began to walk furiously to and fro, taking great strides, and keeping his eyes fixed upon his brother with an expression that boded no good, but without uttering a word. Again and again he placed his hand on his dagger, and Anjou expected nothing less than that his brother would attack him. At last, taking advantage of an opportunity when Charles's back was turned, he hastily retreated from the room. This circumstance led Catharine and Anjou to compare their observations and their plans. "Both of us," says Henry, "were easily persuaded, and became, as it were, certain that it was the admiral who had impressed some evil and sinister opinion of us upon the king. We resolved from that moment to rid ourselves of him, and to concert the means of doing so with the Duchess of Nemours. To her alone we believed that we might safely disclose our purpose, on account of the mortal hatred which we knew that she bore to him."939 The Duchess of Nemours was born of an excellent mother; for she was Anne d'Este, daughter of Renée of France, the younger child of Louis the Twelfth. In her youth, at the court of her father, the Duke of Ferrara, and in society with that prodigy of feminine precocity, Olympia Morata, she had shown evidences of extraordinary intellectual development and of a kindly disposition.940 Although she subsequently married Francis of Guise, the leading persecutor of the Protestants, she had not so lost her sympathy with the oppressed as to witness without tears and remonstrances the atrocious executions by which the tumult of Amboise was followed. But the assassination of her husband turned any affection or compassion she may have entertained for Protestantism into violent hatred. Against Coligny, whom, in spite of his protestations, she persisted in believing to be the instigator of Poltrot's crime, she bore an implacable enmity; and now, having so often failed in obtaining satisfaction from the king by judicial process, she eagerly accepted the opportunity of avenging herself by a deed more dastardly than that which she laid to the charge of her enemy. Entering heartily into the project which Catharine and Anjou laid before her, the Duchess of Nemours enlisted the co-operation of her son, Henry of Guise, and her brother-in-law, the Duke of Aumale, and herself arranged the details of the plan, which was at once to be put into execution.941

Was the massacre long premeditated?

Salviati's testimony.

Such was the germ of the massacre as yet not resolved upon, which, rapidly developing, was to involve the murder of thousands of innocent persons throughout France. In opposition to the opinion that became almost universal among the Protestants, and gained nearly equal currency among the Roman Catholics – that the butchery had long been contemplated, and that Charles was privy to it – and notwithstanding the circumstances that seem to give color to this opinion,942 I am compelled to acquiesce in the belief expressed by the Papal Nuncio, Salviati, who, in his despatches, written in cipher to the cardinal secretary of state, could certainly have had no motive to disguise his real sentiments, and whom it is impossible to suppose ignorant of any scheme for the general extirpation of the Protestants, had such a scheme existed for any considerable length of time: "As to all the statements that will be made respecting the firing upon the admiral and his death, different from that which I have written to you, you will in time find out how true they are. Madame the regent, having come to be at variance with him [the admiral], and having decided upon this step a few days before, caused him to be fired upon. This was without the knowledge of the king, but with the participation of the Duke of Anjou, the Duchess of Nemours, and her son, the Duke of Guise. If the admiral had died at once, no others would have been slain. But, inasmuch as he survived, and they apprehended that some great calamity might happen should he draw closer to the king, they resolved to throw aside shame, and to have him killed together with the rest. And this was put into execution that very night."943

The king's cordiality.

As the hour approached, Coligny exhibited no apprehension of special danger. Others, however, more suspicious, or possessed of less faith in Heaven, felt alarm; and some acted upon their fears. The very "goodness" of the king terrified one. Another said that he had rather be saved with fools than perish with the wise, and hastily forsook the capital. Dark hints had been thrown out by courtiers – such surmises were naturally bred by the defenceless position of the Protestants in the midst of a population so hostile to their faith as the population of Paris – that more blood than wine would be spilled at this wedding. And there were rumors of some mysterious enterprise afloat; so, at least, it was said after the occurrence. But Coligny moved not from the post which he believed had been assigned to his keeping. On Wednesday Charles assured him, with laughing countenance, that if the admiral would but give him four days more for amusement, he would not stir from Paris until he had contented him;944 and the sturdy old Huguenot made no objection when the king, in order to prevent any disturbance which the partisans of Guise might occasion in seeking a quarrel with the followers of the house of Châtillon, proposed to introduce a considerable force of soldiers into the city. "My father," said Charles, with his usual appearance of affection, "you know that you have promised not to give any cause of offence to the Guises so long as you remain here; and they have in like manner promised to respect you and all yours. I am fully persuaded that you will keep your word; but I am not so well assured of their good faith as of yours; for, besides the fact that it is they that would avenge themselves, I know their bravadoes and the favor this populace bears to them."945

Coligny is wounded, August 22.

On Friday morning, the twenty-second of August, Admiral Coligny went to the Louvre, to attend a meeting of the royal council, at which Henry of Anjou presided. It was between ten and eleven o'clock, when, according to the more primitive hours then kept, he left the palace to return home for dinner.946 Meeting Charles just coming out of a chapel in front of the Louvre, he retraced his steps, and accompanied him to the tennis-court, where he left him playing with Guise, against Téligny and another nobleman. Accompanied by about a dozen gentlemen, he again sallied forth, but had not proceeded over a hundred paces when from behind a lattice an arquebuse was fired at him.947 The admiral had been walking slowly, intently engaged in reading a petition which had just been handed to him. The shot had been well aimed, and might have proved fatal, had not the victim at that very moment turned a little to one side. As it was, of the three balls with which the arquebuse was loaded, one took off a finger of his right hand, and another lodged in his left arm, making an ugly wound. Supported by De Guerchy and Des Pruneaux, between whom he had previously been walking, Coligny was carried to his house in the little Rue de Béthisy,948 only a few steps farther on. As he went he pointed out to his friends the house from which the shot had been fired. To a gentleman who expressed the fear that the balls were poisoned, he replied with composure: "Nothing will happen but what it may please God to order."949

The attempted assassination had happened in front of the cloisters of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. The house was recognized as one belonging to the Duchess Dowager of Guise, in which Villemur, the former tutor of young Henry of Guise, had lodged. The door was found locked; but the indignant followers of Coligny soon burst it open. They found within only a woman and a lackey. The assassin, after firing, had fled to the rear of the house. There he found a horse awaiting him; this he exchanged at the Porte Saint Antoine for a fresh Spanish jennet. He was out of Paris almost before pursuit was fairly undertaken. Subsequent investigation left no doubt as to his identity. It was that same Maurevel of infamous memory, who during the third civil war had traitorously shot De Mouy, after insinuating himself into his friendship, and sharing his room and his bed. The king's assassin, "le tueur du roi" – a designation he had obtained when Charles or his advisers gave a special reward for that exploit950– had been selected by Catharine, Anjou and the Guises, as possessing both the nerve and the experience that were requisite to make sure of Coligny's death. It was found that he had been placed in the house by De Chailly, "maître d'hôtel" of the king, and that the horse by means of which he effected his escape had been brought to the door by the groom of the Duke of Guise.951

Agitation of the king.

Charles was still in the tennis-court, when De Piles came in, sent by Coligny, to inform him of the bloody infraction of the Edict of Pacification. On hearing the intelligence, the king was violently agitated. Throwing down his racket, he exclaimed: "Am I, then, never to have peace? What! always new troubles?" and retired to his room in the Louvre, with a countenance expressive of great dejection.952 And when, later in the day, the King of Navarre, the Prince of Condé, and La Rochefoucauld, after seeing Coligny's wounds dressed, came to the palace and begged him for permission to leave a city in which there was no security for their lives, Charles swore to them, with his accustomed profanity, that he would inflict upon the author and abettors of the crime so signal a punishment that Coligny and his friends would be satisfied, and posterity have a warning example. Coligny had received the wound, he said, but the smart was his. Catharine, who was present, chimed in, and declared the outrage so flagrant, that just retribution must speedily be meted out, or insolence would be pushed so far as that the king would be attacked in his own palace.953

Coligny courageous.

Meantime the admiral bore his sufferings with serenity, and, far from needing any comfort his friends could give him, himself administered consolation to the noblemen around his bed. His sufferings were acute. Amboise Paré, the famous surgeon of the king, himself a Huguenot, was called in; but the instruments at hand were dull, and it was not until the third attempt that he could satisfactorily amputate the wounded finger. "My friends," said Coligny to Merlin, his minister, and to other friends, "why do you weep? As for me, I think myself happy in having received these wounds for the name of God." And when Merlin exhorted him "to thank God for His mercy in preserving his mental faculties sound and entire, and to continue to divert his thoughts and feelings from his assassin and his wounds, and to turn them, as he was doing, from all things else to God, since it was from His hands that he had received them," the admiral's reply was, that sincerely and from the heart he forgave the person who had wounded him, and those who had instigated him, holding it for certain that it was beyond their power to injure him, since, should they even kill him, death would be an assured passage to life.954 Thus, with quiet submission, and with edifying prayers which it would be too long to insert, the Admiral de Coligny passed those hours which his enemies subsequently, in their desperate attempts to justify or palliate the most abominable of crimes, represented as given up to infamous plots against king and state.

He is visited by the king and his mother.

That afternoon, between two and three o'clock, Charles visited the wounded man, at the suggestion of Téligny and Damville; for Coligny had expressed a desire to see the monarch, that he might communicate certain matters which concerned him greatly, but of which he feared there was no one else that would inform him.955 The king came, accompanied by his mother, his brothers, the Duke of Montpensier, Cardinal Bourbon, Marshals Damville, Tavannes and Cossé, Count de Retz, and the younger Montmorencies, Thoré and Méru.956 The interview was kind and reassuring. The admiral, who lay upon his bed, heartily thanked the king for the honor he had deigned to do him, and for the measures he had already taken in his behalf. And Charles praised the patience and magnanimity exhibited by Coligny, and bade him be of good courage. Then more important topics were introduced. There were three points respecting which the admiral wished to speak to Charles. The first was his own loyalty, which, however much it had been maligned by his enemies, he desired now solemnly to reaffirm, in the presence of Him before whose bar he might soon be called to stand, and he declared that the sole cause of the hostility he had aroused was his attempt to set bounds to the fury of those who presumed to violate royal edicts. Next, he commended to the king the Flemish project. Never had any predecessor of Charles enjoyed so splendid an opportunity as now offered, when several cities of the Netherlands had declared their desire for his favor and protection. But these advances were openly derided by some of the courtiers about the king; while state secrets were so badly kept, that "one could not turn an egg, nor utter a word in the council, but it was forthwith reported to the Duke of Alva." And, indeed, what else could be expected, since those who were present, and even his own brothers, communicated to foreigners and enemies the king's most confidential deliberations? He earnestly begged Charles to apply a prompt remedy to this matter in future. The last point was the observance of the Edict of Pacification. What opinion would foreign nations form of the king, if he suffered a law solemnly made, and frequently confirmed by oath, to be openly trampled upon? In proof of this assertion, he alleged the recent attack upon the Protestants of Troyes returning from their place of worship, the tragic termination of which has already been noticed.

To that part of Coligny's remarks which related to the war in Flanders, it is said that Charles made no direct reply; but he declared that he had never suspected the admiral's loyalty, and that he accounted him a good man, and a great and generous captain. There was not another man in the kingdom whom he would prefer to him. And he again asseverated his intention to enforce a religious observance of his edicts; for which purpose, indeed, he had recently despatched commissioners into all the provinces, as the queen could inform him. "That is true, Monsieur l'amiral," said Catharine, "and you know it." "Yes, madam," he replied, "commissioners have been sent, among whom are some that condemned me to be hung, and set a price of fifty thousand crowns on my head." "Then," rejoined Charles, "we must send others who are open to no suspicion." Again he promised with his accustomed oath to see that the attempt upon the admiral's life should be so punished that the retribution would be forever remembered;957 after which he inquired whether Coligny were satisfied with the judges whom he had appointed to conduct the investigation. Coligny replied that he committed himself in this matter to the king's prudence, but suggested that Cavaignes, the recently appointed maître de requêtes, and two other Huguenots be added to the commission.

The king and De Retz both endeavored to persuade the admiral to permit himself to be transported, for safety's sake, to the Louvre; but Coligny's friends would not consent to a removal which might endanger his life. Charles requested, before he left, to see the ball extracted from the wounded arm, and examined it with apparent curiosity. Catharine took it next, and said that she was glad that it had been removed, for she remembered that, when the Duke of Guise was shot, the physicians repeatedly said that, even if the ball were poisoned, there was no danger to be apprehended when once the ball was taken out. Many afterward regarded it as a significant circumstance that the queen mother's mind should have reverted on this occasion to the murder of which the Lorraine family still persisted in accusing Coligny of having been the instigator.958

Catharine attempts to break up the conference.

Such was, according to the solitary Huguenot who was present by Coligny's bed, and who survived the subsequent massacre, the substance of the conversation at this celebrated interview. But, if we may credit the account which purports to have been given by Henry of Anjou, there was an incident which he failed to mention. At a certain point in the conversation Coligny asked to be allowed to speak to the king in private, a request which Charles willingly granted, motioning Henry and Catharine to withdraw. They accordingly retired to the middle of the room, where they remained standing during the suspicious colloquy. Meanwhile their apprehensions were awakened as they noticed that there were more than two hundred gentlemen and captains of the admiral's party in this and an adjacent room and below stairs. The sad looks of the Huguenots, their gestures expressive of discontent, their suppressed whispers, as they passed to and fro, before and behind the queen and her favorite son, with less respect than the latter thought was due to them, impressed them with the idea that they were objects of distrust. Catharine afterward admitted to Henry that never in her life was she so glad to get out of any other place. Her impatience soon impelled her to cut short the conference between Charles and Coligny – much to the regret of Charles – on the pretext that longer conversation might retard the sick man's recovery.