History of the Rise of the Huguenots

1095

Ibid., ubi supra.

1096

Ibid., 296.

1097

Mémoires de l'estat de France, ubi supra, 297.

1098

Mém. de l'estat, 298, 299.

1099

Ibid., 299, 300.

1100

A horrible story is told of the discovery of some human relics several weeks later. Ibid., 305.

1101

See ante, p. 502.

1102

Mém. de l'estat, 309-315.

1103

Mém. de l'estat, ubi supra, 349-351. "Puigaillard … homme au reste indigne de vivre pour l'acte détestable par luy commis en la personne de sa première femme tuée à sa sollicitation pour en espouser une autre qu'il entretenoit." (P. 351.)

1104

Registres consulaires, apud "La Saint-Barthélemy à Lyon et le gouverneur Mandelot," by M. Puyroche, p. 311. This monograph which I quote from the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. français, in which it first appeared (vol. xviii., 1869, pp. 305-323, 353-367, and 401-420), is by far the most accurate and complete treatise on this subject, and contains a fund of fresh information based upon unpublished manuscripts, especially the local records.

1105

Charles IX. to Mandelot, Aug. 22, 1572, Correspondance du roi Charles IX. et du sieur de Mandelot, published by P. Paris, 1830 (pp. 36, 37). A portion of this letter has already been given.

1106

Charles IX. to Mandelot, Aug. 24, 1572, Correspondance, etc., 39-42.

1107

"Monsieur de Mandelot, vous croirez le present porteur de ce que je luy ay donné charge de vous dire." Ibid., 42.

1108

"Suivant icelles (the king's letters of Aug. 22d and 24th) et ce que le sieur du Perat m'auroit dict de sa part, je n'auroit failly pourveoir par toutz moyens à la seureté de ceste ville: sy bien, Sire, que et les cors (corps) et les biens de ceulx de la relligion auroient esté saisiz et mis soubz votre main sans aucun tumulte ny scandale." Mandelot to Charles IX., Sept. 2, 1572, Correspondance, etc., 45.

1109

Puyroche, 319.

1110

"Il n'était pas d'avis," dit-il, "que tout le peuple s'en mêlat, craignant quelque désordre, mêmement un sac." Puyroche, 320.

1111

"Quelques deux cens," says Mandelot to Charles IX., Sept. 2d; but he was anxious to make the number as small as possible. Jean de Masso, "receveur général" (Sept. 1st), says, "sept à huit vingt," and sieur Talaize (Sept. 2d), "deux cent soixante et trois." So also Coste (Sept. 3d). Puyroche, 365, 366.

1112

Mandelot tells Charles IX. (Sept. 17th) that he had sent all the poorer Huguenots to other prisons; that he had left here only the rich and those who had borne arms for the Protestant cause. To exhibit his own incorruptibility, he added that there were among them, of his own certain knowledge, at least twenty who would have paid a ransom of thirty thousand or even forty thousand crowns, "qui estoit assez," he significantly adds, "pour tenter ung homme corruptible." Correspondance du roi Charles IX. et du Sieur de Mandelot, 71, 72.

1113

Correspondance, etc., p. 46, 47.

1114

Puyroche, La Saint-Barthélemy à Lyon et le gouverneur Mandelot, ubi supra; Mém. de l'estat, ubi supra, 321-343; Crespin, Hist. des martyrs, 1582, p. 725, etc., apud Époques de l'église de Lyon (Lyon, 1827), 173-185; De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 602-604, etc.; Jean de Serres (1575), iv., fol. 45, etc. The number of Huguenots killed is variously estimated, by some as high as from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred (Crespin, ubi supra). It must have been not less than seven hundred or eight hundred; for private letters written immediately after the occurrence by prominent and well-informed Roman Catholics state it at about seven hundred, and they would certainly not be inclined to exaggerate. The rumor at Paris even then set it at twelve hundred. See the letters in Puyroche, 365-367. Among the one hundred and twenty-three names that have been preserved, the most interesting is that of Claude Goudimel, who set Marot's and Beza's psalms to music, and who was killed by envious rivals. At the time of his death he was engaged in adapting the psalms to a more elaborate arrangement, according to a contemporary writer: "Excellent musicien, et la mémoire duquel sera perpétuelle pour avoir heureusement besogné les psaumes de David en français, la plupart desquels il a mis en musique en forme de motets à quatre, cinq, six et huit parties, et sans la mort eût tôt après rendu cette œuvre accomplie." Sommaire et vrai discours de la Félonie. etc, Puyroche, 402.

1115

"Faisant cependant contenir ce peuple par toutes les remontrances et raisons que je puis leur persuader de ne s'émouvoir à aucune sedition ni tumulte, comme je m'aperçois qu'il y en peut avoir quelque danger auquel toutes fois j'espère prévenir." Mandelot to Charles IX., Aug. 31, 1572, Puyroche, 356. This letter is not contained in Paulin Paris, Correspondance de Charles IX. et du sieur de Mandelot.

1116

Mém. de l'estat, 330; De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 603.

1117

"Je ne veulx estre le premier à en demander à votre Majesté; m'asseurant que si elle a commencé par quelques autres, elle me faict tant d'honneur de ne m'oblier (oublier)." Mandelot to Charles IX., September 2, 1572, Correspondance, p. 49. I find the clearest evidence both of Mandelot's having had no hand in the massacres of August 31st, and of his utter want of principle, in the craven apology he makes, in his letter of September 17th, for not having done more, on the ground that he only knew his Majesty's pleasure as it were in a shadow, and very late, and that he had rather feared the king would be angry at what the people had done, than that so little had been done! "La pouvant asseurer sur ma vie que si elle n'a esté satisfaitte en ce faict icy, je n'en ay aucune coulpe, n'ayant sceu quelle estoit sa volunté que par umbre, encores bien tard et à demy; et ay craint, Sire, que votre Majesté fust plustost courroucée de ce que le peuple auroit faict, que de trop peu, d'aultant que par toutes les autres provinces circonvoysines il ne s'est rien touché." Correspondance, etc., 72, 73.

1118

It is given word for word, from the MS. registers of the parliament, by Floquet, Hist. du parlement de Normandie, iii. 81-85.

1119

Ante, chapter xvii., p. 374.

1120

"Encor qu'il se soit tousjours monstré fort peu amy de telles inhumanitez." Mémoires de l'estat, 371.

1121

"Receut lettres du Roy qui luy mandoit et commandoit expressément d'exterminer tous ceux qui faisoyent profession de la religion audit lieu, sans en excepter aucun." Mém. de l'estat, Arch. cur., vii. 370.

1122

Ibid., 371.

1123

"Il n'y a aultre que vous," said they, "qui puisse commander aux armes céans, contenir le peuple en l'obéissance au roy, et la ville en paix." Reg. secr. du parlement, 9 Septembre, 1572, apud Floquet, 120. See also Reg. de l'hôtel-de-ville de Rouen, 7 Septembre, ibid.

1124

Floquet, 122.

1125

Mém. de l'estat, apud Archives curieuses, vii. 373.

1126

Mémoires de l'estat, apud Arch. curieuses, vii. 372; Floquet, iii. 127. Floquet is incorrect in stating that the names of only about a hundred are known. We have (Mém. de l'estat. Archives curieuses, vii. 372-378) a partial list of 186 men, whose names and trades are generally given, and of 33 women – that is 219, besides a reference to many others whose names the writer did not obtain.

1127

"Les autres estoyent accommodez à coups de dague. Les massacreurs usoyent de ce mot accommoder, l'accommodans à leur bestiale et diabolique cruauté." Mém. de l'estat, ubi sup., 372.

1128

Mém. de l'estat, ubi sup., 378.

1129

Ibid., 379. The story of the massacre is well told in the Mém. de l'estat, and by M. Floquet, whose original sources of information throw a flood of light upon the transactions; also by De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 606; Agrippa d'Aubigné, ii. 27; Jean de Serres (1575), iv., fol. 50.

1130

One of them, Jean Coras, had committed an unpardonable offence. When passing in 1562 with the Protestant army through Roquemadour, in the province of Quercy, he had taken advantage of the opportunity to examine the relics of St. Amadour, of whom the monks boasted that they possessed not only the bones, but also some of the flesh. He was never forgiven for having exhibited the close resemblance of the holy remains to a shoulder of mutton. De Thou, iv. 606, note.

1131

Mém. de l'estat, Archives curieuses, vii. 381-385; De Thou, ubi supra; Agrippa d'Aubigné, ii. 27, 28 (liv. i., c. 5); Jean de Serres (1575), iv., fol. 50.

1132

President Lagebaston even says that, had this been suffered to go on a week longer – so rapidly were the Protestants flocking to the mass – there would not have been eight Huguenots in town.

1133

Registers of Parliament, in Boscheron des Portes, Hist. du parl. de Bordeaux (Bordeaux, 1877), i. 241.

1134

Letter of President Lagebaston to Charles IX., October 7, 1572, Mackintosh, Hist. of England, iii., App. E, 351-353. See also De Thou, iv. 651, 652, and Agrippa d'Aubigné, ii. 27. Lagebaston was "first president" of the Bordalese parliament, but, so far from being able to prevent the massacre, received information that his own name was on Montferrand's list, and fled to the castle of Ha, whence he wrote to the king. His remonstrances against a butchery based upon a pretended order which was not exhibited, his delineation of the impolitic and disgraceful work, and his reasons why an execution, that might have been necessary to crush a secret conspiracy at Paris, was altogether unnecessary in a city "six or seven score leagues distant," where there could be no thought of a conspiracy, render his letter very interesting.

1135

Registres du Parlement, Boscheron des Portes, i. 246, 247.

1136

Boscheron des Portes, ubi supra.

1137

Claude Haton waxes facetious when describing the sudden popularity acquired by the sign of the cross, and the numbers of rosaries that could be seen in the hands, or tied to the belt, of fugitive Huguenot ladies.

1138

Tocsain contre les massacreurs, 156. See ante, chapter xviii., p. 491.

1139

De Félice, Hist. of the Protestants of France (New York, 1859), 214, and Henry White, 455, from Maimbourg, Histoire du Calvinisme, 486. I refer the reader to Mr. L. D. Paumier's exhaustive discussion of the story in his paper, "La Saint-Barthélemy en Normandie," Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. français, vi. (1858), 466-470. Mr. Paumier has also completely demolished the scanty foundation on which rested the similar story told of Sigognes, Governor of Dieppe, pp. 470-474. See also M. C. Osmont de Courtisigny's monograph, "Jean Le Hennuyer et les Huguenots de Lisieux en 1572," in the Bulletin, xxvi. (1877) 145, etc.

1140

Tocsain contre les massacreurs, 156; Odolant Desnos, Mémoires historiques sur la ville d'Alençon, ii. 285, apud Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. français, viii. (1859), 68. The truth of the story as to Alençon seems to be proved by the circumstance that when, in February, 1575, Matignon marched against Alençon, in order to suppress the conspiracy which the duke, Charles's youngest brother, had entered into to prevent Henry of Anjou from succeeding peaceably to the throne of France, the grateful Protestants at once opened their gates to him. Ibid., 305, Bulletin, ubi supra.

1141

Tocsain, 156.

1142

"Par lesquelles vous me mandez n'avoir receu aucun commandement verbal de moy, ains seulement mes lettres du 22, 24 et 28 du passé, dont ne vous mettrez en aucune peine, car elles s'adressoyent seulement à quelques-uns qui s'estoyent trouvez près de moy." Charles IX. to Gordes, Sept. 14, 1572, Archives curieuses, vii. 365, 366.

1143

Ibid., 367, 368.

1144

Mémoires de l'estat, Archives curieuses, vii. 366, 367; De Thou, iv. 605. The Tocsain contre les massacreurs, however, p. 156, gives credit instead to M. de Carces.

1145

Dr. White has shown some reasons for doubting the accuracy of the story. Among the Dulaure MSS. is preserved a full account of the manner in which a Protestant, fleeing from Paris, fell in with the messenger who was carrying the order to St. Hérem or Héran, and robbed him of his instructions. The Protestant hastened on to warn his brethren of their danger, while the messenger could only relate to the governor the contents of the lost despatch. Notwithstanding this, eighty Huguenots were murdered in one city (Aurillac) of this province. Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 454, 455.

1146

Adiram d'Aspremont.

1147

Agrippa d'Aubigné, Hist. univ., ii. 28 (liv. i., c. 5). The authenticity of this letter has been much disputed, partly because of the Viscount's severe and cruel character (which, however, D'Aubigné himself notices when he tells the story), partly because it rests on the sole authority of D'Aubigné. It is to be observed, however, that although he alone relates it, he alludes to it in several of his works, as e. g., in his Tragiques. But the truth of the incident is apparently placed beyond all legitimate doubt by its intimate and necessary connection with an event which D'Aubigné narrates considerably later in his history, and from personal knowledge. Hist. univ., ii. 291, 292 (liv. iii., c. 13). In 1577, D'Aubigné, having lost much of Henry of Navarre's favor through his fidelity or his bluntness (see Mém. de d'Aubigné, éd. Panth., p. 486), retired from Nérac to the neighboring town of Castel-jaloux, of which he was in command. Making a foray at the head of a small detachment of Huguenot soldiers, he fell in with and easily routed a Roman Catholic troop, consisting of a score of light horsemen belonging to Viscount D'Orthez, and a number of men raised at Bayonne and Dax, who were conducting three young ladies condemned at Bordeaux to be beheaded. The vanquished Roman Catholics threw themselves on the ground and sued for mercy. On hearing who they were, D'Aubigné called to him all those who came from Bayonne and then cried out to his followers to treat the rest in memory of the massacre in the prisons of Dax. The Huguenots needed no further reminder. It was not long before they had cut to pieces the twenty-two men from Dax who had fallen into their hands. On the other hand they restored to the soldiers of Bayonne their horses and arms, and, after dressing their wounds in a neighboring village, sent them home to tell their governor, Viscount D'Orthez, "that they had seen the different treatment the Huguenots accorded to soldiers and to hangmen." A week later, a herald from Bayonne arrived at Castel-jaloux, with worked scarfs and handkerchiefs for the entire Huguenot band. Nor did the exchange of courtesies end here. The mad notion seized Henry of Navarre to accept an invitation to a feast extended to him by the Bayonnese. Six Huguenots accompanied him, of whom D'Aubigné was one. The table was sumptuous, the presents were rare and costly. D'Aubigné being recognized, was overwhelmed with thanks, "his courtesy being much more liberally repaid than he had deserved;" while the King of Navarre and his Huguenots, at the table, "at the expense of the rest of France, extolled to heaven the rare and unexampled act and glory of the men of Bayonne." It is certainly an easier supposition that D'Aubigné has faithfully reproduced D'Orthez's letter to Charles IX., than that he has manufactured so long and consistent a story. The discussion in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'histoire du prot. franç. is full, xi. 13-15, 116, etc., xii. 240.

1148

Letter of Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Montpensier, Aug. 26th (it should evidently be the 25th; for the Duke speaks of Coligny as killed "ledit jour d'hier," and the mythical Huguenot plot was to have been executed "hier ou aujourd'hui"). Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., i. (1852) 60, and Soldan, Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, ii., App., 599.

1149

The words are those of an inscription of the seventeenth or the early part of the eighteenth century, in the Hôtel de Ville of Nantes. Bulletin, i. (1852) 61.

1150

Mém. de l'estat, Archives cur., vii. 385, 386.

1151

See a table in White, Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 461.

1152

Narrative appended to Capilupi, Stratagema di Carlo IX. (1574). The cardinal's adulatory letter to Charles IX., on receipt of the king's missive, is strongly corroborative of the view to which everything forces us, that the massacre was not long definitely premeditated. "Sire," he said, "estant arrivé le sieur de Beauville avecques lettres de Vostre Majesté, qui confirmoyent les nouvelles des tres-crestiennes et héroicques délibération et exéquutions faictes non-seulement à Paris, mais aussi partout voz principales villes, je m'asseure qu'il vous plaira bien me tant honorer … que de vous asseurer que entre tous voz très humbles subjects, je ne suis le dernier à an (en) louer Dieu et à me resjouir. Et véritablement, Sire, c'est tout le myeus (mieux) que j'eusse osé jamais désirer ni espérer. Je me tienz asseuré que des ce commencement les actions de Vostre Majesté accroistront chacung jour à la gloire de Dieu et à l'immortalité de vostre nom," etc. Card. Lorraine to the king, Rome, Sept. 10, 1572, MSS. Nat. Library, apud Lestoile, éd. Michaud et Poujoulat, 25, 26, note.

1153

Conjouissance de Mr. le Cardinal de Lorraine, au nom du Roy, faicte au Pape, le vije jour de sept. 1572, sur la mort de l'Admiral et ses complices. Correspondance diplom. de La Mothe Fénélon, vii. 341, 342. Also Jean de Serres (1575) iv., fol. 56, and in a French translation appended to Capilupi, Lo stratagema di Carlo IX. (1574), 111-113, and reproduced in Mém. de l'estat, Arch, cur., vii. 360.

1154

"Literis romanis aureis majusculis descriptum, festa fronte velatum, ac lemniscatum, et supra limen aedis Sancti Ludovici Romæ affixum."

1155

The genuineness of this medal, in spite of the clumsy attempts made to discredit it, is established beyond all possible doubt. The Jesuit Bonanni, in his "Numismata Pontificum" (2 vols. fol., Rome, 1689), has figured and described it as No. 27 of the medals of Gregory XIII. A translation of his account and a facsimile of the medal may be seen in the Bulletin de la Société de l'hist. du prot. français, i. (1852) 240-242. It is also admirably represented in the Trésor de Numismatique (Delaroche, etc., Paris, 1839), Médailles des papes, plate 15, No. 8. The late Alexander Thomson, Esq., of Banchory, Aberdeenshire, purchased at the papal mint in the city of Rome, in 1828 or 1829, among other medals for which he applied, not less than seven copies of this medal, six of them struck off expressly for him from the original die still in possession of the mint. See his own account, given in his Memoir by Professor Smeaton, and reproduced in the New York Evangelist of October 17, 1872.

1156

Recueil des lettres missives de Henri IV., i. 36.

1157

See Pistolesi, Il Museo Vaticano descritto ed illustrato (Roma, 1838) vol. viii. 97. There are three paintings, of which the first represents "the King of France sitting in parliament, and approving and ordering that the death of Gaspard Coligny, Grand Admiral of France, and declared to be head of the Huguenots, be registered." "The mischance of Coligny is delineated in the following picture in a spacious square, among many heads of streets (capistrade) and façades of temples. The admiral, clothed in the French costume of that period, is carried in the arms of several military men; although lifeless (estinto, read rather, faint), he still preserves in his countenance threatening and terrible looks." The third is the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day itself, in which the beholder scarcely knows which to admire most, the artistic skill of the painter, or his success in bringing into a narrow compass so many of the most revolting incidents of the tragedy – the murder of men in the streets, the butchery of helpless and unoffending women, the throwing of Coligny's remains from the window of his room, etc. Dr. Henry White gives a sketch of this painting, taken from De Potter's Lettres de Pie V. Of the fresco representing the wounding of Coligny there is an engraving in Pistolesi, ubi supra, vol. viii. plate 84. By an odd mistake, both the text and the index to the plates, make this belong to the reconciliation of Frederick Barbarossa and the pontificate of Alexander III. – on what grounds it is hard to imagine. The character of the wound of the person borne in the arms of his companions, indicated by the loss of two fingers of his right hand, from which the blood is seen to be dropping, leaves no doubt that he is the Admiral Coligny. Unfortunately, Pistolesi's splendid work is disfigured by other blunders, or typographical errors, equally gross. In describing other paintings of the same Sala Regia (pp. 95, 96), he assigns, or is made by the types to assign, various events in the quarrel of Barbarossa and Adrian IV. and Alexander III., to the years 1554, 1555, 1577, etc.

1158

Ferralz to Charles IX., Rome, Sept. 11, 1572, apud North British Review, Oct., 1869, p. 31.

1159

Prospero Count Arco to the emperor, Rome, Nov. 15, 1572, ubi supra.

1160

"Il pontefice, e universalmente tutta d'Italia grandemente se ne rallegrò, facendo pardonare cotale effetto al Re e alla Reina, che molte cose avevano sostenuto di fare in benefizio di quella parte." G. B. Adriani, Istoria de' suoi tempi, ii. 378.

1161

Cuñiga to Philip, Sept. 8th, Simancas MSS. Gachard, Bull. de l'acad. de Bruxelles, xvi. 249, 250.

1162

"A. N. S. mi faccia gratia di basciar i piedi in nome mio, col quale mi rallegro con le viscere del cuore che sia piaciuto alla Dva. Msa. d'incaminar, nel principio del suo pontificato, si felicemente e honoratamente le cose di questo regno." Salviati to Card. sec. of State, Aug. 24, Mackintosh, iii., App. G., p. 355.

1163

"Non si risolvo a credere che si fusse fatto tanto a un pezzo." Ibid., ubi supra.

1164

"De quoy nous aseurons que en leoures Dieu aveques nous, tant pour nostre particulier coment pour le bien qui en reviendré à toute la cretienté et au service et honeur et gloyre de Dieu," etc.

1165

"Et randons par cet ayfect le temognage de nos bonnes et droyctes yntantions, cor ne les avons jeamés eu aultre que tendant à son honneur," etc. Letter of Catharine de' Medici to Philip II., Aug. 28, 1572, in Musée des archives nationales; documents originaux de l'hist. de France, exposés dans l'Hôtel Soubise (published by the Gen. Directory of the Archives, 1872), p. 392.