Old Court Life in France, vol. 1

A few hours after the shot was fired, the Huguenot chiefs assembled in Navarre’s apartments to deliberate what means should be taken to punish the assassin. About the same time a secret council was called by the Queen-mother, to decide whether or no Navarre and Condé should be massacred. Charles IX., the Duc de Guise – who, however hostile otherwise, join issue to destroy Navarre and Condé – Anjou, Nevers, and D’Angoulême were present. It was resolved that the King of Navarre and the Prince de Condé should die, and that the massacre should take place that very night, before the Huguenots – alarmed by the attempt on Coligni – had time to concert measures of defence. Under pretence of protecting them from further violence, all hotels and lodging-houses were diligently searched, and a list made of the name, age, and condition of every Protestant in Paris. Orders were also given for the troops to be under arms, during the coming night, throughout the city. Every outlet and portal of the Louvre were closed and guarded by Swiss Guards, commanded by Cossein. The Hôtel de Saint-Pierre, in the Rue Béthisy, where Coligni lay, was also surrounded by troops, “for his safety,” it was said. No one could go in or out. At a given signal, the tocsin was to sound from all places where a bell was hung. Chains were to be drawn across the streets and bonfires lighted. White cockades, stitched on a narrow white band to be bound round the right arm, were distributed, in order that the Catholics might be recognised in the darkness. The secret, known to hundreds, was well kept; the Huguenots were utterly unprepared. “No one told me anything,” said Marguerite.13 “They knew that I was too humane. But the evening before, being present at the coucher of my mother the Queen, and sitting on a coffer near my sister Claude, who seemed very sad, the Queen, who was talking to some one, turned round and saw I was not gone. She desired me to retire to bed. As I was making my obeisance to her, my sister took me by the arm and stopped me. Then, sobbing violently, she said, ‘Good God, sister, do not go!’ This alarmed me exceedingly. The Queen, my mother, was watching us, and, looking very angry, called my sister to her and scolded her severely. She peremptorily desired her to say no more to me. Claude replied that it was not fair to sacrifice me like that, and that danger might come to me.

“ ‘Never mind,’ said the Queen. ‘Please God, no danger will come to her; but she must go to bed at once in order to raise no suspicions.’ But Claude still disputed with her, although I did not hear their words. The Queen again turned to me angrily and commanded me to go. My sister, continuing her sobs, bade me ‘good-night.’ I dared ask no questions. So, cold and trembling, without the least idea of what was the matter, I went to my rooms and to my closet, where I prayed to God to save me from I knew not what. The King, my husband, who had not come to bed, sent word to me to do so.” (They occupied the same room, she tells us, but separate beds.) “I could not close my eyes all night,” she adds; “thinking of my sister’s agitation, and sure that something dreadful was coming. Before daylight my husband got up. He came to my bed-side, kissed me, and said that he was going to play a game of rackets before the King was awake. He said he would have justice in the matter of the attempt on the Admiral’s life. Then he left the room. I, seeing the daylight, and overcome by sleep, told my nurse to shut the door, that I might rest longer.”

This took place on Saturday evening, the 23d of August, being the eve of St. Bartholomew.

CHAPTER XX.

ST. BARTHOLOMEW

A SIGNAL sounded from the belfry of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. It was answered by the great bell of the Palace of Justice on the opposite bank of the Seine. Catherine and her two sons, Charles IX. and the Duc d’Anjou, had risen long before daylight. Catherine dared not leave Charles to himself. He was suddenly grown nervous and irresolute. He might yet countermand everything. Within a small closet over the gate of the Louvre, facing the quays, the mother and her two sons stood huddled together. Charles was tallest of the three. The window was open; it was still dark; the streets were empty; not a sound was heard save the crashing of the bells. They listened to the wild clamour without; but not a word was spoken. Catherine felt Charles tremble. She clutched him tightly, and, dreading to hear the echo of her own voice, she whispered in his ear, “My son, God has given your enemies into your hands. Let them not escape you.”

“Mort de Dieu, mother, do you take me for a coward?” whispered back Charles, still trembling.

Suddenly a shot was fired on the Quays. The three conspirators started as if the weapon had been levelled against themselves.

“Whence this pistol shot came, who fired it, or if it wounded any one, I know not,” writes the Duc d’Anjou, who as well as his sister has left an account of the massacre; “but this I know, that the report struck terror into our very souls. We were seized with such sudden dread at the horrors we had ourselves invoked, that even the Queen-mother was dismayed. She despatched one of the King’s gentlemen who waited without, to command the Duc de Guise to stay all proceedings and not to attack Admiral Coligni.” This counter order came too late. The Duke had already left his house.

All the bells in Paris were now ringing furiously; the quays and streets were rapidly filling with citizens bearing flambeaux. Multitudes came pouring in from every opening, every window was filled with persons holding lights, and the crackling of firearms, loud curses, piercing screams, and wild laughter were heard on every side. In the midst of this uproar, Henri de Guise, thirsting for revenge upon the supposed murderer of his father, accompanied by Nevers and D’Angoulême, and a company of Catholic nobles, made his way to the Hôtel Saint-Pierre, in the Rue Béthisy, where Coligni lodged.

Coligni, who had the night before been embraced by his sovereign, lay asleep on his bed. Some of his Protestant friends, Guerchi, Teligny, with Cornaton and Labonne his gentlemen, who had hastened to him upon the news of the attempted assassination, lingered in the anteroom. Paré, the surgeon who had dressed his wounds, had not yet left the hotel. The Admiral had been conversing with him and with his chaplain Merlin, who had offered up a thanksgiving for his deliverance. Within the Court five Swiss Guards stood behind the outer doors; without, in the darkness of the night, crouched Cossein with fifty arquebusiers, who had been gained over by the Duc de Guise.

Suddenly, out of the stillness of the night a voice is heard calling from without, “Open the door – open in the name of the King!” At the King’s name the street-door is immediately unbarred; Cossein and his men rush in, poniard the five guards, break open the inner door, and dash up the stairs. The noise disturbs Cornaton, who descends the stairs; he is pushed violently backwards amid cries of “De par le Roi!” Now the whole house is aroused, Merlin has risen, and Coligni awakened from his sleep, calls loudly from the door of his room, “Cornaton, what does this noise mean?” “My dear Lord,” cries Cornaton hurrying up to him, wringing his hands, “it means that it is God who summons you! The hall below is carried by your enemies – Cossein is a traitor – we cannot save you – we have no means of defence!”

“I understand,” replies Coligni, unmoved. “It is a plot to destroy me now that I am wounded and cannot defend myself. I have long been prepared to die. I commend my soul to God. Cornaton, Merlin, and the others, if the doors are forced you cannot save me, save yourselves.” Coligni returns to his room.

By this time the Admiral’s retainers are aroused and enter his chamber, but no sooner does he repeat the words, “Save yourselves, you cannot save me,” than they lose not a moment in escaping to the leads of the house. One man only remains with his master; his name is Nicolas Muso. The door is then shut, barred, and locked.

Meanwhile Cossein, heavily mailed and sword in hand, having slain all he has found in his way, is on the landing. Besme, a page of the Duc de Guise, Attin, and Sarbaloux are with him; they force open the door of Coligni’s room.

The Admiral, his long white hair falling about his shoulders, is seated in an arm-chair. There is a majesty about him even thus wounded, unarmed and alone, that daunts his assailants. The traitor Cossein falls back. Besme advances brandishing his sword.

“Are you Admiral Coligni?” he cries.

“I am,” replies the veteran, following with his eyes the motion of the sword. “Young man, respect my grey hairs and my infirmities,” and he signs to his arm bound up and swathed to his side. Besme makes a pass at him. “If I could have died by the hands of a gentleman and not of this varlet!” exclaims the Admiral. Besme for answer plunges his sword up to the hilt into Coligni’s breast.

A voice is now heard from without under the window – “Besme, you are very long; is all over?”

“All is over,” answers Besme, thrusting his head out and displaying his bloody sword.

“Sirrah, here is the Duc de Guise, and I, the Chevalier d’Angoulême. We will not believe it until we see the body. Fling it out of the window, like a good lad.”

With some difficulty the corpse is raised and thrown into the street below. The gashed and bleeding remains of the old hero fall heavily upon the pavement. Henri de Guise stoops down to feast his eyes upon his enemy. The features are so veiled with blood he cannot recognise them. He takes out his handkerchief and wipes the wrinkled face clean. “I know you now – Admiral Coligni,” says he, “and I spurn you. Lie there, poisonous old serpent that murdered my father. Thou shalt shed no more venom, reptile!” and he kicks the corpse into a corner, amidst the dirt and mud of the thoroughfare. (Coligni’s dead body14 is carried to the gallows at Montfaucon, where it hangs by the feet from a chain of iron.) Guise then turns to the fifty arquebusiers behind him. “En avant – en avant, mes enfants!” he shouts; “you have made a good beginning – set upon the others – slaughter them all – men, women – even infants at the breast – cut them down.” Sword in hand Guise rushes through the streets with Nevers, D’Angoulême, and Tavannes, as well as Gondi and De Retz, who have now joined him, at his back.

Meanwhile, Marguerite de Valois is awakened by some one beating violently with feet and hands against her door crying out, “Navarre! Navarre!” “My nurse,” writes she, “thinking it was the King, ran and opened the door; but it was M. de Séran, grievously wounded and closely pursued by four archers, who cried out, ‘Kill him; kill him! spare no one.’ De Séran threw himself on my bed to save himself. I, not knowing who he was, jumped out, and he with me, holding by me tightly. We both screamed loudly; I was as frightened as he was, but God sent M. de Nançay, Captain of the Guards, who finding me in this condition, could not help laughing. He drove the archers out and spared the life of this man, whom I put to bed in my closet and kept there till he was well. I changed my night-dress, which was covered with blood. M. de Nançay assured me that my husband was safe and with the King. He threw over me a cloak, and took me to my sister Claude, in whose room I arrived more dead than alive; specially so when, as I set my foot in the antechamber, a gentleman named Bourse dropped, pierced by a ball, dead at my feet. I fell fainting into the arms of M. de Nançay, thinking I was killed also. A little recovered, I went into the small room beyond where my sister slept. While I was there, two gentlemen-in-waiting, who attended my husband, rushed in, imploring me to save their lives. So I went to the King and to the Queen, my brother and my mother, and falling on my knees begged that these gentlemen might be spared, which was granted to me.”

“Having,” continues Marguerite, “failed in the principal purpose, which was not so much against the Huguenots as against the Princes of the blood – the King my husband, and the Prince of Condé– the Queen, my mother, came to me and ‘asked me to break my marriage.’ But I replied that I would not; being sure that she only proposed this in order to murder my husband.”15

The magic mirror of Ruggiero had revealed the truth; Henry of Navarre led a charmed life. Of his escape, against the express command of the all-powerful Catherine, various accounts are related. He is said to have been saved by his wife, but of this she says nothing. It is believed on good authority that, with the Prince de Condé, he went out unusually early, before daybreak even, in order to prepare for playing that identical game of rackets, of which he spoke to Marguerite and which probably saved his life. When it is discovered that these two princes, Condé and Navarre, are both alive, they are summoned to the King’s presence. They find Charles, arquebuse in hand, within the same small closet over the gate of the Louvre. He has been there since daybreak. A page stands by him, ready to reload his weapon. He is mad with exultation and excitement; he leans out of window to watch the crowds of fugitives rush by and to shout to the Swiss Guards below – “Kill – kill all – cut them all in pieces!” “Pardieu! see,” he roars out, pointing to the river, “there is a fellow yonder escaping. By the mass, look – one, two, three – they are swimming across the Seine – at them, at them – take good aim – shoot them down, the carrion!” Volleys of shot are the reply. Charles had recovered his nerves; he now looks on Huguenots as game, and has been potting them with remarkable precision from the window. With hideous mirth, he boasts to Navarre and Condé how many heretics he has brought down with his own hand. He counts upon his fingers the names of the Huguenot chiefs already slaughtered. He yells with fiendish laughter when he describes how Coligni, whom the night before he had called “father,” looked when dead. “By the light of God, it is a royal chase!” shrieks Charles, as the page quickly reloads his arquebuse. “That last shot was excellent. Not a heretic shall be left in France.” Again he points his gun and shoots; a piercing cry follows. Charles nods his head approvingly. “We will have them all – babies and their mothers. ‘Break the eggs and the nest will rot.’ Our mother says well – we must reign. We will no longer be contradicted by our subjects. We will teach them to revere us as the image of the living God. You, Princes,” – and as he turns to address the King of Navarre and Condé, his tall, gaunt figure, distorted countenance, bleared and bloodshot eyes, and matted hair are repulsive to look upon – “You, Princes, I have called hither, out of compassion for your youth, to give you a chance for your lives, as you are alive, – but by the holy Oriflamme, I thought you were both dead already. You are, both of you, rebels, and sons of rebels. You must instantly recant and enter the true Church or you must die. So down on your knees, both of you. Purge yourselves from your accursed sect. Give me your parole, and your swords too, Princes, that you will not leave the Louvre; or, Dieu des Dieux, you shall be massacred like the rest!”

Thus did Henry IV. and the Prince de Condé escape death, unknown to, and contrary to the express orders of Catherine.

Without, Paris is a charnel-house. The streets are choked up by murdered Huguenots. Carts and litters full of dead bodies, huddled together in a hideous medley, rumble along the rough causeways, to be shot into the Seine. The river runs red with blood; its current is dammed up with corpses. But the Court is merry. Catherine triumphs. Her ladies —la petite bande de la Reine– go forth and pick their way in the gory mud, to scrutinise the dead, piled in heaps against the walls and in the courts of the Louvre, to recognise friends or lovers.

On the 6th September the news of the massacre reaches Rome by letters from the Nuncio. Gregory XIII. commands solemn masses and thanksgivings to God for the event. The cannon of St. Angelo booms over the papal city; feux de joie are fired in the principal streets; a medal is struck; a jubilee is published; a legate is sent into France; a procession, in which the Pope, Cardinals, and Ministers to the See of Rome appear, visit the great Basilicas; the Cardinal de Lorraine, uncle to the Balafré, then at Rome, is present, and in the name of his master, Charles IX., congratulates his Holiness on the efficacy of his prayers these seventeen years past for the destruction of heretics.

Blood calls for blood!16 Charles IX., whose royal mandate authorised the massacre (which lasted seven days and seven nights), falls sick two years after at the Castle of Vincennes. “I know not what has befallen me,” he says to his surgeon, Ambrose Paré; “my mind and body both burn with fever. Asleep or awake, I see the mangled Huguenots pass before me. They drip with blood; they make hideous faces at me; they point to their open wounds and mock me. Holy Virgin! I wish, Paré, I had spared the old and the infirm and the infants at the breasts.” Aged twenty-four, Charles died, abhorring the mother whose counsels had led him to this execrable deed – abhorring her so intensely that he could not even bear her in his sight. In her place he called for the King of Navarre, and confided to him his last wishes. He died, poor misguided youth, piously thanking God that he left no children. The blood actually oozed from the pores of his skin. His cries and screams were horrible.

Thus another King of France passed into the world of spirits, bringing Henry of Navarre one step nearer the throne. Charles, according to the prediction of Ruggiero, had died young, bathed in his own blood.

And Catherine? Calm, undaunted, still handsome, she inaugurated a new reign – that of her third and best beloved son, Henri, Duc d’Anjou and King of Poland, popularly known by the style and title of Henry III., “by the favour of his mother inert King of France.”

CHAPTER XXI.

THE END OF CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI

FIFTEEN years have passed. The Queen-mother is now seventy. She suffers from a mortal disease, and lies sick at the Château of Blois.

Hither her son Henry III. and his Court have come to meet the States-General. Trouble is in the kingdom; for the great Balafré, supported by Rome and Spain, is in rebellion; Henry totters on his throne.

And what a throne! What a monarch! Henry, who in his youth was learned, elegant, sober, who fought at Jarnac and Moncontour17 like a Paladin, has become effeminate, superstitious, and vicious. His sceptre is a cup-and-ball; his sword, a tuft of feathers; he paints and dresses like a woman, covers himself with jewels, and passes his time in arranging ecclesiastical processions, or in festivals, pageants, masques, and banquets. His four favourites (“minions” they are called, and also “beggars,” from their greed and luxury), De Joyeuse, D’Epernon, Schomberg, and Maugiron, govern him and the kingdom. They are handsome and satirical, and think to kill the King’s enemies with ridicule and jeux de mots. But Henri de Guise, who sternly rebukes their ribaldry and abhors their dissolute manners, is not the man to be conquered by such weapons as words. He has placed himself at the head of the Catholic League, negotiates with Spain, and openly aspires to the throne.

For a moment there is peace. Henry before leaving Paris, by the advice of his mother summoned the Duc de Guise from Nancy to Paris. The Balafré enters the capital in disguise. The cry, “The Duke is with us!” spreads over the city like lightning. The populace, who adore Guise and detest Henry, tear off his mask and cloak and lead him through the streets in triumph. Catherine, although very ill, is so alarmed at the threatening aspect of affairs, that she causes herself to be carried out to meet him, borne in a chair, and so brings him to the Louvre into the presence of the King. His insolent bearing transports Henry with rage. The citizens, not to be pacified, fall out with the King’s guards, and there is a fearful uproar in the city. The Louvre is besieged. Henry, haughty and obstinate, is no longer safe in Paris. Maréchal d’Ornano offers to assassinate the Duc de Guise, but the King, by advice of D’Epernon, affects to yield to the policy of his mother, and to accept the supremacy of Guise. Under pretence, however, of a walk in the Tuileries Gardens, then newly planted, he orders his horses to be saddled, and escapes out of Paris, by way of Montmartre, attended only by his favourites. He reaches Chartres in safety. At Chartres he is joined by Catherine, and a treaty is signed – a treaty of false peace, for already D’Epernon and Joyeuse are whispering into the King’s ear that “the Duc de Guise must die.”

The treaty stipulates that Henry be declared Head of the Catholic League; that all Huguenots be banished – notably the King of Navarre, heir-presumptive to the throne; and that the Duc de

Guise be Lieutenant-General of the kingdom. The States-General are to be immediately assembled; and Henri de Guise, once the poetic lover, now hardened into the cold, ambitious bigot – ready to usurp the throne of France to ensure the triumph of the Catholic party, and exclude the King of Navarre – canvasses France, to insure a majority for the Holy League against those pertinacious enemies of orthodoxy, Condé and Navarre.

The King, meanwhile, overridden and humiliated, agrees to everything, and listens complacently to D’Epernon, who tells him, “He will never be king while Guise lives.” So, for the moment, there is peace.

Now the King has left Chartres, and is at Blois. The Balafré and his brother the Cardinal are also there to attend the Parliament, which is summoned, and to make known their grievances. So the sunny little town of Blois, sloping sweetly downwards to the Loire, with its superb castle marked by towers, turrets, broad flat roofs, painted windows, and ample courts, is the theatre on which the great battle is to be fought between the rival houses of Guise and Valois. All the chiefs on either side are to be present at a council which is to precede the meeting of the Assembly. Henry – at the instigation of D’Epernon – the better to play his perfidious game has communicated at the same altar with the Balafré and his brother the Cardinal, and given them the kiss of peace to seal their reconciliation.

Catherine’s apartments are on the first floor of the château, – a gallery-saloon, the diamonded windows set in painted arches overlooking the town, the dark walls, decorated with a crowned C and a monogram in gold; her oratory, with a large oval window where an altar stands; her writing-closet, with many concealed drawers and secrets in the walls – a hidden stair leading to an observatory, and a sleeping-room with a recess for her bed. So unaltered are these rooms that the presence of Catherine still haunts them; she faces one at every step.

In her bed within that recess the great Queen lies dying. She is old and broken, and her mind wanders at times through excess of pain. But she cannot die in peace, for she knows that her son Henry – the last of her race – meditates a hideous crime; a crime in which she would have gloried once, but now, racked with bodily suffering and mental anguish, with remorse for the past and terror for the future, she shudders at the very thought.

She calls him to her. Henry, her beloved Anjou! As he enters her chamber, she struggles upright on her bed. No one would have recognised the majestic Queen in the hideous skeleton that now speaks.

“What are you about to do, my son?” she asks in a tremulous voice; “answer me, Henry. I fear I know too well what is on your mind. God grant you may succeed, but I fear evil will come of it. The Duke and his brother are too powerful.”

“The very reason they should die, my mother. I shall never be King of France while they live.”

“But, Henry,” gasps Catherine, trembling from weakness and excitement, as she clasps her son’s hand, “have you taken measures to assure yourself of the cities? Have you communicated with the Holy Father? Do this, do it at once!”

“Madame, good measures have been taken; trouble not yourself further.”

“But, my son,” continues Catherine with increasing agitation, “the Cardinal de Guise has been here to visit me; they are full of suspicion. The Cardinal says that I have betrayed them. I replied, ‘May I die, my cousin, if I have anything to do with any treason whatever.’ My son, I am in great agony,” and she groans and turns her eyes glowing with fever full upon him; “do not listen to D’Epernon; let there be peace while I live, and after.”