READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE : A.D. 1453-1900

CHAPTER XXII.

THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW

CATHERINE DE' MEDICI, who was still under the guidance of L'Hôpital, did not give the decrees of Trent that unqualified approval which had been accorded to them by Ferdinand I and Philip II. The embassy from Paul IV, before mentioned, did not indeed meet with an absolute repulse. The French bishops were authorized to execute in their dioceses such canons as were not contrary to the laws of the land; but, on the plea of the difficult and dangerous situation of the Kingdom, the publication of the decrees was indefinitely postponed. Catharine, however, was not sincere in the moderation which it suited her present policy to display. It was her design to make Catholicism predominant, and to overthrow the oligarchy, which, fortifying itself by the religious troubles, had again established itself around the throne. The national genius favored her plans. The severity of the Calvinistic discipline, however it might serve the party views of the nobles, was equally repugnant to French manners and French laws.

The years 1564 and 1565 produced few events of importance in France, (in 1564 it was ordered in France that the year should henceforth begin on the 1st of January, instead of at Easter. The Pascal year had occasioned great inconvenience, and has been the source of many chronological errors), and were chiefly occupied by Catharine making a tour of the Kingdom with her son Charles IX. After the surrender of Havre, the war between France and England had been confined to piracies, and was finally ended by a treaty signed at Troyes April 11th, 1564, in which Queen Elizabeth contented herself with 120,000 crowns for Calais, instead of the 500,000 stipulated by the treaty of 1559. The year was marked by the death of Calvin at Geneva (May 27th), as well as by that of the Emperor Ferdinand I.

The French Court had set out on their tour in March, proceeding first to the northern provinces. At Bar-le-Duc important negotiations were entered into with some of the German Princes. Burgundy, Dauphiné, Provence were successively visited, and the winter was spent in Languedoc. Throughout the journey, Catharine endeavored to ingratiate herself with the Catholics. She had signified her wish to meet her daughter, the Queen of Spain, when she should approach the Pyrenees; and under this pretext, she had endeavored to arrange an interview with Philip II, whom, as well as the Pope, she was anxious to satisfy on the subject of her temporizing policy. Philip, however, did not think fit to keep the appointment. He was at that time fully occupied with the affairs of his own dominions, the insurrectionary agitation among the Moriscoes of Spain, the memorable siege of Malta by the Turks, and the beginning of the revolt in the Netherlands; but he sent his consort and the Duke of Alva, who met Catharine on the Bidasoa, June 14th, 1565. Hence, the Queen-Mother conducted them to Bayonne, where three weeks were spent in festivities. This celebrated interview has been the subject of much discussion. According to some historians, an extensive conspiracy against Protestantism was here entered into, and that atrocious massacre of St. Bartholomew arranged which seven years after fixed an eternal blot on the annals of France. This much only is certain, that Alva, according to his favorite policy, which he subsequently practiced in the Netherlands, exhorted Catharine to get rid of some five or six of the chief Huguenot leaders either by fair means or by foul. The somewhat homely illustration by which Alva enforced his advice — mieux vaut une tête de saumon que dix mille têtes de grenouilles (“One head of salmon is worth 10,000 heads of frogs”) — was overheard by young Henry of Bearn, whom Catharine, charmed by the lad’s vivacity and wit, kept about her person; and he afterwards reported the words to his mother, Jeanne d'Albret. The views of Alva were supported by some part of the French Court, as the Duke of Montpensier, the Cardinal of Guise, Blaise de Montluc and others; but it is a mistake to suppose that they were acceded to by Catharine and the young King. The Queen-Mother even refused to put down the Calvinist preachings near the frontier of Spain, and the French and Spanish Courts parted with some coldness. The Protestant chiefs nevertheless suspected that a secret league had been concluded; and they renewed on their side their relations with Germany, England, and the malcontents of the Netherlands.

On the 9th of December, 1565, Pope Pius IV died; a Pontiff who at all events was sincere in his religion. The most memorable act of his Pontificate is the close of the Council of Trent. His catechism, modeled on the decrees of that Council, is remarkable for the beauty of its Latinity, and contains many passages which even a Protestant may read with interest. He was succeeded on the Papal throne by Michele Ghislieri, Cardinal of Alessandria and Grand-Inquisitor, who assumed the title of Pius V. His election was chiefly due to Pius IV’s nephew, Cardinal Borromeo, the indefatigable Archbishop of Milan, who enjoyed almost as great a reputation for sanctity as Ghislieri himself. Ghislieri was born of poor parents at Bosco, near Alessandria, in 1504, and entered a Dominican convent at the age of fourteen. He came to Rome on foot, a mendicant friar; and in fifteen years successively rose to be a Bishop, a Cardinal, and head of the Inquisition. Austere in his manners, averse to nepotism, the enemy of all vices and abuses, Pius V pursued the internal reforms begun under the influence of Cardinal Borromeo. But his piety was somber and fanatical; as a Pope he was the beau-idéal of the Ultramontanists; and indeed he was eventually canonized by Pope Clement XI in 1712. Although mild and simple in his more private life, Pius V had a strong consciousness of his religious merits. Convinced that he had himself walked in the right path, he was intemperate and inflexible towards those whom he believed in the wrong, could brook no contradiction, and was never known to mitigate the sentence of a criminal. He not only renewed the publication of the bull In Coena Domini, of which Sovereigns had often complained, but even added new clauses of increased severity. Under his Pontificate terror reigned through Italy. The researches of the Inquisition were carried back for twenty years; the prisons of Rome sufficed not for the number of the accused, so that it was necessary to build new ones; every day beheld executions either by the cord, the axe, or the flames. A temperament like that of Pius V is incompatible with that love of art and literature which distinguished Leo X. Pius sentenced to the stake, as heretics, three of the most distinguished literary men of Italy : Zanetti of Padua, Pietro Carnesecchi of Florence, and Annius Palearius of Milan, who had likened the Inquisition to the poniard of the assassin. The chief objects of the policy of Pius V were to oppose the Turkish power, to subvert the Protestant reformation, and to annihilate its adherents. It was impossible that such a Pontiff should comprehend or tolerate the tortuous and temporizing policy of Catharine de' Medici; and he trembled with rage and indignation when he learnt the precautions with which she treated the Huguenot leaders, and especially the apostate Cardinal of Châtillon.

By the advice of L'Hopital, an Assembly of Notables was summoned at Moulins in January, 1566, with the alleged object of remedying the complaints received by the King during his progress. There were, however, some other subjects of a more private nature to be considered; the arrangement of a quarrel which had recently exploded with great violence between the Cardinal of Lorraine and Marshal Montmorenci, and especially the settlement of the proceedings instituted by the Guises against Admiral Coligni for the alleged murder of the Duke. The first of these affairs was arranged without much difficulty; the other was of more importance. On the 29th of January, Coligni having sworn an oath before the King in Council that he was neither author nor accomplice of the assassination, and challenged to mortal combat whoever should assert the contrary, the Council unanimously declared him innocent, and the Cardinal of Lorraine and the widow of the Duke gave him the kiss of peace. But Guise’s son, the young Duke Henry, had abstained from appearing at Moulins; while his uncle, the Duke of Aumale, who arrived late, manifested so violent an animosity against the Châtillons that the Queen was obliged to dismiss both parties from Court; and thus the termination of an assembly intended to promote peace evidently threatened a renewal of war. It was, however, distinguished by some great legal reforms introduced by L'Hopital and published the following month under the title of the Grande ordonnance de Moulins, which, together with the previous Edict of Villers-Cotterets, formed the basis of French judicial procedure down to the Revolution.

It was plain that both parties were preparing for another struggle. Physical force preponderated on the side of the Catholics, who had organized themselves into confreries, or brotherhoods; and in the riots which frequently happened they commonly had the advantage. The Jesuits had now obtained a footing in France. In 1551 they had got letters patent from Henry II, allowing them to found at Paris a professed house and a college called the College of Clermont (afterwards Louis-le-Grand) in the Rue St. Jacques. But their struggle was a hard one. The University, the Sorbonne, and the Parliament, were opposed to them, and it was only in 1560 that the Parliament’s opposition was overcome, which at length granted them a provisional authority to teach independently of the University.

The permission granted by the Court for the Duke of Alva to march through France with his army in the summer of 1567, when on his way to exterminate the Protestants of the Netherlands, excited the distrust of the Huguenot leaders. Catharine, although she pretended to entertain suspicions of Alva’s designs, secretly sent him supplies. Condé and Coligni, on the other hand, alleging their fears for the safety of France, offered to raise 50,000 men to cut off the Spaniards, but this was of course declined. The suspicion of the Huguenots was augmented by the reception given by Charles IX to an embassy from some of the German Princes, to request that he would faithfully observe the Edict of Pacification, and allow the Gospel to be preached in Paris as well as other places; to which the young King replied by begging the Germans to attend to their own affairs. Soon after Alva’s arrival in the Low Countries, the Huguenot chiefs received secret notice, supposed to have been communicated to them by L'Hôpital, that the French Court meant to follow Alva’s example, and that the revocation of the Edict of Amboise, the perpetual captivity of Condé, and the death of Coligni had been resolved on. The Prince and the Admiral determined to counteract this plot by one of still greater audacity — to carry off the young King and the whole Court from Monceaux in Brie. Condé seems even to have entertained the hope of seizing the Crown. Catharine having learnt the plot two days before the time fixed for its execution, she and the whole Court fled to Meaux, where, by parleying with the Huguenot leaders, she gained time for a body of 6,000 Swiss to arrive; and the young King, putting himself at their head, set off for Paris. Condé and Coligni, having only about 500 horse, were not strong enough to attack so large a body; but they harassed the royal force with skirmishes, and after Charles IX had gained the capital in safety, took up a position at St. Denis. Here some conferences ensued between Montmorenci and the Huguenots; but the latter, who had succeeded in seizing Orleans, Dieppe, Mâcon, La Charité, Vienne, Valence, Nimes and other places, made demands which far exceeded the provisions of the Edict of Amboise, and nothing could be arranged. On the 10th of November, 1567, the army of the Catholics, which was four or five times more numerous than that of the Huguenots, although they also had been reinforced, marched out from Paris and deployed in the plain Des Vertus. A charge headed by Condé and Coligni threw the Catholics into disorder. The Constable was surrounded and summoned to surrender, and being hard pressed by a Scotch-man named Robert Stuart, knocked out three of his teeth with the pommel of his sword, when Stuart is thought to have shot Montmorenci with his pistol. The Constable was rescued while still alive, by his sons the Marshals Montmorenci and Damville, but died two days after, at the age of seventy-five. His qualities were hardly equal to his renown. Notwithstanding this mishap, the battle was in favor of the Catholics; yet, after retaining possession of the field a few hours, they retired into Paris. Next day the Huguenots marched to the very gates; but as Charles IX had received reinforcements from the Duke of Alva of 1,500 Flemish and Walloon cavalry, and as 8,000 Gascons were expected to join the royal army, Condé and Coligni thought it prudent to retire, and marched into Lorraine to meet the German succors conducted by the Count-Palatine, John Casimir. The Queen-Mother, instead of filling up the office of Constable, vacant by the death of Montmorenci, appointed her favorite son Henry, Duke of Anjou, Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom.

The events of the war which followed are not of special importance. The Queen, to save Chartres, which the Huguenots were besieging, concluded a fresh peace, March 20th, 1568, proclaimed in the Edict of Longjumeau on the 23rd, which, from its short duration, was called “la courte paix”. The terms were favorable to the Huguenots, and consequently gave great offence at Rome. In fact, however, neither party was sincere, and it was soon evident from the nature of the ordinances published, as well as from a Papal bull authorizing the alienation of ecclesiastical property, provided the proceeds were employed in exterminating heretics, that the Court was meditating a fresh war. The letters of Pius V at this period to the French and other Courts are terrible. They may be summed up in the words : “Kill all you can”. Assassinations and massacres took place every day. The Jesuits, whose authority was now established in France, thought that no faith should be observed towards heretics. Catharine, who felt herself more secure since the King had attained his majority, cared not any longer to court the Huguenot chiefs, and it was currently reported that an attack would be made on that party after the harvest. She would even have seized Condé and Coligni at Noyers, in Burgundy, had not Tavannes, the Governor of that province, who was to have executed the plot, given the Prince a hint of it. He and the Admiral escaped with some difficulty to La Rochelle (September 1st), where they were cordially received by Jeanne d'Albret and the troops assembled around her. The dismissal of L’Hôpital in October seemed to show that Catharine meant not only to draw the sword, but also to throw away the scabbard. The seals were given to Jean de Morvilliers, Bishop of Orleans; but Birago, a Milanese, afterwards Chancellor, had the chief influence in the Council after the dismissal of L’Hôpital. The King was abandoned to his directions and those of the Florentine Gondi, afterwards Duke of Retz, who inculcated the principles of the Italian tyrants. On the other hand, Condé and the Admiral gathered round them at La Rochelle an army of 20,000 men; and this force and the royal army spent the last months of 1568 in marching about between the Loire and the Garonne, without any result except the outrages which both sides committed upon the wretched inhabitants. Severe edicts were issued by the Court; former concessions were withdrawn; the public exercise of no religion but the Popish was tolerated; Huguenot ministers were ordered to leave the realm in a fortnight, and Protestant lay-men were deprived of any offices they held. But these severities only caused the Huguenots to offer up more zealously their lives and property.

Pope Pius V sent some money and troops into France, and his counsels were to make no prisoners, but to kill all the Huguenots that were taken. Philip II also dispatched some Spanish veterans to the help of the French Catholics. On the other hand. Queen Elizabeth sent Condé 100,000 gold crowns, and after spending some time in recruiting, the Prince rejoined Coligni in February, 1569, with much augmented forces. It was their object, till joined by some German auxiliaries, to prevent the royal army, commanded nominally by the Duke of Anjou but in reality by Gaspard de Tavannes, from crossing the Charente. The royalists, however, effected a passage (March 12th), and defeated Coligni and D'Andelot with a body of Huguenots at the Abbey of Bassac, near Cognac. Condé, who was at Jarnac with the rear-guard, pressed forward to their assistance. On coming upon the field he received a kick from the horse of his brother-in-law, La Rochefoucauld, which broke his leg; nevertheless he charged into the thickest of the fight, overthrowing all that opposed him, till his horse being killed under him, he was captured. As he was being led away prisoner, Montesquieu, a Gascon, captain of the guard of the Duke of Anjou, it is supposed by order of that Prince, rode up and shot him from behind through the head. The Prince left (with other children), a son, Henry, subsequently one of the most distinguished generals of France.

After the death of Condé, Coligni and D'Andelot retreated towards St. Jean d'Angely. The number of Huguenots slain at the Battle of Jaenac was not great, but among them were upwards of a hundred nobles. At Saintes, young Henry of Navarre, now in his fifteenth year, was elected by the Huguenots for their chief in place of Condé, and Coligni became his instructor in the art of war. The Admiral was not exposed to the dangers of the field alone. La Rivière, another captain of Anjou’s guard, bribed a valet of Coligni’s to poison him; but the plot was discovered and the valet hanged. Even the government were competitors in these schemes of murder. The Parliament of Paris published an arrêt condemning Coligni to be hanged in the Place de Grève, and his property to be confiscated; and they promised a reward of 50,000 crowns to whomsoever might bring him in, dead or alive. But the Admiral’s hour was not yet come. He had still to fight and lose another battle.

The two armies were nearly equal, but that of the King Battle of was superior in artillery. Pius V and the Duke of Florence had reinforced it with 6,000 Italians, while the Duke of Alva had sent Germans and Walloons. On the other hand the German succors of Coligni had not arrived in any great numbers. On the 3rd of October, 1569, Tavannes forced the Admiral to give him battle at Montcontour, a place between the Loire and Poitiers; when the Huguenots were again defeated, and lost upwards of 12,000 men, with all their artillery and baggage. Tavannes having dismissed for a ransom of 10,000 crowns M. d'Assier, the general of the Huguenot infantry, who had been taken prisoner, Pius V complained that Tavannes had not obeyed his directions to kill out of hand whatever heretic fell into his power; and after the victory he sent the Duke of Anjou a consecrated hat and sword. But the royalists did not vigorously follow up their advantage. They lost time in sieges, a part of their army was dismissed for want of funds, and Tavannes was recalled through Court intrigues. A moderate or peace party had arisen, at the head of which were the Montmorencis; the King, who was jealous of his brother’s success, was inclined to listen to their counsels; nor was Catharine averse, as part of their plans embraced a marriage between the Duke of Anjou and Queen Elizabeth. Indeed, Catharine, whose only fixed idea was to promote the greatness of her sons, and especially of her favorite, Henry, seems not, though harboring a mortal hatred of the Huguenots, to have had those settled schemes of policy which have been attributed to her by some writers, but rather to have suited her conduct to the course of events. She began to treat with the Huguenots shortly after the battle of Montcontour; but they were on their guard, and as active as the royalists were supine. From the plains of Poitou, Coligni retired to the mountains of Languedoc, his army increasing as it went. Jeanne d'Albret displayed wonderful courage and constancy, inspired her son Henry with her own ardor, and encouraged the troops by her enthusiastic addresses. Coligni led his army by masterly marches over the wildest mountains from Roussillon into Burgundy, where he expected to be joined by the Count Palatine John Casimir and his forces, and designed then to march on Paris. In these alarming circumstances, even the Cardinal of Lorraine advised an accommodation. An armistice was Peace of St. agreed on, and, after considerable negotiation, the Peace of St. Germain was at length concluded (August 8th, 1570). By this peace liberty of conscience and a general amnesty were secured to the Huguenots, who were to recover all their confiscated possessions, privileges, and offices, and to be allowed the free and public exercise of their religion in all places where it had been established before August 1st; except in Paris and ten leagues round, and in places where the Court resided and two leagues round. Four places of security, or cautionary towns, were assigned to them, namely, La Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charité, on the condition that the Princes of Navarre and Condé and twenty nobles to be named by the King should take an oath that these towns should be restored at the expiration of two years.

Nothing could be more unwelcome both to Pope Pius V and King Philip II than this peace, which seemed to break the unity of the Catholic power at the very moment when the Pope, encouraged by the success of the orthodox arms both in France and the Netherlands, was preparing to strike a terrible blow against England by dethroning Queen Elizabeth. But both Philip and Pius were at this time too much occupied with other affairs to enter into any serious quarrel with France. Philip, besides the revolt in the Netherlands narrated in another chapter, was now also engaged in quelling an insurrection of the Moriscoes in Spain; while the attention of the Pope was absorbed by the movements of the Turkish fleets in the Mediterranean. Thus the followers of Mahomet, though without their wish or knowledge, were incidentally instrumental in saving the Protestants from destruction. It will here be necessary to advert to the domestic history of Spain, as well as to resume somewhat higher the account of the Turkish wars; after which we shall narrate the great Catholic plot against the English Queen and nation.

The death of her daughter Elizabeth (October, 1568) had excited in the mind of Catharine de' Medici, a suspicion of unfair play on the part of her son-in-law Philip II, and is said to have been one of the causes which disposed her to abandon the Spanish alliance in favor of that of England. The fate of Elizabeth has been so intimately connected by some writers, though apparently without adequate reason, with that of Philip’s son Don Carlos, that we must here briefly advert to the still obscure and mysterious history of that unfortunate Prince.

STORY OF DON CARLOS

Don Carlos, the son of Philip II and his first wife, Mary of Portugal, was born July 8th, 1545. His mother died few days after giving him birth, and his education was therefore entrusted to his aunt, the regent Joanna. From childhood his constitution was weak; he early betrayed symptoms of a cruel disposition, though blended with traits of courage and generosity; and Charles V who, when on his way to Yuste in 1556, had seen his grandson at Valladolid, had augured but ill of the future heir to the Spanish monarchy. Carlos was present at his father’s marriage, in 1560, with Elizabeth of France, who had once been destined for himself, and is said to have displayed rage and jealousy at being deprived of her hand. At Alcala de Henares, whither he was subsequently sent for the benefit both of his mind and his health, he fractured his skull by a fall. Certain it is that after this period his conduct was unruly; he insulted his tutors and all who were about him, and would sometimes threaten their lives. These symptoms may partly perhaps be ascribed to the treatment he experienced from his father, who allowed him no part either in civil or military affairs, and the energies of the young Prince consequently found vent in a reckless, dissipated life. Tiepolo, who was Venetian ambassador at Madrid in 1667, gives a rather better account of Don Carlos than other authorities, and describes him as having won the affections of his companions. It is said that when the revolt broke out in the Netherlands Carlos sympathized with the insurgents. It is certain that he was annoyed at Alva’s being appointed, instead of himself, to command the army sent against them, and when that captain came to take leave of him, Carlos attempted to stab him, and would have succeeded but for the superior strength of Alva. He is also said to have expressed a wish to take his father’s life, and to have avowed it in the confessional. He then laid a plan to fly the Kingdom, and when his uncle Don John communicated his design to Philip, he attempted to murder that Prince. In January, 1568, Philip himself, clothed in armor and attended by several nobles and twelve of his guard, entered at night the chamber of Don Carlos and seized him in his bed. From this time the unfortunate Prince was placed in strict confinement; and his mode of life in his imprisonment shows that he was deranged. It is probable that Philip had not obscurely intimated to the physicians to take no care of his son’s health, but to suffer him to proceed in his own way, and thus speedily bring his life to a termination. Such a method proved as effectual as a direct act of poisoning, with which, by some writers, Philip has been charged; but their accounts of the manner in which it was effected are so various as to deprive the story of all credit, and indeed it was treated by the Florentine envoy as an idle rumour. It was the prevailing opinion at the time that Don Carlos was put to death in pursuance of a sentence of the Inquisition; a judgment founded apparently on Philip’s announcement to the Papal Nuncio after the arrest of his son “that he had preferred the honor of God, the maintenance of the Catholic religion, and the welfare of his subjects and dominions, to his own flesh and blood, and in obedience to the Divine will had sacrificed his only son”. Don Carlos died in July, 1568, and in less than three months after, the Queen of Spain, Elizabeth of France, expired. Philip appears to have always treated Elizabeth with affection, while she herself was devoted to her husband.

The intolerance and bigotry of the Spanish King increased with his years, and gathered new strength from opposition. The rage excited by symptoms of revolt in the Netherlands was vented on the unhappy Moors of Spain. We have related the cruelty with which Ferdinand the Catholic and Cardinal Ximenes pursued the Moors. The persecution was continued under Charles V, but not with quite so much violence; for many years a sort of toleration was observed; not only in some towns, as Albaicin, the Moorish suburb of Granada, but even in whole districts, as the Alpujarras and their valleys, the Moors were suffered to retain their names and language, their manners and costumes. Some who had pretended to become converts to Christianity were called Marranos, the rest retained the names of Moriscoes. In 1564 and 1565 Philip II, stimulated by his clergy, and especially by Don Pedro Guerrero, Archbishop of Granada, and Cardinal Spinosa, Vice-Grand Inquisitor, who, from his influence over Philip, was long called the “King of Spain”, issued some severe ordinances against the Moorish customs; and these were followed up in the subsequent year by another of such absurd atrocity, that even Philip himself hesitated to adopt it, till the priests forced it upon him by alarming his conscience. By a statute of November 17th, 1566, the Moriscoes were forbidden, on pain of death, to retain their ancient customs, and even to speak their mother-tongue; their music, their dances, and their baths were suppressed; they were not to fasten their doors; their wives were to throw aside their veils; their very names were to be changed for Castilian; in short, every distinctive trace was to be abolished, and they were to be entirely extirpated as a people. The Marquis of Mondejar, Viceroy of Granada, hesitated to publish this cruel and impolitic law; but Don Pedro de Deza, President of the Chancery of Granada, caused it to be proclaimed by sound of trumpet, January 1st, 1567. Astonished and afflicted, the Moors hastened to lay their petitions and remonstrances at the feet of Philip. They might as well have spoken to the winds. Despair then drove them to organize a revolt. Applications were made to the Sultan and to the Moors of Algiers for help; money was secretly raised, and great quantities of arms and provisions were collected in a large cave, or grotto, in the mountains.

The severity of the law was enhanced by the regulations of Don Pedro de Deza. Spaniards were forbidden to hold any intercourse with a Mahometan, and the Moriscoes were directed to send their children to Spanish schools. In April, 1568, the Moorish inhabitants of the Alpujarras flew to arms; and in the following September, in conjunction with their fellow- countrymen at Albaicin, they elected for their chief Don Fernando Muley of Valor and Cordova, a young man twenty-two years of age, descended from the Ommiyahd Khalifs, to whom they gave the title of Muley Abdallah Nahmed ben Ommiyah, King of Granada and Andalusia. In the winter the Moors made an unsuccessful attempt upon Granada, while the Spanish infantry penetrated into the Alpujarras and perpetrated the most inhuman cruelties. An internecine war ensued which lasted two years. Muley having made himself hated and despised by his tyranny and sensuality, the Moriscoes formed a conspiracy against him. He was betrayed in his sleep and murdered by the treachery of his beautiful wife, Zahara; and the conspirators then chose Ben Abu for their leader (October, 1569). Philip had appointed his brother, Don John of Austria, a natural son of Charles V, to conduct the war against the Moors; but it was not till towards the close of 1569 that the mistrustful Philip could prevail upon himself to grant his kinsman full power. Don John then raised the ban and arrière ban of Andalusia, and at the beginning of 1570 brought an army of 24,000 men into the field. Galera was taken after a long siege (February 10th), and Don John disgraced himself by ordering an inhuman massacre. Ben Abu was murdered about the same time, and the Moors lost all hope of a successful resistance. The war became one of extermination; village after village, town after town, fell into the hands of the Spaniards and was destroyed; and in 1571 the Moors were completely subdued. Towards the end of that year the survivors were transplanted into Estremadura and other provinces; but considerable numbers succeeded in escaping to Fez and Algiers.

At this period the arms of Philip II were also engaged Piracies in against the Turks, whose fleets were infesting the Mediterranean. During the reign of Henry II of France, and at that King’s instigation, the Sultan sent every year large armaments into the Mediterranean, whose operations, however, were chiefly confined to supporting the Mahometan pirates on the coast of Africa. In the autumn of 1559 Philip fitted out a fleet against the chief of their pirates, the corsair Draghut. The Pope (then Paul IV), the Genoese, the Florentines, and the Knights of Malta, contributed to the expedition, and 200 vessels under the command of Andrea Doria, and having on board 14,000 troops, attacked and took the island of Jerbah in March, 1560; but it was recovered in the following July by the Turkish admiral Pialí, and no permanent success was achieved by this large expedition. The wars between the Spaniards and the Moors on the African coast continued some years. In 1564 the Spaniards gained considerable advantages. In the following year Sultan Solyman resolved to direct all his forces against the Knights Hospitallers of St. John at Malta, who were the chief support of Christian power in the Mediterranean. Charles V did a politic as well as charitable act by giving them that barren rock after their expulsion from Rhodes, for the feudal rent of an annual falcon, as he thus secured gratuitously an excellent bulwark for his dominions. The Knights greatly improved the island, not only by fortifying it, but also, so far as the soil permitted, by its cultivation.

SIEGE OF MALTA, 1565

The siege of Malta by the Turks is one of the most memorable feats of arms of the sixteenth century, though its details are interesting only in a military point of view. The immediate occasion of it was the capture by the Knights of a Turkish galleon. The Grand-Master of the order at that time was Jean Parisot de la Valette, who, when he heard of Solyman’s design, made the most vigorous preparations for defence. The useless part of the population was shipped off to Sicily, the fortifications were strengthened, and foreign auxiliaries obtained; and in order to breed emulation, different posts were assigned to the Knights according to their tongue, or nation. Their whole body was 700 in number, with a force under them of about 9,000 men. The Turkish fleet consisted of 180 galleys commanded by Pialí, with a large number of transports having about 30,000 troops on board, including 6,000 Janissaries under the veteran Mustapha. This armament, which appeared off Malta May 18th, 1565, was afterwards reinforced by Draghut from Tripoli with thirteen galleys. The first attack of the Turks was directed against the Castle of St. Elmo, commanding the entrance of the harbour. After a bombardment of several weeks, and the repulse of two general assaults, St. Elmo, reduced almost to a heap of ruins, was captured by the Turks, June 23rd. During the siege Draghut received a mortal wound. There still remained to be taken the Borgo, and the Castles of St. Angelo and St. Michael. After a siege of more than two months, the Turks abandoned the attempt in despair, and set sail for Constantinople (September 8th). After their departure the Sicilian Viceroy Don Garcia de Toledo, who was strongly suspected of cowardice, arrived with reinforcements. He subsequently received permission to retire from his government. The merit of the defence belongs entirely to La Valette, who received compliments and presents from every Sovereign in Europe, and among them a Cardinal’s hat from the Pope, which, however, he declined. He subsequently founded a new capital of Malta, which obtained from him the name of Valetta.

Solyman was furious at this defeat, the most humiliating that he had sustained during his long reign. The capture by Pialí in the following year (1566) of the Isle of Chios, the last possession of the Genoese in the Levant, which, however, offered no resistance, afforded the Sultan some consolation. Chios was then ruled by the Giustiniani family, the last of the Frankish lords who maintained a semblance of independence in those waters, though indeed they paid an annual tribute to the Porte. But before Pialí could lay the spoils at his master’s feet, Solyman was dead.

The Sultan had been impelled to wipe out the disgrace of Malta by some glorious achievement, and the affairs of Hungary offered the occasion. The truce of eight years concluded between Ferdinand I and the Porte had not yet expired; and though that Emperor had left the stipulated tribute unpaid, yet Maximilian II after his accession had paid the arrears, as well as the pension to the Grand Vizier. The truce was accordingly to have been renewed; but before a fresh treaty could be prepared, Solyman, nettled by his reverses, had determined on a war in Hungary, in support of the cause of his “slave” John Sigismund. The war which Maximilian had waged with that Prince had been hitherto successful; he had recovered the places captured by John Sigismund, and had also conquered Tokay, Kovar, Erdad, and Bathor. But he had now to contend with a more redoubtable enemy, and he used all his exertions to collect an adequate force. The Germans unanimously voted him 48,000 men at the Diet of Augsburg, and a considerably larger body was raised in his other dominions. Of this force, one division under Schwendi was cantoned on the Theiss, to hold Transylvania in check, another under the Archduke Charles secured Illyria, while Maximilian himself, with the main body of 80,000 men, encamped near Raab.

Solyman the Magnificent left Constantinople at the head of a vast army with all the pomp of war, May 1st, 1-566. At Semlin he received John Sigismund with royal honors (June 29th), and declared that he had come to vindicate his cause against the House of Austria. It was Solyman’s intention to ascend the course of the Danube, had not a feat of arms of Count Zriny diverted his attention to the little town of Szigeth, the family seat of that nobleman, near Fünf-kirchen. In a sally which he made, Zriny had defeated and killed near Siklos a favorite Pasha of the Sultan’s, and Solyman to punish him directed against Szigeth his army of 100,000 men and 300 guns. But this siege afforded another instance of the unskillfulness of the Turks in such operations. Zriny made a valorous defence for nearly five weeks, when the place was at last captured, and he himself beheaded on one of his own cannons. But the enterprise cost the Turks 20,000 men, and among them the great Sultan himself, who died, September 4th, 1566, from the consequences of fatigue and the unwholesome air of the marshes. Solyman had long been in bad health. Besides the gout, he was subject to attacks of melancholy, and lay sometimes totally unconscious in a swoon or trance. Navagero describes him at the age of sixty-two as much above the middle height, meager and of a sallow complexion; yet there was a wonderful grandeur in his look, accompanied with a gentleness that won all hearts. He was a rigid Mussulman, and insisted on a precise observance of all the precepts of the Koran. He was temperate in his diet, ate but little meat, and amused himself chiefly with hunting. In his moments of depression he was accustomed to humble himself before God, and composed spiritual hymns in which he compared his nothingness with the power of the Almighty. He was scrupulous in keeping his word, he loved justice, and never knowingly wronged anybody. In short, allowance made for his Turkish education and prejudices, he may be very advantageously compared with several Christian Princes his contemporaries.

Solyman’s infatuated passion for a Russian lady, the beautiful Roxolana, was a source of political misfortune as well as domestic misery. Assisted by the Grand Vizier Rustan, Roxolana induced the Sultan, to whom she had borne several children, to give her his hand in lawful wedlock, and thus to infringe a maxim of State policy which had been preserved inviolate since the time of Bajazet I. She next, by artful calumnies, turned the heart of Solyman against his eldest son Mustapha, the child of his Sultana, whose qualities resembled his own, and who was the darling of the Turkish nation. Persuaded that Mustapha was intriguing with the Persian Sophi, Solyman hastened to Eregli in Caramania, summoned Mustapha from Diarbekir, and caused him to be strangled in his own presence (1553). Mustapha’s son Mahomet was also put to death, and Selim, the weak and profligate son of Roxolana, was appointed Solyman’s successor. But from this hour the Sultan’s happiness had fled. He became suspicious and dejected, and no longer confided even in his Janissaries, who loved him as a father. In an Empire where everything depended on the personal qualities of the Sovereign, the choice of Selim must be regarded as having prepared the way for the decline of the Ottoman power.

The Vizier Mohammed Sokolli kept Solyman’s death a secret till Selim II arrived in the camp before Szigeth. The unruly Janissaries felt little respect for the new Sultan, who was known only by his addiction to wine and women; and they compelled him very considerably to augment the donative which it was now become customary to distribute at the commencement of every new reign. Under these circumstances, the forces of Maximilian gained some advantages over the Turks, and in May, 1567, he succeeded in concluding with the Porte another truce of eight years, on the basis that all parties, including John Sigismund, should hold what they actually possessed : an arrangement by which Maximilian lost only Szigeth and Gyula, while he acquired a territory of more than 200 miles in extent, from Transylvania to beyond the Theiss. The tribute of 30,000 ducats to the Porte was to be continued; but the Emperor’s ambassadors at Constantinople were to be on the footing of those of the most favored nations, and no longer subject to insult and imprisonment. These conditions, so favorable to the Emperor, are no doubt partly attributable to the French influence in the Divan having at this period sunk to a very low ebb. But Selim had other reasons for making and observing this treaty, as well as for the peace which he concluded with the King of Poland. His attention was now directed towards the south, and to the conquest of Cyprus and Arabia, by which his reign is chiefly distinguished.

CONQUEST OF CYPRUS, 1571

The former Kingdom of Cyprus was at this time held by Conquest of the Venetians, who, during the last thirty years, had fallen very much in power and in the estimation of the Porte. In the three wars which they had waged with the Turks since the fall of Constantinople, they had always come off with the loss of part of their possessions, and were reduced to the condition of tributaries; though, on the other hand, they had acquired Cephalonia and Cyprus, the last an island of great size and importance. During the eighty years, however, which they had held it, they had treated the inhabitants with such harshness and oppression that the Cyprians began to regard the very Turks themselves in the light of deliverers. The story runs that the wine-bibbing Selim was incited to undertake the Cyprian war by his favorite Don Miquez, a Portuguese Jew, whom, after his accession, he had made Duke of Naxos and of the twelve principal Cyclades, and who represented to the Sultan in glowing colors the excellence of the wine of Cyprus. However this may be, Selim, it is certain, assigned no reason for the war but his will. On the 1st of July, 1570, a Turkish fleet of 360 sail, under the command of Pialí, landed at the southernmost point of the island, without opposition, an army of 50,000 men under Mustapha Pasha. The Venetians having only 3,000 soldiers in Cyprus, the defence of the open country was at once abandoned, and all their efforts restricted to defend the towns of Nicosia and Famagosta. Nicosia was taken September 9th, and great part of the inhabitants massacred. Famagosta, defended by Marcantonio Bragadino, did not capitulate till August 1st, 1571. The Turks had retired in the winter, during which the town was relieved by the Venetians, who, however, did not strike a single blow in its defence. In spite of the capitulation, Mustapha had the perfidious barbarity to cause the valiant Bragadino to be flayed alive. During this war the Turks also inflicted great damage and disgrace on the Venetians on the coasts of Albania and Dalmatia.

But these proceedings roused the anger of the fiery and the enthusiastic Pius V, one of whose darling projects had always been to curb the power and the insolence of the Turk. By his exertions an alliance against the Sultan, called the Holy League, was at length concluded between himself, Philip II, the Venetians, and one or two minor Powers. The French offered nothing but their good wishes. Before the end of September, the allied fleet, consisting of 11 Spanish, 6 Maltese, and 3 Savoyard galleys under Don John of Austria, 12 Papal galleys under Marcantonio Colonna, and 108 Venetian galleys and 6 galeazzi under Sebastian Veniero, assembled at Messina. Don John was commander-in-chief of the armament. He was now about twenty-four years of age, having probably been born in 1547, and was the son of Charles V and a German girl, one Barbara Blomberg, of Ratisbon, and probably of lowly condition. Don John is described as having been of great personal beauty, as well as of singularly fascinating manners. His well-proportioned and graceful figure was rather above the middle height. His features were regular, his blue eyes full of vivacity and fire, his long light hair flowed back in natural ringlets from his temples, and his upper lip was covered with a thick moustache. Such was the commander whom we shall again have occasion to meet in another important situation.

BATTLE OF LEPANTO, 1571

The Osmanli fleet of 300 sail, under the Capudan-Pasha Musinsade Ali, lay in the Gulf of Lepanto. The Christians resolved to attack it; the Turks came out to meet them; and on the 7th October, 1571, was fought off the rocky islets of Kurzolari, the ever memorable Battle of Lepanto. The fight lasted till late in the evening. The Turks lost 224 ships and 30,000 men, including their commander; the Christians only 15 galleys and 8,000 men. In this battle, which, though really won by the power of Venice, created the reputation of Don John of Austria, were also present two men, who, like him, were afterwards to be Governors of the Netherlands; Don Luis de Requesens, Grand Commander of Castile, and Alexander Farnese, the nephew of Don John. Another name may be added, subsequently immortalized in literature — that of Cervantes, the author of “Don Quixote”, who was wounded in this battle. The Allies did not follow up their victory, from disputes, apparently, about the division of the spoil. The Morea and Negropont lay at their mercy; but all retired home. The Turks, on the other hand, repaired their losses with incredible energy; the Allies became further disunited through the death of Pius V; and in the summer of 1572 an Osmanli fleet of 250 sail again swept the Greek waters. Under these circumstances, the Venetians, assisted by the French ambassador at Constantinople, opened negotiations with the Porte for a peace, which was finally concluded March 7th, 1573. The Venetians surrendered Cyprus to the Turks, and consented to pay a double tribute for Zante, the only compensation for these sacrifices being the continuance of their commercial privileges in the Levant. This peace was the last important act of the reign of Sultan Selim II; who died on December 12th, 1574. Towards the end of his reign began the first disputes of the Porte with Russia, which were afterwards destined to assume so colossal an importance; and hence this period may be regarded as forming a sort of epoch in the history of the Turks in Europe.

While the efforts of Pius V against the Turks were a European benefit, his policy as head of the Christian Church produced only conspiracies, civil wars, assassination and bloodshed.

In the eyes of the Pope and of the Catholic Powers, Mary Stuart, the prisoner of Elizabeth, was the incarnation of the orthodox principle, and her imprisonment was looked upon with rage and mortification. Of all these powers, however, Pius V was the most ardent against the English Queen : but the time was not yet ripe for an open enterprise against her, since the hands of Philip II, the only sovereign who could be expected to undertake it, were at this time sufficiently filled with the affairs of his own rebellious subjects in the Netherlands. There remained the course of exciting against Elizabeth domestic treason and rebellion, and into this Pius threw himself with ardor. The first plot, in 1569, of the Duke of Norfolk, a Protestant, to marry the Queen of Scots, does not appear to have included any traitorous design against Queen Elizabeth, whose sanction to the marriage was to have been sought; though the conduct of Norfolk in procuring the support of so many English nobles, including several Catholics, as well as that of the Kings of France and Spain, seems to have been designed to overawe Elizabeth and compel her consent. But the Catholic nobles who had entered into the scheme, and especially their leaders, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, had formed far more extensive and criminal designs. The aims of this party were to liberate the Queen of Scots by force, put down the established religion, and depose Elizabeth. Their schemes were actively promoted by Pius V, through Dr. Nicolas Morton, who had visited the northern counties of England in the spring of 1569, in the character of Apostolic penitentiary. Espés, the Spanish ambassador, was also privy to the conspiracy; but though enthusiastic in Mary’s cause, he dreaded to incur the responsibility of promoting it, and referred the conspirators to the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands. After the discovery of Norfolk’s scheme, and the imprisonment of that nobleman, Northumberland and Westmorland, finding themselves suspected, resolved to fly to arms. Accordingly they wrote to Pius V, stating their devotion to the see of Rome, soliciting pecuniary aid and the employment of the Pope’s influence in procuring military assistance from the Duke of Alva. But the insurrection was premature, Alva had not time to succor the rebels, even had he been so inclined. At the approach of the Queen’s forces the insurgents dispersed, without striking a blow, and the two traitor earls escaped into Scotland. Exasperated at the failure of this conspiracy, Pius V resolved to hurl against Elizabeth a bolt which he had been lately preparing. On the 25th of February, 1570, he published a bull excommunicating the Queen of England, and deposing her from her throne. Alva sent some copies of the bull to the Spanish ambassador at London, and one Felton, a gentleman of substance, had the audacity to affix one to the Bishop of London’s gates; for which act he paid the penalty of his life. Rome still claimed the use of such weapons, though now nearly obsolete, as her legitimate prerogative; but Pius meditated also to employ against Elizabeth the surer but hardly canonical method of assassination.

The bull proved of no effect. Elizabeth, however, requested, through the Emperor Maximilian, its revocation; but Pius refused. A fresh and more extensive conspiracy was concocted in 1571, in which the chief agents were the Bishop of Ross, the Spanish ambassador, and one Ridolfi, a Florentine merchant, whose extensive commerce served to screen his movements from suspicion. The scheme of the marriage between Mary and Norfolk was renewed, and the Duke, who, though dismissed from the Tower, was still in custody in his own house, found means to communicate with the Queen of Scots through one of his gentlemen and the Bishop of Ross. Ridolfi, being furnished with credentials from Mary and Norfolk, proceeded into the Netherlands, and endeavored to persuade Alva to send an army of 8,000 men and 25 guns, with a store of extra muskets and ammunition, either to Harwich or Portsmouth, where Norfolk would join with a force of 20,000 foot and 3,000 horse. Alva, however, who was at that time advocating a marriage between Queen Mary and Don John of Austria, conceived a contempt for Ridolfi as a weak prating creature, and dismissed him with an evasive answer, in which the affair was referred to the Catholic king. Ridolfi next went to Rome, and had an interview with Pius V. The Pope entered warmly into the scheme, furnished Ridolfi with money and letters of recommendation to Philip II, urging that sovereign to embark in the plot, and stating that he himself was ready to forward it by selling the chalices of the churches, and even his own garments. The plan was to seize, and murder Elizabeth when proceeding to one of her residences in the country, in the month of August or September. Philip did not need much persuasion. The affair was to his taste. He instructed Alva secretly to pursue the scheme, subject, however, to the Duke’s final judgment; and appointed Vitelli, a distinguished Spanish officer, who had been employed in England in a diplomatic capacity, to command the expedition. Alva proposed to the Spanish Court his own son instead of Vitelli, but this was refused. Queen Elizabeth, however, received information of the plot from some unknown personage abroad. Norfolk’s servants being arrested and racked, confessed their master’s guilt. The Duke was again committed to the Tower, and a closer guard was placed over the Queen of Scots. Philip II still clung to the scheme, even after it was exploded, and in December, 1571, Alva sent two Italian assassins into England to take, by poison or otherwise, the life of Queen Elizabeth, besides planning other attempts of the like kind.

That the French government was concerned in Norfolk’s plot, even so late as September, 1571, when La Mothe-Fénelon supplied him with money, appears from Fénelon’s correspondence, as well as from the confession of Barker, one of the agents in the plot. The French share in the scheme was, however, totally unconnected with Spain, and does not appear to have gone further than the liberation of the Queen of Scots by means of her marriage with Norfolk, in order that the ancient relations between France and Scotland might be maintained, by the restoration of Mary to the Scotch throne. The French Court was, indeed, at this time negotiating a marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou, while Philip II was doing all in his power to prevent it. Although engaged in secret plots against the English Queen, Philip sought, in his public negotiations, to gain her favor and alliance; he even consented that she should retain the money consigned to the Duke of Alva, which she had impounded, and to make compensation for the English merchandize which had been seized at Antwerp in retaliation; and he endeavored to influence her mind against the match, through her courtiers and ladies, to whom he gave presents and gratuities. But his surest card was the Duke of Anjou himself. That Prince was by no means desirous of the match. It had been chiefly concocted by Charles IX, who, jealous of the military reputation acquired by his brother in the civil wars, would have been glad to get rid of him at any price. When the marriage treaty had been nearly arranged, it ultimately went off on Anjou’s insisting on a written promise that he should be secured in the free and public exercise of his religion. Nevertheless the alliance of England was still courted by France. It was necessary to the altered policy adopted, in appearance, at least, by the French Court, since the peace of St. Germain.

After that peace, La Rochelle had become the head-quarters and, as it were, capital of the Huguenots, where the leaders of that party were gathered round Jeanne d'Albret and the Admiral Coligni. Massacres of the Huguenots were perpetrated early in 1571 by the Catholic population at Rouen, Orange, and Dieppe, and much negotiation ensued. Charles IX as well as his mother seems at this time to have regarded the Spanish Court with suspicion and dislike. Hence the French Court was for a while disposed to conciliate the Huguenots; and, except as regarded the chancellorship, favored all their views. The Protestants naturally wished to see L’Hôpital restored to the custody of the seals, which, however, Catharine, in 1570, bestowed on one Birago, a Milanese, and creature of her own. On the other hand the Huguenots were authorized to hold a synod of the reformed churches at La Rochelle, to preside over which Beza came from Geneva; Charles IX backed the application of Coligni and Louis of Nassau to the Grand Duke of Tuscany for a secret loan in support of the insurrection in the Netherlands; and the hand of Queen Elizabeth, a heretic Sovereign excommunicated and deposed by the Pope, was, as we have said, solicited for Henry of Anjou. The Court also seemed to show its sincerity by entertaining the project of a marriage between young Henry of Navarre and the King’s third sister, Margaret; which indeed had been contemplated from their infancy, before the civil wars had broken out. Both were now about eighteen years of age, and Margaret was much attached to the young Duke Henry of Guise. In 1570 a marriage between them had nearly been arranged; but the King, as well as his mother and Anjou, denounced the audacious pretensions of Guise; and Charles ordered his brother, the Bastard of Angouleme, Grand Prior of the Order of Malta in France, to make away with him while on a hunting party. The Bastard failed from cowardice, not conscience, and Guise eluded the impending danger by marrying Catharine of Cleves.

In July, 1571, Count Louis of Nassau, who was at La f Rochelle with the Huguenots, on whose side he had fought after his retirement from the Netherlands, went to Paris, and had a secret interview with Charles IX, his mother, and the Montmorencis, in which he held out to the King the possession of the Netherlands, and the inheritance of the House of Burgundy, as the price of his help against Spain. Charles was struck with the tempting offer, but replied that it was too late to do anything this year against Spain. These negotiations became known. Alava, the Spanish ambassador at the Court of France, threatened war; Catharine protested to Philip II that Alava’s information was false; and the Spanish King, who wished to avoid a rupture with France, superseded him. The French Court then made advances to Coligni, who, always slow to form resolutions, long distrusted their professions. Jeanne d'Albret was not disinclined to the proposed marriage for her son : but resolved that immediately after its celebration he and his wife should retire from Court. Jeanne trembled both for Henry’s morals and his religion.

At that period the Court of France was indeed a sink of iniquity and corruption. Charles IX and his brother Anjou, of opposite tempers, distinguished themselves by opposite crimes. Impetuous, and to appearance frank, though capable of the deepest dissimulation, Charles IX possessed some brilliant qualities. He was expert in all the exercises of a cavalier, understood music, had a good voice, spoke well, and was even a tolerable poet. In November, 1570, he had espoused, at Mézières, Elizabeth, the second daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, and, considering the manners of the day, appears to have been tolerably faithful to his marriage vow. He had little sense of religion, and swore and blasphemed like a trooper. He was fond of violent bodily exercises, of which his constitution seemed to stand in need, and his chief recreation was hunting, which he followed with a sort of fury, killing numberless horses and dogs. Henry of Anjou, on the other hand, though cruel, was effeminate, and shunned all active sports. The lawless disorder in which the Court was plunged at this period may be illustrated by a single anecdote. In the spring of 1572, the King and the Duke of Anjou, brotherly only in their orgies, having dined with Nantouillet, the Prévôt des Marchands, at Paris, directed their people, when the banquet was finished, to pack up and carry away all the silver plate, and other property to the value of 50,000 livres and when Nantouillet took some steps in the Parliament of Paris to recover his property, Charles told the President of that assembly that he had better be quiet, as the robbery had been committed by persons above the law!

The marriage treaty between Henry of Navarre and Margaret of Valois was finally arranged in April, 1572. Pope Pius V sent his nephew Cardinal Alessandrino into France to break it off, if possible; and, though the Legate did not succeed, he received from the French Court assurances which he considered satisfactory, and which he promised to communicate by word of mouth on his return to Rome. Jeanne d'Albret, however, was not destined to see the marriage celebrated. She died at Paris on the 10th of the following June, after a short illness of five days. Some grave historians have attributed her death to poison, but it appears to have been occasioned by disease of the lungs. Her son Henry now assumed the title of King of Navarre.

Coligni had been induced to come to Court in September, 1571, while Jeanne d'Albret still thought it prudent to negotiate the marriage from within the walls of La Rochelle. Many changes had now taken place in the domestic life of Coligni. While at La Rochelle, being a widower, he had contracted a new marriage with Jacqueline d'Entremont, a great Savoyard lady and heiress; who, fascinated with the Admiral’s character, and determined, as she said, to be the Marcia of France, had proceeded to La Rochelle with the design of espousing him, in spite of the threats of the Duke of Savoy to confiscate all her estates. The Châtillons seem to have possessed an aptitude to inspire such passions. D'Andelot had married a lady of Lorraine under very similar circumstances, and had carried her off from Nanci under the very eyes of the Guises, who, however, seized upon her estates. But the gallant Colonel of the French infantry had died in 1569; and the Admiral’s other brother, the ex-Cardinal Odet had expired in England this very year, beloved and esteemed by all for his amiable qualities and his love of learning. Both were thought to have been poisoned. These circumstances were not calculated to inspire the Admiral with confidence; but at length, at the instance of Marshal Montmorenci, and having received the royal permission to surround himself with a guard of fifty gentlemen, Coligni went to Court, in the hope of frustrating the faction of the Guises, and bringing about a war with their patron and protector, the King of Spain.

The Admiral’s reception at Blois was of the warmest kind. Charles IX presented him with 100,000 livres as a wedding gift, interceded with Emmanuel Philibert in favor of his wife, granted him for a year the enjoyment of the ecclesiastical revenues of his brother, the deceased Cardinal, and loaded with favors his son-in-law Teligni and the gentlemen of his suite. But more than by all these liberalities, Coligni was attached by the confidence apparently reposed in him by the King. The Admiral now seemed to be the principal counselor of the French Crown, and in this capacity he developed the views of a true patriot and enlightened statesman, by endeavoring to unite the arms prepared for civil war in striking a blow against the power of Spain, by organizing the French marine, and founding a colonial dominion. Schemes of colonization, which involved an attack upon the Spanish possessions, had long occupied the mind of Coligni. In 1555 he had endeavored to found a colony in Brazil; in 1562 and 1564 he had sent expeditions to Florida, a region hitherto unoccupied by Europeans; and while at La Rochelle, he had dispatched a small squadron to reconnoiter the Antilles, and to concert the means of attack upon those islands. But, of all his views, those which regarded the Netherlands were the most important and the most feasible : namely, to extend the French frontier to the mouth of the Schelde, by re-uniting Flanders to the Crown, and to make Brabant, Holland, and Zealand independent of the Spanish King under the protectorate of the Nassaus. Never before had France had so favorable an opportunity for accomplishing that darling project as in the spring of 1572, after Brille had been seized by the insurgents, and the towns of Zealand and Holland were revolting, one after another, from the Spanish Crown.

The Admiral’s views were supported by the party called the Politiques, which steered between the Court and the Huguenots. Its leaders were the Duke of Alençon and the Montmorenci family, whose chief members were the Marshal Duke of Montmorenci, the Marshal Count of Damville, and the Seigneurs of Meru and of Thore. The French Court entertained at this time some ambitious schemes; it was seeking to establish a sort of protectorate over the Protestant Princes of Germany; it was turning its views towards the Crown of Poland, and even towards the Empire on the death of Maximilian; and Charles had a lingering notion of asserting the claims of his ancestors to Milan and Naples. That King, as we have said, possessed considerable energy, and it seems probable enough that he was occasionally dazzled by the Admiral’s views; an assumption which may serve to explain some of the anomalies observable in Charles’s conduct at this period.

In April, 1572, the French agent in the Netherlands told the Duke of Alva, that, unless he abrogated the obnoxious taxes which he had imposed, his master would break with Spain; and the negotiations with Elizabeth were continued, whose friendship was necessary to France in case of such a rupture. Catharine’s youngest son, the Duke of Alençon, though only eighteen years of age, and twenty-one years younger than Elizabeth, was substituted for the Duke of Anjou as a suitor to the English Queen; and a treaty of alliance between France and England was signed April 22nd, 1572. Even the Turks were exhorting Charles to take advantage of the troubles in the Netherlands and to seize upon those rich provinces; for the French Court, instead of joining the Holy League against Selim, as they were earnestly pressed to do by the Pope, had sent an ambassador to the Porte. Count Louis of Nassau had had secret interviews at Blamont with the Dukes of Anjou and Alençon, and had received 100,000 livres as an earnest of the intentions of France; and on Louis’s arrival in Picardy early in May, he found several thousand French Huguenots, under Genlis, assembling for his assistance, not merely by permission of Charles IX, but even paid with his money. But this was the extent of the French policy in this direction, which, even if it had been sincere up to this time, now took an opposite turn. The movements of Genlis were betrayed to the Duke of Alva by some person at the French Court; and the unfortunate men were cut to pieces.

The policy even of the Queen-Mother at this important crisis seems to have been variable and uncertain. Like all cunning yet irresolute persons, she was always providing some loophole for escape; she would have two strings to her bow, and while she was negotiating with the Protestants she had not broken with the Guises. It having been discovered, from an intercepted letter of the Countess of Northumberland, that towards the close of 1571 the Duke of Guise had spent two months with Alva in the Netherlands, Sir T. Smith mentioned this fact to Catharine in March, 1572; observing that it appeared, from the letter of the Countess, that the House of Guise would punctually follow all the directions of Spain; whereupon Catharine falsely denied that Guise had been with Alva, and added that the Court certainly knew where Guise was, since they communicated with him every four days.

It was some relief to the French Court, that Pius V died during the course of these negotiations (May 1st, 1572). They expected to find less difficulty with his successor. Cardinal Buoncompagni, who assumed the title of Gregory XIII. The son of a Bolognese jurist, Buoncompagni, from his secular education and cheerful temper, resembled the fourth, rather than the fifth, Pius, and, indeed, he employed the ministers of the former Pontiff. Before entering the Church Gregory XIII had had a son born out of wedlock, whom he now made Commandant of St. Angelo and Gonfalonier of Rome. Gregory’s very lack of monasticism, however, threw him into the hands of Jesuits, whom Pius V, a Dominican, had kept at arm’s length. Gregory bought and cleared a whole quarter of Rome to erect for that Society the immense Gesú or Jesuit’s College, containing twenty lecture-rooms, and as many chambers as there are days in the year. This institution, called the “Seminary of all Nations”, was opened with twenty-five discourses in twenty-five different tongues. The Jesuits worked upon Gregory through his desire to improve Catholic education, and his affection for his son, whom they proposed to make King of Ireland; and we shall see in the sequel that he became the willing instrument of all their machinations.

After the death of Pius V, the Cardinal of Lorraine, who was of a cowardly disposition, and dreaded the menacing aspect of affairs in France, went to Rome to attend the Conclave, and to be out of harm’s way. After his departure, the Dukes of Guise and Aumale re-appeared at Court, where they were favorably received, and were induced to sign a formulary of reconciliation with Coligni, upon his renewing the declaration which he had before made, that he had not participated in the murder of Guise’s father. The Admiral seemed to enjoy the whole confidence of the King, and in return for the marks of affection lavished on him by Charles, agreed that the cautionary towns made over to the Huguenots should be surrendered some months before the stipulated time. Fortunately for that party, however, the arrangement was not carried into effect, and they had thus the means of renewing the war after the massacre of St. Bartholomew. On the defeat and capture of Genlis (July 19th) before mentioned, the whole aspect of affairs seemed to change at the French Court; and after an interview with his mother at Montpipeau, early in August, Charles IX appears to have abandoned his anti-Spanish policy. He retained, however, or pretended to retain, his friendship for Coligni; and on the Admiral’s return from a visit to Châtillon, seemed still bent on open war with Spain; he even instructed La Mothe-Fénelon, his ambassador at London, to urge Elizabeth to declare herself openly against that country, and to assist, by a diversion in Zealand, the attempt of the Prince of Orange to relieve Mons.

The marriage of Henry of Navarre and Margaret of Valois, of which, from the horrible massacre by which it was followed, has been called les noces vermeilles, or the blood-red wedding, was now about to take place. From the kinship between the parties a Papal dispensation was required, which was refused by Pope Gregory XIII, except on four conditions : namely, that the King of Navarre should, in the presence of Charles IX, make a secret profession of the Catholic faith; that the dispensation should be solicited by Henry himself; that he should restore to the clergy of Navarre their possessions and benefices; and that he should espouse Margaret with all the customary rites of the Roman Catholic Church. Such conditions were equivalent to a refusal, and Charles IX wrote to his ambassador at Rome, instructing him to press the Pope to yield; to urge, among other reasons, that the marriage was for the interests of religion; and if the Pope should prove inexorable the ambassador was to signify to him his master’s determination to proceed. As Gregory would not yield, Charles induced the Cardinal of Bourbon, a poor weak creature, to perform the marriage, by representing to him that a dispensation would arrive by the next courier; and Monday, August 18th, was fixed for the ceremony. On the previous Sunday all the pulpits of Paris resounded with incendiary sermons. The marriage was celebrated on a scaffold erected before the grand entrance to the cathedral of Notre-Dame, according to a formulary agreed upon; after which the bride and the Catholic part of the Court heard Mass in the cathedral, while the bridegroom retired into the cour de l’évêché. It is said that Margaret refused to pronounce her consent, and that Charles IX compelled her to give seeming token of it by forcibly bowing her head.

On the very day of the marriage Charles IX wrote to Mandelot, the Governor of Lyons, ordering him not to permit any one unprovided with a royal passport to proceed into Italy within six days from that date. The only probable motive that can be assigned for such an order is, that the Court did not wish the Pope to hear of the marriage till he should receive at the same time other news which might console him for so flagrant a contempt of his authority. The first four days of the week were to be devoted to fêtes in honor of the marriage. On the very day after it, one Maurevert was lying in wait for Coligni, with a loaded arquebus, at the house of M. de Pille de Villemur, a former tutor of the Duke of Guise, situated in the cloister of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. Catharine and the Duke of Anjou had arranged his murder with the Guises; they communicated with the Duchess of Nemours, widow of Francis, the murdered Duke of Guise, and declared that they committed to her hands the vengeance she had so long desired to wreak on Coligni, the supposed assassin of her first husband. At this news the young Duke Henry of Guise was furious with joy, and pressed his mother to shoot the Admiral with her own hand; but Maurevert was chosen for the deed, a practiced assassin, who had once before attempted the Admiral’s life. On the following Friday, August 22nd, as Coligni was slowly walking home from the Louvre, and employed in reading a requite, Maurevert fired at him from a grated window of a house in which he was posted. Two balls took effect, one of them carrying away the fore-finger of the Admiral’s right hand, the other entering his left shoulder. Coligni pointed with his mutilated hand to the house whence the shot was fired; it was immediately searched, but the assassin had escaped by a back door. Charles IX ordered an inquiry to be made into the matter, and caused the Admiral to be surrounded with Huguenots, in order, as he pretended, to his security. In the afternoon, at the request of Coligni, Charles paid him a visit, accompanied by his mother and the Duke of Anjou. The Admiral, if the anonymous authority which the anecdote is related may be trusted, spoke to the King earnestly and apart, advising him not to let his mother and brother have so much control over him; till Catharine, suspicious of what was passing, drew Charles away. From this moment the fate of Coligni, it is said, was sealed. The King, however, seemed so determined to punish the attempt on the Admiral’s life, that the Dukes of Guise and Aumale requested and obtained permission to leave Paris; but they did not avail themselves of it. Large troops of Huguenots armed with cuirasses passed and repassed before their hotel, whose clamors for justice sounded very like threats.

No time was to be lost. On the afternoon of Saturday, 23rd, Catharine and the Duke of Anjou sent for their trusty counselors the Italians, Gondi, Count de Retz, the Keeper Birago, Louis de Gonzaga Duke of Nevers, together with Marshal de Tavannes. These six, it is said, having determined on the massacre of the Huguenots, proceeded together to the Louvre to work on the King’s fears and extort his consent to it. A story was invented of a great Huguenot conspiracy to avenge the attempt on Coligni’s life by seizing the King and royal family, and putting to death the Duke of Guise and other Catholic leaders; and it was affirmed that Coligni had sent for 6,000 German cavalry, and 10,000 foot from Switzerland. The only foundation for these charges seems to have been Coligni’s having said to the Queen in one of the discussions in the council : “Madam, the King now shuns a war which promises him advantage; God forbid that another break out which he may not be able to avoid”. Catharine chose to interpret these words as a threat, though they do not appear to have been so meant. Catharine also urged upon the King that the Catholics on their side were rising; that Paris was already armed; the King must choose one of two parties, or fall between them. To these alarming representations, it is said, was added an appeal to filial and fraternal tenderness. The Huguenots were demanding vengeance on the Guises; but Charles could not sacrifice them without also sacrificing his mother and his brother; for Catharine avowed it was she and Anjou who had instigated the attempt on Coligni, though only with the view of preserving the King himself. Charles is related to have resisted the proposal more than an hour, till Catharine and Anjou, fearing to be discovered, asked leave to retire from Court.

It is said that Catharine at first only demanded the life of the Admiral and five or six others — les têtes de saumon, as Alva called them; but that the King, in the ungovernable intensity of his alarm, insisted on a general slaughter. In the evening of that accursed day the Court sent for the Dukes of Guise, Aumale, and Montpensier, and the Bastard of Angouleme, and distributed among them the direction of the massacre. To Guise, as the capital enemy of Coligni, was assigned the quarter of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, in which the Admiral resided. A few heads were excepted from the general doom, among which the chief were the young King of Navarre and the Prince of Condé; also the Montmorencis, whom Guise wished to include as his ancient enemies, and whose orthodoxy was suspected, as being allied with the Châtillons. But though three of the brothers were at Court, Marshal Montmorenci, the head of the family, was absent, and it was feared that he would be driven by the murder of his brothers to take a desperate vengeance. Davila blames this exception, as having destroyed the fruits of a measure which he regarded as a masterpiece of audacity and wisdom.

A.D. 1572

At midnight, or rather in the early morning of Sunday, August 24th, St. Bartholomew’s Day, Catharine descended to the King’s apartment in the Louvre, where the Duke of Anjou had already assembled Guise, Nevers, Birago, Tavannes, and Retz. Everything had been prepared for the massacre. The regiment of guards, recalled to Paris by the advice of Coligni himself, was posted along the river and around the house of the Admiral; the ex-Provost Marcel had assembled at the Hotel de Ville the most fanatical leaders of the Catholic brotherhoods, who were stimulated by priests and monks. At the sound of the bell of the Palais de Justice, which was to toll the knell of the Huguenots at three in the morning, all “good Catholics” were to begin the work of blood. They would recognize one another by a white handkerchief round the left arm and a white cross in their hats. It was well known that a strong fanatical party might be relied on; as a plan had been long agitated among the Catholic confreries or associations to put themselves under trusty leaders, to extirpate the Huguenots, and make the King feel his error in giving them his confidence. While expecting the fatal signal fear seized that royal party, the rulers of a great nation, assembled like midnight murderers to imbrue their hands in the blood of some of their worthiest subjects. At the last hour the King seemed to repent the step he had taken; Catharine, herself pale and trembling, was exhorting him to take courage, when suddenly the report of a pistol broke the silence of the night. It wanted more than an hour to three o'clock, but Catharine sent a hasty message to sound the bell of the church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, which was the nearest, and which was answered by that of the Palais. At this signal the streets were suddenly filled with soldiers, lights appeared at all the windows, from almost every door issued armed men, wearing the appointed badges and shouting furiously, Vive Dieu et le Roi! The dull and solemn reverberation of the bells was succeeded by an indescribable tumult, — the shouts of murder and the cries of despair. The “Paris Matins” had begun.

We leave the details of that bloody night and fix our eyes on a single scene — the death of Coligni. The Admiral was awake, attended by his surgeon and a Calvinist minister named Merlin. At the first noise he thought it was some riot excited by the Guises; but when he heard the soldiers breaking into his house, and the reports of their arquebuses leveled against his servants, the truth stared him in the face. He rose from his bed, bade Merlin pray for him, and commended his soul to God. At this moment, Cornaton, one of his household, entered his apartment, exclaiming, “Monseigneur, it is God who calls us!”. “I have long been prepared for death”, replied the Admiral; “you and the rest had better fly”. All obeyed except a German, who refused to quit him. Merlin and Cornaton escaped, but most of his people were massacred in attempting to save themselves by the roof of the house. Meanwhile, Cosseins, a captain of the guard, broke open the chamber door and rushed in, followed by a German named Besme, and Sarlabous, a Gascon captain and renegade Huguenot.

 “Are not you the Admiral?” cried Besme.

 “I am”, replied Coligni; “you should respect young man, my years and my infirmities : but do your pleasure, you will not much shorten my life”.

As he uttered these words, Besme plunged a javelin into his breast, and the others fell upon him and pierced him with innumerable wounds. The Duke of Guise, who was in the courtyard with his uncle Aumale and the Bastard of Angouleme, now called out, “Besme, have you finished?”. “Yes”. “Then fling him out of window; let us see him!”. The body of the murdered Admiral fell heavily on the pavement. The bastard of Henry II wiped the blood from the face, and recognizing the features of Coligni, gave the venerable head a kick. The example was imitated by Guise. The head was then cut off by an Italian servant of the Duke of Nevers, to be sent to the Cardinal of Lorraine, at Rome, and the mutilated trunk was dragged by the populace through the streets. It is said that as soon as it got light the King placed himself at a window of the Louvre, and shot, with a large arquebus, at everybody he could descry in the Faubourg St. Germain, but without effect, as the piece would not carry so far; while at the same time he kept crying “Kill! kill!”. Such a hunting party he had never had before.

In Paris the massacre lasted two days and nights. Many seized the occasion to get rid of their private enemies. Among the victims of this description was the illustrious Ramus, or La Ramée, the zealous reformer of the University of Paris. Ramus was sought out and delivered to paid assassins by Charpentier, a colleague whom he had often convicted of ignorance, and who had bought a chair in the College of France to lecture on the Greek mathematicians, though he openly avowed that he neither knew Greek nor mathematics. The example of Paris was followed, in consequence of secret verbal orders from the Court, by many provincial towns, beginning with Meaux, August 25th, and ending with Bordeaux, October 3rd. Thus, as Michelet remarks, the St. Bartholomew was not a day but a season. The towns where most Protestants were murdered were Lyons, Rouen, Bordeaux, Castres, Toulouse, Meaux, Orleans, Angers, and Bourges. Lyons numbered 800 victims. The massacres became a matter of business. Suitors at law killed their adversaries; candidates for places made vacancies by murdering the occupants; heirs secured possession by means of a bullet or two inches of steel. The offices of murdered Huguenots were sold at the Louvre. The hangmen behaved admirably : they refused to act, saying that their vocation was only to kill in pursuance of justice; and the soldiers also, at Lyons and elsewhere, declared that they would use their arms only in open warfare. The whole number of victims has been very variously estimated at from 20,000 to 100,000 : the lower number probably expresses the truth. They belonged chiefly to the higher and richer classes.

Whether the St. Bartholomew was premeditated, or whether it was a sudden act forced upon the French Court by the success of the attempt on Coligni’s life, is still a disputed point. Recent historians, and especially those of France, seem, for the most part disinclined to aggravate the guilt of so repulsive a deed, by ascribing it to premeditation; and indeed the long train of cold-blooded and complicated treachery necessary to carry it out, is, to our modern notions, almost incredible. But, in order to gain the proper point of view, we must in imagination carry ourselves three centuries back, to a period when the work of Machiavelli formed the text-book of Princes; when almost any crime was deemed venial that served a policy supposed to be salutary; when assassination was a method practiced by the greatest Sovereigns, and sometimes sanctioned, nay, even employed, by the reputed Vicar himself of Christ upon earth.

Those who maintain that the massacre was a sudden, unpremeditated act, rely chiefly on the evidence of three contemporary writers, and on the improbability which, as they affirm, attends the contrary hypothesis. The three witnesses are, Tavannes and Margaret Valois, in their Memoirs, and the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry III, in a paper which he is said to have dictated to some unknown person at Cracow, when he was King of Poland; and the substance of their testimony is, that the massacre was first resolved on by the Court, as a measure of self-defense, after Coligni had been wounded. Waiving the objections, that the Memoirs of Tavannes are not the work of the Marshal, but were written many years after by his son, who, at the time of the St. Bartholomew, was only seventeen years of age; that Margaret, by her own confession, knew nothing of the deed before its perpetration, and afterwards, of course, only so much as the actors in it chose to tell her; and that the authenticity of the paper ascribed to the Duke of Anjou is viewed with the gravest doubt by the best historical critics; we allege simply the character of the witnesses as a ground for rejecting their evidence. It comes from the very conclave by which the massacre was ordered. Could such witnesses cover with infamy the King, their kinsman, or their master, and themselves also as his counselors and advisers, by acknowledging that the massacre was only the last act of a series of the basest dissimulation and treachery? Could they belie the version published by the Court itself of the origin of the massacre? These considerations alone might induce us to pause before accepting a story which runs counter to the statements of every contemporary historian. Catholic as well as Protestant, who must have known, yet rejected, the account put forth by the Court. But further, we shall oppose to the story of these courtiers evidence just as direct and infinitely less liable to suspicion, as coming from persons who had no interest in concealing the truth.

Salviati, who was at that time the Papal Nuncio in France, was also told, and appears to have believed, the statement circulated by the Court; that, had the Admiral been killed outright, the massacre would never have taken place. It appears, however, from Salviati’s correspondence, that the Court of Rome were better informed in the matter than their Nuncio, and refused to believe this account; in adopting which, indeed, Salviati, on his own showing, must have been not a little credulous. He had heard with his own ears statements which might have led him to a very different conclusion; for in his letter, written on the day of the massacre, he remarks, that the putting to death of the Admiral and so many other brave men agreed with what the Court had told him formerly at Blois, when treating about the marriage of Henry of Navarre.

Charles IX, as we have already related, had also led the Legate Alessandrino to expect the same result; and Alessandrino, with more sagacity than Salviati, connected the massacre with the promise; for when the tidings of it arrived at Rome he exclaimed, “God be thanked! the King of France has kept his word”. Now this anecdote rests on the most unexceptionable authority. It is told by the Cardinal d'Ossat, a man of the highest character, in an official dispatch to the French minister, written when he was at Rome negotiating for the divorce of Henry IV. and consequently not with the remotest view of supporting or refuting any speculative historical question whatever, but strictly as a matter of business. He heard it from the lips of no less a personage than Pope Clement VIII, who had been auditor of the Legate Alessandrino in France, had written down the French King’s words with his own hand, and stated that the paper might still be found among those of the Legate. Clement did not merely relate this anecdote to Cardinal d'Ossat, he also mentioned it in full Consistory, as one of the grounds for forming a judgment in the matter of Henry’s divorce. Yet, strange to say! Clement’s testimony on this occasion has been impugned by a Roman Catholic priest, who has accused him, in one of the most weighty functions of his office, of having made this statement without having satisfied himself of its accuracy. There is, however, ample confirmation, were it needed, of the soundness of Clement’s memory on this occasion. Catena, who had been secretary of Alessandrino during his legateship, gives the words of Charles IX almost literally as the auditor, but with a still more precise addition. The King, he says, subjoined, “I wish either to punish these villains and felons, and have them cut to pieces, or to reign no longer”. The anecdote is also confirmed by Capilupi, a gentleman belonging to the Cardinal of Lorraine, who published an account of the circumstances attending the massacre only a few weeks after its perpetration, under the title of Lo Stratagema, which was translated into French, and is published in the Archives Curieuses. This evidence seems irresistible. It may be objected, indeed, that it all comes from Rome, and that the Cardinals and prelates had agreed to be in one story; but it may be further confirmed from quite Letter of another source. St. Goard, the French ambassador at Madrid, in a letter to Charles IX, in which he gives an account of the manner in which Philip II received the news of the massacre, says, that he was loud in the praise “of so long a dissimulation”.' St. Goard, it appears, had often assured the Spanish King of the plot that was hatching in France against the Huguenots; but Philip was incredulous; and St. Goard now called upon him never henceforth to doubt anything that the ambassador of Charles might tell him.

To any candid mind, however, the evidence of Cardinal d'Ossat alone is amply sufficient, nor is it controverted by M. Martin in his history of France, although he is a strenuous advocate against premeditation; but he seeks to evade it by suggesting that Charles IX, who he thinks would at that time rather have deceived the Pope than Coligni, made use of a double entendre, and by “enemies” meant, not the Huguenots, but the Spaniards. This ground, however, is completely cut away by the despatch of Salviati quoted above, which shows that the Huguenots were the contemplated enemies. To believe, moreover, that Charles was sincere in his professions of friendship to the Huguenots, demands a very large share of credulity, even in reasoning from constructive or circumstantial evidence; and this leads us to the second part of the case, or that of probability.

What are the facts? If Charles was sincere in his policy of conquering the Spaniards through the Huguenots, he abandoned it at the moment when it promised to be successful. But he had never heartily embraced it. The French soldiers whom he permitted to go into the Netherlands in support of the cause were all Huguenots; they were betrayed to Alva by secret information from the French Court, and cut to pieces; thus in reality forming part of the massacre. The preparations at sea show, perhaps, even still more strongly the animus of the French Court. The fleet, whose destination was pretended to be Flushing, was commanded by the most virulent enemies of the Reformation; among them was La Garde, notorious by the massacres of Mérindol and Cabrières; insomuch, that the magistrates of La Rochelle wrote to Coligni to communicate their suspicions that the fleet was destined against that town instead of Flushing. The chief arguments against premeditation, drawn from a constructive probability, are : that it is incredible the King should have professed for so long a time a false friendship for Coligni, or that the Admiral should have been deceived by it; that it is impossible but Anjou and Tavannes should have been acquainted with Charles’s hypocrisy; that Charles’s visit to the wounded Admiral was inconsistent with guilt, and that he thereby exposed himself to imminent danger from the Huguenots; that Catharine’s jealousy of the Admiral’s influence with the King shows that the latter must have been in earnest : that if a general massacre had been meditated it was absurd to attack Coligni first, which would only serve to put the Huguenots on their guard, and perhaps occasion their flight from Paris; and that there appears to be no reason why the attempt upon him should have been so long deferred.

To these objections it may be replied: that the length of Charles IX’s hypocrisy depended on his powers of dissimulation, which, according to the evidence of a contemporary writer, were very considerable; and the insincerity of his character is shown by the falsehoods which he told after the massacre. That Coligni should have been deceived by his professions, shows only that he was of a nobler and more open nature than the King; in fact, however, he was not altogether without suspicion; but he preferred the interests of his country to his own life, and he declared that “he would rather that his corpse should be dragged through the streets of Paris than that the civil war should be renewed”. If Anjou and Tavannes were acquainted with Charles’s hypocrisy, it was not for them to tell it. We have already touched on this point; but, in fact, Charles himself, as we have said, seems to have been occasionally carried away with the Admiral’s magnificent plans, though in the long run the treacherous part of his character prevailed. That the King should have visited the wounded Admiral does not prove him innocent, or the same fact would also prove Catharine and Anjou innocent, who accompanied him; and who, by Dr. Lingard’s showing, were the authors of Coligni’s assassination; nor was there any danger from the Huguenots, who believed the assassin to have been hired, not by the Court, but by the Guises. Catharine’s jealousy of the Admiral has doubtless been exaggerated in order to make out a plausible story; and here again it might be justified by the circumstance that Charles occasionally wavered in his plans. The last two allegations, that it was absurd to attack the Admiral first, and to defer the attack so long, lead to a view of the subject not hitherto developed, and which we shall here briefly state.

A grand clue to the dénouement of the plot is afforded by the part played in it by the Guises, who were to be the instruments — we might rather say the tools — of the Court; for, after they had been used, they were to be thrown aside and denounced, and the first of the King’s falsehoods in endeavoring to evade the responsibility of the massacre was to lay it to them. Guise and his uncle Aumale came to Paris towards the end of May or beginning of June, when the marriage of Henry and Margaret was about to take place, and met with a most flattering reception. They were no doubt as ready then to murder the Admiral as they were two months later; but this did not suit the views of the Court. It was premature. The death of Henry’s mother, Jeanne d'Albret on the 10th of June, caused his marriage to be postponed for several weeks, and the Court had good reasons for connecting the massacre with the marriage : all the Huguenots of note would of course come to Paris on its celebration, and would be thrown off their guard by its accomplishment, as an event which seemed to afford indisputable proof of the King’s sincerity, as well as by the fêtes which followed the auspicious union. Meanwhile Charles kept up their spirits, and entertained them, says the Spanish ambassador, writing to his Court on the 14th of June, with some “equivocal conversations which put them in good hopes”. At length, one by one, the weary days of expectation disappear; the marriage is celebrated on the 18th of August, and next morning Maurevert, posted in a house belonging to the Guises, is lying in wait with an arquebus for the Admiral. Is any further proof needed that the time of the assassination was determined by the time of the marriage?

We may now answer the question why the attempt on Coligni was so long deferred. It was because all the Huguenots should be assembled together because they might probably be irritated by the murder to some act of violence, and thus afford a pretext for their massacre; and because there would be an opportunity of transferring the blame of it from the Court to the Guises. A further proof of the connection between the marriage and the massacre is afforded by Charles IX insisting that the marriage should be celebrated at Paris. Jeanne d'Albret was very anxious that it should be performed in Bearn; and if the object of the union had been merely to cement a friendship between the Court and the Huguenots, it mattered not where the ceremony took place. But in Bearn, where Protestantism prevailed, the massacre could not have been perpetrated.

The news of the St. Bartholomew resounded throughout Europe like a clap of thunder; but the sensations it awakened were widely different. In all Protestant countries there was a silence of horror and indignation, while in those of the Catholic faith the event was hailed with exultation and gladness. Pope Gregory XIII, urged on by Cardinal Alessandrino and the Cardinal of Lorraine, who wrote from Rome a letter full of joy and thanks, celebrated the massacre as one of the most signal triumphs ever gained by the Church. The guns were fired from the Castle of St. Angelo, bonfires were lighted in the streets of Rome, a solemn procession was made to the church of St. Louis, and a medal was ordered to be struck with the head of Gregory, and having on the reverse the exterminating angel slaying the Huguenots, with the legend Hugonotorum Strages. Gregory also caused a picture of the massacre to be painted in fresco in the Hall of Kings in the Vatican. The celebrated Muretus afterwards addressed to Gregory, in classical Latin, a bombastic panegyric on that execrable day, in which he adverts to the Pontiff having gone on foot to return thanks to God and St. Louis. The King of Spain was still more delighted than the Pope. When St. Goard, the French envoy at Madrid, waited on him with the news of the massacre, Philip laughed, sarcastically remarking that Charles well deserved his title of “Most Christian”, and that there was no King to compare with him for valor or prudence. Not only was the bigotry of Philip gratified, he also saw that Charles had committed in his favor a great political blunder. On the other hand, a fast was ordered at Geneva, which was afterwards annually observed on the 24th of August. The virtuous Emperor Maximilian II shed tears over the crime of his son-in-law, and lamented it in a touching letter to Lazarus Schwendi. Fénelon the French ambassador at London, as he passed through the ranks of courtiers and ladies, all clothed in deep mourning, to communicate the dreadful event to Queen Elizabeth, was received with a dead silence, more cutting than the bitterest reproaches; and the Queen herself conveyed to him, with all that dignity which she so well knew how to assume, her sentiments of abhorrence for his master’s deed. Political considerations, however, obliged her to moderate her indignation and resentment; being fearful that the Reformation was entirely suppressed in France, and that Charles IX might now be induced to unite his arms with those of the Catholic King.

The effect of so unexpected a blow was above all terrible in the Netherlands, where an exactly contrary policy had been expected from the French Court. The weapons fell from the hands of the Netherland patriots; the army of the Prince of Orange was dissolved, and the news was soon followed by the surrender of Mons.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS