History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume II Part 54

[1129] Ibid., 379. The story of the ma.s.sacre is well told in the Mem. de l'estat, and by M. Floquet, whose original sources of information throw a flood of light upon the transactions; also by De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 606; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 27; Jean de Serres (1575), iv., fol. 50.

[1130] One of them, Jean Coras, had committed an unpardonable offence.

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

[1131] Mem. de l'estat, Archives curieuses, vii. 381-385; De Thou, _ubi supra_; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 27, 28 (liv. i., c. 5); Jean de Serres (1575), iv., fol. 50.

[1132] President Lagebaston even says that, had this been suffered to go on a week longer--so rapidly were the Protestants flocking to the ma.s.s--there would not have been eight Huguenots in town.

[1133] Registers of Parliament, in Boscheron des Portes, Hist. du parl. de Bordeaux (Bordeaux, 1877), i. 241.

[1134] Letter of President Lagebaston to Charles IX., October 7, 1572, Mackintosh, Hist. of England, iii., App. E, 351-353. See also De Thou, iv.

651, 652, and Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 27. Lagebaston was "first president"

of the Bordalese parliament, but, so far from being able to prevent the ma.s.sacre, received information that his own name was on Montferrand's list, and fled to the castle of Ha, whence he wrote to the king. His remonstrances against a butchery based upon a pretended order which was not exhibited, his delineation of the impolitic and disgraceful work, and his reasons why an execution, that might have been necessary to crush a secret conspiracy at Paris, was altogether unnecessary in a city "six or seven score leagues distant," where there could be no thought of a conspiracy, render his letter very interesting.

[1135] Registres du Parlement, Boscheron des Portes, i. 246, 247.

[1136] Boscheron des Portes, _ubi supra_.

[1137] Claude Haton waxes facetious when describing the sudden popularity acquired by the sign of the cross, and the numbers of rosaries that could be seen in the hands, or tied to the belt, of fugitive Huguenot ladies.

[1138] Tocsain contre les ma.s.sacreurs, 156. See _ante_, chapter xviii., p.

491.

[1139] De Felice, Hist. of the Protestants of France (New York, 1859), 214, and Henry White, 455, from Maimbourg, Histoire du Calvinisme, 486. I refer the reader to Mr. L. D. Paumier's exhaustive discussion of the story in his paper, "La Saint-Barthelemy en Normandie," Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. francais, vi. (1858), 466-470. Mr. Paumier has also completely demolished the scanty foundation on which rested the similar story told of Sigognes, Governor of Dieppe, pp. 470-474. See also M. C.

Osmont de Courtisigny's monograph, "Jean Le Hennuyer et les Huguenots de Lisieux en 1572," in the Bulletin, xxvi. (1877) 145, etc.

[1140] Tocsain contre les ma.s.sacreurs, 156; Odolant Desnos, Memoires historiques sur la ville d'Alencon, ii. 285, _apud_ Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. francais, viii. (1859), 68. The truth of the story as to Alencon seems to be proved by the circ.u.mstance that when, in February, 1575, Matignon marched against Alencon, in order to suppress the conspiracy which the duke, Charles's youngest brother, had entered into to prevent Henry of Anjou from succeeding peaceably to the throne of France, the grateful Protestants at once opened their gates to him. Ibid., 305, Bulletin, _ubi supra_.

[1141] Tocsain, 156.

[1142] "Par lesquelles vous me mandez n'avoir receu aucun commandement verbal de moy, ains seulement mes lettres du 22, 24 et 28 du pa.s.se, dont ne vous mettrez en aucune peine, car elles s'adressoyent seulement a quelques-uns qui s'estoyent trouvez pres de moy." Charles IX. to Gordes, Sept. 14, 1572, Archives curieuses, vii. 365, 366.

[1143] Ibid., 367, 368.

[1144] Memoires de l'estat, Archives curieuses, vii. 366, 367; De Thou, iv. 605. The Tocsain contre les ma.s.sacreurs, however, p. 156, gives credit instead to M. de Carces.

[1145] Dr. White has shown some reasons for doubting the accuracy of the story. Among the Dulaure MSS. is preserved a full account of the manner in which a Protestant, fleeing from Paris, fell in with the messenger who was carrying the order to St. Herem or Heran, and robbed him of his instructions. The Protestant hastened on to warn his brethren of their danger, while the messenger could only relate to the governor the contents of the lost despatch. Notwithstanding this, eighty Huguenots were murdered in one city (Aurillac) of this province. Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew, 454, 455.

[1146] Adiram d'Aspremont.

[1147] Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ., ii. 28 (liv. i., c. 5). The authenticity of this letter has been much disputed, partly because of the Viscount's severe and cruel character (which, however, D'Aubigne himself notices when he tells the story), partly because it rests on the sole authority of D'Aubigne. It is to be observed, however, that although he alone relates it, he alludes to it in several of his works, as _e.g._, in his Tragiques. But the truth of the incident is apparently placed beyond all legitimate doubt by its intimate and necessary connection with an event which D'Aubigne narrates considerably later in his history, and from personal knowledge. Hist. univ., ii. 291, 292 (liv. iii., c. 13). In 1577, D'Aubigne, having lost much of Henry of Navarre's favor through his fidelity or his bluntness (see Mem. de d'Aubigne, ed. Panth., p. 486), retired from Nerac to the neighboring town of Castel-jaloux, of which he was in command. Making a foray at the head of a small detachment of Huguenot soldiers, he fell in with and easily routed a Roman Catholic troop, consisting of a score of light hors.e.m.e.n belonging to Viscount D'Orthez, and a number of men raised at Bayonne and Dax, who were conducting three young ladies condemned at Bordeaux to be beheaded. The vanquished Roman Catholics threw themselves on the ground and sued for mercy. On hearing who they were, D'Aubigne called to him all those who came from Bayonne and then cried out to his followers to treat the rest in memory of the ma.s.sacre in the prisons of Dax. The Huguenots needed no further reminder. It was not long before they had cut to pieces the twenty-two men from Dax who had fallen into their hands. On the other hand they restored to the soldiers of Bayonne their horses and arms, and, after dressing their wounds in a neighboring village, sent them home to tell their governor, Viscount D'Orthez, "that they had seen the different treatment the Huguenots accorded to _soldiers_ and to _hangmen_." A week later, a herald from Bayonne arrived at Castel-jaloux, with worked scarfs and handkerchiefs for the entire Huguenot band. Nor did the exchange of courtesies end here. The mad notion seized Henry of Navarre to accept an invitation to a feast extended to him by the Bayonnese. Six Huguenots accompanied him, of whom D'Aubigne was one. The table was sumptuous, the presents were rare and costly. D'Aubigne being recognized, was overwhelmed with thanks, "his courtesy being much more liberally repaid than he had deserved;" while the King of Navarre and his Huguenots, at the table, "at the expense of the rest of France, extolled to heaven the rare and unexampled act and glory of the men of Bayonne." It is certainly an easier supposition that D'Aubigne has faithfully reproduced D'Orthez's letter to Charles IX., than that he has manufactured so long and consistent a story.

The discussion in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'histoire du prot. franc. is full, xi. 13-15, 116, etc., xii. 240.

[1148] Letter of Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Montpensier, Aug. 26th (it should evidently be the 25th; for the Duke speaks of Coligny as killed "ledit jour d'hier," and the mythical Huguenot plot was to have been executed "hier ou aujourd'hui"). Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot.

fr., i. (1852) 60, and Soldan, Geschichte des Prot. in Frankreich, ii., App., 599.

[1149] The words are those of an inscription of the seventeenth or the early part of the eighteenth century, in the Hotel de Ville of Nantes.

Bulletin, i. (1852) 61.

[1150] Mem. de l'estat, Archives cur., vii. 385, 386.

[1151] See a table in White, Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew, 461.

[1152] Narrative appended to Capilupi, Stratagema di Carlo IX. (1574). The cardinal's adulatory letter to Charles IX., on receipt of the king's missive, is strongly corroborative of the view to which everything forces us, that the ma.s.sacre was not long definitely premeditated. "Sire," he said, "estant arrive le sieur de Beauville avecques lettres de Vostre Majeste, qui confirmoyent les nouvelles des tres-crestiennes et heroicques deliberation et exequutions faictes non-seulement a Paris, mais aussi partout voz princ.i.p.ales villes, je m'a.s.seure qu'il vous plaira bien me tant honorer ... que de vous a.s.seurer que entre tous voz tres humbles subjects, je ne suis le dernier a an (en) louer Dieu et a me resjouir. Et veritablement, Sire, c'est tout le myeus (mieux) que j'eusse ose jamais desirer ni esperer. Je me tienz a.s.seure que des ce commencement les actions de Vostre Majeste accroistront chacung jour a la gloire de Dieu et a l'immortalite de vostre nom," etc. Card. Lorraine to the king, Rome, Sept. 10, 1572, MSS. Nat. Library, _apud_ Lestoile, ed. Michaud et Poujoulat, 25, 26, note.

[1153] Conjouissance de Mr. le Cardinal de Lorraine, au nom du Roy, faicte au Pape, le vije jour de sept. 1572, sur la mort de l'Admiral et ses complices. Correspondance diplom. de La Mothe Fenelon, vii. 341, 342. Also Jean de Serres (1575) iv., fol. 56, and in a French translation appended to Capilupi, Lo stratagema di Carlo IX. (1574), 111-113, and reproduced in Mem. de l'estat, Arch, cur., vii. 360.

[1154] "Literis romanis aureis majusculis descriptum, festa fronte velatum, ac lemniscatum, et supra limen aedis Sancti Ludovici Romae affixum."

[1155] The genuineness of this medal, in spite of the clumsy attempts made to discredit it, is established beyond all possible doubt. The Jesuit Bonanni, in his "Numismata Pontific.u.m" (2 vols. fol., Rome, 1689), has figured and described it as No. 27 of the medals of Gregory XIII. A translation of his account and a facsimile of the medal may be seen in the Bulletin de la Societe de l'hist. du prot. francais, i. (1852) 240-242. It is also admirably represented in the Tresor de Numismatique (Delaroche, etc., Paris, 1839), Medailles des papes, plate 15, No. 8. The late Alexander Thomson, Esq., of Banchory, Aberdeenshire, purchased at the papal mint in the city of Rome, in 1828 or 1829, among other medals for which he applied, not less than seven copies of this medal, six of them struck off expressly for him from the original die still in possession of the mint. See his own account, given in his Memoir by Professor Smeaton, and reproduced in the _New York Evangelist_ of October 17, 1872.

[1156] Recueil des lettres missives de Henri IV., i. 36.

[1157] See Pistolesi, Il Museo Vaticano descritto ed ill.u.s.trato (Roma, 1838) vol. viii. 97. There are three paintings, of which the first represents "the King of France sitting in parliament, and approving and ordering that the death of Gaspard Coligny, Grand Admiral of France, and declared to be head of the Huguenots, be registered." "The mischance of Coligny is delineated in the following picture in a s.p.a.cious square, among many heads of streets (capistrade) and facades of temples. The admiral, clothed in the French costume of that period, is carried in the arms of several military men; although lifeless (estinto, read rather, _faint_), he still preserves in his countenance threatening and terrible looks." The third is the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew's day itself, in which the beholder scarcely knows which to admire most, the artistic skill of the painter, or his success in bringing into a narrow compa.s.s so many of the most revolting incidents of the tragedy--the murder of men in the streets, the butchery of helpless and unoffending women, the throwing of Coligny's remains from the window of his room, etc. Dr. Henry White gives a sketch of this painting, taken from De Potter's Lettres de Pie V. Of the fresco representing the wounding of Coligny there is an engraving in Pistolesi, _ubi supra_, vol. viii. plate 84. By an odd mistake, both the text and the index to the plates, make this belong to the reconciliation of Frederick Barbarossa and the pontificate of Alexander III.--on what grounds it is hard to imagine. The character of the wound of the person borne in the arms of his companions, indicated by _the loss of two fingers of his right hand_, from which the blood is seen to be dropping, leaves no doubt that he is the Admiral Coligny. Unfortunately, Pistolesi's splendid work is disfigured by other blunders, or typographical errors, equally gross. In describing other paintings of the same Sala Regia (pp. 95, 96), he a.s.signs, or is made by the types to a.s.sign, various events in the quarrel of Barbarossa and Adrian IV. and Alexander III., to the years 1554, 1555, 1577, etc.

[1158] Ferralz to Charles IX., Rome, Sept. 11, 1572, _apud_ North British Review, Oct., 1869, p. 31.

[1159] Prospero Count Arco to the emperor, Rome, Nov. 15, 1572, _ubi supra_.

[1160] "Il pontefice, e universalmente tutta d'Italia grandemente se ne rallegr, facendo pardonare cotale effetto al Re e alla Reina, che molte cose avevano sostenuto di fare in benefizio di quella parte." G. B.

Adriani, Istoria de' suoi tempi, ii. 378.

[1161] Cuniga to Philip, Sept. 8th, Simancas MSS. Gachard, Bull. de l'acad. de Bruxelles, xvi. 249, 250.

[1162] "A. N. S. mi faccia gratia di basciar i piedi in nome mio, col quale mi rallegro con le viscere del cuore che sia piaciuto alla Dva. Msa.

d'incaminar, nel principio del suo pontificato, si felicemente e honoratamente le cose di questo regno." Salviati to Card. sec. of State, Aug. 24, Mackintosh, iii., App. G., p. 355.

[1163] "Non si risolvo a credere che si fusse fatto tanto a un pezzo."

Ibid., _ubi supra_.

[1164] "De quoy nous aseurons que en leoures Dieu aveques nous, tant pour nostre particulier coment pour le bien qui en reviendre a toute la cretiente et au service et honeur et gloyre de Dieu," etc.

[1165] "Et randons par cet ayfect le temognage de nos bonnes et droyctes yntantions, cor ne les avons jeames eu aultre que tendant a son honneur,"

etc. Letter of Catharine de' Medici to Philip II., Aug. 28, 1572, in Musee des archives nationales; doc.u.ments originaux de l'hist. de France, exposes dans l'Hotel Soubise (published by the Gen. Directory of the Archives, 1872), p. 392.

[1166] Philip had evidently no intimation that a ma.s.sacre was in contemplation. When Mr. Motley says (United Netherlands, i. 15): "It is as certain that Philip knew beforehand, and testified his approbation of the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew, as that he was the murderer of Orange," the statement must be interpreted in accordance with that other statement in the same author's earlier work (Rise of the Dutch Republic, ii. 388): "The crime was not committed with the connivance of the Spanish government. On the contrary, the two courts were at the moment bitterly opposed to each other," etc. As the eminent historian can scarcely be supposed to contradict himself on so important a point, we must understand him to mean that Philip had, indeed, long since instigated Catharine and her son to rid themselves of the Huguenot leaders by some form of treachery or other, but was quite ignorant of, and unprepared for, the particular means adopted by them for compa.s.sing the end.

[1167] St. Goard to Charles, Sept. 12th, Bodel Nijenhuis, Supplement to Groen van Prinsterer, Archives de la maison d'Orange Na.s.sau, 124-126. St.

Goard was not deceived by Philip's pious congratulations. "Ce faict," he writes to Catharine, a week later (ibid., pp. 126, 127), "a este aussi bien pris de se (ce) Roy comme on le peult penser, _pour luy estre tant profitable pour ses affaires_; toutesfois, comme il est le prince du monde qui scait et faict le plus profession de dissimuler toutes choses, si n'a il sceu celler en ceste-cy le plaisir qu'il en a receu, et encores que je infere touts ses mouvements procedder du bien que en recepvoient ses affaires, lesquelles il voioit pour desplorer sans ce seul remedde, si a il faict croire a tout le monde par ces aparens (apparences) que c'estoit pour le respect du bon succez que voz Majestez avoient eu en si haultes entreprises, tantost louant le filz d'avoir une telle mere, l'aiant si bien garde," etc.

[1168] See the Mondoucet correspondence, Compte rendu de la commission royale d'histoire, second series, iv. (Brux., 1852), 340-349, pub. by M.

Emile Gachet, especially the letter of Charles IX. of Aug. 12th, 1572.

[1169] "El dicho embaxador me propuso ... con grande instancia, que sin dilacion se devia executar la justicia en Janlis (Genlis) y en los otros sus complices que hay estan presos, y en los que se toma.s.sen en Mons."

Philip to Alva, Sept. 18th. Simancas MSS. Gachard, Particularites inedits sur la St. Barthelemy, Bulletin de l'academie royale de Belgique, xvi.

(1849), 256.

[1170] Charles IX. to Mondoucet, Aug. 31st, Mondoucet correspondence, p.