Читать книгу The History of Freedom, and Other Essays - Acton John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Baron - Страница 7

The way in which Coligny and his adherents met their death has been handed down by a crowd of trustworthy witnesses, and few things in history are known in more exact detail. But the origin and motives of the tragedy, and the manner of its reception by the opinion of Christian Europe, are still subject to controversy. Some of the evidence has been difficult of access, part is lost, and much has been deliberately destroyed. No letters written from Paris at the time have been found in the Austrian archives. In the correspondence of thirteen agents of the House of Este at the Court of Rome, every paper relating to the event has disappeared. All the documents of 1572, both from Rome and Paris, are wanting in the archives of Venice. In the Registers of many French towns the leaves which contained the records of August and September in that year have been torn out. The first reports sent to England by Walsingham and by the French Government have not been recovered. Three accounts printed at Rome, when the facts were new, speedily became so rare that they have been forgotten. The Bull of Gregory XIII. was not admitted into the official collections; and the reply to Muretus has escaped notice until now. The letters of Charles IX. to Rome, with the important exception of that which he wrote on the 24th of August, have been dispersed and lost The letters of Gregory XIII. to France have never been seen by persons willing to make them public. In the absence of these documents the most authentic information is that which is supplied by the French Ambassador and by the Nuncio. The despatches of Ferralz, describing the attitude of the Roman court, are extant, but have not been used. Those of Salviati have long been known. Chateaubriand took a copy when the papal archives were at Paris, and projected a work on the events with which they are concerned. Some extracts were published, with his consent, by the continuator of Mackintosh; and a larger selection, from the originals in the Vatican, appeared in Theiner's Annals of Gregory XIII. The letters written under Pius V. are beyond the limits of that work; and Theiner, moreover, has omitted whatever seemed irrelevant to his purpose. The criterion of relevancy is uncertain; and we shall avail ourselves largely of the unpublished portions of Salviati's correspondence, which were transcribed by Chateaubriand. These manuscripts, with others of equal importance not previously consulted, determine several doubtful questions of policy and design.

The Protestants never occupied a more triumphant position, and their prospects were never brighter, than in the summer of 1572. For many years the progress of their religion had been incessant. The most valuable of the conquests it has retained were already made; and the period of its reverses had not begun. The great division which aided Catholicism afterwards to recover so much lost ground was not openly confessed; and the effectual unity of the Reformed Churches was not yet dissolved. In controversial theology the defence was weaker than the attack. The works to which the Reformation owed its popularity and system were in the hands of thousands, while the best authors of the Catholic restoration had not begun to write. The press continued to serve the new opinions better than the old; and in literature Protestantism was supreme. Persecuted in the South, and established by violence in the North, it had overcome the resistance of princes in Central Europe, and had won toleration without ceasing to be intolerant. In France and Poland, in the dominions of the Emperor and under the German prelates, the attempt to arrest its advance by physical force had been abandoned. In Germany it covered twice the area that remained to it in the next generation, and, except in Bavaria, Catholicism was fast dying out. The Polish Government had not strength to persecute, and Poland became the refuge of the sects. When the bishops found that they could not prevent toleration, they resolved that they would not restrict it. Trusting to the maxim, "Bellum Haereticorum pax est Ecclesiae," they insisted that liberty should extend to those whom the Reformers would have exterminated.7 The Polish Protestants, in spite of their dissensions, formed themselves into one great party. When the death of the last of the Jagellons, on the 7th of July 1572, made the monarchy elective, they were strong enough to enforce their conditions on the candidates; and it was thought that they would be able to decide the election, and obtain a king of their own choosing. Alva's reign of Terror had failed to pacify the Low Countries, and he was about to resign the hopeless task to an incapable successor. The taking of the Brill in April was the first of those maritime victories which led to the independence of the Dutch. Mons fell in May; and in July the important province of Holland declared for the Prince of Orange. The Catholics believed that all was lost if Alva remained in command.8

The decisive struggle was in France. During the minority of Charles IX. persecution had given way to civil war, and the Regent, his mother, had vainly striven, by submitting to neither party, to uphold the authority of the Crown. She checked the victorious Catholics, by granting to the Huguenots terms which constituted them, in spite of continual disaster in the field, a vast and organised power in the State. To escape their influence it would have been necessary to invoke the help of Philip II., and to accept protection which would have made France subordinate to Spain. Philip laboured to establish such an alliance; and it was to promote this scheme that he sent his queen, Elizabeth of Valois, to meet her mother at Bayonne. In 1568 Elizabeth died; and a rumour came to Catherine touching the manner of her death which made it hard to listen to friendly overtures from her husband. Antonio Perez, at that time an unscrupulous instrument of his master's will, afterwards accused him of having poisoned his wife. "On parle fort sinistrement de sa mort, pour avoir été advancée," says Brantôme. After the massacre of the Protestants, the ambassador at Venice, a man distinguished as a jurist and a statesman, reproached Catherine with having thrown France into the hands of him in whom the world recognised her daughter's murderer. Catherine did not deny the truth of the report. She replied that she was "bound to think of her sons in preference to her daughters, that the foul-play was not fully proved, and that if it were it could not be avenged so long as France was weakened by religious discord."9 She wrote as she could not have written if she had been convinced that the suspicion was unjust.

When Charles IX. began to be his own master he seemed resolved to follow his father and grandfather in their hostility to the Spanish Power. He wrote to a trusted servant that all his thoughts were bent on thwarting Philip.10 While the Christian navies were fighting at Lepanto, the King of France was treating with the Turks. His menacing attitude in the following year kept Don Juan in Sicilian waters, and made his victory barren for Christendom. Encouraged by French protection, Venice withdrew from the League. Even in Corsica there was a movement which men interpreted as a prelude to the storm that France was raising against the empire of Spain. Rome trembled in expectation of a Huguenot invasion of Italy; for Charles was active in conciliating the Protestants both abroad and at home. He married a daughter of the tolerant Emperor Maximilian II.; and he carried on negotiations for the marriage of his brother with Queen Elizabeth, not with any hope of success, but in order to impress public opinion.11 He made treaties of alliance, in quick succession, with England, with the German Protestants, and with the Prince of Orange. He determined that his brother Anjou, the champion of the Catholics, of whom it was said that he had vowed to root out the Protestants to a man,12 should be banished to the throne of Poland. Disregarding the threats and entreaties of the Pope, he gave his sister in marriage to Navarre. By the peace of St. Germains the Huguenots had secured, within certain limits, freedom from persecution and the liberty of persecuting; so that Pius V. declared that France had been made the slave of heretics. Coligny was now the most powerful man in the kingdom. His scheme for closing the civil wars by an expedition for the conquest of the Netherlands began to be put in motion. French auxiliaries followed Lewis of Nassau into Mons; an army of Huguenots had already gone to his assistance; another was being collected near the frontier, and Coligny was preparing to take the command in a war which might become a Protestant crusade, and which left the Catholics no hope of victory. Meanwhile many hundreds of his officers followed him to Paris, to attend the wedding which was to reconcile the factions, and cement the peace of religion.

In the midst of those lofty designs and hopes, Coligny was struck down. On the morning of the 22nd of August he was shot at and badly wounded. Two days later he was killed; and a general attack was made on the Huguenots of Paris. It lasted some weeks, and was imitated in about twenty places. The chief provincial towns of France were among them.

Judged by its immediate result, the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a measure weakly planned and irresolutely executed, which deprived Protestantism of its political leaders, and left it for a time to the control of zealots. There is no evidence to make it probable that more than seven thousand victims perished. Judged by later events, it was the beginning of a vast change in the conflict of the churches. At first it was believed that a hundred thousand Huguenots had fallen. It was said that the survivors were abjuring by thousands,13 that the children of the slain were made Catholics, that those whom the priest had admitted to absolution and communion were nevertheless put to death.14 Men who were far beyond the reach of the French Government lost their faith in a religion which Providence had visited with so tremendous a judgment;15 and foreign princes took heart to employ severities which could excite no horror after the scenes in France.

Contemporaries were persuaded that the Huguenots had been flattered and their policy adopted only for their destruction, and that the murder of Coligny and his followers was a long premeditated crime. Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in detecting proofs of that which they variously esteemed a sign of supernatural inspiration or of diabolical depravity. In the last forty years a different opinion has prevailed. It has been deemed more probable, more consistent with testimony and with the position of affairs at the time, that Coligny succeeded in acquiring extraordinary influence over the mind of Charles, that his advice really predominated, and that the sanguinary resolution was suddenly embraced by his adversaries as the last means of regaining power. This opinion is made plausible by many facts. It is supported by several writers who were then living, and by the document known as the Confession of Anjou. The best authorities of the present day are nearly unanimous in rejecting premeditation.

The evidence on the opposite side is stronger than they suppose. The doom which awaited the Huguenots had been long expected and often foretold. People at a distance, Monluc in Languedoc, and the Protestant Mylius in Italy, drew the same inference from the news that came from the court. Strangers meeting on the road discussed the infatuation of the Admiral.16 Letters brought from Rome to the Emperor the significant intimation that the birds were all caged, and now was the time to lay hands on them.17 Duplessis-Mornay, the future chief of the Huguenots, was so much oppressed with a sense of coming evil, that he hardly ventured into the streets on the wedding-day. He warned the Admiral of the general belief among their friends that the marriage concealed a plot for their ruin, and that the festivities would end in some horrible surprise.18 Coligny was proof against suspicion. Several of his followers left Paris, but he remained unmoved. At one moment the excessive readiness to grant all his requests shook the confidence of his son-in-law Téligny; but the doubt vanished so completely that Téligny himself prevented the flight of his partisans after the attempt on the Admiral's life. On the morning of the fatal day, Montgomery sent word to Walsingham that Coligny was safe under protection of the King's Guards, and that no further stir was to be apprehended.19

For many years foreign advisers had urged Catherine to make away with these men. At first it was computed that half a dozen victims would be enough.20 That was the original estimate of Alva, at Bayonne.21 When the Duke of Ferrara was in France, in 1564, he proposed a larger measure, and he repeated this advice by the mouth of every agent whom he sent to France.22 After the event, both Alva and Alfonso reminded Catherine that she had done no more than follow their advice.23 Alva's letter explicitly confirms the popular notion which connects the massacre with the conference of Bayonne; and it can no longer now be doubted that La Roche-sur-Yon, on his deathbed, informed Coligny that murderous resolutions had been taken on that occasion.24 But the Nuncio, Santa Croce, who was present, wrote to Cardinal Borromeo that the Queen had indeed promised to punish the infraction of the Edict of Pacification, but that this was a very different thing from undertaking to extirpate heresy. Catherine affirmed that in this way the law could reach all the Huguenot ministers; and Alva professed to believe her.25 Whatever studied ambiguity of language she may have used, the action of 1572 was uninfluenced by deliberations which were seven years old.

During the spring and summer the Tuscan agents diligently prepared their master for what was to come. Petrucci wrote on the 19th of March that, for a reason which he could not trust to paper, the marriage would certainly take place, though not until the Huguenots had delivered up their strongholds. Four weeks later Alamanni announced that the Queen's pious design for restoring unity of faith would, by the grace of God, be speedily accomplished. On the 9th of August Petrucci was able to report that the plan arranged at Bayonne was near execution.26 Yet he was not fully initiated. The Queen afterwards assured him that she had confided the secret to no foreign resident except the Nuncio,27 and Petrucci resentfully complains that she had also consulted the Ambassador of Savoy. Venice, like Florence and Savoy, was not taken by surprise. In February the ambassador Contarini explained to the Senate the specious tranquillity in France, by saying that the Government reckoned on the death of the Admiral or the Queen of Navarre to work a momentous change.28 Cavalli, his successor, judged that a business so grossly mismanaged showed no signs of deliberation.29 There was another Venetian at Paris who was better informed. The Republic was seeking to withdraw from the league against the Turks; and her most illustrious statesman, Giovanni Michiel, was sent to solicit the help of France in negotiating peace.30 The account which he gave of his mission has been pronounced by a consummate judge of Venetian State-Papers the most valuable report of the sixteenth century.31 He was admitted almost daily to secret conference with Anjou, Nevers, and the group of Italians on whom the chief odium rests; and there was no counsellor to whom Catherine more willingly gave ear.32 Michiel affirms that the intention had been long entertained, and that the Nuncio had been directed to reveal it privately to Pius V.33

Salviati was related to Catherine, and had gained her good opinion as Nuncio in the year 1570. The Pope had sent him back because nobody seemed more capable of diverting her and her son from the policy which caused so much uneasiness at Rome.34 He died many years later, with the reputation of having been one of the most eminent Cardinals at a time when the Sacred College was unusually rich in talent. Personally, he had always favoured stern measures of repression. When the Countess of Entremont was married to Coligny, Salviati declared that she had made herself liable to severe penalties by entertaining proposals of marriage with so notorious a heretic, and demanded that the Duke of Savoy should, by all the means in his power, cause that wicked bride to be put out of the way.35 When the peace of St. Germains was concluded, he assured Charles and Catherine that their lives were in danger, as the Huguenots were seeking to pull down the throne as well as the altar. He believed that all intercourse with them was sinful, and that the sole remedy was utter extermination by the sword. "I am convinced," he wrote, "that it will come to this." "If they do the tenth part of what I have advised, it will be well for them."36 After an audience of two hours, at which he had presented a letter from Pius V., prophesying the wrath of Heaven, Salviati perceived that his exhortations made some impression. The King and Queen whispered to him that they hoped to make the peace yield such fruit that the end would more than countervail the badness of the beginning; and the King added, in strict confidence, that his plan was one which, once told, could never be executed.37 This might have been said to delude the Nuncio; but he was inclined on the whole to believe that it was sincerely meant. The impression was confirmed by the Archbishop of Sens, Cardinal Pellevé, who informed him that the Huguenot leaders were caressed at Court in order to detach them from their party, and that after the loss of their leaders it would not take more than three days to deal with the rest.38 Salviati on his return to France was made aware that his long-deferred hopes were about to be fulfilled. He shadowed it forth obscurely in his despatches. He reported that the Queen allowed the Huguenots to pass into Flanders, believing that the admiral would become more and more presumptuous until he gave her an opportunity of retribution; for she excelled in that kind of intrigue. Some days later he knew more, and wrote that he hoped soon to have good news for his Holiness.39 At the last moment his heart misgave him. On the morning of the 21st of August the Duke of Montpensier and the Cardinal of Bourbon spoke with so much unconcern, in his presence, of what was then so near, that he thought it hardly possible the secret could be kept.40

The foremost of the French prelates was the Cardinal of Lorraine. He had held a prominent position at the council of Trent; and for many years he had wielded the influence of the House of Guise over the Catholics of France. In May 1572 he went to Rome; and he was still there when the news came from Paris in September. He at once made it known that the resolution had been taken before he left France, and that it was due to himself and his nephew, the Duke of Guise.41 As the spokesman of the Gallican Church in the following year he delivered a harangue to Charles IX., in which he declared that Charles had eclipsed the glory of preceding kings by slaying the false prophets, and especially by the holy deceit and pious dissimulation with which he had laid his plans.42

There was one man who did not get his knowledge from rumour, and who could not be deceived by lies. The King's confessor, Sorbin, afterwards Bishop of Nevers, published in 1574 a narrative of the life and death of Charles IX. He bears unequivocal testimony that that clement and magnanimous act, for so he terms it, was resolved upon beforehand, and he praises the secrecy as well as the justice of his hero.43

Early in the year a mission of extraordinary solemnity had appeared in France. Pius V., who was seriously alarmed at the conduct of Charles, had sent the Cardinal of Alessandria as Legate to the Kings of Spain and Portugal, and directed him, in returning, to visit the Court at Blois. The Legate was nephew to the Pope, and the man whom he most entirely trusted.44 His character stood so high that the reproach of nepotism was never raised by his promotion. Several prelates destined to future eminence attended him. His chief adviser was Hippolyto Aldobrandini, who, twenty years later, ascended the papal chair as Clement VIII. The companion whose presence conferred the greatest lustre on the mission was the general of the Jesuits, Francis Borgia, the holiest of the successors of Ignatius, and the most venerated of men then living. Austerities had brought him to the last stage of weakness; and he was sinking under the malady of which he was soon to die. But it was believed that the words of such a man, pleading for the Church, would sway the mind of the King. The ostensible purpose of the Legate's journey was to break off the match with Navarre, and to bring France into the Holy League. He gained neither object. When he was summoned back to Rome it was understood in France that he had reaped nothing but refusals, and that he went away disappointed.45 The jeers of the Protestants pursued him.46 But it was sufficiently certain beforehand that France could not plunge into a Turkish war.47 The real business of the Legate, besides proposing a Catholic husband for the Princess, was to ascertain the object of the expedition which was fitting out in the Western ports. On both points he had something favourable to report. In his last despatch, dated Lyons, the 6th of March, he wrote that he had failed to prevent the engagement with Navarre, but that he had something for the Pope's private ear, which made his journey not altogether unprofitable.48 The secret was soon divulged in Italy. The King had met the earnest remonstrances of the Legate by assuring him that the marriage afforded the only prospect of wreaking vengeance on the Huguenots: the event would show; he could say no more, but desired his promise to be carried to the Pope. It was added that he had presented a ring to the Legate, as a pledge of sincerity, which the Legate refused. The first to publish this story was Capilupi, writing only seven months later. It was repeated by Folieta,49 and is given with all details by the historians of Pius V. – Catena and Gabuzzi. Catena was secretary to the Cardinal of Alessandria as early as July 1572, and submitted his work to him before publication.50 Gabuzzi wrote at the instance of the same Cardinal, who supplied him with materials; and his book was examined and approved by Borghese, afterwards Paul V. Both the Cardinal of Alessandria and Paul V., therefore, were instrumental in causing it to be proclaimed that the Legate was acquainted in February 1572 with the intention which the King carried out in August.

The testimony of Aldobrandini was given still more distinctly, and with greater definiteness and authority. When he was required, as Pope, to pronounce upon the dissolution of the ill-omened marriage, he related to Borghese and other Cardinals what had passed in that interview between the Legate and the King, adding that, when the report of the massacre reached Rome, the Cardinal exclaimed: "God be praised! the King of France has kept his word." Clement referred D'Ossat to a narrative of the journey which he had written himself, and in which those things would be found.51 The clue thus given has been unaccountably neglected, although the Report was known to exist. One copy is mentioned by Giorgi; and Mazzuchelli knew of another. Neither of them had read it; for they both ascribe it to Michele Bonelli, the Cardinal of Alessandria. The first page would have satisfied them that it was not his work. Clement VIII. describes the result of the mission to Blois in these words: "Quae rationes eo impulerunt regem ut semel apprehensa manu Cardinalis in hanc vocem proruperit: Significate Pontifici illumque certum reddite me totum hoc quod circa id matrimonium feci et facturus sum, nulla alia de causa facere, quam ulciscendi inimicos Dei et hujus regni, et puniendi tam infidos rebelles, ut eventus ipse docebit, nec aliud vobis amplius significare possum. Quo non obstante semper Cardinalis eas subtexuit difficultates quas potuit, objiciens regi possetne contrahi matrimonium a fidele cum infidele, sitve dispensatio necessaria; quod si est nunquam Pontificem inductum iri ut illam concedat. Re ipsa ita in suspenso relicta discedendum esse putavit, cum jam rescivisset qua de causa naves parabantur, qui apparatus contra Rocellam tendebant."

The opinion that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a sudden and unpremeditated act cannot be maintained; but it does not follow that the only alternative is to believe that it was the aim of every measure of the Government for two years before. Catherine had long contemplated it as her last expedient in extremity; but she had decided that she could not resort to it while her son was virtually a minor.52 She suggested the idea to him in 1570. In that year he gave orders that the Huguenots should be slaughtered at Bourges. The letter is preserved in which La Chastre spurned the command: "If the people of Bourges learn that your Majesty takes pleasure in such tragedies, they will repeat them often. If these men must die, let them first be tried; but do not reward my services and sully my reputation by such a stain."53

In the autumn of 1571 Coligny came to Blois. Walsingham suspected, and was afterwards convinced that the intention to kill him already existed. The Pope was much displeased by his presence at Court; but he received assurances from the ambassador which satisfied him. It was said at the time that he at first believed that Coligny was to be murdered, but that he soon found that there was no such praiseworthy design.54

In December the King knew that, when the moment came, the burghers of Paris would not fail him. Marcel, the Prévôt des Marchands, told him that the wealth was driven out of the country by the Huguenots: "The Catholics will bear it no longer… Let your Majesty look to it. Your crown is at stake, Paris alone can save it."55 By the month of February 1572 the plan had assumed a practical shape. The political idea before the mind of Charles was the same by which Richelieu afterwards made France the first Power in the world; to repress the Protestants at home, and to encourage them abroad. No means of effectual repression was left but murder. But the idea of raising up enemies to Spain by means of Protestantism was thoroughly understood. The Huguenots were allowed to make an expedition to aid William of Orange. Had they gained some substantial success, the Government would have followed it up, and the scheme of Coligny would have become for the moment the policy of France. But the Huguenot commander Genlis was defeated and taken. Coligny had had his chance. He had played and lost. It was useless now to propose his great venture against the King of Spain.56

Philip II. perfectly understood that this event was decisive. When the news came from Hainaut, he sent to the Nuncio Castagna to say that the King of France would gain more than himself by the loss of so many brave Protestants, and that the time was come for him, with the aid of the people of Paris, to get rid of Coligny and the rest of his enemies.57 It appears from the letters of Salviati that he also regarded the resolution as having been finally taken after the defeat of Genlis.

The Court had determined to enforce unity of faith in France. An edict of toleration was issued for the purpose of lulling the Huguenots; but it was well known that it was only a pretence.58 Strict injunctions were sent into the provinces that it should not be obeyed;59 and Catherine said openly to the English envoy, "My son will have exercise but of one Religion in his Realm." On the 26th the King explained his plan to Mondoucet, his agent at Brussels: "Since it has pleased God to bring matters to the point they have now reached, I mean to use the opportunity to secure a perpetual repose in my kingdom, and to do something for the good of all Christendom. It is probable that the conflagration will spread to every town in France, and that they will follow the example of Paris, and lay hands on all the Protestants… I have written to the governors to assemble forces in order to cut to pieces those who may resist."60 The great object was to accomplish the extirpation of Protestantism in such a way as might leave intact the friendship with Protestant States. Every step was governed by this consideration; and the difficulty of the task caused the inconsistencies and the vacillation that ensued. By assassinating Coligny alone it was expected that such an agitation would be provoked among his partisans as would make it appear that they were killed by the Catholics in self-defence. Reports were circulated at once with that object. A letter written on the 23rd states that, after the Admiral was wounded on the day before, the Huguenots assembled at the gate of the Louvre, to avenge him on the Guises as they came out.61 And the first explanation sent forth by the Government on the 24th was to the effect that the old feud between the Houses of Guise and of Châtillon had broken out with a fury which it was impossible to quell. This fable lasted only for a single day. On the 25th Charles writes that he has begun to discover traces of a Huguenot conspiracy;62 and on the following day this was publicly substituted for the original story. Neither the vendetta of the Guises nor the conspiracy at Paris could be made to explain the massacre in the provinces. It required to be so managed that the King could disown it; Salviati describes the plan of operations. It was intended that the Huguenots should be slaughtered successively by a series of spontaneous outbreaks in different parts of the country. While Rochelle held out, it was dangerous to proceed with a more sweeping method.63 Accordingly, no written instructions from the King are in existence; and the governors were expressly informed that they were to expect none.64 Messengers went into the provinces with letters requiring that the verbal orders which they brought should be obeyed.65 Many governors refused to act upon directions so vague and so hard to verify. Burgundy was preserved in this way. Two gentlemen arrived with letters of recommendation from the King, and declared his commands. They were asked to put them on paper; but they refused to give in writing what they had received by word of mouth. Mandelot, the Governor of Lyons, the most ignoble of the instruments in this foul deed, complained that the intimation of the royal wishes sent to him was obscure and insufficient.66 He did not do his work thoroughly, and incurred the displeasure of the King. The orders were complicated as well as obscure. The public authorities were required to collect the Huguenots in some prison or other safe place, where they could be got at by hired bands of volunteer assassins. To screen the King it was desirable that his officers should not superintend the work themselves. Mandelot, having locked the gates of Lyons, and shut up the Huguenots together, took himself out of the way while they were being butchered. Carouge, at Rouen, received a commission to visit the other towns in his province. The magistrates implored him to remain, as nobody, in his absence, could restrain the people. When the King had twice repeated his commands, Carouge obeyed; and five hundred Huguenots perished.67

It was thought unsafe even for the King's brother to give distinct orders under his own hand. He wrote to his lieutenant in Anjou that he had commissioned Puygaillard to communicate with him on a matter which concerned the King's service and his own, and desired that his orders should be received as if they came directly from himself. They were, that every Huguenot in Angers, Saumur, and the adjoining country should be put to death without delay and without exception.68 The Duke of Montpensier himself sent the same order to Brittany; but it was indignantly rejected by the municipality of Nantes.

When reports came in of the manner in which the event had been received in foreign countries, the Government began to waver, and the sanguinary orders were recalled. Schomberg wrote from Germany that the Protestant allies were lost unless they could be satisfied that the King had not decreed the extermination of their brethren.69 He was instructed to explain the tumult in the provinces by the animosity bequeathed by the wars of religion.70 The Bishop of Valence was intriguing in Poland on behalf of Anjou. He wrote that his success had been made very doubtful, and that, if further cruelties were perpetrated, ten millions of gold pieces would not bribe the venal Poles. He advised that a counterfeit edict, at least, should be published.71 Charles perceived that he would be compelled to abandon his enterprise, and set about appeasing the resentment of the Protestant Powers. He promised that an inquiry should be instituted, and the proofs of the conspiracy communicated to foreign Governments. To give a judicial aspect to the proceedings, two prominent Huguenots were ceremoniously hanged. When the new ambassador from Spain praised the long concealment of the plan, Charles became indignant.72 It was repeated everywhere that the thing had been arranged with Rome and Spain; and he was especially studious that there should be no symptoms of a private understanding with either power.73 He was able to flatter himself that he had at least partially succeeded. If he had not exterminated his Protestant subjects, he had preserved his Protestant allies. William the Silent continued to solicit his aid; Elizabeth consented to stand godmother to the daughter who was born to him in October; he was allowed to raise mercenaries in Switzerland; and the Polish Protestants agreed to the election of his brother. The promised evidence of the Huguenot conspiracy was forgotten; and the King suppressed the materials which were to have served for an official history of the event.74

Zeal for religion was not the motive which inspired the chief authors of this extraordinary crime. They were trained to look on the safety of the monarchy as the sovereign law, and on the throne as an idol that justified sins committed in its worship. At all times there have been men, resolute and relentless in the pursuit of their aims, whose ardour was too strong to be restricted by moral barriers or the instinct of humanity. In the sixteenth century, beside the fanaticism of freedom, there was an abject idolatry of power; and laws both human and divine were made to yield to the intoxication of authority and the reign of will. It was laid down that kings have the right of disposing of the lives of their subjects, and may dispense with the forms of justice. The Church herself, whose supreme pontiff was now an absolute monarch, was infected with this superstition. Catholic writers found an opportune argument for their religion in the assertion that it makes the prince master of the consciences as well as the bodies of the people, and enjoins submission even to the vilest tyranny.75 Men whose lives were precious to the Catholic cause could be murdered by royal command, without protest from Rome. When the Duke of Guise, with the Cardinal his brother, was slain by Henry III., he was the most powerful and devoted upholder of Catholicism in France. Sixtus V. thundered against the sacrilegious tyrant who was stained with the blood of a prince of the Church; but he let it be known very distinctly that the death of the Duke caused him little concern.76

Catherine was the daughter of that Medici to whom Machiavelli had dedicated his Prince. So little did religion actuate her conduct that she challenged Elizabeth to do to the Catholics of England what she herself had done to the Protestants of France, promising that if they were destroyed there would be no loss of her good will.77 The levity of her religious feelings appears from her reply when asked by Gomicourt what message he should take to the Duke of Alva: "I must give you the answer of Christ to the disciples of St. John, 'Ite et nuntiate quae vidistis et audivistis; caeci vident, claudi ambulant, leprosi mundantur.'" And she added, "Beatus qui non fuerit in me scandalizatus."78

If mere fanaticism had been their motive, the men who were most active in the massacre would not have spared so many lives. While Guise was galloping after Ferrières and Montgomery, who had taken horse betimes, and made for the coast, his house at Paris was crowded with families belonging to the proscribed faith, and strangers to him. A young girl who was amongst them has described his return, when he sent for the children, spoke to them kindly, and gave orders that they should be well treated as long as his roof sheltered them.79 Protestants even spoke of him as a humane and chivalrous enemy.80 Nevers was considered to have disgraced himself by the number of those whom he enabled to escape.81 The Nuncio was shocked at their ill-timed generosity. He reported to Rome that the only one who had acted in the spirit of a Christian, and had refrained from mercy, was the King; while the other princes, who pretended to be good Catholics, and to deserve the favour of the Pope, had striven, one and all, to save as many Huguenots as they could.82

The worst criminals were not the men who did the deed. The crime of mobs and courtiers, infuriated by the lust of vengeance and of power, is not so strange a portent as the exultation of peaceful men, influenced by no present injury or momentary rage, but by the permanent and incurable perversion of moral sense wrought by a distorted piety.

Philip II., who had long suspected the court of France, was at once relieved from the dread which had oppressed him, and betrayed an excess of joy foreign to his phlegmatic nature.83 He immediately sent six thousand crowns to the murderer of Coligny.84 He persuaded himself that the breach between France and her allies was irreparable, that Charles would now be driven to seek his friendship, and that the Netherlands were out of danger.85 He listened readily to the French ambassador, who assured him that his court had never swerved from the line of Catholic policy, but had intended all along to effect this great change.86 Ayamonte carried his congratulations to Paris, and pretended that his master had been in the secret. It suited Philip that this should be believed by Protestant princes, in order to estrange them still more from France; but he wrote on the margin of Ayamonte's instructions, that it was uncertain how long previously the purpose had subsisted.87 Juan and Diego de Zuñiga, his ambassadors at Rome and at Paris, were convinced that the long display of enmity to Spain was genuine, that the death of Coligny had been decided at the last moment, and that the rest was not the effect of design.88 This opinion found friends at first in Spain. The General of the Franciscans undertook to explode it. He assured Philip that he had seen the King and the Queen-mother two years before, and had found them already so intent on the massacre that he wondered how anybody could have the courage to detract from their merit by denying it.89 This view generally prevailed in Spain. Mendoça knows not which to admire more, the loyal and Catholic inhabitants of Paris, or Charles, who justified his title of the most Christian King by helping with his own hands to slaughter his subjects.90 Mariana witnessed the carnage, and imagined that it must gladden every Catholic heart. Other Spaniards were gratified to think that it had been contrived with Alva at Bayonne.

Alva himself did not judge the event by the same light as Philip. He also had distrusted the French Government; but he had not feared it during the ascendency of the Huguenots. Their fall appeared to him to strengthen France. In public he rejoiced with the rest. He complimented Charles on his valour and his religion, and claimed his own share of merit. But he warned Philip that things had not changed favourably for Spain, and that the King of France was now a formidable neighbour.91 For himself, he said, he never would have committed so base a deed.

The seven Catholic Cantons had their own reason for congratulation. Their countrymen had been busy actors on the scene; and three soldiers of the Swiss guard of Anjou were named as the slayers of the Admiral.92 On the 2nd of October they agreed to raise 6000 men for the King's service. At the following Diet they demanded the expulsion of the fugitive Huguenots who had taken refuge in the Protestant parts of the Confederation. They made overtures to the Pope for a secret alliance against their Confederates.93

In Italy, where the life of a heretic was cheap, their wholesale destruction was confessed a highly politic and ingenious act. Even the sage Venetians were constrained to celebrate it with a procession. The Grand Duke Cosmo had pointed out two years before that an insidious peace would afford excellent opportunities of extinguishing Protestantism; and he derived inexpressible consolation from the heroic enterprise.94 The Viceroy of Naples, Cardinal Granvelle, received the tidings coldly. He was surprised that the event had been so long postponed, and he reproved the Cardinal of Lorraine for the unstatesmanlike delay.95 The Italians generally were excited to warmer feelings. They saw nothing to regret but the death of certain Catholics who had been sacrificed to private revenge. Profane men approved the skill with which the trap was laid; and pious men acknowledged the presence of a genuine religious spirit in the French court.96 The nobles and the Parisian populace were admired for their valour in obeying the sanctified commands of the good King. One fervent enthusiast praises God for the heavenly news, and also St. Bartholomew for having lent his extremely penetrating knife for the salutary sacrifice.97 A month after the event the renowned preacher Panigarola delivered from the pulpit a panegyric on the monarch who had achieved what none had ever heard or read before, by banishing heresy in a single day, and by a single word, from the Christian land of France.98

The French churches had often resounded with furious declamations; and they afterwards rang with canticles of unholy joy. But the French clergy does not figure prominently in the inception or the execution of the sanguinary decree. Conti, a contemporary indeed, but too distant for accurate knowledge, relates that the parish priest went round, marking with a white cross the dwellings of the people who were doomed.99 He is contradicted by the municipal Registers of Paris.100 Morvilliers, Bishop of Orleans, though he had resigned the seals which he received from L'Hôpital, still occupied the first place at the royal council. He was consulted at the last moment, and it is said that he nearly fainted with horror. He recovered, and gave his opinion with the rest. He is the only French prelate, except the cardinals, whose complicity appears to be ascertained. But at Orleans, where the bloodshed was more dreadful in proportion than at Paris, the signal is said to have been given, not by the bishop, but by the King's preacher, Sorbin.

Sorbin is the only priest of the capital who is distinctly associated with the act of the Government. It was his opinion that God has ordained that no mercy shall be shown to heretics, that Charles was bound in conscience to do what he did, and that leniency would have been as censurable in his case as precipitation was in that of Theodosius. What the Calvinists called perfidy and cruelty seemed to him nothing but generosity and kindness.101 These were the sentiments of the man from whose hands Charles IX. received the last consolations of his religion. It has been related that he was tortured in his last moments with remorse for the blood he had shed. His spiritual adviser was fitted to dispel such scruples. He tells us that he heard the last confession of the dying King, and that his most grievous sorrow was that he left the work unfinished.102 In all that bloodstained history there is nothing more tragic than the scene in which the last words preparing the soul for judgment were spoken by such a confessor as Sorbin to such a penitent as Charles.

Edmond Auger, one of the most able and eloquent of the Jesuits, was at that time attracting multitudes by his sermons at Bordeaux. He denounced with so much violence the heretics and the people in authority who protected them, that the magistrates, fearing a cry for blood, proposed to silence or to moderate the preacher. Montpezat, Lieutenant of Guienne, arrived in time to prevent it. On the 30th of September he wrote to the King that he had done this, and that there were a score of the inhabitants who might be despatched with advantage. Three days later, when he was gone, more than two hundred Huguenots were murdered.103

Apart from these two instances it is not known that the clergy interfered in any part of France to encourage the assassins.

The belief was common at the time, and is not yet extinct, that the massacre had been promoted and sanctioned by the Court of Rome. No evidence of this complicity, prior to the event, has ever been produced; but it seemed consistent with what was supposed to have occurred in the affair of the dispensation. The marriage of Margaret of Valois with the King of Navarre was invalid and illicit in the eyes of the Church; and it was known that Pius V. had sworn that he would never permit it. When it had been celebrated by a Cardinal, in the presence of a splendid court, and no more was heard of resistance on the part of Rome, the world concluded that the dispensation had been obtained. De Thou says, in a manuscript note, that it had been sent, and was afterwards suppressed by Salviati; and the French bishop, Spondanus, assigns the reasons which induced Gregory XIII. to give way.104 Others affirmed that he had yielded when he learned that the marriage was a snare, so that the massacre was the price of the dispensation.105 The Cardinal of Lorraine gave currency to the story. As he caused it to be understood that he had been in the secret, it seemed probable that he had told the Pope; for they had been old friends.106 In the commemorative inscription which he put up in the Church of St. Lewis he spoke of the King's gratitude to the Holy See for its assistance and for its advice in the matter – "consiliorum ad eam rem datorum." It is probable that he inspired the narrative which has contributed most to sustain the imputation.

Among the Italians of the French faction who made it their duty to glorify the act of Charles IX., the Capilupi family was conspicuous. They came from Mantua, and appear to have been connected with the French interest through Lewis Gonzaga, who had become by marriage Duke of Nevers, and one of the foremost personages in France. Hippolyto Capilupi, Bishop of Fano, and formerly Nuncio at Venice, resided at Rome, busy with French politics and Latin poetry. When Charles refused to join the League, the Bishop of Fano vindicated his neutrality in a letter to the Duke of Urbino.107 When he slew the Huguenots, the Bishop addressed him in verse, —

Camillo Capilupi, a nephew of the Mantuan bard, held office about the person of the Pope, and was employed on missions of consequence.109 As soon as the news from Paris reached Rome he drew up the account which became so famous under the title of Lo Stratagemma di Carlo IX. The dedication is dated the 18th of September 1572.110 This tract was suppressed, and was soon so rare that its existence was unknown in 1574 to the French translator of the second edition. Capilupi republished his book with alterations, and a preface dated the 22nd of October. The substance and purpose of the two editions is the same. Capilupi is not the official organ of the Roman court: he was not allowed to see the letters of the Nuncio. He wrote to proclaim the praises of the King of France and the Duke of Nevers. At that moment the French party in Rome was divided by the quarrel between the ambassador Ferralz and the Cardinal of Lorraine, who had contrived to get the management of French affairs into his own hands.111 Capilupi was on the side of the Cardinal, and received information from those who were about him. The chief anxiety of these men was that the official version which attributed the massacre to a Huguenot conspiracy should obtain no credence at Rome. If the Cardinal's enemies were overthrown without his participation, it would confirm the report that he had become a cipher in the State. He desired to vindicate for himself and his family the authorship of the catastrophe. Catherine could not tolerate their claim to a merit which she had made her own; and there was competition between them for the first and largest share in the gratitude of the Holy See. Lorraine prevailed with the Pope, who not only loaded him with honours, but rewarded him with benefices worth 4000 crowns a year for his nephew, and a gift of 20,000 crowns for his son. But he found that he had fallen into disgrace at Paris, and feared for his position at Rome.112 In these circumstances Capilupi's book appeared, and enumerated a series of facts proving that the Cardinal was cognisant of the royal design. It adds little to the evidence of premeditation. Capilupi relates that Santa Croce, returning from France, had assured Pius V., in the name of Catherine, that she intended one day to entrap Coligny, and to make a signal butchery of him and his adherents, and that letters in which the Queen renewed this promise to the Pope had been read by credible witnesses. Santa Croce was living, and did not contradict the statement. The Stratagemma had originally stated that Lorraine had informed Sermoneta of the project soon after he arrived at Rome. In the reprint this passage was omitted. The book had, therefore, undergone a censorial revision, which enhances the authenticity of the final narrative.

Two other pieces are extant, which were printed at the Stamperia Camerale, and show what was believed at Rome. One is in the shape of a letter written at Lyons in the midst of scenes of death, and describing what the author had witnessed on the spot, and what he heard from Paris.113 He reports that the King had positively commanded that not one Huguenot should escape, and was overjoyed at the accomplishment of his orders. He believes the thing to have been premeditated, and inspired by Divine justice. The other tract is remarkable because it strives to reconcile the pretended conspiracy with the hypothesis of premeditation.114 There were two plots which went parallel for months. The King knew that Coligny was compassing his death, and deceived him by feigning to enter into his plan for the invasion of the Low Countries; and Coligny, allowing himself to be overreached, summoned his friends to Paris, for the purpose of killing Charles, on the 23rd of August. The writer expects that there will soon be no Huguenots in France. Capilupi at first borrowed several of his facts, which he afterwards corrected.

The real particulars relative to the marriage are set forth minutely in the correspondence of Ferralz; and they absolutely contradict the supposition of the complicity of Rome.115 It was celebrated in flagrant defiance of the Pope, who persisted in refusing the dispensation, and therefore acted in a way which could only serve to mar the plot. The accusation has been kept alive by his conduct after the event. The Jesuit who wrote his life by desire of his son, says that Gregory thanked God in private, but that in public he gave signs of a tempered joy.116 But the illuminations and processions, the singing of Te Deum and the firing of the castle guns, the jubilee, the medal, and the paintings whose faded colours still vividly preserve to our age the passions of that day, nearly exhaust the modes by which a Pope could manifest delight.

Charles IX. and Salviati both wrote to Rome on St. Bartholomew's Day; and the ambassador's nephew, Beauville, set off with the tidings. They were known before he arrived. On the 27th, Mandelot's secretary despatched a secret messenger from Lyons with orders to inform the Pope that the Huguenot leaders were slain, and that their adherents were to be secured all over France. The messenger reached Rome on the 2nd of September, and was immediately carried to the Pope by the Cardinal of Lorraine. Gregory rewarded him for the welcome intelligence with a present of a hundred crowns, and desired that Rome should be at once illuminated. This was prevented by Ferralz, who tried the patience of the Romans by declining their congratulations as long as he was not officially informed.117 Beauville and the courier of the Nuncio arrived on the 5th. The King's letter, like all that he wrote on the first day, ascribed the outbreak to the old hatred between the rival Houses, and to the late attempt on the Admiral's life. He expressed a hope that the dispensation would not now be withheld, but left all particulars to Beauville, whose own eyes had beheld the scene.118 Beauville told his story, and repeated the King's request; but Gregory, though much gratified with what he heard, remained inflexible.119

Salviati had written on the afternoon of the 24th. He desired to fling himself at the Pope's feet to wish him joy. His fondest hopes had been surpassed. Although he had known what was in store for Coligny, he had not expected that there would be energy and prudence to seize the occasion for the destruction of the rest. A new era had commenced; a new compass was required for French affairs. It was a fair sight to see the Catholics in the streets wearing white crosses, and cutting down heretics; and it was thought that, as fast as the news spread, the same thing would be done in all the towns of France.120 This letter was read before the assembled Cardinals at the Venetian palace, and they thereupon attended the Pope to a Te Deum in the nearest church.121 The guns of St. Angelo were fired in the evening, and the city was illuminated for three nights. To disregard the Pope's will in this respect would have savoured of heresy. Gregory XIII. exclaimed that the massacre was more agreeable to him than fifty victories of Lepanto. For some weeks the news from the French provinces sustained the rapture and excitement of the Court.122 It was hoped that other countries would follow the example of France; the Emperor was informed that something of the same kind was expected of him.123 On the 8th of September the Pope went in procession to the French Church of St. Lewis, where three-and-thirty Cardinals attended at a mass of thanksgiving. On the 11th he proclaimed a jubilee. In the Bull he said that forasmuch as God had armed the King of France to inflict vengeance on the heretics for the injuries done to religion, and to punish the leaders of the rebellion which had devastated his kingdom, Catholics should pray that he might have grace to pursue his auspicious enterprise to the end, and so complete what he had begun so well.124 Before a month had passed Vasari was summoned from Florence to decorate the hall of kings with paintings of the massacre.125 The work was pronounced his masterpiece; and the shameful scene may still be traced upon the wall, where, for three centuries, it has insulted every pontiff that entered the Sixtine Chapel.

The story that the Huguenots had perished because they were detected plotting the King's death was known at Rome on the 6th of September. While the sham edict and the imaginary trial served to confirm it in the eyes of Europe, Catherine and her son took care that it should not deceive the Pope. They assured him that they meant to disregard the edict. To excuse his sister's marriage, the King pleaded that it had been concluded for no object but vengeance; and he promised that there would soon be not a heretic in the country.126 This was corroborated by Salviati. As to the proclaimed toleration, he knew that it was a device to disarm foreign enmity, and prevent a popular commotion. He testified that the Queen spoke truly when she said that she had confided to him, long before, the real purpose of her daughter's engagement.127 He exposed the hollow pretence of the plot. He announced that its existence would be established by formalities of law, but added that it was so notoriously false that none but an idiot could believe in it.128 Gregory gave no countenance to the official falsehood. At the reception of the French ambassador, Rambouillet, on the 23rd of December, Muretus made his famous speech. He said that there could not have been a happier beginning for a new pontificate, and alluded to the fabulous plot in the tone exacted of French officials. The Secretary, Boccapaduli, replying in behalf of the Pope, thanked the King for destroying the enemies of Christ; but strictly avoided the conventional fable.129

Cardinal Orsini went as Legate to France. He had been appointed in August, and he was to try to turn the King's course into that line of policy from which he had strayed under Protestant guidance. He had not left Rome when the events occurred which altered the whole situation. Orsini was now charged with felicitations, and was to urge Charles not to stop half-way.130 An ancient and obsolete ceremonial was suddenly revived; and the Cardinals accompanied him to the Flaminian gate.131 This journey of Orsini, and the pomp with which it was surrounded, were exceedingly unwelcome at Paris. It was likely to be taken as proof of that secret understanding with Rome which threatened to rend the delicate web in which Charles was striving to hold the confidence of the Protestant world.132 He requested that the Legate might be recalled; and the Pope was willing that there should be some delay. While Orsini tarried on his way, Gregory's reply to the announcement of the massacre arrived at Paris. It was a great consolation to himself, he said, and an extraordinary grace vouchsafed to Christendom. But he desired, for the glory of God and the good of France, that the Huguenots should be extirpated utterly; and with that view he demanded the revocation of the edict. When Catherine knew that the Pope was not yet satisfied, and sought to direct the actions of the King, she could hardly restrain her rage. Salviati had never seen her so furious. The words had hardly passed his lips when she exclaimed that she wondered at such designs, and was resolved to tolerate no interference in the government of the kingdom. She and her son were Catholics from conviction, and not through fear or influence. Let the Pope content himself with that.133 The Nuncio had at once foreseen that the court, after crushing the Huguenots, would not become more amenable to the counsels of Rome. He wrote, on the very day of St. Bartholomew, that the King would be very jealous of his authority, and would exact obedience from both sides alike.

At this untoward juncture Orsini appeared at Court. To Charles, who had done so much, it seemed unreasonable that he should be asked for more. He represented to Orsini that it was impossible to eradicate all the remnants of a faction which had been so strong. He had put seventy thousand Huguenots to the sword; and, if he had shown compassion to the rest, it was in order that they might become good Catholics.134

The hidden thoughts which the Court of Rome betrayed by its conduct on this memorable occasion have brought upon the Pope himself an amount of hatred greater than he deserved. Gregory XIII. appears as a pale figure between the two strongest of the modern Popes, without the intense zeal of the one and the ruthless volition of the other. He was not prone to large conceptions or violent resolutions. He had been converted late in life to the spirit of the Tridentine Reformation; and when he showed rigour it was thought to be not in his character, but in the counsels of those who influenced him.135 He did not instigate the crime, nor the atrocious sentiments that hailed it. In the religious struggle a frenzy had been kindled which made weakness violent, and turned good men into prodigies of ferocity; and at Rome, where every loss inflicted on Catholicism and every wound was felt, the belief that, in dealing with heretics, murder is better than toleration prevailed for half a century. The predecessor of Gregory had been Inquisitor-General. In his eyes Protestants were worse than Pagans, and Lutherans more dangerous than other Protestants.136 The Capuchin preacher, Pistoja, bore witness that men were hanged and quartered almost daily at Rome;137 and Pius declared that he would release a culprit guilty of a hundred murders rather than one obstinate heretic.138 He seriously contemplated razing the town of Faenza because it was infested with religious error, and he recommended a similar expedient to the King of France.139 He adjured him to hold no intercourse with the Huguenots, to make no terms with them, and not to observe the terms he had made. He required that they should be pursued to the death, that not one should be spared under any pretence, that all prisoners should suffer death.140 He threatened Charles with the punishment of Saul when he forebore to exterminate the Amalekites.141 He told him that it was his mission to avenge the injuries of the Lord, and that nothing is more cruel than mercy to the impious.142 When he sanctioned the murder of Elizabeth he proposed that it should be done in execution of his sentence against her.143 It became usual with those who meditated assassination or regicide on the plea of religion to look upon the representatives of Rome as their natural advisers. On the 21st of January 1591, a young Capuchin came, by permission of his superiors, to Sega, Bishop of Piacenza, then Nuncio at Paris. He said that he was inflamed with the desire of a martyr's death; and having been assured by divines that it would be meritorious to kill that heretic and tyrant, Henry of Navarre, he asked to be dispensed from the rule of his Order while he prepared his measures and watched his opportunity. The Nuncio would not do this without authority from Rome; but the prudence, courage, and humility which he discerned in the friar made him believe that the design was really inspired from above. To make this certain, and to remove all scruples, he submitted the matter to the Pope, and asked his blessing upon it, promising that whatever he decided should be executed with all discretion.144