The duke was walking up and down, biting his beard, a sign with him of furious anger. He summoned the judge of the district, and upbraided him for having suffered these conventicles. The judge pleaded the Edict of January. “The Edict of January!” said Guise, laying his hand upon his sword; “this steel shall speedily cut asunder this edict, however tightly bound.”
The following day, being at Eclairon, his people informed him that the Huguenots of Vassy had sent complaints to the king. “Let them go,” he said with scorn; “they will find neither their admiral, nor their chancellor.”
Reflection, however, made him understand that it was no trifling matter to have authorized this butchery in a time of perfect peace, and he therefore sent a lawyer to Vassy to commence a sort of inquiry. A tale that the Huguenots had been the aggressors was invented, as if it were likely that such an extravagant notion could be believed, that people unarmed, assembled at the foot of the pulpit with women and children, should be the first to attack the numerous escort of François de Guise!
In the following year, when upon his death-bed, the duke protested that he had neither premeditated, nor ordered the massacre of Vassy. We are willing to take him at his word, notwithstanding the overwhelming remarks of Bayle; it would grieve us to witness an ignoble leader of a band of assassins in this brave and valiant captain, the defender of Metz, the conqueror of Renty. But had he not a firm resolve to use at least some violence against the Huguenots of Vassy? What did he do to prevent the massacre? Was he the man to be disobeyed? Towards the end of the affair, he ordered, at the request of the duchess of Guise, that the women with child should be spared, but nothing more. Moreover did he prosecute, did he so much as disclaim any one of the murderers? Even the charge of premeditation he set aside; his consent to the massacre cannot be denied. The blood of Vassy is on his head: it has been visited upon him, his son, and his race. “All they who take the sword, shall perish by the sword.”
The news of the massacre of Vassy created an extraordinary impression throughout the kingdom; it roused all the Reformed to indignation and horror. This was not the crime of a vile populace led on by some contemptible priests, or abject monks. Here was one of the greatest lords of France, who had, in contempt of the law, shed the blood of the faithful in torrents. If this offence were to go unpunished, where would justice be henceforth, and who could be secure against assassination?
At Paris the agitation was so great that an immediate resort to arms was apprehended, and the Marshal de Montmorency, the governor of the town, invited the faithful to suspend their assemblies. But they answered that this would be to give up the cause to their enemies, and to acknowledge that there existed a power superior to that of the law in the kingdom. They, however, restricted themselves to demanding from the marshal the compulsory observance of the edict.
The prince of Condé and the principal members of the party addressed themselves to Catherine de Medicis. They represented to her the insolence of the triumvirate, the league of the Lorraine princes with the king of Spain, the growing audacity of their enterprises, the dangers which threatened the royal authority, and protested that they were ready to sacrifice their possessions and their lives for the cause of the throne, which was now linked with the Reformed faith. Catherine employed her usual dissimulation, gave evasive answers, and tried to penetrate the secrets of the Calvinists, in order to turn them to her own account, as occasion might serve, for or against them.
The consistory of Paris resolved to exhaust every legal means before opposing force to force, and sent Theodore de Bèze to the court to demand the exemplary punishment of the murderers. The king of Navarre, who was present at the audience, and who wished to give some testimony of his zeal to his new allies, exclaimed: “They threw stones at my brother, the duke of Guise; he could not restrain the fury of his people; and mark me, whosoever shall touch but the end of his finger, shall touch my whole body.” “Sire,” Bèze answered, “it is indeed the part of the Church of God, in whose name I speak, to endure blows and not to give them; but you will also please to remember that it is an anvil, which has used up many hammers.”
Theodore de Bèze spoke the truth. Anthony of Bourbon and his have fallen; the persecutors rest in their sepulchre, but the French Reformation still lives.