These are questions, which in our day are exhausted in the estimation of the enlightened and honest men of every opinion. Thus no one would now dare to maintain the fable of a plot by Coligny against the king’s life. The thesis of the Abbé de Caveyrac upon salutary rigours, will not be reproduced. The premeditation of the massacre can be no longer seriously denied. The (Roman) Catholic French historians, De Thou, Mézeray, Péréfixe, Maimbourg, all admit it; the Italian historians, Davila, Capilupi, Adriani, Catena, these confidants of Catherine de Medicis, or of the Roman conclave, do more; they admire and extol the premeditation, and see in it a marvellous effect of the blessing of heaven. These, then, are settled points.[57]
But there is another question, which, as it concerns the honour of the French name, as well as the rights of truth, must be considered. Who were the first, and the real authors of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew? We make answer, from researches, of which we will here give a short analysis.
The popes and the king of Spain, who never ceased to demand by their legates, their ambassadors, their public and secret agents, the extermination of the chiefs of the Huguenot party;
Catherine de Medicis, the niece of Clement VII., the woman of Florence, who had been nurtured in the precepts of Machiavel;
The Cardinal de Lorraine, doubly a foreigner by his birth, and in his quality of prince of the Roman church;
His nephew, Henry of Guise, a Lorraine, a young man of twenty-two, who sought to persuade himself that the Admiral was guilty of the death of his father, in order to incite himself to assassinate him, and to become, after his death, the first person in the state;
Albert de Gondi, the Florentine, whom we have already named, who cited the murder of the duke of Orleans, by the duke of Burgundy, as an example to Charles IX., and said it was necessary not to do things by halves, but to kill all, even the young Bourbon princes, the sin being as great for a small as for a great crime;
René Birago, or de Birague, a Milanese adventurer, whom Francis I. had brought to France; he had risen by climbing to the highest offices of the magistracy, and received a cardinal’s hat, as a reward for the part he took in the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. It was this Birago, who went about repeating the atrocious phrase, that to terminate the religious wars “cooks were needed more them soldiers;”
Lastly, Louis de Gonzague, a native of Mantua, and duke of Nevers, a skilful courtier, an indifferent captain, and one of the most eager of his day in promoting assassinations.
Up to this point there was not a single Frenchman [connected with the plot]. But besides Spain and the Papacy, there were two Lorraines, three Italian men, and one Italian woman[58] [engaged in it]. Albert de Gondi was the most intimate of the confidants of Catherine de Medicis. The duke of Guise, Birago, and Louis de Gonzague, formed a second secret council, which decided everything.