Jeanne d’Albret set out on her journey for Paris on the 15th May. On the 4th June she fell ill; on the 9th she was dead. Had she been poisoned? Many believed so. It was said that a Florentine perfumer, Master René, known by the name of the queen’s poisoner, had sold her some poisoned gloves.
She showed in her last days the same consistent piety, which had adorned her life. She uttered neither complaints nor murmurs in the most cruel accessions of pain; a faith resigned and serene shone through all her sufferings. Her tranquil heroism astonished that court, when in dying they could laugh, but knew not how peacefully to collect themselves before God. She had no regret for her life, but in reflecting on the youth of her son and of her daughter Catherine. “In any case,” she said, “my trust is that God will be to them a father and protector, as He has been to me in my greatest afflictions; I commit them to His Providence to provide for them.” She died at the age of forty-four.
The Admiral Coligny had already gone to court in the autumn of 1571; he returned in July, 1572, in spite of the warnings of many of his friends. “I trust,” he answered them, “to the sincerity and the oath of his majesty.”
In his first interview, Coligny knelt before the king. Charles IX. raised him up, called him his father, and embracing the illustrious old man thrice, said to him, “We have got you now; you shall not escape when you wish; this is the happiest day of my life.”
He opened his councils to the Admiral, and seemed to listen to him with the deference of a son. Coligny laid before him the political plans which had long occupied his thoughts, and which were afterwards adopted by Henry IV. and Cardinal Richelieu—humiliation of the house of Spain; aid to the insurgents of the Low Countries; alliance with the Protestant princes of the empire and of Sweden, in order to become the arbiter of peace and war in Europe. The conquest of the Low Countries was then easy; for the Belgians, out of hatred to Philip II. and the duke of Alba, would have joyfully offered to become an integrant part of the kingdom. If the Admiral’s plan had been followed, France from the sixteenth century would have become the first power in the world, and the entire pages of modern history would have been changed. But the popes, the queen-mother, her advisers, and the Guises prevented it, in spite of Charles IX., who felt at last the instinct of national honour.
The marriage of Margaret of Valois with Henry of Béarn, who had just taken the title of king of Navarre, was celebrated on the 18th August, 1572, and four days were spent in games, festivals, masquerades, and ballets.
On Friday, the 22nd August, Coligny was returning from the Louvre, accompanied by twelve or fifteen gentlemen. He was walking slowly, being engaged in reading a petition, when passing in front of the cloister of Saint Germain, he was struck by three balls shot from an arquebuse, which shattered the forefinger of his left hand, and wounded his left arm. The door of the house whence the arquebuse had been fired, was burst open, but only a laquais and a female servant were found. The murderer had had time to escape: it was Maurevel, formerly a page of the dukes of Guise, and one of their intimates; “the slayer on the king’s wages, the common assassin,” as he is styled by the historians of the epoch.
The surgeon Ambrois Paré examined the Admiral’s wound. It was feared that the copper balls had been poisoned, and Coligny believed he was approaching his last hour. “My friends,” he said, “why do you weep? as for me, I hold myself happy to have received these wounds for the cause of God; pray to Him to strengthen me.”
The news of the crime was spread in a moment throughout Paris, and excited the greatest agitation. The sheriffs (échevins) ordered the captains of the militia to assemble their companies, and to guard the Hôtel de Ville. The king was playing at tennis when he heard of the event, and angrily throwing down his racket, exclaimed, “Shall I never have any peace? Must I witness fresh troubles every day?” This first utterance of his conscience tends to clear his memory; the assassination was the work of the duke of Guise, supported by Catherine and her confidants; it had not been ordered by Charles IX.
The Calvinists gathered in consternation at the dwelling of the Admiral, and held counsel together. They wished to remove him instantly from Paris, but the physicians would not permit it.