[476] Catharine de' Medici to Alva, Dec. 4, 1567, Gachard, Correspondance de Philippe II., i. 607.
[477] Alva to Catharine de' Medici, Dec., 1567, Gachard, Correspondance de Philippe II., i. 608, 609.
[478] It is told of one lackey that he contributed twenty crowns.
[479] The scene is described in an animated manner by François de la Noue, c. xv. (Ancienne Collection, xlvii. 199-201); De Thou, iv. 41. "Marque le lecteur," writes Agrippa d'Aubigné, in his nervous style, "un trait qui n'a point d'exemple en l'antiquité, que ceux qui devoient demander paye et murmurer pour n'en avoir point, puissent et veuillent en leur extreme pauvreté contenter une armée avec 100,000 livres à quoi se monta cette brave gueuserie; argument aux plus sages d'auprès du roi pour prescher la paix; tenans pour invincible le parti qui a la passion pour difference, et pour solde la nécessité." Hist. univ., i. 228. D'Aubigné is mistaken, however, in making the army contribute the entire 100,000. Davila and De Thou say they raised 30,000; La Noue, over 80,000.
[480] Mém. de Fr. de la Noue, c. xv.
[481] Ibid., ubi supra.
[482] Mémoires de Claude Haton, i. 500-503.
[483] Ibid., ii. 517. "Et dès lors fut le pillage mis sus par les gens de guerre des deux partis; et firent tous à qui mieux pilleroit et rançonneroit son hoste, jugeant bien en eux que qui plus en pilleroit plus en auroit. Les gens de guerre du camp catholicque, excepté le pillage des églises et saccagemens des prebstres, estoient au reste aussi meschans, et quasi plus que les huguenotz."
[484] Ménard, Hist. de Nismes, apud Cimber et Danjou, vii. 481, etc.; Bouche, Histoire gén. de Languedoc, v. 276, 277. Prof. Soldan, Geschichte des Protestantismus in Frankreich, ii. 274-276, whose account of an event too generally unnoticed by Protestant historians is fair and impartial, calls attention to the following circumstances, which, although they do not excuse in the least its savage cruelties, ought yet to be borne in mind: 1st, That no woman was killed; 2d, that only those men were killed who had in some way shown themselves enemies of the Protestants; and, 3d, that there is no evidence of any premeditation. To these I will add, as important in contrasting this massacre with the many massacres in which the Huguenots were the victims, the fact that the Protestant ministers not only did not instigate, but disapproved, and endeavored as soon as possible to put an end to the murders.
[485] De Thou, iv. 33-35.