History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 2

by Henry Martyn Baird

The massacre continues.

The carnival of blood, which had been so successfully ushered in on that ill-starred Sunday of August, was maintained on the succeeding days with little abatement of its frenzied excitement. Paris soon resembled a vast charnel-house. The dead or dying lay in the open streets and squares, they blocked the doors and carriage-ways, they were heaped in the courtyards. When the utmost that impotent passion could do to these lifeless remains was accomplished, the Seine became the receptacle. Besides those Huguenots whom their murderers dragged to the bridges or wharves to despatch by drowning, both by day and by night wagons laden with the corpses of men and women, and even of young children, were driven down to the river and emptied of their human freight. But the current of the crooked Seine refused to carry away from the capital all these evidences of guilt. The shores of its first curve, from Paris to the bridge of St. Cloud, were covered with putrefying remains, which the municipality were compelled to inter, through fear of their generating a pestilence. And so we read, in the registers of the Hôtel-de-Ville, of a payment of fifteen livres tournois, on the ninth of September, for the burial of the dead bodies found near the Convent of Chaillot, and of a second payment of twenty livres on the twenty-third, for the burial of eleven hundred more, near Chaillot, Auteuil, and St. Cloud.[1044]

Not a popular movement.

Plunder of the rich.

The massacre was not in its origin a popular outbreak. It sprang from the ambition and vindictive passions of the queen mother, and others, whom the ministers of a corrupt religion had long accustomed to the idea that the extermination of heretics is not a sin, but the highest type of piety. The people were called in only as assistants. Probably the first intention was only to hold the municipal forces in readiness to overcome any resistance which the Protestants might offer. But the massacre succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectations of the conspirators. Very few of the victims defended themselves or their property; scarcely one Roman Catholic was slain. And now the populace, having had a taste of blood, could no longer be restrained. Whether the plunder of the Protestants entered into the original calculations of Catharine and her advisers, may perhaps be doubted. But there is no question as to the turn which the affair soon took in the minds of those engaged in it. Pillage was not always countenanced by church and state: as a violation of the second table of the Law, it was, under ordinary circumstances, atoned for by penance and ecclesiastical censures; as a breach of the royal edicts, it was likely to be punished with hanging or still more painful modes of execution. Consequently, when by furnishing arms the civil power authorized the most severe measures against those whom it accused of foul conspiracy against the king, and when the professed minister of Christ and His gospel of peace blessed the work of exterminating God's enemies and the king's, there was no lack of men willing to profit by the rare and unexpected opportunity. Nor did the courtiers disdain dishonest gain. The Duke of Anjou was known to have enriched himself by the plunder of the shop of Baduère, the king's jeweller.[1045] Noblemen, besides robbing their victims of money, extorted from them, in return for a promise to spare their lives, deeds of valuable lands, or papers resigning in their favor high offices in the government. It was frequently the case that, after giving such presents, the Huguenot was put out of the way at once, in order to prevent him from ever retracting. Thus, Martial de Loménie, a secretary of the king, was murdered in prison, after having resigned his office in favor of Marshal Retz, and sold to him his estate of Versailles, at such a price as the latter chose to name, in the vain hope that this would secure him liberty and life.[1046] The extent to which robbery was carried on the occasion of the massacre is reluctantly conceded in the pamphlet, which was published immediately after, as an apology of the court for the hideous crime; and an attempt is made to justify it, which is worthy of the source from which it drew its inspiration: "Now this good-will of the people to sustain and defend its prince, to espouse his quarrel, and to hate those who are not of his religion, is very praiseworthy; and if in this execution [the massacre] some pillaging has taken place, we must excuse the fury of a people impelled by a worthy zeal—a zeal hard to be restrained and bridled when once excited."[1047]

Orders issued to lay down arms.

Little heed given to them.

But, despite panegyrists, the massacre had not been in progress many hours before the very magistrates of the city appear to have become apprehensive lest the movement might assume dangerous dimensions. It was only about eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, as the registers of the Hôtel de Ville inform us, when Charles was waited upon by the prévôt des marchands and the échevins. They came to inform him that "a number of persons, partly belonging to the suite of his Majesty, partly to that of the princes, princesses, and lords of the court—gentlemen, archers of the king's body-guard, soldiers of his suite, as well as all sorts of people mingled with them and under their authority—were plundering and pillaging many houses and killing many persons in the streets." This was certainly no news to Charles; but as he desired, now that the massacre had begun, not to enrich the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Paris, but to fill his own coffers, he deemed it best to prohibit any further action on their part, and to leave the rest of the work to his own commissioned servants. Accordingly the municipal authorities were directed to ride through the city with all the troops at their disposal, and to see to it, both by day and night, that the bloodshed and robbery should cease. "Sir William Guerrier"—thus runs one of the commissions to the "quarteniers" issued from the central bureau of the city, in pursuance of these directions—"give commandment to all burgesses and inhabitants of your quarter, who to-day have taken up arms according to the king's order, to lay them down, and to retire and remain quietly in their houses, ... according to the king's command conveyed to us by my Lord of Nevers." And this document is accompanied with another, of the same date, applying to soldiers of the guard or others, who should pillage or maltreat Protestants, and threatening them with punishment. Such a proclamation, it is well known, was made by trumpet at about five o'clock that afternoon. The registers tell us that the instructions were so well carried out that all disorder "was at once appeased and ceased." They contain, however, a distinct refutation of this falsehood, in the frequent repetition of similar orders and the variety of forms in which the same statements are made on subsequent days. Again and again does the king direct that soldiers be placed at the head of every street to prevent robbery and murder;[1048] the guards either were never posted, or, as is more likely, became foremost in the work which they were sent to repress. Indeed, the instructions given on Monday to visit all the houses in the city and its suburbs where there were any Protestants, and obtain their names and surnames,[1049] afforded an opportunity which was not permitted to slip by unimproved, for the exaction of heavy bribes, as well as for more open plunder and violence. So notorious was it, nearly a week after the butchery began, that the massacre had only abated in intensity, that, on the thirtieth of August, measures were adopted to prevent any wrong from being done to foreign merchants sojourning in Paris, and especially to the German, English, and Flemish students of the university.[1050]

Miracle of the "Cimetière des Innocents."