History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 2

by Henry Martyn Baird

The previous character of Toulouse, as among the most sanguinary cities of France, was already sufficiently well established. If behind some of the rest on this occasion in the number of victims, Toulouse was inferior only because its previous massacres had rendered it a suspicious place of sojourn in the eyes of the Huguenots. Here, too, notwithstanding deceitful proclamations guaranteeing safety and protection, the Protestants were gathered into the public prisons and jails attached to monasteries; and after having been reserved for several weeks, on receipt of orders from Paris were butchered to the number of two or three hundred. Among others, some Protestant members of parliament were hung in their long red gowns to the branches of a great elm growing in the court of the parliament house.[1130] The miscreants that voluntarily assumed the functions of executioners were in this case drawn in great part from the more unruly class of the law students of the university.[1131] It is needless to add that here, as elsewhere, the opportunity for plunder was by no means neglected.

At Bordeaux.

The procedure in Bordeaux was so extraordinary, and is so authentically related in a letter of a prominent judicial officer who was present, as well as in the records of the Parliament of Guyenne, that the story of its massacre must be added to the notices already given. At first the city was quiet, and the friends of order congratulated themselves that their efforts had been successful in removing the stigma which previous transactions had affixed to its escutcheon. Meantime this policy, united to the fear of a fate similar to that which had befallen their fellow-believers elsewhere, is said to have led to a great number of conversions to the Roman Catholic Church.[1132] But there were those who were unwilling that their prey should so easily escape them. On the fifth of September, M. de Montferrand, Governor of Bordeaux, affecting to have information of a general plot on the part of the Huguenots of the city, had sought and obtained permission of the parliament to introduce three hundred soldiers from abroad. He had thereupon forbidden the celebration of Protestant worship, hitherto held at a distance of three leagues from Bordeaux, on the plain between the Garonne and the Jalle.[1133] Meantime the churches resounded with the violent denunciations of a famous preacher, Friar Edmond Auger or Augier, "a great scourge for heresy," as his partisans styled him. He exhorted his hearers to imitate the example of Paris, and accused the royal officers of indolence and pusillanimity. At this juncture the governor received a visit from Monsieur de Montpézat, son-in-law of Villars, the newly appointed admiral. What the latter told him is unknown. But, on the third of October, Montferrand having given out that he had received from the king a roll of names of forty of the chief men of the place, whom he was commissioned to put to death without judge or trial, set about his bloody work. Persistently refusing to exhibit his warrant, for three days the governor butchered the citizens at will.[1134] One member of parliament, against whom he bore a personal grudge, he stabbed with his own hand. The murderers wore red bonnets supplied by one of the "jurats" or aldermen of the city. They executed their commission so thoroughly that the number of the slain was reported as two hundred and sixty-four persons, all Protestants. If any one be mercifully inclined to regard this statement as an exaggeration, and to base upon this instance a general theory that throughout France the number of the victims has been grossly over-estimated, let him read the following entry made in the records of the Parliament of Bordeaux, and recently brought to light; he will learn from this not only the approximate number of the slain as given by the chief agent in the bloody work, but the anxiety which the latter felt that he should receive due credit for his share in the great undertaking of the destruction of the French Protestants: "On the ninth of October, the Sieur de Montferrand, having been summoned to the court, among other things said, 'that he had been informed that there were some members of the court who had written to the Sieur Admiral de Villars, royal lieutenant in Guyenne, that the said De Montferrand had killed, on the day of the execution by him made, October the third, only ten or twelve men, a thing (under correction of the court) wholly false, inasmuch as there had been more than two hundred and fifty slain; and he would show the list to any one who might desire to see it.'"[1135]

The same hand that placed upon the parliamentary registers this shameless and atrocious boast, for the benefit of those that should come after, has briefly noted the assassination of two members of parliament itself, with an absence of comment in which we can read the evidence of fear. "From the talk of to-day it appears that Messieurs Jean de Guilloche and Pierre de Sevyn were killed as belonging to the new religion."[1136] The tardy and flagrantly unnecessary effusion of blood at Bordeaux exercised no mean influence in emboldening the Huguenots of La Rochelle to persevere in their refusal to admit the emissaries of Charles the Ninth.

Why the massacre was not universal.

The massacre was, however, neither universal throughout France, nor equally destructive in all places where it occurred. The reason for this is to be found partly in the geographical distribution of the Huguenots, partly in the temper of the people, partly in the policy or the humanity of the governors of cities and provinces. Where the number of Protestants was small, and especially where they had never rendered themselves formidable, it was not easy for the clergy to excite the people to that frenzy of sectarian hatred under the influence of which they were willing to imbrue their hands in the blood of peaceable neighbors. In such places—in Provins, for instance—the Huguenots generally kept themselves as far as possible out of sight, while a few of the more timid consented to place a white cross on their hats, a convenient badge of Roman Catholicism which some were willing to assume, when they would rather have died than go to mass.[1137]

Policy of the Guises.

In the province of Champagne the Protestants were spared any general massacre by the prudent foresight of the Guises, to whom its government was confided. The duke, in order to free himself from the imputation of being the author of the bloody plot, and to prove that his private resentment did not extend beyond Admiral Coligny and a few other chiefs, had himself taken several Huguenots in Paris under his special protection. With the same object in view, he made his province an exception to the widespread slaughter.[1138]

Spurious accounts of clemency.

Bishop Le Hennuyer, of Lisieux.