History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 2

by Henry Martyn Baird

The municipality of Nantes.

Nor were the municipal authorities in some places behind the royal governors in their determination to have no part in the nefarious designs of the court. At Nantes, the mayor, échevins, and judges received from Paris, on the eighth of September, a letter of the Duke of Montpensier-Bourbon, Governor of Brittany, in which, after narrating the discovery of the pretended conspiracy of Coligny and his adherents, and their consequent assassination, he added: "By this his Majesty's intention respecting the treatment which the Huguenots are to receive in the other cities is sufficiently evident, as well as the means by which some assured rest may be expected in our poor Catholic Church."[1148] But the municipal and judicial officers of Nantes, instead of following the bloody path thus marked out for them by the governor of their province, "held a meeting in the town hall, and swore to maintain their previous oath not to violate the Edict of Pacification published in favor of the Calvinists, and forbade the inhabitants from indulging in any excess against them."[1149]

Uncertain number of the victims.

Such are the general outlines and a few details of a massacre the full horrors of which it is outside of the province and beyond the ability of history to relate. Nor is it even possible to set down figures that may be relied upon as expressing the true number of those who were unjustly put to death. The difficulty experienced by a well informed contemporary, has not been removed; notwithstanding the careful investigations of those who earnestly desired "that posterity might not-be deprived of what it needed to know, in order that it might become wiser at the expense of others."[1150] We shall be safe in supposing that the number of Huguenot victims throughout France was somewhere between twenty thousand, as conjectured by De Thou and La Popelinière, and thirty thousand, as stated by Jean de Serres and the Mémoires de l'estat de France, rather than in adopting the extreme views of Sully and Perefixe, the latter of whom swells the count of the slain to one hundred thousand men, women, and children.[1151] It can scarcely have been much less than the lower number I have suggested.

News of the massacre received at Rome.

Public thanksgivings.

While the massacre begun on St. Bartholomew's Day was spreading with the speed of some foul contagion to the most distant parts of France, the tidings had been carried beyond its boundaries, and excited a thrill of delight, or a cry of execration, according to the character and sympathies of those to whom they came. Nowhere was the surprise greater, nor the joy more intense, than at Rome. Pope Gregory, like his predecessor, had been very sceptical respecting the pious intentions of the French court. Nuncios and legates brought them, it is true, a great profusion of brilliant assurances, on the part of Catharine and Charles, of devotion to the Roman Church, and to the interests of the Pontifical See, but accompanied by lugubrious vaticinations of their own, based upon the tolerant course on which the king, under Coligny's guidance, had entered. The Cardinal of Alessandria had made little account of the ring offered him by Charles as a pledge of his sincerity, and preferred to wait for the proof which the sequel might exhibit. The last defiant act of the French monarch, in marrying his sister to a professed heretic, and within the degrees of consanguinity prohibited by the Church, without obtaining the Pope's dispensation, served to confirm all the sinister suspicions entertained at Rome. Under these circumstances the papal astonishment and rejoicing can well be imagined, when couriers sent by the Guises brought the intelligence of the massacre to the Cardinal of Lorraine, and when letters from the King of France and from the Nuncio Salviati in Paris to the Pope himself confirmed its accuracy. Salviati's letters having been read in the full consistory, on the sixth of September, the pontiff and the cardinals resolved to go at once in solemn procession to the church of San Marco, there to render thanks to God for the signal blessing conferred upon the Roman See and all Christendom. A solemn mass was appointed for the succeeding Monday, and a jubilee published for the whole Christian world. In the evening the cannon from the Castle of San Angelo, and firearms discharged here and there throughout the city, proclaimed to all the joy felt for so signal a victory over the enemies of the Church. For three successive nights there was a general illumination. Cardinal Orsini, who seems to have been on the point of starting for France as a special legate to urge the court to withdraw from the course of toleration, now received different instructions, and was commissioned to congratulate Charles, and to encourage him to pursue the path upon which he had entered. Charles of Lorraine, as was natural, distinguished himself for his demonstrations of joy. He made a present of one thousand crowns to the bearer of such glad tidings.[1152] Under his auspices a brilliant celebration of the event took place in the church of San Luigi de' Francesi, which was magnificently decorated for the occasion. Gregory himself, attended by his cardinals and bishops, by princes, foreign ambassadors, and large numbers of nobles and of the people, walked thither under the pontifical canopy, and high mass was said. The Cardinal of Lorraine had affixed above the entrance a pompous declaration, in the form of a congratulatory notice from Charles the Ninth to Gregory and the "sacred college of cardinals," wherein the Very Christian King renders thanks to Heaven that, "inflamed by zeal for the Lord God of Hosts, like a smiting angel divinely sent, he had suddenly destroyed by a single slaughter almost all the heretics and enemies of his kingdom." The latinity of the placard might not be above reproach; but it is certain that its sentiments received the cordial approval of the assembled prelates.[1153] Set forth in golden characters, and decorated with festive leaves and ribbons,[1154] it proclaimed that the hierarchy of the Roman Church had no qualms of conscience in indorsing the traitorous deed of Charles and Catharine. But still more unequivocal proofs were not wanting. A well known medal was struck in honor of the event, bearing on the one side the head of the Pope and the words "Gregorius XIII. Pont. Max. An. I.," and on the other an angel with cross and sword pursuing the heretics, and the superscription, "Ugonottorum strages, 1572."[1155]

Paintings by Vasari in the Vatican.

By the order of the Pope, the famous Vasari painted in the Sala Regia of the Vatican palace several pictures representing different scenes in the Parisian massacre. Upon one an inscription was placed which tersely expressed the true state of the case: "Pontifex Colinii necem probat."[1156] The paintings may still be seen in the magnificent room which serves as antechamber to the Sistine Chapel.[1157]