With this express indorsement of Alva's merciless cruelty before us, it is not difficult to understand what Pius demanded of Charles of France. Early in 1569, while sending the Duke of Sforza with auxiliaries, he wrote to the king: "When God shall by His kindness have given to you and to us, as we hope, the victory, it will be your duty to punish the heretics and their leaders with all severity, and thus justly to avenge not only your own wrongs, but those of Almighty God: in order that, by your execution of the righteous judgment of God, they may pay the penalty which they have deserved by their crimes."[1236] After the battle of Jarnac and Condé's death, we have seen that Pius wrote promptly, bidding Charles "pursue and destroy the remnants of the enemy, and wholly tear up not only the roots of an evil so great and which had gathered to itself such strength, but even the very fibres of the roots." He begged him not to spare those who had not spared God nor their king.[1237] To Catharine and to the Duke of Anjou, to the Cardinal of Bourbon, and to the Cardinal of Lorraine, the same language was addressed. Again and again the Pope held up the example of Saul, who disregarded the commands of the Lord through Samuel and spared the Amalekites, as a solemn warning against disobedience. To the queen mother he said: "Under no circumstances and from no considerations ought the enemies of God to be spared.[1238] If your Majesty shall continue, as heretofore, to seek with right purpose of mind and a simple heart the honor of Almighty God, and shall assail the foes of the Catholic religion openly and freely even to extermination,[1239] be well assured that the Divine assistance will never fail, and that still greater victories will be prepared by God for you and for the king your son, until, when all shall have been destroyed, the pristine worship of the Catholic religion shall be restored to that most illustrious realm."[1240] The Duke of Anjou was urged to incite his brother to punish the rebels with great severity, and to be inexorable in refusing the prayers of all who would intercede for them.[1241] Charles was given to understand that if, induced by any motives, he should defer the punishment of God's enemies, he would certainly tempt the Divine patience to change to anger.[1242]

The victory of Moncontour furnished an occasion for fresh exhortations to the king not to neglect to inflict upon the enemies of Almighty God the punishments fixed by the laws. "For what else would this be," said Pius, "than to make of no effect the blessing of God, namely, victory itself, whose fruit indeed consists in this, that by just punishment the execrable heretics, common enemies, having been taken away, the former peace and tranquillity should be restored to the kingdom. And do not allow yourself, by the suggestion of the empty name of pity, to be deceived so far as to seek, by pardoning Divine injuries, to obtain false praise for compassion; for nothing is more cruel than that pity and compassion which is extended to the impious and those who deserve the worst of torments."[1243] The work begun by victories in the field was, therefore, to be completed by the institution of inquisitors of the faith in every city, and the adoption of such other measures as might, with God's help, at length create the kingdom anew and restore it to its former state.[1244]

As often as rumors of negotiations for peace reached him, Pius was in anguish of soul, and wrote to Charles, to Catharine, to Anjou, to the French cardinals, in almost the same words. He protested that, as light has no communion with darkness, so no compact between Catholics and heretics could be other than feigned and full of treachery.[1245] As the prospect of peace grew more distinct, his prognostications of coming disaster grew darker, and sounded almost like threats. Even if the heretics, in concluding the peace, had no intention of laying snares, God would put it into their minds as a punishment to the king. "Now, how fearful a thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God, who is wont not only to chastise the corrupt manners of men by war, but, on account of the sins of kings and people, to dash kingdoms in pieces, and to transfer them from their ancient masters to new ones, is too evident to need to be proved by examples."[1246] When at last the peace of Saint Germain was definitely concluded, the Pope did not cease to lament over "a pacification in which the conquered heretics imposed upon the victorious king conditions so horrible and so pernicious that he could not speak of them without tears." And he expressed at the same time his paternal fears lest the young Charles and those who had consented to the unholy compact would be given over to a reprobate mind, that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not hear.[1247]

To his last breath Pius retained the same thirst for the blood of the heretics of France. He violently opposed the marriage of the king's sister to Henry of Navarre, and instructed his envoy at the French court to bring up again that "matter of conciliation so fatal to the Catholics."[1248] His last letters are as sanguinary as his first. Meanwhile his acts corresponded with his words, and left the King of France and his mother in no doubt respecting the value which the pretended vicegerent of God upon earth, and the future Saint,[1249] set upon the life of a heretic; for, when the town of Mornas was on one occasion captured by the Roman Catholic forces, and a number of prisoners were taken, Pius—"such," his admiring biographer informs us, "was his burning zeal for religion"—ransomed them from the hands of their captors, that he might have the satisfaction of ordering their public execution in the pontifical city of Avignon![1250] And when the same holy father learned that Count Santa Fiore, the commander of the papal troops sent to Charles's assistance, had accepted the offer of a ransom for the life of a distinguished Huguenot nobleman, he wrote to him complaining bitterly that he had disobeyed his orders, which were that every heretic that fell into his hands should straightway be put to death.[1251] As, however, Pius wanted not Huguenot treasure, but Huguenot blood, with more consistency than at first appears, he ordered the captive nobleman whose head had been spared to be released without ransom.[1252]

With such continual papal exhortations to bloodshed, before us, with such suggestive examples of the treatment which heretics ought, according to the pontiff, to receive, and in the light of the extravagant joy displayed at Rome over the consummation of the massacre, we can scarcely hesitate to find the head of the Roman Catholic Church guilty—if not, by a happy accident, of having known or devised the precise mode of its execution, at least of having long instigated and paved the way for the commission of the crime. Without the teachings of Pius the Fifth, the conspiracy of Catharine and Anjou would have been almost impossible. Without the preaching of priests and friars at Lent and Advent, the passions of the low populace could not have been inflamed to such a pitch as to render it capable of perpetrating atrocities which will forever render the reign of Charles the Ninth infamous in the French annals.

A German account of the massacre at Orleans.

One of the most vivid accounts of the massacre in any city outside of Paris is the contemporary narrative of Johann Wilhelm von Botzheim, a young German, who was at the time pursuing his studies in Orleans. It forms the sequel to the description of the Parisian massacre, to which reference has already been made several times, and was first published by Dr. F. W. Ebeling, in his "Archivalische Beiträge zur Geschichte Frankreichs unter Carl IX." (Leipsic, 1872), 129-189. It was also translated into French by M. Charles Read, for the number of the Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire du protestantisme français issued on the occasion of the tercentenary of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. The chief interest of the narration centres in the anxieties and dangers of the little community of Germans in attendance upon the famous law school. Besides this, however, much light is thrown upon the general features of the bloody transactions. The first intimation of Coligny's wounding reached the Protestants as they were returning from the prêche, but created less excitement because of the statement accompanying it, that Charles was greatly displeased at the occurrence. That night a messenger arrived with letters addressed to the provost of the city, announcing the death of the admiral and the Huguenots of Paris, and enjoining the like execution at Orleans. Although the letters bore the royal seal, the information they contained appeared so incredible that the provost commanded the messenger to be imprisoned until two captains, whom he at once despatched to Paris, returned bringing full confirmation of the story. The provost, a man averse to bloodshed, issued, early on Monday morning as a precautionary measure, an order to guard the city gates. But the control of affairs rapidly passed out of his hands, and, threatened with death because of his moderate counsels, the provost was himself forced to take refuge for safety in the citadel. Ten captains at the head of as many bands of soldiers, ruled the city, and were foremost in the work of murder and rapine that now ensued. But there were other bands engaged in the same occupation, not to speak of single persons acting strictly on their own account. Moreover, four hundred ruffians came in from the country, intent upon making up for losses which they pretended to have sustained during the late civil wars. They showed no mercy to the Huguenots that fell into their hands. Of the Protestants scarcely one made resistance, so hopeless was their situation. Pierre Pillier, a bell founder, had indeed barred his door with iron, but, finding that his assailants were on the point of forcing the entrance, he first threw his money from a window, and then, seizing his opportunity when the miscreants were scrambling for their prize, deluged them with molten lead, after which he set fire to his house, and perished, with his wife and children, in the flames.

There is, happily, no need of repeating here the shocking details of the butchery told by the student. As a German, and not generally known to be a Protestant, he managed to escape the fate of his Huguenot friends, but he witnessed, and was forced to appear to applaud, the most revolting exhibitions both of cruelty and of selfishness. His favorite professor, the venerable François Taillebois, after having been twice plundered by bands of marauders, was treacherously conducted by the second band to the Loire, despatched with the dagger, and thrown into the river. "The last lecture, which he gave on Monday at nine o'clock," says his pupil, "was on the Lex Cornelia [de sicariis] of which he made the demonstration by the sacrifice of his own life." It is pitiful to read that even professors in the university were not ashamed to enrich their libraries by the plunder of the law-books of their colleagues, or of their scholars. The writer traced his own copies of Alciat, of Mynsinger and "Speculator," to the shelves of Laurent Godefroid, Professor of the Pandects, and the entire library of his brother Bernhard to those of his neighbor, Dr. Beaupied, Professor of Canon Law.

In the midst of the almost universal unchaining of the worst passions of human or demoniacal nature, it is pleasant to note a few exceptions. Some Roman Catholics were found not only unwilling to imbrue their hands in the blood of their Huguenot neighbors and friends, but actually ready to incur personal peril in rescuing them from assassination. Such magnanimity, however, was very rare. All respect for authority human or divine, all sense of shame or pity, all fear of hell and hope of heaven, seemed to have been obliterated from the breasts of the murderers. The blasphemous words of the furious Captain Gaillard, when opposed in his plan to destroy Botzheim and his fellow Germans, truly expressed the sentiments which others might possibly have hesitated to utter so distinctly. "Par la mort Dieu! il faut qu'il soit.... Il n'y a ny Dieu, ny diable, ny juge qui me puisse commander. Vostre vie est en ma puissance, il fault mourir.... Baillez-moy mon espée, je tuerai l'ung après l'autre, je ne saurois tuer trestous à la fois avec la pistolle." Men, with blood-stained hands and clothes, boasted over their cups of having plundered and murdered thirty, forty, fifty men each. At last, on Saturday afternoon, after the Huguenots had been almost all killed, an edict was published prohibiting murder and pillage on pain of death. Gallows, too, were erected in nearly every street, to hang the disobedient; but not a man was hung, and the murders still continued. Soon after a second edict directed the restoration of stolen property to its rightful owners; it was a mere trick to entice any remaining Huguenot from his refuge and secure his apprehension and death. The Huguenots were not even able to recover, at a later time, the property they had intrusted to their Roman Catholic friends in time of danger, and did not dare to bring the latter before courts of justice. The Huguenots killed at Orleans, in this writer's opinion, were at least fifteen hundred, perhaps even two thousand, in number.

FOOTNOTES:

[1079] Charles IX. to Mondoucet, August 26th, Compte rendu de la com. roy. d'histoire, Brussels, 1852, iv. 344.

[1080] "Estant croiable que ce feu ainsy allumé ira courant par toutes les villes de mon royaume, lesquelles, à l'exemple de ce qui s'est faict en cestedite ville, s'assureront de tous ceulx de ladite religion." Charles to Mondoucet, Aug. 26th, ubi supra, iv. 345