[1540] At Blois not only the Huguenots were not mistreated but the city became a city of refuge (D’Aubigné, III, 344, note 6). The Mayor of Nantes refused to carry out the orders for massacre (Bulletin de la Soc. du prot. franç., I, 59). Hotman was saved from the massacre at Bourges by his students; on the massacre at Troyes see the relation in Arch. cur., VII, 287; and for that at Lyons an article by Puyroche in Bulletin de la Soc. du prot. franç., XVIII, 305, 353, 401; for Normandy, ibid., VI, 461; Revue retrospective, XII, 142 (Lisieux); on the massacre at Rouen, Floquet, Hist. du parlement de Normandie, III, 126 ff.; on the massacre at Bordeaux see Arch. de la Gironde, VIII, 337. De Thou, Book LIII, says there were 264 victims. On the massacre at Toulouse see Bull. de la Soc. du prot. franç., August 15, 1886; Hist. du Languedoc, V, 639. On the non-execution of the massacre in Burgundy see Bull. de la Soc. du prot. franç., IV, 164, and XIV, 340 (documents). The reason for this leniency was the nearness of Burgundy to the frontier.
[1541] The contemporary literature on the massacre is given by M. Felix Bourquelot, editor of the Mém. de Claude Haton in a long note in II, 673-76. Summarized, these opinions are the following: 1. The massacre was done in order to avert a massacre by the Huguenots, after the wounding of Coligny. This was the belief of Marguerite of Navarre (Mémoires, ed. Guessard, 264).
2. The massacre was premeditated by Charles IX and his mother from the time of the Bayonne conference.
3. The massacre was intended to be a military stroke, the government preferring to attempt their overthrow in this way rather than by battle on the open field.
Salviati, the papal nuncio, who ought to have known, explicitly denies the rumor that a conspiracy was on foot by the Huguenots. In a dispatch of September 2 (I quote the French translation of Chateaubriand who copied them for the Paris archives) he says: “Cela n’en demeurera pas moins faux en tous points, et ce sera une honte pour qui est à même de connaître quelques choses aux affaires de ce monde de le croire.” In reply to the Pope’s urgency to extirpate the Protestants, he wrote on September 22: “Je lui fis part de la très grand consolation qu’avaient procuré au Saint Père les succès obtenus dans ce royaume par une grace singulière de Dieu, accordée à toute la Chrétienté sous son pontificat. Je fis connaître le désir qu’avait sa Sainteté, de voir pour la plus grande gloire de Dieu, et le plus grand bien de France, tous les hérétiques extirpés du royaume, et j’ajoutai que dans cette vue le Saint Père estimait que très à propos que l’on revoqua l’édit de pacification.” On October 11th, he writes: “Le Saint Père, ai je dit en éprouve une joie infinie, et a ressenti une grande consolation d’apprendre que sa Majesté avait commandé d’écrire qu’elle espérait qu’avant peu la France n’aurait plus d’Huguenots.” Cardinal Orsini, who was dispatched as legate from Rome to congratulate Charles IX and to support the exhortations of Salviati, describes his audience with the King on December 19. Orsini assured the King that he had eclipsed the glory of all his house, but urged him to fulfil his promise that not a single Huguenot should be left alive in France: “Se si rigardavva all’objetto della gloria, non potendo niun fatto de suoi antecessori, se rettamente si giudicava, agguagliarsi al glorioso ac veramente incomparabili di sua Maesta, in liberar con tanta prudentia et pietà in un giorno solo il suo regno da cotanta diabolica peste.... Esortai ... che con essendo servitio ni di Dio, ni di sua Maesta, lasciar fargli nuovo piede a questa maladetta setta, volesse applicare tutto il suo pensiero e tutte le forze sue per istirparla affatto, recandosi a memoria quelle che ella haveva fatto scrivere a sua Santità da Monsignor il Nuntio, che infra pochi giorni non sarebbe pi un ugonotto in tutto il suo regno.”—Bibliothèque Nationale, MSS Ital., 1,272. The Pope proclaimed a jubilee in honor of the massacre.
Subjoined is a list of the leading authors and articles upon this subject. The most recent consideration which sifts all preceding investigation is that by Whitehead, Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, London, 1904, chaps. xv, xvi; Phillipson, “Die römische Curie und die Bartholomaüsnact,” West Europa, II, 255 ff.; Baguenault de Puchesse, “La St. Barthélemy: ses origines, son vrai caractère, ses suites,” R. Q. H., July-October, 1866; “La premeditation de St. Barthélemy,” R. Q. H., XXVII, 272 ff.; Boutaric, “La St. Barthélemy d’après les Archives du Vatican,” Bib. de l’école des Chartes, sér. III, 3; Theiner, Continuation of Baronius, I (Salviati’s letters); Gandy, “Le massacre de St. Barthélemy,” Revue hist., July, 1879; cf. review in Bull. de la Soc. prot. français; Rajna, in Archivio storico ital., sér. V, No. XXIII, January 15, 1899; Michiel et Cavalli, “La Saint-Barthélemy devant le sénat de Venise. Relation des ambassadeurs ... traduite et ann. par W. Martin,” Paris, 1872; Soldan, Hist. Taschenbuch, 1854; G. P. Fisher, “The Massacre of St. Bartholomew,” New Englander, January, 1880; Loiseleur, “Les nouvelles controverses sur la St. Barthélemy,” Rev. hist., XV, 1883, p. 83; “Nouveaux documents sur la St. Barthélemy,” Rev. hist., IV, 1877, p. 345; Tamizey de Larroque, “Deux lettres de Charles IX,” R. Q. H., III, 1867, p. 567; “La St. Barthélemy, lettres de MM. Baguenault de Puchesse et G. Gandy,” R. Q. H., XXVIII, 1880, p. 268; Dareste, “Un incident de l’histoire diplomatique de Charles IX,” Acad. des sc. moral. etc., LXXI-II, 1863, p. 183; Laugel, “Coligny,” Revue des deux mondes, September, 1883, pp. 162-85.
[1542] The duke of Guise is not so bloody, neither did he kill any man himself but saved divers; he spake openly that for the admiral’s death he was glad, for he knew him to be his enemy. But for the rest, the King had put to death such as might have done him very good service (C. S. P. For., No. 584, September, 1572).
[1543] Montluc clearly appreciated that this was the case and developed the idea in his Commentaires, VI, 231-33. Quite as remarkable are the observations of the Venetian ambassador: Rel. vén., II, 171. Spain anticipated the possibility of a French attempt to recover the Milanais: “The King of Spain being suspicious of the said league has given commission that Italy and Milan be in readiness.”—C. S. P. For., No. 120, February 7, 1572, from Venice.
[1544] Hist. du Languedoc, V, 528, note, 544, note 2. On the siege of Montauban, see La Bret, Histoire de Montauban, 2 vols., 1841. There is a letter of the marshal Brissac on the resistance in F. Fr., No. 15, 555, fol. 104.
[1545] See abstract of Biron’s commission in C. S. P. For., November 6, 1572; cf. Correspondance inédite d’Armand de Gontaut Biron, maréchal de France, par E. de Barthélemy, Paris, 1874, from the originals at St. Petersburg.