This massacre was no chance-sprung event, like an ordinary popular rising, but had been matured for many years. The Council of Trent, which met in 1545 and continued its sittings till 1563, had devoted those eighteen years to codifying the laws of the Catholic Church. A definite, clear, consistent system was established, and acknowledged as the religious and ecclesiastical faith of Christendom. Men were not now left to a painful gathering of the sentiments and rescripts of popes and doctors out of varying and scattered writings. Here were the statutes at large, minutely indexed and easy of reference. From these many texts could be gathered which justified any method of diffusing the true belief or exterminating the false. And accordingly, a short time after the close of the Council, an interview took place between two personages, of very sinister augury for the Protestant cause. Catherine de Medicis and the Duke of Alva met at Bayonne in 1565. In this consultation great things were discussed; and it was decided by the wickedest woman and harshest man in Europe that government could not be safe nor religion honoured unless by the introduction of the Inquisition and a general massacre of heretics in every land. A few months later saw the ferocious Alva beginning his bloodthirsty career in the Netherlands, in which he boasted he had put eighteen thousand Hollanders to death on the scaffold in five years. Catherine also pondered his lessons in her heart, and when seven years had passed, and the Huguenots were still unsubdued, she persuaded her son Charles the Ninth that the time was come to establish his kingdom in righteousness by the indiscriminate murder of all the Protestants. An occasion was found in 1572, when the marriage of Henry of Navarre, afterwards the best-loved king of France, with the Princess Margaret de Valois, held out a prospect of soothing the religious troubles, and also (which suited her designs better) of attracting all the heads of the Huguenot cause to Paris. Every thing turned out as she hoped. There had been feasts and gayeties, and suspicion had been thoroughly disarmed. Suddenly the tocsin was sounded, and the murderers let loose over all the town. No plea was received in extenuation of the deadly crime of favouring the new opinions. Hospitality, friendship, relationship, youth, sex, all were disregarded. The streets were red with blood, and the river choked with mutilated bodies. Upwards of seventy thousand were butchered in Paris alone, and the metropolitan example was followed in other places. The deed was so awful that for a while it silenced the whole of Europe. Some doubted, some shuddered; but Rome sprang up with a shout of joy when the news was confirmed, and uttered prayers of thanksgiving for so great a victory. If it could have been possible to put every gainsayer to death everywhere, the triumph would have been complete; but there were countries where Catherine’s dagger could not reach; and whenever her name was heard, and the terrible details of the massacre were known, undying hatred of the Church which encouraged such iniquity mingled with the feelings of pity and alarm. For no one henceforth could feel safe. The Huguenots were under the highest protection known to the heart of man. They were guests, and they were taken unawares in the midst of the rejoicings of a marriage. Rome lost more by the massacre than the Protestants. People looked round and saw the butcheries in the Netherlands, the slaughters in Paris, the tortures in the Inquisition, and over all, rioting in hopes of recovered dominion, supported by his priests and Dominicans, a Pope who plainly threatened a repetition of such scenes wherever his power was acknowledged. Germany, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and the Northern nations, were lost to the Church of Rome more surely by the scaffold and crimes which professed to bring her aid, than by any other cause. Elizabeth was now the accepted champion and leader of the Protestants, and on her all the malice of the baffled Romanists was turned. To weaken, to dethrone or murder the English heretic was the praiseworthiest of deeds.
But one great means of distracting England from her onward course was now removed. In former days Scotland would have been let loose upon her unguarded flanks; but by this time the genius of Knox, running parallel with the efforts of the Southern reformers, had raised a religious feeling which responded to the English call. Scotland, freed from an oppressive priesthood, did manful battle at the side of her former enemy. Elizabeth was kept safe by the joint hatred the nations entertained to Rome, and, as regarded foreigners, the Union had already taken place. On one sure ground, however, those foreigners could still build their hopes. Mary, conscientious in her religion, and embittered in her dislike, was still alive, to be the rallying-point for every discontented cry and to represent the old causes,—the legitimate descent and the true faith. The greatest circumspection would have been required to keep her conduct from suspicion in these embarrassing circumstances. But she was still as thoughtless as in her happier days, and exposed herself to legal inquiries by the unguardedness of her behaviour. The wise counsellors of Elizabeth saw but one way to put an end to all those fears and expectations; and Mary, after due trial, was condemned and executed. |A.D. 1587.|Hope was now at an end; but revenge remained, and the great Colossus of the Papacy bestirred himself to punish the sacrilegious usurper. Philip the Second was still the most Catholic of kings. More stern and bigoted than when he had tried to restrain the burning zeal of Mary of England, he was resolved to restore by force a revolted people to the Chair of St. Peter and exact vengeance for the slights and scorns which had rankled in his heart from the date of his ill-omened visit. He prepared all his forces for the glorious attempt. Nothing could have been devised more calculated to bring all English hearts more closely to their queen. Every report of a fresh squadron joining the fleets already assembled for the invasion called forth more zeal in behalf of the reformed Church and the undaunted Elizabeth. Scotland also held some vessels ready to assist her sister in this great extremity, and lined her shores with Presbyterian spearmen. Community of danger showed more clearly than ever that safety lay in combination. Chains, we know, were brought over in those missionary galleys, and all the apparatus of torture, with smiths to set them to work. But the smiths and the chains never made good their landing on British ground. The ships covered all the narrow sea; but the wind blew, and they were scattered. It was perhaps better, as a warning and a lesson, that the principal cause of the Spaniard’s disaster was a storm. If it had been fairly inflicted on them in open battle, the superior seamanship or numbers or discipline of the enemy might have been pleaded. But there must have mingled something more depressing than the mere sorrow of defeat when Philip received his discomfited admiral with the words, “We cannot blame you for what has happened: we cannot struggle against the will of God.”
[SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.]
| Kings of France. | ||
| A.D. | ||
| Henry IV.—(cont.) | ||
| 1610. | Louis XIII. | |
| 1643. | Louis XIV. | |
| Emperors of Germany. | ||
| A.D. | ||
| Rodolph II.—(cont.) | ||
| 1612. | Matthias. | |
| 1619. | Ferdinand II. | |
| 1637. | Ferdinand III. | |
| 1658. | Leopold I. | |
| Kings of England and Scotland. | ||
| A.D. | ||
| Elizabeth.—(cont.) | ||
| (House of Stuart.) | ||
| 1603. | James I. | |
| 1625. | Charles I. | |
| 1649. | Commonwealth. | |
| 1660. | Charles II. | |
| 1685. | James II. | |
| 1689. | William III. and Mary. | |
| Kings of Spain. | ||
| A.D. | ||
| Philip III.—(cont.) | ||
| 1621. | Philip IV. | |
| 1665. | Charles II. | |
Distinguished Men.
Bacon, Milton, Locke, Corneille, Racine, Molière, Kepler, (1571-1630,) Boyle, (1627-1691,) Bossuet, (1627-1704,) Newton, (1642-1727,) Burnet, (1643-1715,) Bayle, (1647-1706,) Condé, Turenne, (1611-1675,) Marlborough, (1650-1722.)