The History of Christianity / Consisting of the Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth; the Adventures of Paul and the Apostles; and the Most Interesting Events in the Progress of Christianity, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time.

by John S. C. Abbott

The mangled corpse fell heavily upon the paving-stones. The duke wiped the blood from the lifeless face, and, carefully scrutinzing the features, said, “Yes: I recognize the man.” Then, giving the pallid face a kick, he exclaimed, “Courage, comrades! we have happily begun. Let us now go for others.”

The tiger, having once lapped his tongue in blood, seems to be imbued with a new spirit of ferocity. There is in man a similar temper: the frenzied multitude became drunk with blood. The houses of the Protestants were marked. The assassins burst open the doors, and rushed through all apartments, murdering indiscriminately young and old,—men, women, and children. The gory bodies were thrown from the windows, and the pavements were clotted with blood.

Charles soon recovered from his momentary wavering, and, conscious that it was too late to draw back, with fiend-like eagerness engaged himself in the work of death. Fury seized him: his cheeks were flushed, his lips compressed, and his eyes glared with frenzy. Bending eagerly from his window, he shouted words of encouragement to the assassins. Grasping a gun, he watched like a sportsman for his prey; and when he saw an unfortunate Protestant, wounded and bleeding, flying from his pursuers, he would take deliberate aim from the window of his palace, and shout with exultation as he saw him fall pierced by his bullet.

A crowd of fugitives rushed into the courtyard of the Louvre to throw themselves upon the protection of the king. Charles sent his own body-guard into the yard with guns and daggers to butcher them all.

Just before the carnage commenced, Marguerite, oppressed with fears of she knew not what, retired to her chamber. She had hardly closed her eyes when the outcry of the pursuers and the pursued filled the palace. She sprang up in her bed, and heard some one struggling at the door, and shrieking “Navarre! Navarre!”

The door was burst open; and one of her husband’s attendants rushed in, covered with wounds and blood, and pursued by four soldiers of her brother’s guard. The captain of the guard at that moment entered the room, pursuing his victim.

Marguerite, almost insane with terror, fled to the chamber of her sister. The palace was filled with shouts and shrieks and uproar. As she was rushing through the hall, she encountered another Protestant gentleman flying before the crimsoned sword of his pursuers: he was covered with blood flowing from many ghastly gashes. Just as he reached the young Queen of Navarre, his pursuer plunged a sword through his body; and he fell dead at her feet.

No tongue can tell the horrors of that night: it would require volumes to detail its scenes. While the carnage was in progress, a body of soldiers entered the chamber of Henry of Navarre, and conveyed him to the presence of the king. The imbecile monarch, with blasphemous oaths and a countenance inflamed with fury, ordered him to abandon Protestantism, or prepare to die. Henry, to save his life, ingloriously yielded, and, by similar compulsion, was induced to send an edict to his own dominions, prohibiting the exercise of any religion but that of Rome.

When the gloom of night had passed, and the sabbath sun dawned upon Paris, a spectacle was witnessed such as even that blood-renowned metropolis has seldom presented. The city still resounded with tumult; the pavements were gory, and covered with the dead; men, women, and children were still flying in every direction, wounded and bleeding, pursued by merciless assassins, riotous with demoniac laughter, and drunk with blood.

The report of guns and pistols, and of continued volleys of musketry, from all parts of the city, proved the universality of the massacre. Miserable wretches, smeared with blood, swaggered along with ribald jests and fiend-like howlings, hunting for the Protestants; corpses, torn and gory, strewed the streets, and dissevered heads were spurned like footballs along the pavements; priests in sacerdotal robes, and with elevated crucifixes,urged their emissaries not to grow weary in the work of exterminating God’s enemies; the most distinguished nobles of the court and of the camp rode through the streets with gorgeous retinue, encouraging the massacre.