General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

A little past the hour of midnight on St. Bartholomew's Day (Aug. 24, 1572), at a preconcerted signal,—the tolling of a bell,—the massacre began. Coligny was one of the first victims. After his assassins had done their work, they tossed the body out of the window of the chamber in which it lay, into the street, in order that the Duke of Guise, who stood below, might satisfy himself that his enemy was really dead. For three days and nights the massacre went on within the city. King Charles himself is said to have joined in the work, and from one of the windows of the palace of the Louvre to have fired upon the Huguenots as they fled past. The number of victims in Paris is variously estimated at from 3,000 to 10,000.

With the capital cleared of Huguenots, orders were issued to the principal cities of France to purge themselves in like manner of heretics. In many places the instincts of humanity prevailed over fear of the royal resentment, and the decree was disobeyed. But in other places the orders were carried out, and frightful massacres took place. The entire number of victims throughout the country was probably between 20,000 and 30,000.

The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day raised a cry of execration in almost every part of the civilized world, among Catholics and Protestants alike. Philip II., however, is said to have received the news with unfeigned joy; while Pope Gregory XIII. caused a Te Deum, in commemoration of the event, to be sung in the church of St. Mark, in Rome. Respecting this it should in justice be said that Catholic writers maintain that the Pope acted under a misconception of the facts, it having been represented to him that the massacre resulted from a thwarted plot of the Huguenots against the royal family of France and the Catholic Church.

REIGN OF HENRY III. (1574-1589).—The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, instead of exterminating heresy in France, only served to rouse the Huguenots to a more determined defence of their faith. Throughout the last two years of the reign of Charles IX., and the fifteen succeeding years of the reign of his brother Henry III., the country was in a state of turmoil and war. At length the king, who, jealous of the growing power and popularity of the Duke of Guise, had caused him to be assassinated, was himself struck down by the avenging dagger of a Dominican monk. With him ended the House of Valois-Orleans.

Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre, who for many years had been the most prominent leader of the Huguenots, now came to the throne as the first of the Bourbon kings.

ACCESSION OF HENRY IV. (1589).—Notwithstanding that the doctrines of the reformers had made rapid progress in France under the sons of Henry II., still the majority of the nation at the time of the death of Henry III. were Roman Catholics in faith and worship. Under these circumstances, we shall hardly expect to find the entire nation quietly acquiescing in the accession to the French throne of a Protestant prince, and he the leader and champion of the hated Huguenots. Nor did Henry secure without a struggle the crown that was his by right. The Catholics declared for Cardinal Bourbon, an uncle of the king of Navarre, and France was thus kept in the whirl of civil war. Elizabeth of England aided the Protestants, and Philip II. of Spain assisted the Catholics.

HENRY TURNS CATHOLIC (1593).—After the war had gone on for about four years,—during which time was fought the noted battle of Ivry, in which Henry led his soldiers to victory by telling them to follow the white plume on his hat,—the quarrel was closed, for the time being, by Henry's abjuration of the Huguenot faith, and his adoption of that of the Roman Catholic Church (1593).

Mingled motives led Henry to do this. He was personally liked even by the Catholic chiefs, and he was well aware that it was only his Huguenot faith that prevented their being his hearty supporters. Hence duty and policy seemed to him to concur in urging him to remove the sole obstacle in the way of their ready loyalty, and thus bring peace and quiet to distracted France.

THE EDICT OF NANTES (1598).—As soon as Henry had become the crowned and acknowledged king of France, he gave himself to the work of composing the affairs of his kingdom. The most noteworthy of the measures he adopted to this end was the publication of the celebrated Edict of Nantes (April 15, 1598). This decree granted the Huguenots practical freedom of worship, opened to them all offices and employments, and gave them as places of refuge and defence a large number of fortified towns, among which was the important city of La Rochelle.

The temporary hushing of the long-continued quarrels of the Catholics and Protestants by the adoption of the principle of religious toleration, paved the way for a revival of the trade and industries of the country, which had been almost destroyed by the anarchy and waste of the civil wars. France now entered upon such a period of prosperity as she had not known for many years.