Catherine de’ Medici had begun to think of strengthening herself at home and abroad by matrimonial alliances. She wished one of her sons, whether the Duke of Anjou or the Duke of Alençon it mattered little to her, to marry Elizabeth of England, and her daughter Marguerite to espouse the young King of Navarre. Both designs meant that the Huguenots must be conciliated. They were in no hurry to respond to her advances. Both Coligny and Jeanne d’Albret kept themselves at a distance from the Court. Suddenly the young King, Charles IX., seemed to awaken to his royal position. He had been hitherto entirely submissive to his mother, expending his energies now in hunting, now in lock-making; but, if one can judge from what awakened him, cherishing a sullen grudge against Philip of Spain and his pretensions to guide the policy of Roman Catholic Europe.
Pope Pius V. had made Cosmo de’ Medici, the ruler of Florence, a Grand Duke, and Philip of Spain and Maximilian of Austria had protested. Cosmo sent an agent to win the German Protestants to side with him against Maximilian, and to engage the Dutch Protestants to make trouble in the Netherlands. Charles saw the opportunity of gratifying his grudge, and entered eagerly into the scheme. His wishes did not for the time interfere with his mother’s plans. If her marriage ideas were to succeed, she must break with Spain. Coligny saw the advantages which might come to his fellow-believers in the Netherlands—help in money from Italy and with troops from France. He resolved to make his peace with Catherine, respond to her advances, and betake himself to Court. He was graciously received, for Catherine wished to make use of him; was made a member of the Council, received a gift of one hundred and fifty thousand livres, and, although a heretic, was put into possession of an Abbey whose revenues amounted to twenty thousand livres a year. The Protestant chiefs were respectfully listened to when they stated grievances, and these were promptly put right, even at the risk of exasperating the Romanists. The somewhat unwilling consent of Jeanne d’Albret was won to the marriage of her son with Marguerite, and she herself came to Paris to settle the terms of contract. There she was seized with pleurisy, and died—an irreparable loss to the Protestant cause. Catherine’s home policy had been successful.
But Elizabeth of England was not to be enticed either into a French marriage or a stable French alliance, and Catherine de’ Medici saw that her son’s scheme might lead to France being left to confront Spain alone; and the Spain of the sixteenth century played the part of Russia in the end of the nineteenth—fascinating the statesmen of the day with its gloomy, mysterious, incalculable power. She felt that she must detach Charles at whatever cost from his scheme of flouting Philip by giving assistance to the Protestants of the Low Countries. Coligny was in her way—recognised to be the greatest statesman in France, enthusiastically bent on sending French help to his struggling co-religionists, and encouraging Charles IX. Coligny must be removed. The Guises were at deadly feud with him, and would be useful in putting him out of the way. The Ambassador of Florence reported significantly conferences between Catherine and the Duchess de Nemours, the mother of the Guises (July 23rd, 1572). The Queen had secret interviews with Maureval, a professional bravo, who drew a pension as “tueur du Roy.”
Nothing could be done until Henry, now King of Navarre by his mother’s death, was safely married to Marguerite. The wedding took place on August 18th, 1572. On Friday (Aug. 22nd), between ten and eleven o’clock, Coligny left the Louvre to return to his lodging. The assassin was stationed in a house belonging to a retainer of the Guises, at a grated window concealed by a curtain. The Admiral was walking slowly, reading a letter. Suddenly a shot carried away the index finger of his right hand and wounded his left arm. He calmly pointed to the window from whence the shot had come; and some of his suite rushed to the house, but found nothing but a smoking arquebus. The news reached the King when he was playing tennis. He became pallid, threw down his racquet, and went to his rooms.
Catherine closeted herself with the Duke of Anjou to discuss a situation which was fraught with terror.[219]
§ 14. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Paris was full of Huguenot gentlemen, drawn from all parts of the country for the wedding of their young chief with the Princess Marguerite. They rushed to the house in which Coligny lay. The young King of Navarre and his cousin, Henry de Condé, went to the King to demand justice, which Charles promised would be promptly rendered. Coligny asked to see the King, who proposed to go at once. Catherine feared to leave the two alone, and accompanied him, attended by a number of her most trusty adherents. Even the Duke of Guise was there. The King by Coligny’s bedside swore again with a great oath that he would avenge the outrage in a way that it would never be forgotten. A commission was appointed to inquire into the affair, and they promptly discovered that retainers of the Guises were implicated. If the investigations were pursued in the King’s temper, Guise would probably seek to save himself by revealing Catherine’s share in the attempted assassination. She became more and more a prey to terror. The Huguenots grew more and more violent. At last Catherine, whether on her own initiative or prompted by others will never be known, believed that she could only save herself by a prompt and thorough massacre of the Huguenots, gathered in unusual numbers in Paris.[220]
She summoned a council (Aug. 23rd), at which were present, so far as is known, the Duke of Anjou, her favourite son, afterwards Henry III., Marshal Tavannes, Nevers, Nemours (the stepfather of the Guises), Birago (Chancellor), the Count de Retz, and the Chevalier d’Angoulême—four of them Italians. They were unanimous in advising an instant massacre. Tavannes and Nevers, it is said, pled for and obtained the lives of the two young Bourbons, the King of Navarre and the Prince de Condé. The Count de Retz, who was a favourite with Charles, was engaged to win the King’s consent by appealing to his fears, and by telling him that his mother and brother were as deeply implicated as Guise.
Night had come down before the final resolution was taken; but the fanatical and bloodthirsty mob of Paris might be depended upon. At the last moment, Tavannes (the son) tells us in his Memoirs, Catherine wished to draw back, but the others kept her firm. The Duke of Guise undertook to slay Coligny. The Admiral was run through with a pike, and the body tossed out of the window into the courtyard where Guise was waiting. At the Louvre the young Bourbon Princes were arrested, taken to the King, and given their choice between death and the Mass. The other Huguenot gentlemen who were in the Louvre were slain. In the morning the staircases, balls, and anti-chambers of the Palace were deeply stained with blood. When the murders had been done in the Louvre, the troops divided into parties and went to seek other victims. Almost all the Huguenot gentlemen on the north side of the river were slain, and all in the Quartier Latin. But some who lodged on the south side (among them Montgomery, and Jean de Ferrières, the Vidame de Chartres) escaped.
Orders were sent to complete the massacre in the provinces. At Orléans the slaughter lasted five days, and Protestants were slain in numbers at Meaux, Troyes, Rouen, Lyons, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and in many other places. The total number of victims has been variously estimated. Sully, the Prime Minister of Henry IV., who had good means of knowing, says that seventy thousand perished. Several thousands were slain in Paris alone.