The treaty of St. Germain, which has so often been charged on Catherine as an act of perfidy, was rather an imperative necessity, if respite were to be had from the misery into which the land had fallen. Its conditions were honourably carried out, and Catholic excesses were impartially and severely repressed. Charles IX., who was now twenty years of age, began to assert his independence of the queen-mother and of the Guises,[109] and his first movement was in the direction of conciliation. The young king offered the hand of his sister, Princess Marguerite, to Henry of Navarre, and received Coligny and Jeanne of Navarre with much honour at court. Pressure was brought to bear upon him, but, pope or no pope, the king said he was determined to conclude the marriage. The Catholic party, and especially Paris, were furious. The capital, with the provost, the Parlement, the university, the prelates, the religious orders, had always been hostile to the Huguenots. The people could with difficulty be restrained at times from assuming the office of executioners as Protestants were led to the stake. Any one who did not uncover as he passed the image of the Virgin at the street corners, or who omitted to bend the knee as the Host was carried by, was attacked as a Lutheran. When the heralds published the peace with the Huguenots at the crossways of Paris, filth and mud were thrown at them, and they went in danger of their lives: now Coligny and his Huguenots were holding their heads high in Paris, proud and insolent, and the heretic prince of Navarre was to wed the king’s sister.
Jeanne of Navarre died soon after her arrival at court,[110] but the alliance was hurried on. The betrothal took place in the Louvre, and, on Sunday, 17th August 1572, a high daïs was erected outside Notre Dame for the celebration of the marriage. When the ceremony had been performed by the Cardinal de Bourbon, Henry conducted his bride to the choir of the cathedral, and went walking in the bishop’s garden while mass was sung. The office ended, he returned and led his wife to the bishop’s palace to dinner, and a magnificent state supper at the Louvre concluded this momentous day. Three days of balls, masquerades and tourneys followed, amid the murmuring of a sullen populace. These were the noces vermeilles—the red nuptials—of Marguerite of France and Henry of Navarre.
Meanwhile Catherine and Coligny had differed on a matter of foreign policy, and the king, bent on freeing himself from his mother’s yoke, openly favoured the Huguenot leader. Catherine, terrified at the result of her own work, determined to regain her ascendency, and she conspired with her third son, the Prince of Anjou (later Henry III.), to destroy and have done with the Protestants. Coligny had often been warned of the danger he would run in Paris, but the stout old soldier knew no fear, and came to take part in the festivities of the wedding. The sounds of revelry had barely died away when Coligny, who was returning from the Louvre to his hotel, walking slowly and reading a petition, was fired at from a window as he passed the cloister of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, and wounded in the arm. He stopped and noted the house whence the shot came: it was the house of the preceptor of the Duke of Guise. The king was playing at tennis when the news came to him: he flung down his racquet, exclaiming, “What! shall I never be in peace? must I suffer new trouble every day?” and went moody and pensive to his chamber. In a few moments Prince Condé and Henry of Navarre burst in, uttering indignant protests, and begged permission to leave Paris. Charles assured them he would do justice, and that they might safely remain. In the afternoon the king, his mother and the princes, went to visit the admiral. The king asked to be left alone in the wounded man’s chamber, remained a long time with him, and protested that though the wound was his friend’s, the grief was his own, and he swore to avenge him.