One of the great historical questions has been as to the premeditation of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The Huguenot pamphleteers of the day, followed by the overrated De Thou, Voltaire and his school, and the less temperate Catholic writers, maintain that the plot was long before concerted. White, by his chain of authorities, shows that it was at first aimed at Coligny only, and that the general massacre was not premeditated.
Anjou expressly states that, finding the influence of the admiral dangerous to himself and his mother, they determined to get rid of him, and to concert means with the Duchess of Nemours, "whom alone we ventured to admit into the plot, because of the mortal hatred she bore to the admiral," in her mind the real murderer of her husband, the Duke of Guise.
This statement of Anjou is supported by the testimony of Michieli (Baschet, Diplomatie Venetienne, p. 541) and of the nuncio Salviati.
This makes the first move one of the court party against Coligny personally. The Catholic party, then a recently formed organization, had no part in it; and yet, if we may credit the statement of Cretineau Joly, who has never deceived as to a document he professes to possess, Catholicity in France was in imminent peril, Coligny having, in a letter of June 15th, 1572, to the Prince of Orange, given notice of an intended general execution of the Catholics in September. If a general massacre was plotted, the Catholic party were to be victims, not actors.
Coligny's death having been decided on, Henry de Guise was admitted to the plot, and the execution assigned to him. It needed little to stimulate him to shoot down one who had been privy to his father's assassination. An officer, either Maurevert or Tosinghi, was stationed in a vacant house belonging to Canon Villemur, and as Coligny rode past fired at him, cutting off the first finger of the right hand, and burying a ball in his left arm.
Charles was, as all admit, not only not privy to this act, but was deeply incensed at it. He ordered the assassin to be pursued, and, in despatches to other parts of the kingdom, gave assurance of his intention to adhere to the edict of pacification and to punish all who infringed it. Accompanied by his mother and his brother Henry, he went, that same afternoon, to see the admiral. There a long private conversation ensued between the king and Coligny. White gives this at length from a life of Coligny, published in 1576, but which cannot surely be held as authority. It rests probably on no better source than the Mémoires de l'Etat de France.
Charles, in his letter to the French ambassador at London, tells him that this "vile act proceeds from the enmity between Coligny's house and the house of Guise. I will take steps to prevent their involving my subjects in their quarrels."
Whether the interview changed the king's mind as to the source of the attempt, of course is only conjectural. Still acting in good faith, he appointed a commission of inquiry, including members of both religions, the Huguenots apparently suggested by Coligny.
Charles returned to his palace moody and incensed. He ordered guards to protect Coligny against any further violence, and by his demeanor alarmed his mother and Henry. The Duke d'Aumale and Henri de Guise, foreseeing a tempest, withdrew to the Hotel de Guise, and shut themselves up.
The position of affairs was strange enough. The admiral was not wounded so as to excite any alarm as to his recovery; the loss of a finger and a bullet-wound in the arm, injuries not requiring, one would suppose, the nine physicians and eleven surgeons called in. But it was an attempt on the life of the leader of their party, and the Huguenots determined to pursue it at all hazards. The more violent of them marched through the streets in military array, threatening not only the Guises, who were considered the prime movers, but Anjou, the queen-mother, and even the king himself. They passed the Hotel de Guise with every mark of defiance, and proceeding to the Louvre, made their way to the king's presence as he sat at supper, fiercely demanding vengeance: "If the king refuses us justice," they cried, "we will take the matter into our own hands."