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Charles IX. fired with his own hand on his Protestant subjects whom he had delivered over to the evil passions of the aristocracy and of the populace; or whether the balcony from which he is said to have indulged in this ferocious pastime existed at that time in the sixteenth century, at the palace of the Louvre, and overlooking the Seine. These questions are not without historical interest, and it is well for learned men to study them; but we consider them incapable of being resolved with certainty. And even were they resolved, they would not give the key to the character of Charles IX., and to the portion which appertains to him in the deed of cruelty with which his name remains connected. The great historical fact of the St. Bartholomew is that to which we confine ourselves; and we have attempted to depict it accurately as regards Charles IX. : his hesitations and foolish resolutions; his mingling of open-heartedness and double-dealing in the treatment of Coligny; toward whom he felt himself attracted, without fully understanding him, and his childish weakness in the presence of his mother, whom he rather feared than trusted.

When he had plunged into the madness of the massacre; when after exclaiming "Kill them all!" he had witnessed the killing of Coligny and La Rochefoucauld, the companions of his royal amusements, Charles IX. gave himself up to a paroxysm of mad fury. He was asked whether the two young Huguenot princes, Henry of Navarre and Henry de Condé, were also to be slain. Marshal de Retz was in favor of this, Marshal de Tavannes was opposed to it, and it was decided to spare them. On the very night of St. Bartholomew the King sent for the two Henrys. "I mean for the future," he said, "to have but one religion in my kingdom-the Mass or Death; make your choice." Henry of Navarre reminded the King of his promises, and asked for time to consider. Henry de Condé answered that he would remain firm in the true religion, though he should have to give up his life for it. "Seditious madman, rebel, and the son of a rebel," said Charles, "if within three days you do not change your language, I will have you strangled!"

At this first juncture the King saved from massacre

none but Ambrose Paré, his surgeon, and his nurse, both Huguenots. On the night after the murder of Coligny he sent for Ambrose Paré into his chamber, and made him go into his wardrobe, "ordering him," says Brantome, "not to stir, and saying that it was not reasonable that one who could be of service to a whole world should be thus put to death." A few days afterward the King said to Paré, "Now you really must become a Catholic." Paré replied: "By God's light, I think, Sire, you must surely remember that you promised me, in order that I should never disobey you, that you, on the other hand, would not bid me do four things find my way back into my mother's womb; catch myself fighting in a battle; leave your service; or go to Mass." After a moment's silence, Charles rejoined: "Ambrose, I do not know what has come over me during the last two or three days; but I feel my mind and my body greatly excited, just in fact, as if I had a fever. Meseems every moment, whether waking or sleeping, that those slaughtered corpses keep appearing to me, with their faces all hideous and cov ered with blood. I wish that the helpless and the innocent had not been included." And, adds Sully, in his Economics royales, "He next day issued his orders, prohibiting, on pain of death, any slaying or plundering; the which, were, nevertheless, very ill observed, the animosities and fury of the populace being too much inflamed to defer to them."

Historians, Catholic or Protestant, contemporary or investigating, differ widely as to the number of victims in this massacre. According to DeThou there were about 2,000 killed in Paris the first day; D'Aubigné says 3,000; Brantome speaks of 4,000 bodies that Charles IX. might have seen floating down the Seine; La Popenlière reduces them to 1,000. There is to be found in the account-books of the City of Paris a payment to the grave-diggers of the Cemetery of the Innocents for having interred 1,100 dead bodies stranded at the turns of the Seine near Chaillot, Auteuil, and St. Cloud. It is probable that many bodies were carried still further, and that the corpses were not all thrown into the river.

The uncertainty is still greater when we come to speak of the number of victims in the whole of France. DeThou estimates it at 30,000; Sully at 70,000; Péréfixes, Archbishop of Paris in the nineteenth century, raises it to 100,000; Papirus Masson and Davila reduce it to 10,000, without clearly distinguishing between the massacre at Paris and those of the provinces. Other historians fix upon 40,000.

Great uncertainty also prevails as to the execution of the orders issued from Paris to the Governors of the provinces. The names of the Viscount D'Orte, Governor at Bayonne, and of John Le Hennuyer, Bishop of Lisieux, have become famous from their having refused to take part in the massacre. But the authenticity of the letter from the Viscount D'Orte to Charles IX. is disputed, though the fact of his resistance appears certain; and as for the Bishop John Le Hennuyer, M. de Forméville seems to us to have demonstrated in his Histoire de l'ancien Evêche-comté de Lisieux that "there was no occasion to save the Protestants of Lisieux in 1572, because they did not find themselves in any danger of being massacred; and that the merit of it cannot be attributed to anybody-to the Bishop Le Hennuyer, any more than to Captain Fumichon, Governor of the town. It was only the general course of events and the discretion of the municipal officers of Lisieux that did it all."

One thing which is quite true, and, which it is good to call to mind in the midst of so great a general criminality, is that it met with a refusal to be associated in it. President Jeanin at Dijon, the Count de Tende in Provence, Philibert de la Guiche at Mâcon, Tanneguy Le Veneur de Carrouge at Rouen, the Count de Geordes in Dauphiny, and many other chiefs, military or civil, openly repudiated the example set by the murderers of Paris; and the municipal body of Nantes-a very Catholic town-took upon this subject a resolution which does honor to its patriotic firmness, as well as to its Christian loyalty.

A great good man-a great functionary and a great scholar in disgrace for six years past-the Chancellor Michael de L'Hospital-received about this time in his

retreat at Vignay, a visit from a great philosopher, Michael de Montaigne, "anxious," said his visitor, "to come and testify to you the honor and reverence with which I regard your competence, and the special qualities which are in you-for as to the extraneous and the fortuitous, it is not to my taste to put them down in the account." Montaigne chose a happy moment for disregarding all but the personal and special qualities of the Chancellor. Shortly after his departure L'Hospital was warned that some sinister-looking horsemen were coming, and that he would do well to take care of himself. "No matter, no matter," he answered, "it will be as God pleases, when my hour has come." Next day he was told that those men were approaching his house, and he was asked whether he would not have the gates shut against them, and have them fired upon in case they attempted to force an entrance. "No," said he, "if the small gate will not do for them to enter by, let the big one be opened." A few hours afterward L'Hospital was informed that the King and the Queen-mother were sending other horsemen to protect him. "I did not know," said the old man, "that I had deserved either death or pardon." A rumor of his death flew abroad amongst his enemies, who rejoiced at it. "We are told," wrote Cardinal Granvelle to his agent at Brussels, "that the King has had Chancellor de L'Hospital and his wife dispatched, which would be a great blessing. The agent, more enlightened than his chief, denied the fact, adding, "They are a fine bit of rubbish left-L'Hospital and his wife." Charles IX. wrote to his old adviser, to reassure him, "loving you as I do." Sometime after, however, he demanded of him his resignation of the title of Chancellor, wishing to confer it upon La Birague, to reward him for his co-operation in the St. Bartholomew. L'Hospital gave in his resignation on the 1st of February, 1573, and died six weeks afterward. "I am just at the end of my long journey," he wrote to the King, and the Queen-mother; "and shall have no more business but with God. I implore him to give you His grace, and to lead you with His hand in all your affairs, and in the government of this great and beautiful kingdom which He hath committed to your keeping, with all

gentleness and clemency toward your good subjects, in imitation of Himself, who is good and patient in bearing our burthens, and prompt to forgive you and pardon you everything."

From the 24th to the 31st of August, 1572, the conduct of Charles IX. and the Queen-mother produced nothing but a confused mass of orders and counterorders, affirmations and denials, words and actions incoherent and contradictory, all caused by the habit of lying, and the desire of escaping from the peril or embarrassment of the moment. On the very first day of the massacre, about mid-day, the provost of tradesmen and the sheriffs, who had not taken part in the "Paris matins," came complaining to the King "of the pillage, sack, and murder which were being committed by many belonging to the suite of his Majesty, as well as to those of the princes, princesses, and lords of the Court by noblemen, archers, and soldiers of the guard, as well as by all sorts of gentry and people mixed with them and under their wing." Charles ordered them "to get on horseback, take with them all the forces in the city, and keep their eyes open day and night to put a stop to the sad murder, pillage, and sedition arising because of the rivalry between the houses of Guise and Chatillon, and because they of Guise had been threatened by the Admiral's friends, who suspected them of being at the bottom of the hurt inflicted upon him." The same day he addressed to the governors of the provinces a letter in which he invested the disturbance with the same character, and gave the same explanation of it. The Guises complained violently of being thus disavowed by the King, who had the face to throw upon them alone the odium of the massacre which he had ordered.

Next day, August 25th, the King wrote to all his agents, at home and abroad, another letter affirming that "what had happened at Paris had been done solely to prevent the execution of an accursed conspiracy that the admiral and his allies had concocted against him, his mother and his brothers;" and on the 25th of August he went with his own brothers to hold in state a "bed of justice," and make to the Parliament the same declaration against Coligny and his party. "He could

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