History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume II Part 48

Tocsain, 126.

[1007] Mem. de l'estat, _ubi sup._, 124; Jean de Serres (1575), iv., fol.

35; Reveille-Matin, 182; Euseb. Philadelphi Dial., i. 40; De Thou, iv.

(liv. lii.) 590.

[1008] "Avec une contenance fort esmeue et abatue." Mem. de l'estat.

"Humilissimo animo et consternate ore." Jean de Serres, _ubi supra_.

[1009] Jean de Serres's "_consternatiori_ tamen animo" is an evident misprint for "_constantiori_ tamen animo."

[1010] Memoires de l'estat, 124, 125; Jean de Serres, iv., fol. 35 _verso_; Reveille-Matin, 183; Eusebii Philad. Dial. (1574), i. 40; De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 590; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ., ii. 19 (liv.

i., c. 4).

[1011] Eusebii Phil. Dialogi, i. 40, 41; Reveille-Matin, _ubi sup._, 183, copied _verbatim_ in Mem. de l'estat, 126. The Reveille-Matin removes the apparent contradiction between the various accounts respecting the bell that gave the signal for the ma.s.sacre by showing that _both_ bells were rung. So also Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 16 (liv. i., c. 4), after mentioning how Catharine, for the time being, removed Charles's hesitation by alleging the necessity of cutting off the corrupt members in order to save the Church, the Bride of Christ, and citing the saying: "Che pieta lor ser crudele. Che crudelta lor ser pietosa," adds: "Le roi se resout, et elle avance le tocsain du Palais, en faisant sonner _une heure et demie_ devant celui de Sainct Germain de l'Auxerrois." By neglecting the clue thus given, the chronological order of the events of the day has been lost by a number of historians. It will be noticed that the number of the royal guards reported to have been slain was, strangely enough, derived from that of the Huguenot gentlemen butchered in the Louvre by those very guards. The story may have been perpetuated by misapprehension of the facts; it could have arisen only from wilful falsehood.

[1012] Tocsain contre les ma.s.sacreurs (Rheims, 1579), 124, 125; Reveille-Matin, 126; Eusebii Philadelphi Dialogi, i. 41; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 18; De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 586.

[1013] Tocsain contre les ma.s.sacreurs, 125; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 18; De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 586; Euseb. Philad. Dialogi, _ubi supra_.

[1014] "The courtiers and the soldiers of the royal guard were the executioners of this commission on the (Huguenot) n.o.blesse, terminating, they said, by the sword and general disorder, those processes which pens and paper and the order of justice had hitherto failed to bring to an issue." Reveille-Matin, _ubi supra_, 184; Eusebii Philad. Dialogi, i 41; Memoires de l'estat, 127.

[1015] Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 18.

[1016] Tocsain contre les ma.s.sacreurs, 136, 137.

[1017] Reveille-Matin, _ubi supra_, 184, 185; Eusebii Philad. Dial., i.

42; Mem. de l'estat, 127; Jean de Serres (1575), iv. 38; De Thou, iv.

(liv. lii.) 588; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii. 18. The minor details of the story are given, with variations, by different authors. D'Aubigne gives us Biron's answer to the commands and menaces with which Madame de la Chataigneraie sought to gain possession of young La Force: "I would certainly intrust him in the hands of his relative, in order to take care of him, but not in the hands of his next heir, who took too great care of him yesterday morning," ii. 21. It must be noted, however, that the "Memoires authentiques de Jacques Nompar de Caumont, Duc de la Force, Marechal de France, recueillis par le Marquis de la Grange" (Paris, 1843), i. 2-37, so far from accusing the sister of La Force, ascribe the persistent attempts to secure his death solely to Archan (or Larchant), who had _married_ this sister; and they state that, at her death, she left her property, including what she had inherited from her husband, to her brother.

[1018] Memoires de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 146

[1019] Mem. de l'estat, 146; Tocsain contre les ma.s.sacreurs, 129, 130; De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 592; Claude Haton, ii. 678; Agrippa d'Aubigne, ii.

20.

[1020] Tocsain, 136.

[1021] Mem. de l'estat, 146.

[1022] "Radices, atque etiam radic.u.m fibras, funditus evellas." Pii Quinti Epistolae, 111. See _ante_, chapter xvi., p. 308.

[1023] Mem. de l'estat, 147. The children of other cities emulated the example of those of Paris. In Provins, in the month of October, 1572, a Huguenot, Jean Crespin, after having been hung by the officers of justice, was taken down from the gallows by "les petis enfans de Provins, _de l'age de douze ans et au des...o...b.._," to the number of more than one hundred. By these mimic judges he was declared unworthy to be dragged save by his feet, and, his punishment by hanging being reckoned too light, he was roasted in a fire of straw, and presently thrown into the river. Numbers of older persons looked on, approving and encouraging the children; a few good Catholics were grieved to see such cruelty practised on a dead body.

Mem. de Claude Haton, ii. 704-706.

[1024] Mem. de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 128.

[1025] "On en remarqua qui avoient les yeux attaches sur le corps du Baron du Pont, pour voir si elles y trouveroient quelque cause ou quelque marque de l'impuissance qu'on lui reprochoit." De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 587. See Euseb. Philadelphi Dial., i. 45, and Jean de Serres (1575) iv., fol. 39.

[1026] "Le Roy, la Royne mere, et leurs courtisans, rioyent a gorge desployee." Mem. de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 132.

[1027] The prevot, echevins, etc., "du tout, auroient, d'heure en heure, rendu compte et tesmoignage a sadicte Majeste." Extrait des registres et croniques du bureau de la ville de Paris, Archives curieuses, vii. 215.

[1028] Mem. de l'estat, _ubi supra_.

[1029] Tocsain contre les ma.s.sacreurs, Rheims, 1579, p. 140.

[1030] Ibid., _ubi supra_.

[1031] Brantome, Homines ill.u.s.tres francais, M. de Thavannes.

[1032] "Declarant (Alencon) qu'il ne pouvoit approuver vn tel desordre, ny qu'on rompit si ouvertement la foy promise, qui fut cause que sa mere luy dit en termes clairs que s'il bougeoit elle le feroit ietter dans vn sac aual l'eau." Tocsain contre les ma.s.sacreurs, 141.

[1033] Ib., 133.

[1034] De Thou, iv. 592.

[1035] His son, Jacques Merlin, at a later time pastor at La Roch.e.l.le, although he does not mention the particulars of his father's escape, in the journal published for the first time by M. Gaberel in an appendix to the second vol. of his Histoire de l'eglise de Geneve, pp. 153-207, alludes to it--"fut deliure par une grace de Dieu speciale" (p. 155).

[1036] Memoires de Sully (London, 1748), i. pp. 29, 30.

[1037] Tocsain contre les ma.s.sacreurs, 131; Mem. de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 142, etc. De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 592, 593. Strange to say, Von Botzheim was so far misinformed, that he makes Charpentier _weep_ for the fate of Ramus! Archival. Beitrage, p. 117.

[1038] De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 596; Memoires de l'estat de France sous Charles IX. (Cimber et Danjou, vii. 137-142, and in M. Buchon's biographical notice prefixed to the "Commentaires"). An appreciative chapter on Pierre de la Place and his works may be read in Victor Bujeaud, Chronique protestante de l'Angoumois (Angouleme, 1860), 50-66.

[1039] Cahors is over 300 miles in a straight line from Paris, more than 400 miles--153 leagues--by the roads.

[1040] De Thou, iv. (liv. lii.) 594, 595; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ., ii. 23.

[1041] The incident of Charles IX.'s firing upon the Huguenots has been of late the subject of much discussion. M. Fournier and M. Mery have denied the existence, in 1572, of the pavilion at which tradition makes the king to have stationed himself. See Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot.

francais, v. (1857) 332, etc. It has, I think, been conclusively shown that they are mistaken. The pavilion _was_ in existence. But, besides, there is no reason why an incident should be deemed apocryphal because of a popular mistake in a.s.signing the spot of its occurrence. The "Reveille-Matin" and the Eusebii Philadelphi Dialogi, published in 1574, are the earliest doc.u.ments that refer to it. They place Charles at the window of his own room. So does Brantome, writing considerably later. Jean de Serres (in the fourth vol. of his Commentaria de statu, etc. (fol. 37), published in 1575) says: "Regem quoque ex hypaethrio (_i.e._, from a covered gallery) aiunt, adhibitis, ut solebat, diris contenta voce conclamare, et tormento etiam ipsum ejaculari." Agrippa d'Aubigne alludes to it not only in his Histoire universelle (ii. 19, 21), but in his Tragiques (Bulletin, vii. 185), a poem which he commenced as early as in 1577 (See Bulletin, x. 202). M. Henri Bordier has been so fortunate as to discover and has reprinted a contemporary engraving of the ma.s.sacre, in which Charles is represented as excitedly looking on the slaughter from a window in the Louvre, while behind him stand two halberdiers and several n.o.blemen (Bulletin, x. 106, 107). The question is discussed in an able and exhaustive manner by MM. Fournier, Ludovic Lalanne, Bernard, Berty, Bordier, and others, in the Bulletin, v. 332-340; vi. 118-126; vii.

182-187; x. 5-11, 105-107, 199-204.

[1042] The Porte de Bussy, or Bucy, was the first gate toward the west on the southern side of the Seine. During the reign of Francis I. and his successors of the house of Valois, the walls of Paris were of small compa.s.s. In this quarter their general direction is well marked out by the Rue Mazarine. The circuit started from the Tour de Nesle, which was nearly opposite the eastern front of the Louvre--the short Rue de Bussy fixes the situation of the gate where Guise was delayed. A little west of this is the abbey church of St. Germain-des-Pres, which gave its name to the suburb opposite the Louvre and the Tuileries. This quaint pile--the oldest church, or, indeed, edifice of any kind in Paris--after being built in the sixth century, and injured by the Normans in the ninth, was rebuilt and dedicated in 1163 A.D., by Alexander III. in person. On that occasion the Bishop of Paris was not even permitted by the jealous monks to be present, on the ground that the abbey of St. Germain-des-Pres was exempt from his jurisdiction. The pontiff confirmed their position, and his sermon, instead of being an exposition of the Gospel, was devoted to setting forth the privileges accorded to the abbey by St. Germain, Bishop of Paris, in 886. Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, ii. 79-84.

[1043] Tocsain contre les ma.s.sacreurs, 138, 139; Reveille-Matin, 186-188; Mem. de l'estat, 129-131.

[1044] See Henry White, Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew, p. 460.

[1045] Valued at from 100,000 to 200,000 crowns, Reveille-Matin, 190; Mem.

de l'estat, 151. The interesting anonymous letter from Heidelberg, Dec.

22, 1573, published first by the Marquis de Noailles in his "Henri de Valois et la Pologne en 1572" (Paris, 1867), iii. 533, from the MSS. of Prince Czartoryski, alludes to the costly jewels which Henry, now king-elect of Poland, made to the elector palatine, his host, and remarks: "Forta.s.se magna haec fuisse videbitur liberalitas et rege digna, at parva certe vel nulla potius fuit, si vel sumptibus quos ill.u.s.trissimus noster princeps in deducendo et excipiendo hoc hospite sustinuit conferamus, vel si unde haec dona sint profecta expendamus. Ipse siquidem rex (Henry) ne teruncium pro iis solvisse, sed ex taberna cujusdam praedivitis aurifabri Parisiensis, quam scelerati sui ministri in strage illa n.o.bilium ut alias multas diripuerunt, accep.i.s.se ea fertur."

[1046] Memoires de l'estat, _ubi supra_, 150. Versailles, which thus pa.s.sed into the hands of the family of Marshal Retz--the Gondi family--was an old castle situated in the midst of an almost unbroken forest. The Gondi family sold it to Louis XIII., who built a hunting lodge, afterward trans.m.u.ted by Louis XIV. into the magnificent palace, which, for more than a century, was the favorite residence of the most splendid court in Europe. The mode in which the t.i.tle was acquired did not augur well for the justice or the morality which was to reign there. M. L. Lacour has contributed an animated sketch, "Versailles et les protestants de France,"

to the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., viii. (1859) 352-367.

[1047] Discours sur les causes de l'execution, _ubi supra_, 249.

[1048] Royal orders of Aug. 25th, Aug. 27th, etc. Order of the Prevot des marchands, Aug. 30th. Registres du bureau de la ville, Archives curieuses, vii. 222-230. Euseb. Philadelphi Dialog., i. 45.

[1049] Registres du bureau de la ville, pp. 222, 223.