History of the Rise of the Huguenots Volume II Part 50

[Sidenote: The ma.s.sacre at Meaux.]

Meaux was naturally one of the first of smaller cities to catch the contagion from the capital. Not only was it the nearest city that contained any considerable body of Huguenots, but, if we may credit the report current among them, Catharine, in virtue of her rank as Countess of Meaux, had placed it first upon the roll. It is not impossible that the circ.u.mstance that this was the cradle of Protestantism in France may have secured it this distinction. About the middle of Sunday afternoon a courier reached Meaux, and at once made his way to the residence of the procureur-du-roi, one Cosset. The nature of the message he bore may be inferred from the fact that secret orders were at once given to those persons upon whom Cosset thought that he could rely, to be in readiness about nightfall. So completely had every outlet from Paris been sealed, that it had proved almost impossible for a Protestant to find the means of escaping to carry the tidings abroad. Consequently the adherents of the reformed faith were yet in ignorance of the impending catastrophe. At the time appointed, Cosset and his followers seized the gates of Meaux. It was the hour when the peaceable and unsuspecting people were at supper. The Protestants could now easily be found, and few escaped arrest, either that evening or on the succeeding day. Happily, however, a large number of Huguenots resided in a quarter of Meaux known as the "Grand Marche," and separated from the main part of the town by the river Marne. The inhabitants of the Grand Marche received timely warning of their danger; and the men fled by night for temporary refuge to the neighboring villages. It was scarcely dawn on Monday morning when the work of plunder begun. By eight o'clock little was left of the goods of the Huguenots on this side of the Marne, and the pillagers crossed the bridge to the Grand Marche. Finding only the women, who had remained in the vain hope of saving their family possessions, the papists wreaked their fury upon them.

About twenty-five of these unhappy persons were murdered in cold blood;[1088] others were so severely beaten that they died within a few days; a few were shamefully dishonored. In most cases, if not in all, outward acquiescence in the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church would have saved the lives of the victims, but the Huguenot women were constant and would yield no hypocritical consent. One poor woman, the wife of "Nicholas the cap-maker," was being dragged to ma.s.s, when her bold and impolitic expressions of detestation of the service so enraged her conductors, that, being at that moment upon the bridge which unites the two portions of the city, they stabbed her and threw her body into the river. In a short time the Grand Marche, which the precise chronicler tells us contained more than four hundred houses, was robbed of everything which could be removed, for not the most insignificant article escaped the cupidity of the Roman Catholic populace.[1089]

These were but the preliminaries of the general ma.s.sacre. The prisons were full of Huguenots, whom it was necessary to put out of the way. Late in the day, on Tuesday the twenty-sixth, Cosset and his band made their appearance. They were provided with a list of their destined victims, more than two hundred in number. Of a score or two the names have been preserved, with their respective avocations. They were merchants, judicial officers, industrious artisans--in short, the representatives of the better cla.s.s of the population of Meaux. Not one escaped. The murderous band were stationed in the courtyard of the prison, while Cosset, armed with a pistol in either hand, mounted the steps, and by his roll summoned the Protestants to the slaughter awaiting them below. The b.l.o.o.d.y work was long and tedious. The a.s.sa.s.sins adjourned awhile for their supper, and, unable to complete the task before weariness blunted the edge of their ferocity, reserved a part of the Protestants for the next day. None the less was the task accomplished with thoroughness, and the exultant cutthroats now had leisure to pursue the fugitives of the Grand Marche to the villages in which they had taken refuge.[1090]

[Sidenote: The ma.s.sacre at Troyes.]

The news of the Parisian ma.s.sacre reached Troyes, the flouris.h.i.+ng capital of Champagne, on Tuesday, the twenty-sixth of August, and spread great alarm among the Protestants, who, with the recent disturbances[1091] still fresh in their memories, apprehended immediate death. But their enemies for the time confined themselves to closing the gates to prevent their escape. It was not until Sat.u.r.day, the thirtieth, that the "bailli," Anne de Vaudrey, sieur de St. Phalle, sent throughout the city and brought all the Protestants to the prisons. Meantime one of the most turbulent of the Roman Catholics, named Pierre Belin, had been in Paris, having been deputed, some weeks before, to endeavor to procure the removal of the place of wors.h.i.+p of the reformed from the castle of Isle-au-Mont, two or three leagues from the city, to some more distant and inconvenient spot.

He remained in the capital until the Sat.u.r.day after the ma.s.sacre, and started that day for Troyes, with a copy of the declaration of Thursday forbidding injury to the persons and goods of unoffending Protestants, and ordering the release of any that might have been imprisoned. It was believed, indeed, that he was commissioned to give the declaration to the bailli for publication. On Wednesday, the third of September, he reached Troyes. As he rode through the streets, he inquired again and again whether the Huguenots at Troyes were all killed as they were elsewhere.

When interrogated by peaceable Roman Catholics respecting a rumor that the king had revoked his sanguinary orders, he boldly denied its truth, accompanying his words with oaths and imprecations. Finding the bailli, he had no difficulty in persuading him to suppress the royal order, and to convene a council, at which Belin was introduced as the bearer of verbal instructions, and a bishop was brought forward to confirm them. Belin and the bishop maintained that the royal pleasure was that the heretics of Troyes should all be murdered on the following Sat.u.r.day night, without distinction of rank, s.e.x, or age, and their bodies be exposed in the streets to the sight of those who should on the morrow join in a solemn procession to be held in honor of the achievement. A writing attached to the neck of each was to contain the words: "Seditious persons and rebels against the king, who have conspired against his Majesty."

The task of butchering the helpless Huguenots in the prison was first proposed to the public hangman. He refused to take any part in it: this, he said, was no duty of his office, and he would consent to perform it only when all the forms of law should have been observed. Other persons were found more pliable, and, under the leaders.h.i.+p of one Perremet, the b.l.o.o.d.y scenes of the prison of Meaux were re-enacted, on Thursday, the fourth day of September, in that of Troyes. How many were the victims we know not; we have, however, the names of over thirty, apparently the most prominent of the number. Others were a.s.sa.s.sinated in the streets. At last, when all had been done that malice could effect, the king's declaration, which promised protection to the Huguenots, was published on Friday, the fifth of September.[1092]

[Sidenote: The great bloodshed at Orleans.]

In Orleans, a city once the headquarters of the Huguenots, where their iconoclastic a.s.saults upon the churches during the first civil war had left permanent memorials of their former supremacy, the ma.s.sacre a.s.sumed the largest proportions. One of the king's court preachers, Arnauld Sorbin, better known as M. de Sainte Foy, had written from Paris letters instigating the inhabitants of Orleans to imitate the example of the capital, and the letters came to hand with the earliest tidings of the Parisian ma.s.sacre. The first murder took place on Monday. M. de Champeaux, a royal counsellor and a Protestant, who as yet was in ignorance of the events of St. Bartholomew's Day, received late on Monday the visit of Tessier, surnamed La Court, the leader of the a.s.sa.s.sins of Orleans, and some of his followers. Imagining it to be a friendly call--for they were acquaintances--Champeaux received them courteously, and invited them to sup with him. The meal over, his guests recounted the story of the tragic occurrence at Paris, and, before he was well over his surprise and horror, asked him for his purse. The unhappy host, still mistaking the character of those whom he had entertained, at first regarded the demand as a pleasantry; but when he had been convinced of his error and had complied, his treacherous visitors instantly stabbed him to death in his very dining-room.[1093] The general butchery began on Tuesday night, in the neighborhood of the ramparts, where the Protestants were most numerous, and from Wednesday to Sat.u.r.day there was no intermission in the slaughter.

Here, more even than elsewhere, the murderers distinguished themselves by their profanity and their undisguised hatred of the Protestant faith and wors.h.i.+p. "Where is your G.o.d?" "Where are your prayers and your psalms?"

"Where is the G.o.d they invoke so much? Let Him save, if He can." Such were the expressions with which the blows of the a.s.sa.s.sin were interlarded. At times he thought to aggravate his victim's sufferings by singing s.n.a.t.c.hes of favorite psalms from the Huguenot psalm-book. It might be the forty-third, so appropriate to the condition of oppressed innocence, in its quaint old French garb:

Revenge-moi, pren la querelle De moi, Seigneur, de ta merci, Contre la gent fausse et cruelle: De l'homme rempli de cautelle, Et en sa malice endurci, Delivre moi aussi.

Or it might be the fifty-first--the words never more sincerely accepted, even when chanted to all the perfection of choral music, in the Sistine Chapel or in St. Peter's, than when, in the ears of constant sufferers for their Christian faith, ribald voices contemptuously sang or drawled the familiar lines:

Misericorde au povre vicieux, Dieu tout-puissant, selon ta grand' clemence.[1094]

"These execrable outrages," adds the chronicler who gives us this interesting information, "did not in the least unnerve the Protestants, who died with great constancy; and, if some were shaken (as were some, but in very small numbers), this in no wise lessened the patience and endurance of the rest."[1095] The number of the killed was great. The murderers themselves boasted of the slaughter of more than twelve hundred men and of one hundred and fifty women, besides a large number of children of nine years old and under. And there was a dreary uniformity in the method of their death. They were shot with pistols, then stripped, and dragged to the river, or thrown into the city moat.[1096] But it is, after all, not the numbers of nameless victims whose honorable deaths leave no distinct impression upon the mind, but the individual instances of Christian heroism, teaching lessons of imitable human virtues, that speak most directly to the sympathies of the reader of an age so long posterior.

The records of French Protestantism are full of these, and one or two of the most striking that occurred in Orleans deserve mention. M. de Coudray--whom the Roman Catholics had in vain endeavored on previous occasions to shake--seeing his house beset and no prospect of deliverance, himself opened the door of his dwelling to the murderers, telling them, with wonderful a.s.surance of faith: "You do but hasten the coming of that blessedness which I have long been expecting."[1097] Whereupon they killed him, in the midst of his invocation of his G.o.d. Another Huguenot, De St.

Thomas, a schoolmaster, died uttering words as courageous as ever fell from lips of early Christian martyrs: "Why! do you think that you move me by your blasphemies and acts of cruelty? It is not within your power to deprive me of the a.s.surance of the grace of my G.o.d. Strike as much as you please; I fear not your blows."[1098] Sometimes the dying men were allowed a few moments to utter a final prayer; but, if their zeal led them too far, their impatient murderers cut short their devotions with oaths and curses, and exclaimed: "Here are people that take a great while to pray to their G.o.d!"[1099] Of resistance there was little, so far were the Huguenots from having collected arms and prepared for such a conspiracy as was imputed to them. If a Huguenot teacher of fencing killed one or two of his a.s.sailants, or if a few gentlemen at different places kept them at bay awhile with stones or other missiles, this, so far from proving their evil intentions, on the contrary, furnishes undeniable proof of the very different results that might have ensued had their means of defence been equal to their courage. For fifteen days after the princ.i.p.al ma.s.sacre the work went on more quietly, the dead bodies being still thrown into the ditch--where wolves, which in the sixteenth century abounded in the valley of the Loire, were permitted to feed upon them undisturbed--or into the river, of whose fish, fattened upon this human carrion, the people feared to eat.[1100]

[Sidenote: Ma.s.sacre at Bourges.]

At Bourges the news of the ma.s.sacre was received late on Tuesday.

Meantime, some of the more sagacious of the Huguenots (among others, the celebrated Francis Hotman, at this time a professor of law in the University of Bourges), alarmed by the wounding of Admiral Coligny, had fled from the city. Even after the news came, the ma.s.sacre was but partial. Although the mayor, Jean Joupitre, had received sealed orders (lettres de cachet) instructing him as to the part he was to take, the munic.i.p.al officers, knowing the ill-will the Guises had always borne to the Huguenots, were in doubt how far the king countenanced the b.l.o.o.d.y work. But the royal letter of the thirtieth of August, accompanying the declaration of the twenty-eighth, to which reference was made above,[1101]

so far from putting an end to the disorder, only rendered it more general.

Bourges became the scene of another of those butcheries of Huguenots first gathered in the public prisons, of which there are so many similar instances that it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that the orders to effect them emanated from a single source at court.[1102]

[Sidenote: At Angers.]

We have already been admitted to the secret of the instructions sent by the Duke of Anjou, through Puigaillard, to M. de Montsoreau, for the destruction of the Huguenots of Saumur and Angers. Certainly there was on his part no lack of readiness to fulfil his sanguinary commission; but the local officers were less zealous, and many of the Protestants were merely thrown into prison. Montsoreau's first exploit at Angers deserves particular mention. M. de la Riviere, the first reformed pastor of Paris, of whom I have spoken in a previous chapter, was at this time residing in Angers, and Montsoreau seems to have been acquainted with him. Going straight to his house, the governor met the pastor's wife, whom, according to the gallant custom prevailing, especially among the Trench courtiers, he first kissed, and then inquired for her husband. He was told that he was walking in his garden, and thither his hostess led him. After courteously embracing him, Montsoreau thus abruptly disclosed the object of his visit: "Monsieur de la Riviere, do you know why I am come? The king has ordered me to kill you, and that at once. I have a special commission to this effect, as you will know from these letters." While saying this he exhibited a pistol which he held in his hand. "I know of no crime that I have done," calmly replied De la Riviere; and then, after obtaining permission to offer a brief prayer to G.o.d, he fearlessly presented his breast to the cowardly a.s.sa.s.sin. Montsoreau did not complete the extermination of the Huguenots of Angers, and Puigaillard soon after arrived to prosecute it; but the Protestant prisoners whom he was to have murdered knew his venal disposition, and found little difficulty in purchasing their liberation.[1103]

[Sidenote: Butchery at Lyons.]

The important city of Lyons, inhabited by a population intensely hostile to the Reformation, had for its governor M. de Mandelot, a decided partisan of the Roman Catholic faction. The munic.i.p.al authorities, however, either surpa.s.sed him in zeal, or, as is more probable, were less apprehensive of the dangers to be incurred by a.s.suming the responsibility of a ma.s.sacre; for of all the "echevins," only two opposed the violent measures of their a.s.sociates. The written protest which they insisted upon entering on the official records is still extant.[1104] The first tidings of the wounding of Coligny by Maurevel reached Lyons on Wednesday morning, the twenty-seventh of August, in a letter from Charles the Ninth to Governor Mandelot, similar in tenor to those which were despatched to every other part of France.[1105] Although the king spoke only of displeasure at the outrage, and of his determination to avenge it, the populace interpreted the event according to their wishes, and instantly circulated reports of the murder of the admiral and all his adherents. The Roman Catholics, long discontented with the toleration extended to those who dissented from the creed of the dominant church, were jubilant and menacing; the Protestants were disheartened, but exhibited a self-control only to be accounted for by the long years of oppression which had wellnigh broken their spirit. The next day came the news of the events of Sunday, and, in the afternoon, letters from Ma.s.so and Rubys, prominent citizens of Lyons then at Paris, who said that they had been instructed by the king to order the authorities to copy the example of the capital. The fanatical party was now clamorous; but Mandelot, cautious and politic, would act on no such instructions, although he had taken the precaution of closing the gates, and of commanding the Protestants, on pain of imprisonment, to remain in their houses. Friday morning came, and with it the arrival of Sieur du Peyrat from court, bearing the royal letter written on the day of the ma.s.sacre, in which it was represented as the exclusive work of the Guises, and the king strenuously enjoined the maintenance of the Edict of Pacification.[1106] These were the _public_ instructions sent to Mandelot; but they were not all. There is a suspicious little postscript to the letter: "Monsieur de Mandelot, you will give credit to the bearer respecting the matter which I have charged him to tell you."[1107] What these verbal orders were which the king, not venturing to commit to paper, commissioned Du Peyrat to communicate, the reply of the governor himself distinctly reveals; it was the arrest of the Protestants and the confiscation of their property.[1108] Still more perplexed as to what course to pursue, Mandelot held a long private conference with the messenger, while the echevins impatiently awaited its conclusion. The governor now called in the munic.i.p.al officers for consultation, and with them agreed to order the immediate imprisonment of the Huguenots. He was not, however, even yet fully convinced of the propriety of this step, for scarcely had he given the order when he recalled it.[1109] Fearing that the troops at his disposal might prove insufficient, and dreading with good reason lest the employment of the city militia for this purpose might lead to scenes of disorder which he would find himself powerless to control, he preferred to send for such reinforcements as the neighboring n.o.blemen of the province could furnish.[1110] Meantime, the commotion throughout Lyons had rapidly increased. On Thursday and Friday nights many members of the Reformed Church had been dragged from their houses as if to prison, but most of them had been barbarously despatched by the way. Among others, one of the ministers, Monsieur Jacques l'Anglois, was stabbed and thrown into the river. On Sat.u.r.day morning Mandelot, seeing the confusion hourly increasing, deemed it impolitic to wait any longer for the troops he was expecting, and resolved upon effecting his purpose by ruse. He therefore published a proclamation by sound of trumpet, bidding all the Huguenots to a.s.semble at his house to hear the good pleasure of the king. The Huguenots, deceived by the professions of his Majesty, came in great numbers; but no sooner had they all arrived, than they were seized by the soldiers and hurried away to prison. The common prison, "La Roanne," being too contracted to contain so large a mult.i.tude, three hundred or more were placed in that of the Archbishop's palace, and others in the cloisters of the Celestine Monks and the Gray Friars. At the same time an inventory was being made of all the goods belonging to Protestants throughout the city.

These measures, instead of allaying, only inflamed the pa.s.sions of the populace the more. That night the murders surpa.s.sed those of the previous nights in number and atrocity, and when Sunday morning dawned the people were ready for still greater excesses. At about eight o'clock they entered unopposed the Gray Friars, and butchered every Huguenot they found. Two hours later, a.s.suming the forms of law, a self-const.i.tuted commission, headed by Andre Mornieu, one of the echevins or aldermen, presenting themselves successively at the archiepiscopal prison and at the Roanne, summoned the inmates to abjure their faith and go to ma.s.s. Only thirty persons in the one, and about twenty in the other, consented. These were sent to the Celestine monastery and afterward released. Of the others a careful list was drawn up. Their fate was sealed; but an unexpected difficulty arose. The public hangman refused to execute the sentence of an unauthorized tribunal. So did the soldiers. At last a.s.sa.s.sins were obtained from the ranks of the turbulent inhabitants. About three o'clock that afternoon the archbishop's prison was visited. To describe with minuteness the scene of horror that ensued would scarcely be possible. Two hundred and sixty-three persons,[1111] of the very best and most industrious part of the population of Lyons,[1112] called by name according to the roll previously made, were murdered in rapid succession.

Never was there an exhibition of more pitiless cruelty. Meanwhile, where was the governor? He had gone, in company with the commandant of the citadel, to suppress a threatened disturbance in the Faubourg de la Guillotiere, on the left bank of the Rhone. He returned only in time to find the deed done, and to disperse those who had gone to the Roanne to repeat it there. His demonstrations of anger were loud, and a liberal reward was offered for the detection of any that had partic.i.p.ated in the slaughter.[1113] But this did not prevent the same body of cutthroats from visiting the Roanne, soon after nightfall, and despatching all the Protestants that were there, to the number of about seventy. Many of them, by an excess of barbarity, the a.s.sa.s.sins tied together by a single rope, and threw, while yet alive, into the water. On the following day the bodies which had not yet found a watery grave were carried to the other side of the Saone, where, stripped and mangled, they were about to be buried in the cemetery of the Abbaye d'Esnay, when the monks refused them admission into the consecrated ground, and pointed to the Rhone as a more fitting destination. Even now they were not spared further mutilation; for an apothecary of Lyons, having initiated the murderers into the valuable properties of human fat as a medicinal substance, the miserable remains were put to new use before being consigned to the river. Down to the Mediterranean these ghastly witnesses of the ferocity of the pa.s.sions of the Lyonnese Roman Catholics carried fear and disgust, and for weeks the inhabitants of Arles and other places carefully abstained from drinking the water of the polluted stream.[1114]

[Sidenote: Responsibility of Mandelot.]

The part which Mandelot took in this awful tragedy has been very differently estimated, but I am inclined to think that the governor is not chargeable with any direct responsibility for the butchery in the prisons of Lyons. Certainly this seems to be established by his letter to the king, written in the morning of the day on which it occurred; for he would scarcely have expressed his great desire and hope to be able to prevent any outbreak, if he had planned, or even foreseen, the events of the evening.[1115] The story must therefore be apocryphal, that Mandelot, in commissioning one of the chief a.s.sa.s.sins to execute the b.l.o.o.d.y work, blasphemously said: "I intrust the whole to you, and, as Jesus Christ said to Saint Peter, whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."[1116] It was, however, no conscientious scruple that deterred the governor from actively taking part. Mandelot was scandalously anxious to obtain his part of the plunder, and was not ashamed to appear as a suppliant for the confiscated property of the Huguenots almost before their bodies were cold.[1117] But he was unwilling, without the express orders of his sovereign, written with his own hand, to commit an act which, the more successful it might be, was the more certain to be disavowed and punished. He was right: a subordinate could not be too careful in dealing with so treacherous a court.

[Sidenote: The ma.s.sacre at Rouen.]

Few cities were so ripe for the ma.s.sacre of the Protestants as the capital of Normandy. There the pa.s.sions of the Roman Catholics, inflamed by the civil wars, had not been suffered to cool. Even in the provincial parliament the papists could hardly submit to receive into their deliberations again the five or six Huguenot counsellors who had been expelled or had fled at the outbreak of hostilities, but whom the Edict of Pacification restored to their ancient functions and dignity; and the secret registers, among other unfortunate scenes, chronicle particularly a violent discussion, degenerating into angry altercation between President Vialard and the Huguenot member Maynet.[1118] The b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sault of the populace of Rouen upon the reformed in March, 1571, mentioned in a previous page,[1119] had been but slightly punished. Few of the guilty failed to escape from the city, and the sole penalty suffered had been an execution in effigy. These turbulent men had ever since that time been watching an opportunity to return. They were now burning with a desire to signalize their advent by b.l.o.o.d.y reprisals. Monsieur de Carouge, governor of the city, was, however, a just and upright man,[1120] and they could not hope for countenance in their plans from him. In fact, the contemporary accounts inform us that he received from the king repeated orders to exterminate the Huguenots of Rouen,[1121] which he could not bring himself to execute, and that he sent messengers to remonstrate with his Majesty who returned without succeeding in shaking his determination; and hereupon the governor found himself obliged to shut himself up in the castle, and permit the work which had been intrusted to others also, to take its course.[1122] The secret records of parliament, however, reveal the fact that Carouge received from Paris the order to leave Rouen and visit other portions of Normandy, in order to restore the quiet and peace which had been much disturbed of late. The real, though perhaps not the ostensible object of this commission was to rid the city of the presence of a magistrate whose well known integrity might render it futile to attempt a ma.s.sacre of the innocent. The records also show that, contrary to the current report, both the munic.i.p.al authorities and the parliament, greatly alarmed at the danger menacing Rouen in case of his departure, implored him to remain;[1123] but that the king's peremptory commands left him no discretion, and he was obliged to leave the unhappy city to its fate. The able historian of the Norman Parliament has rightly observed that the governor, whether he left Rouen because he could not consent to execute the barbarous injunctions that were sent him, or because his character was so well known that the court was unwilling to intrust them to him, is equally deserving of praise; and not without reason does this writer claim similar respect for the judicial body which manifested its desire to save everything, by retaining him at Rouen.[1124] Here, as elsewhere, a great part of the Protestants had been arrested and placed in the prisons, to s.h.i.+eld them from popular violence. The governor believed this to be the safest place for them; and at least one instance is known of a father who was so convinced of it that he brought thither his Huguenot son, whom he might have sent out of the city.[1125]

The storm, so long delayed, broke out at last on Wednesday, the seventeenth of September, and lasted four entire days. The gates were closed, and the organized bands of murderers, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Laurent de Maromme, one of the most sanguinary of the turbulent men who had returned from banishment, and of a priest, Claude Montereul, curate of the church of St. Pierre, had undisputed possession of the city. First they slaughtered like sheep the prisoners in the s.p.a.cious "conciergerie"

of the parliament house and in the other prisons of the city. Next they burst into the houses, and nearly every atrocity which history is compelled at any time reluctantly to chronicle, was perpetrated on unresisting men, on tender women, on unoffending children. Not less than five hundred persons, and perhaps even more, perished in a butchery, whose details I gladly pa.s.s over in silence.[1126] Grim humor and charity were incongruously mingled with the most brutal inhumanity. The a.s.sa.s.sins jocularly denominated their work one of "accommodating" their victims;[1127] and the clothes of the Protestants--whose bodies were buried in great ditches outside of the Porte Cauchoise--after having been carefully washed, were piously distributed among the poor.[1128] The tragedy finished, the farce of an investigation was inst.i.tuted by the officers of justice, but no punishment was ever inflicted upon any Roman Catholic, other than that which could be recognized in the retributive judgments befalling a few of the most notable, and especially the cruel Maromme, at the hand of G.o.d.[1129]

[Sidenote: At Toulouse.]

The previous character of Toulouse, as among the most sanguinary cities of France, was already sufficiently well established. If behind some of the rest on this occasion in the number of victims, Toulouse was inferior only because its previous ma.s.sacres had rendered it a suspicious place of sojourn in the eyes of the Huguenots. Here, too, notwithstanding deceitful proclamations guaranteeing safety and protection, the Protestants were gathered into the public prisons and jails attached to monasteries; and after having been reserved for several weeks, on receipt of orders from Paris were butchered to the number of two or three hundred. Among others, some Protestant members of parliament were hung in their long red gowns to the branches of a great elm growing in the court of the parliament house.[1130] The miscreants that voluntarily a.s.sumed the functions of executioners were in this case drawn in great part from the more unruly cla.s.s of the law students of the university.[1131] It is needless to add that here, as elsewhere, the opportunity for plunder was by no means neglected.

[Sidenote: At Bordeaux.]

The procedure in Bordeaux was so extraordinary, and is so authentically related in a letter of a prominent judicial officer who was present, as well as in the records of the Parliament of Guyenne, that the story of its ma.s.sacre must be added to the notices already given. At first the city was quiet, and the friends of order congratulated themselves that their efforts had been successful in removing the stigma which previous transactions had affixed to its escutcheon. Meantime this policy, united to the fear of a fate similar to that which had befallen their fellow-believers elsewhere, is said to have led to a great number of conversions to the Roman Catholic Church.[1132] But there were those who were unwilling that their prey should so easily escape them. On the fifth of September, M. de Montferrand, Governor of Bordeaux, affecting to have information of a general plot on the part of the Huguenots of the city, had sought and obtained permission of the parliament to introduce three hundred soldiers from abroad. He had thereupon forbidden the celebration of Protestant wors.h.i.+p, hitherto held at a distance of three leagues from Bordeaux, on the plain between the Garonne and the Jalle.[1133] Meantime the churches resounded with the violent denunciations of a famous preacher, Friar Edmond Auger or Augier, "a great scourge for heresy," as his partisans styled him. He exhorted his hearers to imitate the example of Paris, and accused the royal officers of indolence and pusillanimity.

At this juncture the governor received a visit from Monsieur de Montpezat, son-in-law of Villars, the newly appointed admiral. What the latter told him is unknown. But, on the third of October, Montferrand having given out that he had received from the king a roll of names of forty of the chief men of the place, whom he was commissioned to put to death without judge or trial, set about his b.l.o.o.d.y work. Persistently refusing to exhibit his warrant, for three days the governor butchered the citizens at will.[1134]

One member of parliament, against whom he bore a personal grudge, he stabbed with his own hand. The murderers wore red bonnets supplied by one of the "jurats" or aldermen of the city. They executed their commission so thoroughly that the number of the slain was reported as two hundred and sixty-four persons, all Protestants. If any one be mercifully inclined to regard this statement as an exaggeration, and to base upon this instance a general theory that throughout France the number of the victims has been grossly over-estimated, let him read the following entry made in the records of the Parliament of Bordeaux, and recently brought to light; he will learn from this not only the approximate number of the slain as given by the chief agent in the b.l.o.o.d.y work, but the anxiety which the latter felt that he should receive due credit for his share in the great undertaking of the destruction of the French Protestants: "On the ninth of October, the Sieur de Montferrand, having been summoned to the court, among other things said, 'that he had been informed that there were some members of the court who had written to the Sieur Admiral de Villars, royal lieutenant in Guyenne, that the said De Montferrand had killed, on the day of the execution by him made, October the third, only ten or twelve men, a thing (under correction of the court) wholly false, inasmuch as there had been more than two hundred and fifty slain; and he would show the list to any one who might desire to see it.'"[1135]

The same hand that placed upon the parliamentary registers this shameless and atrocious boast, for the benefit of those that should come after, has briefly noted the a.s.sa.s.sination of two members of parliament itself, with an absence of comment in which we can read the evidence of fear. "From the talk of to-day it appears that Messieurs Jean de Guilloche and Pierre de Sevyn were killed as belonging to the new religion."[1136] The tardy and flagrantly unnecessary effusion of blood at Bordeaux exercised no mean influence in emboldening the Huguenots of La Roch.e.l.le to persevere in their refusal to admit the emissaries of Charles the Ninth.

[Sidenote: Why the ma.s.sacre was not universal.]

The ma.s.sacre was, however, neither universal throughout France, nor equally destructive in all places where it occurred. The reason for this is to be found partly in the geographical distribution of the Huguenots, partly in the temper of the people, partly in the policy or the humanity of the governors of cities and provinces. Where the number of Protestants was small, and especially where they had never rendered themselves formidable, it was not easy for the clergy to excite the people to that frenzy of sectarian hatred under the influence of which they were willing to imbrue their hands in the blood of peaceable neighbors. In such places--in Provins, for instance--the Huguenots generally kept themselves as far as possible out of sight, while a few of the more timid consented to place a white cross on their hats, a convenient badge of Roman Catholicism which some were willing to a.s.sume, when they would rather have died than go to ma.s.s.[1137]

[Sidenote: Policy of the Guises.]

In the province of Champagne the Protestants were spared any general ma.s.sacre by the prudent foresight of the Guises, to whom its government was confided. The duke, in order to free himself from the imputation of being the author of the b.l.o.o.d.y plot, and to prove that his private resentment did not extend beyond Admiral Coligny and a few other chiefs, had himself taken several Huguenots in Paris under his special protection.

With the same object in view, he made his province an exception to the widespread slaughter.[1138]

[Sidenote: Spurious accounts of clemency.]

[Sidenote: Bishop Le Hennuyer, of Lisieux.]

Others, however, were, merciful from more honorable motives. A number of instances of clemency are mentioned. It is not, indeed, always safe to accept the stories, some of which are suspicious from their very form, while others are manifest inventions of an age when tolerance had become more popular than persecution. To the category of fable we are compelled to a.s.sign the famous response which Le Hennuyer, Bishop of Lisieux, is reported, by authors writing long after the event, as having returned to the lieutenant sent to him by Charles the Ninth. History is occasionally capricious, but she has rarely indulged in a more remarkable freak than when putting into the mouth of an advocate of persecution, a courtier and the almoner of the king, who was not even in his diocese, but undoubtedly in Paris itself, at the time the incident is said to have occurred, this declamatory speech: "No, no, sir; I oppose, and shall always oppose, the execution of such an order. I am the shepherd of the church of Lisieux, and the people I am commanded to slaughter are my flock. Although at present wanderers, having strayed from the fold intrusted to me by Jesus Christ the great shepherd, they may, nevertheless, return. I do not read in the Gospel that the shepherd should suffer the blood of his sheep to be shed; on the contrary, I find there that he is bound to pour out his own blood and give his own life for them. Take the order back, for it shall never be executed so long as I live."[1139]

[Sidenote: Kind offices of Matignon at Caen and Alencon;]

[Sidenote: of Longueville and Gordes;]

Fortunately, there are other instances on record which are not apocryphal.

Monsieur de Matignon seems to have saved Caen and Alencon from becoming the scenes of general ma.s.sacres, and thus to have endeared himself to the Protestants of both places.[1140] The Duke of Longueville prevented the ma.s.sacre from extending to his province of Picardy.[1141] Gordes, Governor of Dauphiny, who had obtained advancement by the a.s.sistance of the Montmorency influence, excused himself, when repeatedly urged to kill the Huguenots, on the plea that Montbrun and others of their leaders were alive and out of his reach, and that any attempt of the kind would only lead to still greater difficulties. He therefore waited for more direct instructions. When, in his letter of the fifth of September, in reference to a clause in the king's letter just received, he stated that he had received no verbal orders, but merely his letters of the twenty-second, twenty-fourth, and twenty-eighth of August, Charles replied bidding him give himself no solicitude as to them, as they were addressed only to a few persons who happened to be near him,[1142] and enjoined upon him to enforce the royal "declaration," and cause all murder and rapine to cease in his government. Yet even here a number of Huguenots were imprisoned, and a few lost their lives at Romans.[1143]

[Sidenote: of Tende in Provence.]

The manly boldness of the Comte de Tende is said in like manner to have saved the Protestants of Provence. Receiving from the hands of La Mole, a gentleman of Arles and servant of the Duke of Alencon, a letter from the secret council ordering him to ma.s.sacre all the Huguenots in his province, the governor replied: "I do not believe that such commands have emanated from the king's free will; but some of the members of his council have usurped the royal authority in order to satisfy their own pa.s.sions. I need no more conclusive testimony than the letters which his Majesty sent me a few days ago, by which he threw upon the Guises the blame for this ma.s.sacre of Paris. I prefer to obey these first letters, as more befitting the royal dignity. Besides, this last order is so cruel and barbarous, that even were the king himself in person to command me to put it into execution, I would not do it." The magnanimity of the count spared Provence the horrors of a repet.i.tion of the ma.s.sacres of Merindol and Cabrieres, but perhaps cost him his own life, for he soon after died at Avignon, and rumor ascribed his death to poison. The infamous Count de Retz, Catharine's favorite, succeeded him as governor.[1144] Saint Heran, Governor of Auvergne, is said to have replied in very similar words; but as he managed to induce a great part of the Protestants within his jurisdiction to apostatize, less notice was taken of his insubordination.[1145]

[Sidenote: Viscount D'Orthez at Bayonne.]