Part 5 (2/2)

But in nearly all the populous towns, where the Catholic population predominated, the ma.s.sacre was universal and indiscriminate. In Meaux, four hundred houses of Protestants were pillaged and devastated, and the inmates, without regard to age or s.e.x, utterly exterminated. At Orleans there were three thousand Protestants. A troop of armed hors.e.m.e.n rode furiously through the streets, shouting, ”Courage, boys!

kill all, and then you shall divide their property.” At Rouen, many of the Protestants, at the first alarm, fled. The rest were arrested and thrown into prison. They were then brought out one by one, and deliberately murdered. Six hundred were thus slain. Such were the scenes which were enacted in Toulouse, Bordeaux, Bourges, Angers, Lyons, and scores of other cities in France. It is impossible to ascertain with precision the number of victims. The Duke of Sully estimates them at seventy thousand; the Bishop Perefixe at one hundred thousand. This latter estimate is probably not exaggerated, if we include the unhappy fugitives, who, fleeing from their homes, died of cold, hunger, and fatigue, and all the other nameless woes which accrued from this great calamity.

In the midst of these scenes of horror it is pleasant to record several instances of generous humanity. In the barbarism of those times dueling was a common practice. A Catholic officer by the name of Vessins, one of the most fierce and irritable men in France, had a private quarrel with a Protestant officer whose name was Regnier. They had mutually sought each other in Paris to obtain such satisfaction as a duel could afford. In the midst of the ma.s.sacre, Regnier, while at prayers with his servant (for in those days dueling and praying were not deemed inconsistent), heard the door of his room broken open, and, looking round in expectation of instant death, saw his foe Vessins enter breathless with excitement and haste. Regnier, conscious that all resistance would be unavailing, calmly bared his bosom to his enemy, exclaiming,

”You will have an easy victory.”

Vessins made no reply, but ordered the valet to seek his master's cloak and sword. Then leading him into the street, he mounted him upon a powerful horse, and with fifteen armed men escorted him out of the city. Not a word was exchanged between them. When they arrived at a little grove at a short distance from the residence of the Protestant gentleman, Vessins presented him with his sword, and bade him dismount and defend himself, saying,

”Do not imagine that I seek your friends.h.i.+p by what I have done. All I wish is to take your life honorably.”

Regnier threw away his sword, saying, ”I will never strike at one who has saved my life.”

”Very well!” Vessins replied, and left him, making him a present of the horse on which he rode.

Though the commands which the king sent to the various provinces of France for the ma.s.sacre were very generally obeyed, there were examples of distinguished virtue, in which Catholics of high rank not only refused to imbrue their own hands in blood, but periled their lives to protect the Protestants. The Bishop of Lisieux, in the exercise of true Christian charity, saved all the Protestants in the town over which he presided. The Governor of Auvergne replied to the secret letter of the king in the following words:

”Sire, I have received an order, under your majesty's seal, to put all the Protestants of this province to death, and if, which G.o.d forbid, the order be genuine, I respect your majesty still too much to obey you.”

The king had sent a similar order to the commandant at Bayonne, the Viscount of Orthez. The following n.o.ble words were returned in reply:

”Sire, I have communicated the commands of your majesty to the inhabitants of the town and to the soldiers of the garrison, and I have found good citizens and brave soldiers, _but not one executioner_; on which account, they and I humbly beseech you to employ our arms and our lives in enterprises in which we can conscientiously engage. However perilous they may be, we will willingly shed therein the last drop of our blood.”

Both of these n.o.ble-minded men soon after very suddenly and mysteriously died. Few entertained a doubt that poison had been administered by the order of Charles.

The _law_ of France required that these Protestants should be hunted to death. This was _the law_ promulgated by the king and sent by his own letters missive to the appointed officers of the crown.

But there is--_there is_ a HIGHER LAW than that of kings and courts.

n.o.bly these majestic men rendered to it their allegiance. They sealed their fidelity to this HIGHER LAW with their blood. They were martyrs, not fanatics.

On the third day of the ma.s.sacre the king a.s.sembled the Parliament in Paris, and made a public avowal of the part he had taken in this fearful tragedy, and of the reasons which had influenced him to the deed. Though he hoped to silence all Protestant tongues in his own realms in death, he knew that the tale would be told throughout all Europe. He therefore stated, in justification of the act, that he had, ”as if by a miracle,” discovered that the Protestants were engaged in a conspiracy against his own life and that of all of his family.

This charge, however, uttered for the moment, was speedily dropped and forgotten. There was not the slightest evidence of such a design.

The Parliament, to give a little semblance of justice to the king's accusation, sat in judgment upon the memory of the n.o.ble Coligni. They sentenced him to be hung in effigy; ordered his arms to be dragged at the heels of a horse through all the princ.i.p.al towns of France; his magnificent castle of Chatillon to be razed to its foundations, and never to be rebuilt; his fertile acres, in the culture of which he had found his chief delight, to be desolated and sown with salt; his portraits and statues, wherever found, to be destroyed; his children to lose their t.i.tle of n.o.bility; all his goods and estates to be confiscated to the use of the crown, and a monument of durable marble to be raised, upon which this sentence of the court should be engraved, to transmit to all posterity his alleged infamy. Thus was punished on earth one of the n.o.blest servants both of G.o.d and man. But there is a day of final judgment yet to come. The oppressor has but his brief hour. There is eternity to right the oppressed.

Notwithstanding this general and awful ma.s.sacre, the Protestants were far from being exterminated. Several n.o.bles, surrounded by their retainers in their distant castles, suspicious of treachery, had refused to go to Paris to attend the wedding of Henry and Marguerite.

Others who had gone to Paris, alarmed by the attack upon Admiral Coligni, immediately retired to their homes. Some concealed themselves in garrets, cellars, and wells until the ma.s.sacre was over. As has been stated, in some towns the governors refused to engage in the merciless butchery, and in others the Protestants had the majority, and with their own arms could defend themselves within the walls which their own troops garrisoned.

Though, in the first panic caused by the dreadful slaughter, the Protestants made no resistance, but either surrendered themselves submissively to the sword of the a.s.sa.s.sin, or sought safety in concealment or flight, soon indignation took the place of fear. Those who had fled from the kingdom to Protestant states rallied together.

The survivors in France began to count their numbers and marshal their forces for self-preservation. From every part of Protestant Europe a cry of horror and execration simultaneously arose in view of this crime of unparalleled enormity. In many places the Catholics themselves seemed appalled in contemplation of the deed they had perpetrated. Words of sympathy were sent to these martyrs to a pure faith from many of the Protestant kingdoms, with pledges of determined and efficient aid. The Protestants rapidly gained courage. From all the country, they flocked into those walled towns which still remained in their power.

As the fugitives from France, emaciate, pale, and woe-stricken, with tattered and dusty garb, recited in England, Switzerland, and Germany the horrid story of the ma.s.sacre, the hearts of their auditors were frozen with horror. In Geneva a day of fasting and prayer was inst.i.tuted, which is observed even to the present day. In Scotland every church resounded with the thrilling tale; and Knox, whose inflexible spirit was nerved for those iron times, exclaimed, in language of prophetic nerve,

”Sentence has gone forth against that murderer, the King of France, and the vengeance of G.o.d will never be withdrawn from his house. His name shall be held in everlasting execration.”

The French court, alarmed by the indignation it had aroused, sent an emba.s.sador to London with a poor apology for the crime, by pretending that the Protestants had conspired against the life of the king. The emba.s.sador was received in the court of the queen with appalling coldness and gloom. Arrangements were made to invest the occasion with the most impressive solemnity. The court was shrouded in mourning, and all the lords and ladies appeared in sable weeds. A stern and sombre sadness was upon every countenance. The emba.s.sador, overwhelmed by his reception, was overheard to exclaim to himself, in bitterness of heart,

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