Volume II Part 45 (1/2)

No loss was more sensibly felt by the scientific world than that of the learned Pierre de la Ramee, or Ramus, a philosopher second to none of his day. The professor might possibly have escaped if his only offence had been his Protestant views; but Ramus had had the temerity to attack Aristotle, and to attempt to reform the faulty p.r.o.nunciation of the Latin language. For these unpardonable sins he was tracked to the cellar in which he had hidden, by a band of robbers under the guidance of Jacques Charpentier, a jealous rival, with whom he had had acrimonious discussions. After being compelled to give up a considerable sum of money, he was despatched with daggers, and thrown from an upper window into the court of his college. Never was philosophic heterodoxy more thoroughly punished; for if the whipping, dragging through the filthy streets, and dismembering of a corpse by indignant students with the approval of their teachers, could atone for such grave errors, the anger of the ill.u.s.trious Stagirite must have been fully appeased. If anything can clearly exhibit the depth of moral degradation to which Roman Catholic France had fallen, it is the fact that Charpentier unblus.h.i.+ngly accepted the praise which was liberally showered upon him for his partic.i.p.ation in this disgraceful affair.[1037]

[Sidenote: President Pierre de la Place.]

Scarcely less signal a misfortune to France was the murder of Pierre de la Place, president of the Cour d'Aides, whose excellent ”Commentaries on the State of Religion and the Republic” const.i.tute one of our best guides through the short reign of Francis the Second and the early part of the reign of Charles the Ninth. This eminent jurist, even more distinguished as a writer on Christian morals than as a historian, had first embraced the Reformation at a time when the recent martyrdom of Anne du Bourg served as a significant reminder of the perils attending a profession of Protestant views. President de la Place had been visited in his house early in the morning, on the first day of the ma.s.sacre, by Captain Michel, an arquebusier of the king, who, entering boldly with his weapons and with the white napkin bound on his left arm, informed him of the death of Coligny, and the fate in reserve for the rest of the Huguenots. The soldier pretended that the king wished to exempt La Place from the general slaughter, and bade him accompany him to the Louvre. However, a gift of a thousand crowns induced the fellow instead to lead the president's daughter and her husband to a place of safety in the house of a Roman Catholic friend. But La Place himself, after having applied at three different houses belonging to persons of his acquaintance and been denied admission, was compelled to return to his home and there await his doom. A day pa.s.sed, during which La Place and his wife were subjected to constant alarms. At length new orders came in the king's name, enjoining upon him without fail to repair instantly to the palace. The meaning was unmistakable; it was the road to death. But neither the Huguenot's piety nor his courage failed him. He gently raised his wife, who had fallen on her knees to beg the messenger to save her husband's life, and reminded her that she should have recourse to G.o.d alone, not to an arm of flesh.

And he sternly rebuked his eldest son, who, in a moment of weakness, had placed a white cross on his hat, in the hope of saving his life. ”The true cross we must wear,” he said, ”is the trials and afflictions sent to us by G.o.d as sure pledges of the bliss and eternal life He has prepared for His own followers.” It was with unruffled composure that he bade his weeping friends farewell. His apprehensions were soon realized; he was despatched by murderers who had been waiting for him, and before long his body was floating down the Seine toward the sea.[1038]

[Sidenote: Regnier and Vezins.]

From such instances of inhumanity it is a relief to turn to one of a few incidents wherein the finer feelings triumphed over prejudice, difference of religious tenets, and even personal hatred. There were in Paris two gentlemen, named Vezins and Regnier, of good families in the province of Quercy in southern France. Both were equally distinguished for their valor; but their dispositions were singularly unlike, for while the Huguenot Regnier was noted for his gentle manners, the Roman Catholic Vezins, who was lieutenant of the governor, the Viscount of Villars, had acquired unenviable notoriety because of his ferocity. Between the two there had for some time existed a mortal feud, which their common friends had striven in vain to heal. While the ma.s.sacre was at its height, Regnier was visited by his enemy, Vezins. The latter, after effecting an entrance into the house by breaking down the door, fiercely ordered the Huguenot--who, well a.s.sured that his last hour was come, had fallen upon his knees to implore the mercy of G.o.d--to rise and follow him. A horse stood saddled at the door, upon which Regnier was told to mount. In his enemy's train he rode unharmed through the streets of Paris, then through the gates of the city. Still Vezins, without vouchsafing a word of explanation, kept on his way toward Cahors, the capital of Quercy, whither he had been despatched by the government.[1039] For many successive days the journey lasted. The prisoner was well guarded, but he was also well lodged and fed. At last the party reached the very castle of Regnier, and here his captor broke the long silence. ”As you have seen,” said he, ”it would have depended only on myself to take advantage of the opportunity which I have long been seeking; but I should be ashamed to avenge myself in this way upon a man so brave as you. In settling our quarrel I desire that the danger shall be equal. Be well a.s.sured that you will find me as ready to decide our dispute in a manner becoming gentlemen, as I have been eager to save you from inevitable destruction.” It need scarcely be said that the Huguenot could not find words sufficiently strong to express his grat.i.tude; but Vezins merely replied: ”I leave it to you to choose whether you wish me to be your friend or your enemy; I saved your life only to enable you to make your election.” With these words he abruptly left him and rode away, nor would he ever consent even to take back the horse upon which he had brought Regnier in safety so many leagues.[1040]

[Sidenote: Escape of Montgomery and Chartres.]

[Sidenote: Charles himself fires at them from the Louvre.]

A number of the Huguenot n.o.blemen were lodged on the southern side of the Seine, outside of the walls, in the Faubourg Saint Germain. Count Montgomery, the Vidame of Chartres, Beauvoir la Nocle, and Frontenay, a member of the powerful Rohan family, were among the most distinguished.

After the admiral, there were certainly no Huguenots whom Catharine was more anxious to destroy than Montgomery and Chartres. Accordingly the ma.s.sacre, which began near the Louvre, was to have been executed simultaneously upon them, and the work was intrusted to M. de Maugiron.

But the delay of the Roman Catholics saved them. Marcel, the former prevot des marchands, who had been instructed to furnish one thousand men, was not ready in time; and Dumas, who was to have acted as guide, overslept the appointed hour. About five o'clock in the morning a Huguenot succeeded in swimming across the river, and carried to Montgomery the first tidings of the events of the last two hours. The count at once notified his comrades, but, although there were among them those who had been most urgent to leave Paris immediately after Maurevel's attack upon Coligny, few of the n.o.bles would harbor the thought that Charles was so lost to honor as to have plotted the a.s.sa.s.sination of his invited guests. They preferred to believe that the king was himself in danger through a sudden commotion occasioned by the Guises. Acting upon this theory, the Huguenots proceeded in a body toward the Seine, intending to cross and lend a.s.sistance to the royal cause; but, on reaching the river's bank, they were speedily undeceived. They saw a band of two hundred soldiers of the royal guard coming toward them in boats, and discharging their arquebuses, with cries of ”_Tue! Tue!_”--”Kill! Kill!” Charles himself was descried at a window of the Louvre, looking with approval upon the scene. There is good authority also, for the story that, in his eagerness to exterminate the Huguenots, Charles s.n.a.t.c.hed an arquebuse from the hand of an attendant, and fired at them, exclaiming, ”Let us shoot, _mort Dieu_, they are fleeing!”[1041]

Montgomery and his companions had by this time recognized their mistake, and hesitated no longer to flee from the perfidious capital. They promptly took to horse, and rode hard to reach Normandy and the sea. This part of the prey was, however, too precious to be permitted to escape.

Accordingly, Guise, Aumale, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Angouleme, and a number of ”gentilhommes tueurs,” started in pursuit. But an accident prevented them from overtaking the Huguenots. When Guise and his party reached the Porte de Bussy[1042]--the gate leading from the city into the faubourg in which the Protestants had been lodging--which was closed in accordance with the king's orders, they found that they had been provided by mistake with the wrong key, and the delay experienced in finding the right one afforded Montgomery an advantage in the race, of which he made good use.[1043]

[Sidenote: The ma.s.sacre continues.]

The carnival of blood, which had been so successfully ushered in on that ill-starred Sunday of August, was maintained on the succeeding days with little abatement of its frenzied excitement. Paris soon resembled a vast charnel-house. The dead or dying lay in the open streets and squares, they blocked the doors and carriage-ways, they were heaped in the courtyards.

When the utmost that impotent pa.s.sion could do to these lifeless remains was accomplished, the Seine became the receptacle. Besides those Huguenots whom their murderers dragged to the bridges or wharves to despatch by drowning, both by day and by night wagons laden with the corpses of men and women, and even of young children, were driven down to the river and emptied of their human freight. But the current of the crooked Seine refused to carry away from the capital all these evidences of guilt. The sh.o.r.es of its first curve, from Paris to the bridge of St. Cloud, were covered with putrefying remains, which the munic.i.p.ality were compelled to inter, through fear of their generating a pestilence. And so we read, in the registers of the Hotel-de-Ville, of a payment of fifteen livres tournois, on the ninth of September, for the burial of the dead bodies found near the Convent of Chaillot, and of a second payment of twenty livres on the twenty-third, for the burial of eleven hundred more, near Chaillot, Auteuil, and St. Cloud.[1044]

[Sidenote: Not a popular movement.]

[Sidenote: Plunder of the rich.]

The ma.s.sacre was not in its origin a popular outbreak. It sprang from the ambition and vindictive pa.s.sions of the queen mother, and others, whom the ministers of a corrupt religion had long accustomed to the idea that the extermination of heretics is not a sin, but the highest type of piety. The people were called in only as a.s.sistants. Probably the first intention was only to hold the munic.i.p.al forces in readiness to overcome any resistance which the Protestants might offer. But the ma.s.sacre succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectations of the conspirators. Very few of the victims defended themselves or their property; scarcely one Roman Catholic was slain. And now the populace, having had a taste of blood, could no longer be restrained. Whether the plunder of the Protestants entered into the original calculations of Catharine and her advisers, may perhaps be doubted. But there is no question as to the turn which the affair soon took in the minds of those engaged in it. Pillage was not always countenanced by church and state: as a violation of the second table of the Law, it was, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, atoned for by penance and ecclesiastical censures; as a breach of the royal edicts, it was likely to be punished with hanging or still more painful modes of execution.

Consequently, when by furnis.h.i.+ng arms the civil power authorized the most severe measures against those whom it accused of foul conspiracy against the king, and when the professed minister of Christ and His gospel of peace blessed the work of exterminating G.o.d's enemies and the king's, there was no lack of men willing to profit by the rare and unexpected opportunity. Nor did the courtiers disdain dishonest gain. The Duke of Anjou was known to have enriched himself by the plunder of the shop of Baduere, the king's jeweller.[1045] n.o.blemen, besides robbing their victims of money, extorted from them, in return for a promise to spare their lives, deeds of valuable lands, or papers resigning in their favor high offices in the government. It was frequently the case that, after giving such presents, the Huguenot was put out of the way at once, in order to prevent him from ever retracting. Thus, Martial de Lomenie, a secretary of the king, was murdered in prison, after having resigned his office in favor of Marshal Retz, and sold to him his estate of Versailles, at such a price as the latter chose to name, in the vain hope that this would secure him liberty and life.[1046] The extent to which robbery was carried on the occasion of the ma.s.sacre is reluctantly conceded in the pamphlet, which was published immediately after, as an apology of the court for the hideous crime; and an attempt is made to justify it, which is worthy of the source from which it drew its inspiration: ”Now this good-will of the people to sustain and defend its prince, to espouse his quarrel, and to hate those who are not of his religion, is very praiseworthy; and if in this execution [the ma.s.sacre] some pillaging has taken place, we must excuse the fury of a people impelled by a worthy zeal--a zeal hard to be restrained and bridled when once excited.”[1047]

[Sidenote: Orders issued to lay down arms.]

[Sidenote: Little heed given to them.]

But, despite panegyrists, the ma.s.sacre had not been in progress many hours before the very magistrates of the city appear to have become apprehensive lest the movement might a.s.sume dangerous dimensions. It was only about eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, as the registers of the Hotel de Ville inform us, when Charles was waited upon by the prevot des marchands and the echevins. They came to inform him that ”a number of persons, partly belonging to the suite of his Majesty, partly to that of the princes, princesses, and lords of the court--gentlemen, archers of the king's body-guard, soldiers of his suite, as well as all sorts of people mingled with them and under their authority--were plundering and pillaging many houses and killing many persons in the streets.” This was certainly no news to Charles; but as he desired, now that the ma.s.sacre had begun, not to enrich the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Paris, but to fill his own coffers, he deemed it best to prohibit any further action on their part, and to leave the rest of the work to his own commissioned servants.

Accordingly the munic.i.p.al authorities were directed to ride through the city with all the troops at their disposal, and to see to it, both by day and night, that the bloodshed and robbery should cease. ”Sir William Guerrier”--thus runs one of the commissions to the ”quarteniers” issued from the central bureau of the city, in pursuance of these directions--”give commandment to all burgesses and inhabitants of your quarter, who to-day have taken up arms _according to the king's order_, to lay them down, and to retire and remain quietly in their houses, ...

according to the king's command conveyed to us by my Lord of Nevers.” And this doc.u.ment is accompanied with another, of the same date, applying to soldiers of the guard or others, who should pillage or maltreat Protestants, and threatening them with punishment. Such a proclamation, it is well known, was made by trumpet at about five o'clock that afternoon.

The registers tell us that the instructions were so well carried out that all disorder ”was at once appeased and ceased.” They contain, however, a distinct refutation of this falsehood, in the frequent repet.i.tion of similar orders and the variety of forms in which the same statements are made on subsequent days. Again and again does the king direct that soldiers be placed at the head of every street to prevent robbery and murder;[1048] the guards either were never posted, or, as is more likely, became foremost in the work which they were sent to repress. Indeed, the instructions given on Monday to visit all the houses in the city and its suburbs where there were any Protestants, and obtain their names and surnames,[1049] afforded an opportunity which was not permitted to slip by unimproved, for the exaction of heavy bribes, as well as for more open plunder and violence. So notorious was it, nearly a week after the butchery began, that the ma.s.sacre had only abated in intensity, that, on the thirtieth of August, measures were adopted to prevent any wrong from being done to foreign merchants sojourning in Paris, and especially to the German, English, and Flemish students of the university.[1050]

[Sidenote: Miracle of the ”Cimetiere des Innocents.”]

The smile of Heaven, it was said by the Roman Catholic clergy, rested upon the effort to extirpate heresy in France. They convinced the people of the truth of their a.s.sertion by pointing to an unusual phenomenon which they declared to be evidently miraculous. In the Cimetiere des Innocents and before a small chapel of the Virgin Mary, there grew a white hawthorn, which, according to some accounts, had for several years been to all appearance dead. Great then was the surprise of those who, on the eventful St. Bartholomew's Day, beheld the tree covered with a great profusion of blossoms as fragrant as those flowers which the hawthorn usually puts forth in May. It was true that no good reason could be a.s.signed why the wonder might not with greater propriety be explained, as the Protestants afterward suggested, rather as a mark of Heaven's sympathy with oppressed innocence. But no doubts entered the minds of the Parisian ecclesiastics.

They spread abroad the fame of the prodigy. They rang the church-bells in token of joy, and invited the blood-stained populace to witness the sight, and gain new courage in their murderous work. It may well be doubted whether either the hawthorn or the virgin of the neighboring chapel wrought the wonderful cures recorded by the curate of Meriot.[1051] But certainly the reported intervention of Heaven setting its seal upon treacherous a.s.sa.s.sination prolonged the slaughter of Huguenots. ”It seemed,” says Claude Haton, reflecting the popular belief, ”that G.o.d, by this miracle, approved and accepted as well-pleasing to Him the Catholic uprising and the death of His great enemy the admiral and his followers, who for twelve years had been audaciously rending His seamless coat, which is His true Church and His Bride.”[1052] And so, what with the encouragement afforded by the wonderful thorn-tree of the Cimetiere des Innocents--what with the continuous fair weather, which was interpreted after the same manner, the task of extirpating the heretical Huguenots was prosecuted with a perseverance that never flagged. It is true that the greater part of the work was done in the first three or four days; but it was not terminated for several weeks, and many a Huguenot, coming out of his place of concealment with the hope that time might have caused the pa.s.sions of his enemies to become less violent, was murdered in cold blood by those who coveted his property. Several thousand persons were butchered in Paris alone during the first few days, besides these later victims; precisely how many, it is useless and perhaps impossible to fix with certainty.[1053]

[Sidenote: The king's first letter to Mandelot.]