Volume II Part 51 (2/2)
John's disciples, 'Go and show again those things which ye have seen and heard--the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.'” ”And do not forget,” she added, ”to say to the Duke of Alva, 'Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.'”[1177] Such was the new gospel of blood and rapine with which it was proposed to replace the Bible in the vernacular, and the Psalms of David translated by Marot and Beza!
[Sidenote: England's horror.]
[Sidenote: Perplexity of the French amba.s.sador at London.]
But Spain and Rome were only exceptions. From almost every part of the civilized world there arose a loud and unanimous cry of execration. It was natural, however, that the feeling of horror should be deepest in the neighboring Protestant countries, whose religion and liberties seemed to be menaced with destruction by the treacherous blow. Above all, in England with whose queen a matrimonial treaty had for months been pending, the abhorrence of the crime and its perpetrators was the more intense because of the violence of the revulsion. Resident Frenchmen were startled at the sudden change. The warmest friends of France became its open enemies, loudly reproaching the broken faith of the king, and pouring curses upon the people that had exercised such indignities upon unoffending citizens.
If we may believe La Mothe Fenelon, the men who customarily wore arms indulged in much insulting bravado and in threats directed against any one that dared to gainsay them.[1178] The French amba.s.sador has himself left on record the description of a remarkable interview which he had with Queen Elizabeth. Rarely had a diplomatic agent been placed in a more embarra.s.sing position. His letters and despatches from home were of the most contradictory character. Scarcely had he, with protestations of sincerity and truthfulness, published the account of events in Paris which was sent him, when new instructions arrived recalling, modifying, or contradicting the former. First, with the startling news of the disturbance of the peace, by Admiral Coligny's wounding, came a letter from the king, expressing ”infinite displeasure” at the ”bad” and ”unhappy” act, and a resolution to inflict ”very exemplary justice.” To which this postscript was appended: ”Monsieur de la Mothe Fenelon, I will not forget to tell you that this wicked act proceeds from the enmity between the admiral's house and the Guises, and that I have taken steps to prevent their involving my subjects in their quarrels, for I intend that my edict of pacification shall be observed in every point.”[1179] Two days later Charles wrote again, communicating intelligence of the ma.s.sacre, beginning with the murder of Coligny, in almost the identical words of the circular he was sending to Mandelot and other governors of provinces and important cities.[1180] Still it is the work of the Guises, and he himself has had enough to do in protecting his own person in the castle of the Louvre. He wishes Queen Elizabeth to be a.s.sured that he has no part in the deed,[1181] and, in fact, that all should know that he entertains great displeasure for what has so unfortunately happened, and that it is the thing which he detests more than anything else.[1182] And he adds in a tone of well counterfeited innocence: ”I have near me my brother the King of Navarre, and my cousin the Prince of Conde, to share in the same fortune with me.”[1183] After receiving and spreading abroad these explanations, what must have been the unfortunate amba.s.sador's perplexity and annoyance, when he received, but too late, a brief letter written on Monday, the day after the ma.s.sacre began, containing these words: ”As we are beginning to discover the conspiracy which the adherents of the pretended reformed religion had entered into against me, my mother and my brothers, you will not speak of the particulars of the disturbance, nor of its occasion until you receive fuller and more certain intelligence from me; for, by to-night or to-morrow morning, I hope to have cleared up the whole matter.”[1184] No wonder the courier to whom the last letter was intrusted was bidden ride with all speed to overtake the other; nor that La Mothe Fenelon hardly knew how to extricate himself from the dilemma in which the king his master had placed him. Had not Charles, by throwing all the blame, in his first letter, upon the Guises and by positively denying any partic.i.p.ation of his own, unambiguously proclaimed his ignorance up to that moment of any Huguenot conspiracy? How, then, could the French envoy go to the same Englishmen to whom he had made known the contents of this despatch, and tell them that the king was the author of the deed he had stigmatized as most detestable, and that the motive that had impelled him reluctantly to order the slaughter of the Huguenots was a conspiracy which he did not discover until a day or two after he gave the order? Yet this was the contradictory story which was sketched in the letter of the twenty-fifth of August, and more fully elaborated in subsequent despatches.[1185]
[Sidenote: His cold reception by Queen Elizabeth.]
The crestfallen amba.s.sador is said--and the authority for the disputed statement is no less than that of the members of the queen's council, Burleigh, Leicester, Knowles, Thomas Smith, and Croft--to have exclaimed bitterly ”that he was ashamed to be counted a Frenchman.”[1186] At first he believed that an audience would be denied him; and when the queen at last vouchsafed to see him at Woodstock, it was only after he had waited three days in Oxford, while Elizabeth and her council met frequently to deliberate upon the contents of Walsingham's despatches. He was admitted to the private apartments of the queen, where he found her Majesty surrounded by the lords of the council and the princ.i.p.al ladies of the court, awaiting his coming in profound silence. Elizabeth advanced to meet him, and greeted him with a countenance on which sorrow and severity were mingled with more kindly feelings. Drawing the amba.s.sador aside to a window, she began the discourse with a dignity which few sovereigns have ever known better how to a.s.sume. She gave particular expression to the regret she felt in hearing such tidings from a prince in whom she had had more confidence than in any other living monarch. And when the amba.s.sador had stammered out the lying excuse based upon ”the horrible ingrat.i.tude and perverse intentions of the Huguenots” against his master, and had tragically recounted the sorrow of Charles at being constrained to cut off an arm to save the rest of the body, she replied that she hoped that if the informations against the admiral and his were confirmed by investigation, the king ”might be excused in some part, both toward G.o.d and the world, in permitting the admiral's enemies by force to prevent his enterprises.” But she would not admit that even then the cruelty of the mode of punishment was capable of defence, most of all in the case of Coligny, who, ”being in his bed, lamed both on the right hand and left arm, lying in danger under the care of chyrurgions, being also guarded about his private house with a number of the king's guard, might have been, by a word of the king's mouth, brought to any place to have answered when and how the king should have thought meet.” But she preferred to ascribe the fault, not to Charles, but to those around him whose age and knowledge ”ought in such case to have foreseen how offenders ought to be justified with the sword of the prince, and not with the b.l.o.o.d.y swords of murderers, being also the mortal enemies of the party murdered.”[1187]
Elizabeth's council was even more outspoken. ”Doubtless,” said they, ”the most heinous act that has occurred in the world, since the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, is that which has been recently committed by the French; an act which the Italians and the Spaniards, ardent as they are, are far from applauding in their heart, since it was a deed too full of blood, for the greater part innocent, and too much suspected of fraud, which had violated the pledged security of a great king, and disturbed the serenity of the royal nuptials of his sister, insupportable to be heard by the ears of princes, and abominable to all cla.s.ses of subjects, perpetrated contrary to all law, divine or human, and without a parallel among all acts ever undertaken in the presence of any prince, and which has even rather involved the King of France in danger than rescued him from it.”[1188]
[Sidenote: The amba.s.sador disheartened.]
The success of the French amba.s.sador, therefore, was not flattering. The most that he could do was to correct the impression that the ma.s.sacre was only a part of a more general plan for the extirpation of Protestantism everywhere. But when the news came of the barbarous butchery of Huguenots in Lyons and elsewhere; when Villiers, Fuguerel, and other Protestant ministers escaping from France, brought to London the report that one hundred thousand victims to religious intolerance had fallen since St.
Bartholomew's Day;[1189] when English merchants who had witnessed the scenes of horror at Rouen returned, bringing a true account of what had occurred; when they overturned the audacious a.s.sertion that religion had nothing to do with the deed, by declaring that the Huguenots whose lives were spared were constrained to go to ma.s.s; that numbers had lost their lives who might have saved them by consenting to take part in services which they regarded as idolatrous; that there were instances of children taken from their parents, and forcibly rebaptized; when, in short, every a.s.sertion of La Mothe Fenelon was disproved, the irritation of the English grew deeper. And at last the French amba.s.sador was forced to confess that they would believe neither him nor the despatches that he occasionally produced, saying that the event, which is wont to give the lie to words and letters, showed them what they had to fear.[1190] The life of Mary, Queen of Scots, was in danger. There were many who regarded it as a measure of self-defence to put to death so open a sympathizer with the work of persecution. La Mothe Fenelon, disheartened, promised Catharine de' Medici to do all that he could to promote the interests of France, but the chief influence must come from the king and herself. ”Otherwise,” he said, ”your word will come to be of no authority, and I shall become ridiculous in everything that I tell them or promise them in your name.”[1191]
[Sidenote: Letter of Sir Thomas Smith.]
About the same time one of the most acute statesmen, one of the most vigorous writers of the age, Sir Thomas Smith, himself a former amba.s.sador at the French court, correctly and eloquently expressed the universal feeling of true Protestants in England, in a letter to Walsingham which has become deservedly famous. ”What warrant can the French make, now seals and words of princes being traps to catch innocents and bring them to the butchery? If the admiral and all those murdered on that b.l.o.o.d.y Bartholomew day were guilty, why were they not apprehended, imprisoned, interrogated, and judged, but so much made of as might be, within two hours of the a.s.sumation? Is that the manner to handle men either culpable or suspected?
So is the journeyer slain by the robber; so is the hen of the fox; so is the hind of the lion; so Abel of Cain; so the innocent of the wicked; so Abner of Joab. But grant they were guilty--they dreamt treason that night in their sleep; what did the innocent men, women, and children at Lyons?
What did the sucking children and their mothers at Roan (Rouen) deserve?
at Cane (Caen)? at Rochel?... Will G.o.d, think you, still sleep? Will not their blood ask vengeance; shall not the earth be accursed that hath sucked up the innocent blood poured out like water upon it?... I am glad you shall come home, and would wish you were at home, out of that country so contaminate with innocent blood, that the sun cannot look upon it but to prognosticate the wrath and vengeance of G.o.d. The ruin and desolation of Jerusalem could not come till all the Christians were either killed there or expelled thence.”[1192]
[Sidenote: Catharine's unsuccessful representations.]
Neither Catharine nor Charles was insensible to the impression made upon the English court by the French atrocities. It became important to furnish, if possible, some more convincing proofs of the existence of a Huguenot plot, since the a.s.surances of both monarch and amba.s.sador had lost all weight. The papers of the admiral, both in Paris and in his castle of Chatillon-sur-Loing, had been searched in vain for anything which, even after the murder, might seem to justify the king in violating his pledged word and every principle of law and right. Not a sc.r.a.p of a letter could be found inculpating him. Not the slightest approach to a hint that it would be well to make way with the king or any of the royal family. The most private ma.n.u.scripts of the admiral, unlike those of many courtiers even in our own day, contained not a disrespectful expression, nothing that could be twisted into a mark of disaffection or treason.
Catharine could lay her hand upon nothing that suited her purpose better than the paper, which, as stated in a former chapter,[1193] she showed to Walsingham, wherein he advised Charles to keep Elizabeth and Philip ”as low as he could, as a thing that tended much to the safety and maintenance of his crown.” But the finesse of the queen mother failed of accomplis.h.i.+ng its object; for neither Elizabeth nor Walsingham would think less of Coligny for proving himself faithful to his own sovereign's interests.
Elizabeth's incredulity was, doubtless, enhanced by the hypocritical pretence of Catharine that her son intended to maintain his edict of pacification in full force.[1194] ”The king's meaning is,” the queen mother once said to the English envoy, ”that the Huguenots shall enjoy the liberty of their conscience.” ”What, Madam,” observed Walsingham, ”and the exercise of their religion too?” ”No,” Catharine replied, ”my son will have exercise but of one religion in his realm.” ”Then, how can it agree, that the observation of the edict, whereof you willed me to advertise the queen my mistress, that the same should continue in his former strength?”
interposed Walsingham. To that Catharine answered ”that they had discovered certain matters of late, that they saw it necessary to abolish all exercise of the same.” ”Why, Madam,” said the puzzled and somewhat pertinacious diplomatist, ”will you have them live without exercise of religion?” ”Even,” quoth Catharine, who fancied that she had discovered a pertinent retort, ”even as your mistress suffereth the Catholics of England.” But the amba.s.sador could not be so easily silenced. Parrying the home thrust, and trenching on an uncourtly bluntness of speech, he quietly called attention to a distinction which her Majesty had not perhaps observed. ”My mistress did never promise them anything by edict; if she had, she would not fail to have performed it.” After that, there was plainly nothing more to be said, and Catharine resorted to the usual refuge of worsted argument, and said: ”The queen your mistress must direct the government of her own country, and the king my son his own.”[1195]
[Sidenote: Briquemault and Cavaignes hung for alleged conspiracy.]
Some victims were needed to be immolated upon the altar of justice to atone for the alleged Huguenot conspiracy. They were found in Briquemault and Cavaignes, two distinguished Protestants. The former, a knight of the royal order, had, contrary to all rules of international law, been forcibly taken from the house of the English amba.s.sador, whither he had fled for refuge.[1196] It was not difficult for the court to obtain what was desired from the cowardly parliament over which Christopher de Thou presided. Convicted by false testimony, and complaining that even their own words were falsified by their partial judges, the two Protestants were publicly hung on the Place de Greve. It was noticed that they both died exhibiting great fort.i.tude,[1197] and protesting to the last that they had neither taken part in, nor even heard of any plot against the king or the state. Charles, hardened by the sight of so much blood, wished to witness in person this new spectacle also, and not only looked on from a neighboring window, but, as it was too dark to see the sufferers distinctly, ordered torches to be lighted, and diverted himself with great laughter in observing their expiring agonies. The King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde were likewise forced to be present, in order to give color to the absurd story that one or both had been included among those whom Coligny and the Huguenots had intended to murder. An hour after, and the Parisian populace cut down the bodies, dragged them in contumely through the streets, and amused themselves by stabbing them, shooting at them, and maiming them. It was an additional aggravation of the judicial crime and the king's ill-timed merriment, that the execution took place on the evening of the day upon which the young Queen of France gave birth to Charles's only legitimate child--a daughter, whom the Salic law excluded from the succession to the throne. Still unconvinced of Coligny's guilt, even by the conviction and death of Briquemault and Cavaignes, Queen Elizabeth very frankly expressed to La Mothe Fenelon her deep regret that her brother, the French king, had profaned the day of his daughter's birth by the sanguinary spectacle he had that evening gone to behold.[1198]
[Sidenote: The news in Scotland;]
In Scotland, when the news of the ma.s.sacre arrived, the aged reformer, John Knox, summoned all his remaining energy to preach a last time before the regent and the estates. In the midst of his sermon, turning to Du Croc, the French amba.s.sador, who was present, he sternly addressed to him these prophetic words: ”Go tell your king that sentence has gone out against him, that G.o.d's vengeance shall never depart from him nor his house, that his name shall remain an execration to the posterities to come, and that none that shall come of his loins shall enjoy that kingdom unless he repent.” The indignant amba.s.sador called upon the regent ”to check the tongue which was reviling an anointed king;” but the regent refused to silence the minister of G.o.d, and suffered Du Croc to leave Edinburgh in anger.[1199]
[Sidenote: in Germany;]
Monsieur de Vulcob, the French amba.s.sador at the court of the Emperor of Germany, was equally unsuccessful in convincing that monarch of the truth of the story contained in his despatches from Paris. The emperor did not disguise his great disappointment and sorrow, nor his belief that the murderous project had been known for weeks before at Rome.[1200] It need scarcely be said that the negotiations of Schomberg, who had been sent to procure an offensive and defensive alliance between the Protestant princes of Germany and the crown of France, were rendered abortive by the advent of tidings of the treacherous ma.s.sacre at Paris. Like the rest of the diplomatists sent out from France, the able envoy to Germany had been left in profound ignorance of the blow that was to disturb all his calculations. He had even been empowered to promise that Charles would a.s.sume toward the enterprise of William of Orange the same position that the princes would take; and he seemed likely to be successful in inducing the princes to make common cause with his master.
To Schomberg, as to the rest, there had been despatched, on the very day that Coligny was wounded, a narrative of that event to be laid before the Protestant princes--a narrative wherein the occurrence was deplored; wherein Charles stated that he had taken just such measures for the apprehension of the perpetrator of the crime as he would have taken had the victim been one of his own brothers; wherein he promised to spare neither diligence nor trouble, and to inflict condign punishment, ”in order that all men might know that no greater misdeed could have been committed in his kingdom, nor more displeasing to himself;” wherein he protested his unalterable determination to maintain completely and sedulously his edict of pacification.[1201] But to Schomberg, as to the other French amba.s.sadors, there had come subsequent tidings and despatches giving the lie to all these a.s.surances.
And now, as he wrote home with some bitterness, ”all his negotiations had ended in smoke.”[1202] Their Highnesses ”could not get it out of their heads” that the events of St. Bartholomew's Day were premeditated, with the view of enabling the Duke of Alva to make way with the forces of the Prince of Orange. So high did feeling run, that the rumor prevailed that Schomberg had been thrown into prison as an accomplice in the perfidy, and that Coligny's death was about to be avenged upon him.[1203]
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