IV
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW 6
The way in which Coligny and his adherents met their death has been handed down by a crowd of trustworthy witnesses, and few things in history are known in more exact detail. But the origin and motives of the tragedy, and the manner of its reception by the opinion of Christian Europe, are still subject to controversy. Some of the evidence has been difficult of access, part is lost, and much has been deliberately destroyed. No letters written from Paris at the time have been found in the Austrian archives. In the correspondence of thirteen agents of the House of Este at the Court of Rome, every paper relating to the event has disappeared. All the documents of 1572, both from Rome and Paris, are wanting in the archives of Venice. In the Registers of many French towns the leaves which contained the records of August and September in that year have been torn out. The first reports sent to England by Walsingham and by the French Government have not been recovered. Three accounts printed at Rome, when the facts were new, speedily became so rare that they have been forgotten. The Bull of Gregory XIII. was not admitted into the official collections; and the reply to Muretus has escaped notice until now. The letters of Charles IX. to Rome, with the important exception of that which he wrote on the 24th of August, have been dispersed and lost The letters of Gregory XIII. to France have never been seen by persons willing to make them public. In the absence of these documents the most authentic information is that which is supplied by the French Ambassador and by the Nuncio. The despatches of Ferralz, describing the attitude of the Roman court, are extant, but have not been used. Those of Salviati have long been known. Chateaubriand took a copy when the papal archives were at Paris, and projected a work on the events with which they are concerned. Some extracts were published, with his consent, by the continuator of Mackintosh; and a larger selection, from the originals in the Vatican, appeared in Theiner's Annals of Gregory XIII. The letters written under Pius V. are beyond the limits of that work; and Theiner, moreover, has omitted whatever seemed irrelevant to his purpose. The criterion of relevancy is uncertain; and we shall avail ourselves largely of the unpublished portions of Salviati's correspondence, which were transcribed by Chateaubriand. These manuscripts, with others of equal importance not previously consulted, determine several doubtful questions of policy and design.
The Protestants never occupied a more triumphant position, and their prospects were never brighter, than in the summer of 1572. For many years the progress of their religion had been incessant. The most valuable of the conquests it has retained were already made; and the period of its reverses had not begun. The great division which aided Catholicism afterwards to recover so much lost ground was not openly confessed; and the effectual unity of the Reformed Churches was not yet dissolved. In controversial theology the defence was weaker than the attack. The works to which the Reformation owed its popularity and system were in the hands of thousands, while the best authors of the Catholic restoration had not begun to write. The press continued to serve the new opinions better than the old; and in literature Protestantism was supreme. Persecuted in the South, and established by violence in the North, it had overcome the resistance of princes in Central Europe, and had won toleration without ceasing to be intolerant. In France and Poland, in the dominions of the Emperor and under the German prelates, the attempt to arrest its advance by physical force had been abandoned. In Germany it covered twice the area that remained to it in the next generation, and, except in Bavaria, Catholicism was fast dying out. The Polish Government had not strength to persecute, and Poland became the refuge of the sects. When the bishops found that they could not prevent toleration, they resolved that they would not restrict it. Trusting to the maxim, "Bellum Haereticorum pax est Ecclesiae," they insisted that liberty should extend to those whom the Reformers would have exterminated.7 The Polish Protestants, in spite of their dissensions, formed themselves into one great party. When the death of the last of the Jagellons, on the 7th of July 1572, made the monarchy elective, they were strong enough to enforce their conditions on the candidates; and it was thought that they would be able to decide the election, and obtain a king of their own choosing. Alva's reign of Terror had failed to pacify the Low Countries, and he was about to resign the hopeless task to an incapable successor. The taking of the Brill in April was the first of those maritime victories which led to the independence of the Dutch. Mons fell in May; and in July the important province of Holland declared for the Prince of Orange. The Catholics believed that all was lost if Alva remained in command.8
The decisive struggle was in France. During the minority of Charles IX. persecution had given way to civil war, and the Regent, his mother, had vainly striven, by submitting to neither party, to uphold the authority of the Crown. She checked the victorious Catholics, by granting to the Huguenots terms which constituted them, in spite of continual disaster in the field, a vast and organised power in the State. To escape their influence it would have been necessary to invoke the help of Philip II., and to accept protection which would have made France subordinate to Spain. Philip laboured to establish such an alliance; and it was to promote this scheme that he sent his queen, Elizabeth of Valois, to meet her mother at Bayonne. In 1568 Elizabeth died; and a rumour came to Catherine touching the manner of her death which made it hard to listen to friendly overtures from her husband. Antonio Perez, at that time an unscrupulous instrument of his master's will, afterwards accused him of having poisoned his wife. "On parle fort sinistrement de sa mort, pour avoir été advancée," says Brantôme. After the massacre of the Protestants, the ambassador at Venice, a man distinguished as a jurist and a statesman, reproached Catherine with having thrown France into the hands of him in whom the world recognised her daughter's murderer. Catherine did not deny the truth of the report. She replied that she was "bound to think of her sons in preference to her daughters, that the foul-play was not fully proved, and that if it were it could not be avenged so long as France was weakened by religious discord."9 She wrote as she could not have written if she had been convinced that the suspicion was unjust.
When Charles IX. began to be his own master he seemed resolved to follow his father and grandfather in their hostility to the Spanish Power. He wrote to a trusted servant that all his thoughts were bent on thwarting Philip.10 While the Christian navies were fighting at Lepanto, the King of France was treating with the Turks. His menacing attitude in the following year kept Don Juan in Sicilian waters, and made his victory barren for Christendom. Encouraged by French protection, Venice withdrew from the League. Even in Corsica there was a movement which men interpreted as a prelude to the storm that France was raising against the empire of Spain. Rome trembled in expectation of a Huguenot invasion of Italy; for Charles was active in conciliating the Protestants both abroad and at home. He married a daughter of the tolerant Emperor Maximilian II.; and he carried on negotiations for the marriage of his brother with Queen Elizabeth, not with any hope of success, but in order to impress public opinion.11 He made treaties of alliance, in quick succession, with England, with the German Protestants, and with the Prince of Orange. He determined that his brother Anjou, the champion of the Catholics, of whom it was said that he had vowed to root out the Protestants to a man,12 should be banished to the throne of Poland. Disregarding the threats and entreaties of the Pope, he gave his sister in marriage to Navarre. By the peace of St. Germains the Huguenots had secured, within certain limits, freedom from persecution and the liberty of persecuting; so that Pius V. declared that France had been made the slave of heretics. Coligny was now the most powerful man in the kingdom. His scheme for closing the civil wars by an expedition for the conquest of the Netherlands began to be put in motion. French auxiliaries followed Lewis of Nassau into Mons; an army of Huguenots had already gone to his assistance; another was being collected near the frontier, and Coligny was preparing to take the command in a war which might become a Protestant crusade, and which left the Catholics no hope of victory. Meanwhile many hundreds of his officers followed him to Paris, to attend the wedding which was to reconcile the factions, and cement the peace of religion.
In the midst of those lofty designs and hopes, Coligny was struck down. On the morning of the 22nd of August he was shot at and badly wounded. Two days later he was killed; and a general attack was made on the Huguenots of Paris. It lasted some weeks, and was imitated in about twenty places. The chief provincial towns of France were among them.
Judged by its immediate result, the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a measure weakly planned and irresolutely executed, which deprived Protestantism of its political leaders, and left it for a time to the control of zealots. There is no evidence to make it probable that more than seven thousand victims perished. Judged by later events, it was the beginning of a vast change in the conflict of the churches. At first it was believed that a hundred thousand Huguenots had fallen. It was said that the survivors were abjuring by thousands,13 that the children of the slain were made Catholics, that those whom the priest had admitted to absolution and communion were nevertheless put to death.14 Men who were far beyond the reach of the French Government lost their faith in a religion which Providence had visited with so tremendous a judgment;15 and foreign princes took heart to employ severities which could excite no horror after the scenes in France.
Contemporaries were persuaded that the Huguenots had been flattered and their policy adopted only for their destruction, and that the murder of Coligny and his followers was a long premeditated crime. Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in detecting proofs of that which they variously esteemed a sign of supernatural inspiration or of diabolical depravity. In the last forty years a different opinion has prevailed. It has been deemed more probable, more consistent with testimony and with the position of affairs at the time, that Coligny succeeded in acquiring extraordinary influence over the mind of Charles, that his advice really predominated, and that the sanguinary resolution was suddenly embraced by his adversaries as the last means of regaining power. This opinion is made plausible by many facts. It is supported by several writers who were then living, and by the document known as the Confession of Anjou. The best authorities of the present day are nearly unanimous in rejecting premeditation.
The evidence on the opposite side is stronger than they suppose. The doom which awaited the Huguenots had been long expected and often foretold. People at a distance, Monluc in Languedoc, and the Protestant Mylius in Italy, drew the same inference from the news that came from the court. Strangers meeting on the road discussed the infatuation of the Admiral.16 Letters brought from Rome to the Emperor the significant intimation that the birds were all caged, and now was the time to lay hands on them.17 Duplessis-Mornay, the future chief of the Huguenots, was so much oppressed with a sense of coming evil, that he hardly ventured into the streets on the wedding-day. He warned the Admiral of the general belief among their friends that the marriage concealed a plot for their ruin, and that the festivities would end in some horrible surprise.18 Coligny was proof against suspicion. Several of his followers left Paris, but he remained unmoved. At one moment the excessive readiness to grant all his requests shook the confidence of his son-in-law Téligny; but the doubt vanished so completely that Téligny himself prevented the flight of his partisans after the attempt on the Admiral's life. On the morning of the fatal day, Montgomery sent word to Walsingham that Coligny was safe under protection of the King's Guards, and that no further stir was to be apprehended.19
For many years foreign advisers had urged Catherine to make away with these men. At first it was computed that half a dozen victims would be enough.20 That was the original estimate of Alva, at Bayonne.21 When the Duke of Ferrara was in France, in 1564, he proposed a larger measure, and he repeated this advice by the mouth of every agent whom he sent to France.22 After the event, both Alva and Alfonso reminded Catherine that she had done no more than follow their advice.23 Alva's letter explicitly confirms the popular notion which connects the massacre with the conference of Bayonne; and it can no longer now be doubted that La Roche-sur-Yon, on his deathbed, informed Coligny that murderous resolutions had been taken on that occasion.24 But the Nuncio, Santa Croce, who was present, wrote to Cardinal Borromeo that the Queen had indeed promised to punish the infraction of the Edict of Pacification, but that this was a very different thing from undertaking to extirpate heresy. Catherine affirmed that in this way the law could reach all the Huguenot ministers; and Alva professed to believe her.25 Whatever studied ambiguity of language she may have used, the action of 1572 was uninfluenced by deliberations which were seven years old.
During the spring and summer the Tuscan agents diligently prepared their master for what was to come. Petrucci wrote on the 19th of March that, for a reason which he could not trust to paper, the marriage would certainly take place, though not until the Huguenots had delivered up their strongholds. Four weeks later Alamanni announced that the Queen's pious design for restoring unity of faith would, by the grace of God, be speedily accomplished. On the 9th of August Petrucci was able to report that the plan arranged at Bayonne was near execution.26 Yet he was not fully initiated. The Queen afterwards assured him that she had confided the secret to no foreign resident except the Nuncio,27 and Petrucci resentfully complains that she had also consulted the Ambassador of Savoy. Venice, like Florence and Savoy, was not taken by surprise. In February the ambassador Contarini explained to the Senate the specious tranquillity in France, by saying that the Government reckoned on the death of the Admiral or the Queen of Navarre to work a momentous change.28 Cavalli, his successor, judged that a business so grossly mismanaged showed no signs of deliberation.29 There was another Venetian at Paris who was better informed. The Republic was seeking to withdraw from the league against the Turks; and her most illustrious statesman, Giovanni Michiel, was sent to solicit the help of France in negotiating peace.30 The account which he gave of his mission has been pronounced by a consummate judge of Venetian State-Papers the most valuable report of the sixteenth century.31 He was admitted almost daily to secret conference with Anjou, Nevers, and the group of Italians on whom the chief odium rests; and there was no counsellor to whom Catherine more willingly gave ear.32 Michiel affirms that the intention had been long entertained, and that the Nuncio had been directed to reveal it privately to Pius V.33
Salviati was related to Catherine, and had gained her good opinion as Nuncio in the year 1570. The Pope had sent him back because nobody seemed more capable of diverting her and her son from the policy which caused so much uneasiness at Rome.34 He died many years later, with the reputation of having been one of the most eminent Cardinals at a time when the Sacred College was unusually rich in talent. Personally, he had always favoured stern measures of repression. When the Countess of Entremont was married to Coligny, Salviati declared that she had made herself liable to severe penalties by entertaining proposals of marriage with so notorious a heretic, and demanded that the Duke of Savoy should, by all the means in his power, cause that wicked bride to be put out of the way.35 When the peace of St. Germains was concluded, he assured Charles and Catherine that their lives were in danger, as the Huguenots were seeking to pull down the throne as well as the altar. He believed that all intercourse with them was sinful, and that the sole remedy was utter extermination by the sword. "I am convinced," he wrote, "that it will come to this." "If they do the tenth part of what I have advised, it will be well for them."36 After an audience of two hours, at which he had presented a letter from Pius V., prophesying the wrath of Heaven, Salviati perceived that his exhortations made some impression. The King and Queen whispered to him that they hoped to make the peace yield such fruit that the end would more than countervail the badness of the beginning; and the King added, in strict confidence, that his plan was one which, once told, could never be executed.37 This might have been said to delude the Nuncio; but he was inclined on the whole to believe that it was sincerely meant. The impression was confirmed by the Archbishop of Sens, Cardinal Pellevé, who informed him that the Huguenot leaders were caressed at Court in order to detach them from their party, and that after the loss of their leaders it would not take more than three days to deal with the rest.38 Salviati on his return to France was made aware that his long-deferred hopes were about to be fulfilled. He shadowed it forth obscurely in his despatches. He reported that the Queen allowed the Huguenots to pass into Flanders, believing that the admiral would become more and more presumptuous until he gave her an opportunity of retribution; for she excelled in that kind of intrigue. Some days later he knew more, and wrote that he hoped soon to have good news for his Holiness.39 At the last moment his heart misgave him. On the morning of the 21st of August the Duke of Montpensier and the Cardinal of Bourbon spoke with so much unconcern, in his presence, of what was then so near, that he thought it hardly possible the secret could be kept.40
The foremost of the French prelates was the Cardinal of Lorraine. He had held a prominent position at the council of Trent; and for many years he had wielded the influence of the House of Guise over the Catholics of France. In May 1572 he went to Rome; and he was still there when the news came from Paris in September. He at once made it known that the resolution had been taken before he left France, and that it was due to himself and his nephew, the Duke of Guise.41 As the spokesman of the Gallican Church in the following year he delivered a harangue to Charles IX., in which he declared that Charles had eclipsed the glory of preceding kings by slaying the false prophets, and especially by the holy deceit and pious dissimulation with which he had laid his plans.42
There was one man who did not get his knowledge from rumour, and who could not be deceived by lies. The King's confessor, Sorbin, afterwards Bishop of Nevers, published in 1574 a narrative of the life and death of Charles IX. He bears unequivocal testimony that that clement and magnanimous act, for so he terms it, was resolved upon beforehand, and he praises the secrecy as well as the justice of his hero.43
Early in the year a mission of extraordinary solemnity had appeared in France. Pius V., who was seriously alarmed at the conduct of Charles, had sent the Cardinal of Alessandria as Legate to the Kings of Spain and Portugal, and directed him, in returning, to visit the Court at Blois. The Legate was nephew to the Pope, and the man whom he most entirely trusted.44 His character stood so high that the reproach of nepotism was never raised by his promotion. Several prelates destined to future eminence attended him. His chief adviser was Hippolyto Aldobrandini, who, twenty years later, ascended the papal chair as Clement VIII. The companion whose presence conferred the greatest lustre on the mission was the general of the Jesuits, Francis Borgia, the holiest of the successors of Ignatius, and the most venerated of men then living. Austerities had brought him to the last stage of weakness; and he was sinking under the malady of which he was soon to die. But it was believed that the words of such a man, pleading for the Church, would sway the mind of the King. The ostensible purpose of the Legate's journey was to break off the match with Navarre, and to bring France into the Holy League. He gained neither object. When he was summoned back to Rome it was understood in France that he had reaped nothing but refusals, and that he went away disappointed.45 The jeers of the Protestants pursued him.46 But it was sufficiently certain beforehand that France could not plunge into a Turkish war.47 The real business of the Legate, besides proposing a Catholic husband for the Princess, was to ascertain the object of the expedition which was fitting out in the Western ports. On both points he had something favourable to report. In his last despatch, dated Lyons, the 6th of March, he wrote that he had failed to prevent the engagement with Navarre, but that he had something for the Pope's private ear, which made his journey not altogether unprofitable.48 The secret was soon divulged in Italy. The King had met the earnest remonstrances of the Legate by assuring him that the marriage afforded the only prospect of wreaking vengeance on the Huguenots: the event would show; he could say no more, but desired his promise to be carried to the Pope. It was added that he had presented a ring to the Legate, as a pledge of sincerity, which the Legate refused. The first to publish this story was Capilupi, writing only seven months later. It was repeated by Folieta,49 and is given with all details by the historians of Pius V. – Catena and Gabuzzi. Catena was secretary to the Cardinal of Alessandria as early as July 1572, and submitted his work to him before publication.50 Gabuzzi wrote at the instance of the same Cardinal, who supplied him with materials; and his book was examined and approved by Borghese, afterwards Paul V. Both the Cardinal of Alessandria and Paul V., therefore, were instrumental in causing it to be proclaimed that the Legate was acquainted in February 1572 with the intention which the King carried out in August.
The testimony of Aldobrandini was given still more distinctly, and with greater definiteness and authority. When he was required, as Pope, to pronounce upon the dissolution of the ill-omened marriage, he related to Borghese and other Cardinals what had passed in that interview between the Legate and the King, adding that, when the report of the massacre reached Rome, the Cardinal exclaimed: "God be praised! the King of France has kept his word." Clement referred D'Ossat to a narrative of the journey which he had written himself, and in which those things would be found.51 The clue thus given has been unaccountably neglected, although the Report was known to exist. One copy is mentioned by Giorgi; and Mazzuchelli knew of another. Neither of them had read it; for they both ascribe it to Michele Bonelli, the Cardinal of Alessandria. The first page would have satisfied them that it was not his work. Clement VIII. describes the result of the mission to Blois in these words: "Quae rationes eo impulerunt regem ut semel apprehensa manu Cardinalis in hanc vocem proruperit: Significate Pontifici illumque certum reddite me totum hoc quod circa id matrimonium feci et facturus sum, nulla alia de causa facere, quam ulciscendi inimicos Dei et hujus regni, et puniendi tam infidos rebelles, ut eventus ipse docebit, nec aliud vobis amplius significare possum. Quo non obstante semper Cardinalis eas subtexuit difficultates quas potuit, objiciens regi possetne contrahi matrimonium a fidele cum infidele, sitve dispensatio necessaria; quod si est nunquam Pontificem inductum iri ut illam concedat. Re ipsa ita in suspenso relicta discedendum esse putavit, cum jam rescivisset qua de causa naves parabantur, qui apparatus contra Rocellam tendebant."
The opinion that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a sudden and unpremeditated act cannot be maintained; but it does not follow that the only alternative is to believe that it was the aim of every measure of the Government for two years before. Catherine had long contemplated it as her last expedient in extremity; but she had decided that she could not resort to it while her son was virtually a minor.52 She suggested the idea to him in 1570. In that year he gave orders that the Huguenots should be slaughtered at Bourges. The letter is preserved in which La Chastre spurned the command: "If the people of Bourges learn that your Majesty takes pleasure in such tragedies, they will repeat them often. If these men must die, let them first be tried; but do not reward my services and sully my reputation by such a stain."53
In the autumn of 1571 Coligny came to Blois. Walsingham suspected, and was afterwards convinced that the intention to kill him already existed. The Pope was much displeased by his presence at Court; but he received assurances from the ambassador which satisfied him. It was said at the time that he at first believed that Coligny was to be murdered, but that he soon found that there was no such praiseworthy design.54
In December the King knew that, when the moment came, the burghers of Paris would not fail him. Marcel, the Prévôt des Marchands, told him that the wealth was driven out of the country by the Huguenots: "The Catholics will bear it no longer… Let your Majesty look to it. Your crown is at stake, Paris alone can save it."55 By the month of February 1572 the plan had assumed a practical shape. The political idea before the mind of Charles was the same by which Richelieu afterwards made France the first Power in the world; to repress the Protestants at home, and to encourage them abroad. No means of effectual repression was left but murder. But the idea of raising up enemies to Spain by means of Protestantism was thoroughly understood. The Huguenots were allowed to make an expedition to aid William of Orange. Had they gained some substantial success, the Government would have followed it up, and the scheme of Coligny would have become for the moment the policy of France. But the Huguenot commander Genlis was defeated and taken. Coligny had had his chance. He had played and lost. It was useless now to propose his great venture against the King of Spain.56
Philip II. perfectly understood that this event was decisive. When the news came from Hainaut, he sent to the Nuncio Castagna to say that the King of France would gain more than himself by the loss of so many brave Protestants, and that the time was come for him, with the aid of the people of Paris, to get rid of Coligny and the rest of his enemies.57 It appears from the letters of Salviati that he also regarded the resolution as having been finally taken after the defeat of Genlis.
The Court had determined to enforce unity of faith in France. An edict of toleration was issued for the purpose of lulling the Huguenots; but it was well known that it was only a pretence.58 Strict injunctions were sent into the provinces that it should not be obeyed;59 and Catherine said openly to the English envoy, "My son will have exercise but of one Religion in his Realm." On the 26th the King explained his plan to Mondoucet, his agent at Brussels: "Since it has pleased God to bring matters to the point they have now reached, I mean to use the opportunity to secure a perpetual repose in my kingdom, and to do something for the good of all Christendom. It is probable that the conflagration will spread to every town in France, and that they will follow the example of Paris, and lay hands on all the Protestants… I have written to the governors to assemble forces in order to cut to pieces those who may resist."60 The great object was to accomplish the extirpation of Protestantism in such a way as might leave intact the friendship with Protestant States. Every step was governed by this consideration; and the difficulty of the task caused the inconsistencies and the vacillation that ensued. By assassinating Coligny alone it was expected that such an agitation would be provoked among his partisans as would make it appear that they were killed by the Catholics in self-defence. Reports were circulated at once with that object. A letter written on the 23rd states that, after the Admiral was wounded on the day before, the Huguenots assembled at the gate of the Louvre, to avenge him on the Guises as they came out.61 And the first explanation sent forth by the Government on the 24th was to the effect that the old feud between the Houses of Guise and of Châtillon had broken out with a fury which it was impossible to quell. This fable lasted only for a single day. On the 25th Charles writes that he has begun to discover traces of a Huguenot conspiracy;62 and on the following day this was publicly substituted for the original story. Neither the vendetta of the Guises nor the conspiracy at Paris could be made to explain the massacre in the provinces. It required to be so managed that the King could disown it; Salviati describes the plan of operations. It was intended that the Huguenots should be slaughtered successively by a series of spontaneous outbreaks in different parts of the country. While Rochelle held out, it was dangerous to proceed with a more sweeping method.63 Accordingly, no written instructions from the King are in existence; and the governors were expressly informed that they were to expect none.64 Messengers went into the provinces with letters requiring that the verbal orders which they brought should be obeyed.65 Many governors refused to act upon directions so vague and so hard to verify. Burgundy was preserved in this way. Two gentlemen arrived with letters of recommendation from the King, and declared his commands. They were asked to put them on paper; but they refused to give in writing what they had received by word of mouth. Mandelot, the Governor of Lyons, the most ignoble of the instruments in this foul deed, complained that the intimation of the royal wishes sent to him was obscure and insufficient.66 He did not do his work thoroughly, and incurred the displeasure of the King. The orders were complicated as well as obscure. The public authorities were required to collect the Huguenots in some prison or other safe place, where they could be got at by hired bands of volunteer assassins. To screen the King it was desirable that his officers should not superintend the work themselves. Mandelot, having locked the gates of Lyons, and shut up the Huguenots together, took himself out of the way while they were being butchered. Carouge, at Rouen, received a commission to visit the other towns in his province. The magistrates implored him to remain, as nobody, in his absence, could restrain the people. When the King had twice repeated his commands, Carouge obeyed; and five hundred Huguenots perished.67