This was at two o'clock in the morning. Before five o'clock the admiral and his friends were murdered in cold blood, and their remains treated with brutal indignity. Revenge and hatred being thus satiated on the Huguenot chiefs, the tocsin was sounded from the parliament house, calling on the populace of Paris to join in the carnage, and protect their religion and their king against Huguenot treason. It is not necessary to enter into the details of this most perfidious butchery. "Death to the Huguenots—treason—courage our game is in the toils—Kill every man of, them—it is the king's orders," shouted the court leaders, as they galloped through the streets, cheering the armed citizens to the slaughter. "Kill I kill 1— bleeding is as wholesome in August as in May," shouted the Marshal Tavannes, another of the planners of the massacre. Thu fury of the court was thus seconded by the long pent-up hatred of the Parisian populace ; and the Huguenots were butchered in their beds, or endeavouring to escape, without any regard to age, sex, or condition. Nor was the slaughter wholly confined to the Protestants. Secret revenge and personal hatred embraced that favourable opportunity of gratification, and many Catholics fell by the hand of Catholic assassins.
Towards evening the excesses of the populace became an alarming that the king, by sound of trumpet, commanded every man to return to his house, under penalty of death, excepting the officers of the guards and the civic authorities; and on the second day he issued another proclamation, declaring, under pain of death, that no person should kill or pillage another, unless duly authorised. Indeed it would seem that the massacre was more extensive and indiscriminate than its projectors had anticipated ; and that it was necessary to check the disorderly fury of the populace. The slaughter however partially continued for three days. On the evening of the first day, Charles despatched letters to his ambassadors in foreign courts, and to all his governors and chief officers in France, bewailing the massacre that had taken place, but imputing it entirely to the private dissension between the houses of Guise and Coligny.
On the following day, the 25th, he wrote to Schomberg, his agent with the Protestant princes of Germany, that having been apprised by some of the Huguenots themselves of a conspiracy formed by the admiral and his friends to murder him, his mother, and brothers, he had been forced to 'sanction the counter attacks of tho house of Guise, in consequence of which, the admiral, and some gentlemen of his party, had been slain ; since which, the populace, exasperated by the report of the conspiracy, and indignant at the restraint imposed upon the royal family, had been guilty of violent excesses, and, to his great regret, had killed all the chiefs of the Huguenots who were at Paris.
Next day however Charles went in state to the parliament of Paris, and avowed himself the author of the massacre, claiming to himself the merit of having thereby given peace to his kingdom ; he denounced the admiral and his adherents as traitors, and declared that he had timely defeated a conspiracy to murder the royal family.
These are the leading facts of the Bartholomew Massacre, concern ing the truth of which there is no controversy. They are admitted and appealed to by historians who take the most opposite views of the motives which led to them. And this brings us to the second part
of the subject.
§ 2. Two questions have arisen out of a consideration of the facts which we have just narrated :-1. Was the massacre the result of a premeditated plot, concealed with infinite cunning for months, accord ing to some, years, that is, since the meeting at Bayonne in 1564; or was it the sudden consequence of the failure of the attack upon the life of the admiral two days before its occurrence 1-2. Admitting it to have been premeditated, was Charles privy to the plot, and conse quently, was the peace of 1570, the marriage of his sister, and his friendly demeanour towards the admiral and the Huguenot chiefs, one piece of the moat profound treachery and dissimulation ? Volumes have been written in reference to these qtrestions ; our limits confine us to a statement of their results.
We shall dispose of the first question rather summarily. The conferences at Bayonne between Catherine de' Medici and the Duke of Alva were secret : if ever reduced to writing, no direct proof of the decisions in which they terminated has come down to us. There is however strong substantial evidence to show that they related to the most effectual means of subduing the Protestants in France and Flanders. Mutual succour was stipulated and afforded. Adriano, a contemporary historian of credit, and who is supposed to have derived tho materials of his history from the journal of Cosmo, duke of Tuscany, who died in 1574, states that Alva declared for an immediate extermination, and treated the proposition of France (to allure the Huguenot lords and priuces back to the bosom of the ancient church) as faint-hearted, and treason to tho cause of God. Catherine repre sented that such an extirpation as Alva contemplated was beyond the ability of tho royal power in France. They agreed as to the end, but differed as to the best means of accomplishing it ; and the confereuce terminated with the parties merely agreeing as to the general principle of destroying the incorrigible ringleader of tho heretical faction ; each sovereign being at liberty to select the opportunity and modes of execution which beat suited the circumstances of his own dominions. This statement is adopted by the judicious De Thou. Strada, the historian of Alva's government in Flanders, who wrote from the papers of the House of Parma, says, in reference to the hypothesis, that the Bartholomew was planned at Bayonne, that he cannot from his own knowledge either affirm or deny the accusation ; but inclines to the belief that it is true ("potius inclinat animus ut credam"). It was on this occasion that Alva made use of the celebrated expression men tioned by Davila and Mathieu, and which Henri IV., then Prince of Beam, and a stripling, who was present at the interview, told to Calignor, chancellor of Navarre, that he would rather catch the large fish and let tho small fry alone; "one salmon," said he, "is worth a hundred frogs."—" Una tete de saumon valoit mieux que celles de cent grenouilles." The subsequent conduct of Alva and the queen-mother, coupled with this indirect testimony, enable us to answer the first question thus far in the affirmative : that there existed, as far back as the conference at Bayonne, a general determination on the part of the courts of Spain and France to subdue, if not extirpate Protestantism ; but no concerted plot, or settled plats of operations.