The History of Christianity - John S. C. Abbott (bookstand for reading .txt) 📗

Upon that conspicuous platform Henry received the hand of the haughty princess, and the nuptial oath was administered. Marguerite however, even in that hour and in the presence of all those spectators, gave a ludicrous exhibition of her girlish petulance and her ungoverned wilfulness. When, in the progress of the ceremony, she was asked if she willingly received Henry of Navarre for her husband, a sudden freak of perversion seized her. She pouted, coquettishly tossed her proud little head, and was silent. The question was repeated. The spirit of Marguerite was now up, and all the powers of Europe could not give pliancy to the shrew.

The question was again repeated. She fixed her eyes defiantly upon the officiating bishop, and, refusing by word or gesture to give the slightest assent, remained as immovable as a statue. Embarrassment and delay ensued. There was a pause in the ceremony; and every eye was fixed, in wonder as to what would be the result.

Suddenly the king, Marguerite’s brother, who with his court was conspicuously seated upon the platform, fully conscious of his sister’s indomitable spirit, quietly walked up to the termagant at bay, and placing one hand upon her bosom, and the other upon the back of her head, compelled an involuntary nod. The bishop smiled and bowed, and acting upon the politic principle, that small favors are gratefully received, proceeded with the ceremony. Such were the vows with which Henry of Navarre and Marguerite of France were united. Such is too often love in the palace.

We must now pass by the festival-days which ensued, and turn from the nuptials to the massacre. Admiral Coligni, anxious to return home, called at the Louvre to take leave of the king. As he was passing through the streets to the lodgings which had been provided for him, two bullets from the pistol of an assassin pierced his body. His friends bore him bleeding to his apartment. Though the king and queen feigned great indignation, the evidence was conclusive that they had instigated the crime. The Protestants were thunderstruck. All their leaders had been lured to Paris; and there they were,—caught in a trap, unarmed, separated from their followers, and helpless. Henry of Navarre immediately hastened to the bedside of his revered and wounded friend. While he was sitting there, Catharine and Charles were deliberating whether Henry himself should be included in the general massacre. After much debate, it was decided to spare him, as he would be powerless after all the Protestants were cold in death.

The Duke of Guise led the movement of the Catholics. Troops had been stationed at all the important positions in Paris, and the Catholic population had been secretly armed. The Catholics were enjoined to wear a white cross upon the hat, that they might be distinguished. The conspiracy extended throughout the whole of France, and the storm of death was to burst at the same moment upon the unsuspecting victims in every city and village of the kingdom.

While Catharine and Charles were arranging the details for the massacre, they employed all their arts of duplicity to disarm suspicion. The very evening of the fatal night, the king invited many of the most illustrious of his victims to a sumptuous entertainment at the Louvre. In a fine glow of spirits he detained them until a late hour with his pleasantries, and induced several to remain in the palace to sleep, that they might be slain beneath his own roof.

The conspiracy had been kept a profound secret from Marguerite, lest she should betray it to her husband. In the mean time, aided by the gloom of a starless night, preparations were making in every street of Paris for the enormous perpetration. Soldiers were assembling at their appointed rendezvouses. Guards were stationed to cut off flight. Fanatic men, armed with sabres and muskets which gleamed in the lamplight, began to emerge through the darkness, and to gather in motley assemblage. Many houses were illuminated, that, by the blaze from the windows, the bullet might be thrown with precision, and the dagger might strike an unerring blow.

Catharine and her son Charles were now in one of the apartments of the Louvre, waiting for the clock to strike the hour of two, when the signal was to be given. Catharine, inexorable in crime, was very apprehensive that her son might relent. Petulant and self-willed, he was liable to paroxysms of stubbornness, when he spurned his mother’s counsels.

Weak as well as depraved, the wretched king was feverishly excited. He paced the room nervously, peering out at the window, looking at his watch, wishing yet dreading to have the appointed hour arrive. His mother, witnessing these indications of a faltering spirit, urged him to order the alarm-bell immediately to be struck, which was to be the signal for the massacre to commence. Charles hesitated, and a cold sweat oozed from his brow.

“Are you a coward?” tauntingly inquired the fiend-like mother.

This is a charge which no coward can stand. It almost always nerves the poltroon to action. The young king nervously exclaimed, “Well, then, let it begin!” There were in the room at the time only Catharine, Charles, and his brother, the Duke of Anjou. It was two hours after midnight. There was a moment of dreadful suspense and of perfect silence. All three stood at the window, in the Palace of the Louvre, looking out into the rayless night.

Suddenly through the still air the ponderous tones of the alarm-bell fell upon the ear, and rolled the knell of death over the city. The vibration awakened the demon in ten thousand hearts. It was the morning of the sabbath, Aug. 24, 1572,—the anniversary of the festival of St. Bartholomew.

The first stroke of the bell had not ceased to vibrate upon the ear when the uproar of the carnage commenced. The sound, which seemed to rouse Catharine to frenzy, almost froze the blood of the young monarch. Trembling in every nerve, he shouted for the massacre to be stopped.

It was too late: the train was fired. Beacon-fires and alarm-bells sent the signal with the rapidity of light and of sound through entire France. The awful roar of human passion, the crackling of musketry, the shrieks of the wounded and of the dying, blended in appalling tumult throughout the whole metropolis. Old men, terrified maidens, helpless infants, venerable matrons, were alike smitten down mercilessly to the fanatic cry of “Vive Dieu et le Roi!”—“Live God and the King!”

The Admiral Coligni, who had been shot and desperately wounded the day before, faint and dying, was lying upon his bed, surrounded by a few faithful friends, as the demoniac clamor rolled in upon their ears. The Duke of Guise, a fanatic Papist, with three hundred followers, hastened to the lodgings of the admiral, stabbed the sentinels, and burst through the gates. A wounded servant rushed to the chamber of the admiral, exclaiming,—

“The house is forced; and there are no means of resisting!”

“I have long,” said the heroic Christian admiral, “prepared myself to die. Save yourselves if you can: you cannot defend me. I commend my soul to God.”

The murderers were now rushing up the stairs. They pursued, shot, stabbed, and cut down the flying friends of Coligni. The admiral, thus for a moment left alone, rose from his bed, and, being unable to stand, leaned against the wall, and, in fervent prayer, surrendered himself to the will of his Maker. The assassins burst into the room. They saw a venerable man in his night-robe, with bandaged wounds, engaged in his devotions.

“Art thou the admiral?” demanded one with brandished sword.

“I am,” replied Coligni; “and thou, young man, shouldst respect my gray hairs. Nevertheless, thou canst abridge my life but a little.”

The wretch plunged his sword into the bosom of Coligni, and then, withdrawing it dripping with blood, cut him down. The admiral fell, calmly saying,—

“If I could but die by the hand of a gentleman, instead of by the hands of such a knave as this!”

The rest of the assassins immediately fell upon him, each emulous to bury his dagger in the bosom of his victim. The Duke of Guise, ashamed to encounter the eye of the noble Coligni, whom he had often met in friendly intercourse, remained impatiently in the courtyard below.

“Breme!” he shouted to one of his followers, looking up to the window, “have you done it?”

“Yes,” Breme replied: “he is done for.”

“Let us see, though,” replied the duke: “throw him out of the window!”

The mangled corpse fell heavily upon the paving-stones. The duke wiped the blood from the lifeless face, and, carefully scrutinzing the features, said, “Yes: I recognize the man.” Then, giving the pallid face a kick, he exclaimed, “Courage, comrades! we have happily begun. Let us now go for others.”

The tiger, having once lapped his tongue in blood, seems to be imbued with a new spirit of ferocity. There is in man a similar temper: the frenzied multitude became drunk with blood. The houses of the Protestants were marked. The assassins burst open the doors, and rushed through all apartments, murdering indiscriminately young and old,—men, women, and children. The gory bodies were thrown from the windows, and the pavements were clotted with blood.

Charles soon recovered from his momentary wavering, and, conscious that it was too late to draw back, with fiend-like eagerness engaged himself in the work of death. Fury seized him: his cheeks were flushed, his lips compressed, and his eyes glared with frenzy. Bending eagerly from his window, he shouted words of encouragement to the assassins. Grasping a gun, he watched like a sportsman for his prey; and when he saw an unfortunate Protestant, wounded and bleeding, flying from his pursuers, he would take deliberate aim from the window of his palace, and shout with exultation as he saw him fall pierced by his bullet.

A crowd of fugitives rushed into the courtyard of the Louvre to throw themselves upon the protection of the king. Charles sent his own body-guard into the yard with guns and daggers to butcher them all.

Just before the carnage commenced, Marguerite, oppressed with fears of she knew not what, retired to her chamber. She had hardly closed her eyes when the outcry of the pursuers and the pursued filled the palace. She sprang up in her bed, and heard some one struggling at the door, and shrieking “Navarre! Navarre!”

The door was burst open; and one of her husband’s attendants rushed in, covered with wounds and blood, and pursued by four soldiers of her brother’s guard. The captain of the guard at that moment entered the room, pursuing his victim.

Marguerite, almost insane with terror, fled to the chamber of her sister. The palace was filled with shouts and shrieks and uproar. As she was rushing through the hall, she encountered another Protestant gentleman flying before the crimsoned sword of his pursuers: he was covered with blood flowing from many ghastly gashes. Just as he reached the young Queen of Navarre, his pursuer plunged a sword through his body; and he fell dead at her feet.

No tongue can tell the horrors of that night: it would require volumes to detail its scenes. While the carnage was in progress, a body of soldiers entered the chamber of Henry of Navarre, and conveyed him to the presence of the king. The imbecile monarch, with blasphemous oaths and a countenance inflamed with fury, ordered him to abandon Protestantism, or prepare to die. Henry, to save his life, ingloriously yielded, and, by similar compulsion, was induced to send an edict to his own dominions, prohibiting the exercise of any religion but that of Rome.

When the gloom of night had passed, and the sabbath sun dawned upon Paris, a spectacle was witnessed such as even that blood-renowned metropolis has seldom presented. The city still resounded with tumult; the pavements were gory, and covered with the dead; men, women, and children were still flying in every direction, wounded and