The duke determined to accomplish himself what his agents had failed to do, and after the meeting of Saverne he and the cardinal came to Esclairon. From this place they proceeded to Vassy, and managed to arrive there with 200 armed followers on Sunday the 1st of March, at the hour of Protestant worship. Stopping first at the church and communing with the priests, they then advanced towards the building where the Protestants were assembled. The Duke himself afterwards alleged that his intention was to remonstrate with them for being Huguenots, to which he could have no right, they being assembled in no walled town, and according to the licence of the late edict. By the Huguenot account, one of the officers, named La Brosse, entered the temple with his soldiers; they were asked to take seats, to which they replied with the words, "Mort Dieu, let us kill all of them." On this the Huguenots strove to shut the doors and put out the soldiers. But these, by the order of the duke who joined them, fired their pistols and arquebuses, and soon cleared an entrance. A general attack was then made upon the unarmed congregation; men and women were cut down, and children not spared, whilst sufficient arquebusiers remained without to shoot down those who tried to escape by roof, by window, or by a scaffolding that had been erected near the wall. At the close, some of the soldiers formed two lines without the church, whilst others drove the rest of the congregation out. And in thus running the gauntlet, most of them were slain, none escaping without a wound. In the midst of the massacre, the Duchess of Guise, who was pregnant, and who from some distance heard the cries, sent to beg her husband to spare any pregnant women. Such mercy came too late. There were from ninety to a hundred slain, and upwards of 250 wounded and maltreated. The Bible was brought to the duke, who showed it, with indig CHAP. XXIII. XXIII, CHAP. nation, to his brother. The cardinal observed that it was the Holy Scriptures, in which there could be no harm, at which the duke raved, and declared it was impossible, a book printed yesterday, when the Holy Scriptures were 1500 years old. He was, in fact, demented with bigotry and rage-storming, tearing his beard, and shocking even the cardinal by his intemperance. But though excited, he was not horrified by the blood that he had spilled. He dragged the wounded minister off with him, and left orders for punishing and persecuting the survivors with unrelenting severity.* The massacre of Vassy was the signal for civil war. Although tumult and bloodshed had not been wanting, it was the first time that wholesale murder had been perpetrated by the order of so high a personage. Guise himself sought to palliate it, especially to the Germans, but the Catholic divines extolled it as an act of signal piety, and as a holy example. Guise, notwithstanding the king's order to him from Monceau, not to approach Paris, continued his march thither at the head of 3000 horse, 200 of them gentlemen.† Condé, having vainly appealed to the queen mother, entered the capital two days after with a force much inferior, composed of few gentlemen, and having but two knights of the order, Genlis and Jarnac, with him.‡ He was thus alone against the triumvirate, to which his brother, the King of Navarre, completely rallied, taking up Guise's quarrel as his own and telling the Protestant ministers that they had no right to complain Mémoires-Journaux de Guise, Mémoires de Condé, De Bèze, De Thou, and MSS. Dupuy, 428. Vie de N. Pithou. Discours de la Persécution de Vassy, printed. MS. Fontanieu, 306. † Journal de Bruslart. Spifanne and Beza's letters to the churches. MSS. Bethune, 8685. Christopher de Thou's letters to Catherine, March, 1562, in MSS. Supplement Français, 3003, fol. 2. Condé's letter to Parliament of Rouen, and his Declaration (printed), are in Fontanieu, MSS. 302-3. of persecution. "There is no doubt," replied Beza, "that the calling of the Church is to suffer martyrdom and oppression. But recollect it is an anvil that has worn out many hammers."* Condé offered those wealthy citizens of Paris who had embraced the Huguenot creed, to defend them if they would furnish him with 10,000 crowns to raise soldiers. From terror or lukewarmness, they raised but 1600 amongst them, and on Coligny's not obeying Condé's call, that he should come to Paris to his succour, the prince found it prudent to abandon the capital to the triumvirate. They instantly celebrated their triumph by destroying the Protestant temples and burning the benches.§ The sanguinary defiance of Vassy and the march of Guise to the capital evidently took the Huguenots by surprise. They had reckoned upon the queen mother being able to maintain the edict of January. Hence their want of readiness to support Condé's scheme of defence. The prince left, not with the intention of proceeding to the north, but merely of conducting his wife to be confined at the Château of La Ferté, which lies eastward of the capital. Some of the Huguenot chiefs were at Chatillon, the residence of Coligny, who himself showed the utmost reluctance to arm and commence the civil war. His wife, it was, who pressed him with most urgency to that resolution, Coligny pointing out to her, in reply, "the vanity of popular risings, the inevitable amount of suffering and horror, with the uncertain prospect of the result." Still she continued to urge him, adding that she regarded her bed as a winding sheet, whilst so many of her co-reli * Journal de l'Estoile. + La Popelinière. La Noue says that the novices of the convents were sufficiently numerous to drive out Condé, who had but 300 gentlemen, as many § From which the Constable de- CHAP. XXIII. XXIII. CHAP. gionists lay murdered and unburied. Coligny said he would take three weeks to consider. The three weeks for consideration she declared were long past. Unable to withstand her reproaches and his own convictions of their justice, Coligny mounted on horseback and proceeded in the last days of March to join Condé at Meaux, accompanied by about 1000 horse.* It was too late to dispute or recover possession of the capital. An equally important achievement would have been to get possession of the king and the queen mother, who were at Fontainebleau, but Condé shrank from using any thing like compulsion. The triumvirate were not so delicate. After sending the parliament to petition the return of the court to Paris, they, along with the King of Navarre, repaired to Fontainebleau, and forcibly removed the king and his mother, first to the Castle of Melun and then to the Louvre, both expressing by tears and lamentations how deeply they felt the humiliation and violence exercised towards them. (1562.) Having thus lost the king and the capital, the Huguenot chiefs fell back upon Orleans, not marching by Fontainebleau to intercept the court, but going round by St. Cloud and the other side of Paris. They were very nearly anticipated at Orleans also. But the vigilance of Andelot, and the celerity with which Coligny's cavaliers galloped to it (April 2), saved that town, which was soon erected into a bulwark for the creed. An arsenal was collected and a mint established there. An association was entered into by the Protestant chiefs † to use their utmost efforts for the deliverance of the king and the maintenance of those tolerant edicts which he had freely promulgated. Condé issued a second declaration, and sent to demand succours of *D'Aubigné, La Noue, &c. Their names are given by Castelnau. Prince de Porcien, De Ro han, De la Rochefoucault, Genlis, Montgomery, Grammont, Soubise, Mornay, &c. XXIII. Queen Elizabeth and the German Protestants, whilst CHAP. summoning to his aid all the men and money that the Huguenots of the South could muster or could spare.* The Huguenots had in many places not waited for the summons of Condé to make reprisals for the massacre of Vassy. On the 3rd, that is, on the first news of it, there were riots at Blois; the people began to destroy the images in the churches.† The towns on the Loire followed the example, and Orleans was in full insurrection when Condé entered it. Poitou and the maritime districts west of it took up arms. What most alarmed the triumvirate was the unanimous declaration of Normandy in favour of the Huguenots; Rouen, Havre, Caen, Dieppe, Falaise pronounced, although without violence, for the new doctrine. These events allowed Catherine to reassume authority and attempt to open negotiations with Condé. But whatever might be the views of either, they were disturbed by tidings of the massacre of Vassy having been repeated at Sens, of which town the Cardinal of Guise was archbishop. The gates having been closed, the Huguenots were attacked, slaughtered, and their bodies flung into the river. This was the signal for all moderation to cease. The Protestants of Valence having taken the Catholic governor, La Mothe Gondrin, hanged him, which was followed by the loss of Lyons and all the towns on the Rhone and the Saone to the Catholics. Bourges, Montauban, Castres, Montpelier, Nismes, Castelnaudary, Pezenas, Beziers, Agen, Aigues Mortes, the Vivarais, Cevennes, Orange, and the Comté Venaisin, with all the mountain country from Gap to Grenoble, hoisted the Huguenot standard.‡ * See Letters of Spifanne and Beza. MSS. Bethune, 8685. ↑ Letter of the Bailly. Bethune, 8695. MSS. Castelnau. Relations in the Mem. of Condé, De Thou, and Archives Curieuses, tom. ix. De Bèze. |