THE STORY OF THE SAINT BARTHOLOMEW
There are elements of mystery about the massacre of Saint Bartholomew over which, presumably, historians will continue to dispute as long as histories are written. Indeed, it is largely of their disputes that the mystery is begotten. Broadly speaking, these historians may be divided into two schools - Catholic and anti-Catholic. The former have made it their business to show that the massacre was purely a political affair, having no concern with religion; the latter have been equally at pains to prove it purely an act of religious persecution having no concern with politics. Those who adopt the latter point of view insist that the affair was long premeditated, that it had its source in something concerted some seven years earlier between Catherine of Medicis and the sinister Duke of Alva. And they would seem to suggest that Henry of Navarre, the nominal head of the Protestant party, was brought to Paris to wed Marguerite de Valois merely so that by this means the Protestant nobles of the kingdom, coming to the capital for the wedding, should be lured to their destruction.
It does not lie within the purview of the present narrative to enter into a consideration of the arguments of the two schools, nor will it be attempted.
But it may briefly be stated that the truth lies probably in a middle course of reasoning - that the massacre was political in conception and religious in execution; or, in other words, that statecraft deliberately made use of fanaticism as of a tool; that the massacre was brought about by a sudden determination begotten of opportunity which is but another word for Chance.
Against the theory of premeditation the following cardinal facts may be urged:
(a) The impossibility of guarding for seven years a secret that several must have shared;(b) The fact that neither Charles IX nor his mother Catherine were in any sense bigoted Catholics, or even of a normal religious sincerity.
(c) The lack of concerted action - so far as the kingdom generally was concerned - in the execution of the massacre.
A subsidiary disproof lies in the attempted assassination of Coligny two days before the massacre, an act which might, by putting the Huguenots on their guard, have caused the miscarriage of the entire plan - had it existed.
It must be borne in mind that for years France had been divided by religious differences into two camps, and that civil war between Catholic and Huguenot had ravaged and distracted the country. At the head of the Protestant party stood that fine soldier Gaspard de Chatillon, Admiral de Coligny, virtually the Protestant King of France, a man who raised armies, maintaining them by taxes levied upon Protestant subjects, and treated with Charles IX as prince with prince. At the head of the Catholic party - the other imperium in imperio - stood the Duke of Guise. The third and weakest party in the State, serving, as it seemed, little purpose beyond that of holding the scales between the other turbulent two, was the party of the King.
The motives and events that precipitated the massacre are set forth in the narration of the King's brother, the Duke of Anjou (afterwards Henri III). It was made by him to Miron, his physician and confidential servant in Cracow, when he ruled there later as King of Poland, under circumstances which place it beyond suspicion of being intended to serve ulterior aims. For partial corroboration, and for other details of the massacre itself, we have the narratives, among others, of Sully, who was then a young man in the train of the King of Navarre, and of Lusignan, a gentleman of the Admiral's household. We shall closely follow these in our reconstruction of the event and its immediate causes.
The gay chatter of the gallants and ladies thronging the long gallery of the Louvre sank and murmured into silence, and a movement was made to yield a free passage to the King, who had suddenly made his appearance leaning affectionately upon the shoulder of the Admiral de Coligny.
The Duke of Anjou, a slender, graceful young man in a gold-embroidered suit of violet, forgot the interest he was taking in his beautiful hands to bend lower over the handsome Madame de Nemours what time the unfriendly eyes of both were turned upon the Admiral.
The King and the great Huguenot leader came slowly down the gallery, an oddly contrasting pair. Coligny would have been the taller by a half-head but for his stoop, yet in spite of it there was energy and military vigour in his carriage, just as there was a severe dignity amounting to haughtiness in his scarred and wrinkled countenance. A bullet that had pierced his cheek and broken three of his teeth at the battle of Moncontour had left a livid scar that lost itself in his long white beard. His forehead was high and bald, and his eyes were of a steely keenness under their tufted brows. He was dressed with Calvinistic simplicity entirely in black, and just as this contrasted with the King's suit of sulphur-coloured satin, so did the gravity of his countenance contrast with the stupidity of his sovereign's.
Charles IX, a slimly built young man in his twenty-fourth year, was of a pallid, muddy complexion, with great, shifty, greenish eyes, and a thick, pendulous nose. The protruding upper lip of his long, thin mouth gave him an oafish expression, which was increased by his habit of carrying his head craned forward.
His nature was precisely what you would have expected from his appearance - dull and gross. He was chiefly distinguished among men of birth for general obscenity of speech and morphological inventiveness in blasphemy.
At the end of the gallery Coligny stooped to kiss the royal hand in leave-taking. With his other hand Charles patted the Admiral's shoulder.
