25 Chapter 25.The Reformation in France and French Switzerland.A.D. 1520-1592.

Chapter 25. The Reformation in France and French Switzerland.

A.D. 1520-1592. The establishment of the Reformation in France and French Switzerland, in its relation to the German and German-Swiss Reformation, must be looked upon as a somewhat late work. Its record is a record of blood, beginning with the martyrdom of the eloquent but imprudent John Leclerc, and ending with the massacre of the Huguenots, in which about 70,000 of the reformed faith were slaughtered in a few days.

William Farel, a native of Dauphiny, may be regarded as the apostle of the Reformation in French Switzerland. He learnt the reformed doctrines from a pious and learned doctor of Etaples, named James Lefevre, and first taught them in Paris, where he enjoyed the friendship and patronage of the bishop of Meaux, William Briconnet, who himself taught the new doctrines.

Persecution, however, at length became so violent that he was obliged to take refuge in Switzerland, where he made the acquaintance of Oecolampadius, Bucer, and other reformers. At Basle, Montbeliard, Aigle, Vallengin, St. Blaise, and Neuchatel, all in French Switzerland, he laboured with varying success; and such was the power of his preaching in the last-named place that the people declared they would live and die in the Protestant faith, and refused to rest satisfied till the Reformation was legally established in the Canton. At Geneva, which he visited twice, his work was difficult and perilous, and many attempts were made both by monks and priests to murder him. Several times he was stoned and beaten; twice he narrowly escaped a death by drowning in the Rhone; and once he was mercifully preserved from a more painful death by poison. But the blessing of the Lord was upon his labours, and ere long the Mass was officially suspended by a decree of the Council of Two Hundred, and an edict appeared ordaining that, "the services of God were thenceforward to be performed according to the statutes of the gospel; and that all acts of papal idolatry were to cease altogether." Coins were struck in commemoration of the event, and the citizens chose for themselves this new motto, "After darkness, light." The same happy results attended the labours of the stout-hearted reformer at Lausanne, though his first visit to the place was unsuccessful. The important matter was settled at a public disputation which lasted eight days, and ended in a signal triumph for the Protestants.

While at Geneva in the year 1536, Farel made the acquaintance of Calvin, then a young man in his twenty-eighth year. He had already made himself famous by the publication of his "Christian Institutes," and Farel felt that if he could persuade his young friend to remain in Geneva, to overlook the work, he would be doing much to help on the interests of the Reformation. He proposed the matter to him, but Calvin shrank from taking up the burden of such an undertaking, and refused. He pleaded that he was not mentally prepared for the task, that his education was as yet unfinished, and that, for the present at least, he could only render assistance by his pen. But Farel felt that he had the mind of God in asking him to remain, and met his shrinking refusal with the authoritative reply, "I declare to you on the part of God, that if you refuse to labour here along with us in the Lord’s work, His curse will be upon you; since under the pretence of your studies, it is yourself that you are seeking, rather than Him." The words had the desired effect upon the young theologian. Calvin abandoned his intention of proceeding to Strasbourg to continue his studies, and settled at Geneva. He was at once appointed a professor of theology, and commenced an arduous ministry of twenty-eight years, as pastor of one of the most prominent churches of the city: and from this place his influence presently extended to all the countries of Europe. "His relation to the ancient church," says Ludwig Hausser, "was peculiar. He was more bitterly opposed to it than any one else. Passionate and cutting things had indeed been said of Rome, but nothing so crushing had been urged against the Curia in the whole range of polemics as the attempt to prove that the church of Rome, in its origin and growth, was utterly opposed to the true church of Christ. Never had the hierarchical principle of the mediaeval Romish church been the subject of a fiercer attack than by Calvin’s unimpassioned and cool-blooded assertion, that it was utterly opposed to the original idea of the constitution of the church, and he was therefore regarded by Rome as a more dangerous and implacable enemy than Luther." But the people of Geneva could not at once fall in with the measures of reform which Calvin introduced. The whole city was sunk in vice and popery, and its "nine hundred priests" governed the consciences of the people. They did not like the restrictions which he put upon their singing, and dancing, and other worldly amusements; nor could they tolerate his stern rebukes of those less open sins to which they were no strangers: and when at last he prohibited them from coming to the altar, and sent them back with the rebuke, "You are not worthy to partake of the Lord’s body; you are just what you were before; your sentiments, your morals, and your conduct are unchanged" when his faithfulness had brought him to this point, the people rose in a body and drove him from the city. But in a little while they wished him back again. The city became filled with disorder, owing to the angry factions of the papists, the libertines, and the Anabaptists; and his presence was much needed. The very people who had driven him away began to clamour loudly for his return. "Let us recall the man," said they, "who wished to renovate our faith, our morals, and our liberties." And so, in the year 1540, it was resolved by the Council of Two Hundred, "in order that the honour and glory of God may be promoted, to seek all possible means to have Master Calvin back as preacher."

Calvin was loth at first to return, and declared that there was no place under heaven which he more dreaded than Geneva, yet added that he would decline nothing that might be for the welfare of that church. At last, in response to his official invitations and the earnest appeals of his friends, and feeling that he was guided by the will of God, he accepted the recall. To Farel he wrote, "Since I remember that I am not my own, nor at my own disposal, I give myself up, tied, bound, as a sacrifice to God." The welcome which he received atoned in some measure for his past ill-treatment, and from henceforth he was little hindered in his labours for the good of the people.

History does not favour us by drawing back the curtain which hides the inner and domestic life of Calvin from our view, and so the contemplation of his life is not so fraught with interest as that of Luther. He died on May I7th, 1564, literally worn out by the excessive mental fatigue which he had gone through. Farel, who was a feeble old man in his seventy-fifth year, when the news of the great reformer’s illness reached him, wrote to say he must come and see him, but Calvin thoughtfully begged him to spare himself that fatigue. His brief letter was full of affection. "Farewell, my best and most faithful brother," he wrote, "and since it is God’s pleasure that you should survive me in this world, live in the constant remembrance of our union, which, in so far as it was useful to the church of God, will still bear for us abiding fruit in heaven. Do not expose yourself to fatigue for my sake. I respire with difficulty, and continually expect my breath to fail me; but it is enough for me that I live and die in Christ, who to His people in life and death is gain. Once more, farewell to thee, and to all the brethren, thy colleagues." Calvin lingered on some three weeks after writing this letter, and spent the greater portion of that time in prayer. He died repeating the apostle’s words, "The sufferings of this present life are not worthy to be compared with the glory to be —" here he stopped, for at that moment the glory dawned upon his view. In the narrative by Beza, a fellow reformer, we get this reference to Calvin: "He lived fifty-four years, ten months, and seventeen days; half of which time he spent in the sacred ministry. His stature was of a middle size, his complexion dark and pale, his eyes brilliant even unto death, expressing the acuteness of his understanding. He lived nearly without sleep. His power of memory was almost incredible; and his judgment so sound, that his decisions often seemed oracular. In his words he was sparing, and he despised an artificial eloquence; yet was he an accomplished writer, and, by the accuracy of his mind, and his practice in dictating to an amanuensis, he attained to speak little differently from what he would have written. . . . Having given with good faith the history of his life and of his death, after sixteen years’ observation of him, I feel myself warranted to declare, that in him was proposed to all men an illustrious example of the life and death of the Christian, so that it will be found as difficult to emulate as it is easy to calumniate him." So much for Calvin and the Reformation in French Switzerland: we may now turn our attention to France, and watch the progress and difficulties of the work there. We have already alluded to the work of Farel and Lefevre in Paris, and of the encouragement which they received from Briconnet, the bishop of Meaux; but it was in the diocese of Briçonnet that the reformed doctrines were first publicly proclaimed.

Meaux at that time was a busy little city filled with wool-carders, fullers, and cloth-workers, and these simple people listened with deep interest to the new doctrines of their bishop, many being converted. The work grew, and the monks and begging friars who infested the neighbourhood became alarmed. "What new heresy is this?" they cried; "our authority is being questioned, our means of livelihood are being cut off — we must take instant measures to suppress these strange doctrines." They accordingly proceeded to Paris and laid their complaints before the Sorbonne and the Parliament, averring that "the city of Meaux, and all the neighbourhood, was infected with heresy, and its polluted waters flowed from the episcopal palace." At that time the kingdom was administered, in the absence of its rightful monarch Francis I., by his mother, a bigoted catholic; and the reforming party knew that they could expect no kindness at her hands. Nor was the conduct of their bishop, when he was presently summoned before the Parliament, at all likely to encourage and sustain them; for he displayed the greatest timidity during his examination, and eventually yielded to the terms of the Sorbonne. The worship of the virgin and the saints was now resumed throughout his diocese; a prohibition was placed on the sale and possession of Luther’s works; and Lefevre, Farel and the other reformers were forbidden to preach in the pulpits of Meaux, or even to remain in the neighbourhood. This was not a hopeful beginning. The foremost reformer at Meaux had given up the work through fear, and the rest had been driven from the field. What was to be done? Was the work to be abandoned, and the cause of God to suffer irretrievably because of the wrath of man? No. For a while the work went on in secret, and though the public means of grace were denied, private study of the word and prayer were not neglected. Then a prominent member of their party, a wool-comber, named John Leclerc, drew up a proclamation, in which he spoke in no measured terms of the pope, and asserted that the kingdom of Antichrist was about to be destroyed by the breath of the Lord. This proclamation he posted on one of the doors of the cathedral, where all might read it; and waited the result. As might be expected the monks and priests were filled with rage and confusion; and Leclerc was arrested on suspicion. When brought up for trial he made no attempt to conceal his act, and after a trial of a few days was condemned to be whipped through the city, and to have his forehead branded with a hot iron. While the latter part of his sentence was being carried out, a woman pressed through the crowd, her face pale with grief and emotion, and cried out, "Jesus Christ, and His marks for ever!" It was Leclerc’s mother. The wool-comber scarcely suffered his wounds to heal, before he was at work again: but the scene of his labours was changed. Having been banished from Meaux we next hear of him at Metz, and in the character of an image-breaker. Seated one day before the images in the Chapel of the Virgin, an edifice of great celebrity near that city, those words came into his mind, "Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works; but thou shalt overthrow them, and quite break down their images" (Ex. xxiii. 24), and receiving this as a divine injunction, he immediately arose, and demolished the images with which the chapel was crowded. This done, he quietly re-entered the city. The agitation produced among the catholics by this act was indescribable, and the branded heretic was immediately arrested. As in the case of his previous trial, he readily confessed his crime — gloried in it in fact and exhorted the people to renounce idolatry, and return to the worship of the one true God. Sentence of death having been passed upon him, he was hurried to the scene of his martyrdom. Here a frightful death awaited him, though he was wonderfully sustained to the last. First, his right hand, which did the mischief, was cut off; then his flesh was torn with red-hot pincers; then his chest was cruelly burned. But while this torture was going on he recited, in a clear unwavering voice, the Psalmist’s words, "Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; they have ears, but they hear not; noses have they, but they smell not; they have hands, but they handle not; feet have they, but they walk not; neither speak they through their throats. They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them. O Israel, trust thou in the Lord; he is their help and their shield." Then his body was consumed over a slow fire; and thus the first martyr of the French Reformation entered heaven. In due time came the martyrdom of a converted priest, named Chatelain, whose patient testimony at the stake, convinced many of the truth of the cause in which he died, and filled them with a desire to know more of that gospel in which he had found so great a solace. Then came the pious and very learned Louis Berquin, a peer of France, who Beza said would have made a second Luther if he had found in Francis a second Frederick of Hanover. Thrice was he imprisoned for preaching the reformed doctrines to the people, and thrice was he delivered from his prison through the instrumentality of the king’s sister, the eminently pious Margaret, afterwards Queen of Navarre. Meanwhile his friends, timorous and lukewarm by reason of the dangers by which they were surrounded, urged him to desist from preaching, and to tempt no longer the malice of his enemies; but Berquin could see no reason to fly the field, and fearlessly went on with the work."Leave these hornets alone," wrote his timid friend Erasmus, "above all, do not mix me up in these things; my burden is already heavy enough." "You know Beza and his familiars," he wrote again, "a thousand-headed hydra is shooting out its venom on all sides. The name of your enemies is Legion. Were your cause better than that of Jesus Christ, they will not let you go until they have brought you to a cruel end. Do not trust in the protection of the king. But in any case do not commit me with the faculty of Theology." But while Erasmus and his other timid friends called loudly for Berquin to stop, the voice of God in his own soul and through the pages of His word, bade him go on; and Berquin went on, and France has need to bless God for it. In the month of April, 1529, he was arrested for the fourth time, and brought before the Sorbonne. After a hurried and mock trial he was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and to have his tongue bored through with a hot iron, but Berquin appealed against the decision of the council, and the judges feared to insist upon their sentence in the face of his appeal. Then they decided that he should be strangled and burnt, and this sentence was carried out. On the 22nd of April, 1529, he was taken in a cart to the Place de Grève, under an escort of six hundred soldiers, and met his death with great firmness.

Martyrdoms now grew frequent, but they were the beacon fires of the Reformation, inviting the people everywhere to rise in defence of the truth; and for every life thus taken, twenty champions arose to fill the gap. But the opposition was very great, and the number of the reformers in comparison with the enemies of the Reformation was a mere cipher. At length an expedient was hit upon, which it was hoped would accelerate the work; and an elaborate protest was prepared,* in which the abuses of Rome were exposed in vivid colours. Copies of this protest were circulated throughout France, and it was privately arranged that it should be published simultaneously in every town, upon a night that should be named. The 18th (some say, the 24th) of October, 1534, was the date fixed upon; and the eventful work of that one night has given to the whole year the name of the "Year of the Placards."

{*The author of the protest is not known: some think that Farel had the chief hand in it.} The night at length arrived — an anxious one for the Lutherans, and the daring task of posting the placards was accomplished quietly, and without disturbance. In Paris, copies were affixed to the wall of the university, and all the public buildings, and the doors of the cathedral were covered with them. Even the parliament house, and the door of the king’s sleeping apartment were not excepted; though it is probable that an enemy was responsible for the presence of the placard there. Morning came; and the effects of the discovery throughout the kingdom cannot be described. The excitement was unparalleled: a wrathful cry of "Death to the heretics!" arose throughout the land and a storm of terrible persecution began. The king grew pale with agitation when he saw the placard, and wrathfully exclaimed, "Let all be seized, and let Lutheranism be totally exterminated."

Numerous arrests were at once made, and the executions followed one another with terrible rapidity. Bartholomew Milon, a cripple, was the first martyr. He had to be lifted out of the cart on the day of his execution, as he could not walk; but the judges had taken no pity on his affliction, and he was burnt to death over a slow fire. Others followed. On the 21st of January, 1535, a "peace offering" procession, to atone for the indignities which had been offered to the ancient church, "marched through the most public streets of Paris in gloomy majesty," and the solemnities of the day were closed by the martyrdom of six Lutherans. The king was present, and made a violent speech against the new doctrines. "If my arm were infected with this pestilence," he said, I would cut it off. If one of my children were so wretched as to favour this new reform, and to wish to make a profession of it, I would sacrifice him myself to the justice of God, and to my own justice." Notable zeal this; but how the language of the wretched king began to change, when the hour of his own departure drew near! What would he have given then to have washed the guilt of so much blood from his conscience, and to have relieved his soul of the consequences which he knew were hanging over him! And what a history of crime and blood his reign presents to us! — of so many crimes, and so much blood! It was he who consented to the persecution of the Vaudois Christians, who inhabited the fruitful country of Merindole and Cabrieres. They held doctrines similar to the doctrines of the French reformers; and this was their only crime. "They are irreproachable in morals," said a catholic writer of that day, "laborious, sober, benevolent, and of unshaken loyalty." Yet an edict of persecution was published against them, and upwards of twenty-two towns and villages were plundered and burned, and the inhabitants murdered under circumstances of shocking barbarity. And Francis was in measure responsible for this. What a burden for his distracted soul as the hour of his dissolution drew near! It is then we hear him moaning, as the terrors of an accusing conscience take form before his eyes, "I am not to blame — my orders were exceeded." Courtier-prelates might have lulled that conscience to sleep while the king was in the vigour of life; but of what avail were their words when the hand of death was upon him, and eternity stared him in the face? In the year 1547 Francis died, and was succeeded by his second son Henry, whose elder brother had been poisoned by the wicked Catherine de’ Medici, the new king’s wife. During his reign of twelve years the persecution was continued with increasing violence, and the priests did not lose any opportunity of prejudicing the king’s mind with regard to the Reformation. They described it as seditious and revolutionary, and declared that the Huguenots* — for this was the new name by which the French Lutherans were known — were plotting against him, and that their doctrines were subversive of all ecclesiastical and regal power. The king took alarm at these representations, but it was not till towards the close of his reign, (when the Reformation had taken such a hold of the people that a sixth of the population were Huguenots), that he resorted to the extreme measure of summoning a parliament with a view to their suppression. This memorable sitting is known in history as the "Bed of Justice."

{*So named from one Hugues, a Genevese Calvinist.}

Meanwhile, thanks to the untiring labours of Calvin, the ecclesiastical foundations of the Reformation had been laid, and churches had been formed on his model in Paris, Poictiers, Angers, Bourges and elsewhere; so that when the king convoked his parliament in the year 1559, there were over a thousand such congregations in existence in France. The only important incident which occurred during the deliberations of the parliament, seems to have been the arrest of one of its senators, John Du Bourg, whose bold speech in favour of the Huguenots, excited the king’s anger, and led him to exclaim that he would watch Du Bourg’s martyrdom with his own eyes. This, indeed, was his serious intention, but the Lord had willed otherwise, and fourteen days after the senator’s arrest, Henry was killed in a tilting match with Count Montgomery, the captain of the guards. Strange to say, this was the very man who had effected the arrest of Du Bourg. The accession of Francis II. brought no brighter prospects for the Huguenots; and after their bold champion, Du Bourg, had been immured for six months in the frightful dungeon of the Bastille, during which he had been denied the common necessaries of life, and had suffered grievous tortures by means of an iron cage, he was burnt alive. The new king was a mere boy when he ascended the throne, and his weak body and still weaker mind rendered him eminently unfit to rule. It was during his reign that the work of Reformation in France assumed a political complexion, and the wars of religion began. French Protestantism could now number among its adherents several of the highest nobles in the land, men like Coligny and Sully, and the Huguenots had become a body which could no longer be despised. There were two parties then in the State in violent opposition; the one, with Catherine de’ Medici at its head, representing the old nobility of France — the Bourbons, Montmorencys, etc.; the other, headed by the brothers Francis and Charles Guise, representing an entirely new faction, which had grown out of the intrigues of these men. Francis Guise, in rank a duke, had control of the army, and aspired to the throne; Charles held the rank of a cardinal, and had control of the finances and foreign affairs. How to check the power of the two brothers, who virtually ruled the kingdom between them, became a problem with Catherine’s party, and they sought to solve it by drawing to their side the Huguenot opposition. Many members of the discontented aristocracy even adopted Calvinistic sentiments for purely political motives; and when one of these nobles, La Renaudie by name, who held a grudge against the Guises for the murder of his brother, had been detected in a plot against their lives, the Huguenots were implicated in the conspiracy. But the death of Francis II., in the year 1560, effected the overthrow of the Guise party, and Catherine de’ Medici having undertaken, in her own interests, the guardianship of the new king, Charles IX., then in his tenth year, the reins of government were practically transferred to her hands. Though possessed of no strong religious convictions, she was a catholic in name, and hated Protestantism be cause of its supposed democratic tendencies: yet, in order to consolidate her power, and to destroy more effectually the power of the Guises, she professed toleration, and released the Huguenots who had been imprisoned during the reign of Francis II. At the same time she avoided mortally offending the Guises, and permitted them, and all their adherents, to remain in their offices and posts of honour. But no sooner was her position firmly established than she proceeded to mature her plans for the extermination of heresy and the ruin of the Huguenots. Her schemes were as deeply laid as her heart was cruel and wicked, and aided by the counsels of Pope Pius V., and Philip II. of Spain, her plot was ripe for execution in the autumn of the year 1572. That plot had for its object the wholesale massacre of the French Protestants. At the head of the Huguenots was the illustrious Admiral Coligny, an old man, alike venerated for his piety and renowned for his bravery. It had been necessary that his confidence should be gained, or, at least, that he should be thrown off his guard, before a scheme so vast as that which Catherine and her accomplices had formed, could be carried out: and this had been effected in the following manner. Charles IX., then in his 22nd year. had been instigated by his mother, to profess "an earnest desire for the establishment of a lasting peace" between the two religious factions, and to that end a marriage had been proposed between his own sister, Margaret of Valois, a Roman Catholic, and the protestant king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. At first there had been some opposition to this, from the mother of Henry, the spiritual and accomplished Jeanne d’Albret, but she had been secretly removed by poison at an early stage of the proceedings; and the marriage had been duly arranged. Coligny guileless and open-hearted himself, could suspect no treachery in others, and made no attempts to sift the hidden sources of the king’s action, or to question his motives. Nothing disturbed his own peace, and he began to look forward with joyful hope to the approaching union. The marriage was fixed for the 18th of August, 1572, and nobles from all parts of the kingdom; — Protestants as well as Catholics — were invited to the ceremony. Almost all responded to the invitation, and by the 18th, Paris was crowded with the chiefs of the two religious parties. The marriage was duly solemnised, and for some days the French metropolis was given up to feasting and gaiety; the Protestants mingling with the Catholics without suspicion. But this was all a part of the great scheme, and by it the Huguenots were lulled to sleep. St. Bartholomew’s eve was drawing near, but still the festivities continued and still the same amicable relationships were preserved among all classes. True, at times there was something in the looks and gestures of certain of the Romanists, which those who perceived it could scarcely understand: yet the feeling of wonder passed away, and the fatal sense of security remained. Now and then a Protestant would come upon a whispering group of papists, lurking in some dark corner of a street, and a feeling of uneasiness would steal over him — but why? Were they not his frends? — Alas! Alas!

Charles became deeply agitated as the fatal hour drew near. His face grew deathly pale; his frame shook; a fearful feeling of remorse oppressed his heart. In his irresolution he would have countermanded his orders, but for the persuasions of his mother. He did dispatch a message to the Duke of Guise urging him not to act in haste; but the message came too late. Catherine had anticipated him, by commanding that the tragedy should commence an hour before the stated time; and while the messenger was yet on his way the signal bell rang out. Immediately it was answered from every steeple in Paris, and the massacre began. A voice was heard at the door of Coligny’s sleeping apartment, "My lord, God calls us to His presence!" He had been wakened by the clanging of the bells, and was at that moment engaged in prayer. The aged nobleman rose to his feet, and turning towards his attendants, said, "I have been long prepared to die; as for you, save yourselves if you can; you cannot save my life." The Duke of Guise was waiting in the street without, while the assassins did their work, and presently his voice was heard, calling to his servant, "Behem, hast thou done it?" The ominous answer immediately came back, "It is done, my lord." "But we must see it to believe it;" said the Duke, "throw him out of the window." Behem took up the still breathing form, and did with it as he was commanded. As the body fell on to the pavement below, the Duke spurned it with his foot, saying, "I know him, it is he: courage, comrades; we have begun well — now for the rest." In all the streets was now heard the firing of musketry, mingled with the brutal curses of the papists, and the groans of the dying. The Huguenots, taken by surprise, could offer no resistance; and when morning dawned their corpses were seen lying in heaps on every hand. The streets ran with blood, and the Seine was purpled with the dark stream. Morning brought no cessation in the awful work, and by that time Charles had recovered from his indecision, and came out on a balcony, with his mother, to feast his eyes on the scene of slaughter. He even joined in the work himself, and, seizing upon an arquebuse, fired upon the Huguenots who were seeking to escape by swimming across the river. For four days the massacre continued, and then the murderers left off through sheer weariness. By that time some five hundred of the Protestant nobility and gentry had been slaughtered, and from five to ten thousand Huguenots of lesser station. Nor did the carnage end there. It extended to the provinces, and orders were dispatched to the various governors and magistrates to exterminate the heretics without mercy. Some yielded a ready obedience, but not all. To his eternal honour be it told, one catholic bishop, John Hennuyer, bishop of Lisieux, refused to incur the guilt of so foul an act, and when the royal messenger presented him with the order, he said, "No, no, sir; I oppose, and will always oppose the execution of such an order. I am the pastor of Lisieux, and these people whom you command me to slaughter are my flock. Although they have at present strayed, having quitted the pasture which Jesus Christ, the sovereign Shepherd, has confided to my care, they may still come back. I do not see in the gospel that the shepherd can permit the blood of his sheep to be shed; on the contrary, I find there, that he is bound to give his blood and his life for them." Noble testimony! It is with joy that we record it here, though differing so widely from the brave John Hennuyer as regards the doctrines which he taught. The governor of Bayonne was another who refused to obey the murderous command. "The king has many brave soldiers in his garrison," he said, "but not a single executioner."

During six weeks the massacre in the provinces continued, and the number of victims is variously estimated at fifty, seventy, and one hundred thousand. The latter number, if we take into account those who afterwards perished from hunger and grief, is probably the most correct. The grave-diggers of the cemetery of the Innocents, at Paris, interred over a thousand bodies which had been cast up the Seine alone, a fact to which the account-books of that city bear witness to this day; and in Meaux, where the French Reformation may be said to have begun, the number of victims was so great that the labour of killing them with the sword was too slow, and they were dispatched with iron hammers.

Rome was loud in her joy when the first news of the massacre reached her. The messenger who brought it was rewarded with a thousand crowns by the Cardinal of Lorraine; artillery was fired; and when night came on, the city was gay with its illuminations. A solemn Te Deum was celebrated in St. Mark’s Church, and thanks were offered to God for so signal a blessing conferred on the Roman See; while at Paris a medal was struck with this inscription, Pietas armavit justitiam, "Piety has armed Justice." "If ever the depths and wiles of Satan were seen in human wickedness," says Andrew Miller, "it is here. The premeditation, the solemn oaths of the king — which drew the Calvinists to Paris the royal marriage, and the dagger put into the hands of the mob by the chiefs of the State, at a time of universal peace, represent a plot which has no parallel in history. And then, from the pope downwards, the Catholic community lifting up their hands to heaven, and thanking God for the glorious triumph!" But a solemn retribution awaited the authors of this terrible crime. All but one came to violent ends. Charles died, some two years after, in dreadful agonies of soul and body; and was heard to exclaim, not long before his death, "What blood — what murder! How evil are the counsels that I have followed! Oh my God, pardon and pity me! I know not where I am, so grievous is my agony and perplexity. What will be the end of it? What will become of me? I am lost for ever." The Duke of Guise was assassinated; his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, died raving mad; and the wretched Catherine de’ Medici, though she lived to an unhonoured old age, was imprisoned by her favourite son, and her name became synonymous throughout the world with perfidy and cruelty. And the "heresy" of the Huguenots was not exterminated, though one hundred thousand of their number fell. He who had planted the incorruptible seed of the gospel in their hearts, could quickly plant it in the hearts of one hundred thousand more: and so it came to pass. A long series of petty wars between the Huguenots and the Catholics, distinguished the reign of Charles’s successor, Henry III.; and when he was assassinated in the year 1589, a Protestant prince, Henry of Navarre, succeeded him on the throne.