of all his party, though long accustomed to the hazards of the field, followed him, thinking that he was going to his death. To his surprise he found a horse ready for him at the door, on which he mounted, and they rode to the house of Vezins at Guercy, There his strange guide turned, and addressed him, "You are now out of danger. I might have taken advantage of the time, and revenged myself. But between brave men the danger ought to be equal; I have therefore saved you. When you please, you will find me ready to finish our quarrel like gentlemen." Resnier was all gratitude, and begged that thenceforth they might be friends. "What!" said Vezins, "will the Huguenots be base enough not to resent the treachery of the Court?" "Whatever they may do," was the natural answer, "I should be ungrateful were I to resent it to you.' The whole conversation reminds one of some of the romantic sullenness of Spain. "Sir," was the stern reply of his deliverer, "I love courage in a friend, I love it also in an enemy. I leave you at liberty to love or hate me as you please, and I have brought you to this place, merely to put it in your power to make the choice." He then struck the spur into his horse, and galloped away.*

The numbers who fell in the massacre were very great. But, from the extent over which it spread, the obscurity of some of the places where it was perpetrated, the general confusion of the time, and the wish of the Court to hide the full measure of its guilt from the eyes of Europe, no exact calculation has ever been attainable. But De Thou, a historian of the highest character, and living at the time, fixes it at 30,000, probably alluding chiefly to those who fell in Paris, and the principal cities. Others, enumerating the deaths in the villages and open country, calculate it at 70,000, or even 100,000.†

* De Thou, liv. 52.

Large as the last number is, it may not be too large, when we remember that the attack on the Reformed was spread over almost the whole of the vast country of France, excepting in some parts of Burgundy and Brittany, where the Reformed were few, and Languedoc and Gascony, where they were too powerful to be attacked with impunity. It is further to be remembered, that the attack in every instance was one of surprise, and that too in so singular a degree that the assailants scarcely met with any resistance whatever,-there being in Paris, when the chieftains and tried warriors of the Protestants were assembled, but one man, Guerchy, who died fighting; and Taverny, a lawyer, who, with his valet alone, defended his house for some hours. The execution was also principally in the hands of the populace, who, inflamed with bigotry and eager for pillage, when once they had begun and found that they might enjoy robbery without resistance, knew not where to stop, especially when they had the King's sanction conjoined with that of the priesthood, and thus were exhibiting their loyalty and religion while they were indulging their love of riot and rapine. But it was then that the spirit of popery displayed itself in its unequivocal evil. The tidings had no sooner reached Rome than all was rejoicing in the Vatican. The Cardinal of Lorraine, brother of the Guises, gave a large present to the messenger who brought such triumphant news.

The Cardinal Alexandria had already betrayed the fact, that he had expected news of a great victory over the heretics, and exclaimed, when it arrived, that the King of France "had kept his word." But the conduct of the Pope was still more declaratory. He went in grand procession to St Peter's, performed high mass with all the pomp of his Court, and ordered a Te Deum to be sung and

the cannon to be fired, to celebrate the "glorious event." To perpetuate this victory of Rome a medal was ordered to be struck, with the head of Gregory XIII. on one side, and on the other the Exterminating Angel destroying the Protestants, with the inscription," Huguenotorum Strages, 1572."

But though Popery rejoices at this most dreadful combination of perfidy and slaughter, human nature exclaimed against it from every quarter of Europe. The blood already cried out of the ground; and after the first exultation had cooled, Charles shrunk from being thus the object of this universal horror. From that time forth, all the arts of that spirit which is as much distinguished by being "the father of lies" as of cruelty, were exercised to blind the common sense of Europe. The massacre was successively described as a mere retaliation for Huguenot offences, as an overthrow of a plot in which the Huguenots had planned a Romish massacre, and were anticipated only by royal vigilance, as a matter long rendered necessary by the hazards of the Government, and as a matter of the moment, arising simply from popular effervescence. It is obvious that those defences destroy each other, and that they are all equally unsound. No answer is, or can be given, to the acknowledged facts, that the Huguenot nobles and gentlemen were especially invited to Paris; that they were treated there with the most studied and novel courtesy; that after the Admiral had been fired at, the King paid him the most marked attentions, purposely to prevent his feeling any alarm, and leaving Paris; that on the night of the butchery the Huguenots were found totally unprepared, and were killed without the slightest attempt at union or resistance. While, on the other hand, the holding of the council to decide on the fate of their leaders was notorious. The preparations for the event were made with perfect security, and the event perfectly accom

plished in consequence. The orders despatched to the various governments of the provinces would, if all other evidence were lost, be unanswerable. No fear of a tumult in Paris could have suggested those orders, which were more likely to have roused that tumult than extinguished it. No sudden tumult could have given rise to the deliberate commands for execution extending through the kingdom. The exultation of Rome, worthy of the genius of persecution, and the profane and startling grossness of making the sudden murder of so many thousands of women and children, is an answer which comprehends the full force of the accusation. Those who could thus have rejoiced would have commanded the crime, and those who would have commanded, could have found sanction only in that darkened and deadly superstition which makes all artifice an allowable instrument for the service of the Church, declares that all oaths against the interest of the Romish Church are invalid, and proclaims the doctrine that death is the natural punishment of the unbeliever in the power and purity of Rome."

All Europe was instantly thrown into a state of agitation as the intelligence spread. The general feeling was open horror and wrath, but the Pope and the King of Spain formed exceptions. The former, as we have seen, rejoiced in the flow of Protestant gore, let the cause be what it might, and displayed his rejoicing in a jubilee! The latter declared that he felt but one ground of discontent

that the lives of the King of Navarre and the Prince of Condé had not been sacrificed with the rest. He immediately sent the despatch to the Admiral of Castile, as a matter of congratulation; and the Admiral read it to a party whom he had at supper, as a matter of amusement. But all, even in the shadow of the Spanish court, were not equally di vested of the common sentiments of human nature. The Duke del Infantado, who was at the supper,

poignantly asked, "Were Coligni and his friends Christians?" On being answered that they were, "How is it, then," said the Duke, "that being Frenchmen and Christ ians, they should be butchered like brutes?"-"Gently, Duke," replied the Admiral," do you not know that war in France is peace in Spain?" In our own country, the indignation, as might be conceived from the national abhorrence of treachery and cruelty, was unbounded. The peo ple cried loudly for a war. However, it was one of the principles of Elizabeth's matchless policy to avoid war on mere subjects of passion. Feeling herself by no means entitled to punish the French court for its acts of domestic guilt; and fully knowing the hazards of hostilities with France and Spain while she had a powerful Popish faction in the midst of her realm, she reserved her strength, suppressed all murmurs, allowed even the negotiation for her marriage with the Duke of Alençon to follow its course for the time, and received Lamotte Fénélon, the French ambassador, who attended the court, to give a statement of the massacre according to the views of his master. She even received him with great form, but with an expressive and touching circumstance, which told her whole feeling better than words-she and her court received him in deep mourning!

In the interval of terror and weakness which followed this prostration of the Huguenot strength, all was silent; but a struggle was preparing which was to crush the dynasty on the throne, and punish the people by the heaviest scourge of civil war. The fatal evidence that no oaths can bind the Papist while he has an object in view by their violation, and while his priesthood stand ready to give him hourly absolution, alike for perjury and murder, rendered the Protestants utterly contemptuous of all further promises of the Papist court. They declared that their only resource lay in arms, and thus, at length awake to the perfidy which formed so prominent a share of French politics, they combined with the gallantry of brave men the force of desperation. Such was the first reward of the massacre. From that period, France was doubly perplex

ed by conspiracy, doubly harassed with popular tumults, and tenfold more disemboweled by the havoc of armies. D'Aubigné's talents and intrepidity were now to be brought into action on a larger scale. The King of Navarre felt himself a prisoner at the Louvre, and felt, at the same time, that by this fettered life he was losing all the uses and honours of his rank as chief of the Protestants of France. Some advances from the Duke of Alençon, the King's brother, a profligate, giddy, and yet ambitious prince, who was discontented with the court, seemed to give him the opportunity of that manly exertion for which he longed; and a plan was soon laid with Marshals Montmorenci and de Cossè to escape from Paris, and put themselves at the head of the Huguenots and malecontent Papists, and begin hostilities. The conception was bold, but it was unlucky. The plan was betrayed, the two marshals were sent to the Bastile, and the two princes to the Castle of Vincennes. In this emergency, the King of Navarre, more bent than ever upon throwing off his thraldom, desired to attach to his service some of the most promising of his young countrymen. D'Aubigné's name was a passport to the favour of one who honoured intelligence and bravery, and he was immediately taken into his service. But, as it was necessary to avoid attracting the vigilant eye of the Queen Mother, he was known only as standard-bearer to M. de Fervaques. He was now at Court, where a false step might be ruin, but his heart was irrepressible. One day, accidentally being met by the Queen-Mother in one of the corri dors of the palace, she burst out into invective against his father, and said that he would be as bad a subject and a man. The young soldier, heedless of the agonies in which those died who resisted the QueenMother, responded, with a firm tone, "God grant I may!" But he was soon sensible of his imprudence, when he saw Catherine looking eagerly about for the guards, of whom none happened to be near, to seize so audacious a speaker. He fled her presence without a ment's delay, and finally obtained pardon for his sincerity, only through

mo

Fervaques protesting his standardbearer's loyalty.

D'Aubigné escaped the St Bartholomew by the merest accident. He had been in Paris to obtain permission to lead some soldiers whom he had raised into the Low Countries. A few days before the massacre he was compelled, by the insolence of an officer, to fight him; he had wounded the officer, as he thought, mortally, and unwilling to wait the chances of the law in a time when all was party, immediately left the capital behind. This was but three days before the explosion. On his way he made a remark which has been so often realized, that courage is much a thing of circumstance. The news of the massacre had reached him on the road, and filled the minds of himself and his soldiers with the deepest depression. While they were thinking only of the miseries of their friends and countrymen, a loud voice was heard at a distance. With one impulse they all took to flight at the mere sound, and ran until they were forced to stop for want of breath. They then looked at each other with astonishment, and no slight shame at their panic; for though they were eighty armed men, they had fled without seeing any one in pursuit. Upon which their captain observes,-" We agreed that God does not give sense or courage, he only lends it." But they speedily retrieved their character; for it was but the next day, that with forty of these men he rushed upon a force of six hundred, returning flushed with blood and plunder from the slaughters at Paris, broke and utterly routed them, with the loss of a large proportion of their number.

If further confirmation of the royal plot against the Protestants were necessary, it would be found in the measures which were arranged for taking advantage of the confusion into which they must naturally be thrown by the outbreak of the massacre, and the loss of their principal nobles and officers. Attempts had been instantly made upon three of their strongholds. One, La Charité, a town especially granted by the last peace, was surprised and taken. But Montauban and Rochelle defeated the treachery. The latter

was the great fortress of the west, and when force had failed, Charles tried negotiation. But the Rochellers were firm, and indignantly refused to trust to the honour of a prince, who could at any moment acquit himself, and be acquitted by his church, of the foulest perjury. As a last experiment, he prevailed on La Noue, a distinguished soldier among the Protestants, to bear his proposals, and commence the negotiation. His name obtained him entrance, but his reception was characteristic of the men and the time. On his being introduced into the presence of the commissioners appointed to meet him, they professed to have lost their knowledge of his person. "We expected," was their expressive remark," to have met La Noue, but we do not see him here. It is true, there may be some resemblance of feature; but that is to no purpose, when the characters are so totally unlike." The Huguenot warrior, doubtless taunted with this grave rebuke, adverted to his services in their cause, and, throwing back his cloak, showed them that he had lost an arm fighting for Protestantism; and asked, "if he deserved to be forgotten?" They answered, with still more touching rebuke-" That they perfectly recollected a 'gallant soldier of his name, their very excellent friend, who, by many displays of valour and wisdom, had defended the Protestant cause, and done himself eminent honour. he had one quality which decided them on the present occasion; he was a man of the strictest integrity, and could not have been induced by any temptation to come and deceive his old friends and fellow Christians. Therefore he could not be the person who now brought the royal proposals; a man, however like in countenance, utterly different in mind."" This was found irresistible. The heart was attacked, and the negotiator gave way. La Noue abandoned the service of the perfidious King, was received into the city, and became once more one of the most brilliant chieftains of the cause. A royal army was marched against Rochelle. But it was baffled and beaten, until the new bait for ambition offered to the Court, in the election of the Duke of Anjou to the

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