ken cover at Noyers." Condé acted on these warnings, and escaped with his brother's family and his own, closely pursued by the king's troops. He crossed the Loire at a ford not commonly known, the prince holding his infant in his arms. Though the river was generally too deep for crossing, yet on this occasion there was no difficulty in passing the ford, until Condé and his troop of about 150 persons had landed in safety. Immediately, however, as if by a special interposition of Providence, the stream rose above its usual height, foaming and rushing with a sudden torrent, so that the pursuers, who crowded rapidly upon the further bank, saw that they were too late, and that their expected prey had escaped from their hands. Condé was killed at the battle of Jarnac, after he had surrendered as a prisoner of war; he is supposed to have owed his death to the treachery of the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry III.

The man of the highest sense of religion, in our acceptation of the word, was the Admiral of France, Gaspard de Coligny. To his influence may be attributed the strictness and sobriety which usually characterized the Protestant army. Games of chance were strictly forbidden; swearing and plundering were severely punished; and the forms of religion steadily observed. "I fear," said Coligny to one who complimented him on these subjects, "that it will not last long-a young hermit is an old devil:""the French infantry will soon become tired of their virtue, and put the cross into the fire." His predictions were only too true, as the event proved. Coligny himself combined the characters of a soldier and a reformer more than any of his contemporaries. Brantóme compares him with the Duke of Guise. He says they were diamonds of the first water, on the superior excellence of which it would be impossible to decide. They had been intimate friends in youth, wearing the same dresses, taking the same side in the tournaments, joining in the same mischievous pranks, and encouraging each other in extravagant follies. Coligny, however, soon grew tired of youthful excesses; he seems to have understood the principle,—

"Nec lusisse pudet, sed non incidere ludum,”—

for as a man we never find him drawn into the excesses of the court, or imitating his friend Condé in the pursuit of pleasure. His rules for the conduct of his soldiers were adopted even by his enemies; and he was

the first who raised the character of a French army, and placed it above the level of a horde of barbarous invaders, whose chief object was plunder, without respect even to their own allies. He attempted to procure for France a just system of representative government; and he is said, by his influence during the civil wars, to have preserved the lives and properties of more than a million of persons. His wife, Charlotte de Laval, was devoted to the Protestant cause. She established in his family a system of propriety seldom witnessed in the households of the great. We have a minute description of Coligny's household, the regularity of his hours, his family prayers, and his instruction of his dependants; but he seems to have stood almost alone: few in that age could appreciate his virtues; and though his influence over the Prince de Condé was exerted for good, yet he was but one among a multitude, and his salutary influence was often overborne by the evils incident to a civil war. This great man survived the other leaders of his party, and was the first victim of the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Another reason why intelligence and Protestantism made little progress was the ignorance of the times. We do not speak so much of the great body of the people, as of those who may be supposed to have received the best education. When the Duke of Guise was wounded by an assassin, during the siege of Orleans, the surgeons at first augured favorably of his recovery, but they evidently killed him by their unskilful treatment: first, they widened and cauterized with a hot silver instrument, to destroy the effects of the poison which they imagined to be in the powder and bullets. They were astonished to find that the bullet had made a larger hole at its exit than at its entrance, and therefore agreed to open the wound again in order to look for it, though the age of the moon pointed out the day as unfavorable. They then with their fingers examined both sides of the wound, and found all safe and sound: not satisfied with the progress which nature was making, they made another opening across the wound, and passed a piece of linen through it, by way of a seton, to keep it open; and though this was on the fourth day of the moon, the duke was better, though his fever increased. Some of his friends wanted him to try the effect of enchantments-we confess we should have preferred them to the treatment of his surgeons-but the duke refused them as unlawful means, and declared that he should prefer death to the prospect of life

by remedies forbidden by God. When we consider the ignorance of one learned profession, and recollect that it had become a proverb to say, as ignorant as a priest," we cannot much wonder at the darkness of the people; and we cannot feel much surprised that they should be led into excesses by the advice of a cruel nobility and an ambitious priesthood.

Great allowance must be made for the differences of the age from ours; and we must remember that until the works of John Locke, toleration, in our sense of the word, was never understood. Uniformity of opinion was the grand object; the Council of Trent met for the purpose of settling what men ought to believe, with the full expectation of being able to persuade them that it was their duty to do so, and a full determination to exterminate all recusants. Some of the more moderate party did not expect to be able to bind the opinions of others; these only said that outward conformity to established usage should be sufficient; and that no inquiry should be made as to religious sentiments, provided only the people should attend mass and confession. The Hugonots themselves never expected equal privileges with the dominant party all they asked was, leave to have their own churches, and administer the sacraments; and they even proposed that they should pay double taxes as a test of their sincerity. These reasonable demands were frequently promised, but the promises were broken as soon as the Hugonots had laid down their arms.

Persecution, burning heretics by legal warrant, were as common as in England during the reign of Bloody Mary; but France went a step further than England, and often murdered the recusants without the shadow or pretence of law. We can scarcely imagine, even from the worst portions of the history of England, that a nobleman of high rank, like the Duke of Guise, should set out on a progress to his conntry seat, and suddenly massacre a whole congregation of men, women, and children while on his journey. Yet this took place at Vassy, on Sunday morning, the first of March, 1562. The duke declared that it was done against his will, and in consequence of an insult offered by the Hugonots to some of his followers; but whatever be the cause, the melancholy effects were undeniable. The massacre of Vassy was the signal for similar excesses throughout the kingdom; priests were seen pointing out their victims to the soldiers, lest any should escape; and though the duke

asked pardon on his death-bed for being the cause of so much bloodshed, yet Brantóme tells us, that while he solemnly denied having done it intentionally, he at the same time made light of the matter. It was asserted by the Hugonots, in their petition to the king, that 3000 lives had been lost at Vassy, and by the excesses which followed.

The Duke of Guise was not the only royalist who made light of human life: Montluc, one of the king's generals, coolly tells us, that "there is no such thing as a prisoner in a civil war: I therefore hung up the carrions as soon as I took them: everybody knew where I passed, as the trees were everywhere hung with my colors. At Monsegur, I took eighty or a hundred soldiers, and went round the walls and made them leap down; they were dead before they came to the bottom. At Pamiers, forty women were killed at once, which made me very angry, as soldiers ought not to kill women; but several bad boys came in my way, who served to fill up the wells in the castle." A letter is still extant from Pope Pius IV. to this noble and well-beloved son of the Church, congratulating him on the gifts of Heaven, commending him for his virtuous and honorable deeds, and assuring him of the eternal favor of God, whose cause he had so triumphantly defended.

The

Reprisals are the natural consequence of oppression; and the Hugonots, though slow to take up arms, were well skilled in their use; and in one single instance were equally cruel with their opponents. Baron D'Adrets was the only Protestant who imitated the barbarity of his enemies: after plundering several convents, and laying waste the country around, he took the tower of Maugiron; and, by way of amusement after dinner, he compelled the garrison to leap from the battlements. One of his victims ran forward three times to the fatal leap, but paused upon the brink. The baron reproached him with cowardice; but the man replied, "My lord, brave as you are, I will give you ten trials." For this answer the baron spared his life.

With these characters and facts before us, we are led to the painful conclusion, that there was little religion on either side; but we cannot forget that we have no "acts and monuments" of the martyrs of France. The historians seem to have thought little of the feelings which prompted men to sacrifice their lives for conscience' sake; and we certainly miss honest John Fox and his writings: perhaps, had such a man been found to record the sentiments and virtues of the Hugonot

martyrs, they might have been considered equal to some of his English heroes :

66

"Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Multi; sed omnes illacrymabiles Urgentur, ignotique longâ

Nocte, carent quia vate sacro."

Kings were supposed to be absolute, but woe to the land where the king is a child and the princes eat in the morning," he who could secure the person of the king and get his signature to his warrants, had the power of life and death in his hands; the court was bent on pleasure; excitement was the grand object, and Catherine's motto was, keep the ball rolling." The Parliament was a mere court for the registry of royal edicts; and the only influence they ever exerted was to reject some of the proclamations in favor of toleration, which Charles IX. had been induced to grant.

66

The interest of the reigns of Francis and Charles is fully sustained up to the final catastrophe of 1572. It is only fair to the author to allow the history to speak for itself, and we wish we had room to extract the whole chapter; our limits, however, will only admit of a short portion.

"Queen Margaret (the bride of Henry IV). will supply a picture of what was passing in the queen's private circle, during this terrible evening. I knew nothing of all this,' says she; I saw every one in agitation. The Hugonots in despair at the wound, (Coligny had been wounded some days before;) the Guises, having been threatened that justice would be had for it, whispering in each other's ears. I was suspected by the Hugonots of being a Catholic, by the Catholics as being married to the King of Navarre; so that no one told me anything until the evening, when, being at the toilet of the queen my mother, and sitting near my sister of Lorraine, who I saw was very sorrowful, the queen my mother saw me, and told me to go to bed. As [ made my courtesy, my sister took me by the arm, and stopping me began to weep, saying, Sister, do not go. This frightened me excessively, which the queen perceived, and calling very angrily to my sister, forbade her to tell me anything. My sister said it was too shocking to send me to be sacrificed in that manner; for doubtless if anything were discovered, inmediate revenge would be had upon me. The queen answered, unless it were the will of God, no harm could happen to me; but be that as it might, I must go, lest they should suspect something. They continued to dispute, but I could not hear their words. At length she told me very roughly to go to bed, and my sister bursting into tears bade me good night, not daring to say more. As for me, I went away shivering and trembling, unable to imagine what was to be feared. As soon as I was in my closet,

I began to pray God that he would be pleased to protect and guard me, not knowing from whom or against what. The king, my husband, who was already in bed, called to me; I came and found the bed surrounded by about thirty or forty Hugonot gentlemen, whom I scarcely knew, being so lately married. All night they did nothing but talk of the admiral's accident; and resolve that in the morning they would demand justice of the king on M. de Guise and failing him, do it for themselves. I, who had my sister's tears still upon my heart, could not sleep, and so the night passed. At the point of day the king rose, saying he would go and play tennis till Charles awoke; resolving then to demand justice. He quitted the room, his gentlemen with him; I begged the nurse to shut the door, and fell asleep.' "It was at midnight that Catherine, fearing the resolution of her son might still fail, came down to the king's apartment, to watch over him

till the moment for execution should arrive. She found there the Duke d'Anjou, the Duke de Nevers, De Ritz, and Biraque, who were all uniting their efforts to encourage Charles and maintain him in his resolution, but their words were vain. As the moment approached, horror took possession of the king; cold damps stood upon his brow, and a troubled fever agitated his frame. The queen endeavored to arouse him by every means in her power, endeavoring, by arts she too well understood, to irritate once more his fiercer passions, and silence the remorseful and relenting feelings of nature-striving with her usual wicked sophistry to color crime by a pretence of justice and necessity. She asked him (says D'Aubigné) whether it were not best at once to tear corrupted members from the bosom of the Church, the blessed spouse of our Lord; and repeated, after a celebrated Italian divine, that abominable sentiment, so often and so easily perverted, That in their case mercy was cruelty, and cruelty was mercy.'

66

She again represented the critical nature of his affairs, and how bitterly he would repent if he suffered the present opportunity to escape him: thus striving to stifle that cry of outraged conscience which, in spite of all her efforts, would

make itself heard in the bosom of her wretched son. At last she succeeded in dragging the fatal order from his lips. The moment it was obtained she was impatient to begin. It wanted an hour and a half of day-break, when the appointed signal was to be given upon the tocsin of the Hall of Justice. But the interval appeared too long for her fears; and as the distance to the Palais de Justice was considerable, she commanded the tocsin of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois, which is close upon the Louvre, to be sounded in its place, and the dreadful alarum to be given without loss of time.

"This order being issued, a pause of perfect silence ensued-and then those three guilty creatures, the queen and her two miserable sons, crept to a small closet over the gate of the Louvre, and, opening a window, looked uneasily out into the night.

"But all was silent as the grave. Suddenly a