the French officers, saying, that had she been in command it should not have happened; and that she had the courage, if not the strength of a man. Though a good French woman (says Brantome) she discouraged duelling. (Brantóme has written largely on duels, and is one of the best authorities on the subject). "For," he adds, "when one of my cousins challenged an officer, she sent him to the Bastile; and suspecting that I was engaged as his second, she sent for me and reprimanded me severely, saying, that whatever excuse might be made for the folly of a young man, there was none for me, as being older I ought to have been wiser." But with all her physical courage, she was evidently deficient in moral courage; and for her cruelty she had not even the pretext of religious enthusiasm: after the battle of Dreux, when the Hugonots were supposed to have gained a victory, her only remark was, "Then for the future we must say our prayers in French."

The predominant party was of course Roman Catholic; these, represented by the Constable de Montmorenci, the Duke of Guise, and the Maréchal de St. André, who are known as the triumvirate, held possession of Paris and the king's person. As Catherine disliked all authority except her own, she feared and hated these nobles; to check their power she encouraged the Hugonots, at the head of whom were Anthony, king of Navarre, the father of Henry IV., his brother the Prince of Condé, and the Admiral Coligny. These generally seemed Catherine's favor ites, except when they were in arms against the king, yet this was the party afterwards massacred by her orders. In order therefore to gain a true view of the times, we must consider Catherine as vacillating in her intentions, the creature of those around her, always wishing to advance her own power, but never hesitating to take the advice of the most depraved religionist who should promise her her object, even by the most unworthy means. Let us recollect that the Roman Catholic Church had not been idle in its opposition to Luther; a vast and irresponsible power had now been created, ready to espouse the cause of Rome, and bound to advance the spiritual empire of the Church by every art, whether lawful or unlawful. Ignatius Loyola had received the sanction of the Pope for the incorporation of the Jesuits in 1543. Now the secret influence of their crafty policy, in which the end sanctifies the means, and all things expedient are considered lawful, had already begun to exert its influence upon the

councils of nations. The Cardinal of Lorraine, brother to the Duke of Guise, had returned from the Council of Trent with a full determination to uphold Catholicism; the duke was the first warrior of his day, and though so ignorant that he swore a New Testament could be worth nothing because it was only a year printed, and our Lord died 1500 years ago, yet, as he said himself, he understood the trade of chopping off heads, and that was enough to give him the greatest inflence in a barbarous age.

With these men, the near relations of Francis II. and his beautiful bride, (the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots,) nothing was more easy than to obtain the ascendant over a weak-minded and delicate boy of thirteen. Francis had attained his legal majority at that age when some children are almost too young for a public school. The duke's habits of business were such, that he seldom commanded his officers to do what could be done by himself; he was in the habit of examining the enemy's fortifications with his own eyes, attending to the most minute details, and then sitting up during the whole night to write his own despatches: one of his officers inquiring for him at the siege of Thronville, was told that he was writing; he replied by cursing his writings, and added, "What a pity he was not brought up to be a clerk!" "Well, Montluc," said the duke, overhearing him, "do you think I am the right stuff to make a clerk?" and then, coming out of his tent, he gave his orders with his customary decision and authority. He was killed by Poltrot, an assassin, at the siege of Orleans, in 1563. While the Duke of Guise was the pope's temporal agent, his brother the cardinal was no less useful in spiritual matters; like his brother, he had great talent for business, and was besides an excellent courtier and fluent speaker. He spared no expense to have the earliest intelligence from all parts of Christendom; and thus, by his paid agents, he enacted the part which Eugene Sue attributes to the superior of the Jesuits; he organized a sort of spiritual police, who could inform him of the secret intentions, as well as the actions of men; and of course, as a cardinal, he was bound to wield this power in the service of the pope. Though learned, eloquent and polite, the cardinal was essentially vicious; he was a persecuting bigot without the excuse of religious zeal. A Roman Catholic writer tells us, that he used his religion chiefly as a means to build up his greatness; he often spoke highly of the confession of Augsburg, and at times al

jected, and seeing the duke's confessor going out, he said, "that the duke was much happier than himself in having heard mass that day, as a preparation for what might occur.' He hated Catherine de Medicis, and said on one occasion, that the best thing he could do for France would be to throw her into the sea in a sack; and he might probably have fulfilled his purpose, had it not been for the opposition of the Duke of Guise.

The Chancellor de L'Hôpital was the man of the highest principle and most liberal views among the Roman Catholic party. Brantôme calls him the Cato of his age, and compares him with Sir Thomas More. He upheld the divine right of kings in its strongest sense, yet made more advances towards toleration and liberty of conscience than any of his fellow ministers; but the sentiments of a single individual, however noble and enlightened, were easily overborne by a host of persecuting courtiers; and the pope offered Charles 100,000 crowns of church property, if he would " confine the chancellor within four walls." De L'Hópital was suspected of being a Hugonot at heart, though he never showed any tendency to their doctrines; and some of the Romanists were heard to say, "The Lord deliver us from the chancellor's mass !"

At the head of all these various powers, Charles IX. found himself the nominal King of France, at the age of eleven years, with the expectation of obtaining his legal majority at thirteen. Few princes received a worse education in childhood; and few kings have ever been called upon to rule a more corrupt court even in the prime of manhood. His early education was intrusted to Du Perron, from whom, among other accomplishments, he learnt to swear outrageously; "not like a gentleman," says Brantóme, who occasionally lets fall an oath, "but like a catchpole, when he seizes his victim." To this habit of profane swearing we may attribute the disregard of solemn engagements, and the tendency to break his faith which characterized the life of Charles. He was less dissipated and more inclined to manly amusements than might have been expected from his circumstances; but his temper was violent, and he was easily led by his mother and her associates: he ought to be considered rather as the instrument of a party, than their leader; and as he only lived to the age of twenty-five, we cannot suppose that his authority was much felt, or that he is the person really responsible for the atrocities committed in his name.

While the destinies of France seemed to fluctuate between the two contending parties, a foreigner appeared upon the scene, who was the real mover of the greatest enormities, and the evil genius of Catherine; we mean the Duke of Alva. Till long after the death of Francis II., the queen seemed undecided between two opinions; she appeared to balance Condé against Guise, and Beza against Lorraine; but circumstances, in an evil hour for France, brought her under the influence of the dark, designing, treacherous, and bloodthirsty Spaniard, who seemed, like some brilliant but poisonous serpent, to fascinate his victim to the destruction of her principles and the perversion of her conscience. Elizabeth, the daughter of Catherine, had been engaged to Don Carlos of Spain, but had afterwards married his father Philip II. The court of France, with Catherine at its head, visited the court of Spain at Bayonne, in the month of June, 1565. Here was a grand opportunity for the display of all the pomp and splendor in which Catherine so much delighted. The queen travelled from town to town, accompanied by forty or fifty of her young ladies, mounted on beautiful haquenées with splendid trappings. "To imagine these scenes," says Brantome, “ one must have seen this lovely troop, one more richly and bravely attired than another, shining in those magnificent assemblies, like stars in the clear azure of heaven; for the queen expected them to appear in full dress, though she herself was attired as a widow, and in silk of the gravest colors; still she was elegant and enchanting, ever appearing the queen of all; she rode with extreme grace, the ladies following with plumes floating in the air, so that Virgil when he describes Queen Dido going to the chase has never imagined anything comparable to Queen Catherine and her attendants." This graphic writer minutely describes the beauties of the court, but gives the highest praise to Margaret of Valois, the future queen of Henry IV. The brilliant cavalcade arrived at Bayonne, and was entertained by Elizabeth and the Duke of Alva. The King of Spain was absent, but Alva attended, ostensibly for the purpose of presenting the order of the Golden Fleece to Charles IX., but really with the intention of establishing a secret influence over the mind of Catherine, and with the determination to induce her to renew in France the persecutions of the late reign, and to imitate the cruelty which Philip had countenanced in England, and which he himself afterwards devised and executed in

his sanguinary persecution of the Protestants | of Holland. The connection of Philip with England has already too well fixed his history in our minds; his object was to exterminate heresy by fire and sword, and to extinguish political and religious liberty in his own dominions, and in the rest of the world. Alva was an agent singularly well qualified to carry out the designs of his master; he was barbarously cruel, but cold and dispassionate, not the less dangerous because alike incapable of tenderness or rage; he seized his victim like some vast machine, and crushed him to pieces with the certainty and coldness of a complicated series of wheels and pulleys, breaking his limbs with remorseless power, and insensible to his cries and indifferent to his resistance. Living in an age of dissimulation, the Duke of Alva was certainly not a hypocrite; he openly avowed his belief that no toleration ought to be extended to those who should dissent from the religion of the king; he stated his determination to spare neither age nor sex, and, like some political economists, coolly argued on his right to exterminate as if he were demonstrating an abstract proposition, quite distinct from human rights, or the sufferings of mankind. In the midst of feasts, tournaments, processions, dancing parties, and illuminations, the wily Spaniard managed to spend a certain portion of every night in the apartments of the Queen of Spain. Thither Catherine used to repair to meet him, through a private gallery; and while the rest of the gay party of courtiers were sleeping after the fatigues of a day of pleasure, the queen and the duke were consulting upon the best method of governing France. The wily Spaniard laid it down as a principle that two religions cannot co-exist in the same state; that no prince could do a more pernicious thing as regarded himself than to permit his people to live according to their consciences; that there are as many religions in the world as there are caprices in the human mind, and that to give them free license is only to open a door to confusion and treason; that religious controversy is only another name for popular insurrection; and that all indulgence only increases the disorder. The queen, it appears, was averse to sanguinary measures; she was desirous of restoring her subjects to the bosom of the Church, but wished to do it by fair means. She spoke of the strength of the principles of the Hugonots, admitted the inconvenience of conflicting opinions, but declared her intention of reaching her object by a circuitous route; she said the port was

distant and the sea difficult of navigation, she must therefore be satisfied not to steer a straight course; that it is safer to weaken the opposing power by degrees, than to attempt to stifle a flame too suddenly, as it may then burst out into a violent conflagration. These sentiments it was Alva's business to combat. He had received absolution for making war upon the pope, and was of course anxious to give a compensation for his late sins. The pope had recommended a repetition of the Sicilian Vespers, and while the queen was cautious, Alva pressed her to proceed boldly and make away with the chiefs; he said in the hearing of Henry IV., (then a child of eleven years old,) that "one salmon was well worth a hundred frogs." It seems, then, from the best contemporary authority, which is quoted at large by our author, that the plan of a general massacre was now considered advisable if opportunity should offer; that Alva persuaded the queen, contrary to her better judgment, that destruction of heretics was both lawful and politic; and that while she herself might have been contented with indirect persecution, double taxation, legal restraint, and the occasional execution of a troublesome leader on feigned pretexts, nothing less than final extirpation was sufficient to satisfy the agent of the pope.

The young king was not exempt from the temptations of the Duke of Alva; he seems at this meeting to have been familiarized with notions from which in his better moments he must have shrunk with horror. The Queen of Navarre, the most zealous Hugonot of her day, perceived the change in Charles during the return of the expedition. It is hard to ascertain that any definite plan was arranged for the destruction of the Hugonots: the massacre of St. Bartholomew must have arisen out of circumstances; but this much seems clear, that the Duke of Alva prepared the minds of Catherine and Charles to betray and murder the most innocent portion of their subjects, as soon as a convenient opportunity should offer; and having thus broken down the barrier of conscience in the rulers of France, he himself repaired to Holland, where his fierce persecution of the Protestants has handed down his name to us as one of the most cruel and unrelenting agents of the Church of Rome.

Let us now consider the party opposed to the court, the Hugonots and their leaders. Here we may easily trace one of the great causes of the failure of the cause of Protestantism in France. The whole history presents

and devotion to the cause of Protestantism ; and to her early care may be traced the formation of the character of her celebrated son Henry IV. As long, however, as her husband lived, her powers seem to have been shackled, and her influence lost.

laid hold first on the intellects and then on the feelings of the nation. John Knox, like Luther, was a zealot of the most ardent class, sometimes intemperate, but always sincere. We look in vain for such men among the French Hugonots. Religion-by the word we mean a conscientious desire of serving God according to his will-has always been the prime moving cause of every great change in England. Oliver Cromwell was a zealot; if he was not, his party thought him so, and followed his orders because they felt anxiety in the same cause. James II. lost his crown because he interfered with the religion of England, represented by the seven bishops. Radicals, Chartists, and various disturbers, have in all periods endeavored to overturn our institutions; but the strength of the people has always been attached to Protestantism and the established Church, because they consider them the proper means of serving God. Nothing therefore has ever shaken the throne of England but a religious movement, and to be religious a movement must depend upon its leaders: we may fairly form a conjecture as to the character of any class of men from the persons whom they obey, and whom they put forward as their spokesmen when liberty and life are at stake. Here,as in the present day, France presents a strong contrast with England; there seems a strange want of all religion among the people, the power of God seems to be forgotten, his name is never mentioned, and last Easter Sunday was fixed for a general election. We regret that even among the martyrs of the sixteenth century there is a great deficiency in evangelical principles and virtue. Let us consider the character of some of the leading Hugonots.

The first, in point of rank, as first prince of the blood, is Anthony of Navarre. His wife, Jeanne D'Albret, was well fitted, as far as a woman can be, to take the lead in a religious

stance of the evils which arise, when second-rate "Anthony (says our author) is a striking inability, combined with weakness of moral principle and instability of temper, is elevated to influential situations. The vacillations of his selfish fears and calculations, aided by jealousy, that demon of weak minds, did more to ruin France

true is it, that states and families may perish as surely, through the timidity, meanness, and want of spirit in their leaders, as through the greatest excesses of ill-directed energy."--Vol i. p. 81.

After lending his name to the Hugonot party, and supporting them by his right to approach and advise the king as first prince of the blood, he allowed himself to be drawn into a league with their enemies; and, in 1562, he is found united with the cardinal and the Duke of Guise, the most powerful and the most insidious of the enemies of his party. His wife remonstrated, but he only answered her by sending her home to Navarre, and placing his son under the care of a Roman Catholic. Shortly after new troubles broke out, and we find the King of Navarre on the side of the Duke of Guise. At the siege of Rouen, in the same year, he was mortally wounded, but though he suffered great pain, he was not at first considered in a dangerous state. His amusements at this time were dances, which he gave in his bedchamber to the young people of the camp; and his mistress, La Belle Rouet, was seated by his side.

He continued to boast of all he was to do, and talked much of the riches and beauty of Sardinia. When the town was taken, he insisted on being carried through it in a litter, which inflamed his wound, and caused serious apprehensions of danger. The terrors of conscience now succeeded to the levity of his former occupations, but he does

not seem to have known whether he were a Protestant or a Roman Catholic. He began to examine his past life, and, like Cardinal Wolsey, regretted, when too late, that he had sacrificed his religion to the aggrandizement of his kingdom. When his brother, the Prince de Condé, sent to inquire for him, he returned an answer, that, if his life were spared, he should make the establishment of reform his great object. His last hours were spent in the miserable remorse of a troubled conscience: he was attended by two physi