BOOK the danger great and evident to as many as profess the gospel, as also particularly to the king his master, and to the queen my mistress. But the case standing as it doth, and foreseeing the mischief that will follow, he doth most earnestly desire you to be a mean to stay her majesty's revocation of those that be in Flanders.' p. 233. To lord Leicester, our ambassador further described the admiral's feelings and conduct :- How perplexed the admiral is, who foreseeth the mischief that is like to follow, your lordship may easily guess. And surely to say truth, he never shewed greater magnanimity; nor never was better followed, nor more honored of those of the religion, than now he is, which doth not a little appal the enemies. In this storm he doth not give over the helm. He layeth before the king and his council, the peril and danger of his estate; and tho he cannot obtain what he would, yet doth he obtain somewhat from him. He desired me [to say] from him, that if her majesty proceeded in revocation of those of her subjects in Flanders, it will breed such a discouragement in those of the country that are well affected to the cause, as will to all likelihood hazard the whole enterprise. He desires your lordship, as you wish well to the cause and safety of her majesty, whose repose, whatsoever is said to the contrary, dependeth upon the good success of this enterprise, to procure a stay to be made of the said revocation.' Digges, p. 234. In these representations, it is probable that we see the real state of the case as far as these parties were concerned. Charles was preparing a force to assist the operations of the prince of Orange; Elizabeth had sent troops to act concurrently with him; when the information from the French ambassador in London, that the English forces were to be recalled, alarmed the king and his mother, and the Protestant chiefs, as greatly as it rejoiced the Romish and Spanish party in the French cabinet, and their connected friends, and promoted the ulterior objects of their darker politics. The admiral foresaw the mischief which such a conduct in Elizabeth must occasion, and earnestly advised that no revocation of the troops should take place. The disquieting allegation was UNTRUE. It was either an exaggerating misconception of what had occurred; or was a falsehood wilfully fabricated by those whose purposes it was intended to promote. Elizabeth was making one of her country progresses when Walsingham's dispatches arrived; and they were answered by sir Thomas Smith, from Kenilworth, on 22d August, in these words: Indeed, as yet, there is no revocation, neither done NOR MEANT of our men at Flushing, or in Flanders; howsoever the bruit is made there with you. Truth it is, that certain more that would have gone over from hence, were stayed, for fear of too much disorder for lack of some good head, and wise and expert captain. But them that be there are neither yet revoked nor discouraged, altho the duke of Alva, by letters, this last week, required that they should be revoked. But he is gently answered with a dilatory and doubtful answer.' Digges, 237. It may have been, that this gentle, dilatory and doubtful answer, like all deviations from true and manly openness, and courageous sincerity, gave the card of mischief for the enemy to play with. The English government did not intend to recal their forces, but they chose to send to Alva an ambiguous temporising answer, which he converted immediately to his own purposes. What could his friends in the French cabinet wish more, to promote their desire to neutralise the arm of France, and to create mistrust of Elizabeth's real intentions, than a copy of such a letter privately communicated to its foreign ambassadors, and by them transmitted to their sovereign. Her very character for integrity would lessen the belief that it was but a politic handling.' The most decided certainty of her effective co-operation had been expected and reckoned upon by Charles, and the refusal of the required revocation ought therefore to have been clear and unhesitating. But instead of that,' a gentle, a dilatory, a doubtful answer' was returned. It is probable that this impolitic insincerity arose out of the incidents of the day; and from some real doubts in the minds of the English ministry how far they could effectuate their own wishes in favor of the prince of Orange; for we read in lord Burghley's dispatch of the same date, Our men in Zealand are evil used by the French there, and howsoever the admiral hath lately borne you in hand, I doubt our intention shall be disappointed; or at worst, it is justly doubted that the prince's captain at Flushing is corrupted, and become Spanish in secret sort; whereof, I pray you, advertise the admiral.' ib. p. 237. French and English troops rarely act cordially together, whatever be the wish of their governments; and it is manifest that the very caution of Burghley's foresight was becoming that suspicion which so often produces the evil that had no previous existence. CHAP. XXX. BOOK But before this contradiction of the alleged revocation could reach the French monarch, the blackest stain in the history of his nation had been indelibly fixed upon it. The misconception of Elizabeth's intentions was worked to produce on the mind of Charles its most unfavorable effect; and from the accidental coincidence of her summer progress having delayed that contradicting answer, which, in the usual rapidity of important communications, might have reached Paris eight days after Walsingham had written, or on the 18th; it was not sent from the stately festivities at Kenilworth until the 22d-a fatal delay — which gave full time for the formation and maturity of the direful machinations which exploded so terribly some days before the tardy epistle could have arrived; yet, a procrastination not unnatural, amid such gay amusements, when there could be no anticipation of the tragedy which it so unintentionally favored. Beza, who wrote his account the year after the massacre, and with no favorable pen to Charles, evinces, in an incidental paragraph, the important effects of this king's political countenance to the prince of Orange, tho without perceiving the connexion of his expedition with the catastrophe of St. Bartholomew :— 'The king caused the count Lewis of Nassau, brother of the prince of Orange, to come to his court, who since the last peace had been living at Rochelle. With him he treated of various means and designs, which he desired to pursue against the king of Spain, to revenge himself for the wrongs he had received; and entertaining him with kind courtesies, resolved with him upon an enterprise of great consequence, which was afterwards executed on the Low Countries by this count Lewis, the seigneur de la Noue, and many other Frenchmen; to whose assistance, when they were besieged at Mons, the king sent the seigneur de Genlis with four thousand soldiers. This concert between the king and count Lewis fut occasion et cause that the prince of Orange with a powerful army entered the Low Countries, which revolted almost entirely from the king of Spain, and took Holland, which he yet holds, with a great part of Zealand, with the prospect of never again quitting it.' Reveille, p. 33. It was to frustrate this great plan, and to prevent this successful result, that the countermining achievement of St. Bartholomew, or its commencement, was planned and executed. The dispatches above cited lead us to this conclusion, and at all events demonstrate that it was under the circumstances which have been recapitulated, that it actually took place. That there really XXX. was a connexion between some of these facts and the ensuing CHAP. atrocity, cannot, from the great secrecy of the machination, be directly proved; but the activity of the duke of Guise in both, makes it a warrantable inference; and this has the corroboration of the additional truth, that one of the immediate results of the massacre was, that the forming union between Charles and the Protestant party in Europe was thereby broken, and that the prince of Orange was baffled in his first attempt. He The fact, of Charles desiring to employ a French army against the Spanish forces in Flanders, while the prince of Orange was operating against them, and the admiral urged him to this measure, is confirmed by the Memoirs of Gaspard de Tavannes. states, that The king was led to this Spanish war by the subtlety of the Huguenots; that the queen fluctuated between peace and war. Like a woman, she would and would not. She changed her opinion, and altered it again every moment. The Huguenots sounded for war;' the king was with them.' Mem. Tav. v. 27, p. 221. Tavannes mentions that the admiral said to him, ' Whoever hinders the war with Spain, is not a Frenchman; he has a red cross in the belly,' ib. 223; and that the Huguenots exclaimed, A Spanish or a civil war.' ib. 224. He then gives the harangue of the duc D'Anjou against such a war, 225-8; and also his own speech on that occasion, discouraging it from the prospect that the success of the rebels there would assist those in France, and would be dangerous. p. 229-38. He intimates, that it was the admiral's importunity for this war which occasioned the massacre: There was no other resolution for a St. Bartholemy, than that which the admiral and his adherents by their imprudence occasioned.' p. 242. 'ALVA having driven the French from Valenciennes, besieged Mons so strictly, that it was near being taken, all good Frenchmen praising him. The admiral sent three thousand men, under Genlis, to succor Mons. The Spaniards defeated them. The admiral was not dismayed. He had the king's ear, and sent three thousand other troops under Villars.' p. 245-7. Anjou then made a second opposition, p. 248-52; and also Tavannes, p. 252-5. But Charles continuing firm in acting on the counsels of the admiral, the queen [Catherine] went after him to Montpipeau, and, going into his cabinet, burst into tears, and exclaimed, You are hiding yourself from me to advise with your BOOK II. enemies. You are holding secret councils with the admiral. You desire to plunge inconsiderately into a war with Spain, to put your country and ourselves at the mercy of these religionists.' This artificial harangue shook, astonished, and frightened the king.' Mem. Tav. 259-60. The reader will observe how exactly this account corresponds with the dispatches of Walsingham; and we here see the actual exertions made at the critical period of the expedition of Orange, to prevent the king of France from assisting him. His hesitation, thus produced, alarmed Elizabeth with the idea of being deserted if she was active; and her doubts of him, thus excited, were used to make him believe that she would leave him to bear all the brunt, unassisted by her. Of the actual perpetration of the St. Bartholomew atrocity, we will proceed to select the most authentic and characterizing facts, with that impartiality and care, which it is our duty to exert, and especially on all contested subjects. The marriage of Henry of Navarre with the king's sister having been finally agreed upon in July, on Monday the 18th August the ceremony took place with great pomp. Most of the Protestant nobility and gentry attended, with their families, to the number of nearly one thousand gentlemen [environ mille gentils hommes.] Beza, 46. The Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, were passed in all sorts of festivities. The admiral partook of them, and was always courteously treated by the king, as before [allant le bon visage du roi al' accoustumé,] ib. 46; and on Wednesday the 20th, when he went to the king to confer on some matters of importance, Charles laughingly asked to be allowed three or four days to amuse himself, and pledged his royal word that he would not leave Paris until he had fully satisfied both him and his friends. Beza, p. 46. The admiral had received an anonymous warning to take care of himself, and that the king had been repeatedly told that the Huguenots meant to destroy him, but had declared that there was no reason for any mistrust. Beza, 36-40. On Friday the 22d he attended a council at the Louvre, and went afterwards with the king to the Tennis Court, where Charles and the duke of Guise played a game against two Protestant gentlemen. Going home to dinner on foot with several accompanying friends, as he passed the house where the preceptor of the |