Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/24

 18 and 1598, when Henry IV. granted the celebrated Edict of Nantes, the professors of the pure faith were most particularly subjected to every kind of cruelty and injustice. These persecutions were carried on with some of the forms of law, worship was allowed in all the towns they had held during the war; and they were permitted to retain and garrison Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charitế, as guarantees for the observance of the treaty.

All had now the appearance of peace; but it was the delusive calm which preceded a storm: vengeance was preparing, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day followed with all its horrors, which are too well known to need repetition. The number of Huguenots slaughtered, has been estimated at 50,000. Those who survived were for a moment paralyzed by the blow, and the Catholics themselves seemed stupefied with shame and remorse. Charles was as one struck by avenging retribution; he became restless, sullen, and dejected, and labored under a slow fever to the day of his death. He tried to excuse his perfidy on the plea of its having been necessary for self-preservation: and he sent instructions to his ambassador in England, to give such an explanation to Queen Elizabeth. Hume, speaking of this interview, says, "Nothing could be more awful and affecting than his audience. A melancholy sorrow sat on every face: silence, as in the dead of night, reigned through all the chambers of the royal apartments—the courtiers and ladies clad in deep mourning were ranged on each side, and allowed him to pass without affording him one salute or favorable look, till he was admitted to the Queen herself."

The lives of the young Prince of Condé and Henry of Navarre had been spared, on condition of becoming Catholics, a condition to which they merely pretended to accede, as both attempted to escape from Paris immediately afterwards. Condé alone was successful, and placed himself at the head of the Huguenots; and this sect, which Charles had hoped to exterminate at one blow, soon mustered an army of 18,000 men, and they had kept possession of Rochelle and Montauban, besides many castles, fortresses, and smaller towns. Thus Charles, and Catherine his mother, gained nothing by their infamous treachery, but a character for perfidy and cruelty which has been unequalled in the annals of history.

After the death of Charles IX., the condition of the Huguenots was ever changing; they were frequently in the field, and when successful, obtained favorable edicts, which were broken as soon as they laid down their arms, and then they would resume them, and fight until their success gained fresh concessions.

In 1576, Catholic league was formed, having for its main object the exclusion from the throne of France of Henry of Navarre, who was next heir to Henry III., the reigning monarch. War was carried on between the League and the Huguenots, until 1594, five years after the death of