Historical Tales [calibre 5.4.1]

"The slaughter of many thousands of men may be prevented by a single sword-thrust," they argued. "Only kill the admiral, the head and front of the civil wars, and the strength of his party will die with him. The sacrifice of two or three men will satisfy the loyal party, who will remain forever your faithful and obedient subjects. War is inevitable. The Guises on one side, and the Huguenots on the other, cannot be controlled. Better to win a battle in Paris, where we hold all the chiefs in our clutches, than to put it to hazard in the field. In this case pity would be cruelty, and cruelty would be pity."

THE DUKE OF GUISE AT THE FRENCH COURT.

For an hour and a half the struggle with the weak will of the king continued. He was violently agitated, but could not bring himself to order the murder of the guest to whom he had promised his royal faith and protection. The queen mother grew alarmed. Delay might ruin all, by the discovery of her plans. At length, with a show of indignation, she said,—

"Then, if you will not do this, permit me and your brother to retire to some other part of the kingdom."

This threat to leave him alone to grapple with the difficulties that surrounded him frightened the feeble king. He rose hastily from his seat.

"By God's death!" he cried, passionately, "since you think proper to kill the admiral, I consent." With these words he left the room.

The beginning of the work of bloodshed had been fixed for an hour before daybreak. But the king had spoken in a moment of passion and agitation. An hour's reflection might change his mind. There was no time to be lost. The queen gave the signal at once, and out on the air of that dreadful night rang the terrible tocsin peal from the tower of the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the alarm call for which the white-crossed murderers waited.

Quickly the silence of the night was broken by loud cries, shouts of vengeance, the tramp of many feet, the sharp reports of musketry. The work was begun. Every man not marked by a cross was to be slaughtered. The voice of murder broke fearfully upon the peacefulness of the recently quiet midnight hour.

The noise roused Coligny. He rose hastily and threw on his dressing-gown. The cries and shots told him what was going on. He had trusted the faithless Guises and the soulless De' Medici, and this was what came of it.

"M. Merlin," he said to a clergyman who was with him, "say me a prayer; I commit my soul to my Saviour."

Some of his gentlemen entered the room.

"What is the meaning of this riot?" asked Ambrose Paré.

"My lord, it is God calling us," said Cornaton.

"I have long been ready to die," said the admiral; "but you, my friends, save yourselves, if it is still possible."

They left him, and escaped, the most of them by the roof. Only one man stayed with him, Nicholas Muss, a German servant, "as little concerned," says Cornaton, "as if there was nothing going on around him."

The flight had been made barely in time. Hasty footsteps were heard below. The assassins were in the house. In a moment more the chamber door was flung open and two servants of the Duke of Guise entered.

"Art not thou the admiral?" asked one of them, Behme by name.

"Young man," answered Coligny, "thou comest against a wounded and aged man. Thou'lt not shorten my life by much."

Behme's answer was to plunge a heavy boar-spear which he held into the body of the defenceless veteran. Withdrawing it, he struck him on the head with it. Coligny fell, saying,—

"If it were but a man! But it is a horse-boy."

Others rushed into the room and thrust their weapons into the dying man.

"Behme," cried the duke of Guise from the court-yard, "hast thou done?"

"It is all over, my lord," answered the assassin.

The murderers flung the body from the window. It fell with a crash at the feet of Guise and his companions. They turned it over, wiped the blood from the face, and said,—

"Faith, it is he, sure enough!"

Some say that Guise kicked the bleeding corpse in the face.

Meanwhile, murder was everywhere. The savage lower orders of Paris, all, high and low, of the party of the Guises, were infected with the thirst for blood, and the streets of the city became a horrible whirlpool of slaughter, all who did not wear the saving cross being shot down without mercy or discrimination.

The anecdotes of that fatal night and the succeeding day are numerous, some of them pathetic, most of them ferocious, all tending to show how brutal man may become under the inspiration of religious prejudice and the example of slaughter,—the blood fury, as it has been fitly termed.