Saint Bartholomews Eve | Page 8

made at the Conference of Poissy had infuriated the
Catholics, and the war was brought on by the Duke of Guise who,
passing with a large band of retainers through the town of Vassy in
Champagne, found the Huguenots there worshipping in a barn. His
retainers attacked them, slaying men, women, and children--some sixty
being killed, and a hundred or more left terribly wounded.
The Protestant nobles demanded that Francis of Guise should be
punished for this atrocious massacre, but in vain; and Guise, on
entering Paris, in defiance of Catharine's prohibition, was received with
royal honours by the populace. The Cardinal of Lorraine, the duke's
brother, the duke himself, and their allies, the Constable Montmorency
and Marshal Saint Andre, assumed so threatening an attitude that
Catharine left Paris and went to Melun, her sympathies at this period
being with the reformers; by whose aid, alone, she thought that she
could maintain her influence in the state against that of the Guises.
Conde was forced to leave Paris with the Protestant nobles, and from
all parts of France the Huguenots marched to assist him. Coligny, the
greatest of the Huguenot leaders, hesitated; being, above all things,
reluctant to plunge France into civil war. But the entreaties of his noble
wife, of his brothers and friends, overpowered his reluctance. Conde
left Meaux, with fifteen hundred horse, with the intention of seizing the
person of the young king; but he had been forestalled by the Guises,
and moved to Orleans, where he took up his headquarters. All over
France the Huguenots rose in such numbers as astonished their enemies,
and soon became possessed of a great many important cities.
Their leaders had endeavoured, in every way, to impress upon them the

necessity of behaving as men who fought only for the right to worship
God; and for the most part these injunctions were strictly obeyed. In
one matter, alone, the Huguenots could not be restrained. For thirty
years the people of their faith had been executed, tortured, and slain;
and their hatred of the Romish church manifested itself by the
destruction of images and pictures of all kinds, in the churches of the
towns of which they obtained possession. Only in the southeast of
France was there any exception to the general excellence of their
conduct. Their persecution here had always been very severe, and in the
town of Orange the papal troops committed a massacre almost without
a parallel in its atrocity. The Baron of Adrets, on behalf of the
Protestants, took revenge by massacres equally atrocious; but while the
butchery at Orange was hailed with approbation and delight by the
Catholic leaders, those promoted by Adrets excited such a storm of
indignation, among the Huguenots of all classes, that he shortly
afterwards went over to the other side, and was found fighting against
the party he had disgraced.
At Toulouse three thousand Huguenots were massacred, and in other
towns where the Catholics were in a majority terrible persecutions were
carried out.
It was nearly a year after the massacre at Vassy before the two armies
met in battle. The Huguenots had suffered greatly, by the delays caused
by attempts at negotiations and compromise. Conde's army was formed
entirely of volunteers, and the nobles and gentry, as their means
became exhausted, were compelled to return home with their retainers;
while many were forced to march to their native provinces, to assist
their co-religionists there to defend themselves from their Catholic
neighbours.
England had entered, to a certain extent, upon the war; Elizabeth, after
long vacillation, having at length agreed to send six thousand men to
hold the towns of Havre, Dieppe, and Rouen, providing these three
towns were handed over to her; thus evincing the same calculating
greed that marked her subsequent dealings with the Dutch, in their
struggle for freedom.

In vain Conde and Coligny begged her not to impose conditions that
Frenchmen would hold to be infamous to them. In vain Throgmorton,
her ambassador at Paris, warned her that she would alienate the
Protestants of France from her; while the possession of the cities would
avail her but little. In vain her minister, Cecil, urged her frankly to ally
herself with the Protestants. From the first outbreak of the war for
freedom of conscience in France, to the termination of the struggle in
Holland, Elizabeth baffled both friends and enemies by her vacillation
and duplicity, and her utter want of faith; doling out aid in the spirit of
a huckster rather than a queen, so that she was, in the end, even more
hated by the Protestants of Holland and France than by the Catholics of
France and Spain.
To those who look only at the progress made by England, during the
reign of Elizabeth--thanks to her great ministers, her valiant