The Queen

children, to

Then all Europe would lie at his feet, and France be practically a Spanish province. On the 25th of February, 1570, Pius V., an untiring and unpitying instigator of persecution, issued his bull of excommunication against Elizabeth. A year after, the brilliant victory of Spain over the Turks at Lepanto still further raised the prestige of Philip, and left him more free to pursue his ambitious schemes in Western Europe. Mother loved power too well for herself and her fall into the snare which Philip was setting. She entered warmly into the project of a marriage between her second son, the Duke of Anjou, and Elizabeth, which was first suggested by the brother of Coligny. When Anjou, seduced by the Spanish Court, and by the offer of 100,000 crowns from the Pope's Nuncio, drew back from a match with a heretic so much. older than himself, Catherine was eager to substitute for him his younger brother Alençon; and indulged, also, the chimerical hope that Anjou might secure the hand of Mary Queen of Scots. This policy of the Court could not be otherwise than satisfactory to the Huguenots. War with Spain, to be fought out in the Netherlands, in alliance with England and Germany, but with due care for French interests, appealed at once to their patriotic feeling and their religious enthusiasm. The government and the Huguenot party were thus drawn towards each other. A marriage between Henry of Navarre and Margaret of Valois, the daughter of Catherine, had been spoken of long before, prior to the death of Henry II., when both Navarre and Margaret were children. The idea was now revived from the side of the Moderates, by a son of Montmorenci. It was heartily favored by Catherine, warmly supported by the King, who was personally fond of Henry, and was struck with the expediency of a marriage which would thus unite the contending parties; and it obtained at length the consent of the hightoned Queen of Navarre, with whom worldly distinction for her son was of far less account than honor and religious conviction. Coligny and the other Huguenot leaders lent their cordial approval to the plan.

Coligny was now urgently invited to come to the Court. The King and the Queen Mother were anxious to have the benefit of his counsel. Despite the opposition of his friends,

including the Queen of Navarre, who were unwilling to see him commit himself to the hands of those who had been, in the past, his perfidious enemies, Coligny determined to comply with the invitation. He confided in Charles, he said; he would rather die at once, than live a hundred years, subject to cowardly apprehensions. He earnestly desired to bring the civil conflict to an end. He was full of ardor for the enterprise against Philip, in the Netherlands, into which he hoped to carry the King. It would give employment to the numerous mercenaries and marauders whom the cessation of the war at home had left idle. It would strike a blow, alike honorable and useful to France, and damaging to Spain. Coligny left Rochelle, escorted by fifty gentlemen, and arrived at Blois, where the Court was, on the 12th of September, 1571. He was welcomed by Catherine, and by the King, who greeted him with the title of "father," and declared that day to be the happiest of his life.

Charles was twenty-one years of age. His natural talents were above the ordinary level. He was fond of music, and his poetical compositions were not without merit. But the education which he had received was the worst possible. His nature was unhealthy, and utterly unregulated. Though not a debauchee, like his brother Anjou, his morbid impulses raged without control: his anger, when excited, bordered on frenzy. Yet there was in him a latent vein of generous feeling. He met in Coligny, almost for the first time in his life, a man whom he could revere. Coligny was fifty-four years of age. He had been a man of war from his youth up; but he had drawn the sword from a stern sense of duty; and his lofty character could not fail to impress all who were thrown in his company. He, in turu, seemed to be charmed with his young sovereign. The jealousy of Catherine was soon aroused. "He sees too much of the Admiral," she said, "and too little of me." As the veteran soldier painted the advantages that would result from going to the rescue of William of Orange, and striking a blow at Spain in the Low Countries, the sympathy of Charles was awakened, and he expressed an eager desire to enter personally into the contest.

Meantime, the project of the marriage of Henry and Marga

ret continued to be pushed. The Queen of Navarre was persuaded herself to come to Blois, in March, 1572. While there, in a letter to her son, she described the indecency of the Court, where even the women had cast off the show of modesty, and did not blush to play the part of seducers. The marriage of Henry and Margaret, the plan of a matrimonial connection with Elizabeth, the scheme of an offensive alliance with England, and of a war with Spain, to be waged in Flanders, were all parts of a line of policy which the Huguenots urged, and which Catherine for a while favored. But she became more and more alarmed at the influence acquired by Coligny. Elizabeth was cautious, and the negotiations looking to a change of the defensive into an offensive alliance, lagged. A war with Spain, Catherine felt, would establish Coligny's ascendency over the mind of Charles. Such a war she more and more dreaded on its own account; and when the force secretly sent by Charles, under Genlis, to the support of Orange, was defeated and cut up by Alva's son, the Queen Mother declared herself vehemently against the measure on which Coligny rested all his hopes for France, and towards which the King, in his better moods, was strongly inclined. In the Council, the party opposed to the war was led by Anjou. He, with Catherine, Retz, Tavannes, and others to support him, was able to keep back the King from an absolute decision; and thus, through the spring and early summer of 1572, the question was warmly, and sometimes angrily, debated. The death of the Queen of Navarre at Paris, on the 9th of June, was one cause for the postponement of the wedding of her son to the 18th of August. The refusal of the Pope to grant a dispensation was another hindrance. The King was resolved to effect the marriage, with or without the Pope's consent. A forged letter, purporting to come from Rome, announcing the consent of Gregory XIII., the new Pope, to the nuptials, was exhibited by Charles to the Cardinal of Bourbon, who had refused to solemnize the marriage without the Papal authorization.

In subsequent years Henry IV., the Conqueror of Ivry and the Restorer of Peace to France, looked back on the 8th of July, 1572, as one of the brightest days in all his tempestuous career. On that day he made his entry into Paris, riding

between the King's two brothers, and accompanied by Condé, the Cardinal of Bourbon, the Admiral Coligny, and eight hundred mounted gentlemen. The procession, however, was greeted with little enthusiasm by the crowd that filled the streets. Paris was the hot-bed of Catholic fanaticism. In all the treaties which had given liberty to the Reformed worship, the capital had been excepted. Here the enmity of the populace to the Huguenots was rancorous in the extreme. All the pulpits in those days rang with fierce invectives against the heretics. Guise, with his mother, the Duchess of Nemours, and with a great military following, came to Paris also. The Huguenots had no protection but their own vigilance, their swords, and above all, the good faith of the King, against the host of enemies by whom they were surrounded.

On the 18th of August the long-expected marriage took place. The splendid procession, composed of the royal family and the nobility of France, moved along a covered platform from the Bishop's palace to the pavilion erected in front of Notre Dame, where the ceremony took place. The bride. whose beauty and grace of person unhappily were not associated with moral qualities equally winning-for she was untruthful and vain, if not something worse-describes her own costume -her crown, her vest of ermine spotted with black (couet d'hermine mouchetée), all brilliant with pearls, and the great blue mantle, whose train of four ells in length was carried by three princesses. Charles, Navarre and Condé, in token of their mutual affection, were dressed alike, in garments of light yellow satin, embroided with silver, and glittering with pearls and precious stones. Micheli, one of the Venetian Ambassadors-accurate reporters-states that the cost of the king's bonnet, charger, and garments, was half a million crowns; while Anjou wore in his hat thirty-two well known pearls, purchased at a cost of 23,000 gold crowns. All this, when the royal treasury was exhausted! Navarre led his bride from the pavilion into the church; and then, during the celebration of mass, with the Huguenot chiefs withdrew to the adjacent cloister. De Thou, the French historian, who was then a youth of nineteen, after the mass was over, climbed over the barriers erected to keep off the people, went into the choir, and

heard Coligny, pointing to the flags taken at Jarnac and Moncontour, say to Damville that "soon these would be replaced. by others more agreeable to see ;" alluding to the war in Flanders, on which his thoughts were bent. The next few days were given up to festivities-"balls, banquets, masques and tourneys," into which Navarre entered with zest, but which were equally offensive and tedious to the grave Coligny, who longed to be away, and who vainly tried to draw the King's attention to the business which lay nearest his heart. Charles put him off. He must have a few days for pleasure; then the Admiral should be gratified.

Five days after the wedding, on Friday, the 22d of August, at a little past ten in the morning, as Coligny was walking between two friends from the Louvre to his own lodgings, an arquebus was discharged at him from a latticed window of a house standing near the cloister of St. Germain l'Auxerrois. At the moment he was in the act of reading a petition. He was hit by a bullet on the first finger of the right hand ; another bullet entered his left arm. With his wounded hand he pointed out the window whence the shot had come, and directed an attendant to inform the king. He was then conducted to his lodgings. The king, vexed and enraged, threatened vengeance upon the guilty parties. His surgeon,

Ambrose Paré, was sent, who amputated the finger, and extracted the ball from the arm. Navarre, attended by hundreds of Huguenot gentlemen, soon visited the Admiral. Condé and other Huguenot leaders waited on the king, and demanded leave to retire from the court, where their lives were not safe. Charles begged them to remain, and swore vengeance upon the perpetrators of the deed.

The authors of the attempt to assassinate Coligny were Catherine de Medici, and her son, the Duke of Anjou, in conjunction with the Duke of Guise and his mother. The house belonged to a dependent of Guise; the weapon, which was found in it, to one of Anjou's guards. The instrument who was employed to do the work was Maurevel, who, a few years before, had been hired to kill Coligny, at a time when a price. was set on his head, but had murdered one of his lieutenants, Mouy, in his stead.