' with a wonderful unanimity, confessed the Catholic Church and 'the Roman See to be free from all guilt, and neither to have 'counselled so wicked a deed, nor to have been an accomplice ' after the fact. We may, for the sake of doing them honour, ' refer more especially to Ranke, Reimer, and Solden, who have 'affirmed and proved, that the accusations of more ancient 'historians are worthless. On no historical action has more been 'written, or have more varying opinions passed, than on this 'celebrated slaughter of the Huguenots. Especially those who 'did not belong to the Catholic Church, and were desirous of attacking her, gladly seized the opportunity of dwelling on this act of violence, thinking it a fit occasion for vomiting forth the 'poison they had conceived in their mind.' It is needless to remind the reader with what limitations the testimonies which our historian alleges would serve his purpose, if quoted in full. He must have known that some French ultramontanes have been found, not only to allow, but to glory in the participation by the Roman See. He must have seen the Abbé Guettée's work, published three years before his own, with all the documents which it contained; but he finds it convenient to ignore everything but what seemed to make for his own side of the question. And, after all, judged by his own evidence, his story is very lame. He continues- Countless contemporary docu'ments, connected with this subject, have been dragged out from 'their hiding-places and made public; but only in our own time have those letters been published, which were written by the 'several ambassadors to their masters; in which, eye-witnesses themselves, they endeavoured to relate what had happened, with the most perfect good faith. These epistles are most proper to explain the whole course of the history. The most important among them are those addressed by Antony Maria Salviati, bishop of Saint Papoul, and legate from the Pontiff to 'Charles IX., first published by the celebrated Châteaubriand, 'then ambassador from France to the See of Rome, from the autographs in the Vatican. By him they were supplied to 'James Mackintosh, a celebrated English historian, who added them as an appendix to his work on English history. They ' have partly also been reprinted by Eugenio Albero, in his life ' of Catherine de Medicis. We may be allowed to reprint them again after collating them with the original autographs. With 'the assistance of these writings and some others which have, up to this time, remained hidden in the same Vatican library, we hope that we shall be able entirely to dispel every cloud of doubt, if any such remains, with respect to this slaughter of the Huguenots.'

6

Our historian then proceeds to argue: firstly, that the whole

6

affair was no long devised and organized conspiracy, but the mere hasty resolution of one or two days; secondly, that it was a mere political massacre, and no further connected with the Huguenots than as a faction ready to take up arms against their lawful sovereign; thirdly, that Gregory XIII., in characterising the massacre as a pious and laudable work, did so under the belief that it was a mere political execution of miscreants, as hostile to the established government as they were to the Church. No one,' says our historian, will wonder if on receiving the letters from his legates, which spoke of a detected conspiracy of the Huguenots, and the punishment of the guilty, the Pontiff should have rendered thanks to God for the preser'vation of the monarch's life in such danger.' We have already seen, however, by contemporary documents, that the massacre of the Huguenots throughout France had long before been contrived; and it needs only common sense to be assured that, though the facts of the case might have been distorted in the first accounts which reached Rome, the Pope must soon have received, as did the other sovereigns of Europe, truer intelligence. Did he ever retract what he had at first affirmed? Was not the medal which he struck distributed long after the facts had been clearly ascertained? Did not Vasari's picture, with its epigraph, the Pontiff approves the death of Coligni,' remain in the Vatican? Had Gregory XIII. really changed his mind? Why could not the successor of S. Peter do as the successor of the Roman Emperors did? In a very interesting letter, written by Maximilian to his ambassador at the Court of Paris, and reprinted by M. Theiner, he says:

'With respect to that celebrated deed, which the French tyrannically perpetrated on the Admiral and his companions, I can in no respect approve it; and it gave me the greatest pain to be informed that my son-inlaw suffered himself to be persuaded to consent to so foul a butchery. It is true, I know, that others have greater power than himself. But this is not sufficient to excuse the deed: it is not even enough to palliate the crime. Would that he had taken me into his counsel! I would have given him faithful and paternal advice, and never should he have acted as he has done through following my counsels. By this enormity he has marked himself with a stain which he will not easily be able to wash out, or to wipe off. God forgive those who have to bear the guilt of the proceeding! I greatly fear that, in process of time, they will learn what is the consequence of acting in this way. The fact is that, as you well and wisely write, religious affairs ought not to be settled by the sword. Nor can any one think differently who has any desire after piety and goodness, or even peace and tranquillity. Furthermore, Christ and His Apostles have taught us far differently. For their sword was their tongue, a doctrine worthy of the Word of God and the life of Christ; and their behaviour ought to invite and allure us to follow them as they did Christ. I say nothing on another subject; that that mad set of men ought, in the course of so many years, and from the nature and event of circun.

stances themselves, to have been persuaded, that this affair cannot be managed by cruel punishments, such as quartering and the stake. In brief, their actions do not please me at all; nor shall I ever be induced to praise them, unless (which I sincerely pray God may never happen) I should fall into raging madness. But I do not wish to hide from you that there are certain impudent and mendacious scoundrels, who do not blush to affirm, that whatever the Frenchman has done, he did not only with my complicity, but at my suggestion. In which assertion I call God to witness that an injustice is done to me, before Him and before all the world. But lies, and calumnies of this sort, are no new things to me; I have often had to put up with them before. I commit all these matters to my God, Who knows how, in his own time, to repel and to vindicate me from such injuries.'

With this letter M. Theiner closes his account of the massacre of S. Bartholomew. Account we call it by courtesy, for unless the reader were acquainted with the history before, all he could learn from the Annals' is, that a slaughter of some kind took place among the Huguenots in Paris, of which the author was extremely anxious to prove the Roman Church entirely innocent. But under what circumstances it was perpetrated; what was the number of victims; what was the organization of the murderers; what the resistance offered; what the feeling with which the intelligence was received throughout Christendom,-in fact, anything and everything about the whole history, M. Theiner does not tell us. It is impossible to conceive any pages more destitute of information than the six which he devotes to the subject. It is worthy, too, of notice, that there is not the slightest allusion to the general massacre throughout France, which followed that in Paris. One can only again ask in what sense can this work be called a history?

If ever there were an event in the annals of modern Europe which gave scope to, and which deserved, the best efforts of the historian, it was the fatal battle of Alcacer Quibir, and the virtual destruction of the Portuguese monarchy. The mystery which envelopes the whole of this last of the Crusades; the sudden fall from a glory never till that time attained by any European people to a miserable subjugation to a foreign power, the warnings and portents which preceded the expedition. Now, let us see how M. Theiner treats this subject under the year 1578; and the following notices are all that he allots to one of the most remarkable occurrences of European history. Gregory also exhorted Catholic princes, and especially 'the Italians, to assist by advice and money, Sebastian, King of 'Portugal, then with juvenile ardour about to undertake a war ' against the Saracens of Africa. Here are his letters to the 'Genoese. [They follow.] John, Duke of Bragança, who con'tributed not a little to this war, having sent João Tovari to 'condole with those princes who were relations of the deceased Maria, Duchess of Parma, entreated the Pontiff to bestow on

6

'him some spiritual graces for the excitement of his own piety and that of his family.' Then follows a very long letter, referring the Pope to this Tovari for an explanation of what the Duke wanted: a letter which contains not one single line worth reprinting." Gregory bestowed on him that which 'he requested, on account of his laudable piety and care in 'sending his eldest son, yet a child, to the African war.' One should have thought that, had the war been desirable, the Duke's piety would have been still more laudable, had he gore himself, instead of sending a boy, eleven years old, as his proxy. However, the Duke's letter serves as a peg for Gregory's answer, which, of course, follows at length. Now we come to the war itself. But the inconvenience to which the Christian republic was then exposed from the event of that war is never sufficiently to be deplored. For Sebastian, a king most 'excellent, both from his piety and from his military courage, ' in the very flower of his age, for he was not yet twenty-four, ' and unmarried, fighting near the town of Alcacer Quibir in the foremost ranks, fell, pierced with many wounds: on which, 'nearly his whole army was destroyed. In which lamentable 'war, the son of the Duke of Bragança was taken prisoner; and 'the father, with many tears, gave information to the Pontiff of this unhappy event. Then follows a long letter from the Duke, containing nothing further than the general statement of the king's death and of his son's captivity; and two briefs, the one to Cardinal Henrique, successor of Sebastian, the other to the Duke of Bragança, conclude all the notice which our author thinks fit to take of the event: he does not even refer to the much disputed question, whether Sebastian really fell in the battle or not. And this, again, is what it seems we are to call writing history. One might have thought that the very coldest imagination would have taken fire in relating the gradual approach and development of the fate which, like the avenging fury of the Greek tragedy, seemed to dog the kingdom of Portugal. The fabulous riches poured in from India and Brazil, the romantic victories which seemed to make good the tales of knight errantry,-the rapid discoveries and as rapid conquests of regions whose wealth seemed boundless, and whose monarchs vied with each other in submitting to the Portuguese crown,-the magnificence of the courts of Dom Manoel, and Dom João III.,-the marvellous structures they reared, especially the crowning glory of all, the Capella do Fundador at Batalha, these things might well inflame the fancy of a hot-headed and ill-educated prince like Sebastian into ideas of universal monarchy. His very piety assisted in the delusion; it would be but little to make the whole of

Africa a Portuguese dependency, and a Catholic continent; when that was done, he proposed to wrest Constantinople from the Turks, to expel them from Asia Minor, and then to crush the Tartars in Central Asia. And this at a time when his little kingdom had over-exerted its strength, and squandered its resources; when there were not wanting tokens to men of political wisdom, that the prestige of Indian conquests was already on the wane; when the western settlements of Africa had some time previously been from necessity contracted; when other claimants of the dominion of the seas were rising up; when the very existence of the kingdom depended on the life of the monarch (the decrepit Cardinal Henrique being the only survivor of the ancient family in its male line); and, above all things, when the general corruption and dissoluteness of manners seemed to threaten that the transgressors were come to the full, and that a heavy retribution was in store for Portugal. Yet Sebastian, ascending the throne in early childhood, brooded over these wild dreams till the conquest of Africa became almost a monomania. Already, in the year 1574, he had made one inglorious, although safe, expedition thither; in which he had not only shown his destitution of every single quality necessary to a general, except personal courage; but had also proved that Portugal possessed not one single leader endowed with the talents necessary for such an expedition. Of this previous attempt, our historian scarcely says a word.'

1 While omitting all mention of this unfortunate monarch's first crusade, M. Theiner fills up the dreary annals of this same year with twaddle even more intolerable than usual. A certain doctor, a canon of Olmutz, by name Illicinus, having been accused of heresy, defends himself (as, poor man, it was only reasonable that he should) to his Bishop and to the Pope; on which he was honourably acquitted. But our author not only gives a most lengthened and weary correspondence, but actually prints a poem by which the accused man sought to propi. tiate his Bishop: it commences in this fashion

Non semper Boreas spirat in Alpibus

Nec semper nivibus celsa cacumina

Stant, nec semper hyems sævit in arbore;

Non et dira Jovis dextera fulminat,' &c. &c.

At all events, if M. Theiner will print such poetry, he might at least give us metre and sense, and not inflict upon us such lines as

Or again :

Quem multis decorant Puerides rosis,
Quem sacrata Themis, quem Diva pervehit.'

'Qui usurpare tuum concupirit locum.'

Part of this long correspondence turns on the important question of a dinner. Illicinus, it seems, had accused his Bishop of spending five hundred florins on one meal. Hinc illa lacyrmæ. It is not so,' writes the Bishop in the third column of his Epistle to Cardinal Commendono, there were but a hundred and thirty covers for the guests: and of these, forty were taken up by dessert, which