Beacon Lights of History, Volume 08 - Great Rulers by John Lord
page 81 of 272 (29%)
page 81 of 272 (29%)
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from education rather than conviction. At twelve, in the year 1565, he
was intrusted by his mother, the Queen of Navarre, to the care of his uncle, the Prince of Condé, and, on his death, to Admiral Coligny, the acknowledged leader of the Protestants. He thus witnessed many bloody battles before he was old enough to be intrusted with command. At eighteen he was affianced to Marguerite de Valois, sister of Charles IX., in spite of differences of religion. It was amid the nuptial festivities of the young King of Navarre,--his mother had died the year before,--when all the prominent leaders of the Protestants were enticed to Paris, that preparations were made for the blackest crime in the annals of civilized nations,--even the treacherous and hideous massacre of St. Bartholomew, perpetrated by Charles IX., who was incited to it by his mother, the ever-infamous Catherine de Médicis, and the Duke of Guise. The Protestants, under the Prince of Condé and Admiral Coligny, had fought so bravely and so successfully in defence of their cause that all hope of subduing them in the field was given up. The bloody battles of Montcontour, of St. Denis, and of Jarnac had proved how stubbornly the Huguenots would fight; while their possession of such strong fortresses as Montauban and La Rochelle, deemed impregnable, showed that they could not easily be subdued. Although the Prince of Condé had been slain at the battle of Jarnac, this great misfortune to the Protestants was more than balanced by the assassination of the great Duke of Guise, the ablest general and leader of the Catholics. So when all hope had vanished of exterminating the Huguenots in open warfare, a deceitful peace was made; and their leaders were decoyed to Paris, in order to accomplish, in one foul sweep, by wholesale murder, the diabolical design. |
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