The Huguenot leaders were completely deceived. Old Admiral Coligny, with
his deeper insight, hesitated to put himself into the power of a bigoted
and persecuting monarch; but Charles IX. pledged his word for his
safety, and in an age when chivalry was not extinguished, his promise
was accepted. Who could believe that his word of honor would be broken,
or that he, a king, could commit such an outrageous and unprecedented
crime? But what oath, what promise, what law can bind a man who is a
slave of religious bigotry, when his church requires a bloody and a
cruel act? The end seemed to justify any means. I would not fix the
stain of that infamous crime exclusively on the Jesuits, or on the Pope,
or on the councillors of the King, or on his mother. I will not say that
it was even exclusively a Church movement: it may have been equally an
apparent State necessity. A Protestant prince might mount the throne of
France, and with him, perhaps, the ascendency of Protestantism, or at
least its protection. Such a catastrophe, as it seemed to the
councillors of Charles IX., must somehow be averted. How could it be
averted otherwise than by the assassination of Henry himself, and his
cousin Condé, and the brave old admiral, as powerful as Guise, as
courageous as Du Gueslin, and as pious as Godfrey? And then, when these
leaders were removed, and all the Protestants in Paris were murdered,
who would remain to continue the contest, and what Protestant prince
could hope to mount the throne? But whoever was directly responsible for
the crime, and whatever may have been the motives for it, still it was
committed. The first victim was Coligny himself, and the slaughter of
sixty thousand persons followed in Paris and the provinces. The Admiral
Coligny, Marquis of Chatillon, was one of the finest characters in all
history,--brave, honest, truthful, sincere, with deep religious
convictions, and great ability as a general. No Englishman in the
sixteenth century can be compared with him for influence, heroism, and