thinking it was more the fault of the age than of Catholic bigots; but I
now present it in its naked deformity, to be true to history, and to
show how cruel is religious intolerance, confirmed by the history of
other inhumanities in the Catholic Church,--by the persecution of
Dominican monks, by the slaughter of the Albigenses, by inquisitions,
gunpowder plots, the cruelties of Alva, and that trail of blood which
has marked the fairest portions of Europe by the hostilities of the
Church of Borne in its struggles to suppress Protestant opinions. I
mention it to recall the fact that Protestantism has never been stained
by such a crime. I mention it to invoke gratitude that such a misguided
zeal has passed away and is never likely to return. Catholic historians
do not pretend to deny the horrid facts, but ascribe the massacre to
political animosities rather than religious,--a lame and impotent
defence of their persecuting Church in the sixteenth century.

But this atrocity had such a demoniacal blackness and perfidy about it
that it filled the whole Protestant world with grief and indignation,
especially England, and had only the effect of binding together the
Huguenots in a solid phalanx of warriors, resolved on making no peace
with their perfidious enemies until their religious liberties were
guaranteed Though decimated, they were not destroyed; for the provincial
governors and rural magistrates generally refused to execute the royal
decrees,--their hearts were moved with pity. The slaughter was not
universal, and Henry himself had escaped, his life being spared on
condition of his becoming a Catholic, which as a matter of form he did.

Nevertheless, all Protestant eyes were now directed to him as their
leader, since Coligny had perished by daggers, and Condé on the field of
battle. Henry was still a young man, only twenty years of age, but able,
intrepid, and wise. He and his cousin, the younger Condé, were still