Baron d'Oppede, first president of the Parliament of Aix, had
already set an example by killing 3,000 persons in the space of
ten days, with refinements of cruelty, and destroying three
cities and twenty-two villages. Montluc, a worthy forerunner of
Carrier, had the Calvinists thrown living into the wells until
these were full. The Protestants were no more humane. They did
not spare even the Catholic churches, and treated the tombs and
statues just as the delegates of the Convention were to treat the
royal tombs of Saint Denis.

Under the influence of these conflicts France was progressively
disintegrated, and at the end of the reign of Henri III. was
parcelled out into veritable little confederated municipal
republics, forming so many sovereign states. The royal power was
vanishing. The States of Blois claimed to dictate their wishes
to Henri III., who had fled from his capital. In 1577 the
traveller Lippomano, who traversed France, saw important cities--
Orleans, Tours, Blois, Poitiers--entirely devastated, the
cathedrals and churches in ruins, and the tombs shattered. This
was almost the state of France at the end of the Directory.

Among the events of this epoch, that which has left the darkest
memory, although it was not perhaps the most murderous, was the
massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, ordered, according to the
historians, by Catherine de Medicis and Charles IX.

One does not require a very profound knowledge of psychology to
realise that no sovereign could have ordered such an event. St.
Bartholomew's Day was not a royal but a popular crime. Catherine
de Medicis, believing her existence and that of the king