History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland by William Cobbett

Author:William Cobbett [Cobbett, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TAN Books
Published: 2015-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X.

289. Though the massacre of Saint Bartholomew took place in France, yet it has formed so fertile a source of calumny against the religion of our fathers, it has served as a pretence with Protestant historians to justify or palliate so many atrocities on the part of their divers sects, and the Queen of England and her ministers had so great a hand in first producing it and then in punishing Catholics under pretence of avenging it, that it is necessary for me to give an account of it.

290. We have seen in the paragraphs from 273 to 281 the treacherous works of Coligny, and in paragraph 278 we have seen that this pretended saint basely caused that gallant and patriotic nobleman, the Duke of Guise, to be assassinated. But in assassinating this nobleman the wretch did not take off the whole of his family. There was a son left to avenge that father, and the just vengeance of this son the treacherous Coligny had to feel. We have seen that peace had taken place between the French King and his rebellious subjects, but Coligny had all along discovered that his treacherous designs only slept. The King was making a progress through the kingdom about four years after the pacification:1 a plot was formed by Coligny and his associates to kill or seize him; but by riding fourteen hours without getting off his horse, and without food or drink, he escaped and got safe to Paris.2 Another civil war soon broke out, followed by another pacification; but such had been the barbarities committed on both sides that there could be, and there was, no real forgiveness. The Protestants had been full as sanguinary as the Catholics; and, which has been remarked even by their own historians, their conduct was frequently, not to say uniformly, characterized by plundering and by hypocrisy and perfidy unknown to their enemies.

291. During this pacification Coligny had, by the deepest dissimulation, endeavoured to worm himself into favour with the young King; and upon the occasion of a marriage between the King's sister and the young King of Navarre (afterwards the famous Henry IV.), Coligny, who, Condé being now dead,3 was become the chief of his sect, came to Paris with a company of his Protestant adherents to partake in the celebration, and that, too, at the King's invitation. After he had been there a day or two, some one shot at him in the street with a blunderbuss and wounded him in two or three places, but not dangerously.4 His partisans ascribed this to the young Duke of Guise, though no proof has ever been produced to support the assertion.5 They, however, got about their leader and threatened revenge, as was very natural. Taking this for the ground of their justification, the court resolved to anticipate the blow, and on Sunday, August 24, 1572, it being Saint Bartholomew's day, they put their design in execution. There was great difficulty in prevailing upon the young King

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