of posterity to fall.  The moment we speak of the St. Bartholomew, it seems as if Charles IX., Catherine de’ Medici, and the Guises issued from their grave to receive that sentence; and God forbid that we should wish to deliver them from it; but it hits the nameless populace of their day as well as themselves, and the hands of the people, far more than the will of kings, began the tale of massacres for religion’s sake.  This is no vague and general assertion; and, to show it, we shall only have to enumerate, with their dates, the principal facts of which history has preserved the memory, whilst stigmatizing them, with good reason, as massacres or murders.  The greater number, as was to be expected, are deeds done by Catholics, for they were by far the more numerous and more frequently victorious; but Protestants also have sometimes deserved a place in this tragic category, and when we meet with them, we will assuredly not blot them out.

We confine the enumeration to the reign of Charles IX., and in it we place only such massacres and murders as were not the results of any legal proceeding.  We say nothing of judicial sentences and executions, however outrageous and iniquitous they may have been.

The first fact which presents itself is a singular one.  Admiral de Coligny’s eldest brother, Odet de Chatillon, was a Catholic, Bishop of Beauvais, and a cardinal; in 1550, he had gone to Rome and had co-operated in the election of Pope Julius III.; in 1554, he had published some Constitutions synodales (synodal regulations), to remedy certain abuses which had crept into his diocese, and, in 1561, he proposed to make in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper some modifications which smacked, it is said, of the innovations of Geneva.  The populace of Beauvais were so enraged at this that they rose up against him, massacred a schoolmaster whom he tried to protect, and would have massacred the bishop himself if troops sent from Paris had not come to his assistance.

In the same year, 1561, the Protestants had a custom of meeting at Paris, for their religious exercises, in a house called the Patriarch’s house, very near the church of St. Medard.  On the 27th of December, whilst the Reformed minister was preaching, the Catholics had all the bells of St. Medard rung in full peal.  The minister sent two of his congregation to beg the incumbent to have the bell-ringing stopped for a short time.  The mob threw themselves upon the two messengers:  one was killed, and the other, after making a stout defence, returned badly wounded to the Patriarch’s house, and fell dead at the preacher’s feet.  The provost of tradesmen was for having the bells stopped; the riot became violent; the house of the Reformers was stormed; and the provost’s archers had great difficulty in putting a stop to the fight.  More than a hundred persons, it is said, were killed or wounded.

[Illustration:  Massacre of Protestants—–­305]