In 1562, in the month of February, whilst the Guises were travelling in Germany, with the object of concluding, in the interests of policy, alliances with some German Lutheran princes, disturbances broke out at Cahors, Amiens, Sens, and Tours, between the Protestants and the Catholics.  Which of the two began them?  It would be difficult to determine.  The passions that lead to insult, attack, defence, and vengeance were mutually felt and equally violent on both sides.  Montluc was sent to Guienne by the queen-mother to restore order there; but nearly everywhere he laid the blame on the Protestants.  His Memoires prove that he harried them without any form of justice.  “At Sauveterre,” says he, “I caught five or six, all of whom I had hanged without expense of paper or ink, and without giving them a hearing, for those gentry are regular Chrysostoms (parlent d’or).”  “I was informed that at Gironde there were sixty or eighty Huguenots belonging to them of La Reole, who had retreated thither; the which were all taken, and I had them hanged to the pillars of the market-place without further ceremony.  One hanged has more effect than a hundred slain.”  When Montluc took Monsegur, “the massacre lasted for ten hours or more,” says he, “because search was made for them in the houses; the dead were counted and found to be more than seven hundred.” [Memoires de Montluc, t. ii. pp. 442, 443-447.]

Almost at the very time at which Montluc, who had been sent to Guienne to restore order there between the Catholics and the Protestants, was treating the latter with this shocking severity, an incident, more serious because of the rank of the persons concerned, took place at Vassy, a small town in Champagne, near which the Duke of Guise passed on returning from Germany.  Hearing, as he went, the sound of bells, he asked what it meant.  “It is the church of the Huguenots of Vassy,” was the answer.  “Are there many of them?” asked the duke.  He was told that there were, and that they were increasing more and more.  “Then,” says the chronicler, “he began to mutter and to put himself in a white heat, gnawing his beard, as he was wont to do when he was enraged or had a mind to take vengeance.”  Did he turn aside out of his way with his following, to pass right through Vassy, or did he confine himself to sending some of his people to bring him an account of what was happening there?  When a fact which was at the outset insignificant has become a great event, it is hardly possible to arrive at any certain knowledge of the truth as to the small details of its origin.  Whatever may have been the case in the first instance, a quarrel, and, before long, a struggle, began between the preacher’s congregation and the prince’s following.  Being informed of the matter whilst he was at table, the Duke of Guise rose up, went to the spot, found the combatants very warmly at work, and himself received several blows from stones; and, when the fight was put a stop to,