of Croncels by the excited populace.  A certain number of individuals, accompanying a mother carrying a child which had just received baptism, were pursued with showers of stones; several were wounded, and the child was killed in its mother’s arms.”  This affair did not give rise to any prosecution.  “It is no use to think about it any longer,” said the delegate of the bailiff and of the mayor of Troyes, in a letter from Paris on the 27th of August.  The St. Bartholomew had just taken place on the 24th of August. [Histoire de la Ville de Troyes, by H. Boutiot, t. iii. p. 25.]

Where they happened to be the stronger, and where they had either vengeance to satisfy or measures of security to take, the Protestants were not more patient or more humane than the Catholics.  At Nimes, in 1567, they projected and carried out, in the town and the neighboring country, a massacre in which a hundred and ninety-two Catholics perished; and several churches and religious houses were damaged or completely destroyed.  This massacre, perpetrated on St. Michael’s day, was called the Michaelade.  The barbarities committed against the Catholics in Dauphiny and in Provence by Francis de Beaumont, Baron of Adrets, have remained as historical as the massacre of Vassy, and he justified them on the same grounds as Montluc had given for his in Guienne.  “Nobody commits cruelty in repaying it,” said he; “the first are called cruelties, the second justice.  The only way to stop the enemy’s barbarities is to meet them with retaliation.”  Though experience ought to have shown them their mistake, both Adrets and Montluc persisted in it.  A case, however, is mentioned in which Adrets was constrained to be merciful.  After the capture of Montbrison, he had sentenced all the prisoners to throw themselves down, with their hands tied behind them, from the top of the citadel; one of them made two attempts, and thought better of it; “Come, twice is enough to take your soundings,” shouted the baron, who was looking on.  “I’ll give you four times to do it in,” rejoined the soldier.  And this good saying saved his life.

The weak and undecided government of Catherine de’ Medici tried several times, but in vain, to prevent or repress these savage explosions of passion and strife amongst the people; the sterling moderation of Chancellor de l’Hospital was scarcely more successful than the hypocritical and double-faced attentions paid by Catherine de’ Medici to both the Catholic and the Protestant leaders; the great maladies and the great errors of nations require remedies more heroic than the adroitness of a woman, the wisdom of a functionary, or the hopes of a philosopher.  It was formal and open civil war between the two communions and the two parties that, with honest and patriotic desire, L’Hospital and even Catherine were anxious to avoid.  From 1561 to 1572 there were in France eighteen or twenty massacres of Protestants, four or five of Catholics, and thirty or forty single murders