as the followers of the Reformed Church were styled,
seems to have exclusively occupied the whole time
during this short reign, therefore no attention was
devoted to the improving of Paris, which was next brought
under the dominion of the young monster, Charles IX,
or rather the continued reign of his sanguinary mother,
Catherine, he being but ten years of age. The
massacre of the night of St. Bartholomew is known to
all. Charles certainly had some revulsive feelings
on the subject, and several times would have given
orders to stop it, but Catherine bade him assert the
claims of heaven, and be the noble instrument of its
vengeance, “Go on, then,” exclaimed the
King, “and let none remain to reproach me with
the deed,” and after all, when daylight appeared,
he placed himself at a window of the Louvre, which
overlooks the Seine, and with a carbine he fired at
the unfortunate fugitives who tried to save themselves
by swimming across the river. In his reign was
built the Tuileries, he himself laying the first stone;
it was intended for the Queen Mother, but Catherine
did not inhabit it long, her conscience not permitting
her to enjoy repose anywhere. Charles died a
few months after the dreadful massacre of the protestants,
a prey to all the pangs of remorse, and was succeeded
in 1574 by his brother Henry III. Brought up in
the same pernicious school, under the same infamous
mother as his predecessor, little could be hoped from
such a being; he was inclined, however, to be somewhat
more tolerant than his brother, but was frightened
into persecuting the protestants; his mother died
at the age of seventy, goaded by the consciousness
of the crimes she had committed; civil war raged during
the reign of Henry, and he was obliged to quit his
capital and join the protestants, whom he soon, however,
betrayed; without energy to adopt any certain line
of conduct, he balanced between the two parties of
catholics and protestants, until both sects despised
him, and at length he was stabbed by a fanatic friar,
named Jacques Clement. Several convents and religious
establishments were founded in his reign, amongst
the rest the Feuillans, which was extensive and had
a church attached, but in 1804 the whole was demolished,
and on its site, and that of the monastery of the
Capucins, were built the Rue Rivoli, Castiglione,
and Monthabor, and a terrace of the gardens of the
Tuileries is still called the Feuillans. The Pont
Neuf was also built in this reign. In 1589, Henry
IV, surnamed the Great, succeeded to the throne; he
was of the house of Bourbon, and descended from Robert,
the second son of Louis the Ninth. He was compelled
to begin his reign by laying siege to his own capital,
which was in the hands of his enemies, who defended
it with 58,000 troops, and 1,500 armed priests, scholars
and monks, and after three years’ vain endeavours
he was obliged to renounce the protestant religion,
and conform to the catholic ceremonies, which produced
a truce, and Henry at last entered Paris. By