This is the whole evidence of Salviati against premeditation. It consists of simple and brief assertion, without a syllable of direct or circumstantial proof. Its value depends upon this startling proposition, that if design existed he must have known it. But Davila expressly says the design existed, and was concealed from him through extreme care to prevent discovery. Another reason is furnished by himself, in the violent jealousy with which Catherine of Medicis repelled any attempt of the pope to influence her measures of government even with respect to the huguenots. + His despatches, in fact, are those of a diplomatist who, instead of sharing, was ever labouring to penetrate, the designs of the court. Charles and Catherine communicated with the pope, not through Salviati, but through their ambassador Ferralz, or a special envoy. In a despatch dated the very 24th of August to the ambassador, after slurring over the massacre as a quarrel between the huguenots and Guises, in exact conformity with the scheme attributed to the secret council before the massacre, Charles says, "I hope that, for the reasons which your nephew (the bearer) will explain to you, his holiness the pope will no longer make any difficulty in granting me the dispensation or absolution." Catherine and her son knew well when to use verbal, not written, communications. The inference appears all but certain, that the envoy was instructed to appeal to the massacre as clearing up his previous conduct, and proving the truth of his assurances as to his object in the marriage, and his designs against the huguenots. But Salviati refutes himself. Excusing to the pope the treacherous or futile edict of pacification which immediately followed the massacre, he says, "This queen, in process of time, intends not only to recall the edict, but to restore, by means of penal justice, the catholic faith in its ancient observance ; it appearing to her that

Dav. Ist. lib. v.

+ His despatches, passim.

Charles to Ferralz, ambassador at Rome. MSS. Bib. du Roi. See Ap

no one ought to doubt it, now that they have put to death the admiral, and so many other valorous men, in accordance with conversations formerly held with myself, when I was at Blois, treating of the marriage of Navarre and other things which were matters of discussion at that period; and the truth of this I can testify to his holiness and all the world."* In a letter

of the 3d of September, his self-refutation is conclusive, unless Salviati be better authority for the secret designs of Charles than Charles himself: "The letter of his holiness, written with his own hand, has proved most acceptable to his majesty, who has spoken to me anew of the dispensation, saying, as his excuse, that in the marriage he had no other object than to deliver himself of his enemies."+ Salviati agrees with the "discourse of Henry III." as to the share of madame de Nemours in the attempt upon the life of the admiral; but he agrees, also, on the same point with Adriani †, who stands among the earliest and best authorities for premeditation. One word more, and the nuncio may be dismissed. Denying Charles a merit, not exculpating him from a crime, he (it has been observed) twice asserts, in a parenthesis of the same four words repeated, that the attempt to assassinate the admiral was made "without the knowledge of the king."§ The question is immaterial as affecting premeditation. Catherine and the secret council may have exercised their discretion in acquainting him or not with the first act of the forthcoming tragedy, as it was correctly viewed and termed by the more prudent minority of the huguenots at the admiral's bedside. His indignation at the tennis court, and his sorrow at Coligny's bedside, prove nothing, or favour the suspicion of his being an accomplice. In judging Charles IX., the presumption is on the side of dissimulation and atrocity. His remorse after the mas

See Appendix G.

"La lettera di man propria di S. B. e stata carma, a S. M. che di novo mi ha parlato della dispensa, escusandosi di non haver fatto il parentado per altro che per librarsi del suoi inimici."

.

Istor. di Suoi Tempi.

"Senza saputa del re."

sacre has been adduced as evidence that, if design existed, he was not a party to it. In the first place, it is recorded of him that he avowed his participation with ribald levity *; and, next, it would be strange indeed if enormous crime were exempt from remorse, or remorse were to be received as evidence that the crime was less enormous.

The question of premeditation, and of the participation of Charles, may be reduced to this: His reconciliation with Coligny was either dissembled or sincere. If it was sincere, the catholic forgave the heretic, who, with a fanaticism really barbarous, had destroyed or profaned objects to a catholic the most sacred; the king pardoned and loved the rebel who had defeated his armies, endangered his power, and subjected his person to the ignominious flight of Meauxt; and the man thus placably indulgent was Charles IX.! The consequence is absurd, and the proposition involved in the other branch of the dilemma is the true one.

It may still be admitted that Charles, after private conference with the admiral, manifested sometimes a disposition to burst the trammels in which he was held by his mother, and that the conduct even of Catherine herself was not always consistent with the design entertained by her. But this would prove no more than that the tempestuous imbecility and uncertain humour of the one, and the intriguing vacillations of the other+, may have prevented an undeviating single-minded pursuit of their design - it would be the weakest of all inferences, that design, therefore, was not pursued or entertained at all. It is not contended that the time, place, and manner were concerted two years beforehand. Nothing more is maintained than that the pa

"Après que le roi eut fait la St. Barthélemy, il disait riant, et en jurant Dieu à sa manière accoustumée, et avec des paroles que la pudeur oblige de taire, que sa grosse Margot en se mariant avoit pris tous ses rebelles huguenots à la pipée."- Mém. de P. l'Est.

Brant. Dav. Thuan.

"La régente, qui n'étoit propre qu'à l'intrigue, et toujours lasse de ce qu'elle faisait, parceque elle faisoit toujours une faute, agit sans principes, essaya cent enterprises sans eu suivre aucune, et fut enfin obligée d'obéir aux évènemens."-Mably, Observ. sur l'Hist. de France..

cification, the Flemish war project, and the marriage covered a treacherous design against the huguenots, and that their extermination was, in pursuance of it, attempted on St. Bartholomew's eve. This conclusion is arrived at in one of the most remarkable essays extant, on the philosophy and the facts of history *; and a trait of light from an intelligence of a superior order, on such a question, is perhaps one of the surest guides.

It is an injustice to charge this crime on the religion of Roman catholics. Fanaticism is not the badge of one church in particular. It is the growth of certain stages of civilisation, and of incidental causes firing the passions and imaginations of men. If the see of Rome and its satellites abused to purposes the most horrible their spiritual dominion over ferocious natures and weak minds, the reformers thought they discovered in the Bible precedents for crime, and threw over assassination a false glare of heroic devotion and glorious tyrannicide. A woman of Munster went out during the siege to repeat the example of Judith upon the besieging bishop; and there are verses still extant, in which the assassin of Francis duke of Guise is extolled as a hero and a saint-another Aod, who had slain the chief of the Moabites and persecutor of God's chosen people. ↑ Fanaticism, moreover, had but an equal, perhaps lesser share, in the massacre of St. Bartholomew with that political morality of the sixteenth century, which warranted expedient dissimulation and profitable crime; and that maxim of the Italian petty tyrants, which it was the purpose of Machiavelli to expose, not inculcate,

that state crime should not be committed by half. ‡ Whatever the number of victims, which is variously stated from 10,000 to 100,000, there still remained above 2,000,000 of huguenots for civil war and vengeance. Charles, therefore, issued what he called an edict of pa

"Il se peut que le temps, le lieu, la manière, le nombre des proscrits, n'eussent pas été concertes pendant deux années, mais il est vrai que le dessein d'exterminer le parti était pris de long-temps.' "" -Essai sur les Mœurs, &c.

+ See Mém. de P. l'Estoile, and Mém, de Cast. Add. de Lab.

Mach. Il Pren.

cification, and charged his ambassadors with excuses to foreign courts. At Madrid, indeed, excuse was not necessary, as the massacre was celebrated there with court festivals; and at Rome, the pope and the cardinals returned God thanks, in the church of St. Louis, for this signal instance of divine grace to Christendom and the infant pontificate of Gregory XIII. But the Swiss were too simple and rude to be moved by the rhetoric of Bellièvre*, who said that Charles but acted in self-defence against desperate conspirators. The protestant princes of Germany would not credit the assurance of Schomberg, that hatred of the huguenots did not enter into the motives of the massacre † ; and Monluc, bishop of Valence, who was negotiating in Poland the election of the duke of Anjou as king, declared, that unless the court thought proper to publish or to forge an edict in favour of the huguenots, millions could not purchase the suffrages of the Poles. I

The impression produced in England cannot easily be conceived. To form an idea of it, regard must be had to the existing relations between England and France. A treaty of defensive alliance, without excepting even the case of religion, had been concluded in the preceding April between Charles and Elizabeth at Blois. Marshal Montmorency came over with a brilliant retinue to receive Elizabeth's oath of ratification, according to the usage of the time. It was a characteristic of the age, and a symptom of its demoralisation, that no public and few private acts were deemed complete without the solemnity of an oath. A proposal of marriage between the duke of Anjou and Elizabeth had been the subject of negotiation some time before. It was made with seeming earnestness by the French court, and regarded after the massacre as one of the many contrivances employed to delude the huguenots to their destruction. Elizabeth was equally insincere. She thought to divert the French

Harangue de M. de Bellièvre-Lettre de M. de Bellièvre au Roi. MSS. Bib. du Roi. See Appendix L.

+ Schom. to Charles. MSS. Bib, du Roi,

Mon. to Charles. MSS. Ibid.