Part 23

For that so-called murder, Guise had his revenge on the day of St. Bartholomew, when he vainly hoped that the enemies of his house had perished for ever. On the head of more than one member of the house of Guise rests the responsibility of that terrible day. During the slaughter, Guise gained his revenge, but lost his love. The cries of the victims were the nuptial songs chanted at the marriage-ceremony of Henri of Navarre and Margaret, the King’s sister. The latter had looked, nothing loath, upon the suit offered to her by Guise, who was an ardent wooer. But the wooing had been roughly broken in upon by the lady’s brother, the Duc d’Anjou, who declared aloud in the Louvre, that if Guise dared look with lover’s eyes upon “Margot,” he would run his knife into the lover’s throat! The threat had its influence, and the unfaithful wooer, who had been all the while solemnly affianced to a Princess Catherine of Cleves, married that remarkable brunette, and showed his respect for her, by speaking and writing of her as “that amiable lady, the negress.” It may be noticed in passing, that the objection of D’Anjou to Guise as a brother-in-law, was not personal; it had a political foundation. The two dukes became, indeed, brothers-in-law; not by Guise marrying the sister of D’Anjou, but by D’Anjou marrying the sister of Guise, and by sharing with her the throne which he, subsequently, occupied rather than enjoyed, as Henri III.

When summoned to the throne by the unedifying death of Charles IX., Henry of Anjou was king of Poland. He escaped from that country with difficulty, in order to wear a more brilliant but a more fatal crown in France. He had no sooner assumed it, when he beheld the Guises encircling him, and leaving him neither liberty nor will. The Protestants were driven into rebellion. They found a leader in Henry of Navarre, and Guise and his friends made war against them, irrespective of the King’s consent, and cut in pieces, with their swords, the treaties entered into between the two Henrys, without the consent of the third Henri--of Guise and Lorraine. The latter so completely enslaved the weak and unhappy sovereign, as to wring from him, against his remonstrance and conviction, the famous articles of Nemours, wherein it was solemnly decreed in the name of the King, and confirmed by the signature of Guise, that, thenceforward, it was the will of God that there should be but one faith in France, and that the opposers thereof would find that opposition incurred death.

There is a tradition that when Henri III. was told of this decree, he was seated in deep meditation, his head resting upon his hand; and that when he leaped to his feet with emotion, at the impiety of the declaration, it was observed that the part of his moustache which had been covered by his hand, had suddenly turned gray.

The misery that followed on the publication of these infamous articles was widely spread, and extended to other hearths besides those of the Huguenots. Sword, pestilence, and famine, made a desert of a smiling country; and the universal people, in their common sorrow, cursed all parties alike--“King and Queen, Pope and Calvin,” and only asked from Heaven release from all, and peace for those who suffered by the national divisions. The King, indeed, was neither ill-intentional nor intolerant; but Guise so intrigued as to persuade the “Catholic” part of the nation that Henri was incapable. Faction then began to look upon the powerful subject as _the_ man best qualified to meet the great emergency. He fairly cajoled them into rebellion. They were, indeed, willing to be so cajoled by a leader so liberal of promises, and yet he was known to be as cruel as he engaged himself to be liberal. He often kept his own soldiers at a point barely above starvation; and the slightest insubordination in a regiment entailed the penalty of death. To his foes he was more terrible still. As he stood in the centre of a conquered town that had been held by the Huguenots, it was sport to him to see the latter tossed into the flames. On one occasion he ordered a Huguenot officer to be torn asunder by young horses for no greater crime than mutilating a wooden idol in a church. The officer had placed the mutilated figure on a bastion of the city, with a pike across its breast, as a satire on the guardianship which such a protector was popularly believed to afford.

He could, however, be humane when the humor and good reason for it came together. Thus he parted with a pet lioness, which he kept at his quarters, on the very sufficient ground that the royal beast had, on a certain morning, slain and swallowed one of his _favorite_ footmen! A commonplace lacquey he might have spared without complaining; but he could not, without some irritation, hear of a _valet_ being devoured who, though a valet, had a profound belief that his master was a hero.

The “Bartholomew” had not destroyed all the foes of the name of Guise. What was not accomplished on that day was sought to be achieved by the “League.” The object of this society was to raise the Duke to the throne of Henri, either before or after the death of the latter. The King was childless, and the presumptive heir to the throne, Henri of Navarre, was a Protestant. The Lorrainers had double reason, then, for looking to themselves. The reigning sovereign was the last of three brothers who had inherited the crown, and there was then a superstitious idea that when three brothers had reigned in France, a change of dynasty was inevitable.

Guise fired his followers with the assurance that the invasion of England, and the establishment of Popery there, should be an enterprise which they should be called upon to accomplish. The King was in great alarm at the “League,” but he wisely constituted himself a member. The confederates kept him in the dark as to the chief of their objects. The suspicious monarch, on the other hand, encouraged his minions to annoy his good cousin of Lorraine. One of these unworthy favorites, St. Megrim, did more: he slandered the wife of Guise, who took, thereon, a singular course of trial and revenge. He aroused his Duchess from her solitary couch, in the middle of the night, hissed in her alarmed ear the damning rumor that was abroad, and bade her take at once from his hands the dagger or the poison-cup, which he offered her:--adding that she had better die, having so greatly sinned. The offended and innocent wife cared not for life, since she was suspected, and drank off the contents of the cup, after protestation of her innocence. The draught was of harmless preparation, for the Duke was well assured of the spotless character of a consort whom he himself daily dishonored by his infidelities. He kissed her hand and took his leave; but he sent a score of his trusty-men into the courtyard of the Louvre, who fell on St. Megrim, and butchered him almost on the threshold of the King’s apartments.

The monarch made no complaint at the outrage; but he raised a tomb over the mangled remains of his favorite minion, above which a triad of Cupids represented the royal grief, by holding their stony knuckles to their tearless eyes, affecting the passion which they could not feel.

In the meantime, while the people were being pushed to rebellion at home, the ducal family were intriguing in nearly every court in Europe. Between the intrigues of Guise and the recklessness of the King, the public welfare suffered shipwreck. So nearly complete was the ruin, that it was popularly said, “The Minions crave all: the King gives all; the Queen-mother manages all; Guise opposes all; the Red Ass (the Cardinal) embroils all, and would that the Devil had all!”

But the opposition of Guise was made to some purpose. By exercising it he exacted from the King a surrender of several strong cities. They were immediately garrisoned by Guisards, though held nominally by the sovereign. From the latter the Duke wrung nearly all that it was in the power of the monarch to yield; but when Guise, who had a design against the life of the Protestant Henri of Navarre, asked for a royal decree prohibiting the granting of “quarter” to a Huguenot in the field, the King indignantly banished him from the capital. Guise feigned to obey; but his celebrated sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, refused to share in even a temporary exile. This bold woman went about in public, with a pair of scissors at her girdle, which, as she intimated, would serve for the _tonsure_ of brother Henri of Valois, when weariness should drive him from a palace into a monastery.

The King, somewhat alarmed, called around him his old Swiss body guard, and as the majority of these men professed the reformed faith, Guise made use of the circumstance to obtain greater ends than any he had yet obtained. The people were persuaded that their religion was in peril; and when the Duke, breaking his ban, entered Paris and, gallantly attired, walked by the side of the sedan of Catherine of Medicis, on their way to the Louvre, to remonstrate with the unorthodox king, the church-bells gave their joyous greeting, and the excited populace hung upon the steps of the Duke, showering upon him blessings and blasphemous appellations. “Hosanna to our new son of David!” shouted those who affected to be the most pious; and aged women, kissing his garment as he passed, rose from their knees, exclaiming, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation!”

The less blasphemous or the more sincere sufficiently expressed their satisfaction by hailing him, as he went on his way, smiling, “King of Paris!”

The sound of this title reached the ears of Henri. Coupling it with the unauthorized return of Guise to court, he passed into alternate fits of ungovernable wrath and profound melancholy. He was under the influence of the latter when there fell on his ear, words which make him start from his seat--“_Percutiam pastorem, et dispergentur oves_;” and when the Monarch looked round for the speaker, he beheld the Abbé d’Elbene, who had thus calmly quoted Scripture, in order to recommend murder. The King, though startled, was not displeased. On the contrary, he smiled; and the smile was yet around his lips, and in his eyes, when Guise entered the presence, and mistook the expression of the royal face for one of welcome. The Duke, emboldened by what he saw, hurried through a long list of grievances, especially dwelling on the lenity, not to say favor, with which Henri treated the heretics generally. The sovereign made a few excuses, which Guise heeded not; on the contrary, he hastened to denounce the body of minions who polluted the palace. “Love me, love my dog,” said Henri, in a hoarse voice. “Yes,” answered Guise, peering into the royal and unnaturally sparkling eyes, “provided he doesn’t bite!” The two men stood revealed before each other; and from that hour the struggle was deadly. Henri would not give away, with reference to his Swiss guard; and Guise, passing through Paris, with his sword unsheathed, awoke the eager spirit of revolt, and looked complacently on while the barricades were raised to impede the march of the execrable Calvinistic Archers of the Guard. The “King of Paris” earned a decisive victory; but before it was achieved, the King of France hurried, in an agony of cowardly affright, from his capital. He gazed for a moment on the city, as he departed, venting curses on its ingratitude; for, said the fugitive Monarch, “I loved you better than I did my own wife;”--which was indisputably true.

Guise might now have ascended the throne, had he not been too circumspect. He deemed the royal cause lost, but he was satisfied for the moment with ruling in the capital, as generalissimo. He stopped the King’s couriers, and opened his letters. He confiscated the property of Huguenots, and sold the same for his own benefit, while he professed to care only for that of the Commonwealth. Finally, he declared that the disturbed condition of affairs should be regulated by a States-General, which he commanded rather than prayed Henri to summon to a meeting at Blois. The King consented; and the 18th of October, 1588, was appointed for the opening. Guise entered the old town with his family, and a host of retainers, cased in armor, and bristling with steel. Henri had his mother Catherine at his side; but there were also a few faithful and unscrupulous followers with him in the palace at Blois; and as he looked on any of those who might happen to salute him in passing, the King smiled darkly, and _Percutiam pastorem_ fell in murmured satisfaction from his lips. The saturnine monarch became, all at once, cheerful in his outward bearing, even when Guise was so ruling the States as to make their proceedings turn to the detriment of the monarchy. The Guise faction became anxious for the safety of their leader, whose quarters were in the palace; but when the King, in token of reconciliation begged the Duke to participate with him in the celebration of the Holy Sacrament, there was scarcely a man capable of interpreting the manner of the times, who did not feel assured that under such a solemn pledge of security, there lay concealed the very basest treachery. Guise, over-confident, scorned alike open warning and dark innuendoes. He was so strong, and his royal antagonist so weak, that he despised the idea of violence being used against him--especially as the keys of the palatial castle were in his keeping, as “Grand-Master” of the Court.

The 23d of December had arrived. The King intimated that he should proceed early in the morning, soon after daybreak (but subsequently to holding a council, to which he summoned the Duke and Cardinal), to the shrine of Our Lady of Clery, some two miles distant; and the keys of the gates were demanded, in order to let Henri have issue at his pleasure, but in reality to keep the Guises within, isolated from their friends without. Larchant, one of the Archers of the Guard, also waited upon the Duke, to pray him to intercede for himself and comrades with the King, in order to obtain for them an increase of pay. “We will do ourselves the honor,” said Larchant, “to prefer our petition to your Highness, in the morning, in a body.” This was a contrivance to prevent Guise from being surprised at seeing so many armed men together in the King’s antechamber, before the council was sitting. Henri passed a sleepless night. His namesake of Guise, who had just sent his Duchess homeward, her approaching confinement being expected, spent the whole of the same night in the apartments of the Countess de Noirmoutier.

He was seen coming thence, before dawn, gayly dressed, and proceeding to the Chapel of the Virgin, to perform his morning devotions. Long before this, the King was a-foot, visiting the select archers who had accepted the bloody mission of ridding the perplexed monarch of his importunate adversary. He posted them, altered the arrangements, reposted them, addressed them again and again on the lawfulness of their office, and had some trouble to suppress an enthusiasm which threatened to wake the Queen-mother, who slept below, and to excite the suspicion of the Guards in the vicinity. Staircase and hall, closet and arras, no coign of vantage but had its assassin ready to act, should his fellows have failed.

Precisely at seven o’clock, Guise, attired in a light suit of gray satin, and followed by Pericart, his secretary, entered the council-chamber, where he found several members assembled; among others, his younger brother, the “Bottle-Cardinal” de Guise. An hour passed without the appearance of any message from the King, who was in an inner apartment, now half-frightened at the pale faces of his own confidants, and anon endeavoring to excite his own resolution, by attempts to encourage theirs. It was a long and weary hour for all parties. As it slowly passed away, Guise, he knew not wherefore, grew anxious. He complained of the cold, and heaped billets of wood upon the fire. He spoke of feeling sick, faint, and unnerved; and from his silver sweetmeat-case he took a few bonbons, by way of breakfast. He subsequently asked for some Damascus raisins, and conserve of roses; but these, when supplied to him did not relieve him of an unaccountable nervousness, which was suddenly increased, when the eye next to the scar from which he derived his appellation of _Le Balafré_, began to be suffused with tears. He indignantly wiped away the unwelcome suffusion, and had quite recovered as Rivol, Secretary of State, entered, and requested him to attend on the King, who awaited him in his own chamber.

Guise gayly flung his _bonbonnière_ across the council-table, and laughingly bade the grave counsellors scramble for the scattered sweets. He started up, overturned his chair in so doing, drew his thin mantle around him, and with cap and gloves in hand, waved a farewell to the statesmen present. He passed through two rooms, and closely followed by various of the archers, reached the tapestried entrance to the King’s cabinet. No one offered to raise the arras for him. Guise lifted his own right arm to help himself at the same time looking half-round at the archers who were near him. At that moment, a dagger was buried in his breast, up to the very hilt. The blow was delivered by Montsery, from behind. The Duke let fall his hand to the pommel of his sword, when one assassin clung to his legs, a second, also from behind, stabbed him in the neck; while a third passed his weapon through the Duke’s ribs.

Guise’s first cry was, “Ho, friends!” His second, as Sarine ran him through the lower part of the back, was, “Mercy, Jesus!” He struggled faintly across the chamber, bleeding from a dozen wounds, in every one of which sat death. The murderers hacked at him as he staggered, and wildly yet feebly fought. All paused for a moment, when he had reached the extreme end of the room, where he again attempted to raise his sword; but in the act he rolled over, stone dead, at the foot of the bed of Henri III.

At that moment the tapestry was raised, and the king, whispering “Is it done?” approached the body, moodily remarking as he gazed upon it, “He looks greater than he did when living.” Upon the person of the duke was found a manuscript memorandum, in these words:--“To maintain a war in France, I should require 700,000 livres per month.” This memorandum served in the king’s mind as a justification of the murder just committed by his orders. The body was then unceremoniously rolled up in the Turkey carpet on which it had fallen, was covered with quick lime, and flung into the Loire. Some maimed rites were previously performed over it by Dourgin the royal chaplain, who could not mutter the _De Profundis_ without a running and terrified commentary of “Christ!--the awful sight!” Guise’s second cardinal-brother and the Archbishop of Lyons were murdered on the following day; but the lesser victims were forgotten in the fate which had fallen upon the more illustrious, yet certainly more guilty personages.

The widow of Guise, soon after the dread event, gave birth to a son, subsequently the Chevalier Louis de Guise. “The boy,” said the bereaved lady, “came into the world with his hands clasped, as if praying for vengeance on the assassins of his father.” Every male member of the family whom the king could reach was now subjected to arrest. The young heir of _Balafré_, Charles, now fourth Duke of Guise, was now placed in close restriction in the Castle of Tours, where, sleeping or waking, four living eyes unceasingly watched him--_voire même allant â la garderobe_--but which eyes he managed to elude nevertheless.

In the meantime Rome excommunicated the murderer of her champion. Paris put on mourning; officials were placed in the street to strip and scourge even ladies who ventured to appear without some sign of sorrow. Wax effigies of the king were brought into the churches, and frantically stabbed by the priests at the altar. The priests then solemnly paraded the streets, chanting as they went, “May God extinguish the Valois!”

The whole city broke into insurrection, and the brother of Guise, the Duke de Mayenne, placed himself at the head of the “league,” whose object was the deposing of the king, and the transferring of the crown to a child of Lorraine. In the contest which ensued, Valois and Navarre united against the Guisards, and carried victory with them wherever they raised their banners. The exultation of Henri III. was only mitigated by the repeated Papal summonses received by him to repair to Rome, and there answer for his crime.

Henri of Navarre induced him to rather think of gaining Paris than of mollifying the Pope; and he was so occupied when the double vengeance of the church and the house of Guise overtook him in the very moment of victory.

The Duchess de Montpensier, sister of the slaughtered duke, had made no secret of her intentions to have public revenge for the deed privately committed, whereby she had lost a brother. There was precaution enough taken that she should not approach the royal army or the king’s quarters; but a woman and a priest rendered all precautions futile. The somewhat gay duchess was on unusually intimate terms with a young monk, named Jacques Clement. This good Brother was a fanatic zealot for his church, and a rather too ardent admirer of the duchess, who turned both sentiments to her own especial purpose. She whispered in his ears a promise, to secure the fulfilment of which, he received with furious haste, the knife which was placed in his hands by the handsomest woman in France. It is said that knife is still preserved, a precious treasure, at Rome.

However this may be, on the 1st of August, 1589, the young Brother, with a weapon hid in the folds of his monkish gaberdine, and with a letter in his hand, sought and obtained access to the king. He went straightforward to his butcher’s work, and had scarcely passed beneath the roof of the royal tent before he had buried the steel deep in the monarch’s bosom. He turned to fly with hot haste to the lady from whom he had received his commission; but a dozen swords and pikes thrust life out of him ere he had made three steps in the direction of his promised recompence.

She who had engaged herself to pay for the crime cared for neither victim. She screamed indeed, but it was with a hysteric joy that threatened to slay her, and which was only allayed by the thought that the last King of the Valois race did not know that he had died by a dagger directed by a sister of Guise.

In testimony of her exultation she distributed green scarfs, the color of Lorraine, to the people of Paris. She brought up from the provinces the mother of Clement, to whom was accorded the distinction of a triumphal entry. Priests and people worshipped the mother of the assassin as she passed wonderingly on her way; and they blasphemously saluted her with the chanted words, “Blessed be the womb that bare him, and the paps that gave him suck.” She was led to the seat of honor at the table of Guise, and Rome sheltered the infamy of the assassin, and revealed its own, by pronouncing his work to be a god-like act. By authority of the Vatican, medals were struck in memory and honor of the dead; but the Huguenots who read thereon the murderer’s profession and name--_Frère Jacques Clement_--ingeniously discovered therein the anagrammatic interpretation “_C’est l’enfer qui m’a crée_”--“It is hell that created me.”