21.

MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEWS.

In the month of August 1572, in the reign of Charles Ninth of France, 30,000, or as some affirm, 100,000 Protestants were massacred in France by the Catholics. This bloody massacre commenced in Paris, on the 24th of August, on St. Bartholomew's day.

In order the sooner to effect their purposes by cutting off the leaders of the Protestants, many of the principal Protestants in the kingdom, were invited to Paris under a solemn oath of safety, upon occasion of the marriage of the king of Navarre, with the French king's sister. The queen dowager of Nayarre, a zealous Protestant, however, was poisoned by a pair of gloves before the marriage was solemnized. Upon a given signal, the work of death began.-Charles the savage monarch, from the windows of his palace, encouraged the furious populace to massacre his Protestant subjects, by crying out, kill! kill!

Cologni, admiral of France, was basely murdered in his own house, and then thrown out of the window, to gratify the malice of the duke of

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Guise; his head was afterwards cut off, and sent to the king and queen mother; and his body, after many indignities offered to it, hung on a gibbet. After this, the murderers ravaged the whole city of Paris, and butchered in three days, above ten thousand lords, gentlemen, presidents and people of all ranks. An horrible scene of things says a historian of the time, when the very streets and passages, resounded with the noise of those who met together for murder and plunder; the groans of those who were dying, the shrieks of those who were just going to be butchered were every where heard; the bodies of the slain were thrown out of the windows, the dead bodies of others were dragged through the streets; their blood running through the channels, in such plenty, that torrents seemed to empty themselves in the neighbouring river; in a word, an innumerable number of men, women, and children, were all involved in one common destruction; and the gates and entrances of the king's palace, all besmeared with their blood.

From the city of Paris, the massacre spread throughout the whole kingdom. In the city of Meaux, they threw above two hundred into gaol; and after they had ravished and killed a

great number of women, and plundered the houses of the Protestants, they executed their fury on those they had imprisoned, and calling them one by one, they were killed like sheep in a market. In Orleans, they murdered above five hundred men, women and children, and enriched themselves with the spoil. The same cruelties were practised at Angus, Troyes, Bouges, La Charite, and especially at Lyons, where they inhumanly destroyed above eight hundred Protestants; children hanging on their parents necks; parents embracing their children; putting ropes about the necks of some, dragging them through the streets, and throwing them, mangled, torn, and half dead, into the river.

But what aggravates these scenes with still greater wantonness and cruelty, was, the manner in which the news was received at Rome. When the letters of the Pope's legates were read in the assembly of the Cardinals, by which he assured the Pope that all was transacted by the express will & command of the king, it was immediately decreed that the Pope should march with his Cardinals to the Church of St. Mark, and in the most solemn manner, give thanks to God for so great a blessing conferred on the See of Rome,