TWELVE

THE MASSACRE

Then kill them all! Kill them all!

August 1572

Catherine now prepared to take drastic measures to protect both her son’s throne and the peace of the kingdom. The ensuing tumultuous events of August 1572 have stained her name for over 430 years, creating the legend of The Black Queen. Tragically she is not remembered for her enlightened and often frequent attempts at conciliation between Protestants and Catholics but for the chaotic bloodbath known as the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

After the heated council meeting of Sunday, 10 August 1572 Catherine prepared for her journey to the Château of Montceaux where her daughter Claude had now moved and lay recovering from her illness. Charles still believed that his mother planned to leave Court, despite her victory over Coligny. Some short time before her departure, according to Tavannes’ memoirs – which were actually written by his son over twenty years later – the King seemed more frightened of ‘the probable designs of his mother and his brother than the proceedings of the Huguenots; for His Majesty well appreciated the power they wielded over his realm’.¹ Nonetheless Charles humbly kissed Catherine’s hand and begged her not to abandon him, swearing that in future he would heed her counsels faithfully. When he discovered she had indeed left Paris he refused to eat and cut a desolate figure before deciding upon the only realistic course open to him.

Charles raced to Montceaux and there he continued to press the Queen Mother to reconsider her ‘retirement’ from public life. With Anjou and her trusties, Tavannes and Retz, they held a meeting in which, Tavannes recalled, ‘the disloyalty, the audacity, prowess, menaces and violences of the Huguenots were magnified and exaggerated by such an infinity of mingled truths and artifices that from being the friends of the King, His Majesty was led to regard them as enemies’.² Charles still wavered, grasping at the mirage of military glory over Spain. He ‘fluctuated greatly’ but they hoped ‘the King’s infatuation with Coligny’ was now over. So thoroughly had they permeated the King with mistrust, apprehension and doubt over his mentor that Catherine and her closest advisers believed the Admiral would never be viewed by Charles in the same light again.

The whole charade had been played with the precision at which Catherine excelled. Once in possession of her eldest surviving son, she had orchestrated to perfection the reconciliation and forgiveness of the prodigal King. With scenes of ‘mingled violence and tender reproach … the matter ended as Catherine intended it should, with the Queen receiving from her son a formal prohibition forbidding her to abandon his council. The Duke of Anjou meantime, being presented by his mother, received a fraternal embrace.’³According to Tavannes it was then that the Queen Mother and Anjou resolved to take the next logical step in order to ‘deliver themselves from all future apprehension’ that Charles might recall the Admiral at any time. They decided that Coligny must die, ‘though this design was not imparted to the King’.⁴ Catherine’s decision to rid France of Coligny sprang not from a lust for vengeance against a powerful antagonist who had caused her so much grief and helped split the nation, but as a prerequisite for a return to a sense of national well-being. There was nothing feverish about her preparations; they were urgent, but only because of the perilous risk of the war with Spain that Coligny so assiduously promoted. She went about the removal of her adversary with the same impassive practicality she had hitherto shown in all matters of state. Coligny’s death had in her view now become a necessity, and she was prepared to do whatever was needed to achieve her goal.

As the drama at Montceaux ran its course, Coligny attended the wedding of Henri de Condé to Marie of Clèves. At the celebrations he was approached several times by his followers begging him not to return to Paris where they feared his life would be at risk. They urged him to take up arms instead. He replied to their entreaties simply with the sort of noble remark that had shaped his reputation: ‘I would rather be dragged through the mud in Paris than see civil war in this land once more.’⁵ He went from Condé’s wedding to visit his estates at Châtillon before returning to the city. In Paris the number of warnings and threats multiplied, yet he waved them aside saying that he was ‘surfeited with fears’ and adding that ‘a man would never have peace if he listened to every alarm’. Besides, he said, ‘Whatever happened he had lived long enough.’⁶ His place must be in Paris for the abominable wedding of his protégé, Henri, the King of Navarre.

At fifty years of age Coligny, the warlord, the statesman, the Huguenot chief and the king’s confidant, had become the caricature of a biblical hero. Leading his ‘chosen people’ to La Rochelle where he ruled a mini-state, independent financially thanks to the loot of privateers, he needed for nothing but to expand his domain. He had come to believe that by birth and by merit he was the man to help a weak and captive King rule France. His sober dress, dour countenance and pious utterings made him loved, but not lovable. Revered by his people for his almost theatrical rejection of anything but the loftiest aims and principles, Coligny had ceased to believe that there was any way other than his own. He did not trust in discussion or debate, but stubbornly continued upon his chosen path. This was no longer dedication to his religion or country but superb arrogance. His much-vaunted integrity, the cornerstone of his reputation, was now little more than fantastic vanity driving his relentless personal ambition.

In many ways the Admiral resembled his despised and mortal enemies, the Guises. These two great feudal entities both desired power and supremacy, both were capable of ordering the deaths of hundreds of people in the name of God, and both the late François of Guise and the Admiral were outstanding military commanders. The essential difference between Coligny and the Guises was that the Lorrainers did not dissimulate when it came to their ambitions. Their princely brilliance, their glorious reputations for chivalry and their unbudging defence of Catholicism simply made them more seductive as popular leaders of the people. But when they were not held in check, both Coligny and the Guises posed just as great a threat to France.

Henri of Navarre had attended the funeral of his mother in Vendôme on 1 July and had been in Paris since 8 July. Despite Jeanne’s death there was no question of postponing the wedding. Plans for the marriage of France’s most senior royal Huguenot to her exalted Catholic princess were too advanced and too many interests were involved for even a nominal adjournment. The Cardinal de Bourbon and the Duke de Montpensier greeted him as he arrived at Palaiseau at the head of 800 well-armed horsemen all clad in black, although some accounts have Henri arriving with an escort of only eighty men. No matter how large his escort, however, for the first time as a grown man (he was eighteen years old) Henri no longer enjoyed the unyielding protection of his mother. He had spent many years as a boy and youth at Catherine’s Court and had been taught a love of Italian poetry by the Queen Mother herself, as well as how to acquire the many other attributes expected of a young Renaissance prince. He particularly admired the troubadours’ tales of romantic chivalry and martial valour. Returning to his mother, who abominated such refinements, he had been forced to lead a simpler life exchanging Dante and Tasso for the far less melodious readings of Calvin and de Bèze.

Arriving at the Valois Court and to the web of machinations and intrigues that ensnared all who lived there would have been daunting to one used to plain speaking, simple living and maternal sermonising. Henri remembered enough of his earlier days living under Catherine’s guardianship and, though much had changed, he would need a guide to get through the labyrinth before him. He had his uncle the Cardinal de Bourbon and perhaps his bride, though he held no great expectations from the latter.

Henri was certainly no tall blond Adonis to be compared with the young Duke of Guise, but he had many attractive qualities. He was about five feet eight inches in height, with a high forehead, thick dark hair, clear skin and the prominent nose that was such a feature of the Bourbons. Used to spending much of his time on horseback, he had developed a fine muscular physique and possessed a cheerful, outgoing, generous nature. The once mischievous boy had grown into an open and straightforward man. Henri had a particular charm that derived from his frankness, masculinity and magnanimity. His physical attributes were matched by his intellect; he was not, as so many of the courtiers liked to claim, an inarticulate peasant from the Pyrenees. Notwithstanding his love of garlic and distaste for bathing, he could joke and talk with those surrounding him without losing the composure required of his rank. He combined being a man and a king with surprising social finesse. Despite himself, Charles had always liked Navarre; he could not help but be attracted to him. Henri had seen military action, and made a robust and good companion. The King found him refreshing after the ludicrous affectations of his own brother Anjou.

As the days before the wedding passed, the heat in Paris grew oppressive, the streets were dusty and the sultry city filled with strangers arriving from all over the country. Most of the Huguenots stayed at inns and taverns. Many peasants from the provinces, most without proper lodging, came to take part in the festivities and watch the great spectacle of their princess marrying the King of Navarre. Due to the drought and a poor harvest in the surrounding countryside, there were also a large number of the lowliest labourers now choking the approaches to Paris hoping to find something to eat at the great feasts that would be given. Churches, convents and other buildings had been specially opened to house the unexpectedly large influx of people, but many had to manage as best they could, sleeping in huddles in the streets.

As the first Protestants arrived, the ultra-Catholic city appeared peaceful, which surprised many Huguenots who had expected to face a simmering hatred. One of them wrote, ‘This populace, which has always been described as so terrible, would like nothing better than to live in peace, if only the great, in their ambition and disloyalty, did not exploit its excitability.’⁷ Around the middle of the month, however, the pulpits came alive with a clamour of disapproval at the marriage. The hate-filled inflammatory preaching, directed mainly against the Protestants and the royal family, gave birth to numerous groundless rumours that flew from the congregations through the gathering crowds. Tempers flared as pickpockets and prostitutes preyed upon a rich harvest and beggars grasped at passers-by. The atmosphere grew tense in the streets of Paris, not the Paris of today with its broad boulevards, but a medieval city of narrow winding streets opening either on to large squares, or some becoming ever narrower, leading only to dead ends.

Catherine returned to this hot, ill-tempered, pullulating city on 15 August. Almost as soon as she arrived she found herself confronted with a furious demand from the Duke of Alba requiring an urgent explanation as to why no fewer than 3000 Huguenot troops were stationed close to the border near Mons. Once again she had been fooled. As she rapidly discovered, the Admiral had continued levying troops, despite the decision of the council, and at that moment was raising a force of 12,000 arquebusiers and 2000 cavalry. Nor was it a secret that the large number of Huguenot gentlemen in Paris for the wedding intended to set out for the Netherlands as soon as the celebrations had ended. The Admiral’s ultimate intention to lead a mixed force of Catholics and Protestants to fight in the Netherlands against Spain would, he believed, remove any risk of civil war in France.

The King, who had for months given unparalleled access to his ‘father confessor’, permitting him into his chamber at any time of the day or night, sitting closeted alone with him for hours on end, now felt too confused and weak to wrest control back from Coligny. In truth, perhaps he no longer knew what he wanted. Coligny spoke to him like a man, treated him like a king, and provided a comforting counterpoint to his mother and Anjou. Catherine grew fearful that it would soon be too late to spring her trap. Perhaps Coligny had plotted to kidnap the King and have her sent into exile? Maybe she really would wind up on her estates in the Auvergne after all.

It is impossible today to know exactly when and how the plan for the murder of Admiral Coligny was arranged, but as the Guise family were in Paris for the wedding they provided the accomplices Catherine needed. Anjou’s own account must be treated with some caution, though there is much in it that is undeniably true. As he sat, lonely and remorseful, in Cracow two years later, it is believed he talked to a senior member of his household, thought to be either his physician Miron or one of his gentlemen of the chamber, M. de Souve, who recorded his master’s version of events. In them the duke stated,

We were certain from the menacing conduct of the King, that the Admiral had inspired His Majesty with a bad and sinister opinion of the Queen my mother and of myself, we resolved to rid ourselves of him, and to call to our aid Madame de Nemours, to whom we held that we might reveal our project from the mortal hate which we knew that she bore towards the said Admiral.⁸

Some reports have Anne d’Este, Duchess of Nemours, present at Montceaux and included in the plotting to kill the man she believed had murdered her first husband, François, Duke of Guise, whose memory she had kept as alive as her desire for revenge. The duchess and the Queen Mother had passed a good deal of time in each other’s company since the end of July, but no one considered this noteworthy until the events of 22–24 August, since the two women enjoyed a close friendship.

Whenever the fateful meeting did take place between Catherine and the duchess, it is clear that at some point in early August the Queen Mother had secretly revoked the royal ban preventing the Guises from exacting their vengeance. In return, she received a promise of help from the matriarch of the Guise clan and its enormous clientele, many of whom were in Paris for the wedding. Total secrecy was paramount in that age of plots and rumours of plots, and of the Guise family only the duchess, her former brother-in-law the Duke d’Aumale and Henri, the young Duke of Guise, were party to the plan. The most notable absentee from Paris during those fateful days was the Cardinal of Lorraine. Since the family’s disgrace over the ‘romance’ between Henri of Guise and Margot, he had decided to travel to Rome. Disgusted at the outcome of the last civil war, before his departure he had complained to the Duke of Alba about Catherine: ‘She is so dissimulating that when she says one thing, she thinks another, her only aim being to command, as she does. As for the rest, she cares nothing.’⁹ Catherine’s powers of dissimulation were now to be put to the ultimate test. If her plan failed, she and her family risked being killed by the thousands of armed Huguenots present in the city.

According to Anjou’s recollections, once the complicity of the Duchess of Nemours had been assured it only remained for an assassin to be found. The Queen Mother’s and her son’s first candidate was ‘a certain Gascon captain’ whom they rejected as being too ‘volatile and light-headed for our purpose’. Improbably, the pair told the unsuccessful applicant that their discussions had all been in jest and he should make nothing of it. Anjou and Catherine finally decided to employ none other than Charles de Louviers de Maurevert, the nobleman who had shot Coligny’s beloved comrade de Mouy during the third civil war and been rewarded by the King. They knew that he could keep a cool head and that he had felt no scruples about shooting de Mouy, his former tutor, in the back.

Anjou’s account states that Maurevert provided ‘an instrument more fit to achieve our designs. … We therefore, without loss of time, summoned him, and having incontinently revealed our design to animate him the more to the enterprise, we told him that, if he had regard for his own safety, he must not refuse to become our agent.’¹⁰ The pair thus neatly alluded to the mortal danger Maurevert would be in if he somehow fell into Coligny’s hands. After much discussion they ‘next took counsel on the best mode of executing the enterprise, and found no better expedient than that suggested by Madame de Nemours, who proposed that the shot should be fired from the window of the house where Villemur – a former preceptor of the Duke of Guise – lodged, a spot very conveniently placed for our enterprise’.¹¹

Catherine’s use of the Guises was a calculated and brilliant one. Despite the certainty that the Huguenots would clamour for vengeance after the death of the Admiral, she and the King would be above suspicion. The house from where Maurevert would fire upon the Admiral was known to belong to the Guises. The Duchess of Nemours had actually lived there herself for a while. The Protestants would blame the Guises, assuming the murder to be only a continuation of the blood feud between the Châtillons and the Lorrainers. The Guises for their part were entirely fired up by the thought of finally seeing vengeance done, and counted on Catherine’s royal protection. The Queen Mother’s aims were thus probably twofold: her first consideration was to kill Coligny, but if the Guises fell prey to the vengeance of the Protestants she might also achieve her ultimate goal, the downfall of both of the Houses that had menaced the state by their imperious attempts to control the monarchy since the death of Henry II.

Yet before Coligny’s execution – for such was it seen by Catherine – the wedding arranged to symbolise religious and national harmony must take place. On 16 August the Cardinal de Bourbon officiated at the betrothal ceremony held at the Louvre. The wedding itself was to be celebrated two days later although the papal dispensation had not yet arrived. This could largely be attributed to the robust offices of the Cardinal of Lorraine, who had done little else since his arrival in Rome but tell anyone at the Vatican who cared to listen that Catherine was a dangerous and duplicitous woman. Ignorant of his malice, the Queen Mother had asked him to intercede with the usually fair-minded Pope Gregory XIII. Lorraine’s haughty reply came back that he was in Rome on ‘purely private affairs’ and thus unable to help. Until the cardinal’s arrival the French ambassador had been on the verge of obtaining the dispensation, but as talk of Catherine’s general villainy spread, negotiations were halted and the dispensation later refused.

The Cardinal de Bourbon, though longing for the match between his nephew and Margot, suffered an attack of scruples and refused to conduct the ceremony without the necessary permission. Finally Catherine grew impatient with Bourbon and decided to trick him. She showed him a bogus letter purporting to come from the French ambassador in Rome saying that the dispensation had been agreed and that the papers would arrive shortly by courier. She then ordered that the borders near Lyons be closed until after the ceremony, to ensure that no contradictory news arrived from Rome. The cardinal fell for the ruse and agreed to officiate at the nuptials.

By now the city almost shimmered with religious and political tension. Word came that Coligny wished to leave as soon as possible after the ceremony as his wife was due to give birth at any moment and he wanted to visit her briefly before he set out on his expedition to the Netherlands. The King also awaited the birth of his first child with Elisabeth of Austria, who had stayed at Fontainebleau in the peace of the countryside. Charles decided he would quit the tinderbox city as soon as possible and decreed that all official business be suspended during the festivities, which were due to end on Sunday, 24 August. The Court would then quit Paris on 26 August.

On the morning of 18 August 1572 the nineteen-year-old bride prepared for the ceremony. She had spent the night in the episcopal palace beside the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. During the period approaching the marriage she had shown little relish for what lay ahead. When Catherine had asked her daughter in April if she agreed to marry Henri of Navarre – not so much a question as a formal request requiring a formal assent – Margot later recalled her answer, ‘I had no will, nor choice but her own, and I begged her to keep in mind my strong Catholic faith.’ She dreaded the thought of leaving the brilliant French Court and living at Nérac, in all its Huguenot austerity. This spontaneous child of fun, flirtation and fashion feared that her husband’s kingdom might bury her alive. With Jeanne dead, however, Margot’s hopes grew a little that she might be able to charm Henri’s austere subjects and introduce some gaiety into their lives. Understanding and fearing her mother as she did, Margot had no illusions about the perils of being Henri’s wife. If there were to be further religious conflicts her husband’s camp would not trust her and her own suspicious family – once she was no longer of any use to them – would soon consider her equally tainted. She would thus become an exile from them if the peace this marriage was intended to cement did not survive. However little she cared for her mother and elder brothers, she nevertheless feared being abandoned by them.

On Monday, 18 August Margot, sumptuously dressed in a robe sparkling with gems, a glittering crown trimmed with ermine on her head, and wearing a blue coat with a thirty-foot train carried by three princesses, became the Queen of Navarre. She recalled how superb she looked that day ‘moi habillée à la royale’, wearing ‘all the jewels of the Crown’. Accompanied on either side by her brothers, King Charles IX and the Duke of Anjou, the bride walked to the specially erected platform outside Notre-Dame where the first part of the ceremony was to be held. Margot ‘to the last persisted in her system of silent deprecation of the alliance: if she offered no resistance, she gave no assent’.¹² As she mounted the steps of the platform with her brothers, Henri of Navarre walked up to meet her from the other side, accompanied by Henri de Condé and his noblemen, including Admiral de Coligny. One account of the marriage describes Anjou, Alençon, the King and Navarre all dressed in the same pale silk covered with silver embroidery. Anjou, unable to resist further embellishing his costume, had added a feathered toquet studded with thirty huge pearls. As she had done for Charles’s wedding, the Queen Mother discarded her usual black and wore a gown of dark-purple brocade.

Aside from the fanfare of trumpets announcing the arrival of the couple and the royal family, the crowd watched the first part of the marriage in silence. The couple knelt before the Cardinal de Bourbon. Henri, asked if he took Margot as his wife, answered with a clear yes. The cardinal then asked Margot if she agreed to take Henri as her husband, but the princess remained silent. The cardinal asked a second time, but still no answer came. Finally the King, understandably exasperated by this petty game, marched up behind his sister and brusquely pushed down her head as though she were nodding her assent. He strode back to his seat and with that she became Henri’s wife. Although Margot always denied this version of events as recorded by the historian Davila and others, it later became one of the crucial factors that enabled her to have the marriage annulled on the grounds that she had not consented to it of her own free will. Navarre then led Margot to Anjou who had been chosen to act as the groom’s proxy inside the cathedral to celebrate Mass with the rest of the royal family.

During the Mass Navarre and Coligny promenaded on the platform, talking together in full view of the crowd. When the service was over, Henri went to fetch his bride and led her, followed by the royal party, over to the episcopal palace for a splendid banquet to celebrate the marriage. The young nobleman and historian Jacques-Auguste de Thou made his way into the cathedral just as the party were leaving and found himself standing close to the Admiral who was talking to Henri Montmorency-Damville, the second son of the late Constable, just beneath captured Huguenot standards from the battles of Moncontour and Jarnac. De Thou recalled the Admiral’s words as he pointed mournfully to the tragic mementoes of Huguenot defeats, saying, ‘Very shortly these will be taken down, and in their stead other standards more agreeable to our sight shall replace them!’ He doubtless alluded to his hope of capturing Spanish banners from the war he still believed would shortly begin against the Netherlands. This conversation was overheard and repeated by many.

Salviati, the papal nuncio and a relative of Catherine’s, wrote that the Admiral was, in view of the council’s clear rejection of the war, ‘presuming too far, they will rap him on the knuckles. I perceive that they will no longer tolerate him.’¹³ A magnificent ball was held in the Salle Voutée at the Louvre, followed by the banquet at the episcopal palace. Huge artificial silver-painted rocks made to look like mountains upon which sat the King and the most senior princes were carried into the salle. Both Henri of Guise and Coligny attended the celebration, though Guise made his excuses and asked the King for permission to retire early. Coligny followed soon afterwards. Four days of feasting and magnificent spectacles were to follow, with the Queen Mother’s own masterpiece on the fifth day, 22 August. Catherine had decided that this would be the moment to strike.

The festivities were surprisingly good-natured considering the tension that had built up just before the wedding. On 19 August Anjou gave a luncheon and a ball; the following night the Court attended a magnificent masked ball given by the King, at which apantomime tournoi was performed in honour of his sister. An observer wrote, ‘On one side of the hall was shown paradise defended by three knights, the King, M. d’Anjou and M. d’Alençon. Opposite was a hell in which a great number of devils and imps were making infinite follery and noise. A great wheel turned to the said hell, hung all over with little bells. The two regions were divided from each other by a river flowing between, on which floated a boat guided by Charon, the ferryman of hell.’¹⁴ Nymphs adorned the Elysian Fields and as the King of Navarre appeared, leading his men all dressed in armour and livery specially made for the play, the King and his brothers prevented their entrance to paradise and sent them to a sulphurous hell, while the angelic nymphs danced a ballet. The fantastic show ended in a great false battle with the King and his brothers rescuing Navarre and his comrades from their Mephistophelian gaol. The theme being, after all, reconciliation and fraternity. To rescue the prisoners from hell, lances were broken in an unconscious reminder of the King’s father’s death. The evening concluded with an impressive firework display which very nearly became much more impressive than had been intended when a spark fell in among the unspent rockets. The subject matter of thepantomime might seem very near the bone under the prevailing political circumstances, but heaven and hell, good and evil were almost always the subject of Renaissance Court entertainments.

For the most part Admiral de Coligny, who lodged at the Hôtel de Béthizy, kept his appearances at the wedding entertainments to a minimum. He wrote to his wife on the night of 18 August:

M’amie … today the marriage of Madame the sister of the King and the King of Navarre was celebrated. There will follow three or four days of celebrations, masques, and combats. After these the King has assured and promised me that he will give me some time to deal with several complaints about breaches in the Edict from all around the kingdom. If I thought of nothing but my own happiness I would rather come to see you than to be at this Court, for many reasons which I will tell you. But one must look after the people before one looks after oneself.

He added a postscript: ‘Let me know how the little man, or the little girl, is doing. Three days ago I had an attack of colic, partly wind, partly gravel, but, thank God, it lasted only eight or ten hours, and today I feel no effect of it thanks be to God, and I promise you that I shall not be much in evidence during all these feasts and combats during the next few days.’¹⁵

One account of this fateful period claims that on 20 August the King – ignorant of his mother’s plan – told Coligny that he had ‘no confidence’ in the Guises and ordered a company of 1200 arquebusiers to be brought into the city and posted at various key positions. On 21 August the last of the celebrations, a ‘course à bagues’ (a tilt at the ring), took place in the great courtyard of the Louvre followed by a ball lasting well into the early morning. On the same day the Admiral received word in cypher from the wife of one of his lieutenants of a plot being hatched against ‘those of the religion’. Other Huguenot officers had also approached him during the last four days warning him of some ‘méchante affaire’. He listened to these unspecific warnings, but according to his habit he carried on as usual. Some Huguenots – including his cousin Montmorency – had felt it prudent to leave the city and had done so almost immediately after the wedding, but Coligny remained, captive of his own schemes.¹⁶

On 21 August the Admiral, impatient and anxious for Charles to give his ultimate sanction for the expedition into the Low Countries, apparently requested an audience with the King. Charles, whose inconsistent ardour for the project had decidedly cooled with his mother’s arrival, had begun to avoid Coligny. Too cowardly to face him and exhausted by the tug-of-war between the Admiral and his mother, he put off all serious business, saying, ‘Mon père, I pray you grant me four or five days of pleasure, and after that I promise you, on the faith of a king, to give you and those of your religion content.’¹⁷ The Admiral, so infuriated at being put off this time, is said to have threatened to leave Paris, also making the imprudent comment that this abrupt departure might lead to a civil war instead of a foreign one. Upon hearing this, Anjou is reported to have moved contingents of troops to various key outposts around the city with the plausible explanation that they were merely there to stop any trouble between the Guise, Châtillon and Montmorency factions.

What now follows has been the subject of speculation for over 400 years. One thing is certain: Catherine played a leading role in the setting of the chain of events that would culminate in the bloodiest massacre in French history, unequalled until the FrenchRevolution. Late that night, as the last of the marriage revelries took place, it is believed that the Queen Mother held a meeting that included Anjou, Guise, his uncle d’Aumale, the Duke of Nemours and Marshal de Tavannes, where they examined the plan for the morrow in detail. While the conspirators talked, the assassin Maurevert was let into Villemur’s house at the cloister of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois by M. de Chailly, the Duke d’Aumale’s maître d’hôtel. The house was located on the exact route that the Admiral would be taking in the morning to and from the council meeting at the Louvre Palace.

On the morning of Friday, 22 August, the government recess for the marriage celebrations being now over, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny left his lodgings on the rue de Béthizy – today No. 144 rue de Rivoli – for a council meeting that was to start at nine o’clock. He had wished to press for French military intervention in Flanders, but to his frustration he found Anjou presiding over the meeting as the King had risen late. Anjou left the meeting early and when matters had been concluded the Admiral came across the King on his way with Téligny and the Duke of Guise to play a game of tennis. Charles begged Coligny to join him for a game but the Admiral refused. They parted at around eleven o’clock and Coligny left the Louvre for his short walk home, reading a document while he did so. As he approached the window at which Maurevert was hiding a binding on one of his shoes came loose and he bent down to fix it. Just as he did so, a shot rang out. The bullet broke his left arm and almost tore the index finger off his right hand. Had he not bent over at the critical moment he would have been mortally wounded.

A huge commotion ensued. Having first ensured that the Admiral had not been dangerously hurt, a number of his gentlemen ran into the building from which they had heard the shot. They found a smoking arquebus behind the latticed window, but the would-be killer had already made his escape through a back door where he had had a horse waiting. Two Huguenot officers, Séré and Saint-Aubin, set off after him. Two servants found in the house were arrested. Coligny, fainting with pain and shock, and fearful of further attacks, had his men carry him quickly back to the Hôtel de Béthizy. Catherine had just sat down to eat with the Duke of Anjou when word of the failed attempt on the Admiral’s life reached her. Diego de Zuñiga, the Spanish ambassador, happened to be nearby and watched the Queen Mother’s completely impassive face as she heard the news. Little did he realise that the words whispered in her ear confirmed that she now faced the most hazardous situation of her life. Betraying nothing, Catherine and Anjou quietly got up from the table and walked to her private chambers.

Charles stood arguing on the tennis court over a point when he heard what had happened from the two Huguenot captains, Armand de Piles and François de Monniens, whom Coligny had immediately despatched to the King. Throwing down his racquet in a rage he screamed, ‘Am I never to be left in peace? More trouble! More trouble!’ and stormed off to his apartments. Here his brother-in-law Navarre, as well as Condé and other senior Huguenots soon appeared and confronted him, clamouring for justice. Sending Ambroise Paré, the famous surgeon who had tried to save his father in 1559, to Coligny, the King made three important declarations to show his good faith. He promised a full investigation into the crime, saying that the guilty parties, whoever they were, would be brought to justice. He forbade the citizens of Paris to take up arms, and ordered that the area around the Admiral be cleared of Catholics so that he would be surrounded only by his own men. The Duke of Guise wisely decided to quit the Louvre and go to his familyhôtel while the King busily issued orders.

The scene in Coligny’s room was chaotic. According to a fidèle tésmoin (a reliable witness), Paré had arrived quickly and set to work on the Admiral’s wounds. Operating first on the dangling digit, it took three gruesome attempts before he finally managed to cut the finger off ‘as his scissors were not well sharpened’, and he then attended to the injured arm.¹⁸ Two deep incisions were made and the bullet was mercifully extracted without endless probing. Crowding round his bed, Coligny’s men gasped and wept. Their leader, maintaining his characteristic heroic composure, managed not only to keep from uttering the slightest groan but could even find words of comfort for his dismayed friends. As word spread across the city of the attempted murder the number of worried and angry Huguenots arriving at the Hôtel de Béthizy grew so rapidly that it became almost impossible to pass in or out of the house.

That afternoon the King paid a visit to the convalescing Coligny. The Queen Mother and Anjou accompanied him, determined not to be left behind, and with them came Navarre, Condé, Retz, Tavannes and Nevers. All of these except the King, Navarre and Condé were jostled menacingly by the angry crowd both inside the hôtel and outside in the street. Once in the Admiral’s chamber, bent down beside the stricken victim, the King swore vengeance for the outrageous crime: ‘Mon père! Par le mort de Dieu! You have the wound and I the pain. I will give up my own salvation if I do not avenge this crime against you.’ His outrage, oaths and tears were mimicked and magnified by the Queen Mother and Anjou, who with heroic hypocrisy strove to outdo the King in his declarations of anguish and determination to see the authors of this outrage brought to justice. Charles’s vehemently-spoken words can hardly have inspired cheer in Anjou or his mother, nor is it likely that the couple’s ‘outrage’ convinced the menacing crowd of Huguenots surrounding them, least of all the victim himself.

The King ordered that the inquiry into the crime begin immediately and be led by the Premier Président de Parlement de Thou and the Admiral’s friend, Councillor Cavaignes. Coligny begged the King to come closer so that he might speak to him privately, at which Charles signalled for Catherine and Anjou to retire from the bedside further away. Anjou recalled,

We accordingly quitted the bed and stood in the middle of the chamber where we remained during this private colloquy, which gave us great suspicion and unease. Moreover, we saw ourselves surrounded by more than two hundred … partisans of the Admiral. … These all had melancholy countenances, and showed by their gestures and signs how disaffected they were; some whispered, others did nothing but pass behind and before us, and omitted to pay us the honour and reverence which were our due, as if they suspected us of having caused the wound of the Admiral.… The Queen my mother has since acknowledged that never had she found herself in a more critical position.¹⁹

Catherine, frantic to prevent any information being passed by Coligny to the King that might compromise her and Anjou, broke into their conversation to exclaim solicitously that the Admiral must be tired and that the King was fatiguing him. Charles reluctantly withdrew and offered to have the Admiral brought to the Louvre for greater safety. Coligny replied that he felt quite safe with the King’s protection. Catherine and Charles both asked to look at the blood-soaked bullet extracted from the Admiral’s arm at which the Queen Mother is supposed to have declared, ‘Glad am I, that it has been extracted for when M. de Guise was killed the physicians declared that his life would have been safe had they been able to find the ball.’ This remark smacks of l’esprit d’escalier, for while it would have been poetic to mention the death of François, Duke of Guise it would undoubtedly have provoked uproar – the very last thing Catherine needed at that particular moment.

As soon as the royal party had left, the Huguenots and their leader held a meeting to decide upon the best course of action. Many wanted the Admiral removed from Paris immediately, but Téligny, Navarre and Condé felt that it would be a terrible insult to the King. Charles knew nothing of his mother’s plot and had evidently convinced his Huguenot audience of the sincerity of his goodwill during the visit. Coligny agreed to stay in Paris. The trusting Téligny then suggested moving the Admiral to the Louvre, but this was rejected absolutely by the others, not only for security reasons but also because Paré declared the Admiral to be in no condition to move anywhere yet. None of the Admiral’s supporters knew that among their number was one of Catherine’s spies, Antoine de Bouchevannes. He reported that despite forceful argument by many of Coligny’s captains to remove him from the city, by fighting their way out if necessary, the Admiral had decided to remain in Paris. She knew, however, that they might change their minds at any moment. Several of the senior members of the party, including the Bourbon Vidame de Chartres and Gabriel, Comte de Montgomery – the accidental killer of Henry II at the joust – had already decided to move across the river to the faubourg Saint-Germain, from where escape would be easier should it become necessary.

Anjou later recalled that in the carriage returning to the Louvre his mother managed to bring the conversation round to the subject most troubling her: what had the Admiral said to Charles? The King, who had until then been sitting in angry silence, flared up with the reply that Coligny had warned him that his role as king had been usurped by his mother and brother. Other accounts have Coligny also telling the King that despite his enfeebled condition, he would remain in Paris to continue with the Netherlands project and to ensure the observation of the Edict of Saint-Germain. Whatever took place in the carriage, the King certainly arrived back at the Louvre in a fury, which left Catherine and Anjou in a state of complete trepidation. That same afternoon Charles sent word to his various ambassadors throughout Europe. To La Motte-Fénélon, in England, he wrote, ‘Please advise the Queen of England that I intend to obtain and ensure justice is done in such a way that this will be an example to all in my kingdom. … I also wish to tell you that this evil deed comes from the animosity between the Houses of Châtillon and Guise, and I shall command them not to involve my subjects in their private quarrels.’²⁰

It was to be a restless night for Catherine and Anjou. The duke later recalled with some humbug that ‘stung and outraged by the language of the Admiral and by the faith which the King seemed to put in it … we were so bewildered that we could find no solution for the moment, and parted deferring the matter until the next day’. Knowing that it could only be a question of time before the evidence led to the Guises, Catherine could be certain that if she took no action her role in the affair would soon be disclosed by them to the King. Not only had Coligny survived but after the King’s outburst in the carriage it appeared that he was more in control than ever. Anjou recalled going to his mother’s apartments at dawn to find her awake; she had not slept. Searching desperately for a solution, they both understood the imperative need to ‘finish the Admiral by whatever means we could find. And since we could no longer use stratagem, it had to be done openly, but for this purpose it was necessary to bring the King around to our resolution. We decided to go to him in his study, after dinner …’²¹

By the afternoon of Saturday, 23 August the two servants arrested at Villemur’s house had been questioned. This had led to the arrest of Chailly, who had let Maurevert into the house on the night before the assassination attempt. The man who had brought the getaway horse to the house had also been found and it was quickly ascertained that the animal came from the Guises’ stables. The two captains who had chased the marksman immediately after the attack had traced him as far as the country estate of M. Chailly but they had lost track of him there. They claimed, however, that the would-be-killer was none other than Maurevert. Already abominable to them for the shooting of de Mouy, he was a known client of the Guises. Deciding to pre-empt any intemperate reaction by the King, and accompanied by his uncle d’Aumale, Henri of Guise presented himself to Charles and asked for permission to leave the city. The King replied, ‘You can go to the Devil if you wish, but I shall know how to find you if I need to.’ The duke took his leave by the Porte Saint-Antoine, before doubling back to the security of the Hôtel de Guise.²² As a champion of the Catholic cause he knew he would be far safer in Paris than anywhere else.

Shops were closing and the populace grew restless at the impudent and threatening attitude of the Huguenots. The Parisians had not forgotten their hunger during the siege of 1567. The heat, the marriage celebrations and the mob now roused a deep and long-held resentment against the Protestants, only further fuelled by the sight of so many black-clad Huguenots all over the city. Why, they asked themselves, did their King allow himself to be surrounded by them? The priests grew bolder in their denunciation of the King’s protection of the heretics, nor was Catherine immune from their insults.

The atmosphere became desperate. Since the day of the attack on the Admiral, many Catholics had been quietly arming and preparing themselves for a strike from the Huguenots, most of whom were well equipped for their intended ‘crusade’ into the Low Countries. Late on 23 August after a meeting at the Louvre, the Prévôt des Marchands and magistrates ordered militiamen led by their captains to congregate at the Hôtel de Ville. They were given strict instructions not to provoke trouble; they were only there to prevent pillaging and damage if the mob went on a rampage. One emissary wrote with prescience, ‘Unless this great fury passes, we shall soon hear of some huge madness.’ The Spanish ambassador informed Philip II, ‘It is to be hoped that the rascal [Coligny] lives, for, if he lives, suspecting the King of this assassination, he will abandon his plans against Your Majesty and turn them against the man who consented to this attempt on his person. If he should die, I am afraid that those who survive will do more than the King will permit or command.’²³ He continued, referring to Catherine, ‘She has sent word to me that she cannot speak to me at this time for fear that I might be seen entering the palace, and that she does not wish even to write to Your Majesty lest what she wishes to do be discovered, for letters can be intercepted, but that soon she will speak or write to me.’²⁴

Just as the tension in the street was palpable, so feelings around the Louvre Palace itself ran high. Rows broke out between the Huguenot escorts, gentlemen of Condé and Navarre, and the royal guards. Téligny arrived at the palace to present to Charles Coligny’s request for a detachment of the King’s personal troops to protect him at his lodgings. Anjou, who happened to be present, offered a guard of fifty arquebusiers commanded by Captain de Cosseins, a client of the Guises. Téligny knew well that de Cosseins was a declared enemy of the Admiral but feared upsetting the King who seemed pleased with the suggestion and confirmed his brother’s order. The traffic between the Louvre and the Hôtel de Béthizy was constant: Margot went to visit the Admiral who, although in a weakened condition, appeared to have recovered a little of his old strength. Having spent some time sending out word to his followers in the provinces that he was alive and relatively well, he allowed a group of anxious German students to pay their hero a visit. One of them recalled that he spoke to them ‘affably and seemed quite assured that nothing would happen to him without the Almighty’s approval’.²⁵ The King had sent messengers throughout the day seeking news of an improvement in the Admiral’s condition and to enquire if he needed anything to make him more comfortable. The Huguenots’ anxieties increased when they noted that the authorities were making a round of the inns and boarding houses where many of them had lodged, compiling lists of the Protestants’ names. Perhaps it was only a precautionary measure, but the Admiral’s men felt uneasy.

On the afternoon of 23 August Catherine had called together her inner circle, Retz, Tavannes, Nevers and Chancellor Birague for a desperate ‘war council’ on how to proceed now that the assassination attempt had failed. According to the memoirs of the Marshal de Tavannes, she decided that the meeting would take place in the Tuileries Gardens where they could discuss their pressing problems while they walked and decide whether or not to launch a pre-emptive strike on the Huguenots. They would not be overheard. As Tavannes recalled, ‘Because the attempt on the Admiral would cause a war, she and the rest of us agreed that it would be advisable to bring battle in Paris.’²⁶ They would finish the work so badly begun by Maurevert, but this time their victims would include not only the Admiral but also his most senior Huguenot nobles and captains so conveniently either lodged with the Admiral or around him in the city. This would effectively decapitate the rebel movement and, they hoped, prevent a fourth full-scale civil war. All agreed that such an opportunity would never present itself again. There were also worrying signs that if they did not act soon the Huguenots might strike first. Even as they had been walking behind the walls of the Queen Mother’s garden, Brantôme himself reported hearing violent abuse coming from Protestants on the other side, who shouted: ‘We are striking back and will kill!’

Outside the Hôtels de Guise and Aumale the same scenes were unfolding, only there the Huguenots clad in armour marched back and forth as if patrolling the walls of the two Guise strongholds.²⁷ The most shocking evidence that the situation was getting out of control occurred at the Queen Mother’s souper which, despite the agitation, she decided to hold in public as usual. With the utmost contempt for her royal person, the Baron de Pardaillan Ségur, a Huguenot from Gascony, approached Catherine’s table proclaiming in a loud voice that those of the new religion would not rest until justice had been meted out to the criminals guilty of the assault upon the Admiral. If there had been any doubt in Catherine’s mind, this public and barely veiled threat ensured that her plan must proceed without delay. In Margot’s memoirs, written many years after these events, she confirms that the threats of Pardaillan ‘exposed the evil intent of the Huguenots to attack both the King and herself [Catherine] that very night’.

In order to act with full legal authority and to gain the King’s support, Catherine now faced the unpleasant task of informing him that she had been deceiving him all along. She had to tell her son that it was not only the Guises who had planned the killing of Coligny but that she and Anjou had also been involved from the first. The Queen Mother selected Retz for the task of breaking the news to the King for she knew him to be well liked and trusted by Charles; only once he had absorbed the shocking and dreadful truth would she speak to him herself.

At around nine o’clock on the evening of 23 August Retz went to the King in his study, where he disclosed that his mother and brother had been accomplices in the attack on Coligny. Furthermore, according to Margot’s account, he warned the King that he and the royal family now faced the gravest peril. He explained that the Huguenots planned ‘not only to take the Duke of Guise, but the Queen his mother, and his brother. They also believed that the King himself had consented to the attack on the Admiral and had therefore decided to rise up that very night against them and others throughout his kingdom.’²⁸

Scarcely able to believe his ears, Charles struggled to absorb what had been done. Worse still, he now found himself in the most hazardous position with no idea of how to proceed to defend himself and the realm. ‘Dexterously had Catherine played her role; but with still more subtle craft did she consummate the final overthrow of those who dared to brave her power,’ wrote one historian, as the Queen Mother, followed by Anjou, Nevers, Tavannes and Birague, then entered the King’s room to convince him of what must now be done.²⁹ Catherine began by going over the old grievances against the Admiral, especially the ‘Surprise de Meaux’, and the killing of Captain Charry, his friend and loyal servant, murdered in a vendetta, some believed by the order of Coligny. François, Duke of Guise could also be counted among the many victims of this evil man, they said. She cited all the years of troubles in the kingdom brought upon them by the Huguenots. As for the proposed war with Spain, how dare the Admiral proceed against Philip in defiance of the full authority of the King and his council? Figures – doubtless exaggerated to alarm him – were given to Charles from Bouchevannes, their spy at the Hôtel de Béthizy, of the large number of Huguenot troops both inside Paris already and headed for the city.

At first the King cried that these were lies and ‘the Admiral loves me as though I were his own son. He would never do anything to harm me.’ Eventually the haranguing of his mother and the mournful affirmations of her supporters broke his spirit and drained his endurance. Feeling he had been betrayed by his trusted friend, he began to listen to Catherine as she outlined their plan to kill all the senior Huguenots in Paris, starting with the Admiral. The Bourbon Princes of the Blood were to be kept alive and forced to abjure the Protestant faith under pain of death. Finally convinced, the young, ill and unstable King is said to have uttered the immortal cry for which he is principally remembered: ‘Then kill them all! Kill them all!’ It is almost certain that by this he meant all those on a list drawn up by Catherine and not, as has often been claimed, all the Huguenots in France. A terrible massacre would not resolve anything, but the killing of a select few might eliminate the heretics’ high command. The King prepared and approved the list of those to be executed; he desired above all that this should be a legal state undertaking. Although no such list has ever been unearthed, that is hardly surprising considering its sensitivity.

With Charles’s monarchical approval won, the plan had to be put into action immediately. Urgent despatches were written and sent out. The Duke of Guise was given the task of taking his men to the Hôtel de Béthizy and there to kill the Admiral. Le Charron, the Prévôt des Marchands, was summoned and told that at that very moment Huguenot forces marched on the city. His orders were to muster his militiamen, close the city gates and guard all other possible exits from the city. Chained barges were linked up across the Seine to prevent escape downriver. To protect the houses of the militiamen each one had an armed guard wearing a white sash on his right arm, with a flaming torch, assigned to stand in their doorways. The Catholic bourgeoisie were issued arms for self-protection and cannons were placed in front of the Hôtel de Ville. The King’s own royal bodyguards and the personal troops of the Guises were to undertake the actual killings, led by Guise, Aumale, Nevers, Tavannes and Angoulême, Henry II’s illegitimate son.

The signal for the start of the attack – the murder of Coligny – was to be the bell of the Palais de Justice which would toll at three o’clock in the morning. In fact, the tocsin of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois rang out about a minute earlier and so the killings commenced. Tavannes’ memoirs describe a moment of doubt in Catherine just before the bell’s deadly chime sounded. It is more likely that all he witnessed was a woman gripped by a moment of fear that the plan would fail. Just like the death of Coligny, the list of condemned men caused her no personal remorse and she regarded it as a practical measure that required a decisive hand and the resolve to see it through. Decisiveness and resolve were two qualities she had in full measure when it came to protecting the Valois dynasty.

Just a few minutes’ walk away from the Louvre, Guise’s men had already arrived at the Hôtel de Béthizy. Guise, acting on the old truth that if something needs doing properly one should do it oneself, personally led the detachment. De Cosseins, the captain of the guard posted there by the King the day before and a man devoted to the Duke of Guise, called up to say that he had a messenger from the King who urgently needed to speak to the Admiral. Coligny’s faithful maître d’hôtel therefore unlocked the door, whereupon he was immediately stabbed by de Cosseins. One of the Admiral’s Swiss guards managed to get upstairs and, using a chest of drawers, he barricaded the door to his chamber. As soon as he heard the commotion the Admiral understood that this was the end. He asked for his robe and bade Merlin, the chaplain, to pray with him. Ambroise Paré, also in attendance, turned to the Admiral saying, ‘Monseigneur, it is God who calls you unto him, the doors have been breached, and there are no means here for our protection.’³⁰ The Admiral is supposed to have replied, ‘For a long time now I have been preparing for death, save yourselves, for you cannot save me. I will commend my soul to God’s mercy.’³¹ Unafraid, the Admiral awaited the inevitable as Téligny climbed on to the rooftop, only to be shot dead from the courtyard below. Paré and the others were spared.

Pushing the obstacle aside, Anjou’s Swiss guards had followed de Cosseins up the stairs where they came face to face with the Swiss guard of Navarre. They did not fire on each other. Instead, de Cosseins called on his own guards, two of Guise’s men, to kick down the door to Coligny’s bedroom, their swords in their hands. One asked him, ‘Are you the Admiral?’ ‘I am,’ he replied and, with a look of disdain, added, ‘I should at least be killed by a gentleman and not by this boor,’ at which the boor thrust his sword into the Admiral’s chest and then beat him about the head. They then threw his body out of the window. Some say he was still just alive as they noticed his fingers clinging on to the ledge for a moment, before falling into the courtyard below, landing beside the Duke of Guise and Angoulême. Guise looked at the bloody face of the corpse at his feet before uttering, ‘Ma foi! It is him!’ Giving the corpse a satisfying kick, he turned and set off on horseback with Angoulême.³²

At the Louvre, where so many Huguenot nobles had lodged for the marriage, the killings also began. Earlier, on the evening of the 23rd, Margot had been in her mother’s private apartments with her sister Claude, Duchess of Lorraine. She had seen for herself that there were strange preparations being made that indicated trouble, although in her memoirs she wrote, ‘As for me no one told me anything about this.’ She had already fallen victim to what she feared most: excluded by the Protestants who surrounded her husband, now her family treated her as suspect. It was impossible to ignore the whispering and febrile activity around her, yet she was cold-shouldered by both sides. In her memoirs she recalled that dreadful night:

The Huguenots suspected me because I was a Catholic, and the Catholics because I had married the King of Navarre, so that no one told me anything until that evening. I was at the coucher of the Queen my mother, sitting on a chest with my sister [the Duchess] of Lorraine, who was very depressed, when my mother noticed me and sent me to bed. As I was making my curtsy, my sister caught me by the sleeve and detained me. She began to weep and said, ‘Mon Dieu, sister, you must not go.’ This frightened me greatly. My mother, noticing it, called my sister and spoke to her sharply, forbidding her to tell me anything. My sister said that it was not right to send me away like that to be sacrificed and that, if they discovered anything, no doubt they would avenge themselves on me. My mother replied that, God willing, I would come to no harm, but in any case I must go, for fear of awaking their suspicions. I could see that they were arguing, though I did not catch the words. She commanded me sharply again to retire. My sister, melting into tears, bade me goodnight, not daring to say anything further; and I left the room bewildered and dazed without knowing what it was that I feared. No sooner had I reached my closet than I said my prayers, imploring God to take me under His wing and to guard me against what or whom I knew not.³³

For Catherine to have withheld her daughter from the Protestants’ apartments that night might have alerted them to the plot. She was therefore allowed to go to what her mother well knew would very soon become a charnel house. It was a mark of the Queen Mother’s utter commitment to the success of the operation that she put the prosperity of her plans before the well-being of her daughter.

Henri of Navarre had been in his apartments at the palace holding an urgent meeting with his suite of nobles about the worrying signs that an attack of some sort might be imminent. He was restless and decided that he would speak to the King early the next morning. When Margot arrived,

The King, my husband, who was in his bed, sent word to me that I should retire which I did. I found his bed surrounded by some thirty or forty Huguenots, who were strangers to me as yet, as I had been married only a few days. All night long they talked of the accident to the Admiral, deciding to go to the King as soon as it were day and to demand justice.³⁴

Margot was to get little rest that night, for as her husband rose at the first light of dawn, having been unable to sleep, he decided to play tennis while waiting for the King to rise. He had not walked more than a few paces from his apartment when he and his companions were stopped by guards on the King’s orders. Separated from his gentlemen, the elite of the Protestant party, most of whom he would never see again, Henri was taken with his cousin the Prince de Condé to a chamber and ordered to remain there by the King’s command for his own safety.

As he was locked in with his cousin, his comrades were being slaughtered, easy victims trapped in the heart of their enemy’s citadel. Nançay, captain of the royal guard, led his men as they began their gruesome work. Most of the Huguenots were asleep when the killing started. Dragged from their beds, their throats were cut before they had a chance to fight back. As the noise of screams and terror resounded throughout the passages, staircases, and confusing catacomb of corridors that made up part of the much-altered palace, the survivors ran desperately, attempting to hide from the teams of killers. Finding nowhere to conceal themselves, many were chased into the great courtyard of the Louvre. There, awaiting them, were the King’s archers who pushed the terrified men and women on to the halberds of the Swiss guards, who impaled their unarmed quarry with grim efficiency.

Margot had just fallen asleep in her husband’s bed when someone was heard desperately banging and kicking against the door, crying out, ‘Navarre! Navarre!’ Margot’s old nourrice (wet-nurse), thinking it was Navarre himself, hurriedly unlocked the door only to find that it was Monsieur de Leran, one of his gentlemen. Margot was aghast when she saw him:

Wounded in the elbow by a sword and by a halberd on the arm, and [he] was pursued by four archers who followed him into the room. To save himself, he flung himself on my bed, and I, with that man holding me, rolled into the passage and he after me, still hugging my body. I did not know who he was nor whether he meant to outrage me nor whether it was him or myself whom the archers were pursuing. We both screamed and were equally terrified. But at last, as God would have it, Monsieur de Nançay, the captain of the guards, came in. Seeing me in that position, though he pitied me, he could not help laughing, and … gave me the life of that poor man who was clinging to me. I had him laid in my closet and his wounds tended and kept him there until he recovered. While I was changing my shift, which was bloody, Monsieur de Nançay told me what was happening and assured me that the King my husband was in the King’s room and that no harm would come to him. Wrapping me in a bed-robe, he led me to the apartment of my sister Madame de Lorraine where I arrived more dead than alive. As I entered the antechamber, the door of which was standing wide open, a gentleman named Bourse, running from the archers who were at his heels, was struck by a halberd not three feet away from me. I fell almost fainting into the arms of Monsieur de Nançay and … as soon as I could recover, I ran into the little room where my sister slept.³⁵

According to Margot’s account she then intervened for two of her husband’s men, his valet de chambre, Jean d’Armagnac, and Jean de Miossens, first gentleman to Henri of Navarre. They begged her to save them and she in turn went on her knees before the King and Queen Mother, who reluctantly agreed to spare their lives.

As the feast day of Saint Bartholomew dawned, all but a few of the most senior Huguenots had been killed in or around the Louvre, the Admiral among the first. The flower of the French Protestant movement, many of them experienced soldiers – including Pardaillan, Piles and others who had enjoyed success in battle – were eliminated, as well as great noblemen such as La Rochefoucauld, killed in his bed by the brother of the King’s fool Chicot. Neither were those poor wretches who slept in humbler lodgings or in the streets shown any mercy. Easily identifiable by their black-and-white clothes, few of those Protestants who had come to Paris, some bringing their wives and children to experience the thrill of a royal wedding, escaped. Appearing on no list of those condemned to die, these innocents now fell victim to the indiscriminate massacre that followed. Their assailants, be they militiamen, troops or hate-filled Parisians, fell upon the detested heretics, men, women and children. Pregnant women were eviscerated and had their wombs cut out. Baskets filled with dead or dying small children were cast into the Seine. Most of the victims were stripped naked for any loot. Nearly all had had their throats cut, and many of the men were mutilated and disembowelled.

Zuñiga wrote cheerfully, if to modern ears chillingly, to his master Philip II, ‘As I write, they are killing them all, they are stripping them naked, dragging them through the streets, plundering the houses and sparing not even children. Blessed be God who has converted the French princes to His cause! May he inspire their hearts to continue as they have begun!’³⁶ Most of the diplomatic reports written at the time convey conflicting reports and often completely false information, reflecting the confusion and chaos of the situation for those in its midst. As the frenzied slaughter broadened in scope, old scores could be conveniently settled cloaked by the bloody, dusty chaos. It was later noted that a number of bourgeois Catholic Parisians had suffered the same fate as the Protestants; many financial debts were wiped clean with the death of creditors and moneylenders that night. Here was an opportunity to rob a neighbour, kill a personal enemy, or perhaps even rid oneself of a nagging wife without risk of discovery, amidst the insane, seemingly unstoppable carnage. Libraries were set ablaze and, all the time, priests and preachers encouraged the bloodshed. There was a rumour that the Almighty Himself had sent the Parisians a special sign of his approval by the miraculous flowering of a dried-out hawthorn bush beside a statue of the Holy Virgin in the Cimitière des Innocents.

The authorised ‘executions’ had, as far as was possible, been completed by five o’clock in the morning of Sunday 24 August. For confirmation of their deputed killers’ efficiency the King and Queen Mother needed to look no further than the courtyard of their own palace to see the grotesque piles of mutilated corpses. By the afternoon, Charles, dismayed at reports of the unbridled carnage in the streets of his capital, gave the order for the killings to stop. His command went unheeded and the violence continued for a further three days. Most citizens of Paris had stayed at home, away from the violence, their houses shuttered or boarded up for safety. It was the mob that ruled the streets during those bloody days of late August 1572.

The violence soon spread to the provinces, despite the despatch from the King on the 24th announcing that there had been a bloody clash between the houses of Guise and Châtillon and that the local authorities must keep control over their localities. By 25 August the first despatch was no longer credible and the King issued a fresh declaration stating that the Huguenots had premeditated an attack against the King which had been thwarted. By his original orders the strictest control must be kept to prevent the violence from spreading, but the commands that followed from the King or his council were by no means consistent or even comprehensible.

Misunderstanding piled upon confusion. In many regions it was too late anyhow; the flames of hatred fanned out over the country and many provincial cities followed the capital with orgies of killing. In October 1572 the tumult finally reached southern France, where the last of the cruelty unleashed on Saint Bartholomew’s day was finally spent.

The fortunate Huguenots who had taken the precaution of moving over the river to Saint Germain – among them the Vidame of Chartres, the Comte de Montgomery and Baron de Pardaillan, father of the man who had impetuously threatened Catherine at her public souper on 23 August – had heard the commotion near the Louvre and assumed at first that it was just a street brawl. When they saw their comrades who had managed to escape from the palace trying to cross the river and being shot as they did so, the Protestant seigneurs realised what was afoot and fled the city as fast as they could. At about five o’clock in the morning Guise and Angoulême set off after them, but having been given the wrong keys to the Porte de Bussy, the few surviving Protestant leaders had time to make a good head start. After half a dozen miles in pursuit, they gave up the chase. Only a handful of senior Huguenots had escaped, yet each carried with them the spores to start a fresh civil war.