Hello and Welcome to Western SIEV episode three hundred and six, the Saint Bartholomew's
Day Massacre. Once the ink was dry on the Treaty of Saint Germaine,
Catherine went back to her favorite pastime, arranging marriage matches for her remaining children.
The biggest catch remained the Princess Margott, who was beautiful, alluring,
and also a princess. Philip of Spain wanted to marry her to the Portuguese
king, who seemed much more interested in reading Senator Thomas aquinas he literally went
nowhere without it than talking to women. But Philip hoped that the match would
keep Catherine firmly in the ultra cattle camp and away from Protestant temptation. They
has, of course annoyed the remaining leading French Huguenots at court, but proving
that this had nothing to do with religion at all, Catherine decided instead to
pursue a match between Henri, the Duke of Anjous, and Elizabeth, the
First of England. Elizabeth Recall was two decades older than on Ju, and
on Ju had absolutely no interest in being married to a heretic twenty years his
seniorear and he put the kebash on the whole idea. But in at least
one respect, Catherine had some success. On November fifth, fifteen seventy,
Elizabeth of Austria Charles, the ninth proposed bride, reached France. Catherine wanted
their wedding to be magnificent, despite the reality that her treasury was already empty
and a war torn France certainly could not afford it. Now. Unbeknownst to
the newly arrived Elizabeth, Charles had a mistress in Paris named Marie Toucheaux,
the daughter of a bourgeoisie Protestant. He had decided that he loved Marie from
their first encounter in Orleans back in fifteen sixty nine, and had carried on
a secret love affair for many months during that summer. A portrait of her
shows a girl with strawberry blonde hair and a pretty round face. Charles entrusted
his secret to Margott and asked her to take Marie into her household as one
of her ladies. As the courtiers amused themselves during the summer evenings, the
king's personal guard would at his single played tambourines and pipes to create a noisy
commotion, allowing him to escape and meet with his mistress. One day,
he gave her a piece of paper upon which he had written the champ to
Marie asked what it meant, and Margaret explained that he had created an anagram
for her name. When the court returned to Paris, Catherine discovered the relationship,
and, after making inquiries about the girl, approved of this liaison.
She harbored no aspirations whatsoever to control Charles or detach him from her, and
so this girl was perfectly acceptable to Catherine. The king's mistress was nowhere close
to what Catherine had experienced. Was Diane de Poitier. In fact, she
proved to be a completely benign influence upon the king and bore him a baby's
son, whom they named after his father. Always known as the Petite Charles,
he became a particular favorite, interestingly enough, among Catherine's grandchildren, and
was later given the title the Duke of Angloomey. Petite Charles was notable among
Catherine's descendants for his longevity. He clearly inherited a strong constitution from his mother
and actually survived well into the reign of Louis the fourteenth always being conscious of
being the son of a king petite, Charles was nevertheless careful never to annoy
anyone, particularly Louis behaved courteously towards him, but of course, understandably,
Louis the fourteenth considered ungloom may to be a relic of the past. Now,
despite this affair, Charles very much loved his new wife, Elizabeth.
She was a saintly woman who went to Mass twice per day and spent many
more hours at prayer. Charles and Elizabeth first entered the capitol together on March
the sixth, fifteen seventy one. Catherine, despite a lack of funds,
has spared no expense. In fact, she had mortgaged her own jewelry to
pay for much at the pageantry. During the wedding ceremony, Charles's procession stomped
at the Notre Dame Cathedral, where there was an enormous banquet. On March
the eleventh, Charles gave a speech to the Parliament of Paris in which he
paid eloquent homage to his mother's, telling his listeners quote, after God,
the Queen, my mother is the person to whom I am the most indebted.
Her tenderness for me and for my people. Her tireless work, energy
and wisdom, I have assured the running of state affairs so well during a
time when because of my age I was unable to take charge of them myself,
that even the tempests of civil war have been unable to harm my kingdom
end quote. This tribute, of course, had been orchestrated, like everything
else in the celebrations, by Catherine herself, and it also contained the veiled
message that she would continue to keep charge of state affairs if always standing politely
and tactfully a few paces behind her son. Despite the King's talk of his
mother's success in guarding the kingdom during the civil Wars, the unsurprising but glaring
absence of the Huguenot princes and other nobles holed up in La Rochelle was duly
noted. Elizabeth herself was crowned at San Denis on March the twenty fifth,
fifteen seventy one. Meanwhile, affairs abroad had gotten slightly more serious. In
early fifteen seventy one, William of Orange attempted to build up a coalition of
forces from Germany to liberate the Netherlands. Orange's brother Louis of Nassau was at
La Rochelle, where he hoped French Protestants might lend their military support, and
Charles, for his part, when he got word of it, thought this
might be a good chance to lead his troops into some real military action.
Catherine did her best now to walk a diplomatic tightrope. Flemish rebels had been
using La Rochelle as a base from which to assault Spanish shipping. Catherine was
willing to look the other way about this, as it gained her support amongst
her Protestant nobility, but she didn't want these attacks to go so far as
to instigate a war with Spain. She knew that would be an abject disaster
to be avoided at all costs. But the problem was that increasingly Catherine found
her efforts undermined by the actions of her own son. Charles now wanted to
make foreign policy decisions for himself. The problem was he was both terrible at
it and even worse at keeping his stratagem's secret. Everyone knew what he was
doing long before he did it. Case in point Tuscany, the Pope had
recently given Tuscany to Cosimo de Medici, a family relation of Catherine, but
one whom she despised. The Habsburgs were incensed at the Pope's pretensions, given
that Tuscany was traditionally Imperial territory. To defend his new land, Cosimo reached
out to Charles, who quickly agreed to an anti Spanish, anti Habsburg alliance,
though it gave him nothing and only committed his forces to more conflicts and
his kingdom could handle worse. Still, Charles didn't keep any of this secret,
so Philip of Spain knew exactly where the King of France stood, and
neither did this workout for Cosimo, by the way, he quickly realized Charles
had no idea what he was doing, and so when Charles tried to use
this packed offensively instead of the defensive alliance it was supposed to be, Cosimo
wrote frantically urging the young king to follow his mother's advice, since Cosimo clearly
saw this alliance as defensive, while Charles thought the two had agreed to some
sort of a blank check alliance. Charles continued negotiating with the Protestants in law
Rochelle, who wanted him to invade the Netherlands alongside Louis of Nassau. The
idea, at least as it was being pitched, was to liberate the territory
from the Spanish, most of it to the native Dutch, who were Protestants,
and then a small section of border territory would be ceded to France.
It was all the height of naivete, but Charles was all in on it.
To Catherine, this was anathema. Her entire goal since the death of
her husband had been to avoid foreign wars, especially with Spain, whose Mexican
and Peruvian possessions continued for the moment to function as Philip's personal atm piece abroad
stability at home. Those were Catherine's mantras. Thus far, she had only
ever succeeded at the former. Charles looked to undo even that. Now,
Catherine was fine entertaining everybody else's wild ambitions so long as that bought her time
and peace. She just didn't want France to commit to anything major. When
the Spanish heard about Charles's not so secret deal with the Dutch rebels, Philip
was furious and declared in no uncertain terms this was going to lead directly to
war, and after repeated promises of safe conduct. Colonie finally left La Rochelle
and made the trek to blue As in September fifteen seventy one. Catherine was
desperate to get the admiral back into the Fold. To get him back at
the Royal Council. Rochelle was now essentially a politically independent enclave in France,
and that was by no means good for the Kingdom. Catherine also needed to
get it back under royal control, and to do that she needed Colonie.
Charles spent the next several weeks showering the old admiral with gifts and studiously returning
all his lost properties. Simultaneously, word reached the court at Bluawe that Cosimo
was no longer interested in fighting the Spanish in the Netherlands. He had in
fact joined in the ongoing war against the Ottoman Turks and recently taken part in
the massively important Battle of Laponto. The Ottomans will actually be the subject of
our next episode, as much has gone on in that direction since the death
of Suliman the Magnificent. Catherine was overjoyed, as she had been looking on
any excuse to pump the brakes on the Dutch problem. Charles was exuberant when
he heard news of Laponto. That was, at least until someone reminded him
that most of the Turkish fleet had actually been on loan from France. Hence
the losses were actually French ships. That deflated the mood at court a bit,
though Charles remained seemingly intent on invading the Netherlands, though literally everyone at
court told him that was a terrible idea. Meanwhile, in Paris, the
mood remained tense, the Geese faction continued to be absent. Coliagnie seemed to
be back in the royal good graces, though the staunchly Catholic Queen Elizabeth recoiled
from his presence as though the old warrior were Satan himself. Colin Yi was
probably the only person now at court who wanted Charles's invasion of the Netherlands to
go forward. In late fifteen seventy one, the plot to assassinate Elizabeth the
First of England and place Mary Stewart on the throne fell apart, as we
know, but the upshot of the whole affair was to shift foreign policy in
France, because England was driven closer to France in an anti Spanish alliance.
Charles was keen for such a match, and as though Anjou could no longer
be thrown in as a marital prospect for the English Queen, his younger brother
and Sois might serve the purpose. Plus, Charles detested his younger brother and
was happy to see him off if Elizabeth would take him. As usual,
Elizabeth dawdled and allowed the talks to proceed while refusing a definite answer. The
discussions did result in the Treaty of Blueas in fifteen seventy two. However,
this was essentially a defensive and a commercial pact. Elizabeth's value as an ally
became doubtful when the French discovered that she had secretly also opened discussions with the
Duke of Alba at his request, only a month before signing the Treaty of
Blueis, with the aim of restoring commercial relations between England and the Spanish Netherlands.
These had been suspended in fifteen sixty nine and were proving costly to both
countries. Although the English had found other outlets in Hamburg, the additional and
commercial associations with the Netherlands were mutually profitable and preferable. By fifteen seventy two,
Spanish shipping suffered severe interruptions due to the constant attack from William Orange's privateers.
The sea Beggers, as they were known, successfully rove the English Channel,
capturing or sinking a large number of enemy ships with their cargoes Potato,
taking refuge at Le Rochelle and various English ports. In order for her agreement
with al But to proceed, Elizabeth had already in February fifteen seventy two ordered
all the rebel ships to leave English ports. Their expulsion set off an unforeseen
change of events that would inflame the already aggravated situation in the Low Countries and
encourage French Protestants to believe in the ultimate possibility of a successful invasion to eject
the Spaniards altogether. The Sea Beggers had put out to sea, but were
forced by a storm to drop anchor at Real in the Netherlands. By chance,
the Spanish garrison there had recently departed to put down a rebellion in Utrecht,
and the Sea Beggers, a highly organized military and naval force, captured
the port. It didn't take long before they controlled most of the Zealand peninsula,
large numbers of refugees in England and Law Rochelle now hurried to join them,
boosted by special clandestine forces from England and other sympathetic states. On the
thirtieth of April, the very day after the signing of the Treaty of Blue
Law, the English announced that commercial relations with Flanders would recommence. Elizabeth,
who didn't want triumph for either France or Spain, followed her own strategy of
keeping the Spanish tied up in the Netherlands. The French tempted to intervene,
and Philip unable to concentrate on invading England's quote unquote, heretical shores. Still,
despite all of this, Catherine's primary focus in fifteen seventy two remained arranging
a marital pact between the House of Navarre and the House of Blois. This
meant a marriage between Anrie of Navarre and the Princess Margot. To that end,
on March the second, fifteen seventy two, Queen Jean of Navarre,
a staunch Protestant, finally agreed to visit the royal court at Blois and discuss
the matter in person. Both Henri and Margaret, by the way, were
essentially unwilling participants in this affair, but pawns do not get to dictate their
course, and so onward they march. As was usual during the sixteenth century,
the negotiations focused around religion. Essentially, both sides were waiting for a
papal dispensation that would allow the Protestant Henri to wed the Catholic Margot. Charles
finally got tired of waiting, however, and granted Henri the right to have
a proxy stand in for the Catholic portion of the wedding, though he would
at least have to be in Paris for the ceremony. On April eleventh,
fifteen seventy two, the two sides formally signed the marriage contract, but then
disaster struck. Jean of Navarre fell ill and on the June ninth, at
the age of only forty four, she died. Her death was a huge
blow to the Huguenots, though later rumors that Catherine had been behind her death
make no sense at all, after all. On May thirteenth, a new
pope, Gregory the thirteenth, was elected, and he was much more amenable
to a union between Navarre and France, which supports what Catherine wanted. In
the first place, but then events intervened that once more turned up the international
temperature between France and Spain. On July seventeenth, fifteen seventy two, a
Huguenot military expedition of five thousand troops across the border from France into the Spanish
Netherlands, where they were then ambushed near Mons by Spanish troops who had been
alerted about the attack well in advance. The Protestant captains were on a mission
to save Louis of Nassau, who had, with the support of money and
men from Charles, attacked Mons and Vallisiennes. Initial success had quickly turned to
failure, and the Spanish now had Nassau and his men besieged in the fortress
of Mons. At the same time, Prince William of Orange, Nassau's brother,
plan an invasion from Germany. For weeks, rumors had been circulating at
the French court about the rescue plan. Parisian armorers were reportedly working throughout the
night, and every day since mid June, large numbers of armed men had
been seen leaving Paris heading north. Some alleged that the king personally received some
of the Huguenot captains in Paris honor about the twenty third of June. Charles,
for his part, however, claimed total ignorance of the attack, though
it's hard to credit that since the Spanish were well informed enough to prevent its
success. It's most likely that the Huguenots had the clandestine help of Colony and
at least the tacit support of the king. Regardless, the Huguenot force was
decimated. Only a few hundred men escaped. One of the survivors was one
of the Huguenot captains, Jenless. He unfortunately carried a highly compromising letter written
by Charles in which he encouraged the French Huguenots in their rebellious activities in the
Netherlands. The incursion of an armed force into Spanish territory could easily constitute an
act of war by the French, and Charles hastily distanced himself by congratulating Philip
on his success in defeating the expedition so roundly. Catherine, furious that her
son had covertly supported so foolish a mission, demanded he make a public declaration
denouncing the expedition, stating that his aim was to live in harmony with his
neighbors. Believing that the immediate crisis now had been averted, Catherine left the
capital to tend to her daughter Claude Day, where she had been taken ill
on the way to Paris. She was coming for the wedding. Catherine,
though, had failed to grasp that as far as Colony was concerned, this
expedition, the failed one represented little more than an advanced party for what would
later be a far greater French force than he planned to lead, and no
sooner had Catherine turned her back on the Capitol than he had the King's ear
trying to convince him of the wisdom of this plan. Catherine got wind of
this and rushed back to Paris to employ or her son to avoid war with
Spain. She insisted that such a course would undo everything she had worked so
hard for and turn the country over the Protestants. COLONYI argued that the advance
should go forward, and the king found himself torn between his mother and his
mentor. At the emergency Council meeting on the ninth and tenth of August,
all those present, which included Anjou, the Dukes of n Veres and Montspierre,
the Marshals Cosset and Tabase all voted for peace. The only dissenting voice
Colony. At the outcome of the vote, Colonie is said to have given
a rather sinister warning to the victorious Catherine. Quote, Madame, if the
King decides against a war, may God spare him another from which he will
not be able to extricate himself. I am not able to oppose that which
your Majesty has done, but I am assured that she will have occasion to
regret it. End quote. This was clearly intended as a warning, but
by making this barely veiled pret Colognie had just unwittingly signed his own death warrant.
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 of fifteen seventy
two are the ones that have stained her name for oh about four hundred and
forty years now, creating this sort of legend of the Black Queen. Unfortunately,
she's not remembered for her enlightened and often frequent attempts at conciliation between Protestants
and Catholics, but only for the chaotic bloodbath as we'll see today, becomes
known as the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre. After the council meeting on August tenth,
fifteen seventy two, Catherine prepared to visit her daughter Claudet, who was
recovering from an illness. According to memoirs written twenty years later, the king
absolutely begged her not to go. He was, according to one source,
petrified at the idea his mother would quote unquote abandon him as the Huguenots rallied
for a final attack. This memoir, of course, as the value of
hindsight. Charles actually physically pursued his mother as she ready to depart, begging
her to reconsider. Our sources report that this is when she made her move.
Sensing that Charles would agree to anything to keep her support, she played
horror trump card for the good of the nation, colony must die. There
was no desire for personal vengeance in this decision. This decision, from her
perspective, was to restore France to some semblance of normality. Now, at
the same time that this is going on, Colon Yie was dismissing all the
advice he was getting not to go. To Paris for Henri of Navarre's wedding.
Colin Ye wouldn't listen to any of it, even if he died,
He declared he had lived long enough. At this point, the admiral had
clearly become the very caricature of a biblical martyr. On July the first,
Henri of Navarre attended his mother's funeral. He made it to Paris on the
eighth. There was no question of postponing this wedding. The marriage of the
Protestant prince to the Catholic princess simply had to go forward. Physically, Henri
was certainly no tall blonde compared with the young Duke of Geese, whom Margot
had previously had an effe, but he was still considered very attractive in the
age. He was about five feet eight inches tall. He had a high
forehead, thick dark hair, clear skin, and a prominent nose that was
a feature of the Bourbons. He used to spend much of his time on
horseback. He was quite muscular, and was, in terms of his nature,
cheerful, outgoing and generous. He had grown frankly into a very open
and straightforward man. He had a particular charm as a result of that.
Really, from his frankness, his masculinity, and oftentimes his magnanimity as well,
his physical attributes were matched by his intellect. He was not, as
so many courtiers liked to claim, an inarticulate, foolish peasant from the Pyrenees.
Notwithstanding a love of garlic and a distaste for bathing, He could joke
and talk with those surrounding him without losing the composure required of a prince of
the blood. 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 real military action, and that made
a robust and good companion for the King. Frankly, the king found him
refreshing after the ludicrous affectations of his own brother Anjou. Now, in the
days leading up to the wedding in Paris, the streets were oppressively hot and
quite frankly choked with people. It had been a very poor harvest that year,
so peasants had flooded to the city, hoping to take advantage of the
planned wedding feasts. As the first Protestants arrived, they found the city unexpectedly
welcoming. Yet around the middle of July the mood decisively changed. Then the
Catholic pulpits came alive with sermons lambasting this proposed ye union is diabolical. Suddenly,
the very city seemed to grow hot, both due to the unusual heat
wave and also the seething anger of its populace. It had become, in
other words, a powder keg. Catherine returned to this hot, ill tempered
city on the fifteenth of August. Almost as soon as she arrived, she
found herself confronted with a furious demand from the Spanish ambassador, requiring an urgent
explanation as to why no fewer than three thousand Huguenot troops were stationed close to
the border near mons By, the Netherlands. Once again she had been fooled,
as Catherine quickly discovered, the Admiral had continued levying troops despite the decision
of the council, and at that very moment he was raising a force of
twelve thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, intending to use it in the Netherlands.
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
ended. The Admiral's ultimate intention was to lead a mixed force of Catholics and
Protestants to fight in the Netherlands against Spain, and he believed that would remove
the risk of civil war in Spain. The King was now too weak to
rest control of all this back from Colonnie, and frankly, it's hard to
even determine what the King wanted. He might not even have known. It's
almost impossible to determine just when and how the plan to murder Colonnie came into
being. Certainly, the arrival of the Geese family into Paris provided Catherine with
an enormous amount of accomplices, or I guess at least potential accomplices. It
appears at some point the lynchpin was the Duchess of Nemours and DSD. She
agreed to participate in the Admiral's death, and her involvement seems to have spurred
the involvement of multiple other individuals. One thing is absolutely clear from the record.
In early August, the Queen revoked the royal ban, preventing the Geeses
from seeking their vengeance. Now, secrecy was still paramount. In the end,
only four members of the entire Geese family were in on the plot.
I have to point out what a risky plan this was. There were thousands
of arm Huguenots in the city. If the plan failed and Colin Yee survived,
there might have been a massacre, but it would have gone in the
other direction. Once all the accomplices were had, and I'm not going to
go through all of them because it's a lot of names, the only matter
was in finding the actual assassin. Ultimately, the plotters picked a man by
the name of Charles de Louverre. Incidentally, de Louverra de Marvarette had shot
and killed one of Colon Yie's close friends during the recent Third Religious War.
Everyone knew that he hated Colonie, and everyone knew he could keep his composure,
so Catherine felt secure in this decision. She and King Charles would have
clear alibis. Moureuvert would shoot Colonie from the window of a residency owned by
the Geese family, who then would clearly be blamed for the whole affair,
or at least such was the plan. Frankly, there's a scenario here where
Colonie is murdered and then the Protestant crowns turn on and kill the entire Geese
family that's present, which would have been nothing less than ideal for Catherine.
In one fell swoop, she would have eliminated both of her rivals for power.
One thing that was critical, however, was that the wedding had to
take place before the murder. This wedding was to symbolize religious unity that would
not be possible after Colonie was dead. On August the sixteenth, the Cardinal
des Barbont officiated the betrothal ceremony. The wedding was to take place two days
later on August the eighteenth, fifteen seventy two. The nineteen year old bride
readied herself for a ceremony. She was not looking forward to. The Princess
Margaret had been given no say this marriage and would maintain that truth until the
end of her life. It was a rather bizarre ceremony. Colonie and the
groom, Henri, watched from a distance as a proxy made the marriage promises
for him. The moment the ceremony was over, on Ri collected his new
wife and set out for the palace for a feast. Despite all the tensions
leading up to the wedding, the celebrations afterwards were, according to everyone,
surprisingly good natured for the most part. The Admiral de Colonni was lodge at
the Hotel de Pitize. He kept his appearances and wedding entertainments to a minimum,
and wrote to his wife on the evening of August the eighteenth as follows,
quote Madame, 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, masks and combats. After these, the King had assured and
promised me that he will give me some time to deal with several complaints about
breaches in the edict. The Edict of ambois from all around the kingdom.
If I thought of nothing but my own happiness, I would rather come to
see you than be at this court for many reasons, which I will tell
you. But one must look after the people before one looks after oneself.
There's actually a little PostScript at the bottom of the letter that reads follows,
let me know how the little man or 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 end quote. You see, Coliny's wife was due to give
birth any day now. Now, most high ranking Protestants left the city almost
immediately after the wedding. Colinian did not. On August tenth, Charles had
told him that he had quote no confidence end quot in the Geese faction,
and so he had ordered an additional twelve hundred royal troops into the city.
Now, the reason that Colin Yie was remaining in Paris was that he still
wanted Charles to agree to an invasion of the Netherlands. But now Charles,
stuck between the admiral and his mother, apparently couldn't make up his mind.
What now follows has been the subject of speculation for about four hundred years.
One thing is certain. Catherine de Medici played a leading role in setting of
the chain of events in motion. That's going to culminate in the bloodiest massacre
in French history all the way up to the French Revolution. Late that night,
as the last of the marriage revelries took place, it is believed that
the Queen Mother held a meeting that included the following, the Duke of anjou
Geese, his uncle Dumay, the Duke of Neyedmours, the Marshall Tubaness,
and they all examined the plan for tomorrow in great detail. While the conspirators
were talking, the assassin Malvert was let into the house that was designed for
the actual event to take place. The house was located critically on the exact
route that the admiral would be taking in the morning to and from the council
meetings at the Louver Palace. On the morning of Friday, the twenty second
of August, the government recess for the marriage celebrations being now over, the
Admiral des Coloni left his lodgings on the Rue de Bethisi 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 gotten up rather late. On Jou left
the meeting early, and when matters had been concluded, the Admiral happened to
come across the King on his way with a gentleman by the name of Telignie,
the Duke of Geese, to play a game of tennis. Charles actually
begged Colony to join him for a game, but the Admiral refused. They
parted each other at around eleven o'clock in the morning. From there, Colin
Lee left the louver for his short walk home, reading a document while he
was walking. As he approached the window at which Malver was hiding behind a
binding, one of his shoes happened to come loose. As he bent down
to fix it, 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, Colony would have been killed almost instantly. Now
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
a horse waiting. Two Huguenot officers tore off after him. Colony, who
had fainted now due to the pain, was carried back to his lodgings.
Meanwhile, word of the failed assassination attempt to reach Catherine just as she sat
down to meet with the Spanish ambassador. Her face remained impassive as a messenger
whispered the words in her ear betraying nothing. Catherine and the Duke of Anjou,
who was also present, quietly got up and walked to her private apartments.
King Charles, for his part, stood arguing on the tennis court over
a point, when suddenly he heard what had happened from two Huguenot captains,
throwing down his racket in a rage, he said to have exclaimed, am
I never to be left in peace? More trouble, more trouble, and
then stormed off to his room. Here, his brother in law, Navarre,
as well as Conde and other senior Huguenots, soon appeared and confronted him,
demanding justice. Now sending Ambrose Paret, the famous surgeon who had tried
to save his father. Actually back in fifteen fifty nine to Colonnie, 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 he 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 Geese wisely decided to leave the louver and go to his family while the
king busily issued orders. Meanwhile, the scene in Colonnier's room was chaotic.
According to a reliable witness, the doctor Barre arrived quickly and set to work
on the admiral's wound. Operating first on the dangling finger. It took three
gruesome attempts before he managed to cut the finger off, quote as his scissors
were not well sharpened. Then he moved on to attend to the injured arm.
Two deep incisions were made, and the bullet was mercifully extracted without endless
probing. Crowding around his bed, Colonies's men gasped and wept. Their leader,
maintaining his characteristic heroic composure, managed not only to keep from uttering the
slightest gown, but even could find words of comfort for his dismayed men.
As the words spread across the city of this attempted murder, a number of
worried and angry Huguenots began to congregate outside Coloniese's home, and they grew so
rapidly that soon it was impossible to get in or out of the house.
Now that afternoon, the King himself paid a visit to Colonni and stood by
his sick bed, swearing outrage and vengeance on all involved, showing no sign
of the immense hypocrisy the situation actually called for. The Queen Mother and a
Ju, who had both accompanied the king, swore the same, striving to
outdo Charles in their levels of patently false indignation. The two were slightly less
pleased in appearance when the King ordered again a full and immediate inquest into the
attempted assassination. On Jou later recalled as follows, We Catherine and an on
Jou quietly 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 passed behind us,
in before us, and omitted to pay us the honor and reverence who are
our due, as if they suspected us of causing the wound of the Admiral,
which of course they had. The Queen my mother has since acknowledged that
she never found herself in a more critical position end quote. Catherine quickly intervened
in the King's conversation with Colonnie, desperate that Charles not put two and two
together, and realized that those standing beside the sick bed were the same two
who had put Coloonni in it. As soon as the trio left, the
Huguenots started to argue about the best course of their action. Some wanted to
leave the city immediately, others felt that that would insult Charles, who had
just sworn that Colonie was now under royal protection. The surgeon shut everybody down
when he declared that the king was not fit to be moved anywhere regardless.
But even if Colonie was not going to leave Paris, many other leading Huguenots
cautiously relocated their own lodgings to the outskirts of the city should a quick exit
become necessary. Unbeknownst to everyone, Catherine had a spy, Antoine de Bocheneis
in their midst would soon report all this back to his master. That evening,
Charles, still fuming, shouted at his mother and brother that Colony had
pointedly warned him that the two of them were trying to usurp his kingdom.
Catherine was at the point of panic. She knew that at some point the
evidence would lead to the Geese family and they would spill the beans on her.
She had to get to them first, and she wasn't wrong about the
evidence either, by the way. Before long, the man who had let
the would be assassined into the Geese house had been questioned, and he led
the investigators straight to ma Vert. The assassin himself, given that he had
already killed one of Colony's closest friends and was a known client of the Geese
family. It wasn't long before everyone was convinced that Malvert was the man who
had fired the faithful shot. The mood in Paris was now increasingly hostile.
The Parisians hated the black clad Protestants now seemingly infesting the capital. They began
arming themselves. Everyone knew that the Huguenots planned to join up and march into
the Netherlands, so they were already armed. It was, from the Catholic
perspective, merely self defense. At this point, the mood within the Louver
Palace wasn't any better. The leading Huguenot nobles were especially uneasy as the authorities
started making the rounds to various places of lodging and compiling the lists of any
Protestants within. On the afternoon of August twenty third, Catherine called together her
inner circle gentlemen by the name of Retz Tavanness, of course Neveres, and
her chancellor, for a desperate war council on how to proceed now that the
assassination attempt had failed. According to the memoirs of the martial de Tavanness,
she decided that the meeting would take place in the Tullery gardens, where they
could discuss their pressing problems while they walked and decide whether or not to launch
a preemptive strike on the Huguenots. Lake would not be overheard, as Tavanness
recalled, quote, 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 end quote. They would finish the work badly be gun by mal
Verit, although it really wasn't his fault because colony bent down at the inopportune
moment. But this time the list of victims would be massively expanded. It
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 didn't act soon, the Huguenots
might strike first. Even as they had been walking behind the walls of the
Queen Mother's garden so I'm walking with her, reported hearing violent abusive language coming
from the Protestants on the other side, who were shouting quote, we are
striking back and will kill and quote. 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 the king all along. She had to
tell her son that it was not only the Geeses who had planned the killing
of Colony, but that she and the Duke of Anjou had also been involved.
From the word got at around nine o'clock in the evening of the twenty
third of August, several men went to the King in his study, where
they disclosed that his mother and brother had been accomplices in the attack on Colonni.
Furthermore, they warned the King that he and the royal family now were
in the gravest of perils. They explained that the Huguenots planned quote not only
to take the Duke of Geese, but the Queen, his mother, and
his brother. They also believed that the King himself had consented to the attack
on the admiral, and therefore decided to rise up that very night against him
and others throughout his kingdom end quote. Able to believe what he was hearing,
Charles struggled to absorb what had been done were still he now found himself
in the most precarious of positions, with no idea how to defend himself and
the realm. Then the Queen Mother and Anjou, amongst others, visited the
king. They laid all sorts of allegations at Colonie's feet and detailed the reasons
that the admiral simply had to die there were no other options. At first,
the king cried that these were lies, declaring, quote, the Admiral
loves me as though I were his own son. He would do anything to
harm me and quote. Eventually, however, the arguments of his mother broke
down his spirit. Feeling he had been betrayed by his trusted friend, he
began to listen to Catherine, and she outlined their plan to kill all the
senior Huguenots in Paris, starting with the Admiral de Coloni. The Bourbon princes
of the Blood were to be kept alive and forced to give up the Protestant
faith, and their pain of death finally convinced the young and we have to
remember, desperately ill and relatively unstable king is said to have uttered the immortal
cry for which he is remembered throughout all of history quote and kill them all,
kill them all end quote. It is almost certain that by this he
meant all those on a list that have been drawn up by Catherine, and
not, as has often been claimed, all the Huguenots in France. A
terrible massacre wouldn't resolve anything, but the killing of a select few might eliminate
the Heretic's high command. The king prepared and approved the list of those to
be executed. He desired above all, this should be a legal state undertaking.
Although no such list has ever been found, it's hardly surprised in giving
its sensitivity. Now, with Charles's approval, the plan had to be put
into action at once. Urgent dispatches were written and sent out. The Duke
of Geese was given the task of taking his men to the Hotel de Bessini,
and there killed the admiral. The captain of the city guard was told
to muster his militiamen and guard all other possible exits from the city, closing
the city gates. Chained barges were linked up across the Seine to prevent escape
down river. 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 weapons for self protection,
and cannons were placed in front of the Hotel de Ville. The king's
own bodyguard and personal troops of the Geeses were to undertake the actual killing,
led by Geese and several other men, including Tavanness. The signal for the
start of the attack the murder of Colonni was to be the Belle of the
Palais de Justice, which would toll at three o'clock in the morning. In
fact, the actual bell rang out about a minute earlier, and so the
killings commenced. Colonies's residence was only a few minutes walk from the Palace de
Louver. There the Geese men pounded on the door, which was duly opened
by the servants station there. He was immediately stabbed to death for his trouble.
One of the Admiral's Swiss guards realized what was happening and bolted upstairs,
securing the door to Colony's room with a large chest. The Colony immediately realized
that this was the end. He calmly asked for his robes and requested that
his minister pray for him. He made no effort whatsoever to escape. One
of the men who eventually broke down the door asked Coloni if he was the
admiral. He responded that he was. The man then unceremoniously stabbed Colony through
the chest and shoved him out the window. His body hit the ground,
and he landed only a few feet from the Duke of Geese, who gave
the dead body a satisfying kick for good measure before riding off at the Louver.
The killings began around the same time. 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 was intimate. He was
restless and decided that he would speak with the king early the next morning,
when Margot arrived. Quote the King, my husband, who was in his
bed, said 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 I had yet been married only a few days. All night
long, they talked at the accident to the admiral, deciding to go to
the king as soon as it were day and demand justice and quote. But
the Queen Margot was to get very little rest that night, for 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. But he had
not walked more than a few feet from his apartment when he heard he and
his companions being stopped by guards on the king's orders. Separated from his men,
the elite of the Protestant party, most of whom he would never see
again. Henri was then taken with his cousin, the Prince de Conde,
to a chamber in order to remain there by the king 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 castle. The captain of the
Royal Guard led his men as they began the gruesome work. Most of the
Huguenots were asleep when the killings started. Dragged from their beds, their throats
were cut before they had a chance to fight back. As the noise of
the screams and the terror resounded throughout the passages, staircases, and confusing corridors
that made up much of the altered palace, the survivors ran desperately, attempting
to hide from the teams of killers. Finding nowhere to conceal themselves, many
of these poor victims ran into the courtyard of the louver. There awaiting them
were the king's archers, who pushed the terrified men and women onto the hallvards
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, Margaret's old nurse. Thinking
it was Navarre himself, hurriedly unlocked the door, only to find that it
was Monseigneur de la Ran, one of his gentlemen. Our Gost was aghast
when she saw him, later writing quote wounded in the elbow by his sword
and by a halbard 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 him
into the passage, and he after me, still hugging my body. I
did not know who he was, or 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,
Monseigneur de Nancie, 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 there until
he recovered. While I was changing my shift, which was bloody, Monseigneur
de Nanci 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 my bedrobe, he led me to the apartment of my
sister, Madame de Lauran, where I arrived more dead than alive. As
I entered the anti chain, the door of which was standing wide open,
a gentleman named Rossi, 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 Monsignor den On Si, and as soon
as I could recover, I ran into the little room where my sister slept.
End Quote as the feast day of Saint Bartholomew dawned, all but a
few of the most senior Huguenot leaders lay dead or dying. Nor was the
slaughter confined to the leadership easily identifiable by their simple black and white robes.
Huguenots who came to the city to enjoy the thrill of a royal wedding were
now indiscriminately killed, men, women and children, stripped naked of their valuables
before their bodies were cast into the Seine. And here I want to quote
directly because I think it's a great section of the book from historian Leonin and
Frieda in her work Catherine de Medici in the Renaissance Queen of France, quote
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 the
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 bourgeoisie Catholic Parisians had suffered the same fate as Protestants. Many financial debts
were wiped clean with the death of creditors and money lenders that night. Here
was the opportunity to rob nighbor, 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 were a number that the Almighty himself had sent
the Parisians a special sign of his approval by the miraculous flowering of a dried
out hawthorne bush beside a statue of the Holy Virgin in the simitee te de
Anis sounds. Most of the important Huguenots were dead by five am on Sunday,
August the twenty fourth. Their bodies were just piled up in the courtyards
of the Louver Palace, but the violence continued for another three days, despite
Charles's ineffectual orders for them to stop. The violence soon spread to the provinces,
as I suppose we should have expected, despite dispatch from the King on
the twenty fourth announcing that there had been a bloody clash between the houses of
Geese and Chepton, and that local authorities must keep control over the localities.
But again, no one listens to the king at this point. By the
twenty fifth of August, these dispatches were no longer even credible, and the
King issued a fresh declaration stating that the Huguenot 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 the
King or his council were by no means consistent or in any way shape or
form enforcable misunderstanding piled on top of confusion in many regions. It was too
late anyway. The flames of hatred fanned out all over the country, and
many provincial cities followed the capital with orgies of killing. In October fifteen seventy
two, the tumult finally reached southern France, where the last of the cruelty
unleashed on Saint Bartholomew's Day was finally spent. Yet not every single Huguenot died.
Those who had taken the precaution of moving to the outskirts of Paris by
large were able to make their escape, and each man, woman and child
who got away carried with them the seeds of more civil war, more unrest,
and conflict. Sadly, as we're going to see, Saint Bartholomew's Day
was only the beginning. But as I promised previously, next week we're going
to turn east and we're going to go back to the Ottoman Empire, because
we have quite a lot of catching up to do after the death of soule
Mon the Magnificent, to keep our narrative somewhat coherent in the meantime, If
you're eager for more content, check out the links in the show notes that
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