d by an
assassin: yet Charles, redoubling his dissimulation, was still able
to retain the Hugonots in their security; till, on the evening of St.
Bartholomew, a few days after the marriage, the signal was given for a
general massacre of those religionists, and the king himself in person
led the way to these assassinations. The hatred long entertained by
the Parisians against the Protestants, made them second, without any
preparation, the fury of the court; and persons of every condition, age,
and sex, suspected of any propensity to that religion, were involved in
an undistinguished ruin. The admiral, his son-in-law Teligni, Soubize,
Rochefoucault, Pardaillon, Piles, Lavardin, men who, during the late
wars, had signalized themselves by the most heroic actions, were
miserably butchered without resistance; the streets of Paris flowed with
blood; and the people, more enraged than satiated with their cruelty,
as if repining that death had saved their victims from further insult,
exercised on their dead bodies all the rage of the most licentious
brutality. About five hundred gentlemen and men of rank perished in this
massacre; and near ten thousand of inferior condition.[*] Orders were
instantly despatched to all the provinces for a like general execution
of the Protestants; and in Rouen, Lyons, and many other cities, the
people emulated the fury of the capital. Even the murder of the king of
Navarre, and prince of Conde, had been proposed by the duke of Guise;
but Charles, softened by the amiable manners of the king of Navarre,
and hoping that these young princes might easily be converted to the
Catholic faith, determined to spare their lives, though he obliged them
to purchase their safety by a seeming change of their religion.

Charles, in order to cover this barbarous perfidy, pretended that
a conspiracy of the Hugonots to seize his person had been suddenly
detected; and that he had been necessitated, for his own defence, to
proceed to this severity against them. He sent orders to Fenelon, his
ambassador in England, to ask an audience, and to give Elizabeth this
account of the late transaction. That minister, a man of probity,
abhorred the treachery and cruelty of his court, and even scrupled not
to declare that he was now ashamed to bear the name of Frenchman;[**]
yet he was obliged to obey his orders, and make use of the apology which
had been prescribed to him. He met with that reception from all the
courtiers which he