454. Popery, as it was, and mill be. [May, 
wonder at the horrid iniquities, the complication of perfidy and blood- 
thirstiness, that so immediately after deluged France with murder. 
The mind of the court being thus prepared by the exhortations of 
Pius the Vth to every individual of influence round the person of the 
young king, Catherine and her councillors waited only for an opportu- 
nity of striking the decisive blow. At the conferences of Bayonne in. 
1567, the Pope, Philip of Spain, and Catherine, had formed the design 
of extinguishing the Protestants; but it is not clear that they looked 
further than to the assassination of the leading princes and nobles, pre- 
suming, that with the loss of the leaders the party would perish. But 
the crime became familiar by contemplation. The death of the prince 
of Condé at Jarnac, seemed to produce so slight an impression on the 
fortunes of the Protestants, and so many bold and able men were seen 
ready to supply the place of those who fell in the field, that a more 
sweeping measure of ruin was resolved on in a cabinet, which seemed 
less of human council than of the fierce malignity and furious rebellion 
of fiends, 
In 1570 the treaty of St. Jermain en l’Aye was made, and thence- 
forth the whole policy of the queen was directed to lulling the suspicions 
of the Protestants, and drawing them to Paris. For this purpose a mar- 
riage was proposed between Henry, the son of the queen of Navarre, and: 
the princess Margaret, sister of Charles the IXth. A long course of the 
most dextrous dissimulation overcame Coligny, the Protestant leader’s, 
prudence, and he attended the court. The queen followed his example. 
She arrived in Paris in May, and was poisoned within a month. But 
this period of popish supremacy was the period of poisoning. Coligny’s 
brother had died by poison. Coligny himself was attempted by poison, 
and Philip the IInd of Spain had poisoned his wife, the king of France’s 
sister. A powerful and sagacious enemy was thus removed, but her 
death served as a protection to many of the Protestants, for it startled 
them so much, that they retired from Paris, and the general fears of the 
reformed were suddenly awakened. A saying of the Baron de Rosny, 
the father of the celebrated Duke of Sully, is reported, “If the prince of 
Bearn’s marriage is to be in Paris, the wedding favours will be crimson.” 
On the 18th of August, 1572, this ill-omened marriage took place. 
Four days were spent in public rejoicing. On the fourth day, Coligny 
returning from the Louvre, was fired at from the house of Villemur, the 
Duke of Guise’s tutor, in the Rue des Fosses, St. Germain. He was — 
wounded in both arms. Paris was instantly in confusion, and the 
princes of Navarre and Condé demanded an audience of the king for ven- 
geance on the assassin Maurevel and his employers. To lull suspicion 
to the last, the court visited Coligny in his bed. Councils were now held 
in rapid succession, to decide upon the means of striking the final blow. 
One of the points discussed was the death of the young king of Navarre, 
and the prince of Condé. The arrangements were at length made. The 
Duke of Guise was to murder Coligny on hearing the palace bell ring. 
Tavannes, a celebrated officer, was to muster the armed citizens at mid- 
night, at the Hotel de Ville ; when on the signal of the bell, they were to — 
barricade the streets, and get ready for the massacre. To keep up the 
delusion, the king rode out with the chevalier d-Angouleme, his natural 
brother, in the afternoon, through the streets; and the queen had her 
court circle as usual. Secrecy was to be rigorously observed, and yet 
secrecy must have exposed some who were not intended for the common 
