510 PARISIAN OR ST. BARTHOLOMEW MASSACRE. 
day, which was carried on with such detestable perfidy and bloody 
ciTielty, as would surpass all belief, were it not aUested by the most 
undeniable evidence. 
Bloody as the French revolution has been in some periods of it, 
and ferocious as the Maratists and Septembrisers were, it affords no 
instance, in its whole course, of such accumulated treachery, cruelty, 
barbarity, and perfidy, as this, which was planned, carried on, and exe- 
cuted from a spirit of religious fanaticism, under the royal authority 
of the king of France. 
In 1572, in the reign of Charles IX. many of the principal Pro- 
testants were invited to Paris, with a solemn oath of safety, upon 
occasion of the marriage of the king of Navarre with the French king’s 
sister. The queen dowager of Navarre, a zealous Protestant, was 
poisoned by a pair of gloves before the marriage was solemnized ; 
and on the 24th of August, being Bartholomew’s day, about daybreak, 
upon the toll of the bell of the church of St. Germain, the butchery 
began. The admiral of France was basely murdered in his own 
house. After this, the murderers ravaged the whole city of Paris, 
and butchered in three days ten thousand lords, gentlemen, presidents, 
and people of all ranks. “ A horrible scene of things,” says Thu- 
anus, “followed. The very streets and passages resounded with the 
noise of those that met together for murder and plunder ; the groans 
of those who were dying, and the shrieks of such as were going to 
be butchered, were every where heard ; the bodies of the slain were 
thrown out of the windows ; the courts and chambers of the houses were 
filled with them ; the dead bodies of others dragged through the streets 
their blood running down the channels in torrents into the river ; 
and in a word, an innumerable multitude of men, women, maidens, 
children, and women with child, were all involved in one common 
destruction ; and the gates and entrances of the king’s palaces were 
all besmeared with their blood.” 
From Paris the massacre spread almost throughout the whole king- 
dom. In the city of Meaux they threw above two hundred into jail ; 
and after they had ravished and killed a great number of women, 
and plundered the houses of the Protestants at large, they executed 
their fury- on those they had imprisoned. In Orleans they murdered 
above five hundred men, women, and children, and enriched them- 
selves with their spoils. The same cruelties were practised at Angers, 
Troyes, Bourges, Charente, and especially at Lyons, w^here they 
destroyed above eight hundred Protestants, (among whom were chil- 
dren ha'iigingon their parents’ necks, and parents embracing their chil- 
dren) putting ropes about their necks, dragging them through the streets, 
and throwing them, mangled, torn, and half dead, into the river. It 
would be endless to mention the butcheries committed at Valence, 
Roniaine, Rouen, Szc. According to Thuanus, above thirty-thousand 
Protestants were destroyed in this massacre, or, as others with greater 
probability affirm, above one hundred thousand ! And yet, as if it had 
been a most heroic transaction, and could have procured immortal 
glory to the authors of it, medals were struck at Paris in honour of 
it. Thuanus adds, “ And when the news came to Rome, it was w'on- 
dejful to see how' they exul ted for joy.” 
