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ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH.

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The last years of the reign of Mary were miserable to Ch. 4. herself, and disastrous to the nation. Her royal husband did A. D. not return her warm affections, and left England for ever. 1558. She embarked in a ruinous war with France, and gained nothing but disgrace. Her health failed, and her disposition Last became gloomy. Intolerant in her religious opinions, she years of Mary. thought more of restoring Romanism, than of promoting the interests of her kingdom. Her heart was bruised and broken, and the remainder of her life was a succession of sorrows. It is fashionable to call this unfortunate Queen the "Bloody Mary," and few allow her a single virtue; yet she was affectionate, sincere, high-minded, and she shrunk from the dissimulation and intrigue which characterized her energetic successor. Mary was capable of the warmest friendship; was attentive and considerate to her servants, charitable to the poor, and always kind to the unfortunate, when not blinded by her religious prejudices. She had many accomplishments, and a severe taste. Her bigotry ruined her, and the nation hailed with enthusiasm the accession of Elizabeth, on the Acces17th of November, 1558, by whom the Protestant religion sion of was immediately restored.

With this re-establishment of Protestantism on the basis formed by Cranmer and his associates, we take leave, for the present, of Elizabeth, and now turn to survey the progress of affairs in France.

REFERENCES.-Hume and Lingard are the two works which may be considered as standards. The "Pictorial History of England" is also very valuable. Miss Strickland's "Lives of the Queens of England" are much admired, though too favorable to Mary. Burnet's "History of the Reformation" has not been displaced. The lives of Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, and Cranmer, should be carefully read, as also Fox's "Book of Martyrs."

Elizabeth.

F

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Ch. 5.

CHAPTER V.

THE CIVIL WARS OF FRANCE, OR THE HUGUENOTIC
CONTEST.

THE history of France, from the death of Francis I. to the peace of Verviens, 1598, when Henry IV. had triumphed 1547 over all his enemies, and secured the recognition of his sub

A. D.

to jects, is virtually the history of religious contentions and per1598. secutions, and of those civil wars which grew out of them. The Huguenotic contest is therefore a great historical subject, Hugue- and as such will be presented in connection with the history of France, until the death of Henry IV., the greatest of the French monarchs, and long the illustrious head of the Protestant party.

notic

contest.

French

ers.

The reformed doctrines first began to spread in France during the reign of Francis. As early as 1523, many were burned at the stake for professing them, among whom the descendants of the Waldenses were the most numerous. These doctrines were the same in substance as those of the Swiss reformers.

While this persecution was raging, John Calvin fled from Reform- France to Ferrara, from which city he proceeded to Geneva. This was in the year 1536, when his theological career commenced by the publication of the Institutes, which were dedicated to Francis I. These Institutes, the great text book of the Swiss and French reformers, were distasteful to the French King, and he gave fresh orders for the persecution of the Protestants. Notwithstanding the hostility of Francis, however, the new doctrines spread, and were embraced by some of

CATHARINE DE MEDICI AND CHARLES IX.

65

rine de

the most distinguished of the French nobility. The succes- Ch. 5. sor of Francis I. was his son, Henry II., during whose reign A. D. the new faith was embraced by a very respectable party both 1560. at court and in the army. The King sought in vain to arrest its progress; his wife, the celebrated Catharine de Medici, Cathainciting him to the most cruel atrocities. His accidental Medici. death at a tournament, in 1559, for a while put a stop to persecution. But his successor, Francis II., the husband of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, acting under the direction of his advisers, soon renewed it, and the Huguenots, driven to despair, took up arms in their own defence.

IX.

Francis II. soon died; and his brother, Charles IX., a boy Charles of ten years of age, succeeded to the French crown, when the Queen mother, now all powerful, commenced the most unsparing religious persecution recorded in the history of modern Europe.

At the head of the Catholic party were the Queen Regent, the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Duke of Guise, his brother, and the constable Montmorency. They had the support of the priesthood, of the Spaniards, and a great majority of the nation.

The Protestants were headed by the King of Navarre, father of Henry IV., the Prince of Condé, his brother, and Admiral Coligny; and they had the sympathy of the University, and the Parliament, as well as that of the Protestants of Germany and England.

wars.

Between these parties the struggle lasted for forty years, Civil with various success. Persecution provoked resistance, but resistance did not lead to liberty. Still the Protestants had hope, and, as they could always assemble a large army, they maintained their ground. Their conduct was not marked by the religious earnestness which characterized the Puritans, or by the same strength of religious principle: political motives mingled with religious. The contest was a struggle for the ascendancy of rival chiefs, as well as for the establishment of reformed doctrines. The Bourbons hated the Guises, and the Guises resolved to destroy the Bourbons.

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Ch. 5.

A. D.

MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.

Charles before long discovered that civil war only wasted the resources of the country, without weakening the Protestants; 1572. he therefore made peace, but at the same time formed, under the influence of his mother, a plan for their extermination by treachery. In order to cover his designs, he gave his sister, Margaret de Valois, in marriage to the King of Navarre, first Prince of the blood, then nineteen years of age. Admiral Coligny was also invited to Paris, and treated with distinguished courtesy.

Massa

St. Bar

mew.

It was during the festivities which succeeded the marriage cre of of the King of Navarre that Coligny was murdered, and the tholo- signal for the horrid slaughter of St. Bartholomew was given. At midnight, August 23, 1572, the great bell at the Hotel de Ville began to toll; torches were placed in the windows, chains were drawn across the streets, and armed bodies collected around the hotels. The doors of the houses were broken open, and neither age, condition, nor sex was spared. The massacre at Paris was followed by one equally brutal in the provinces. Sixty thousand people, according to Sully, were slain in cold blood. The King of Navarre and the Prince of Condé only escaped through their relationship to the King, and by renouncing the Protestant religion.

Death

Charles

Most of the European courts expressed their detestation of this foul crime; but the Pope went in grand procession to his cathedral, and ordered a Te Deum to be sung in commemoration of an event which steeped his cause in infamy.

The Protestants, though nearly exterminated, again rallied; the King of Navarre and the Prince of Condé renounced the religion which had been forced on them by fear of death, and prosecuted a bloody civil war, with the firm resolution of never abandoning it until religious liberty was guaranteed.

Meanwhile, Charles died, as it was supposed, by poison. of His last hours were wretched, and his remorse for the massacre of St. Bartholomew filled his soul with agony. He beheld frightful spectres, and dreamed horrid dreams; in

IX.

HENRY III.-RENEWED WARS.

imagination he constantly saw heaps of livid

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bodies, and his Ch. 5.

Worn out by A. D.

ears were assailed with imaginary groans. these horrors, he expired in misery, having first solemnly 1574 warned the King of Navarre to beware of Catharine.

to

ed civil

wars.

Charles was succeeded by his brother, the King of Poland, 1589. under the title of Henry III. The persecutions of the Huguenots were now renewed, and the old scenes of treachery, Renewassassination, and war, were acted over again. The cause of religion was lost sight of in a labyrinth of contentions, jealousies, and plots. Intrigues and factions were endless. Nearly all the leaders, on both sides, perished by the sword or the dagger. The Prince of Condé, the Duke of Guise, and his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, were assassinated. Shortly after, died the chief mover of all these troubles, Catharine de Death of CaMedici, a woman of talents and persuasive eloquence, but of most unprincipled ambition, perfidious, cruel, and dissolute. She encouraged the licentiousness of the court, and even the worst vices of her sons, that she might make them subservient to her designs. All her passions were subordinate to her calculations of policy, and every womanly virtue was suppressed by the desire of wielding a government which she had usurped. Henry III. soon followed her to the grave. His death, which took place by assassination in the year 1589, secured the throne to the King of Navarre, who now took the title of Henry IV.

tharine.

This monarch, the first of the Bourbon line, was descended from Robert, the sixth son of St. Louis, who had married the daughter and heiress of John of Burgundy and Agnes of Bourbon. He was thirty-six years of age when he became king, and had passed through great experiences and many sorrows. Thus far he had contended for Protestant opinions, Accesand was the acknowledged leader of the Protestant party in France. But a life of contention and bloodshed, and the new IV. career opened to him as King of France, cooled his religious ardor, and he did not hesitate to accept the condition which the French nobles imposed, before they would take the oaths

sion of

Henry

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