The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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change your language before three days, I will have you strangled!"
Of the throng of Huguenot nobles who come to Paris to attend the wedding, all are seized. The Swiss Guards of the king are let loose upon them, and all are massacred. There they lie in a heap in the courtyard of the Louvre — two hundred of the noblest men of the kingdom. Charles, Catherine, the ladies of the court, go out and behold them — the men with whom they danced three days ago! They gaze upon their ghastly countenances besmeared with blood, and indulge in ribald laughter. So, it is said, the hyenas laugh when they have dug up the hones of the dead, and crunch them beneath their teeth.
Never before was there such a festival of St Bartholomew. Families are broken up. There are sudden partings, husbands from wives, parents from children, young men from the maidens whom they love, to meet no more, maybe, this side the grave. In the river are thousands of floating corpses — men, women, children. No age or sex is spared.
"Kill the heretics!" It is the cry of the priests and the soldiers. What though fair maidens plead for mercy? What though mothers pray that the lives of their infants may be spared? There is no pity, and the massacre goes on; and not only in Paris, but in the country — in Lyons, Bordeaux, Orleans. Seventy thousand men, women, and children are slaughtered.
The bells of Rome are ringing, and the guns of St. Angelo thundering; bonfires blaze; and Gregory XIII., attended by cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and a great throng of prelates, march in procession. A Te Deum is chanted, and the Pope commissions the painter Vasari to paint the scene of the massacre, and employs an artist to engrave a medal commemorative of the event. The preachers in Rome deliver eloquent orations, and a messenger carries a golden rose to Charles as a present from the Pope.
Fifteen months pass. Charles has acted strangely. the Venetian ambassador, Cavilli, makes the king a visit, and writes of his appearance: "He is melancholy and sombre. He dares not look any one in the face. He drops his head, and closes his eyes. It is feared that the demon of vengeance has taken possession of him. He is becoming cruel."
He grows weak and feeble, and will have no one near him except his nurse. His conscience is awake, and his mind racked with remorse. the screeches of the victims of St Bartholomew are ringing in his ears.
He sees men, women, and children flying through the streets crying for mercy, pursued by blood-thirsty wretches. The air is filled with ghosts; the ground strewed with ghastly corpses.
"Ah, nurse! what blood! what murder! Oh, what evil counsel have I followed!" Then he prays. "O God, forgive me! Have mercy on me!" Despair sets in. "I'm lost! I'm lost!" On July 30th, 1574, he ceases to breathe, and Henry, Duke of Anjou, Catherine's younger son, becomes Henry III., King of France.
CHAPTER XXV
HOW THE "BEGGARS" FOUGHT FOR THEIR RIGHTS
OF all people in Europe, none are more peacefully inclined than the inhabitants of Holland. They are great worker, and have no desire to engage in quarrels with anybody. There was a time when a portion of their land was under the sea. The water was not deep, and the people built dikes — laying down bundles of brush, trunks of trees, heaping mud upon them, so fencing out the ocean. Then they erected windmills, and pumped out the water. They laid off the land into fields and gardens, built their houses, made the canals their highways, and so, as the years rolled on, there grew up a country, as it were, from beneath the sea.
The Dutch have little time to spend in pleasure. In winter, when the canals are frozen, they get up skating parties; but in summer the butter and cheese must be made, and the cabbages cultivated, Everybody must work. Even the dogs are put into harness. By hard, patient labor they have become a thrifty people. Once they all accepted the Pope as the head of the Church; but they have begun to think for themselves, and are fast becoming heretics. Charles, before he resigned his crown to Philip, began to burn and hang them. He taxed them unjustly, confiscated their property, cast them into prison. The men who ask questions have been sending thousands of men and women to jail. Fires blaze, and men are burned, not because they have committed crime, but because they read the Bible. Since Charles laid aside the crown, Philip has been crushing out the heretics with all his might. More than one hundred thousand have been put to death, thrust into jail, or driven from the country. The people have risen in revolt. One of Philip's officers called them a nation of beggars; they have accepted the term, and have elected as their leader the Silent Man, William, on whose shoulder Charles leaned when he resigned his crown. The Silent Man is giving his money, his time, his energies,to the cause. He was a Catholic; but he sees that men have a right to think for themselves, and is ready to lay down his life, if need be, for liberty. He has been defeated in battle again and again, has been so straitened in circumstances that he had not money enough to buy a breakfast; but he has gathered another army, and is determined to drive the Spaniards out of Holland.
In 1574, the Spaniards are besieging Leyden. Philip offers the citizens of the town a pardon if they will surrender. But what have they done that they should accept a pardon? Nothing. They have been thinking for themselves, and reading the Bible, which the Pope has forbidden ; but have they not a right to read it? If so, they will not ask pardon of any one.
Philip is in Spain, eating bacon-fat and witnessing the burning of heretics. This is the answer which the people of Leyden send to him:
"As long as there is a man left, we will fight for our liberty and our religion."
General Valdez, one of Philip's officers, is sent by the Duke of Alva to level the city to the ground. After taking Leyden, he will sail up the Great Canal to Amsterdam. Five miles from Leyden is a great dike — the Land-scheiding. Three-quarters of a mile nearer is another, called the Greenway. There is another still, called the Kirkway. Inside of these are the forts and redoubts — sixty-two in all, which are in the possession of the Spaniards. Half a pound of meat and half a pound of bread is all they have to eat a day, the aldermen weighing it out to each person in the city. On every side the Spaniards pitch their tents. The people of Leyden are shut in. Only by pigeons can they send word to the Prince of Orange. They have no soldiers; but every citizen is a soldier, and so is every woman. May and June pass; there are frequent skirmishes.
"We will pay a bounty for the head of every Spaniard," say the burgomasters of Leyden, and now and then a man steals out, kills a Spaniard, cute off his head, brings it in, and sticks it upon a pole on the walls, that the Spaniards may see it.
The Spanish general expects to starve the " beggars " into submission. the days go by. The Prince of Orange cannot raise an army large enough to fight Valdez; but there is one thing that can be done — he can let in the sea upon the land, and drown out the hateful myrmidons of the Pope and of Philip. The people hail the proposition with joy. "Better a drowned land than a lost laud. We can pump it dry again, if we drown it; but if we yield to the Spaniards, our liberties are gone forever," they say.
"Cut the sluices!" It is the order issued by the Silent Man, and men go to work with their spades digging away the dikes. But what will the people in the country do? They must leave their homes. there is a scene of confusion. They take their pigs, cattle, goats, their goods and chattels, on board their boats, and hasten to Amsterdam. It is hard to see the property disappearing beneath the waves, to behold their houses floating away; but better this than to give up their rights.
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