The queen of Navarre was poisoned
by orders from the court; the admiral was dangerously wounded 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.
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