his enemies, they cut off his right hand and tormenting him. with red hot irons, he was at last consumed by a slow fire. During all these horrid tortures his mind was kept in perfect fidelity and peace, and he ejaculated solemnly: 'Israel trust in the Lord, he is their help and their shield.' Such was the first confessor of Jesus Christ who suffered and died in France, and therefore demands our especial notice. A system of terror soon began over the whole of France.

"But in vain did its enemies oppose; the glorious march of the Reformation was onward and sure. France had now been bap

tized with the blood of the martyrs!

"In the midst of perils, opposition and persecution, the first national synod was called at the metropolis of the kingdom. This council published to the world their confession, which is entitled,

The confession of faith held and professed by the Reformed Churches of France, received and enacted by their first national synod, celebrated in the city of Paris, and year of our Lord, 1559.'

"In their contests at this period the Huguenot forces were led by the celebrated and brave Coligny and the Prince of Condé, two illustrious names in their annals. The Duke of Guise headed the papal armies. Towns were taken and retaken; when the Huguenots triumphed they destroyed altars and images, and the Romanists in their turn burned all the bibles they could seize. Such were the effects of fanaticism on both sides. To assert that the excesses were only committed by one party would be untrue, and that some of our race were allied to angels; but we hazard nothing in saying that the reformed, in almost every instance, resorted to arms from motives of self-preservation."

"Upon Sunday, August the 24th, 1572, was perpetrated the massacre of St. Bartholomew. De Thou, a Popish historian, relates that thirty thousand perished on this terrible occasion. Another estimates one hundred thousand. In Paris alone, they amounted to ten thousand, and among the number five hundred Huguenot lords, knights, and military officers, with several thousand gentlemen.

"This massacre which was perpetrated on St. Bartholomew's day, in the year of our Lord 1572, a year most aptly designated as infamous by Lord Clarendon, may be pronounced the foulest VOL. I.

49

and the bloodiest of ancient or modern times. The black deed has handed down the names of Catharine de Medicis and her son Charles IX. to the universal detestation of after ages.

"Charles, by a public edict, proclaimed himself the author of it, pretending that he was forced to the measure by the Admiral Coligny and his friends. In honor of it high mass was performed by the Pope; salvoes of artillery thundered from the ramparts of St. Angelo; a Te Deum was sung to celebrate the atrocious event, and a medal was struck for the same purpose. If every Protestant account of this terrible transaction must encounter suspicion, we ourselves will be satisfied with the testimony of this medal alone of Gregory XIII., at that time the Pope;-evidence that scatters to the winds of heaven all the excuses and attempted apologies for those who perpetrated the St. Bartholomew massacre. The medal has as usual on the obverse a head of the Pope, Gregorius XIII. Pont. Max. An. I. The reverse exhibits a destroying angel with a cross in one hand, and a sword in the other, pursuing and slaying a flying and prostrate band of heretics. Strange work for an angel. The legend is: Hugonottorum strages, (slaughter of the Huguenots,) 1572."b

Fac-simile of Papal Medal in honour of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's. Kindly furnished by Mr. Edward Walker, publisher of "Dowling's History of Romanism."

Sketch of the Huguenots by Mr. G. P. Disosway. See Christian Intelligencer. There is an original medal in the possession of the Rev. S. Farmar Jarvis, D. D. L. L. D., of Middletown, Connecticut; who obtained it at the mint in Rome. Electrotype copies of this medal are very numerous.

have preserved the memory of that fatal day, by adopting it as a christian name for their offspring.a

The city of La Rochelle in France, which had always stood firmly attached to the reformed interests, appears to have afforded (in 1572,) an asylum for the survivors of the bloody massacre of St. Bartholomew. It was here they issued their famous declaration stating the affair to be one of unheard of cruelty, and bidding defiance to their enemies the house of Guise. "And it was here they armed and fortified themselves, trusting in a just cause and to the favor of Heaven. For nine months they fought most gallantly in defence of La Rochelle, killing 40,000 of their enemies, who besieged them with the strongest and mightiest army of France without success. It was however in 1627, that this city made its last and ever memorable stand for the cause of the Huguenots.

"And it may safely be said, that this mighty city would never have fallen, (such was the undaunted heroism of the Rochellese themselves,) had it not been for the powerful minded genius of Cardinal Richelieu, who planned and executed such a mighty work against it, that in gigantic extent it has been compared by historians to the similar one executed by Alexander the Great for Tyre. The powerful mind of Richelieu saw at a glance that it was useless to carry on the longest siege against the city of La Rochelle, whilst a free communication remained open to the sea, on which the town was situated. He therefore closed the mouth of their channel by the erection of a prodigious mole, 4482 feet across the harbor, with a central opening. The frame work of this mole consisted of huge piles which was filled up with stones, and sixty hulks sunk with the same material, for the purpose of buttresses. One arm of this immense dyke overlapped the other, so that the entrance instead of being in front was lateral. A stockade of piles, interlaced with chains effectually stopped the passage. This work he completed and defended by 45,000 men, while forty pieces of cannon on the one shore, and twenty-five on the other, flanked the approaches; and the

Bartholomew le Roux and others.

narrow passage in its centre, (of one hundred and fifty feet,) guarded by a flotilla of vessels."a

"The brave Rochellese manfully defended themselves amidst warfare and starvation. They were reduced from over 27,000 to 5000, and out of a company of nearly 600 English allies, only 62 survived. Assure the Rochellese that I will not abandon them;' was the message of Charles of England to the closely besieged city, and just as Buckingham was taking command of the desired expedition, he was assassinated. This event created further delay, and the expedition arrived too late to relieve the place. The citizens bore their trials most manfully, and with a perseverance seldom equalled. The bearer of a letter was arrested, and compelled by torture to confess that he had swallowed it concealed in a silver almond; and he with the silver-smith who made the almond were both hanged. Two illustrious ladies, the Duchess of Rohan and her daughter, who were not named in the capitulation, are thus referred to by a writer of that day. 'Rigor without precedent, that a person of her quality, at the age of seventy, on quitting a siege in which she and her daughter had lived for three months on horse flesh and four or five ounces of bread per day, should be held a captive, deprived of the exercises of religion.' 'Protestants were no longer allowed to reside in this city of refuge,' unless they had been inhabitants before the arrival of Buckingham's expedition. The walls were prostrated, the fortifications razed, and a cross erected. Thus perished this little Christian republic which had defied the crown of France for seventy years."

History does not afford an example of more malignant or desolating war than that which raged in France during the seventeenth century. Louis XIV., the easy dupe of the Jesuits, confessors, and the designing Madame de Maintenon, and led on, also, by the Cardinal Mazariné, determined to convert the Reformers to the Roman faith. Not only force, but bribery was

tion.

Smedley's History of Reform. Religion in France, vol. iii., p. 164, Harper's edi

now employed; converts were to be purchased, and proselytism in every form resorted to."a

To enter into the minute particulars of this disastrous period would be superfluous; suffice it to say, that now commenced a renewal of the outrageous proceedings of former years. Commissioners were sent into the provinces to dispossess the Reformed of all they held as citizens; nothing awaited them but fines, humiliation and poverty. Troops of soldiers were quartered among them, who inflicted the most horrid barbarities, while others scoured the country, and dragooned men into false confessions. And not only this; hundreds were condemned to the galleys, and sent to the French provinces in America. One of their own ministers, Jeurieu, informs us that a friend of his saw a great number of men, at Arles, fastened to the horses, underneath, by means of cords, followed by long carts filled with men and women, tied by their waists to the carts! and these were carried to Marseilles, to be shipped to America; others again were sent to the islands of this country in the king's ships, to be sold, like slaves, to those who would give most for them.b Wearied with the incessant persecution, and despairing of repose around their native hearths, the Huguenots began to leave France for more secure regions. Their well known industry and skill made them be welcomed in every Protestant country. No

Sketch of the Huguenots, Christian Intelligencer, Mr. Disosway,
Jeurieu's Pastoral Letters.