106
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
In the midst of those lofty designs and hopes, Coligny was struck down. On the lTIorning of the 22nd of August he was shot at and badly wounded. Two days later he was killed; and a general attack \vas made on the Huguenots of Paris. It lasted some weeks, and was imitated in about twenty places. The chief provincial towns of France were among them. Judged by its immediate result, the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a measure weakly planned and irresolutely executed, which deprived Protestantism of its political leaders, and left it for a time to the control of zealots. There is no evidence to make it probable that more than seven thousand victims perished. Judged by later events, it was the beginning of a vast change in the conflict of the churches. At first it was believed that a hundred thousand Huguenots had fallen. It was said that the survivors were abjuring by thousands,! that the children of the slain were made Catholics, that those whom the priest had admitted to absolution and com- munion were nevertheless put to death. 2 Men who were far beyond the reach of the French Government lost their faith in a religion which Providence had visited with so tremendous a judgment; 8 and foreign princes took heart to employ severities which could excite no horror after the scenes in France. Contemporaries were persuaded that the Huguenots had been flattered and their policy adopted only for their destruction, and that the murder of Coligny and his followers was a long premeditated crime. Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in detecting proofs of that which they variously esteemed a sign of supernatural inspiration or of diabolical depravity. In the last forty years a different opinion has prevailed. I t has been 1 In reliqua Gallia fuit et est incredibilis defectio, quae tam en usque adeo non pacavit immanes illas feras, ut etiam eos qui defecerunt (qui pene sunt innumera- biles) semel ad internecionem una cum integris familiis trucidare prorsus decre- verint (Beza, Dee, 3. 1572; Ill. vir, Bpp, Set" p, 621, 161 7)' 2 Languet to the Duke of Saxony, Nov. 30, 1572 (Arcana, see, xvi. 18 3)' 3 Vidi et cum dolore intellexi lanienam illam Gallicam perfidissimam et atrocissimam plurimos per Germaniam ita offendisse, ut jam etiam de veritate nostrae Religionis et doctrinae dubitare incoeperint (Bullinger to Wittgenstein. Feb. 23. 1573; Friedländer, Beiträge zur ret. Gesell., p, 25....),
