he
stabbed with his own hand. The murderers wore red bonnets supplied by one
of the "jurats" or aldermen of the city. They executed their commission so
thoroughly that the number of the slain was reported as two hundred and
sixty-four persons, all Protestants. If any one be mercifully inclined to
regard this statement as an exaggeration, and to base upon this instance a
general theory that throughout France the number of the victims has been
grossly over-estimated, let him read the following entry made in the
records of the Parliament of Bordeaux, and recently brought to light; he
will learn from this not only the approximate number of the slain as given
by the chief agent in the bloody work, but the anxiety which the latter
felt that he should receive due credit for his share in the great
undertaking of the destruction of the French Protestants: "On the ninth of
October, the Sieur de Montferrand, having been summoned to the court,
among other things said, 'that he had been informed that there were some
members of the court who had written to the Sieur Admiral de Villars,
royal lieutenant in Guyenne, that the said De Montferrand had killed, on
the day of the execution by him made, October the third, only ten or
twelve men, a thing (under correction of the court) wholly false, inasmuch
as there had been more than two hundred and fifty slain; and he would show
the list to any one who might desire to see it.'"[1135]

The same hand that placed upon the parliamentary registers this shameless
and atrocious boast, for the benefit of those that should come after, has
briefly noted the assassination of two members of parliament itself, with
an absence of comment in which we can read the evidence of fear. "From the
talk of to-day it appears that Messieurs Jean de Guilloche and Pierre de
Sevyn were killed as belonging to the new religion."[1136] The tardy and
flagrantly unnecessary effusion of blood at Bordeaux exercised no mean
influence in emboldening the Huguenots of La Rochelle to persevere in
their refusal to admit the emissaries of Charles the Ninth.

[Sidenote: Why the massacre was not universal.]

The massacre was, however, neither universal throughout France, nor
equally destructive in all places where it occurred. The reason for this
is to be found partly in the geographical distribution of the Huguenots,
partly in the temper of the people, partly in the policy or the humanity
of the governors of cities and provinces. W