demoniacal nature, it is pleasant to note
a few exceptions. Some Roman Catholics were found not only
unwilling to imbrue their hands in the blood of their Huguenot
neighbors and friends, but actually ready to incur personal
peril in rescuing them from assassination. Such magnanimity,
however, was very rare. All respect for authority human or
divine, all sense of shame or pity, all fear of hell and hope
of heaven, seemed to have been obliterated from the breasts of
the murderers. The blasphemous words of the furious Captain
Gaillard, when opposed in his plan to destroy Botzheim and his
fellow Germans, truly expressed the sentiments which others
might possibly have hesitated to utter so distinctly. "Par la
mort Dieu! il faut qu'il soit.... Il n'y a ny Dieu, ny
diable, ny juge qui me puisse commander. Vostre vie est en ma
puissance, il fault mourir.... Baillez-moy mon espee, je
tuerai l'ung apres l'autre, je ne saurois tuer trestous a la
fois avec la pistolle." Men, with blood-stained hands and
clothes, boasted over their cups of having plundered and
murdered thirty, forty, fifty men each. At last, on Saturday
afternoon, after the Huguenots had been almost all killed, an
edict was published prohibiting murder and pillage on pain of
death. Gallows, too, were erected in nearly every street, to
hang the disobedient; but not a man was hung, and the murders
still continued. Soon after a second edict directed the
restoration of stolen property to its rightful owners; it was
a mere trick to entice any remaining Huguenot from his refuge
and secure his apprehension and death. The Huguenots were not
even able to recover, at a later time, the property they had
intrusted to their Roman Catholic friends in time of danger,
and did not dare to bring the latter before courts of justice.
The Huguenots killed at Orleans, in this writer's opinion,
were at least fifteen hundred, perhaps even two thousand, in
number.

FOOTNOTES:

[1079] Charles IX. to Mondoucet, August 26th, Compte rendu de la com. roy.
d'histoire, Brussels, 1852, iv. 344.

[1080] "Estant croiable que ce feu ainsy allume ira courant par toutes les
villes de mon royaume, lesquelles, a l'exemple de ce qui s'est faict en
cestedite ville, s'assureront de tous ceulx de ladite religion." Charles
to Mondoucet, Aug. 26t