chiefs all together
for to make an end of it."

Next year, on the 24th of August, 1572, when the St. Bartholomew broke
out, Tavannes took care to himself explain what he meant in 1571 by those
words, to take the chiefs all together for to make an end of it. Being
invested with the command in Paris, "he went about the city all day,"
says Brantome, "and, seeing so much blood spilt, he said and shouted to
the people, 'Bleed, bleed; the doctors say that bleeding is as good all
through this month of August as in May.'"

In the year which preceded the outbreak of the massacre, when the
marriage of Marguerite de Valois with the Prince of Navarre was agreed
upon, and Coligny was often present at court, sometimes at Blois and
sometimes at Paris, there arose between the king and the queen-mother a
difference which there had been up to that time nothing to foreshadow.
It was plain that the union between the two branches, Catholic and
Protestant, of the royal house and the patriotic policy of Coligny were
far more pleasing to Charles IX. than to his mother.

On the matrimonial question the king's feeling was so strong that he
expressed it roughly. Jeanne d'Albret having said to him one day that
the pope would make them wait a long while for the dispensation requested
for the marriage, "No, no, my clear aunt," said the king; "I honor you
more than I do the pope, and I love my sister more than I fear him. I am
not a Huguenot, but no more am I an ass. If the pope has too much of his
nonsense, I will myself take Margot by the hand and carry her off to be
married in open conventicle." Toligny, for his part, was so pleased with
the measures that Charles IX. had taken in favor of the Low Countries in
their quarrels with Philip II., and so confident himself of his influence
over the king, that when Tavannes was complaining in his presence "that
the vanquished should make laws for the victors," Coligny said to his
face, "Whoever is not for war with Spain is not a good Frenchman, and has
the red cross inside him." The Catholics were getting alarmed and
irritated. The Guises and their partisans left the court. It was near
the time fixed for the marriage of Henry of Navarre and Marguerite de
Valois; the new pope, Gregory XIII., who had at first shown more pliancy
than his predecessor Pius V., attached to the dispensation conditions to
which neither the intended husband nor King Charles IX. himself was
inclined to consent. The Queen