conspirators,[112] who, under
the Prince of Conde, had plotted to destroy the Guises and to free the
king from their influence. It was the first act in a horrible drama, a
dread pursuivant of the civil and religious wars which were to
culminate in the massacre of St. Bartholomew at Paris. The stake was a
high one, for the victory of the reformers would sound the death-knell
of the Catholic cause in Europe. There is little reason to doubt that
the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, who now emerges into
prominence, was genuinely sincere in her disapproval of the horrors of
Amboise, and in her efforts to bring milder counsels to bear in
dealing with the Huguenots whom she feared less than the Guises; but
the fierce passions roused by civil and religious hatred were
uncontrollable. When the Huguenot noble, Villemongis, was led to the
scaffold at Amboise, he dipped his hands in the blood of his
slaughtered comrades, and, lifting them to heaven, cried: "Lord,
behold the blood of Thy children; Thou wilt avenge them." It has been
truly said that the grass soon grows over blood, shed on the
battle-field; never over blood shed on the scaffold. Treachery and
assassination were the interludes of plots and battles, and the
thirst for vengeance during thirty years was never slaked. In 1563 the
Duke of Guise was shot in the back by a fanatical Huguenot, and as the
wounded Prince of Conde was surrendering his sword to the Duke of
Anjou after the defeat of 1569, the Baron de Montesquieu, _brave et
vaillant gentilhomme_, says Brantome, rode up, exclaiming: "Mort Dieu!
kill him! kill him!" and blew out the wounded captive's brains with a
pistol shot.

[Footnote 112: One thousand two hundred are said to have suffered
death during the month of vengeance.]

The treaty of St. Germain, which has so often been charged on
Catherine as an act of perfidy, was rather an imperative necessity, if
respite were to be had from the misery into which the land had fallen.
Its conditions were honourably carried out, and Catholic excesses were
impartially and severely repressed. Charles IX., who was now twenty
years of age and strongly attached to Coligny, began to assert his
independence of the queen-mother and of the Guises,[113] and his first
movement was in the direction of conciliation. The young king offered
the hand of his fair sister, Princess Marguerite, to Henry of Navarre,
and received the Admiral and Jeanne of Navarre with much honour at
cou