Francis II., husband of Mary Queen of Scots, and through her nephew of the Guises, allowed this persecuting family to carry on the cruel work of his father. The illustrious chancellor, Du Bourg, was hanged and burned in the Place de Grève, as to which Voltaire wrote: “This murder was of more service to Protestantism than all the most eloquent works written by its defenders.” Cardinal de Lorraine captured many other victims by surrounding a Protestant hotel in the Rue des Marais Saint-Germain. This street was the head-quarters of the reformed church, and many of its houses communicated with one another by means of mysterious apertures through which the inhabitants passed when threatened with arrest. The street in question, one of the most historic in all Paris, was lately rechristened by the name of Visconti in place of the one which it had borne for more than three centuries, and by which it was known, not only to the first Protestants of Paris, the d’Aubignés and the Du Moulins, but later on to the Duke de la Rochefoucauld and Mme. de Sévigné, to Racine and Voltaire, to Mlle. Clairon and Adrienne Lecouvreur, who all for a considerable time inhabited it, or were accustomed to visit its inhabitants. Meanwhile the reform continued to spread. Coligny and his two brothers, one of whom was a cardinal, joined it openly. These three Châtillons were now violently attacked in the Paris churches, and Jean de Han, a monk, took one day for his text, “Ite in Castellum quod contrà vos est,” which he thus translated; “March upon Châtillon, who is against you.”

On assuming the regency, Catherine de Médicis, indifferent to both religions, hesitated between the Châtillons and the Guises. She summoned a conference at Poissy in the hope of bringing about a reconciliation. Theodore de Bèze represented Calvin on the occasion, and for several months he was allowed to fulfil all the duties of pastor at Paris. The reformed religion was now celebrated openly, but in general beyond the walls. Four pastors, without counting Bèze, preached regularly in the different places of worship. One of them, Malot, had been vicar at Saint-André-des-Arcs, and the chronicles of the times speak of assemblies of from two to three thousand Protestants. Catherine de Médicis placed herself one day at a window in the Rue Saint-Antoine to see the Huguenots go by to their place of worship, and many of them, knowing the intention of the queen, wore on that occasion the insignia of their rank or profession. In 1562 the Consistory of Paris adopted, for the relief of the indigent, a regulation which was read from all the Protestant pulpits, with the names of those who were to distribute the alms, notwithstanding the danger thus brought upon them. Soon afterwards, indeed, a riot provoked by the clergy of Saint-Médard disturbed the service that was being celebrated by Malot in the adjoining temple of the Patriarch. Temple and church were invaded and sacked, and the officer of the watch, Gabaston by name, was afterwards hanged for having arrested indiscriminately the rioters of both religions. The temple was now shut up, while Saint-Médard was restored and inaugurated anew with great pomp, numbers of Protestants being sacrificed on the occasion. The constable of Montmorency gained the sobriquet of Captain Burn-bench (Brûle-banc) from having set fire to the interior of the reformed church of Popincourt. Subsequently he burned this same building from roof to basement and sacked another Protestant temple in the Rue aux Fossés Saint-Jacques.

The edict of January having granted to the Protestants a certain tolerance, Guise, who boasted that he would cut this edict in half with his sword, proved his word by the massacre of Vassy. The Protestants of Paris were terrified at this tragedy, but would not be discouraged. The very day the duke returned to Paris, his sword reeking with innocent blood, Bèze went to preach at the temple of Jerusalem, whither he was escorted by the Prince de Condé, a faithful Huguenot, and by a large company of mounted arquebusiers.

During the second civil war, in January, 1568, the citizens of Paris were, by an official proclamation, called upon to warn the Protestants of the capital to absent themselves from it, “until those who had taken arms against His Majesty should have laid them low.” In December, after the “lame” peace, as it was called, Parliament ordered the Protestants to shut themselves up in their houses “to avoid the murders which might follow.” It is asserted that ten thousand of them were assassinated during the six months which succeeded the peace, though this figure is doubtless exaggerated.

The extermination of the heretics had for a considerable time past been recommended to Catherine de Médicis by Philippe II., by the Duke of Alva, and by Pope Pius V. The queen, long irresolute, decided suddenly, just when the Guises had aggravated the situation by causing Coligny to be assassinated. Catherine, as we have seen in a previous chapter, obtained, at the last moment, the consent of the king; but it was Charles’s brother and successor, Henry III., who took the direction of the massacre and posted himself in the middle of the bridge of Notre Dame in order to have both banks beneath his eye. We know how the signal for the tragedy was given by the bell of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, and how Coligny was the first to feel the Catholic steel. The assassins who now plunged into their ghastly work carried a white cross in their hat and a kerchief tied in a knot on their arm.

At the court of the Louvre the officer of the guard, with a list in his hand, called out the Huguenot gentlemen who were staying in the palace, and the king, from one of the windows, saw the throats of his guests cut, to the number of two hundred. It is an error, all the same, to suppose that the massacre scarcely touched any but the aristocratic classes; a large portion of the Parisian population, merchants, workmen, belonged to the Reformation and perished.

Towards seven in the morning Charles IX., armed with a blunderbuss, fired upon some of the fugitives, whom he failed to hit because his fowling-piece did not carry far enough. This incident has been denied; but it has been gravely recorded by Brantôme, D’Aubigny, and Goulard. It was attested moreover to Voltaire by Marshal de Jessé. The Marshal had known the page, then almost a centenarian, who loaded and re-loaded the royal blunderbuss.

After the massacre the king went to the Parliament and declared that he assumed the whole responsibility for what had happened. The audience of senators loudly applauded the murderer, and the chief president overwhelmed him with the vilest eulogies. On the 27th August the chapter of Notre Dame formed a special procession to thank the Almighty for the “extirpation of the heretics now happily commenced”; and at the same juncture Panigarole, bishop of Asti, preaching before the queen-mother, Charles IX., and Henry, King of Poland, praised the king for having “in one morning purged France of heresy.” Nor did the municipality of Paris omit to have medals struck “in memory of Saint Bartholomew’s Day.”

More than one professor of the reformed faith now turned renegade. Condé abjured at Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Henry of Navarre and his sister at the Louvre. But the infant church was fondly nursed by such devotees as Bérenger and Portal, who endowed it with a sum sufficient to maintain its pastors in their functions and to educate candidates for the future ministry.

The edict of July authorised the exercise of the reformed religion at two leagues from Paris. Noisy-le-Sec was chosen as the place of worship. But in September, 1576, the congregation found itself assailed by the populace, and the faithful had to abandon all public service.

The League, prepared long beforehand by the Cardinal of Lorraine, was organised in 1576 by two curés of Paris, a number of citizens, and several fanatical magistrates. From this moment Protestantism was more completely crushed in the capital than it had been even by the Saint Bartholomew butchery. The Spanish ambassador reigned at Paris. Hatred of the Reformation stifled in the breasts of the leaguers all love of their country; and they went to the almost incredible length of offering, on the 20th September, 1591, by a formal resolution passed in the municipal council, the city of Paris and the crown of France to Philip II., King of Spain.

After the accession of Henry IV., in the interval which elapsed before the issuing of the Edict of Nantes, which permitted Protestant worship except within five leagues of Paris, the sister of the new king, Catherine de Bourbon, made use of the privilege which belonged to the nobility of performing religious worship in their own houses, with the doors open. The reformed church found an asylum within her walls; there the faithful adored their Maker in peace. On all occasions Catherine protected her co-religionists, and her brother, le Béarnais, when they came to him with some petition, used to send them on to her, saying: – “You must apply to my sister; your kingdom is now under feminine rule.” By the marriage and departure of Catherine in 1599 the Protestants lost a large part of their advantages; but, become Duchess of Bar, she returned every year to Paris and gathered the faithful around her. This continued, despite the frequent complaints of the clergy, until the Duchess’s death in 1604.

The Edict of Nantes formally countenanced the reformed religion even whilst forbidding its adherents to assemble for worship within five leagues of Paris. The meeting-place chosen in 1599 by the Protestants was the Château de Grigny, residence of the seigneur Josias Mercier des Bordes, a distinguished scholar as well as a councillor of state. Several times, on returning from Grigny, the Protestants were assailed by the populace, acting at the instigation of such fanatics as the aristocratic capuchin, Ange de Joyeuse. It was found necessary to erect extra gibbets for those who attacked worshippers returning from Grigny.

This place of assembly, however, was too remote, and at the end of six months the king transferred it to Ablon-sur-Seine. Even Ablon proved inconveniently distant, although it was nearer the capital than the edict permitted. The difficulties and dangers of the journey to this spot were great. The Protestants often went by water, and several were accidentally drowned. A petition presented to the king set forth that forty infants had died through having been carried in winter to baptism at Ablon. At length the king found that his own Protestant ministers could not render their duties to God and to himself on the same day; and Henry IV., yielding to the influence of Sully and of Calignon, assigned to the Protestants of the capital, as their place of meeting, Charenton, two leagues distant.

From that time the street and the faubourg of Saint-Antoine were traversed on Sunday by crowds of Huguenots, in carriages, on horseback, or on foot; and for their protection two fresh gibbets had to be erected, one in the name of the Lieutenant of the Town, the other in that of the Chief of the Watch. Many of the Huguenots now went to Charenton by water. On Sundays and holidays the river was covered with boats of all kinds, conveying, in the words of a Catholic poet of the time,

“La flotte des brebis galeuses

Qui vont au presche à Charenton.”

The lord of the manor, notwithstanding the increased value given to his property by the arrival of the Huguenots, many of whom established themselves in the neighbourhood of their one recognised place of worship, protested constantly against the toleration accorded to them.

Often the Huguenots returning from Charenton, where on Sunday they would pass the entire day, were attacked; on which an appeal was made to the king, who took the part of his former co-religionists. The death of Henry IV. was a terrible blow to the French Protestants, who were now at the mercy of the Jesuits, of Catherine de Médicis, and of her Florentine advisers, such as the Concinis. The principal Protestant pastors deplored aloud from the Charenton pulpit the death of the king, who had endeavoured to bring about an understanding, if not perfect harmony, between his subjects of both religions, and whose wise tolerance had been the cause of his death. Ravaillac was a fanatic who, in striking his murderous blow, had been prompted only by his hatred of Protestantism and of the king’s concessions to the Protestants. The temple constructed at Charenton was pillaged and burnt in 1621. In 1624 it was rebuilt on a larger scale; and the Protestant historians note that it was approached through an avenue of shops, where books of all kinds were sold, without any objection on the part of the consistory, which, although very strict in its rules for the conduct of the Protestants, did not enforce the Judaic observance of the Sabbath, “as practised,” says a writer of the time, by the Protestants of Scotland and England.

Many illustrious persons still belonged to the reformed religion. But gradually the aristocratic families were bought over to the other side; and the Jesuit Garasse declared that the church of the Protestants would soon be a church of beggars. The unhappy Protestants did not in any case neglect their poor; and as it was found impossible to keep priests and monks out of the hospitals, which were constantly invaded by them, the chiefs of the reformed religion established hospitals in secret places, which, however, were closed as soon as Catholic clergy or the public discovered them. In 1600 the Parliament of Paris interdicted these charitable establishments by a formal decree.

The first decisive step towards the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was the suppression of all representation of the Protestants in the Parliaments of Paris and of Normandy. In connection with this step Louis XIV. received, though only as a matter of form, Ruvigny, deputy general of the reformed church, and the eloquent pastor du Bosc, of whom, after listening to the exposition of his claims, the king said to the queen: “He is the best speaker in my kingdom.” He suppressed, all the same, the only guarantee of justice remaining to the French Protestants.

The Protestant consistories were now required to admit into their assemblies representatives of the Catholic clergy, whose mission it was to read to them a so-called pastoral warning. Already the minister Louvois had attempted to enforce conversion to the Roman Catholic religion by quartering upon the unfortunate Protestants dragoons, whom, if they remained faithful to their religion, they had for an indefinite time to support. The so-called “dragonnades” were for the most part confined to the provinces. Paris was exempted from them, lest the king himself should be scandalised by the scenes they well might lead to. Louvois had sworn to extirpate the “dangerous heresy,” and he assured the king that he was doing so by peaceful means.

Four days after the signing of the edict, and on the very day of its formal registration, the Protestant temples were demolished by the mob, who could not wait for official measures to be taken against the buildings already condemned. The cemetery adjoining the temple of Charenton was profaned, and the tombs of the Protestants violated, as, a century later, were to be violated the tombs of the Catholic kings. Notices were served on the chiefs of the Protestant families, commanding them, in the name of the king, to change their religion. Of the recalcitrants large numbers were sent to the Bastille, while the members of the consistory were exiled by “lettres de cachet.” Protestants who had been domiciled in Paris for less than a year were ordered to quit the capital, and the pastors in general had a fortnight given to them in which to leave France; while Claude, the most renowned amongst them, was ordered to quit French territory within twenty-four hours, being meantime watched by one of the king’s servants. In the months of October, November, and December, 1685, no less than 1,087 members of the reformed church emigrated from Paris, 1,098 abjured their religion, while 3,823, after refusing to abjure, still remained in the city. The emigration had been arranged beforehand by Claude and his colleagues. A constant service of guides was kept up between Paris and the frontiers, though it was death for those who had once quitted Paris to return. The exiles took flight at midnight on market days, when it was easier to pass the barriers. Notwithstanding the menace of capital punishment, some half-dozen Protestant ministers returned to Paris a year after the revocation in order to do secret duty among their co-religionaries remaining in the capital. Some were sentenced to imprisonment for life in the isles of Sainte-Marguerite, others were shut up in the Bastille, and one of them, the celebrated Claude (Claude Brousson, by his full name), was hanged. Meanwhile some of the Protestants who still ventured to stay at Paris continued services at the English Embassy, or at the legation of the United Provinces. Instead of one chaplain the legation of the Dutch Republic maintained two. But an edict was soon passed forbidding French Protestants to attend worship in the chapels of any of the foreign ministers.

Protestantism was not again to be tolerated in France until 1787, two years before the Revolution, many of whose reforms (including the abolition of torture) had been anticipated by the Monarchy, already condemned.

It must be added that under the Reign of Terror Protestantism was persecuted from a new point of view. Under the ancient régime, the complaint against it had been that it rejected much which ought to be believed. The Terrorists, when public worship had been abolished in France, hated it for its persistent adherence to doctrines which the enemies of religion had proscribed.

Paris at present possesses numerous Protestant churches representing various Protestant sects. The Independents have six different places of worship, and the Wesleyans two, at one of which the service is performed in French, English, and German. There is a Baptist chapel, established some thirty years ago by Americans resident in Paris, a Scotch Presbyterian church, an American Episcopal church, an English Wesleyan church, and three Anglican churches.