of his son Edwarda VI., then in the tenth year of his age, the Protestant religion prevailed in England; but this amiable prince died at the early age of fifteen; and after a rash attempt of a few of the nobility to seat Lady Jane Grey, niece to Henry VIII., on the throne, the sceptre passed to the hands of Edward's sister Mary,b (1553) called the "Bloody Mary," an intolerant Catholic and cruel persecutor of the Protestants. In her reign, of only five years' duration, more than eight hundred miserable victims were burnt at the stake,-martyrs to their religious opinions. Mary married Philip II. of Spain, the son and successor of Charles V., who induced her in 1557 to unite with him in the war against France. Among the events of this war, the most remarkable are the victory of St. Quentin,' gained by the Spaniards, and the conquest of Calais by the French, under the duke of Guise, the last possession of the English in France. (1558.) In the same year occurred the death of Mary, about a month later than the death of Charles V. Mary was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, under whose reign the Protestant religion became firmly established in England. I. MARY OF III. THE AGE OF ELIZABETH.-1. As the marriage of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn had not been sanctioned by the Romish Church, the claims of Elizabeth were not recognized by the Catholic ⚫ States of Europe; and, the youthful Mary, queen of Scotland, the niece of Henry VIII., who was the next SCOTLAND. heir to the crown if the illegitimacy of Elizabeth could be established, was regarded by them as the rightful claimant of the throne. Mary, who had been educated in France, in the Catholic faith, and had been married when very young to the dauphin, was persuaded by the king of France, and her maternal uncles, the Guises, to assume the arms and title of queen of England; a false step which laid the foundation of all her subsequent misfortunes. 2. Elizabeth endeavored to promote Protestant principles, as the 1. St. Quentin, formerly a place of great strength, is a town of France, in the former province of Picardy, eighty miles north-east from Paris. On the 10th of August, 1557, the army of Philip II., commanded by the duke of Savoy, engaged the French, commanded by the consta ble Montmorenci, near this town, when the French were totally defeated, with the loss of all their artillery and baggage, and about seven thousand men killed and prisoners. The town, defended by the famous admiral Coligni, soon afterwards fell into the hands of the Spaniards, (Map No. XIII.) a. Son of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour. b. Daughter of Henry's first wifo Catherine. best safeguard of her throne; and in the year 1559 the parliament formally abolished the papal supremacy, and established the Church of England in its present form. On the other side Philip II. was the champion of the Catholics; and hence England now became the counterpoise to Spain, as France had been during the reign of Charles V., while the ancient rivalry between France and Spain pre vented these Catholic powers from cordially uniting to check the progress of the Reformation. 3. On the death of Henry II. of France, by a mortal wound received at a tournament, (1559) the feeble Francis II., the husband of Mary of Scotland, ascended the throne, but died the following year, (Dec. 1560,) and was succeeded by his brother Charles IX., then at the age of only ten years. Mary then left France for her native dominions; but she found there the Romish church overthrown, and Protestantism erected in its stead. The marriage of the queen to the young Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, in spite of the remonstrances of Elizabeth, led to the first open breach between Mary and her Protestant subjects. Darnley, jealous of the ascendancy which an Italian, David Rizzio, Mary's private secretary, had acquired over her, headed a band of conspirators who murdered the favorite before the eyes of the queen. Soon after, the house which Darnley inhabited was blown up by powder; Darnley was buried under its ruins; and three months later Mary married the earl of Bothwell, the principal author of the crime. An insurrection of the Protestant lords followed these proceedings; Mary was forced to dismiss Bothwell, and resign the crown to her infant son James VI., but subsequently endeavoring to resume her authority, and being defeated by the regent Murray, her own brother, she fled into England, and threw herself upon the protection of Elizabeth, her deadly enemy. (1568.) Elizabeth retained the unfortunate Mary a prisoner, gave the guardianship of her young son to whom she pleased, and, through her influence over the Protestant nobility of Scotland, was enabled to govern that country mostly at her will. 4. During these events in Scotland Elizabeth was carrying on a secret war against the attempts of Philip II. to establish the inquisition in the Netherlands, and also against a similar design of the Catholic party in France, which ruled that country during the mi nority of the sovereign. In both these countries the attempts of the Catholic rulers provoked a desperate resistance. In France, banishment or death had become the penalty of heresy, when, in January II. CIVIL AND WAR IN FRANCE. 1562, an edict was issued by the government, through the influence of the queen regent, granting tolerance to the Huguenots, as the French Protestants were called, and allowing RELIGIOUS them to assemble for worship outside the walls of towns. The powerful family of Guises were indignant at the countenance thus given to heresy; and as the duke of Guise was passing through a small village, his followers fell upon the Protestants who were assembled outside the walls in prayer, and killed sixty of their number. This atrocity was the signal for a general rising; the prince of Condé, the leader of the Protestant party, took possession of Orleans, and made that town the head-quarters of the Huguenots, as the capital was of the Catholics, while at the same time the aid of Philip of Spain was openly proffered to the Guises, and Condé concluded a treaty with Elizabeth, to whom he delivered Havre-de-Grace' in return for a corps of six thousand men. 5. At the opening of this civil and religious war, the greatest en thusiasm prevailed on both sides,-in the opposing armies prayers were heard in common, morning and evening,-there was no gam`bling, no profane language, nor dissipation; but, under an exterior of sanctity, feelings of the most vindictive hate were nourished, and the direst cruelties were openly perpetrated in the name of religion. The Catholic governor of Guienne' went through his province with hangmen, marking his route by the victims whom he hung on the trees by the road-side. On the other hand, a Protestant baron in Dauphiny' precipitated his prisoners from the top of a tower on pikes;-both parties made retaliatory reprisals, each spilling blood upon scaffolds of its own erection. 6. The first great battle was fought at Dreux,' the prince of Condé commanding the army of the Protestants, and the constable Montmorency that of the Catholics; but while the latter won the field, each of the two generals became prisoner to the opposite party. The duke of Guise, who was next in command to Montmorency, treated 1. Havre-de-grace, now called Havre, is a fortified town, and the principal commercial seaport, on the western coast of France, at the mouth of the river Seine, one hundred and nine miles north-west from Paris. (Map No. XIII.) 2. The province of Guienne was in the south-west part of the kingdom, on both sides of the Garonne. (Map No. XIII.) 3. The province of Dauphiny, of which Grenoble was the capital, was in the south-eastern part of France, having Bur' gundy on the north, Italy on the east, Provence on the south, and the Rhine on the west. (Map No. XIII.) 4. Dreux, the ancient seat of the counts of Dreux, is a town of France, forty-five miles a little south of west from Paris. (Map No. XIII.) his captive rival with the utmost generosity: they shared the same tent-the same bed; and while Condé, from the strangeness of his position, remained wakeful, Guise, he declared, enjoyed the most profound sleep. The admiral Coligni succeeded to the command of the defeated Huguenots; and Orleans, their principal post, was only saved by the assassination of the duke of Guise, whom a Protestant, from behind, wounded by the discharge of a pistol. The capture or death of the chiefs on both sides, Coligni excepted, brought about an accommodation; and in March, 1563, the treaty of Amboise' was declared, granting to the Protestants full liberty of worship within the towns of which they then were in possession. 7. The treaty of Amboise was scarcely concluded when its terms began to be modified by the court, so that, as a cotemporary writer observes, "edicts took more from the Protestants in peace than force could take from them in war." The Protestant leaders, Condé and Coligni, tried in vain to get possession of the young king; and a battle was fought in the very suburbs of Paris, in which the aged Montmorency was slain. (1567.) A "Lame Peace," a concluded in the following year, confirmed that of Amboise; but the wary Protestant leaders saw in it only a trap to ensnare them as soon as their army should be disbanded. The mask was soon thrown off by an attempt of the court to seize the two chiefs: the Huguenots were defeated in four battles; Condé was slain, and Coligni severely wounded; but in 1570 the peace of St. Germain' was concluded; and amnesty and liberty of worship were again granted to the Protestants. 8. The object of the court, however, was not peace, but vengeance; and Charles IX., now in his twentieth year, engaged zealously in the project of his mother Catherine, to entice the Protestant leaders to the capital, and there massacre them, and afterwards carry on a war of extermination against the Huguenots throughout the kingdom. For the purpose of enticing the Huguenots to the capital, and lulling them into security, it was proposed that young Henry of Navarre, a Protestant, should espouse the king's sister Margaret, a marriage 1. Amboise is a town and castle on the Loire, in the former province of Touraine, fifteen miles east of Tours. The castle occupies the summit of a rock about ninety feet in height. (Map No. XIII.) 2. St. Germain is a town of France, on a hill near the south bank of the Seine, six miles north of Versailles, and nine miles north-west from Paris. It is chiefly noted for its palace, originally built by Charles V., and often the residence of the kings of France. James II. of England, with most of his family, passed their exile, and died, in it. (Map No. XIII.) a. So called as well from its infirm and uncertain nature, as from the accidental lameness of its two negotiators. which would, in itself, be a bond of union between the two parties. The nuptials were celebrated with the greatest magnificence; and amid the festivities which followed, the plan of the massacre was matured. When the decree of extermination was placed before Charles for his signature, he at first hesitated, appalled by the enormity of the deed, but at length signed it, exclaiming, "let none escape to reproach me." III. MASSA CRE OF ST. OMEW. 9. About three o'clock in the morning of St. Bartholomew's day, the 24th of August, 1572, the young duke of Guise and his band of cut-throats commenced the bloody work by breaking into the apartment of the aged Coligni, and slaying him while engaged in prayer; the tocsin was sounded, and the Catholics of Paris, with the sign of the cross in their caps to distinguish them, rushed forth to the massacre of their brethren. What is surprising, the victims made no resistance! They would not derogate, at such a moment, from their character of martyrs. The massacre lasted, in Paris, eight days and nights, without any apparent diminution of the fury of the murderers. 10. Charles commanded the same scene to be renewed in every town throughout the kingdom; and fifty thousand Protestants are believed to have fallen victims to the monarch's order. A few commanders, however, refused to obey the edict: one wrote back to the court, "that he commanded soldiers, not assassins;" and even the public executioner of a certain town, when a dagger was put into his hands, threw it from him, and declared himself above the crime. The prince of Navarre, who had espoused the king's sister, and his companion the young prince of Condé, were spared only on the condition of becoming Catholics; but both yielded in appearance only. A circumstance as horrible as the massacre itself, was the joy it excited. Philip II., thinking Protestantism subdued, sent to congratulate the court of France: medals to commemorate the event were struck at Rome; and the pope went in state to his cathedral, and returned public thanks to Heaven for this signal mercy. 11. But the crime from which so much was expected, produced neither peace nor advantage; and the civil war was renewed with greater force than ever: mere abhorrence of the massacre caused many Catholics to turn Huguenots; and although the latter were at first paralyzed by the blow, the former were stung by remorse and shame. Charles himself seemed stricken already by avenging fate. As the accounts of the murders of old men, women, and children, were |