Charles hesitated long, and at last yielded, crying: "Kill all, then, that none may live to reproach me." The words of 'the weak king, wrought to madness by his perplexities, seem to have been accepted at once; and the scheme of murder took a wider scope. The Huguenots were doomed.
The question arises, Had Catharine any ground for charging the Huguenots with a plot against the king? A despatch of the Duke of Alva had been received, announcing it. White derides the idea as preposterous. Gandy examines the subject, and admits that the charge lacks all requisite proof. He ascribes the whole to fear. But this does not seem to explain it sufficiently.
The fact of a plot formed after Coligny's wound must have been established in some degree at least, to have brought the king to the policy of the queen-mother. The bed of justice on the 26th, the solemn declaration of Charles, the action of the Parliament, may have been rash and unsupported by proper testimony, but were to all appearance sincere. { 14} Charles was not a hypocrite. The declarations of Bouchavannes as to what was proposed at Coligny's house were doubtless more than justified by the loud threats of some of the leaders, like De Pilles and Pardaillan, whose words and deeds make La Noue call them stupid, clumsy fools.
The solution of this historical question is made the more difficult from the speedy termination of the house of Valois. That family and the League come down to us under a heavy cloud of odium; the succession of Henry IV. to the throne made them the only parties on whom all might safely lay the burden of an act at once a crime and a blunder, while it was equally necessary to shield the party with which Henry then acted from any charge of conspiracy. Interest raised up apologists for him and his associates: there was none to do reverence to the name of Catharine or the fallen house of Valois.
Once that the council had decided on its bloody course, the action was prompt. Guise, from being a prisoner in his house, was summoned to command. To the leaders of the people of Paris he repeated the charge of a Huguenot conspiracy against the king, of Swiss and German invaders, adding the approach of a force under Montmorency to burn the city. At four in the afternoon Anjou rode through the streets. At ten, another council was held, to which Le Charron, provost of the merchants, was summoned. To him the king repeated the same charges, giving him orders to put the able-bodied men in each ward under arms, and take precaution for the safety of the city.