Amongst the victims was an infant brought to be baptized A poor boy, eight years of age, in the simplicity of his heart, offered eightpence, the contents of his little purse, in the hope of ransoming his life; but the murderers loved his blood better; whilst the Lady of Châtaigneraie afterwards amused herself with the butchers in counting the dead. This cold-blooded butchery revolted even the most violent of Henry IV.’s advisers, and the authors of the massacre were expressly exempted in cases of amnesty. Nevertheless, it may be seen in a publication of 1597, under the title, _Complaints of the Reformed Churches of France_, how much oppression, injustice, and violence, had to be submitted to. These grievances would alone fill a volume; but we will only cite a few examples. The Reformed were forbidden the free exercise of their religion throughout such provinces as Burgundy and Picardy; they had but a solitary place of worship in Brittany, and two in Provence; they were ill-treated, stoned, or thrown into the river on their return from worship; cannons were fired against their meetings; the king’s own sister was constrained to set out for Rouen, to take the sacrament, because the legate disapproved of her receiving it in the city; Bibles and the Book of Psalms were burnt by the hand of the executioner; they were forbidden to comfort the sick; and at Saint Quentin, for example, a man was outlawed for having relieved one infected with the plague in the street; children were carried off or baptized by force in the houses by priests, accompanied by officers of justice. The curate of Saint Etienne starved an old man in prison to extort an abjuration, and forced him to sign a deed in the presence of a notary, by which he condemned himself to banishment if he renounced the (Roman) Catholic faith; cities, given as hostages, were taken away or ransacked; the poor were neglected and driven away, even where the Reformed contributed the most to the common fund; there was systematic exclusion from all appointments, even from the magistracy of the city, from the freedom of companies, from the offices of notary and attorney; there was no justice before the tribunals; exorbitant fines and imprisonments [were inflicted] for the slightest cause; [as well as] disinterment of the dead, even of those who had been buried in the tombs of their ancestors, &c. &c. &c.