The prudence of Maximilian wonderfully allayed the bitterness of religious strife in Germany, while other portions of Europe were desolated with the fiercest warfare between the Catholics and Protestants. In France, in particular, the conflict raged with merciless fury. It was on August 24th, 1572, but a few years after Maximilian ascended the throne, when the Catholics of France perpetrated the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, perhaps the most atrocious crime recorded in history. The Catholics and Protestants in France were nearly equally divided in numbers, wealth and rank. The papal party, finding it impossible to crush their foes by force of arms, resolved to exterminate them by a simultaneous massacre. They feigned toleration and reconciliation. The court of Paris invited all the leading Protestants of the kingdom to the metropolis to celebrate the nuptials of Henry, the young King of Navarre, with Margaret, sister of Charles IX., the reigning monarch. Secret orders were dispatched all over the kingdom, for the conspirators, secretly armed, at a given signal, by midnight, to rise upon the Protestants, men, women and children, and utterly exterminate them. "Let not one remain alive," said the King of France, "to tell the story." The deed was nearly accomplished. The king himself, from a window of the Louvre, fired upon his Protestant subjects, as they fled in dismay through the streets. In a few hours eighty thousand of the Protestants were mangled corpses. Protestantism in France has never recovered from this blow. Maximilian openly expressed his execration of this deed, though the pope ordered Te Deums to be chanted at Rome in exultation over the crime. Not long after this horrible slaughter, Charles IX. died in mental torment. Henry of Valois, brother of the deceased king, succeeded to the throne. He was at that time King of Poland. Returning to France, through Vienna, he had an interview with Maximilian, who addressed him in those memorable words which have often been quoted to the honor of the Austrian sovereign: "There is no crime greater in princes," said Maximilian, "than to tyrannize over the consciences of their subjects. By shedding the blood of heretics, far from honoring the common Father of all, they incur the divine vengeance; and while they aspire, by such means, to crowns in heaven, they justly expose themselves to the loss of their earthly kingdoms."