Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
[Footnote 122: The Duke of Guise was so called from his face being
scarred by a wound received at the battle of Dolmans.]
On the night of the 11th May a force of Royal Guards and 4,000 Swiss
mercenaries entered Paris, but the Parisians, with that genius for
insurrection which has always characterised them, were equal to the
occasion. The sixteen sections into which the communal government of
the city was divided met; in the morning the people were under arms;
and barricades and chains blocked the streets. The St. Antoine
section, ever to the front, stood up to the king's Guards and to the
Swiss advancing to occupy their quarter, defeated them, and with
exultant cries rushed to threaten the Louvre itself. Henry was forced
to send his mother to treat with the duke; she returned with terms
that meant a virtual abdication. Henry took horse and fled, vowing he
would come back only through a breach in the walls. But Guise was
supreme in Paris, and the pitiful monarch was soon forced to yield; he
signed the terms of his own humiliation, and went to Blois to meet
Guise and the States-General with bitterness in his heart, brooding
over his revenge. Visitors to the chateau of Blois, which has the same
thrilling interest for the traveller as the palace of Holyrood, will
recall the scene of the tragic end of Guise, the incidents of which
the official guardians are wont to recite with dramatic gesture.
Fearless and impatient of warnings, the great captain fell into the
trap prepared for him and was done to death in the king's chamber,
like a lion caught in the toils. Henry, who had heard mass and prayed
that God would be gracious to him and permit the success of his
enterprise, hastened to his mother, now aged and dying. "Madame," said
he, "I have killed the king of Paris and am become once more king of
France." The Cardinal of Lorraine, separated from the king's chamber
only by a partition, paled as he heard his nephew's struggles. "_Ne
bougez pas_," said the Marshal of Aumont putting his hand to his
sword, "the king has some accounts to settle with you too." Next
morning the old cardinal was led out and hewn in pieces. The two
bodies were burnt and the ashes scattered to the winds to prevent
their being worshipped as relics: it was Christmas Eve of 1588.
The stupid crime brought its inevitable consequences--
"Revenge and hate bring forth their kind,
Like the foul cubs their parents are."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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