Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I to Edict of Nantes - James Aitken Wylie

unhappy king had recourse to one dodge after
another, verifying the French saying that "to excuse
is to accuse one's self." On the evening of the first
day of the massacre, he dispatched messengers to
the provinces to announce the death of Coligny,
and the slaughters in Paris, attributing everything
to the feud which had so long subsisted between
Guise and the admiral. A day's reflection
convinced the king that the duke would force him
to acknowledge his own share in the massacre, and
he saw that he must concoct another excuse; he
would plead a political necessity. Putting his lie in
the form of an appeal to the Almighty, he went,
attended by the whole court, to mass, solemnly to
thank God for having delivered him from the
Protestants; and on his return, holding "a bed of
justice," he professed to unveil to the Parliament a
terrible plot which Coligny and the Huguenots had
contrived for destroying the king and the royal
house, which had left him no alternative but to
order the massacre. Although the king's story was
not supported by one atom of solid truth, but on the
other hand was contradicted by a hundred facts, of
which the Parliament was cognisant, the
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