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

Bartholomew Massacre, and yet the authors of that
terrible tragedy are all dead, and all of them, with
one exception, have died by violence. Charles IX,
smitten with a strange and fearful malady, expired
in torments. The Duke of Guise was massacred in
the Castle of Blois, the king kicking his dead body
as he had done the corpse of Coligny. The Cardinal
of Lorraine was assassinated in prison; and Henry
III met his death in his own tent as we have just
narrated, by the hand of a monk. The two greatest
criminals in this band of great criminals were the
last to be overtaken by vengeance. Catherine de
Medici died at the Castle of Blois twelve days after
the murder of the Duke of Guise, as little cared for
in her last hours as if she had been the poorest
peasant in all France; and when she had breathed
her last, "they took no more heed of her," says
Estelle, "than of a dead goat." She lived to witness
the failure of all her schemes, the punishment of all
her partners in guilt, and to see her dynasty, which
she had labored to prop up by so many dark
intrigues and bloody crimes, on the eve of
extinction. And when at last she went to the grave,
it was amid the execrations of all parties. "We are
394