All right, because Arianwen can't keep her mouth shut on this one, and I qualify under the moderators' rules, I'm posting regarding the massacre.
I'm Catholic. Born, raised, continue to be, with a vast, Anglican family and one small, Catholic family. If you want to hear my religious views, visit the 'Tudor Queens' thread. I'm not a particularly good Catholic, but to me, while I'm not ashamed of my faith, it's a private, personal thing. No two members of ANY religion have the same beliefs on every point, so allow for that when judging my opinion, for it IS just that, an opinion, formed by education, reading the primary sources in the original languages, and lots of personal letters. For the massacre, I had one Huguenot branch of my family, roughly thirty people, wiped out, and another branch of my ancestors are the de Guise family, so if you try to tell me I'm biased, don't forget to tell me which way I'm leaning.
That being said, my being Catholic doesn't change the fact that the massacre was, in my mind, mass murder and inexcusable. I agree that the 70,000 number is most accurate, and the Catholic me agrees with it, but I'd like to point out one very important thing: the Paris numbers, the ones the royal command was directly responsible for, were between 3,000 and 10,000. Toulouse, Dijon, and the other cities accounted for the vast majority of the deaths, and why did those happen? Because Catholics used the excuse of Paris to take out the Protestants, because they heard the rumours of what had happened, and followed suit. So let's play the blame game, shall we?
Catherine wanted Coligny out of the way, whether he was plotting against her family or not. If Starkey published that, I tend to believe it, but it's still news to me. Catherine worked with de Guise to assassinate Coligny, because Coligny was the leader of the Protestants who killed de Guise's father and because Coligny was upsetting the balance between Catholics and Protestants that Catherine had spent THIRTEEN YEARS trying to uphold. De Guise swore revenge on Coligny for the murder, and probably the rest of the Protestants. As for Catherine...to me, self-defense or defense of loved ones is the ONLY excuse for taking life, and in my own defense, I probably couldn't. That's me, though, and I didn't live Catherine's life. She didn't want all Protestants dead, or even many. She wanted ONE.
As for the Guise family, they were the vicious Catholic faction, and I say that being descended from them. When Coligny didn't die, Catherine, de Guise, and the future Henri III knew the job had to be finished, and either eleven or thirteen leaders were decided upon. Catherine refused to allow certain leaders to be taken out because of royal blood, and quite frankly, because she was scared. So Catherine and the others finally get Charles IX to agree to murder Coligny and the others. Charles then says to kill them all. De Guise and Henri, well-satisfied, then leave and start gathering Catholics. At that point, what could Catherine have done? Gone after her son and de Guise? The king had given orders, the word had spread among the militant Catholics, and Catherine really had no choice. She could stand by her son, or she could alienate both factions and put her entire family in danger. What would YOU all have done?
So Charles IX gave the command to kill them all, and the chief among the bands of Catholic murderers was the Duc de Guise. Let's put blame where it's due. Want to guess how many innocent people de Guise killed, or how many died because Charles IX couldn't bear for anyone to accuse him of betraying Coligny? Also, when the killing was SPECIFICALLY planned for Paris, how logical is it to hold Catherine responsible for what other cities did upon hearing the news? They were obviously looking for an excuse to kill off their Huguenots, and they did it. Everywhere but Paris accounted for most of the death toll, so is Catherine really responsible? Is Charles IX? Is the Duc de Guise? Is Henri III? I put the most blame on the Catholics who did the actual killing, in Paris and elsewhere, on Charles IX for the order he gave to 'kill them all', the Duc de Guise for leading the patrols and killing many Huguenots himself, and Henri III for doing much the same. Catherine wanted one man dead, for right or for wrong.
My other question is this: Michael, you say Catherine's preferred method was poisoning someone. Yes, the Italians did prefer poison, and poison was ALWAYS suspected when someone young and noble died, but what instances are you referring to? Victims, methods, etc? When Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henri IV of Navarre, died suddenly before the wedding of Henri and Margot, it was said Catherine had poisoned Jeanne by means of perfumed gloves. Physiologically, my husband (a medical student who works in an ER and studied biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins) says this is all but impossible. Any chemical that would have poisoned Jeanne from smell alone would have been easily detected, and people knew that arsenic smelled like almonds, but also had to be ingested. Also, Catherine was cleared of her brother-in-law's death by her father-in-law and the rest of court. Therefore, where are your poison examples?
What I'm trying to say is that Catherine was far from a saint, but I think her biggest sin was loving her children too much, and loving power almost as much. She ruled through them, yes, but look at how some of them, Margot and Henri III in particular, ended up betraying her, and she forgave them time and again. That's what parents DO. She had to wait ten years to have children, and when she finally did, they were all but taken away from her, but still that precious to her.
When judging the actions of another, you have to be able to put yourself in their time, place, morals, upbringing, etc. This, in the 21st century, is almost impossible to do. I once heard history defined (brilliantly) as 'an interpretation of the past for the present'. There is revisionism because new documents are always being found, society and governments are changing, and perhaps, we come to understand historical figures in a new light. For example, we know now that Stonewall Jackson died not of losing his arm, but of pneumonia he had before the battle ever began. We know now that Jeanne d'Arc existed and about her life and death, something we had forgotten a century ago. History keeps changing because we keep learning more about it. How is that a bad thing?
Regards,
Arianwen
