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.
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