So wonderfully had the Spirit of God wrought in France by means of the truth, that when men expected to see only the ruins of the crushed Huguenots after the massacre, they were surprised to find them resolved in many parts of the country to offer a determined resistance to the royal troops. There can be no doubt that French Protestantism had become a great political association; but not wholly so. There must have been many thousands of real Christians amongst them, though led to believe that it was right to oppose their oppressors, and fight for their lives, their families, and their religion. In the siege of Sancerre, when nearly all the young children died from hunger, we give one instance of perfect grace. A boy of ten years old, drawing nigh unto death, seeing his parents weeping near him, and handling his arms and legs, which were as dry as wood, said to them, "Why do you weep to see me die of hunger? I do not ask you for bread, mother. I know you have none. But since God wills that I must thus die, we must be content. The holy Lazarus, did he not suffer hunger? Have I not read that in the Bible?" Thus passed away that precious lamb, with many others, to be folded in the everlasting embrace of the Good Shepherd who died for them; of them may not it be truly said, "they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun [of persecution] light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." (Rev. 7:16, 1716They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. 17For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. (Revelation 7:16‑17).)
But not so died the perfidious and cruel king. The terrible crime in which he had taken so prominent a part, weighed heavily on his mind to the last moment of his life. Night and day he was haunted by the scenes he had witnessed on St. Bartholomew's eve. He imagined he saw his murdered guests sitting at his bedside and at his table. Sleeping or waking, the murdered Huguenots seemed ever present to his eyes with ghastly faces, and weltering in blood. But, as the Lord would have it, he-who had stipulated when giving his orders for the St. Bartholomew massacre, that not a Huguenot should be left alive to reproach him with the deed-was attended on his deathbed by a Huguenot physician, and waited upon by a Huguenot nurse. He evidently had not the slightest confidence in any of his former associates; he was even haunted by the terrible feeling that his own mother was causing his death by slow poisoning. He died of a strange and frightful malady, which caused his blood to ooze from the pores of his body, in less than two years after the St. Bartholomew massacre, having lived twenty-five years and reigned fourteen.
It is said that all the actors in the St. Bartholomew massacre, with one exception, died by violence. But we need not trace their tragic history. These bloody men were overtaken by divine vengeance, and brought down to the grave in blood. Catherine de Medici lived to see the utter failure of all her schemes, the death of all her partners in guilt, and the extinction of her dynasty. The Cardinal of Lorraine was assassinated in prison, and Henry III., the last of the Valois, fell by the dagger of the assassin in his own tent, and thus was the prophecy of John Knox fulfilled.
The vast materials furnished by the Reformation in France have detained us a little longer, and occupied more of our space than we can well afford; but the greatness of the Lord's work there, the mighty struggle between light and darkness, and the melancholy interest which all must feel in the results of that work, give it a peculiar place in the great revolutions of the sixteenth century.