692. Elizabeth I vs The Catholics: A Massacre in Paris (Part 2)
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Cousin tis he, I know him by his look. See where my soldier shot him through the arm. He missed him near, but we have struck him now. Ah, thou base degenerate, chief standard-bearer to the Lutherans! Thus, in despite of thy religion, the Duke of Guise stamps on thy lifeless bulk. away with him, cut off his head and hands, and send them for a present to the Pope. And when this just revenge is finished, unto Mount Faucon will we drag his corpse, and he that living hated so the cross shall being dead be hanged thereon in chains. Now, no delay. Go and shoot the ordinance off, that they which have already set the street may know their watchword, and then toll the bell. And so, let's forward to the massacre.
Chilling. So that was the sinister Henri, or Henry, Duke of Guise, as ventriloquized by Christopher Marlowe in his tragedy, The Massacre at Paris, which he wrote in 1593. And what that play describes is the most infamous bloodbath in all 16th century European history. It is the massacre, the pogrom against French Protestants, or Huguenots as they were called, which began on the 24th of August, 1572, St. Bartholomew's Day. And Marlowe was writing his play two decades later. But the events of that day, the bloodshed in the streets of Paris, were still stamped onto the imaginations of English Protestants. They haunted their dreams because this was the proof, proof beyond any possible doubt, that Catholics were set on extirpating the true religion, the true Protestant faith, that they were plotting and conspiring to destroy Protestantism.
And that if they were ever given the opportunity, there was no atrocity, no barbarism, no crime, no cruelty that they would not commit in the name of their hellish fanatical devotion to the Bishop of Rome and his underlings. And Tom, people may be thinking, well, this is very overstated and very melodramatic. But actually, what the Duke of Guise is promising in that speech, the massacre, you know, he's punished this bloke. What's happened to this one guy is going to happen to thousands of other people. I mean, this is not so far from the reality of what actually did happen that day in Paris, is it?
Yeah, as we'll see, Marlowe is drawing on contemporaneous accounts for his drama. And even though in the play, the Duke of Guise is a kind of classic Tudor, dramatic Machiavelli, kind of cackling and all of that, The words in his speech do correspond, as you said, to what happened. The guy who was shot through the arm at the beginning of that speech, and then he gets dispatched by Guise's men, and the Duke of Guise himself jumps on him. That is the Admiral of France. We talked about him in our previous episode. He's a very distinguished soldier called Gaspard de Coligny. And the reason that the Duke of Guise is so triumphant as he stands over the corpse of Coligny, as he is in the play, is because Guise, although by now he's 21, so still a very, very young man, he is the most powerful Catholic nobleman in France, and Coligny is the leader of the Huguenots, the French Protestants.
But as we also mentioned in our previous episode, Guise's hatred for Coligny is personal as well as sectarian, because he blames the Admiral for having sponsored the assassination of his father nine years before.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–7:37
2
What triggered the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and how is it dramatised by Marlowe?
7:37–25:37
3
Who were the Duke of Guise and Gaspard de Coligny and why did their conflict escalate into massacre?
25:37–50:13
4
How widespread and brutal were the killings during and after St Bartholomew’s Day?
50:13–1:08:40
Speakers
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