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Updated: June 5, 2025
In the Rue de Béthisy, Paris, stood a house, the Hôtel de Châtillon, from the window of one of whose rooms assassins flung the gory head of the great Admiral de Coligni down to the Duke de Guise on the night of Saint Bartholomew, 1572. In that same room was born, February 14, 1744, Sophie Arnould, the daughter of the proprietor, who had transformed the historic dwelling into a hostelry.
The Admiral Coligni, one of the most illustrious of the Protestants, and the bosom friend of Henry of Navarre, was standing, with many other nobles, at the bedside of the monarch as he breathed his last. "Gentlemen," said the admiral, with that gravity which was in accordance with his character and his religious principles, "the king is dead. It is a lesson to teach us all how to live."
Our destinies, madam, had a great and surprising conformity. I was the daughter of Admiral Coligni, you of Secretary Walsingham, two persons who were the most consummate statesmen and ablest supports of the Protestant religion in France, and in England.
During this short interval the Protestant nobles continued to flock to Paris, that they might honor with their presence the marriage of the young chief. The Admiral Coligni was, by very special exertions on the part of Catharine and Charles, lured to the metropolis. He had received anonymous letters warning him of his danger.
Coligni now resigned all his appointments and preferments, except the nominal rank of admiral, and retired to his estates, where he passed his time in fervent devotion, and in the enjoyment of the calm happiness of domestic life.
Meanwhile Orleans had been well defended by Dandelot; and the great chief of the Roman Catholics, the Duke of Guise, had died by the hand of an assassin. Some attempts were made to implicate Coligni in the guilt of this murder, but the Admiral indignantly denied the charge; nor is there any ground for believing him to have had the least cognizance of Poltrot's crime.
Not that Condé is to be condemned for that effort, but the Admiral's exceeding loyalty is proved by his having kept aloof from it. Coligni continued to seek security for his co-religionists by peaceable means, for two years after that unsuccessful enterprise, from the savage reprisals of the Court upon its authors.
The Protestants were in France called Huguenots, but for what reason is not now known. They were sustained by many noble families, and had for their leaders the Prince of Condé, Admiral Coligni, and the house of Navarre. There were arrayed against them the power of the crown, many of the most powerful nobles, and conspicuously the almost regal house of Guise.
but the Huguenot chief, while fully equal to the ancient Roman in probity, in self-reliance, and in unflinching fortitude, was far superior to him in comprehensiveness of judgment and in fertility of resources; and moreover, the affectionate gentleness which marked the private life of Coligni, contrasts favorably with the stoic coarseness by which the character of Cato was deformed.
You had better gain the victory at once here than incur the hazard of a new campaign." "Well, then," said Charles, petulantly, "since you approve the murder of the admiral, I am content. But let all the Huguenots also fall, that there may not be one left to reproach me." It was on Friday, the 22d of August, that the bullets of the assassin wounded Coligni.
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