Henry M. Baird · 267 of 379

CHAPTER XI · Transfer of power.

If the sudden catastrophe which brought to an end the bloody rule of Henry was naturally interpreted as a marked interposition of Heaven in behalf of the persecuted "Lutherans," it is not surprising that the unexpected death of his eldest son, in the flower of his youth, and after the briefest reign in the royal annals, seemed little short of a miracle. Had Francis lived but a week longer, the ruin of the Huguenots might perhaps have been consummated. Condé would have been executed at the opening of the States General. Navarre and Montmorency, if no worse doom befell them, would have been incarcerated at Loches and Bourges. The Estates, deprived of the presence of these leaders, and overawed by the formidable military preparations of the Guises, would readily have acquiesced in the most extreme measures. Liberty and reform would have found a common grave. But a few hours sufficed to disarrange this programme. The political power was, at one stroke, transferred from the hands of Francis and Charles of Lorraine to those of Catharine de' Medici and the King of Navarre; and the Protestants of Paris recognized in the event a direct answer to the petitions which they had offered to Almighty God on the recent days of special humiliation and prayer.