History of His Own Time
A history of his own age by the French statesman Jacques-Auguste de Thou, who was in Paris as a young man during the massacre of 1572. The extract used here tells of the decision to kill the Huguenots and of the death of Admiral Coligny.
De Thou was born in 1553 and died in 1617. The sourcebook that hosts the extract describes him as a statesman and historian who witnessed St Bartholomew’s Day in his youth; his history was written long afterwards. For what happened inside Coligny’s lodging he names his informant: one of the killers, he says, reported the admiral’s last words as he gives them, and he sets beside this a different version that “others have written”.
The extract opens with the decision to “exterminate all the Protestants”, which De Thou says the queen mother approved, and with the duke of Guise instructing the captains in the king’s name. It then follows the killing of Coligny, the treatment of his body, and its secret burial at Chantilly. His sympathies show in the telling: he stresses the admiral’s composure and writes of “the just indignation of many” at the display of the corpse. The passage linked here is an extract from a very long work, translated at second hand through French.
Cited in
- 24 August 1572, firm date