The greater number, as was to be expected, are deeds done by Catholics, for they were by far the more numerous and more frequently victorious; but Protestants also have sometimes deserved a place in this tragic category, and when we meet with them, we will assuredly not blot them out.
We confine the enumeration to the reign of Charles IX., and in it we place only such massacres and murders as were not the results of any legal proceeding.

We say nothing of judicial sentences and executions, however outrageous and iniquitous they may have been.
The first fact which presents itself is a singular one.

Admiral de Coligny's eldest brother, Odet de Chatillon, was a Catholic, Bishop of Beauvais, and a cardinal; in 1550, he had gone to Rome and had co-operated in the election of Pope Julius III.; in 1554, he had published some _Constitutions synodales_ (synodal regulations), to remedy certain abuses which had crept into his diocese, and, in 1561, he proposed to make in the celebration of the Lord's Supper some modifications which smacked, it is said, of the innovations of Geneva.
The populace of Beauvais were so enraged at this that they rose up against him, massacred a schoolmaster whom he tried to protect, and would have massacred the bishop himself if troops sent from Paris had not come to his assistance.
In the same year, 1561, the Protestants had a custom of meeting at Paris, for their religious exercises, in a house called the Patriarch's house, very near the church of St.Medard.

On the 27th of December, whilst the Reformed minister was preaching, the Catholics had all the bells of St.
Medard rung in full peal.

The minister sent two of his congregation to beg the incumbent to have the bell-ringing stopped for a short time.