Chapter XIII (5)

The fall of Rouen was quickly followed by the battle of Dreux, one of the most interesting actions of those wars. Condé was threatening Paris, when the Duke of Guise, following the example twice given by his father (in 1536 and 1544,) hurried from Rouen, where his troops had committed frightful excesses, but where he had successfully invoked the royal clemency in favour of the officers of the captured garrison, to give the inhabitants of the capital the benefit of his valour and skill. He there received a reinforcement of seven thousand Gascons and Spaniards; and Condé, seeing Paris so well defended, and that the chances of a general action, which he had at first been disposed to provoke, were no longer in his favour, retreated towards Normandy to establish communications with the English, who had already sent some slight succours to the Protestants.

Guise pursued, gained a march on him, and confronted him near Dreux. The movements of the Catholics were nominally directed by the Constable, but Guise was in fact the presiding spirit. Unwilling to assume the responsibility of such a battle as appeared imminent, the Duke desired to cast it upon Catherine of Medicis, and accordingly, on the 14th December, he had sent Castlenau to that princess to know her decision. The envoy reached Vincennes at the moment of her _lever_. She affected surprise that experienced generals should send for counsel to a woman and child, whom the imminence of civil war plunged in grief. The King's nurse coming in at that moment, 'You should ask her,' said the Queen ironically, 'if battle is to be given.' And calling the woman to her--'Nurse,' she said, 'the time has come that men ask of women advice to give battle; how seems it to you?' A second messenger from the _triumvirate_[28] pressed for a decision; the council was assembled, and left everything to the prudence and judgment of the generals. With this semi-authorisation, these took up a position in the villages adjacent to Dreux, menacing Condé's left flank. Numerically stronger than the Protestants, they had fewer cavalry, but were well posted. The main body was commanded by the Constable in person; Guise, too proud to act as second in command, remained in reserve with his own company of men-at-arms and a few volunteers who had joined him. With these five hundred picked horsemen he was prepared to strike in where his aid might most be wanted. For two hours the armies remained in mutual observation, without even a skirmish. After hearing the report of d'Andelot, who had made a reconnoissance, Condé would gladly have avoided a battle, or at least have changed the ground. "By a movement to his right he exposed his flank; the Constable wished to take advantage of this. Condé's advanced guard, under Coligny, furiously charged the Royalist centre, as it advanced under Montmorency. The Prince himself, who, with his main body, was opposed to St André and the advanced guard, neglected to attack them, but directed all his efforts against the principal mass of the Catholics, imprudently bringing all his cavalry into action, and penetrating to the very colours of the Swiss troops, who successfully withstood this terrible shock. Contrary to the advice of the Duke of Guise, who urged him to let this fury expend itself, d'Anville, with three companies of men-at-arms and the light horse, hurried to attack Condé; but soon, surrounded by the German cavalry, he was forced to retreat upon the right wing, composed of Spanish infantry, and protected by fourteen pieces of cannon. Meanwhile the Constable opposed an energetic resistance to the attack of his nephew Coligny. In the midst of this terrible _mêlée_, Montmorency, as unfortunate as at St Quintin, had his horse killed under him; he mounted another, but the next moment, wounded in the jaw by a pistol-shot, he was taken prisoner. Around him fell his fourth son Montbéron, Beauvais, and the Sieur de Givry. The Duke of Aumale--fighting with the utmost ardour, overthrown by the fugitives, and trampled under the horses' feet--had his shoulder broken, the bone of the arm being almost uncovered, and split up to the joint, so that for six weeks he could not ride. The Grand Prior was also wounded. The entire main body, and a part of the advanced guard, (which had been disposed on the same line with the centre, or _corps de bataille_,) were totally routed; the artillery covering them was in the power of the enemy; five thousand Swiss alone still displayed a bold front. The Protestants, however, headlong in pursuit of the vanquished, outstripped these troops and reached the baggage, which they plundered, 'even that of Monsieur de Guise and his silver plate;'[29] then, reforming, they returned to the charge against the Swiss--who, frequently broken, always rallied, and at last, seeing themselves attacked on all sides by Condé's lansquenets, were no longer contented to hold their ground, but pressed forward and repulsed their assailants."

The battle seemed won, when Guise, who had remained all this time inactive, at last decided to advance. He has often been reproached for the apathy with which he had so long beheld the disasters of the Catholic army. It certainly looked very much as if he wished to requite in kind Montmorency's inaction, eight years previously, at the combat of Renty. His conduct may have been, as M. de Bouillé inclines to believe, the result of prudent calculation; and it is difficult, after this lapse of time, to prove that less caution would not have been fatal to the Catholic army. The succour that retrieved the fortune of the day came so late, however, that the victors' loss exceeded that of the vanquished. When Montmorency's son, d'Anville, beheld his brother slain and his father prisoner, he hurried to Guise--whose reserve was concealed from the enemy behind the village of Blainville and a cluster of trees--and franticly implored him to rescue the Constable by an impetuous charge. Guise refused to stir. Presently, however, when he saw that the Huguenots, disordered by success, deemed the battle completely won, he advanced at a steady pace, rallying the fugitives, bringing up the advanced guard, and uniting with the Spaniards and Gascons. Thus supported, he moved boldly against the hostile battalions, which gave way before him. d'Andelot, whom fever kept from the field, first perceived the disastrous change in the issue of the combat. Unarmed, wrapped in a furred dressing-gown, he sprang forward to cheek the rout; and, observing the good order of the Duke of Guise's reserve--"Yonder," he said, "is a tail that it will be very difficult to scotch." In vain the Prince of Condé sought to rally his cavalry, paralysed by the sustained fire of eight hundred arquebusiers posted by St André. The carnage was frightful. Condé, wounded in the right hand, lost his horse, killed by a bullet; and as he was about to remount he was surrounded, and compelled to yield himself prisoner to d'Anville, who burned to revenge his father's wound and captivity. Thereupon the gallant Coligny, who had rallied fifteen or sixteen hundred horse in a little valley, returned to the charge to rescue the prince; and so terrible was his onset upon Guise's squadrons, that these wavered, and Guise himself was for a moment in great danger. But the fire of two thousand arquebusiers, posted on his flanks, covered the confusion of his cavalry, and compelled Coligny to a retreat, which was effected in good order. Night fell; Guise did not pursue; and Coligny saved a part of his artillery, but lost, in that day's action, three or four thousand men. The loss of the Catholics amounted to five or six thousand, and was particularly severe in cavalry. By a strange coincidence, the two generals-in-chief were prisoners. The conquerors had to regret the loss of several other distinguished leaders. In the closing act of this obstinately-contested fight, Marshal St André, thrown from his horse and made prisoner, was pistolled by Daubigny, a former follower of his, who had long been his bitter foe. Both the Labrosses, and Jean d'Annebaut, were also slain; and the Duke of Nevers had his thigh broken. At first it was rumoured in the Protestant army that Guise himself was killed. "Knowing," says Etienne Pasquier in one of his letters, quoted by M. de Bouillé, "that it was he at whom the Huguenots would chiefly aim, and doubting not but that his army was full of spies, upon the eve of the battle he declared publicly at supper what horse he would ride, and what would be his arms and equipment upon the following day. But the next morning, before proceeding to the rendezvous, he gave up that horse and accoutrements to his esquire. Well for him that he did so! for the esquire was killed, whilst he for a while escaped." It is recorded that the esquire, Varicarville, solicited permission thus to devote himself for his leader's safety. The stratagem was so successful, that when Guise, late in the day, made his appearance, the Admiral and Condé were completely astonished. "Here, then, is the cunning fellow whose shadow we have pursued," exclaimed Coligny. "We are lost; the victory will slip from our hands."--"The day's success came most apropos to M. de Guise," wrote Pasquier, "for of one defeat he made two victories; the captivity of the Constable, his rival in renown, not being less advantageous to him than that of the Prince, his open foe." Whilst Coligny marched off his uncle and prisoner to Orleans, to place him in the hands of the Princess of Condé, Guise, with characteristic magnanimity, courteously and kindly received his inveterate enemy, the Prince. Quartered in Blainville, which the Huguenots had devastated, and deprived of his baggage, he could command but a single bed, which he offered to Condé, with other marks of deference for the first prince of the blood. Touched by his conqueror's generosity, Condé momentarily forgot his hatred; supped at Guise's table--freely discussed with him the basis of a peace, of whose conclusion the presumed destruction of his party made him desirous--and finally accepted the proffered couch, only on condition that the Duke should share it with him.

The news of the victory of Dreux was received at Paris with transports of joy, and once more the name of "saviour of his country" was applied to Guise. The alarm in the capital had been very great, and not without reason. "If this battle had been lost," wrote Montluc in his _Commentaries_, "I believe it was all over with France: both the state and the religion would have been changed; for a young king may be made to do anything." The satisfaction of Catherine de Medicis was by no means unalloyed. She did not like Condé; but his defeat destroyed the equilibrium which she had hitherto so carefully maintained, to the benefit of her own influence. She now felt herself under the pressure of a power, moderate in form but absolute in fact. There was no help for it, however; neither, in the absence of the Constable, was there any excuse for withholding the chief command from the Duke of Guise, who was accordingly appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom. He did not long enjoy his new dignity. The battle of Dreux was fought on the 19th December. Just two months later, on the night of the 18th February, Guise--after arranging everything for the assault of Orleans upon the following day, and announcing to the Queen-mother his conviction of approaching triumph--left the camp on horseback, accompanied only by one of his officers and a page, to visit the Duchess, who had that day reached the neighbouring castle of Corney. "He had crossed the Loiret in a boat, and was walking his horse, when, at a cross-road, he felt himself wounded in the right shoulder, almost under the arm, by a pistol-shot fired behind a hedge, from between two great walnut trees, at a distance of only six or seven paces. Notwithstanding the darkness, a white plume he wore upon his head signalised him; and as, for the sake of ease, he had taken off his cuirass at evening, those bullets, aimed just above the armour which the assassin believed him to wear, passed through his body. 'They have long had this shot in reserve for me,' exclaimed he, on feeling himself wounded; 'I deserve it for my want of precaution.' Unable to support himself for pain, he fell on his horse's neck; in vain he endeavoured to draw his sword: his arm refused its service. Carried to his quarters, he was welcomed by the cries of the Duchess of Guise, whom he embraced and told her himself the circumstances of his assassination, by which he declared himself grieved for the honour of France. He exhorted his wife to submit with resignation to the will of heaven; then, covering with kisses the Prince of Joinville, who was weeping, he said to him, gently, 'God grant thee grace, my son, to be a good man!'" Poltrot de Méré, the assassin, escaped for the moment, although promptly pursued; but he lost his way in the darkness, and after riding ten leagues, found himself at daybreak close to the Catholic cantonments. Worn out with fatigue, as was also his horse--a good Spanish charger, for whose purchase he had received a hundred crowns from Coligny--he hid himself in a farm, and was there arrested, on the 20th February, by the Duke's secretary, La Seurre. The gift of the hundred crowns has been alleged against the Admiral as a proof of his having instigated the crime; but, in fact, it was no proof at all, for Poltrot had been acting as a secret agent and spy to the Huguenots, and might very well receive that sum, as he had previously received a smaller one, as guerdon for the information he brought. He himself, on his examination, declared he had been urged to the deed by Coligny, Theodore de Bèze, and another Protestant minister; but he could adduce no proof, save that of one hundred and twenty crowns received from Coligny, to whom he had been recommended, as a useful agent, by a Huguenot leader in eastern France. And his previous life rendered his bare assertion worthless, whilst the high character of the men he impeached raised them above suspicion--in the eyes of unprejudiced persons--of having instigated so foul a deed. They addressed a letter to the Queen-mother, repelling the charge, and entreating that Poltrot's life might be spared until peace should be concluded, when they would confront him and refute his testimony. Coligny declared that he had even discountenanced such plots, and referred to a warning he had given the Duke, only a few days previously, "to be on his guard, for there was a man suborned to kill him." At the same time he repudiated all regret for the Duke's death, which he declared the best thing that could have happened for the kingdom and for the church of God. But, to his dying day, he protested his innocence of the blood of Guise; and his life and character give weight and credibility to the protest. M. de Bouillé makes some judicious reflections as to the share Catherine of Medicis may have had in instigating the murder. Her jealousy and distrust of the Guises were very strong: she had opposed the siege of Orleans, and thrown obstacles in the way of its successful issue; she had hastened the execution of the murderer, as soon as he had accused the Admiral of complicity. We are certainly doing no injustice to the character of that most corrupt and crafty queen, when we assume the possibility that hopes of a mitigated punishment, or of means of escape, had been held out to induce Poltrot to depone against the Admiral; and that then, the deposition obtained, the pledge to the unhappy wretch was broken, and the murderer's doom inflicted. Such double treachery was quite in concord with Catherine's character. She felt that suspicions would attach to her, and endeavoured to stifle them by a display of profound grief, by loading with favours the family of the victim, and by a promise of severe and full measure of justice.

The death of Francis of Lorraine (on Ash Wednesday, 24th February 1563,) was the immediate cause of a treaty of peace between Catholics and Protestants, for which the Queen-mother had for some time been paving the way. On a small island in the middle of the Loire, near Orleans, the two illustrious captives, Condé and the Constable, met, each under strong escort; and terms were agreed upon, the principal of which were a general amnesty, and freedom of conscience and worship, under certain restrictions of place, for the Huguenots. All prisoners were released on both sides; and Orleans, which had so nearly shared the fate of Rouen, opened its gates to the King and Queen-mother, who were to take possession of it without any marks of triumph.

"On the eve of the tournament in which Henry II. was mortally wounded by Montgomery, that king held upon his knees his little daughter Margaret, afterwards wife of Henry IV. Diverted by the repartees of the child, who already gave promise of great wit and understanding, and seeing the Prince of Joinville, and the Marquis of Beaupréau, (son of the Prince of La Roche-sur-Yon,) playing together in the room, the King asked Margaret which of the two she liked best. 'I prefer the Marquis,' she replied, 'he is gentler and better.' 'Yes,' said the King, 'but Joinville is handsomest.' 'Oh,' retorted Margaret, 'he is always in mischief, and _will_ be master everywhere.' Joinville was but nine years old, and Margaret was only seven, but she had already deciphered the character of the man whose ambition set all France in a flame." A prediction of Francis of Lorraine, recorded by M. de Bouillé, confirmed that of the precocious princess. Observant of his son's character, from infancy upwards, he is said to have foretold that, carried away and dazzled by popularity and its vain promises, he would perish in an attempt to upset the kingdom. The event may fairly be said to have justified the prophecy. Henry, third Duke of Guise, fell by his ambition. "Inferior to his father as a warrior," says M. de Bouillé, "he perhaps surpassed all the princes of his house in certain natural gifts, in certain talents, which procured him the respect of the court, the affection of the people, but which, nevertheless, were tarnished by a singular alloy of great faults and unlimited ambition." The historian proceeds to give a glowing description of his beauty, accomplishments, and seductive qualities. "France was mad about that man," wrote Balzac, "for it is too little to say she was in love with him. Her passion approached idolatry. There were persons who invoked him in their prayers, others who inserted his portrait in their books. His portrait, indeed, was everywhere: some ran after him in the streets to touch his mantle with their rosaries; and one day that he entered Paris by the Porte St Antoine, on his return from a journey to Champagne, they not only cried _Vive Guise!_ but many sang on his passage: _Hosanna filio David!_ Large assemblies were known to yield themselves at once captive to his pleasant countenance. No heart could resist that face; it persuaded before he opened his mouth; it was impossible to wish him harm in his presence.... And Huguenots belonged to the League when they beheld the Duke of Guise." Although but thirteen years old, at his father's death, Henry of Lorraine had accompanied him in his recent campaigns, and at the siege of Orleans had had opportunity to show symptoms of that cool intrepidity for which he was afterwards remarkable. Profound dissimulation was another leading and early-developed feature of his character; and in this respect he had before him a first-rate model in the person of his uncle, the crafty and unscrupulous Cardinal of Lorraine.

This prelate, who was rather violent than brave, was profoundly grieved and alarmed by his brother's assassination, news of which reached him at the Council of Trent. On receiving the sad intelligence, he fell on his knees, and, lifting his hands and eyes to heaven: "Lord," he exclaimed, "you have deprived the innocent brother of life, and left it to the guilty!"--a cry of conscience, in which there was not a little truth. He immediately surrounded himself with a guard. In a letter, of which he took care to have copies handed about, he announced to his mother his resolution to retire to his diocese, and pass the rest of his days in preaching the word of God. Nevertheless he did not quit the Council, where his weight, however, was somewhat lessened by the Duke's death. But he recovered his ground, and finally exercised a most important influence on its deliberations. On his return to France, he obtained permission to retain his guard, consisting of fifty arquebusiers, who never left him, accompanying him to church, when he preached or said mass, and even conducting him to the door of the King's cabinet. For nearly a year after his return from Italy, however, he kept aloof from the capital and from public affairs, dividing his time between Rheims and Joinville, but still secretly carrying on his complicated intrigues. At last, on the 8th January 1565, he entered Paris with a considerable escort, and in a sort of triumph, accompanied by his young nephews, the Duke of Guise and the Marquis of Mayenne, and by a number of knights, presidents, and gentlemen. Marshal Montmorency (son of the Constable), who was now intimate with his cousin Coligny, and ill-disposed to the Guises, was Governor of the Isle of France, and had published, "on the 13th December, a royal ordinance, which, in a spirit of precaution indispensable in those troubled times, forbade all princes, nobles, or persons whatsoever, to travel with an armed retinue. The Cardinal had a dispensation from the Queen-mother, but he either disdained or neglected to present it to Montmorency. The Marshal was most probably aware of its existence, but he ignored it, and sent word to the Cardinal not to pursue his journey with a forbidden escort. The Cardinal, considering this injunction an affront, heeded it not, and was close to his journey's end, when he was encountered in the streets of Paris, (Rue St Denis), by a body of infantry and cavalry of both religions, under the orders of Montmorency and of the Prince of Portien, who charged and routed his escort; and he himself was compelled to seek safety in the humble dwelling of a rope-maker, dragging with him his nephews, of whom the eldest especially, a pistol in either hand, refused to quit the combat, unequal as it was, and, by recalling his father's memory to the Parisians, already acquired personal partisans. A faithful follower, who would have shut the door upon them, was mortally wounded by the balls which struck the very threshold of the room in which the Princes of Lorraine had taken refuge. '_Seigneur, mon Dieu!_' cried the Cardinal, in this imminent peril, 'if my hour is come, and the power of darkness, spare at least the innocent blood!' Meanwhile the Duke of Aumale, who had entered by the gate of the Louvre, created a diversion, which contributed to appease the tumult of the Rue St Denis; and under cover of night, the prelate, with his nephews and suite, was able to reach his _hôtel de Cluny_."

It was in 1565 that the consideration of the formidable results obtained by the close union of the Protestants, numerically weak, suggested to the Cardinal de Lorraine, and a number of Catholic nobleman, the idea of a counter-association on a grand scale, (the germ of this dated from some years previously), to be composed of prelates, gentlemen, magistrates, and of burgesses and other members of the third estate, for the purpose of acting with promptitude and independence, without awaiting the orders or the uncertain and tardy succours of Government. This was the association known in history as the League. At the end of the following year the young Duke of Guise, who had been campaigning with the Emperor Maximilian against the Turks, returned to France, just in time to see the curtain lifted for the bloody drama of a new civil war. Already Huguenots and Catholics were in mutual observation of each other. The former first assumed the offensive. Alarmed by movements of troops, fresh levies, and other menacing indications, they laid a plan to carry off Charles IX. then at his hunting-seat of Monceaux, near Meaux. Once in their hands, they calculated on making the young King the nominal chief of their party. But the plot was betrayed, and recoiled upon its advisers by exciting against them the implacable hatred of its object. "With even more oaths than were necessary," says an old writer, the King exhaled his wrath, and vowed vengeance against the Huguenots, from whom, however, he was for the moment compelled to fly. Escorted by six thousand Swiss, and by such other troops as could hastily be assembled, he took the road to Paris, hard pressed for seven hours by Condé and the Admiral. But the Protestant squadrons were unable to break the stern array of the Swiss; on the second day d'Aumale, with several hundred well-armed gentlemen, came out from Paris to swell the royal escort; and Charles entered his capital in safety, furious at the rebels, and well-disposed to proceed against them to any extremities the Guises might suggest. The anger of this family was greatly roused by a trap laid, two days later, for the Cardinal of Lorraine, who only escaped by quitting his carriage and mounting a fleet horse, (some say that he had even to run a long way on foot,) with loss of his plate and equipage.

Shut up in Paris, Charles IX. beheld the Huguenots almost at its gates, intercepting supplies and burning the flour-mills. At last, d'Andelot and Montgomery having marched towards Poissy, to oppose the passage of a Spanish auxiliary corps, Condé and Coligny, with fifteen hundred horse and eighteen hundred indifferently equipped infantry, without artillery,[30] were attacked by the Constable at the head of twelve thousand infantry, three thousand horse, and fourteen guns. There ensued the brief but glorious battle of St Denis, in which Montmorency was slain, and the Protestants, opposed to five times their numbers, held victory in their grasp, when d'Aumale, seeing them disordered by success, moved up with a body of picked men, whom he had kept in reserve, (as his brother Francis had done at the battle of Dreux,) rallied the fugitives, saved the Swiss from total defeat, rescued the body of the Constable, and compelled Condé to retreat. The laurels of the day, however, were unquestionably for the Huguenots, notwithstanding that they abandoned the field; and the next day they again offered battle to the royal army, but it was not accepted. Then Condé, short of provisions and weakened by the action, retired towards Lorraine, and effected his junction with an auxiliary corps of twelve thousand men which came to him from Germany. There ensued a short and hollow peace, which were better named an imperfectly-observed truce, and which did not preclude persecution of the Protestants; and then war again broke out, with the Duke of Anjou, (afterwards Henry III.) at the head of the royal armies. The first action of this, the third civil war, took place in the Perigord, and is known as the combat of Mouvans--the name of one of the leaders who was killed. He and another Huguenot gentleman were bringing up several thousand men to join the Prince of Condé, when they were attacked, and routed with great loss, by twelve hundred cavalry under the Duke of Montpensier. In this affair the young Duke of Guise greatly distinguished himself, by an impetuous and opportune charge on the main body of the enemy's infantry. Next came the fatal battle of Jarnac--fatal, that is to say, to the Protestants, who lost in it, or rather after it, by a felon-shot, their gallant leader Condé. Against overwhelming numbers, his right arm broken by a fall, wounded in the leg by the kick of a horse, dismounted and unable to stand, that heroic prince, one knee upon the ground, still obstinately defended himself. "The Catholics who surrounded him, respecting so much courage, ceased to attack, and urged him to give up his sword. He had already consented to do so,[31] his quality of prisoner ought to have protected him, when Montesquiou, captain of the Swiss guard of the Duke of Anjou, came up--with secret orders, it is supposed--and sent a pistol-ball through his head. Thus undisguised did the fury and hatred engendered by civil discord then exhibit themselves. At the close of this same fight, and at no great distance from the spot where Condé perished, Robert Stuart was also made prisoner; and Honorat de Savoie, Count de Villars, obtained permission, by dint of entreaty, to kill him with his own hand, in expiation of the blow by which this Scot was accused of having mortally wounded the Constable of Montmorency at the battle of St Denis. But even such barbarity as this did not suffice, and to it were added cowardly outrages and ignoble jests. The dead body of Condé was derisively placed upon an ass, and followed the Duke of Anjou upon his triumphant entrance into Jarnac, and was there laid upon a stone, at the door of the quarters of the King's brother; whilst religious fury scrupled not to justify by sarcasm the indignity of such acts."[32]

Greatly discouraged by the reverse of Jarnac, and by the loss of their leader, the Protestant party presently had their hopes revived by promised succours from Elizabeth of England, and from various German princes. Coligny--now the real head of the party, whose titulary chiefs were Henry of Béarn and his young cousin Condé--was joined by twelve thousand Germans, under Duke Wolfgang of Zweibrucken. On the other hand, the Catholic army was weakened by sickness and desertions, by the want of discipline amongst the Swiss troops and German _reiters_, chiefly composing it, and by discord between its generals. The Guises were displeased at being commanded by the Duke of Anjou, who, in spite of his extreme youth, had displayed valour, decision, and military talents, whose promise was not fulfilled by his ignoble reign as Henry III.

The siege of Poitiers cost the Protestant army much time and many men. After the most vigorous efforts for its capture, Coligny retired from before the town--which had been admirably defended, and owed its safety less to a diversion made by the Duke of Anjou, (who menaced Chatellerault) than to the great valour and activity of the Duke of Guise, recalling, on a smaller scale, the glorious defence of Metz by his father. Five breaches had been made in the walls, but the most determined assaults were steadily and successfully repulsed. Of the garrison, one-third perished, and the loss of the besiegers was very heavy. On the 9th September, Guise and his brother Mayenne left the town, at the head of fifteen hundred horse, and, after making a report of their triumph to the Duke of Anjou, proceeded to Tours, where Charles IX. received them with many caresses and flattering words. Four days later, the Parliament of Paris proclaimed the ex-Admiral Coligny a traitor, condemned him to death, and offered fifty thousand gold crowns to whomsoever should deliver him up alive. A few days afterwards the same sum was offered for his head; and the Guises had the proclamation translated into seven languages, and circulated throughout Europe. Then came the bloody battle of Moncontour, where eighteen thousand men under Coligny were beaten, with very heavy loss, by the Duke of Anjou's army of twenty-five thousand. It began with a long cannonade, quickly succeeded by a combat at close quarters, in which even the generals-in-chief were personally engaged. "The Duke of Anjou had his horse killed under him, but was rescued by d'Aumale; Coligny was wounded in the face, and lost four teeth; Guise was badly hurt by a ball in the foot: Mayenne distinguished himself at his brother's side." After an hour's deadly struggle, the Huguenots were beaten at all points. There was a terrible massacre of them; three thousand prisoners were made, and five hundred German horse passed over to the conquerors. This was a grievous blow for the Protestant party. Coligny, however, and the princes, shut themselves up in La Rochelle, and had leisure to look around them and organise their remaining forces, whilst the Duke of Anjou wasted his time in the siege of some unimportant places, and the Duke of Guise was laid up with his wound, which was long of healing. The state of the kingdom of France, exhausted by these repeated wars, was deplorable. Coligny, bold and active, made long marches southwards, collecting reinforcements and supplies, and finally reaching Burgundy, and getting the advantage in an encounter with the King's army, under Marshal de Cossé, at Arnay le Duc. In short, he had the road open to Paris. These considerations made Charles IX. anxious for peace; which, after some negotiation, was concluded at St Germain-en-Laye, in August 1570, on terms so favourable to the Huguenots--who, says Montluc, in his _Commentaries_, always had the best of it when it came to those _diables d'escritures_--that Pope Pius V. wrote to the Cardinal de Lorraine to express his violent disapproval.

As had more than once already been the case, the return of peace was quickly followed by the marked diminution of the influence of the house of Guise. The Duke of Anjou cherished an instinctive hatred and jealousy of Henry of Lorraine; whilst the Cardinal had incurred the displeasure of the Queen-mother, who, as well as Charles IX., had previously been greatly angered by the presumption of the Duke of Guise in aspiring to the hand of her daughter Margaret. At one time, so furiously chafed was the King's naturally violent temper by the pretensions of the Guise party--against whom his brother Anjou lost no opportunity of irritating him--that he actually resolved on the immediate death of the young Duke of Guise, who only escaped through the timidity and indecision of Henry of Angoulême, the King's bastard brother--commissioned to make an end of him at a hunting party--and through warnings given him, it is said, by Margaret herself. The Montmorencys, cousins of the Colignys, seemed to have succeeded to the influence the Guises had lost: the Marshal and his brother d'Anville governed the Queen-mother; and so fierce was the animosity between the rival families, that Guise and Méru, brother of Marshal Montmorency, openly quarrelled in the King's Chamber, and, on leaving the palace, exchanged a challenge, whose consequences persons sent expressly by Charles IX. had great difficulty in averting. In short, during the year 1571, "no more was heard of the Cardinal of Lorraine than if he had been dead; nor was anything known about the Guises, except that they had celebrated at Joinville the birth of a son to the Duke," who had married, in the previous year, Catherine of Cleves, widow of the Prince de Portien.

The apparent favour of the Admiral de Coligny, the return to Paris of the Guises, the seeming fusion of the two great parties that had so long distracted France, were preludes to the massacre of St Bartholomew. In narrating the strange and important events that crowded the year 1572, M. de Bouillé lays bare the vile qualities of Charles IX., his cold-blooded cruelty, his odious treachery, and the powers of profound dissimulation he had inherited from his mother. One anecdote, extracted from Fornier's MS. History of the House of Guise, is extremely characteristic. The King, whilst loading Coligny with marks of confidence and favour, hinted darkly to the Guises the existence of some sinister plot, urging them to take patience, because, as he said to the Duke d'Aumale, _bientôt il verroit quelque bon jeu_. It happened one day that "the King was alone in his chamber with Henry of Lorraine, both gaily disposed; the latter had seized a headless pike, used to shut the upper shutters of the window, and was amusing Charles IX. by the extraordinary dexterity with which he wielded this weapon, when Coligny unexpectedly entered. The King felt that the abrupt interruption of their play, on his appearance, might excite the Admiral's suspicions. Suddenly, therefore, he feigned violent displeasure; accused the Duke of having insolently waved the pole close to his face, and, seizing a boar-spear that stood by his bed, pursued Guise, who, as if the better to escape, ran, it is said, into the apartments of Margaret de Valois. Charles snatched the Admiral's sword to pursue the fugitive; and Coligny, deceived by this well-acted anger, interceded to obtain the pardon of the heedless young Prince of Lorraine."

There is no particular novelty in M. de Bouillé's account of the massacre of St Bartholomew. We cannot compliment him on the guarded manner in which he condemns his hero for his participation in that monster murder--an episode that would have sufficed to brand with eternal infamy a far greater and better man than Henry of Lorraine. Compelled to admit that the whole direction and combination of the massacre was intrusted to, and joyfully undertaken by, the Duke of Guise--that he was privy to and approving of Maurevel's previous attempt to assassinate Coligny, and that he afterwards stood under the Admiral's window whilst the Wurtemburger Besme, and others of his creatures, stabbed the wounded Protestant as he rose defenceless from his couch--M. de Bouillé informs us that, on quitting the place of his enemy's murder, whilst the most barbarous scenes were on all sides enacting--the consequence of the completeness and skill of his own preparations--Guise was _seized with compassion_, and had "the good thought to save many innocent victims, women, children, and even men," by sheltering them in his hotel. On the other hand, "those whom the Prince considered as factious, or as adherents of such--in a word, his political adversaries rather than heretics--found little pity at his hands." And he was proceeding "to carry death into the faubourg St Germain, and to seek there Montgomery, the Vidame de Chartres, and a hundred Protestant gentlemen whom prudence had prevented from lodging near the Admiral." The compassionate intentions of Guise towards these five score Huguenots and "political adversaries," could be so little doubtful, that it was certainly most fortunate for them that a friend swam the Seine and gave them warning, whilst a mistake about keys delayed the Duke's passage through the gate of Bussy. They escaped, pursued to some distance from Paris by Guise and his escort. On his return, the massacre was at its height. "Less pitiless than any of the other Catholic chiefs, he had opened in his own dwelling an asylum to more than a hundred Protestant gentlemen, _of whom he thought he should be able afterwards to make partisans_." His compassion, then, had not the merit of disinterestedness. Similar selfish considerations induced others of the assassins to rescue others of the doomed. It will be remembered, that Ambrose Paré found shelter and protection in the palace, from whose windows Charles IX., arquebuse in hand, is said to have amused himself by picking off the wretched Protestants, as they scudded through the streets with the blood-hounds at their heels. But all the skill of the Huguenot leech was insufficient, a few months later, to preserve that perfidious and cruel monarch from a death whose strange and horrible character was considered by many to be a token of God's displeasure at the oceans of blood he had so inhumanly caused to flow. Charles IX. was preceded and followed to the grave, at short intervals, by an active sharer in the massacre, the Duke of Aumale, and by one of its most vehement instigators and approvers, Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, both uncles of the Duke, and notable members of the house of Guise. The change of religion of Henry of Navarre and of the young Prince of Condé, the siege of Rochelle, the conclusion of peace with the Protestants, and the accession of Henry III. to the throne of France, are the other important events that bring us to the end of the second volume of M. de Bouillé's interesting history.

A WILD-FLOWER GARLAND. BY DELTA.

THE DAISY.

I.

The Daisy blossoms on the rocks,
Amid the purple heath;
It blossoms on the river's banks,
That thrids the glens beneath:
The eagle, at his pride of place,
Beholds it by his nest;
And, in the mead, it cushions soft
The lark's descending breast.

II.

Before the cuckoo, earliest spring
Its silver circlet knows,
When greening buds begin to swell,
And zephyr melts the snows;
And, when December's breezes howl
Along the moorlands bare,
And only blooms the Christmas rose,
The Daisy still is there!

III.

Samaritan of flowers! to it
All races are alike,
The Switzer on his glacier height,--
The Dutchman by his dyke,--
The seal-skin vested Esquimaux,
Begirt with icy seas,--
And, underneath his burning noon,
The parasol'd Chinese.

IV.

The emigrant on distant shore,
Mid scenes and faces strange,
Beholds it flowering in the sward,
Where'er his footsteps range;
And when his yearning, home-sick heart
Would bow to its despair,
It reads his eye a lesson sage--
That God is everywhere!

V.

Stars are the Daisies that begem
The blue fields of the sky,
Beheld by all, and everywhere,
Bright prototypes on high:--
Bloom on, then, unpretending flowers!
And to the waverer be
An emblem of St Paul's content,
St Stephen's constancy.

THE WHITE ROSE.

I.

Rose of the desert! thou art to me
An emblem of stainless purity,--
Of those who, keeping their garments white,
Walk on through life with steps aright.

II.

Thy fragrance breathes of the fields above,
Whose soil and air are faith and love;
And where, by the murmur of silver springs,
The Cherubim fold their snow-white wings;--

III.

Where those who were severed re-meet in joy,
Which death can never more destroy;
Where scenes without, and where souls within,
Are blanched from taint and touch of sin;--

IV.

Where speech is music, and breath is balm;
And broods an everlasting calm;
And flowers wither not, as in worlds like this;
And hope is swallowed in perfect bliss;--

V.

Where all is peaceful, for all is pure;
And all is lovely; and all endure;
And day is endless, and ever bright;
And no more sea is, and no more night;--

VI.

Where round the throne, in hues like thine,
The raiments of the ransom'd shine;
And o'er each brow a halo glows
Of glory, like the pure White Rose!

THE SWEET BRIAR.

I.

The Sweet Briar flowering,
With boughs embowering,
Beside the willow-tufted stream,
In its soft, red bloom,
And its wild perfume,
Brings back the past like a sunny dream!

II.

Methinks, in childhood,
Beside the wildwood
I lie, and listen the blackbird's song,
Mid the evening calm,
As the Sweet Briar's balm
On the gentle west wind breathes along--

III.

To speak of meadows,
And palm-tree shadows,
And bee-hive cones, and a thymy hill,
And greenwood mazes,
And greensward daisies,
And a foamy stream, and a clacking mill.

IV.

Still the heart rejoices,
At the happy voices
Of children, singing amid their play;
While swallows twittering,
And waters glittering,
Make earth an Eden at close of day.

V.

In sequestered places,
Departed faces,
Return and smile as of yore they smiled;
When, with trifles blest,
Each buoyant breast
Held the trusting heart of a little child.

VI.

The future never
Again can ever
The perished gifts of the past restore,
Nor, to thee or me,
Can the wild flowers be
What the Briar was then--oh never more!

THE WALL-FLOWER.

I.

The Wall-flower--the Wall-flower,
How beautiful it blooms!
It gleams above the ruined tower,
Like sunlight over tombs;
It sheds a halo of repose
Around the wrecks of time.
To beauty give the flaunting rose,
The Wall-flower is sublime.

II.

Flower of the solitary place!
Gray ruin's golden crown,
That lendest melancholy grace
To haunts of old renown;
Thou mantlest o'er the battlement,
By strife or storm decayed;
And fillest up each envious rent
Time's canker-tooth hath made.

III.

Thy roots outspread the ramparts o'er,
Where, in war's stormy day,
Percy or Douglas ranged of yore
Their ranks in grim array;
The clangour of the field is fled,
The beacon on the hill
No more through midnight blazes red,
But thou art blooming still!

IV.

Whither hath fled the choral band
That filled the Abbey's nave?
Yon dark sepulchral yew-trees stand
O'er many a level grave.
In the belfry's crevices, the dove
Her young brood nurseth well,
While thou, lone flower! dost shed above
A sweet decaying smell.

V.

In the season of the tulip-cup
When blossoms clothe the trees,
How sweet to throw the lattice up,
And scent thee on the breeze;
The butterfly is then abroad,
The bee is on the wing,
And on the hawthorn by the road
The linnets sit and sing.

VI.

Sweet Wall-flower--sweet Wall-flower!
Thou conjurest up to me,
Full many a soft and sunny hour
Of boyhood's thoughtless glee;
When joy from out the daisies grew,
In woodland pastures green,
And summer skies were far more blue,
Than since they e'er have been.

VII.

Now autumn's pensive voice is heard
Amid the yellow bowers,
The robin is the regal bird,
And thou the queen of flowers!
He sings on the laburnum trees,
Amid the twilight dim,
And Araby ne'er gave the breeze
Such scents, as thou to him.

VIII.

Rich is the pink, the lily gay,
The rose is summer's guest;
Bland are thy charms when these decay,
Of flowers--first, last, and best!
There may be gaudier on the bower,
And statelier on the tree,
But Wall-flower--loved Wall-flower,
Thou art the flower for me!

THE MASQUERADE OF FREEDOM.

I.

When Freedom first appeared beneath,
Right simple was the garb she wore:
Her brows were circled with a wreath
Such as the Grecian victors bore:
Her vesture all of spotless white,
Her aspect stately and serene;
And so she moved in all men's sight
As lovely as a Maiden Queen.

II.

And queenlike, long she ruled the throng,
As ancient records truly tell;
Their strength she took not from the strong,
But taught them how to use it well.
Her presence graced the peasant's floor
As freely as the noble's hall:
And aye the humbler was the door,
The still more welcome was her call.

III.

But simple manners rarely range
Beyond the simpler ages' ken:
And e'en the Virtues sometimes change
Their vesture and their looks, like men.
Pride, noble once, grows close and vain,
And Honour stoops to vulgar things,
And old Obedience slacks the rein,
And murmurs at the rule of kings.

IV.

So Freedom, like her sisters too,
Has felt the impulse of the time,
Has changed her garments' blameless hue,
And donn'd the colours dear to crime
First in a Phrygian cap she stalked,
And bore within her grasp the spear;
And ever, when abroad she walk'd,
Men knew Revenge was following near.

V.

She moves again--The death-drums roll,
The frantic mobs their chorus raise,
The thunder of the Carmagnole--
The war-chant of the Marseillaise'
Red run the streets with blameless blood--
The guillotine comes clanking down--
And Freedom, in her drunken mood,
Can witness all without a frown.

VI.

Times change again: and Freedom now,
Though scarcely yet less wild and frantic,
Appears, before men's eyes below,
In guises more intensely antic.
No single kind of garb she wears,
As o'er the earth she goes crusading;
But shifts her habit and her airs
Like Joe Grimaldi masquerading.

VII.

Through Paris you may see her tread,
The cynosure of all beholders;
A _bonnet rouge_ upon her head,
A ragged blouse upon her shoulders.
More decent now than once she was,
Though equally opposed to riches,
She still upholds the good old cause,
Yet condescends to wear the breeches.

VIII.

The Huns behold her as of yore,
With grisly beard and monstrous swagger;
The swart Italian bows before
The Goddess with the mask and dagger.
The German, as his patriot thirst
With beer Bavarian he assuages,
Surveys her image, as at first
'Twas pictured in the Middle Ages.

IX.

Her glorious form appears to him
In all its pristine pomp and glitter,
Equipped complete from head to heel,
In semblance of a stalwart Ritter.
With doublet slash, and fierce moustache,
And wrinkled boots of russet leather,
And hose and belt, with hat of felt
Surmounted by a capon's feather.

X.

Mysterious as Egyptian Sphinx,
A perfect riddle--who can solve her?
One while she comes with blazing links,
The next, she's armed with a revolver.
Across the main, whene'er the shoe
Upon her radiant instep pinches,
To-day, she'll tar and feather you;
To-morrow, and she merely Lynches.

XI.

While thus abroad, in varied guise,
We see the fair enchantress flitting,
She deigns to greet in other wise
Her latest satellites in Britain.
Sometimes, in black dissenting cloth,
She figures like an undertaker;
And sometimes plunges, nothing loath,
Into the garments of a Quaker.

XII.

You'll find her recommending pikes
At many a crowded Chartist meeting,
Where gentlemen, like William Sykes,
To exiled patriots vote their greeting.
You'll find her also with her friends,
Engaged upon a bloody errand,
When, stead of arguments, she sends
Her bludgeoneers to silence Ferrand.

XIII.

You'll find her too, at different dates,
With men of peace on platforms many,
Denouncing loans to foreign states
Whereof they could not raise a penny.
In short, to end the catalogue,
There's hardly any son of Edom
Who, in his character of rogue,
Won't tell you that he worships Freedom.

XIV.

Yet hold--one sample more--the last,
Ere of this theme we make a clearance;
One little month is barely past
Since London saw her grand appearance,
In one of those enormous hats,
Short leggings and peculiar jerkins,
Which men assume who tend the vats
Of Barclay and his partner Perkins.

XV.

To that great factory of beer,
Unconscious wholly of his danger,
Nor dreaming that a foe was near,
There came, one day, an aged stranger.
He was a soldier, and had fought
In other lands 'gainst revolution;
And done his utmost--so he thought--
To save his country's constitution.

XVI.

But saving states, like other things
Is not in highest vogue at present;
And those who stand by laws and kings
Must look for recompense unpleasant.
Fair Freedom, brooding o'er the drink
That makes the Briton strong and hearty,
Began to sneeze upon the brink
As though she scented Bonaparte.

XVII.

"Ah, ha!" she cried, and cried again--
At every word her voice grew louder--
"I smell an Austrian or a Dane,
I smell a minion of gunpowder!
Some servant of a kingly race
My independent nostril vexes!
Say--shall he dare to show his face,
Within this hall of triple X's?

XVIII.

"'Tis true--he is unarmed, alone,
A stranger, weak, and old, and hoary--
Yet--on, my children! heave the stone!
The less the risk, the more the glory!"
She ceased: and round the startled man,
As round the Indian crowds the cayman,
From vat, and vault, and desk, and van,
Thronged brewer, maltster, clerk, and drayman.

XIX.

"A precious lark!" the foremost cried;
"Come--twig him, Tom! come--pin him, Roger!"
"Who is it?" Then a sage replied--
"He's some infernal foreign sodger!
He looks as how he'd scored ere now
Some shoulders black and blue with lashes
So pitch him here into the beer--
And, lads--we'll pull off his moustaches!"

XX.

They did--what brutal natures scorn.
What savages would shrink to do--
What none but basest cowards born,
And the most abject and most few,
Would offer to an old man's head!
O shame--O shame to Englishmen!
If the old spirit be not dead,
'Tis time it showed itself again!

XXI.

What! in this land which shelter gave
To all, whatever their degree,
Or were they faint, or were they brave,
Or were they slaves, or were they free--
In this Asylum of the Earth--
The noblest name it ever won--
Shall deeds like these pollute our hearth,
Shall open shame like this be done?

XXII.

O most ignoble end of all
Our boasted order and renown!
The robber in the tribune's hall--
The maltster in the Judge's gown!
The hospitable roof profaned;
Old age by ruffian force opprest,
And English hands most vilely stained
With blood of an unconscious guest!

XXIII.

O Freedom! if thou wouldst maintain
Thy empire on the British shore,
Wash from thy robes that coward stain,
Resume thy ancient garb once more.
In virgin whiteness walk abroad,
Maintain thy might from sea to sea,
And, as the dearest gift of God,
So men shall live and die for thee!

Dies Boreales.

No. VIII.

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

_Camp at Cladich._

SCENE--_The Wren's Nest._

TIME--_Evening._

NORTH--TALBOYS--SEWARD--BULLER.

NORTH.

Have you dined?

TALBOYS.

That we have, sir.

NORTH.

With me this has been Fast-day.

TALBOYS.

We saw it was, at our breakfast. Your abstinence at that meal, and at luncheon, we knew from the composure of your features, and your benignant silence, was not from any disorder of material organisation, but from steady moral resolve; so his absence from the Dinner-Table gave us no uneasiness about Numa.

NORTH.

No Nymph has been with him in the Grot.

TALBOYS.

His Good Genius is always with him in Solitude. The form we observed stealing--no, not stealing--gliding away--was, I verily believe, but the Lady of the Wood.

NORTH.