The history of the house of Guise has a natural division into two periods, of nearly equal duration, whose point of separation may be fixed at the death of Henry II., or, more strictly perhaps, at the date of the treaty of Cateau-CambrÉsis, which preceded it by three months. Under Francis I. and Henry II., foreign wars engrossed much of the time and energy of the warriors, foreign diplomacy gave frequent occupation to the statesmen, of that restless and ambitious family, which, during the reigns of Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III., was busied with civil strife, domestic intrigues, and even with disloyal and treasonable projects. The treaty above referred to—signed on the 3d April 1559, and by which France abandoned no less than one hundred and ninety-eight fortresses, including the conquests of thirty years in Piedmont—stipulated a durable alliance between the Kings of France and Spain, "who were to love each other as brothers, and labour in concert for the extinction of heresy." This was the prelude of a long peace with the foreigner, but also of a long series of intestine wars, and of more bloodshed and misery than any invasion from without would have probably occasioned. France was on the eve of the Wars of Religion. Calvinism grew daily stronger in the land, many of whose most illustrious nobles were soon included amongst its proselytes; until at last the princes of the blood themselves, jealous of the influence, power, and pretensions of the princes of Lorraine, placed themselves at the head of the Protestant party. Thus, early in the reign of that sickly and feeble prince, Francis II., Bourbon and Guise entered the lists, to struggle for the chief power in the state, and to commence, during the lifetime of four sons of Henry II., a long contest for the inheritance of the declining house of Valois. On the one side, the chief posts were occupied by Anthony of Bourbon, King of Navarre, by his brother, the Prince of CondÉ—far superior to him in ability, and who was the chief of the party—and by that brave and skilful soldier and commander, Gaspard de ChÂtillon, Admiral de Coligny. Opposed to these, the principal figures in the Protestant ranks, stood the Duke of Guise and his brothers—notably the astute, cruel, and violent cardinal, Charles of Lorraine. Catherine of Medicis, who had been allowed little interference in public affairs during her husband's life, came forward at his death, and played a striking and important part in the strange historical drama which comprised the reigns of three of her sons. Adopting a machiavelian and unscrupulous policy, her intrigues were directed alternately to support and damage the most contrary interests; but, at the outset of her political career, her dislike to Montmorency, and her eagerness to grasp a share of the power from which he had largely contributed to her exclusion, impelled her to an alliance with the Guises, by whom it was evident that the kingdom was, for a time at least, to be virtually ruled. Her husband's body was yet above ground, when she joined them and her son at the Louvre—whither they had conducted Francis, after proclaiming him King, from his residence at the palace of the Tournelles; and scarcely had it been deposited in the vaults of St Denis, when the treaty between her and them was sealed by the sacrifice of Diane de Poitiers, whose daughter was their sister-in-law by her marriage with Claude, Marquis of Mayenne, but who, nevertheless, was driven ignominiously from court, and compelled to give up the costly jewels she had received from her royal lover, and to appease Catherine by the gift of her magnificent castle of Chenonceaux.

The circumstances of the time, and their own high connections, were singularly favourable to the Guises' assumption of the chief power. "No influence in the kingdom," says M. de BouillÉ, "was comparable to that of those two men. The clergy, the richest and the first of the three orders of the state, professed an unbounded devotion for the Cardinal; in Francis of Lorraine the greater part of the nobility, military men, even magistrates, habitually recognised a skilful chief, a sure friend, a zealous protector. The Queen (Mary Stuart) was niece of the Guises; their cousin, the Duke of Lorraine, was brother-in-law of the King; the husband of another sister of Francis II., Philip of Spain, was well pleased that the royal choice had fallen upon them in preference to Anthony of Bourbon, who would not have failed to apply his power to the attempted recovery of Navarre from Spain. Finally, obligations of gratitude attached the Duke of Savoy to them. So many advantages, such numerous means of access, united with so many talents and so much glory, rendered their position very natural." The humiliation of the Bourbons was proportionate to the exaltation of their rivals. Montmorency received, from the lips of the King himself, advice to retire to his domain of Chantilly, a rustication and disgrace which left the veteran Constable no resource but to ally himself with the princes of the blood. These were deliberating at VendÔme, with d'Andelot and their other confidential partisans, as to the means of opposing the authority of the Guise, when they received the overtures and exhortations of the Constable, who pressed and prevailed with the King of Navarre to repair to court. But slights and affronts were there offered both to him and to the Prince of CondÉ, and soon they were glad again to absent themselves. Within nine months of the accession of Francis, the plot known as the conspiracy of Amboise, of which CondÉ was the secret head, was formed, discovered, and crushed; the Duke of Guise displaying much energy and prudence, the Cardinal of Lorraine great cruelty and a most unchristian spirit, in its repression, and in the treatment of the baffled conspirators. For the third time Guise was named lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and invested with unlimited powers. The conspiracy to which he was indebted for this aggrandisement, was, however, the result of his brother's violent and persecuting spirit. The Cardinal had spurred the Huguenots to revolt. In all their proclamations, manifestos, and justificatory publications, they protested their loyalty to the King, and declared that they took arms solely against the family of Guise. It did not suit the purpose of these princes to admit the sincerity of the distinctions thus made. "What have I done to my subjects," exclaimed the feeble King, "that they should bear me such ill-will? Is it not rather to you, gentlemen, that they are opposed? I would that for a time you would depart, that we might see if these disorders ceased." The words had been suggested by the Spanish ambassador; but Francis knew not how to give them effect, and was easily cajoled by his uncles, who assured him that their absence would be the signal for attempts on his life and the lives of his brothers—attempts already planned by the Bourbons and supported by the heretics.

We pass on to the close of the short reign of Francis II., which extended over barely seventeen months. His death occurred on the 5th December 1560. The 10th of the same month was to have witnessed the execution of the Prince of CondÉ, condemned as traitor and heretic. But when a sudden swoon at vespers, succeeded by violent pains in the head, indicated the probable dissolution of the sickly monarch, whose constitution was already undermined by disease, Catherine de Medicis, unwilling to lose CondÉ, who served her as a counterpoise to the power of the Guise, took measures to delay his doom, and opened negotiations with the King of Navarre. This prince signed an agreement guaranteeing the regency to Catherine during the minority of Charles IX. She and her council were to have the sole direction of political affairs; whilst Anthony de Bourbon, with the title of lieutenant-general, was to be military chief of the kingdom. On the other hand, Catherine brought about his reconciliation with the Guises; inducing Francis II. to declare on his death-bed that the prosecution of CondÉ emanated not from them, but from his will alone. At the very moment she rendered this service to the princes of Lorraine, she was plotting with Bourbon their banishment from court. It were bewildering, and indeed impossible, in a brief essay on that busy period, to trace the tortuous policy and seemingly contradictory intrigues of the Queen-mother. It suffices to state her aim, then and for long afterwards. By pitting one faction against the other, and alternately supporting both, she secured for herself a larger share of power than she would have obtained by assisting in the final triumph of either.

The death of their niece's royal husband was a great shock to the Guises, who in his name had exercised absolute authority. It was subject of rejoicing to the Protestants, who deemed it "a stroke of heavenly mercy"—a mystical expression of satisfaction, which made some suspect poison to be the cause of the King's death. For this there seems to have been no foundation. But such suspicions were the fashion of the time. Beside the bed of Francis stood Coligny, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and many other nobles. When the monarch breathed his last, "Gentlemen," said the Admiral, with his habitual earnest gravity, "the King is dead; 'tis a lesson for us how to live." He returned home with one of his intimates, named Fontaines, and fell into a profound reverie, his tooth-pick in his mouth and his feet to the fire. He did not observe that his boots were burning, until Fontaines called his attention to the fact. "Ah, Fontaines!" then replied the Admiral, "not a week ago you and I would each have given a leg for things to take this turn, and now, we get off with a pair of boots; it is cheap." Not one of the six brothers Guise followed the funeral of Francis II., whose loss they had such reason to deplore. In cutting allusion to this indecent neglect, an unknown hand affixed to the black velvet that covered the royal bier the following inscription—"Where is Tanneguy DuchÂtel? But he was a Frenchman!" This was a chamberlain of Charles VII., who, although unjustly banished from court, had mourned his master's death, and had provided magnificently for his interment, sacrilegiously neglected by that king's own son. The inscription bore a double sting, for it both condemned the conduct of the Guises, and stigmatised them as foreigners. In vain did they strive to justify themselves, alleging the necessity of their presence at court. And they were equally unable to refute the charge of having appropriated, during the illness of Francis, a considerable sum that remained in the royal treasury. This was done with the connivance of Catherine.

The state of affairs after the accession of Charles IX., was as follows: CondÉ was released from prison, the King of Navarre was in favour with the Queen-mother, the Bourbons and Guises affected mutual friendship, the Colignys and the Constable were continually at the palace; the star of the Bourbon party was in the ascendant. But those were the days of political and religious renegades, and a very short time produced wonderful changes in the composition of the two great parties. Soon we find the King of Navarre going over to the Church of Rome, and the Constable abandoning the cause of his nephews to assist at the germination of the celebrated League, into which the Guises and other great Catholic chiefs afterwards entered for the suppression of Protestantism, and for the overthrow of the party headed by CondÉ and Coligny.

It is a matter of extreme difficulty to form a correct opinion of the character of the Duke of Guise, diversely represented as it has been by the party writers of the time. M. de BouillÉ has endeavoured, with patience and industry, to sift the truth from the mass of conflicting evidence; and if he is not completely successful, it is because such contradictory testimony as he has to deal with defies reconciliation. His zeal for truth leads him into researches and disquisitions through which not all of his readers perhaps will have patience to follow him, although they are doubtless essential to the completeness of a work which is eminently what the French term un ouvrage sÉrieux. With an evident desire for strict impartiality, he leans a little, as it appears to us, to the Catholic party—no unnatural bias in a writer of that religion. We, on the other hand, as Protestants, have to guard ourselves against the strong interest and sympathy inspired by the faith, the valour, and the sufferings of the French Huguenots: and we cannot but admit the justice of M. de BouillÉ's conclusion, that although, amongst these, many were martyrs for religion's sake, many others assumed the Protestant badge from motives of political convenience as much as from conscientious conviction. As regards the second Duke of Guise, however, we find difficulty in always coinciding with his present historian, who makes him out a better man than previous reading had taught us to believe him. All the three Dukes of Guise were moral giants—men of extraordinary qualities, who towered far above their cotemporaries. All three were valiant, sagacious, and skilful in no common degree; but they were also ambitious and unscrupulous—the son more so than the father, the grandson more than either. In estimating their qualities and actions, M. de BouillÉ justly makes much allowance for the prevalent fanaticism of the time; but he sometimes goes too far towards the adoption of the opinions of Catholic writers, who find extenuating circumstances in the conduct of the arch-butcher, Henry of Lorraine, on the night of St Bartholomew, and who acquit his father of sanctioning that barbarous massacre at Vassy, which was the spark to the powder—the actual commencement of the wars of religion.

The little town of Vassy, adjacent to the domains of Guise, was the headquarters of a numerous Protestant congregation, whose preaching and acts of devotion "greatly scandalised," says M. de BouillÉ, "the virtuous Antoinette de Bourbon, surnamed by the Huguenots, Mother of the tyrants and enemies of the gospel." She constantly implored the Duke, her son, to rid her of these obnoxious neighbours, which he promised to do, if it were possible without violation of the royal edicts. Upon the 1st March 1562, a journey he made in company with his wife—then with child and travelling in a litter—led him through Vassy. "His suite consisted of two hundred men-at-arms, all partaking, and even surpassing, the exalted Catholicism and warlike temper of their chief. At Vassy he was to be joined by sixty more. On arriving there, he entered the church to hear high mass; and, whether it was that the psalms of the Calvinists reached his ears, or that he was maliciously informed of their being then assembled, or that the clergy of Vassy complained and solicited the repression of outrages received from the sectarians, the fact is that he learned that their preaching was then going on. With the intention of giving them a severe admonition, he sent for their minister, and for the chief members of the congregation. His messenger was Labrosse, the son,—who was accompanied by two German pages, Schleck and Klingberg, one of whom carried his arquebuse and the other his pistols. These young men were violent in the fulfilment of their mission, and an exchange of insults was soon followed by bloodshed. At the first shots fired, the men-at-arms and the varlets, already disposed to hostilities, took part in the unequal fray. The five or six hundred Protestants, although superior in number, were far from sufficiently armed to offer an effectual resistance. They sought to establish a barricade, and to defend themselves with sticks and stones. The Duke, who hurried to the scene of the tumult, found himself unable to repress it. Some of his gentlemen were hit; the face of Labrosse, the father, streamed with blood; Guise himself was wounded in the left cheek by a stone. At sight of his hurt, his followers' fury knew no bounds. The Protestants, overwhelmed, (ÉcrasÉs,) uttered piercing cries; and, endeavouring to escape by all issues, even by the roof, delivered themselves to the bullets of their enemies. Anne d'Est, who was peaceably pursuing her journey, paused on hearing the sounds of strife, and sent in all haste to entreat her husband to put an end to the effusion of blood; but the carnage lasted an hour; sixty men and women lost their lives and two hundred were wounded. On the side of the Prince of Lorraine, some men were also more or less hurt; only one was killed."

A champion so energetic and formidable, a commander so much beloved, as the Duke of Guise, would certainly have succeeded, had he really attempted and desired to do so, in somewhat less than an hour, in checking his men-at-arms and stopping this inhuman massacre, which procured him from the Reformed party the odious nickname of the Butcher of Vassy. M. de BouillÉ inclines to consider the slaughter on that fatal day as a sort of cruel reprisals, deplorable certainly, but in some measure extenuated by various excesses committed by the Huguenots—excesses, however, to which he but vaguely refers. It must be remembered that, at the time of the massacre of Vassy, an edict, obtained less than two months previously by the exertions and influence of Coligny and l'Hospital, and granting the Protestants liberty of conscience and free exercise of their religion, was in full force. The following passage from M. de BouillÉ sufficiently shows the animus of Guise—"When the return of a gloomy calm suffered him to discern the sad character of such a scene, the Duke fell into a passion with Claude Tourneur, captain of the town and castle of Vassy for Mary Stuart; he imputed the day's misfortunes to the toleration that officer had shown in suffering the formation of Calvinist assemblies. Tourneur, in his justification, cited the edict of January; but Guise clapped his hand to his sword, 'This,' he said, 'shall rescind that detestable edict!'" When the news of the massacre reached Paris, Theodore de BÈze, deputed by the Calvinist church of the capital, presented himself before Catherine to demand severe justice on the Duke of Guise. Catherine received him well and replied favourably; When the King of Navarre, in all the fervour of his new religion and sudden friendship for the Duke, burst out into anger against BÈze, attributing all the fault to the Protestants of Vassy, and declaring that "whoever touched as much as the finger-tip of his brother the Duke of Guise touched him in the middle of his heart." "Sire," replied BÈze, "it assuredly behoves that church of God in whose name I speak to endure blows, and not to strike them; but may it please you also to remember, that it is an anvil which has worn out many hammers." This menacing resignation was an omen of approaching calamities.

Although Anthony of Bourbon, King of Navarre, was of little value at the council-board, or in any other way than as a brave man-at-arms, his conversion and alliance were highly prized by the Catholic party, as a great diminution of the prestige of the Protestants. The Duke of Guise and his brothers, the Constable, and even the Spanish ambassador Chantonnay, combined to flatter and cajole the feeble prince, who on his part knew not how sufficiently to demonstrate his zeal for Popery and his love for the family of Lorraine. On Palm Sunday he marched in procession, accompanied by his new friends and by two thousand gentlemen of their party, bearing the consecrated branches from the church of St Genevieve to that of Notre-Dame. On occasion of this solemnity it has been said that the life of the Duke of Guise was in danger—some Protestant gentlemen having offered to assassinate him, if their ministers would authorise the deed in the name of religion. This authorisation was refused; the Calvinist churchmen "with greater prudence," says M. de BouillÉ, "preferring to await the result of the complaint they had made with respect to the massacre of Vassy." It is hardly fair thus to insinuate that prudential considerations alone influenced this abstinence from assassination. Guise was considered, especially after the massacre of Vassy, the most dangerous foe of the Huguenot party; and more than one plan for his murder was laid prior to that which succeeded. But there is no proof that these plots were instigated by either the chiefs or the priests of the party. On the contrary, everything concurs to stamp them as proceeding solely from the religious fanaticism or violent party spirit of individuals. During the siege of Rouen—the first important operation of the war that now broke out—"the Duke of Guise," says M. de BouillÉ, "was informed that an assassin had entered the camp with the project of taking his life. He sent for and calmly interrogated him—'Have you not come hither to kill me?' he said. Surprised at his detection, and trembling with apprehension of punishment, this young gentleman of Mans at once avowed his criminal design. 'And what motive,' inquired the Duke, 'impelled you to such a deed? Have I done you any wrong?' 'No; but in so doing I should serve my religion—that is to say, the belief in the doctrine of Calvin, which I profess.' 'My religion then is better than yours,' cried Guise with a generous impulse, 'for it commands me to pardon, of my own accord, you who are convicted of guilt.' And by his orders the gentleman was safely conducted out of the camp. A fine example," exclaims M. de BouillÉ, "of truly religious sentiments and magnanimous proselytism, very natural to the Duke of Guise, the most moderate and humane of the chiefs of the Catholic army; and whose brilliant generosity—true basis of the character of this great man—had been but temporarily obscured by the occurrence at Vassy!"

At this siege of Rouen, Guise performed prodigies of valour; and Anthony of Bourbon, second to none in high soldierly spirit, had his jealousy roused by the exploits of his ally. Determined also to signalise himself, he needlessly exposed his life, and was hit by an arquebuse ball. The wound was severe, and Ambrose ParÉ declared it mortal, in contradiction to the opinions of several other physicians, who gave hopes of cure. Ten days afterwards Rouen was taken by assault; and on learning this, the King of Navarre insisted on being carried in triumph to his quarters in the captured town. Preceded by musicians, he was borne upon his bed through the breach by a detachment of Swiss soldiers. The fatigue and excitement increased the inflammation of his wound, and hastened his death. In his last moments he showed symptoms of regretting his change of religion; but notwithstanding this tardy repentance, the Protestants, against whom since his perversion to Rome he had used great severity, rejoiced exceedingly at his death, which they celebrated as a chastisement proceeding from Heaven.

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.