report this remarkable conversation from the lips of those who were present; and he states that she proceeded to urge on him these words :"God has bestowed on you the genius of a great captain will you refuse the use of it to his children? You have confessed to the justice of their cause-is not the knightly sword you bear pledged to the defence of the oppressed? Sir, my heart bleeds for our slaughtered brethren—. and their blood cries out to God and Heaven against you as the murderer of those whom you might have saved." "Since," replied the Admiral, "the reasons which I have this evening alleged against an ineffectual resistance, have made so little impression upon your mind, lay your hand upon your heart and answer me this question. Could you, without murmuring against Providence and the husband to whom Heaven has united you, receive the news of a general defeat? Are you prepared to endure the opprobrium of your enemiesthe reproaches of your friends-the treachery of partisans-the curses of the people-confiscation, flight, exile-the insolence of the English, the quarrels of the Germans shame, nakedness, hunger and, what is worse, to suffer all this in your children? Are you prepared to see your husband branded as a rebel and dragged to a scaffold; while your children, disgraced and ruined, are begging their bread at the hands of their enemies? I give you eight days to reflect upon it, and when you shall be well prepared for such reverses, I will be ready to set forward, and perish with you and our mutual friends." "The eight days are already expired!" she cried. "Go, sir, where your duty calls you. Heaven will not give the victory to our enemies. In the name of God, I call upon you to resist no longer, but to save our brethren, or die in the attempt." On the next morning Coligni was on horseback, with all his retainers round him: and, with a heavy heart but a clear conscience, he rode on his way to join Condé at Meaux, which was now, in the early spring of 1562, the headquarters of the insurgent Huguenots. The high rank of the Prince of Condé, as well as his brilliant abilities and chivalrous courage, caused him to be acknowledged as chief of the Protestant party; but Coligni was looked on by friends and foes as the main pillar of their cause; and it was he that gave organization to the volunteers who flocked around himself and the Prince, first at Meaux, and afterwards in greater numbers at Orleans, when towards the end of March they succeeded in occupying that important city, and making it a centre of operations for the Huguenot confederacy. Like Cromwell in after times, Coligni relied on the religious enthusiasm as well as the natural bravery of his troops. He exercised them by preaching and prayer as well as by drilling and manoeuvring. He inspired them with his own spirit of austere devotion to their cause; and the Huguenot army was in its first campaigns as conspicuous for good order and morality as for valour; though by degrees it became tainted with the tendency to marauding and to brutal violence, which has ever characterized the French even beyond the soldiery of other nations.* Coligni himself forsesaw from the beginning, that the national character of his countrymen was incompatible with the long continuance of the saintly discipline which he had introduced. One of his captains, La None, tells us, after describing the conduct of the Huguenot troops at the beginning of the war, "Many were astonished at this fine order; and I remember my brother, M. de Teligny and myself, discoursing with M. l'Admiral, applauded it much, fine thing," said he, "moyennant qu'elle dure, but I fear this people will soon be It is a The Roman Catholic party now sought support from Philip II. of Spain, from the Duke of Savoy, the Emperor and other foreign princes of their creed; and the Huguenots, to the deep regret of Coligni, were compelled to strengthen themselves by similar negotiations. The English Queen Elizabeth promised succours in men and money, on condition of Havre (which city, like most of the other strong places in Normandy, was devoted to the Protestant cause) being placed in her power as a security for repayment. The German Lutheran princes permitted a large auxiliary force of lansquenets and heavy-armed cavalry to be raised among their subjects in behalf of the French Potestants; and D'Andelot was dispatched into Germany to place himself at their head, and lead them across the Rhine; a difficult operation, which he accomplished with great skill, and joined his brothers and Condé at Pluviers, near Orleans, late in the year, and at a crisis when the fortunes of the Protestant party appeared reduced to a very low ebb, as in the interval which had elapsed since the commencement of the war, though there had been no engagement between the main armies, the Royalists had gained numerous advantages, and had captured many towns, both in the South and in Normandy, which had originally declared for the insurgents. Coligni and Condé with their own troops and their German allies now (December 1562) marched upon Paris; but finding it hopeless to attempt the storm or siege of the capital, they led their army towards Normandy, desiring to form a junction with the English troops at Havre. The Royal forces, commanded nominally by the Constable Montmorenci and the Maréchal de St. André, but in which the Duke of Guise was also present, marched for some days on their flank, till the two armies came into collision on the 19th of December at Dreux, where the first battle of the civil wars was fought. In this action, after many vicissitudes of fortune, the Duke of Guise secured the victory for the Roman Catholics; and Condé was taken prisoner. Coligni led the remains of the Protestant army back to Orleans; whither the Duke de Guise, at the head of a largely recruited army, flushed by their recent victory, soon advanced, with the intention of crushing insurrection and Protestantism, by the capture and destruction of their stronghold. Coligni's situation now seemed desperate. His German mercenaries in arrear of pay, threatened to desert him; the funds which he had been able to collect for the conduct of the war were exhausted; and he was utterly unable to encounter the numerous and well-appointed forces of Guise. In this emergency he formed the bold plan of leaving his brother, D'Andelot, with the bulk of the infantry to defend Orleans, while he himself led the cavalry and a few companies of foot again to Normandy, and again attempted to avail himself of the English supplies of money and troops. In spite of the mutinous murmurings of the German reisters, in spite of the attempts which the Roman Catholic commanders made to intercept him, Coligni executed his daring scheme. Havre was reached. The English subsidies were secured, and the rich and powerful city of Caen voluntarily placed itself in Coligni's power. Meanwhile Orleans had been well defended by D'Andelot; and the great chief of the Roman Catholics, the Duke of Guise, had died by the hand of an assassin. Some tired of their virtue, de jeune hermite, vieux diable. I know the French infantry well, and if the proverb fail, nous ferons la croix à la cheminée." We laughed then, but experience showed he was prophetic." attempts were made to implicate Coligni in the guilt of this murder, but the Admiral indignantly denied the charge; nor is there any ground for believing him to have had the least cognizance of Poltrot's crime. The death of Guise made a temporary pacification easy; and the edict of Amboise on the 19th of March, 1563, by which a narrow and restricted permission for the exercise of the Protestant religion was allowed, closed the first war. now This peace on the part of the Royalists was only a hollow and a treacherous truce. Fresh communications with Philip II. were opened; and an interview took place in 1564 at Bayonne, between Catherine, her son Charles IX., and the Duke of Alva, a most worthy representative of the gloomy bigot who filled the Spanish throne. There is every reason to believe that at that meeting the destruction of the Protestants by craft or by force was concerted. The treaty of Amboise was openly and repeatedly violated by the fanatic party of the French Roman Catholics; and the Huguenots were again driven to take up arms in selfdefence. Condé and Coligni advanced upon Paris, and fought on the 10th of November, 1567, the sanguinary battle of St. Denys against the royalist forces. The Huguenots were beaten, but Coligni rallied them, and marching towards the Meuse, effected a junction with fresh bands of German auxiliaries. The war now raged with redoubled horror in every district of France. Alarmed at the strength of the Huguenot army, Catherine tried and successfully exerted her powers of persuasion and deceit over Condé, and a second faithless peace, called the treaty of Longjumeau, was concluded; but when the Huguenot forces were disbanded, and their German auxiliaries dismissed, the royalists renewed the war. In 1569, the indiscreet spirit of Condé brought the Protestants into action at Jarnac, under heavy disadvantages against the flower of the Catholic army. Condé was killed in the battle, and a large part of his forces routed with heavy slaughter; but Coligni was again the Ajax of the cause, covered the retreat, and reorganized the fugitives for fresh exertions. But the waves of calamity were not yet spent. The hostile armies met again at Montcontour, and the Protestants sustained the most complete and murderous overthrow, that had been dealt to them throughout the war. Coligni's brother, the gallant D'Andelot, was mortally wounded in this disastrous field; many of his staunchest friends had fallen; many abandoned him; and he found himself a fugitive, with only a few bands of mutineers around him, the wreck of the gallant army that he had lately led. But it was in this depth of gloom that the true heroic lustre of his soul was seen. Fearless himself of what man could do unto him, he calmed the panic of his followers, and inspired them with his own energy. He who has innate strength to stand amid the storm, will soon find others flock around, and fortify him while they seek support for themselves. When it was known that Coligni's banner still was flying, the Protestants of France and Eastern Germany, who at first had been stunned by the report of Montcontour, thronged to him as to a strong tower in the midst of trouble. While the Royalists were exulting at the fancied annihilation of their foe, they suddenly learned that Coligni was approaching the capital, at the head of the largest army that the Huguenots had yet sent into the field. Again the device of a treacherous pacification was attempted, and again it prevailed. Coligni was warned of the personal danger that he incurred, by trusting the faith of a Medici and a Guise; but he replied that he would rather lay down his life, than see France continue the victim of the woes of civil war. The treaty of St. Germains was signed on the 8th of August, 1570; and on the 24th of August, 1572, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew attested with what worse than Punic faith the crowned conspirators of the French Court had planned it. In the interval, the most detestable and elaborate hypocrisy was employed to lull the suspicions of the Huguenot chiefs, and to bring them defenceless into the power of their enemies. At last, in the summer of 1572, they were collected in Paris, under the pretence of being the honoured guests of the French king, at the nuptials of his sister with Henry of Navarre. An attempt was made on the life of Coligni by an assassin, in which the Admiral was severely wounded. The King and his courtiers affected the utmost indignation at this crime, and the warmest sympathy with the suffering veteran. But in the early dawn of the day appointed for the most un-Christian carnage that ever defiled the earth, a party of murderers, headed by the young Duke of Guise himself, broke open the doors of the house where Coligni lay, and Besme, one of the Duke's domestics, entered with a drawn sword, into the room where the Admiral was sitting in an arm-chair. "Young man," said he, undisturbed, "you ought to respect my grey hairs; but do as you please, you can only shorten my life a few days." Besme thrust him through in many places, and then threw his body, still breathing, out of the window into the court, where it fell at the feet of the Duke of Guise. The minions of the Louvre, and the slaves of the Vatican and Escurial flocked around in hideous glee, to insult the lifeless form of him, before whom they had so long quailed and trembled. They gibbeted their own infamy in vainly seeking to dishonour the illustrious dead. His memory is at once the glory and the shame of France and the very land of the St. Bartholomew is, to some extent, hallowed in Protestant eyes, by having been the birth-place of Coligni, and the scene of his heroic career. I do not pause to describe the tardy homage which his countrymen afterwards paid to the name and relics of the fallen great. Those obsequies and panegyrics may be looked on as some small expiation for the national guilt of France; but Coligni needed them not-'Avdpov yap ἐπιφανῶν πᾶσα γῆ τάφος, καὶ οὐ στηλῶν μόνον ἐν τῇ οἰκείᾳ σημαίνει ἐπι· γραφὴ, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν τῇ μὴ προσηκούσῃ ἄγραφος μνήμη παρ' ἑκάστῳ τῆς γνώμης μᾶλλον ἢ τοῦ ἔργου ἐνδιαιτᾶται.* *From the speech of Pericles over the Athenians who were killed in battle in the first year of the Peloponnesian War; reported in the second book of Thucydides, section 43. ANECDOTE OF LORD BYRON. THE following trifling jeux d'esprit, in which Lord Byron bore a part are very little known, and, it is believed, were never before in print. Two young officers of Artillery obtained leave of absence from the garrison of Malta, in the early part of the present century, to make a tour up the Mediterranean. At Athens, they found the wall of a lodging-house scribbled over with names, and among the collection, those of Sligo, Hobhouse, and Byron, under which, in an oval ring, they wrote these lines: "Fair Albion, smiling, sees her son depart, To trace the birth and nursery of art; Noble his object! glorious his aim ! He comes to Athens, and he writes his name! Lord Byron was at Athens at the time, and a few days afterwards they found the following, side by side with the former lines, and in a similar ring. THE COUNTERPOISE. "This modest bard, like many a bard unknown, His name would bring more credit than his verse." Under the two they then added, "Admiring Athens, as in days of old, In these degenerate days may still behold BYRON. |