guards held the gatehouses, fords, and bridges. A warning reached Condé and Coligny. A horseman galloped past Noyers, sounding his horn, and crying out, "The stag is in the snare! The hunt is up!" Instant flight was necessary. At midnight, on August 25th, 1568, the Huguenot leaders, with their families and fifty followers, left Noyers to run the gauntlet of their enemies, and traverse the many hundred miles which lay between them and their refuge at Rochelle. The pursuit was hot. Led by a huntsman who knew the fords and forest paths, they reached the Loire at a spot above Cosne, near Sancerre. They crossed the river, their horses wading only to their girths. As day broke, the river rose in flood. The fugitives were saved. They had placed a barrier between themselves and their pursuers. Rochelle could yet be reached in safety. They fell on their knees on the farther bank, and gave thanks, singing the 114th Psalm, "What ailed thee, O thou sea," etc.

The war was renewed. At Jarnac (1569) the Roman Catholics gained a victory, in which Condé was killed. At Moncontour, in the same year, Coligny himself was disastrously defeated. Wounded in three places, he was carried from the field in a litter. As Lestrange, one of his old companions in arms, also severely wounded, was being carried past him, he thrust his head into the Admiral's litter, and without strength for more, whispered, "Si est-ce que Dieu est tres doux." ("Truly God is loving unto Israel, even unto such as are of a clean heart," Ps. lxxiii., verse 1.) The words, as Coligny told a friend, revived his failing courage. His firmness returned, and he set himself to restore the fortunes of his cause. From all the mountain districts of the Vivarais, the Cevennes, and the Forez, the Huguenots flocked to his standard. A new spirit animated his followers. They sang, as they passed through a hostile country and deserted villages,

Coligny's name overshadowed that of the king. “De

l'Amiral de France," says Brantôme, "il etait plus parlé que du roi de France." At the head of his army he had, within a year, extorted from Catherine de Medicis, and the unhappy red-haired youth, who bears the sinister title of Charles IX., the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye (1570).

Coligny was the chief victim of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, August 24th, 1572. The same event introduces the hero of the second period of the Civil Wars. A prisoner at the court of Charles IX., surrounded in Paris by the murderers of his friends, tempted by all the sensual allurements which Catherine de Medicis had thrown in his way, Henry of Navarre seemed to have forgotten ambition, and to welcome inaction. Only two of his former attendants remained faithful to the young king-his squire, d'Aubigné, and his valet, Armagnac. Even they were weary of the task, and on the eve of quitting so unworthy a master. But one evening, when Henry was 'in bed, ill, feverish and depressed, they heard him singing softly to himself the words of Psalm lxxxviii. (verses 7-10, 18), "Thou hast put mine acquaintance far from me, and made me to be abhorred of them. I am so fast in prison that I cannot get forth. . . . Dost Thou shew wonders among the dead; or shall the dead rise up again and praise Thee? . . . My lovers and friends hast Thou put away from me, and hid mine acquaintance out of my sight." The squire felt that the young king's chivalrous spirit was not wholly extinct. He urged him to throw in his lot with the faithful adherents who were fighting that enemy whom Henry himself was serving. A few months later, the king escaped from Paris, crossed the Seine at Poissy, traversed a country held by the forces of the Guises, and at Alençon placed himself at the head of the Huguenots. The next morning when he attended service, the psalm which was appointed to be sung was Psalm xxi., “The king shall rejoice in thy strength, O Lord," etc. The omen seemed so propitious that Henry asked whether the psalm had been selected to welcome him to the camp. But it had come in its natural course. Henry remembered, so d'Aubigné tells the story, that this was the same psalm which the companion of his passage across the Seine at Poissy had sung, as, with their bridles on their arms, they walked the horses to and

fro by the side of the river, waiting for the rest of the party.

Already Rochelle had repulsed the triumphant Roman Catholics. The town had preserved its municipal independence since it was surrendered by the English at the Peace of Bretigny. Taxing itself, electing its own magistrates, protected on the land by impregnable walls, opening or closing its port at its own pleasure, sweeping the seas with its own powerful navies, Rochelle was the Venice or Amsterdam of France. It was also its Geneva, the city of refuge to which fled Protestants from all parts of the country. But for the moment its fate trembled in the balance. Outside the walls of the Huguenot stronghold were encamped the royal armies, in which Brantôme held a command. Within the city were crowded the citizens and refugees. After five weeks of battering and skirmishes, a general assault was delivered. Four times the besiegers were driven back, and, as they recoiled, the battle-song of the Huguenots, Que Dieu se monstre seulement (Ps. lxviii.), rose in triumph from the ramparts. The siege was raised (1573), and thus the claim of the citizens was vindicated that Rochelle was founded on an impregnable rock.

In the years that followed, the interest of the Wars of Religion centres round Henry of Navarre. With two at least of his victories, the Psalms are strikingly associated. At the battle of Courtras, October 20th, 1587, before the fight began, the Huguenots knelt in prayer, and chanted Ps. cxviii., verses 24, 25:

"La voici l'heureuse iournee

Que Dieu a faite a plein desir,
Par nous soit ioye demenee
Et prenons en elle plaisir.
O Dieu eternel, ie te prie,

Ie te prie, ton Roy maintien:
O Dieu, ie te prie et reprie,
Sauue ton Roy et l'entretien."

''Sdeath," cried a young courtier to the Duc de Joyeuse, who commanded the Roman Catholics, "the cowards are afraid; they are confessing themselves." Sire," said a scarred veteran, "when the Huguenots behave thus, they are ready to fight to the death." The battle ended in the

triumph of Henry. The Duc de Joyeuse was killed, and his army utterly routed. More than forty years afterwards (1630), d'Aubigné lay on his deathbed. Perhaps the memory of the victory returned at his last moments to the dying man. "Two hours before his death," so wrote his widow, “ with a glad countenance, and with a peaceful contented mind," he repeated the Psalm, “La voici l'heureuse iournee,” etc., and so passed to his rest.

In 1589 Henry gained another victory under the walls of the Château d'Arques, the picturesque ruins of which are still standing in the neighbourhood of Dieppe. There the king and his Huguenot followers were threatened with destruction by the Duc de Mayenne and the army of the League. His forces were but few compared with the number of those arrayed against them; his reinforcements had failed him; the courage of his men was crushed by the weight of superior numbers. Come, M. le Ministre," cried the king to Pastor Damour, "lift the psalm. It is full time." Then, above the din of the marching armies, rose the austere melody of the 68th Psalm, set to the words of Beza, and swinging with the march of the Huguenot companies. Pressing onwards, the men of Dieppe forced themselves like an iron wedge through the lines of the League, and split them asunder. The sea fog cleared away; Henry's artillery-men in the castle could see to take aim; the roll of cannon marked the time of the psalm; and the Leaguers were scattered.

The triumph of Henry IV. in 1598 restored the Psalter to the Court of France. Once more the Psalms, which Francis I. had hummed so gaily, were sung at the Louvre. By the Edict of Nantes, peace was for a time imposed upon France. It was the Magna Charta of the Reformed churches, guaranteeing to the Huguenots freedom of worship in specified places, admitting them to civil rights, offices, and dignities, providing for the trial of Protestant causes by mixed benches of judges, and securing enjoyment of these privileges by the possession of fortified towns. During the life of Henry IV., the son of Jeanne d'Albret, pupil of Coligny, and hero of a hundred fights against the Catholic League, the king's personal influence maintained the compact. Yet, at the best, the Edict of Nantes proclaimed a truce rather than a lasting peace.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HUGUENOTS, 1600-1762 (continued)

The Roman Catholic Reaction-Vincent de Paul, François de Sales: changed conditions of the Huguenot cause; their effect on the character of the Wars of Religion 1621-29-Henri de Rohan, sieges of Montauban and la Rochelle; The Roman Catholic triumph and maintenance of the strictest orthodoxy-Port Royal, Pascal, Madame Guyon: Edicts against the Huguenots and the use of the Psalter: the Vaudois and Henri Arnaud; Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685); persecution of the French Huguenots; the rising in the Cevennes murder of François du Chayla, Cavalier and the Camisards, Bellot, Martignargues (1704), Salindres (1709); the Pastors of the Desert-Rang, Roger, Benezet, Rochette; effect of the Psalms on the virtues and defects of the Huguenots.

THE French Wars of Religion, waged in the seventeenth century by the Duc de Rohan and Cardinal Richelieu, differed materially from those led by the Guises on the one side, and by Coligny or Henry of Navarre on the other. The Huguenots were now confronted by a Roman Catholic reaction. The austerities of monastic life were revived, and to these was added the cultivation of learning. Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, set their houses in order; Clairvaux, Citeaux, and Cluny underwent a reformation. Jesuits laboured in the world for the advancement of the Roman faith, and multiplied their schools and seminaries. New religious orders supplied preachers and made proselytes. Missions were conducted among country people by the new congregation of St. Vincent de Paul. Women shared the same movements. Montmartre, Val de Grace, Port Royal, became models of conventual piety. The Feuillantines and Jesuitines rivalled the zeal of the Jesuits and the Feuillants. The work of educating young girls was taken up by the PortRoyalists. Sisters of Charity found cells in the sick-room, and lived in the world unscathed, with the fear of God for