as enabled him to escape; and the fugitive arrived in the friendly town of La Rochelle, on the 10th September 1568. The principal victim thus eluded the grasp of Catherine; and others were equally fortunate in eluding her toils. Odit, Cardinal Chatillon, escaped to England in the dress of a common sailor, where he promoted the cause of his party with Queen Elizabeth ; while the Queen of Navarre, whose arrest was committed to Montluc, Bishop of Valence, fled from Bearn, and joined Condé and Coligny at La Rochelle, bringing with her troops and money. The king proceeded to extremities, repealed the edict of January 1562, and prohibited the exercise of every form of worship except that sanctioned by Rome. The third war commenced; and among the Calvinist leaders now conspicuously appeared the talented and virtuous La Noue, and the powerful and ardent D'Acier. The name of the latter was James Crussel, lord of Acier, who alone could raise twenty-five thousand men to his standard in Languedoc and Dauphiny, which vast authority is deserving of notice as it shows how tremendous was the influence of the feudal barons of France, before they were crushed in a subsequent reign by Cardinal Richelieu. This D'Acier was one of the most intrepid and determined of the Calvinist party. His banner was a broad pendant of green taffeta, on which was painted a hydra, whose heads represented cardinals, bishops, and priests; while D'Acier himself, in the character of Hercules, and brandishing the club of that heathen demigod, was exhibited in the act of exterminating his enemies. The young Duke of Anjou, the king's brother, had the nominal command of the royal army, but all operations in the field were entrusted to Marshal Tavannes. On the 13th March, 1569, the opposing forces met each other on the banks of the river Charente, near to Jarnac, a small frontier town which divided Limousin from Angumois. The military dispositions of the Prince of Condé were very defective; he dispersed his troops on so wide an area that they could not succour each other, and committed the fatal error of allowing Tavannes to cross the river in compact order, so that the Marshal could concentrate his strength on any point he chose to select. In this battle, known as the battle of Jarnac, Condé was truly unfortunate, for he lost his life by an accident. In resisting a charge of cavalry, led on by the Duke of Anjou, his leg was broken by a kick from the horse of his friend, the Duke of Rochefoucauld, who was fighting by his side. His courage did not desert him; he gallantly plunged into the thickest of the fight, and was soon dismounted; with one knee on the ground he shook his sword fiercely in the faces of his enemies, who had him at every advantage the nearest royalist officers urged him to surrender and promised to save him, when Montesquiou, captain of the Duke of Anjou's guards, came behind him and fired a pistol-ball through his head. This atrocious act, so dishonouring to an age in which the spirit of chivalry still glowed brightly in the breast of soldiers, is thus finely alluded to in the Henriade, where Henry the Fourth is represented as addressing Elizabeth of England: Oh! plaines de Jarnac! O coup trop inhumain ! J'ai vu porter le coup, j'ai vu trancher sa vie, Helas! trop jeune encore, mon bras, mon faible bras, The Duke of Anjou, or rather his advisers, for he was too young to be responsible, stained their triumph by a mean outrage on the body of the prince, which was insultingly carried into Jarnac upon a pack-horse. "All the army," says Davila, "made sport at such a spectacle, though while he lived, they were terrified at the name of so great a person." The body of the prince was afterwards restored to his nephew, Henry, Prince of Bearn, by whom it was buried at Vendôme, in a tomb belonging to his ancestors. In this battle also perished Robert Stuart, who slew the constable Montmorenci; he was wounded and taken prisoner; he expiated the double crime of being a foreigner and a heretic by being tortured to death, receiving repeated stabs from sharplypointed daggers. The defeat of the Calvinists was complete, and they retreated to Cognac, under Coligny, D'Andelot, and other leaders, who collected their dispersed forces. Jane D'Albret, Queen of Navarre, accompanied by her son Henry, Prince of Bearn, and the eldest son of the Prince of Condé, joined them at Cognac. She was a woman of heroic firmness, of warm piety, and earnest convictions. The troops being drawn up on parade to receive her with the honours due to her rank, she advanced, holding the two young men by either hand, and thus addressed them: "My friends, we mourn the loss of a friend, who, to his dying hour, sustained with equal fidelity and courage the party he had undertaken to defend; but our tears would be unworthy of him, unless, imitating his bright example, we firmly resolved to sacrifice our own lives rather than abandon our faith. The good cause has not perished with Condé ; and his unhappy fate ought not to fill with despair men who are devotedly attached to their religion. God watches over his own. He gave that prince companions well fitted to serve him while he lived, and he leaves among us brave and experienced captains, able to repair the loss we have sustained by his death. I offer you my son, the young Prince of Bearn; I also confide to you Henry of Condé, son of the chief whom we bewail. May it please Heaven that they both show themselves worthy heirs of the valour of their ancestors; and may these tender pledges, committed to your guardianship, be the bond of your union, and the earnest of your future triumph." The air rang with acclamations; all were inspired with new energy and panted for revenge, and both the young princes swore to devote themselves to the triumph of Calvinism. The Prince of Bearn, as head of the Bourbon family, was elected generalissimo —a prudent measure, as it quelled jealousy among so many leaders of equal pretensions and of rival ambitions. Coligny was in fact the commander-in-chief, though without the title, and the point of honour was satisfied without endangering the safety of the army. The great object was to effect a junction with the German auxiliaries, who were advancing under Wolfangus of Bavaria, known as Duke of Deux Ponts. He had fourteen thousand men under his standard, and among his officers were William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, and his two brothers, Louis and Henry, who had quitted the Low Countries to avoid the persecution of the merciless Duke of Alva. In this expedition Wolfangus died of fever; but his soldiers, at his last request, obeyed his lieutenant, Count Mansfeldt, and under this general the Germans joined the French, and the united forces amounted to twenty-five thousand men. At this juncture the Calvinists sustained an irreparable loss in the death of D'Andelot, the first patrician apostle of religious liberty in France. He was a man of spotless integrity, and of singular hardihood of character; frank, open, and generous, he won friendships by the affability of his demeanour, and retained them by the respect and confidence he inspired. No love of pleasure seduced him from his duty; no vicissitudes of fortune could shake his inflexibility; in the darkest times he never despaired, and no prosperity lulled his caution. If history bestowed its highest honours on public and private virtue, none would stand higher in the rolls of fame than D'Andelot. The admiral deeply bewailed his sad bereavement; but while he mourned for his brother, he did not forget his principles or his responsibility. He marched against the enemy, and lost the decisive battle of Moncontour, where his lower jaw was shattered by a pistol ball; but he continued to display the talent of a general and the courage of a soldier, till he was overpowered by numbers. The victory was complete-the carnage terrific. The field of battle, cannon, banners, and baggage, all fell into the hands of the royalists; and out of an army of twenty-five thousand men, only six thousand reached St. Jean D'Angely. The cause of freedom now seemed hopeless, but it was saved from an unexpected quarter. Catherine and the Cardinal of Lorraine had again become distrustful of each other. The former really commanded the army by placing the Duke of Anjou at its head, and nominating the general on whom the responsibility devolved; and from that important post she took care to exclude the Guises and their allies. The Cardinal soon perceived these tactics, and determined to retaliate with similar weapons of deceit. He therefore poisoned the mind of the king against his brother, rendering him jealous of the laurels gathered by the Duke of Anjou, and advised his removal, proposing a foreign general and naming the Duke of Alva. Nor was Charles the only person dissatisfied. The old military men deemed themselves neglected, and Damsille, a son of Montmorency, and now governor of Languedoc, allowed the Calvinists to escape, to show the Court the importance of his services. These dissensions paralysed the vigorous action of the royalist troops, for orders were constantly forwarded from Paris which embarrassed Marshal Tavannes, who knew not whether to advance or retire. The indefatigable Coligny took advantage of these vacillations, recruited his army, and assailing Marshal Corré Gonnor who had been ordered to oppose him in Burgundy, gained a complete victory, though the Calvinists only opposed six thousand to thirteen thousand royalists. This unexpected blow alarmed all the court intriguers; for they justly dreaded a party, so lately reduced to the last gasp, and now flushed by success. Tavannes openly quarrelled with the Cardinal of Lorraine, who flatly contradicted the Marshal on a point of military tactics. "Each to his trade, Sir Cardinal," said the blunt soldier; "no man can be a good priest and a good warrior." He complained that Coligny had recovered all he had lost at Moncontour, which would not have happened, had he not been thwarted. Then he tendered his resignation, which was accepted, but the difficulty was to replace him. Both the Guises and the Montmorencies had equal pretensions. The queen disliked the former as related to the cardinal, and the cardinal persuaded the king not to employ the latter, as they were connected by marriage with the admiral and the young Prince of Condé. Thus the rigour of the government was paralysed, while the Calvinists, perfectly united, and rendered desperate by threats of extermination, were making prodigious efforts to conquer their endangered liberties. Nothing was left to Charles the Ninth but to propose terms of reconciliation; and on the 2nd of August 1570 peace was concluded at St. Germain en Laye. The preceding edicts were ratified; a general amnesty was granted; excepting in the royal palaces, the free exercise of the reformed religion was conceded; all confiscated property was restored, and, what was most important, all Calvinists were declared eligible to all offices of State. They obtained two other valuable privileges; they were allowed to challenge six judges on all trials, and nominate the governors of four towns. They selected Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charité; but this was a temporary arrangement, as the Princes of Bearn and Condé, and twenty other leaders of the party, bound themselves on oath to surrender them to the king at the end of two years. THE WALCHEREN EXPEDITION. It was in the year made memorable by the battle of Wagram, so nearly lost and dearly won by the first Napoleon-the year of "the Douro," "Talavera," and "Saragossa"-that the ill-fated "Walcheren Expedition was undertaken, a campaign which, until recently, occupied the most prominent place among the disastrous enterprises of this country. In the year 1809, all the most powerful continental states were either in alliance with France, were crouching at her feet, or were so paralyzed, as to be unable to strike a blow in defence of their own liberties. Russia and Denmark were with the French; the French flag floated on the ramparts of Vienna and the principal strongholds of Northern Germany: Prussia, though inclined to resist, was so crippled that she found her only safety to lie in inaction; Spain was kept down by an invading army; and Holland and Flanders were occupied by French troops destined for the invasion and conquest of Great Britain. Such was the state of Europe when the English ministry resolved to make a diversion in favour of Austria, by sending |