"Hena, my sister's daughter, was plunged twenty-five times into the flames by the priests of the Church of Rome. I have just put to death my twenty-fifth Roman Catholic and Apostolic priest!"
As he murmured these words to himself, Josephin contemplated the corpse of Fra Hervé, stretched out upon his back in a pool of blood, with stiffened arms, clenched fists and half bent knees. The light from the lamp shed its pale luster upon the monk's face upon which the agony of death was still stamped. The jaws were close set; foam oozed out at the lips; the corpse's glassy and fixed eyes still seemed to preserve their threatening aspect from the depth of their cavities.
"Oh!" exclaimed the Franc-Taupin with a terrible sigh, "How many times, alas! how very many times, seated at the hearth of my poor sister, when the unfortunate being who lies there dead and still foaming at his mouth with rage was a little boy, how often I took him and his younger brother Odelin upon my knees! caressed their little blonde heads! kissed their plump cheeks! Joining in their infantine amusements, I entertained them, I gladdened them with my Franc-Taupin songs! In those days Hervé equalled his brother in the gentleness of his character and the kindness of his heart. The two were the joy, the pride, the hope of my sister and of Christian! But one day a monk, a demon, Fra Girard, took possession of the mind of unhappy Hervé, dominated it, led it astray, corrupted it, and debased it forever! Oh! priests of Rome! priests of Rome! A curse upon you! Alas! out of the sweet boy, whom I loved so dearly, you made a bloodthirsty fanatic, a wrathful madman, a fratricide—and it became my duty to smite him with my dagger—him—him—my own sister's child!"
The Franc-Taupin was drawn from his revery by the ringing sound of blows struck with maces and the butts of arquebuses against the door from without, and splintering its woodwork, while, rising above the tumult, the voice of the Marquis of Montbar was heard crying: "To work! Strike hard! Harder still! Break in the door!"
"Well! The hour has come for the St. Bartholomew lambkins to dance in the air!" said the Franc-Taupin. Without hurrying, without losing his calmness, he pulled from his pocket a tinder box, a wick and a flint and steel. Striking upon the flint with the iron, he hummed between his teeth the old song that the memories of Odelin's and Hervé's infancy had recalled to his mind:
| "A Franc-Taupin had an ash-tree bow, |
| All eaten with worms, and all knotted its cord; |
| His arrow was made out of paper, and plumed, |
| And tipped at the end with a capon's spur. |
| Derideron, vignette on vignon! Derideron!" |
During the song of the old soldier, who calmly continued to strike at the flint, the blows aimed at the door redoubled in violence. Presently it was heard to crack, yield, break, and one of its fragments fell inside the apartment. Immediately thereupon Josephin applied the lighted wick to the train of powder and vanished underground letting down the heavy trap door over his head. The train of powder took fire, shot along its course as rapid as a flash of lightning, and reached the fuse of the petard, which exploded with a great crash at the very moment when the door, finally broken through, offered a passage to the Marquis of Montbar, closely followed by his henchmen. Like himself, they were blown up, mutilated or killed by the fragments of the iron box which flew into pieces. The masonry of the door, being torn down by the explosion, ripped the rest of the wall after it, bringing down the ceiling which fell in a heap upon the heads of the royalists.
Cornelia, Antonicq, Master Barbot, Captain Mirant and six resolute mariners who accompanied him but whose help was not needed, were soon joined at the bottom of the aqueduct by the apprentice and the Franc-Taupin. Josephin forthwith blew up the mine that he had laid at that place in order completely to obstruct the passage of the royalists in case they attempted to pursue the fugitives. The whole party soon arrived safe and sound at La Rochelle, where they met Louis Rennepont and his wife, a prey to mortal anxiety upon the issue of the enterprise, which had that morning been planned, upon Theresa's bringing back from the beach the news of Cornelia's capture and reservation for the Duke of Anjou.
The bloody defeat, sustained by the royalists at the assault of the Bastion of the Evangelium, was the presage of the raising of the siege of La Rochelle. After two other stubbornly contested encounters, at which the royalist forces were again repulsed, the Duke of Anjou commissioned several seigneurs as parliamentarians to the Rochelois with propositions of peace. The majority of the City Council took the stand that the Huguenots refused to lay down arms until a new royal edict consecrated their rights and their liberty. The minority of the City Council, aware of the worthlessness of all royal edicts, favored breaking with royalty for all time. The view of the majority prevailed. Commissioners were appointed by both sides, to agree upon the bases of a new edict. The Catholic commissioners were the Seigneur of La Vauguyon, René of Villequier, Francis of La Baume, the Count of Suze, the Seigneur of Malicorne, Marshal Montluc, Armand of Gontaut-Biron, and the Count of Retz. The Rochelois commissioners were two bourgeois, Morrisson the Mayor, and Captain Gargouillaud. The reformers stoutly maintained their position, and stipulated for the same, not in the name of their own city only, but in the name of all the reformers of the Protestant Republican Union. These stipulations were subsequently rejected by the Union, so soon as they became known, upon the just ground of the rest of the Union's not having been consulted, and of its declining to recognize the royal authority. Thus, thanks to their bold insurrection and their heroic resistance the Rochelois imposed upon Charles IX the new edict of July 15, 1573. This edict consecrated and extended all the rights previously conquered by the reformers. A clause in this edict, which was a crushing document to the Catholic party, provided: "That all armed insurrections which took place after the night of August 23, 1572, are amnestied." Thus Charles IX was made to admit that the reformers had justly drawn the sword to avenge the crime of St. Bartholomew's night!
Thus the siege of La Rochelle was disgracefully raised by the Catholic army. This expedition cost the King immense sums of money, and he lost in the course of the several assaults upon the city, and also from sickness, about twenty-two thousand men. Among the seigneurs and captains killed during the siege were the Duke of Aumale, Clermont, Tallard, Cosseins, Du Guast, etc., besides over three hundred subaltern officers.