[647] Jean de Serres, iii. 302, 309; De Thou, iv. 161; Agrippa d'Aubigné, i. 277.
[648] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 174, 175.
[649] The Earl of Leicester gives Charles a more direct part in the war. "The king hathe bene these two monethes about Metz in Lorrayne, to empeache the entry of the Duke of Bipounte, who is set forward by the common assent of all the princes Protestants in Germany, with twelve thousand horsemen, and twenty-five thousand footemen, to assiste the Protestants in France, and to make some final end of their garboyles." Letter to Randolph, ambassador to the Emperor of Muscovy, May 1, 1569, Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 313. The facilities, even for diplomatic correspondence, with so distant a country as Muscovy, were very scanty. Leicester's despatch is accordingly an interesting résumé of the chief events that had occurred in Western Europe during the past sixty days.
[650] Agrippa d'Aubigné, i. 277; De Thou, iv. 172, etc.
[651] "Ja Dieu ne plaise qu'on die jamais que Bourbon ait fuyt devant ses ennemis." Lestoile, 21. It is probably to this circumstance that the Earl of Leicester alludes, when he says that "the Prince of Condé, through his overmuche hardines and little regard to follow the Admirall's advise had his arme broken with a courrire shotte," etc. Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 313, 314.
[652] Agrippa d'Aubigné, Hist. univ., liv. v., c. 8 (i. 280); De Thou, iv. 175.
[653] D'Aubigné, ubi supra. A Huguenot patriarch, named La Vergne, was noticed by Agrippa himself fighting in the midst of twenty-five of his nephews and kinsmen. The dead bodies of the old man and of fifteen of his followers fell almost on a single heap, and nearly all the survivors were taken prisoners.
[654] Jeanne d'Albret to Marie de Clèves, April, 1569, Rochambeau, Lettres d'Antoine de Bourbon et de Jehanne d'Albret (Paris, 1877), 297.
[655] I regret to say that the current representations as to the termination of Condé's dishonorable attachment to Isabeau de Limueil are proved by contemporary documents to be erroneous. The tears and remonstrances of his wife Éléonore de Roye (see ante, chapter xiv.) may have had some temporary effect. But an anonymous letter among the Simancas MSS., written March 15, 1565 (and consequently more than six months after Éléonore's death, which occurred July 23, 1564), portrays him as "hora più che mai passionato per la sua Limolia." Duc d'Aumale, Pièces justif., i. 552. Just as Calvin (letter of September 17, 1563, Bonnet, Lettres franç., ii. 539) had rebuked the prince with his customary frankness, warning him respecting his conduct, and saying that "les bonnes gens en seront offenséz, les malins en feront leur risée," so now Coligny and the Huguenot gentlemen of his suite united with the Protestant ministers in begging him to renounce his present course of life, and contract a second honorable marriage. The latter held up to him "il pericolo et infamia propria, et il scandalo commune a tutta la relligione per esserne lui capo;" the former threatened to leave him. I have seen no injurious reports affecting Condé's morals after his marriage, November 8, 1565, to Françoise Marie d'Orléans Longueville. Duc d'Aumale, Princes de Condé, i. 263-278.
[656] Long the idol of the Huguenots, both of high or of low degree, he enjoyed a popularity perpetuated in a spirited song ("La Chanson du Petit Homme"), current so far back as the close of the first war, 1563, the refrain of which, alluding to the prince's diminutive stature, is: "Dieu gard' de mal le Petit Homme!" Chansonnier Huguenot, 250, etc.