[714] It must be remembered that this was a different place from Châtillon-sur-Loing, Admiral Coligny's residence, which was not more than fifteen miles distant. The places are frequently confounded with each other. The Loing is a tributary of the Seine, into which it empties below Montereau, after flowing by Châtillon-sur-Loing, Montargis, and Nemours.
[715] The fullest and most graphic account of this interesting incident I find in Agrippa d'Aubigné, i. 293 (liv. v., c. 13). See De Thou, iv. (liv. xlv.) 204, and Memorials of Renée of France (London, 1859), 261-263. The Huguenot horsemen numbered not eight hundred, as the author last quoted states, but about one hundred and twenty—"six vingts."
[716] The "Discours de ce qui avint touchant la Croix de Gastines, l'an 1571, vers Noel" (Mémoires de l'état de France sous Charles IX., and Archives curieuses, vi. 475, etc.), contains the quaint decree of the parliament. See Journal d'un curé ligueur (Jehan de la Fosse), 107. As actually erected, the monument consisted of a high stone pyramid, surmounted by a gilt crucifix. Besides the decree in question, there were engraved some Latin verses of so confused a construction that it was suggested that the composer intended to cast ridicule both on the Roman Catholics and on the Huguenots. M. de Thou, who was a boy of sixteen at the time—and who, as son of the first President of Parliament, and himself, at a later time, a leading member and president à mortier of that body, enjoyed rare advantages for arriving at the truth—declares (iv. 488) that the elder Gastines was a venerable man, beloved by his neighbors, and, indeed, by the entire city; and that the execution was compassed by a cabal of seditious persons, who, by dint of soliciting the judges, of exciting the people, of inducing them to congregate and follow the judges with threats as they left parliament, succeeded in causing to be punished with death, in the persons of the Gastines, an offence which, until then, had been punished only with exile or a pecuniary fine.
[717] Jehan de la Fosse, 107, 108.
[718] Journal d'un curé ligueur, 110; Mém. de Castelnau, liv. vii., c. 8; De Thou, iv. (liv. l) 216; Gasp. Colinii Vita (1569), 87; Memoirs of G. de Coligny, 140, etc. The arrêt of the parliament is in Archives curieuses, vi. 377, etc. The Latin life of Coligny (89-91) inserts a manly and Christian letter, in the author's possession, written (Oct. 16, 1569) by the admiral to his own children and those of his deceased brother, D'Andelot, who were studying at La Rochelle, shortly after receiving intelligence of this judicial sentence and of the wanton injury done to his palace at Châtillon-sur-Loing. "We must follow our Head, Jesus Christ, who himself leads the way," he writes. "Men have deprived us of all that it was in their power to take from us, and if it be God's will that we never recover what we have lost, still we shall be happy, and our condition will be a good one, inasmuch as these losses have not arisen from any harm done by us to those who have brought them upon us, but solely from the hatred they bear toward me for the reason that it has pleased God to make use of me in assisting His Church."
[719] Jean de Serres, iii. 356, 357; Mem. of Coligny, 136; De Thou, iv. 216, 217; Agrippa d'Aubigné, i. 302.
[720] Jean de Serres, iii. 363; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 221; Castelnau, vii., c. 8.
[721] De Thou, iv. 216; Agrippa d'Aubigné, i. 302. The place was also known by the name of Foie la Vineuse.
[722] Agrippa d'Aubigné, i. 305.
[723] In the heat of the engagement, the excited imaginations of the combatants even saw visions of celestial champions, as Theseus was fabled to have appeared at Marathon. A renegade Protestant captain afterward assured the Cardinal of Alessandria that on that eventful day he had seen in mid-air an array of warriors with refulgent armor and blood-red swords, threatening the Huguenot lines in which he fought; and he had instantly embraced the Roman Catholic faith, and vowed perpetual service under the banners of the pontiff. There were others, we are told, to corroborate his account of the prodigy. Joannis Antonii Gabutii Vita Pii Quinti Papæ (Acta Sanctorum, Maii 5), § 125, pp. 647, 648.