[1308] According to Davila, Sancerre was not comprehended in the terms made with the Rochellois, "because it was not a free town under the king's absolute dominion as the rest, but under the seigniory of the Counts of Sancerre." London trans. of 1678, 193.
[1309] Jean de Léry, Discours de l'extrême famine, etc., 25-27.
[1310] Jean de Léry, 38.
[1311] Styled also, in the articles of capitulation, "le gouverneur par élection de ladite ville." He was an able and influential magistrate, who had been elected to the governorship of his native city at the time of the former troubles. Léry, 78-80.
[1312] Agrippa d'Aubigné (Hist. univ., ii. 104) distinctly represents La Chastre as desirous of destroying the entire city; while Léry (p. 77) and Davila (p. 193) are in doubt whether Johanneau's murder was not effected by his orders. Yet Léry himself records a conversation he held about this time with La Chastre (p. 67), in which the latter protested that he was not, as commonly reported, of a sanguinary disposition, and appealed for corroboration to his merciful treatment of some Huguenot prisoners that fell into his hands in the third civil war, whom he refused to surrender to the Parisian parliament when formally summoned to do so. Claude de la Chastre's noble letter to Charles IX., of January 21, 1570 (Bulletin, iv. 28), seems to be a sufficient voucher for his veracity. See ante, chapter xvi., p. 345.
[1313] Jean de Léry, 42.
[1314] Agrippa d'Aubigné, i. 104. It would be a great relief could we believe that inordinate fondness for the dance was the chief vice of the French court. Unfortunately the moral turpitude of the king and his favorites rests upon less suspicious grounds than the revolting stories told on hearsay by the unfriendly writer of the Eusebii Philadelphi Dialogi (Edinburgi, 1574), ii. 117, 118. The "Affair of Nantouillet," occurring just about the time of the Polish ambassadors' arrival in Paris, is only too authentic. The "Prévôt de Paris," M. de Nantouillet (cf. ante, chapter xv., page 258, note), grandson of Cardinal du Prat, Chancellor of France under Francis I., offended Anjou by somewhat contemptuously declining the hand of the duke's discarded mistress, Mademoiselle de Châteauneuf. The lady easily induced her princely lover to avenge her wounded vanity. One evening Charles IX., the new king of Poland, the King of Navarre, the Grand Prior of France, and their attendants, presented themselves at the stately mansion of Nantouillet, on the southern bank of the Seine, opposite the Louvre, and demanded that a banquet be prepared for them. Though the royal party was masked, the unwilling host knew his guests but too well, and dared not deny their peremptory command. In the midst of the carousal, at a preconcerted signal, the king's followers began to ransack the house, maltreating the occupants, wantonly destroying the costly furniture, appropriating the silver plate, and breaking open doors and coffers in search of money. The next day even Paris itself was indignant at the base conduct of its king. To the first president of parliament, who that day visited the palace and informed Charles of the current rumors respecting his having been present and conniving at the pillage, the despicable monarch denied their truth with his customary horrible imprecation. But when the president expressed his great satisfaction, and said that parliament would at once institute proceedings to discover and punish the guilty, Charles promptly responded: "By no means. You will lose your trouble;" and he added a significant threat for Nantouillet, that, should he pursue his attempt to obtain satisfaction, he would find that he had to do with an opponent infinitely his superior. Euseb. Phil. Dialogi, ii. 117, 118; Jean de Serres, iv., fol. 114, verso; D'Aubigné, ii. 104; De Thou, iv. (liv. lvi.) 821.
[1315] Article 4th. Text in Agrippa d'Aubigné, ii. 98.
[1316] J. de Serres, iv., fol. 112.
[1317] This hamlet must not be confounded with the important town of Milhaud, or Milhau-en-Rouergue, mentioned below, nearly seventy miles farther west.