Chapter X.
War and Woe.
1590-1591
Ferocity of the combatants.
Civil war seems peculiarly to arouse the ferocity of man. Family quarrels are notoriously implacable. Throughout the whole kingdom of France the war raged with intense violence, brother against brother, and father against child. Farm-houses, cities, villages, were burned mercilessly. Old men, women, and children were tortured and slain with insults and derision. Maiden modesty was cruelly violated, and every species of inhumanity was practiced by the infuriated antagonists. The Catholic priests were in general conspicuous for their brutality. They resolved that the Protestant heresy should be drowned in blood and terror.
Liberality of Henry.
Henry IV. was peculiarly a humane man. He cherished kind feelings for all his subjects, and was perfectly willing that the Catholic religion should retain its unquestioned supremacy. His pride, however, revolted from yielding to compulsory conversion, and he also refused to become the persecutor of his former friends. Indeed, it seems probable that he was strongly inclined toward the Catholic faith as, on the whole, the safest and the best. He consequently did every thing in his power to mitigate the mercilessness of the strife, and to win his Catholic subjects by the most signal clemency. But no efforts of his could restrain his partisans in different parts of the kingdom from severe retaliation.
Preparations for a battle.
Through the long months of a cold and dreary winter the awful carnage continued, with success so equally balanced that there was no prospect of any termination to this most awful of national calamities. Early in March, 1590, the armies of Henry IV. and of the Duke of Mayenne began to congregate in the vicinity of Ivry, about fifty miles west of Paris, for a decisive battle. The snows of winter had nearly disappeared, and the cold rains of spring deluged the roads. The Sabbath of the eleventh of March was wet and tempestuous. As night darkened over the bleak and soaked plains of Ivry, innumerable battalions of armed men, with spears, and banners, and heavy pieces of artillery, dragged axle-deep through the mire, were dimly discerned taking positions for an approaching battle. As the blackness of midnight enveloped them, the storm increased to fearful fury. The gale fiercely swept the plain, in its loud wailings and its roar drowning every human sound. The rain, all the night long, poured down in torrents. But through the darkness and the storm, and breasting the gale, the contending hosts, without even a watch-fire to cheer the gloom, waited anxiously for the morning.