Montgommery threw himself into Rochelle with Lanoue. The town sustained nine fierce assaults, and cost the royal army forty thousand men. In the capitulation which ensued, it retained its freedom; and Gabriel was allowed to depart, safe and sound.
He then made his way into Sancerre, which was besieged by the governor of Berri. He was well skilled, our readers will remember, in the defence of beleaguered towns. A handful of Sancerrois, with no other arms than iron-shod clubs, held out for four months against a body of six thousand soldiers. When at last they capitulated, they obtained the same terms granted at Rochelle,—liberty of conscience and immunity of person.
Catherine de Médicis viewed with ever-growing fury the continual escapes of her old unconquerable foe.
Montgommery left Poitou, which was in a blaze, and returned to Normandy to rekindle the flames which were subsiding there.
Setting out from St. Lo, within three days he had taken Carentan and despoiled Valognes of all her supplies. All the Norman nobility ranged themselves under his standard.
Catherine de Médicis and the king at once put three armies in the field, and proclaimed the ban and the arrière-ban in Mans and in Perche. The royal forces were led by the Duc de Matignon.
This time Montgommery no longer fought individually. Lost in the ranks of the Reformers, he devoted himself to thwarting Charles IX., and had his army, as the king had his.
He formed an admirable plan, which bade fair to assure him a brilliant victory.
He left Matignon besieging St. Lô with his whole force, secretly quitted the town, and made his way to Domfront. There François du Hallot was to join him with all the cavalry of Bretagne, Anjou, and the Caux country. With these forces he proposed to fall unexpectedly upon the royal army before St. Lô, which, being thus caught between two fires, would be annihilated.
But treachery conquered the unconquerable. An ensign warned Matignon of Montgommery's secret departure for Domfront, whither he was accompanied by only forty horsemen.