where the Spaniards had encamped were planted with vines by the Count de Nanteuil-le-Haudouin, and received the name of the Vineyard de la Plante.[435] [Illustration: MARIE STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTS.] [Illustration: RENAISSANCE DOORWAY TO THE CHURCH OF EPERNAY.] [Illustration: ATTACK ON THE HUGUENOTS AT EPERNAY.] As a matter of course, the hapless fate of the town pursued it during the religious wars of the sixteenth century. In 1567 the Huguenots, under Condé, seized on Epernay--then a portion of the appanage of the unfortunate Marie Stuart of Scotland--and exacted a ransom of 10,500 livres, towards which the Abbey of St. Martin contributed 3451 livres, partly in money and partly in wine, calculated at no more than eleven livres the queue. A higher price appears to have ruled on the recapture of the town by the Duke of Guise the same year, when the levy made consisted of 500 pièces of wine, estimated at twenty-four livres the queue.[436] Guise was driven out by the inhabitants in 1588; but after one fruitless assault, the Leaguers under Rosné succeeded in obtaining forcible possession of Epernay four years later. On Henri Quatre laying siege in turn to Epernay in 1592, the vineyards around the town were again literally watered with blood. One notable episode of this siege was the death of Maréchal Biron, the most devoted of Henri's adherents. On the 27th July the King and Biron were returning on horseback from Damery to the camp. As they advanced up the road leading from Mardeuil to the faubourg of Igny, the wind blew off Henri's hat, adorned with the famous white plume, and Biron, picking it up, jestingly placed it upon his own head. At this moment the white plume unluckily caught the eye of Petit, the master gunner of Epernay, and he at once pointed a cannon at it from the Tour Saint Antoine. 'For the Béarnais!' he exclaimed, as he fired; and the ball carried away the head of the Maréchal, to whom Henri was speaking, and upon whose shoulder the King's hand was actually resting. 'Ah, mordieu, the dog has bitten the Béarnais!' cried the exulting gunner, believing it was the King who had fallen, and alluding to the name of the cannon, which was known as the 'Dog of Orleans,' from its having been captured from the English at the siege of that city, and bearing on its breech the figure of a dog.[437] [Illustration] [Illustration: HENRI QUATRE BEFORE EPERNAY.]