The states-general of the League did not appear again; their prorogation was their death. The year 1594, which came after them, was for Henry IV. a year of home conquests, some pacific and due to the spontaneous movement of the inhabitants, others obtained after resistance and purchased with gold. The town of Lyons set the example of the first. A rumor spread that the Spaniards were preparing an expedition against it; some burgesses met to consult, and sent a private message to Alphonse d’Ornano, who was conducting the war for the king in Dauphiny, pressing him to move forward, on a day appointed, to the faubourg de la Guillotiere. A small force sent by Ornano arrived, accordingly, on the 7th of February, about daybreak, at the foot of the bridge over the Rhone, in the faubourg, and, after a stubborn resistance, dislodged the outpost on duty there. At sound of the fighting, excitement broke out in the town; and barricades were thrown up, amidst shouts of “Hurrah for French liberty!” without any mention of the king’s name. The archbishop, Peter d’Espignac, a stanch Leaguer, tried to intimidate the burgesses, or at any rate to allay the excitement. As he made no impression, he retired into his palace. The people arrested the sheriffs and seized the arsenal. The king’s name resounded everywhere. “The noise of the cheering was such,” says De Thou, “that there was no hearing the sound of the bells. Everybody assumed the white scarf with so much zeal that by evening there was not a scrap of white silk left at the tradesmen’s. Tables were laid in the streets; the king’s arms were put up on the gates and in the public thoroughfares.” Ornano marched in over the barricades; royalist sheriffs were substituted for the Leaguer sheriffs, and hastened to take the oath of allegiance to the king, who had nothing to do but thank the Lyonnese for having been the first to come over to him without constraint or any exigency, and who confirmed by an edict all their municipal liberties. At the very moment when the Lyonnese were thus springing to the side of their king, there set out from Lyons the first assassin who raised a hand against Henry IV., Peter Parriere, a poor boatman of the Loire, whom an unhappy passion for a girl in the household of Marguerite de Valois and the preachings of fanatics had urged on to this hateful design. Assassin we have called him, although there was not on his part so much as an attempt at assassination; but he had, by his own admission, projected and made preparations for the crime, to the extent of talking it over with accomplices and sharpening the knife he had purchased for its accomplishment. Having been arrested at Melun and taken to Paris, he was sentenced to capital punishment, and to all the tortures that ingenuity could add to it. He owned to everything, whilst cursing those who had assured him that “if he died in the enterprise, his soul, uplifted by angels, would float away to the bosom of God, where he