The Protestants, under the Prince of Condé and Admiral Coligny, had fought so bravely and so successfully in defence of their cause that all hope of subduing them in the field was given up. The bloody battles of Montcontour, of St. Denis, and of Jarnac had proved how stubbornly the Huguenots would fight; while their possession of such strong fortresses as Montauban and La Rochelle, deemed impregnable, showed that they could not easily be subdued. Although the Prince of Condé had been slain at the battle of Jarnac, this great misfortune to the Protestants was more than balanced by the assassination of the great Duke of Guise, the ablest general and leader of the Catholics. So when all hope had vanished of exterminating the Huguenots in open warfare, a deceitful peace was made; and their leaders were decoyed to Paris, in order to accomplish, in one foul sweep, by wholesale murder, the diabolical design. The Huguenot leaders were completely deceived. Old Admiral Coligny, with his deeper insight, hesitated to put himself into the power of a bigoted and persecuting monarch; but Charles IX. pledged his word for his safety, and in an age when chivalry was not extinguished, his promise was accepted. Who could believe that his word of honor would be broken, or that he, a king, could commit such an outrageous and unprecedented crime? But what oath, what promise, what law can bind a man who is a slave of religious bigotry, when his church requires a bloody and a cruel act? The end seemed to justify any means. I would not fix the stain of that infamous crime exclusively on the Jesuits, or on the Pope, or on the councillors of the King, or on his mother. I will not say that it was even exclusively a Church movement: it may have been equally an apparent State necessity. A Protestant prince might mount the throne of France, and with him, perhaps, the ascendency of Protestantism, or at least its protection. Such a catastrophe, as it seemed to the councillors of Charles IX., must somehow be averted. How could it be averted otherwise than by the assassination of Henry himself, and his cousin Condé, and the brave old admiral, as powerful as Guise, as courageous as Du Gueslin, and as pious as Godfrey? And then, when these leaders were removed, and all the Protestants in Paris were murdered, who would remain to continue the contest, and what Protestant prince could hope to mount the throne? But whoever was directly responsible for the crime, and whatever may have been the motives for it, still it was committed. The first victim was Coligny himself, and the slaughter of sixty thousand persons followed in Paris and the provinces. The Admiral Coligny, Marquis of Chatillon, was one of the finest characters in all history,--brave, honest, truthful, sincere, with deep religious convictions, and great ability as a general. No Englishman in the sixteenth century can be compared with him for influence, heroism, and virtue combined.