imminent risk to his own life, in saving upwards of four thousand persons of all ages. Nearly double that number perished; as many more at Saverne and in the mountains, to which the unfortunate Germans fled; and about fifteen thousand in a final engagement at Chenouville, which broke the strength of the fanatic host, and finally closed the campaign. During one of these battles, the soldiers of Guise beheld in the air the image of the Saviour attached to the cross, a phenomenon in which they saw assurance of victory. [2] Francis of Lorraine was eighteen years old when slain at Pavia. One of his brothers had fallen, at about the same age, at the battle of Marignano. "Once more," says M. de Bouillé, "Guise had rendered a most important service to the kingdom; he had also assumed a peculiar and marked position, and had fixed a point of departure for himself and his descendants, by striking, of his own accord, and without instructions from the Government, the first blows that Protestantism received in France: a circumstance often recalled, with more or less exultation, by the panegyrists of that family, and which procured Claude de Lorraine the nickname of the _Great Butcher_, given him by the heretics, who were exasperated by the loss of nearly forty thousand men, caused them by his arms in that fatal expedition." Determined foes to the Reformed faith as both of them were, a distinction must yet be made between the Count of Guise assailing and slaughtering, with far inferior forces, a formidable body of armed and aggressive foreigners, and the fierce _Balafré_, wielding a murderous sword against his defenceless and inoffensive Huguenot countrymen, on the terrible night of St Bartholomew. If the amount of bloodshed at Saverne and Chenouville appears excessive, and implies that little quarter was given, it must yet be remembered that greater clemency to the vanquished might have had the most disastrous consequences to the handful of conquerors. The Council of Regency disapproved of Guise's conduct in the affair; taxing him with rashness in risking the whole of the small number of regular troops disposable for the defence of the kingdom. But there could hardly have been more pressing occasion to expose them; and Francis I., on returning from exile, recognised and rewarded that and other good services by elevating the county of Guise into a duchy and peerage--further enriching the newly-made duke with a portion of the crown domains. Such honours and advantages had previously been almost exclusively reserved for persons of the blood-royal. The Parliament remonstrated in vain; but Francis himself, before very long, repented what he had done. He took umbrage at the increasing popularity of the Duke of Guise, and gave ear to the calumnies and insinuations of the French nobles, who were irritated by the haughty bearing, great prosperity, and ambitious views of the house of Lorraine. The manner in which Francis testified his jealousy and