“Louis XIII. arrived on November 7, early in the morning, accompanied by fifty-four young nobles, riding at full speed, preceded by four post-masters sounding the horn. He rode through the city, where he was not expected. The noise made by his troop woke the citizens, they ran to the windows, and as soon as the monarch was recognised there were cries of _Vive le Roi_. The guard at the Louvre, seeing an armed troop approach, stood on the defence. They soon learned that it was the King; the palace rang with transports of joy; Louis XIII. flew to embrace his mother and his wife. The day was for him one of triumph. The shops were shut; they feasted in the streets and lighted bonfires in the evening.” But the Huguenot party did not rejoice. “As soon,” says Richelieu, “as His Majesty had brought Béarn back to its duty, there was talk of the assembling of Huguenots in many parts of the kingdom.” And very swiftly the matter advanced beyond talk. From the central assembly at La Rochelle orders went out for the Protestants to rise in all quarters. In May 1621 Louis XIII. started on a campaign against them which, first under the influence of Luynes, then under that of Condé, lasted through the greater part of two years--a campaign rather of long sieges than of pitched battles, but costing many distinguished lives, among them that of the Duc de Mayenne. At the opening of this campaign, Luynes made himself Constable of France. He was hardly qualified for the highest military office in the kingdom, being not only timid as a soldier, but absolutely ignorant of the science of war. His career, however, was now nearly at an end. His star had been for some time waning, and Saint-Simon might well say that he died at the right moment, for Louis, “whose eyes were opening,” was beginning to turn against the man whom he had so heartily admired. “Il fut enfin frappé des dimensions de ce colosse formé tout-à-coup,” grown to supreme power in the very moment of Concini’s fall. He made perilous confidences, from which wise courtiers fled, calling the Constable “King Luynes,” and complaining violently of him and his brothers. Luynes did not, as he believed, know his young King through and through. The favourite fell as suddenly as he had risen. Three days of fever, in a village near the castle of Monheurt, which the royal army was besieging, carried off the richest and most powerful man in France. A few days later, the servants who conveyed him to his own estates for burial were playing at dice on his coffin while they rested their horses.