Every misfortune seemed to fall at once upon Coligny. He had lost his brother D’Andelot. The Parliament of Paris had just declared him guilty of _lèse-majesté_, a traitor and a felon, inviting any one to attack him, with a promise of fifty thousand crowns to any one who should deliver him up, dead or alive; in fact, he had been exposed to several attempts at assassination. Bands of miscreants had burned his château and devastated his domains. Lastly, as if to overwhelm him with a final blow, Pius V. had addressed letters to the king and queen-mother, in which he described him as “_a detestable, infamous, and execrable man, if indeed he deserved the name of man!_” Behold, then, this great unfortunate, outlawed by the government of his country, and, in a manner, by the human and divine law, by the chief of (Roman) Catholicity, covered with wounds, despoiled of all he possessed, with mutinied mercenaries, an army struck down by defeat, abandoned by many of his friends, blamed by a great number, and having to contend against adversaries without mercy and without faith! Behold him thus, and then read this letter, so pious and so calm, which he wrote to his children on the 16th of October, 1569, thirteen days after the disaster of Moncontour: it is one of the most beautiful pages of the history of humanity:— “We must not count upon what is called property, but rather place our hope elsewhere than on earth, and acquire other means than those which we see with our eyes, or touch with our hands. We must follow Jesus Christ, our Chief, who has gone before us. Men have taken from us all they can; if such is always the will of God, we shall be happy, and our condition good, since this loss has happened to us through no injury that has been done to those who caused it, but simply for the hatred borne to me, because it has pleased God to make use of me to help His Church.... For the present, it is enough for me to admonish and conjure you, in the name of God, to persevere with courage in the practice of virtue.” Coligny did not confine himself to writing: he collected together another army. At his voice, from every mountain of Béarn, of Cevennes, of Dauphiné, of Vivarais, of the county of Foix, there came down intrepid gentlemen, and warlike peasants, who promised to defend their faith and their liberty to the death. He traversed the half of France, passed the Loire, defeated the (Roman) Catholics near Arnay-le-Duc, and marched towards Paris, saying, “The Parisians would incline to peace when they found the war at their gates.”