From this period the affairs of Henry III. took a favourable turn. The Leaguers were defeated in several encounters. An army of forty-two thousand men, commanded by the two kings, advanced to the gates of Paris and prepared to commence a general assault. The Duke de Mayenne had only eight thousand disheartened troops. The leaders of the League began to lose all hope, the priests were cast down; the Reformed looked forward to a better future, when the knife of a Dominican monk, Jacques Clément, disconcerted at the same time the hopes and the fears of each party. Henry III. died of his wound, at the end of eighteen hours, on the 10th August, 1589. With him the race of Valois became extinct. Francis I. met with a shameful death; Henry II. was mortally wounded in a tournament; Francis II. did not attain the age of manhood; Charles IX. expired in the convulsions of an unknown malady; the Duke d’Alençon prematurely expired in debauchery and disgrace; and Henry III. perished by the knife of an assassin. The Valois carry on their forehead the ineffaceable brand of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.[72] If history ought not to be a mere object of curiosity, it is still desirable to tell what were the ideas of religion and the manners of this court, where such fanatic intolerance was paramount. After the celebration of mass, astrologers were visited at their houses, in order to procure philtres and poisons. All the magic arts, all the witchcraft imported from Italy by Catherine de Medicis, were in vogue. The courtiers kept small wax figures in their cabinets, and pierced their hearts with pins, pronouncing at the same time cabalistic words, in order, as they believed, to cause the death of their enemies. Religious ceremonies were made use of to rouse the vilest and most sanguinary passions. The sermons of priests connected with the League, like torches, inflamed the whole kingdom. Processions were projected to excite the ferocity of the populace, and frequently presented spectacles of indecency and impiety. At Chartres, after the day of the barricades, a Capuchin represented before Henry III. the Saviour ascending Calvary. He had painted drops of blood, that appeared to ooze from his head, which was crowned with thorns; he seemed to drag along with difficulty a cross of painted cardboard, and fell down at intervals, uttering piercing cries. At Paris, after the assassination of the duke of Guise, men, women, and young girls, covered only with a chemise or sheet, formed night-processions; and in the midst of sacred songs gave themselves up to Saturnalia, worthy of the pagan world in its most vicious days. The soldiers of the League, who bore arms which had been blessed by the priests, committed acts of infamy, even on the steps of altars. The atrocities perpetrated in the churches of Saint-Symphorien, in that of D’Arquenay, and in a crowd of others, cannot be related.