Meanwhile more important movements took place. Rene of Savoy, son of the Count de Tende, but better known as Cipierre, was Conde's agent in assembling the Huguenots of Provence; but Paul de Mouvans, whom we have met with before in this history, was the real hero of the region. In Dauphiny, Montbrun commanded. In Bourbonnais and the neighboring provinces west of the Rhone, Parcenac and Verbelai raised three thousand foot and five hundred horse, but sustained so severe a loss while passing through Forez, that the number was soon reduced to barely twelve hundred. Nearer the Pyrenees, seven thousand men were assembled, known as "the army of the viscounts," to which further reference will shortly be made. Lyons, one of the Huguenot strongholds in the first war, the Protestants failed to capture.[485] But Orleans was secured by the skill of Francois de la Noue, a young champion whose name was destined long to figure in the most brilliant deeds of arms of his party, both in France and in the Low Countries.[486] In the west, too, the Huguenots made the most important gain of the war in the city of La Rochelle, for the next half-century and more their secure refuge on approach of danger. This place, strong by nature, surrounded by low, marshy grounds, rendering it almost unapproachable from the land side, save by the causeways over which the roads ran, with a large and convenient harbor and with easy access to the sea, was already rich and populous. The citizens of La Rochelle were noted for their independent spirit, engendered or fostered by their maritime habits. Although the great importance of the city dates from the civil wars, when its wharves received the commerce driven from older ports, and when its privateers swept the shores of Brittany and the bosom of the English channel, it had long boasted extraordinary privileges, among which the most highly prized was the right to refuse admission to a royal garrison.[487] Besides this, the citizens were accustomed to choose three candidates for the office of major, from whom the king or the royal governor made his selection; and the magistrate thus appointed enjoyed an authority which the Rochellois would scarcely concede to their monarch.[488] La Rochelle--whose former orthodoxy Father Soulier attempts to establish by instancing the sentence which the "presidial" of the city pronounced in 1552 against some Protestants, condemning them to be dragged on a hurdle with a fagot of sticks bound to their backs, and afterward to be burned, one of them alive[489]--had been so far affected by the progress of the Reformation, that it was perhaps only the fear of losing its trade and privileges that prevented it from openly siding with Conde in the first religious war.[490] By this time, however, Protestantism had struck such deep roots, that one of the three candidates for the mayoralty, at the Easter elections of 1567, was Truchares, a political Huguenot. The king was, indeed, warned of his sentiments; but