When the civil war broke out Henri of Navarre took the lead with furious energy on the Protestant side; and it was then that he won his reputation for soldiering and for romance. The white plume of Navarre has been an oriflamme for many a novelist ever since. And it was more than romance, though treated romantically by Macaulay in his _Battle of Ivry_. Henry had bound upon his head a great plume of white peacock feathers just before the battle. “Should the standards fall,” he cried, “rally round the white plume of Navarre. I promise you that it shall be found in the thickest of the fighting.” He made good his boast, for he charged the Catholics two horses’ lengths ahead of his followers, and fought furiously until his sword was beaten out of shape and his right arm swelled with over-exertion—I suppose the lymphatics of the arm became somehow obstructed, but I confess I do not quite understand the pathological condition; still, the incident made a great impression upon his soldiers and gave Henri of Navarre a name for immense courage and enterprise. As a result of many hours’ fierce fighting the Protestants swept the field, partly because the Swiss mercenaries, finding that the League had not paid their wages, surrendered incontinently. “Pas d’argent—pas de Suisse,” was their excellent motto, which the League should have remembered. If Henri had swept on to Paris the opinion is that he might have entered it with very little trouble. But he had no money, he had fired away all his ammunition, and the roads were made impassable by recent rains; moreover, even if Paris had opened her gates to him the Pope would never have ceased his hostility to a Protestant king of France; and once more the old spectre of civil war, interminable, bloodthirsty, and dreadful, would have arisen. And, after all, the majority of Frenchmen were Catholic; and the mighty power of Spain waited just over the Pyrenees to help the Pope if indeterminate civil war should occur. Paris lay, weakly defended, ready for assault; but it would have been a terrible crime for Henri to give the word, and to subject his capital to a worse than St. Bartholomew. So he agreed to “receive instruction,” saying before he did so that his religion was that of all brave men. Paris, strictly invested, suffered the worst horrors of famine. Soldiers killed and ate stray children, and a woman even salted down and ate her own babies who had died of starvation. It is said that the poor creature went “melancholy” from this Thyestian feast, and who can wonder? The great Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, was arriving from the Netherlands with a relieving army of Spaniards; he outmanœuvred Henri, and opened navigation to the beleaguered city. Henri could neither pay his men nor would he permit them to pay themselves by the sack of the city, so naturally they went home. Henri and a few faithful friends and horse soldiers retired to watch and hope. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy