He cloaked his treason under the hypocritical pretext that he was in arms not against the king, but against the king's advisers. White allows himself to be deluded by this hypocritical sham, and in several places censures the _treasonable_ conduct of the Cardinal of Lorraine and others, who wrote to the King of Spain soliciting his aid to save Catholicity in France, while Coligny, in arms against his king, making treaties with Elizabeth of England, introducing into France English and German mercenaries, is never branded as a traitor at all. And if Condé and Coligny merely sought to banish the Guises, how was that to be effected by pillaging Catholic churches? They took up arms to exterminate the leaders of the Catholic party and the clergy, suppress the Catholic worship, and place Condé on the throne. White, too, censures the pope for interfering, but neglects to put before his reader the fact that part of France, the Comté Venaissin, then belonged to the Holy See, and that in that part the Huguenots were committing the same ravages. Meanwhile the royal armies rallied; and, as a first step, endeavored to induce the Huguenot leaders to lay down their arms. Condé was so far influenced by the offers made, that he agreed to leave France if Guise would do the same, but Beza traversed the projects of peace. He besought the prince, says White, "not to give over the good work he had begun, which God, whose honor it concerned, would bring to perfection." Negotiation failing, the royal troops began the campaign to recover the conquered cities. Blois, Tours, Poitiers, Angers, Bourges, and Rouen were at once retaken, and Orleans, the stronghold of reform, besieged. In the battle of Dreux, fought on the 19th of December, the rebels were utterly defeated, Condé remaining a prisoner in the hands of the royal forces. While besieging Orleans, (February 18th,) Guise was assassinated by Jean Méré de Poltrot, a man whom Coligny aided with money, and who had revealed to that nobleman his project of murder. White's endeavor to exculpate Coligny is very lame. He deems it suspicious that Poltrot was executed at once without his being confronted with Coligny; as though the rebel general would have come into court for the purpose, in the very heat of the civil war. He finally, however, admits: "This leaves no doubt that Coligny assented, if he did not consent, to the crime. He was not unwilling to profit by it, though he would do nothing to further it. This may diminish the lofty moral pedestal on which some writers have placed the Protestant hero; but he was a man, and had all a man's failings, though he may have controlled them by his religious principles. Nor was assassination considered at all cowardly or disgraceful in those days; not more so than killing a man in a duel was, until very recently, among us." {9}