In the troubled times which followed, Rosny was unshaken in devotion to the cause which he had espoused. He accompanied Henry, when that prince, with only nineteen followers, threw himself, as a last resource, into La Rochelle. He undertook an embassy from that city to Henry III., then almost as much persecuted by the League as the King of Navarre himself. In his Memoirs he has left a striking description of the degraded condition of that sovereign, who had entirely abandoned himself to favourites and menials of the court. “His Majesty was in his cabinet; he had his sword by his side, a hood thrown over his shoulders, a little bonnet on his head, and a basket full of little dogs hung round his neck by a broad riband.” He listened to Rosny with vacant stupidity, neither moving his feet, his hands, nor his head. When he spoke, he complained of the audacity and insults of the League—said that nothing would go well in France until the King of Navarre went to mass—but agreed, finally, that Rosny might treat with the envoys of the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland, in his name as well as the King of Navarre’s, for the raising of twenty thousand Swiss troops, to be employed between the two sovereigns. Henry, through his imprudence, lost all the advantages which his faithful servant’s treaty with the Swiss might have secured to him; but neither disgusted nor dispirited by this folly, Rosny persevered in his attachment to a cause which seemed altogether desperate to most others. He was at the siege of Fontenay, and at the brilliant victory of Coutras, for which the King of Navarre was materially indebted to the artillery under Rosny’s command. His next great undertaking was to effect an entire reconciliation between his master and the King of France. Having succeeded in this, the eyes of all France thenceforward rested upon him as the only man who could re-establish the distracted kingdom. Such was the enthusiasm of many of the French at the time, that they called him “Le Dieu Rosny.” The desired reconciliation had not long been made when Henry III. was assassinated by a fanatic monk, and the King of Navarre laid claim to the vacant throne. But much remained to be done ere he could tranquilly seat himself upon it. His religion was an insurmountable obstacle to the mass of the nation, and the League was all-powerful in many parts of France and held possession of Paris. Rosny fought with his accustomed valour at the battles of Arques and Ivry. At the latter he well nigh lost his life: he received five wounds, had two horses killed under him, and fell at last among a heap of slain. The manner in which he retired from this field, with four prisoners of the highest distinction and the standard of the enemy’s commander-in-chief, is one of the most romantic incidents to be found in authentic history.