The first distinguished prisoner of the Bastile, after the firm establishment of Henry on the throne, was John de Saulx, viscount de Tavannes, second son of that marshal who acquired an undying but unenviable fame during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He was born in 1555, and may be said to have been nursed in a deadly hatred to the protestants. The viscount accompanied Henry the third to Poland, remained behind when his master departed, visited the Turkish frontier provinces, was engaged in various actions, and at length fell into the hands of the Ottomans. He managed, however, to get free, and, in 1575, he revisited his native country. In the wars between the catholics and the protestants, Tavannes was an indefatigable scourge of the latter. On one occasion, while he was governor of Auxonne, he was in no small danger; he was surprised and wounded in a church by the enemy, and was confined in a castle. Yet though the wall was a hundred feet high, and he was guarded in sight, he contrived to escape. In the war of the League, against both Henries, he rendered himself conspicuous by his violence and perseverance. He proposed to arm the people with pikes, but this proposal was overruled, on the ground that it tended to excite in their minds the idea of a republic. In attempting to relieve Noyon, he was again made prisoner; he was, however, soon exchanged, the mother, wife, and two sisters, of the duke of Longueville being given as an equivalent for him. In 1592, he was appointed to the government of Burgundy, and he maintained the contest till 1595, when, being abandoned by all his companions in the cause, he yielded a sullen submission to Henry. Having refused to join the king at the siege of Amiens, he was arrested, in 1597, and committed to the Bastile. Tavannes had certainly a talent for escaping; we have seen that he twice extricated himself from confinement, and he now did so for the third time. By what means he eluded the vigilance of his jailors does not appear. Henry seems to have cherished no very strong resentment against the fugitive; for, instead of placing him in surer custody, he allowed him to reside unmolested on his estate, where Tavannes died, about the year 1630. The viscount published a life of his father, a curious and valuable work; of which, however, some passages are animated by a spirit dishonourable to the writer. That Tavannes, who was long his determined enemy, and never professed to have become his friend, should be openly or secretly hostile to him, could excite no surprise in Henry; but his feelings must have received a deep wound, when he discovered that he might say, with the inspired royal psalmist, “Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted his heel against me.”