In self-defense the Huguenots were forced to appeal to their brother Protestants for help; nor were Swiss, Germans, or English deaf to their appeal. By the treaty of Hampton Court (20th Sept., 1562) Elizabeth agreed to furnish 6000 men, of whom one-half were to garrison Havre, as a material guarantee until the end of the war. This was an impolitic concession on the part of the Huguenots; it turned many friends into enemies, and necessarily drove Catherine into the arms of the coalition. The Duke of Guise, only a few years before, had by the capture of Calais expelled the English from the “sacred soil” of France; and now the Huguenots were traitorously inviting them back. Unfortunately Elizabeth’s behavior only served to strengthen the suspicions of the French people. Her declared object was “to check the aspirations of the Guisian conspirators, who would never be satisfied until Scotland and England were united under one crown, and that worn by Mary Stuart.”[307] To the King of Spain she wrote, immediately after signing the treaty, that her aim was to preserve peace “by securing such ports as be next us from them (Guisians), without intent of offense to the king.”[308] But she did not preserve peace, and her actions did offend. Hostilities broke out long before these negotiations were concluded. By the middle of June the two armies were in the field and ready for action. They were not large: that under Navarre consisting of 4000 foot and 3000 horse, that under Condé of 6000 foot and 2000 horse. The first movements were favorable to the Catholics. Having frustrated an attempt to surprise them, the royal forces prepared to attack Orleans, the Huguenot head-quarters, by cutting it off from the surrounding country. They retook Blois, Tours, Poitiers, Angers, and Bourges, almost without striking a blow, signalizing the capture of these cities by atrocities which could have been perpetrated only when the passions of a fierce soldiery were inflamed by religious fanaticism. At Blois a woman found praying with some neighbors was thrown into the water, and as she floated was beaten with sticks and pelted with stones until she died. An old man of seventy caught reading the Bible was immediately massacred; another had his eyes plucked out and was then knocked on the head; another was paraded through the city on an ass, with his face to the tail, pelted, hooted, and drowned. The pastor Chassebœuf was, by Guise’s express order, hung up to a tree without any form of trial.[309] There was much in the appearance of Tours to rouse the fanaticism of the soldiery. For some weeks the town had been in the hands of the Huguenots, who seized upon the churches, stole the plate, broke the images and ornaments, burned the service-books, desecrated the relics, and ordered every ecclesiastic to leave the place in twenty-four hours under pain of imprisonment. Contemporary records describe the destruction of a “Calvary” of gold and azure, one of the