8th of March that Henry appeared before the
walls of Paris. By this time the Leaguers had made preparations to
resist him. Provisions and military stores had been accumulated.
Troops had been hurried into the city, and arrangements were made to
hold out till Mayenne could bring them succor. Now a siege was
necessary, with all its accompaniments of blood and woe. There were
now fifty thousand fighting men in the city when Henry commenced the
siege with but twelve thousand foot and three thousand horse.

In this emergence the energy of Henry returned. He took possession of
the river above and below the city. Batteries were reared upon the
heights of Montmartre and Montfaucon, and cannon balls, portentous of
the rising storm, began to fall in the thronged streets of the
metropolis. In the midst of this state of things the old Cardinal of
Bourbon died. The Leaguers had pronounced him king under the title of
Charles X. The insurgents, discomfited in battle, and with many rival
candidates ambitious of the crown, were not in a condition to attempt
to elect another monarch. They thought it more prudent to combine and
fight for victory, postponing until some future day their choice of a
king. The Catholic priests were almost universally on their side, and
urged them, by all the most sacred importunities of religion, rather
to die than to allow a heretic to ascend the throne of France.

Day after day the siege continued. There were bombardments, and
conflagrations, and sallies, and midnight assaults, and all the
tumult, and carnage, and woe of horrid war. Three hundred thousand
men, women, and children were in the beleaguered city. All supplies
were cut off. Famine commenced its ravages. The wheat became
exhausted, and they ate bran. The bran was all consumed, and the
haggard citizens devoured the dogs and the cats. Starvation came. On
parlor floors and on the hard pavement emaciate forms were stretched
in the convulsions of death. The shrieks of women and children in
their dying agonies fell in tones horrible to hear upon the ears of
the besiegers.

The tender heart of Henry was so moved by the sufferings which he was
unwillingly instrumental in inflicting, that he allowed some
provisions to be carried into the city, though he thus protracted the
siege. He hoped that this humanity would prove to his foes that he did
not seek revenge. The Duke of Nemours, who conducted the defense,
encouraged by this unmilitary humanity, that