enough for unevangelized pagans.[1282]

[Sidenote: The besieged pray and fight.]

In view of the impending peril, the Protestants had recourse, as their
custom was, to prayer and fasting. The sixteenth and eighteenth of
February were days of public humiliation. From their knees the Huguenots
went with redoubled courage to the ramparts. The crisis had at length
arrived. A series of furious assaults were given, directed principally
against the northern wall and the Bastion de l'Evangile. It was in one of
these attacks, on the third of March, that the Duke of Aumale was killed.
By the besieged the death of so eminent a member of the house of Lorraine
was interpreted as a signal judgment of God upon the most cruel member of
a persecuting family--another presage that the sword should never depart
from the princely stock which had begun the war, until it should be
altogether destroyed. The royalists, on the other hand, found in it a
great source of regret; while Catharine, terrified at the danger to which
her son might be exposed, wrote one of her ill-spelt letters to
Montpensier, entreating him and the other veterans not to suffer any of
the princes to go imprudently near the walls.[1283]

[Sidenote: Bravery of the women.]

It does not enter into the plan of this history to detail the progress of
the siege. Let it suffice to say that the enemy was met at every point and
repulsed. Not content with simply defending their walls, the Huguenots
made sorties, in which many of Anjou's followers were slain. Sometimes
dressing in the uniform of those they had killed or taken prisoners, they
returned and penetrated into the hostile camp, learned the plans of the
assailants, and cut off more than one man of note. The presence of women
among them became an element of strength; for these, surmounting the
weakness of their sex, did good service in the mines, or, donning armor,
defended the breach and drove the enemy into the ditch.[1284] It was
remarked that, as the supply of fresh provisions diminished, the lack was
in some degree compensated by such an abundance of cockles on the sands as
had never before been known. If the Protestants regarded this incident as
a providential interposition in their behalf,[1285] the Roman Catholics
sought to account for it by supposing that the operations of the siege had
permitted the fish to multiply undisturbed.[1286] However this might be,
the women of La Rochelle sallied forth to husband this ne