ance to the Huguenots, on
account of the league recently entered into, which Retz had been specially
sent by Charles to confirm, he at least succeeded in obtaining a sum of
forty thousand francs from various English, French, and Flemish
sympathizers, with which he was permitted, notwithstanding protests from
Paris, to fit out a fleet. Elizabeth, indeed, so far overcame her scruples
as to allow a large vessel of her own to follow. But when Montgomery's
squadron reached the roads of La Rochelle, the fifty-three ships of which
it was composed, and which carried eighteen hundred or two thousand men,
were so small and badly-appointed--in short, so inferior in strength to
the fewer vessels of the king standing off the entrance--that they avoided
coming to close quarters, stood off to Belle Isle, and finally returned to
England. Queen Elizabeth, at all times very doubtful respecting the
propriety of assisting subjects against their monarch, had meantime
disowned the enterprise as piratical, and expressed the hope the culprits
might be destroyed. It was not, in this case, merely her customary
dissimulation. The plundering by some French and Netherland sailors of the
vessel on which the Earl of Worcester was proceeding, in the queen's name,
to stand as sponsor at the baptism of Charles's infant daughter, had
greatly incensed her.[1290] Not, however, that Elizabeth lost any of that
remarkable interest which she had always taken in Count Montgomery, or
felt at all inclined to give him up to the French government for his
breach of the peace. For when, a little later, a demand was made for the
culprit, she assured the ambassador of Charles that she could swear she
was ignorant that the count was in her dominions. "But," she added, "were
he to come, I would answer your master as his father answered my sister,
Queen Mary, when he said, 'I will not consent to be the hangman of the
Queen of England.' So his Majesty, the King of France, must excuse me if I
can no more act as executioner of those of my religion than King Henry
would discharge a similar office in the case of those that were not of his
religion."[1291]

[Sidenote: Huguenot successes in the south.]

[Sidenote: Sommieres.]

[Sidenote: Villeneuve.]

In other parts of France it had fared no better with the attempt to crush
the Huguenots. Montauban and Nismes still held out. Various places in the
south-east fell into Huguenot hands. The siege of Sommieres, near Nismes,
by th