t intimation was discredited by the cautious Protestants,
not unused to the wiles of the enemy. But when, some twenty days later (on
the sixth of August), the statement was confirmed, and the Sancerrois
received the additional assurance that they would be mildly treated, their
surprise knew no bounds. The terms of surrender were easily arranged. A
ransom of forty thousand livres was to be exacted from the city. On the
thirty-first of August, M. de la Chastre made his solemn entry into
Sancerre, accompanied by a band of Roman Catholic priests chanting a _Te
Deum_ over his success. As was too frequently the case, the promise of
immunity to the inhabitants was but poorly kept. Scarcely had two weeks
passed before the "bailli" Johanneau,[1311] summoned from his house by the
archers of the prevot, on the plea that M. de la Chastre desired his
presence, was treacherously murdered on the way to the governor's house.
Besides assassination, other infractions of the capitulation were
committed; the gates of the city were burned, the walls dismantled, many
of the houses torn down. In fact, so unmercifully was Sancerre harried,
partly by the troops, partly by the peasantry of the neighborhood, and by
the "bailli" of Berry, that the reformed church of this place seems to
have been, for the time, completely dispersed.[1312]

Thus ended a siege which had lasted some eight months. The besieged had
lost only eighty-four men by the direct effects of warfare; but more than
five hundred persons perished during the last six weeks of sheer
starvation.[1313]

Sancerre owed its release from the horrors of the siege in great part to
the same causes that had powerfully contributed to the conclusion of the
peace. The Polish ambassadors, coming to proffer the crown to the king's
brother, Henry of Anjou, were about to reach the French court. They were
already not a little surprised at the discovery that the statements and
promises made in the king's name by that not over-scrupulous negotiator,
Montluc, Bishop of Valence, were impudent impostures, fabricated for no
other purpose than to secure at all hazards the success of the French
candidate for the Polish throne. To exhibit to them at this critical
juncture the edifying spectacle of a royal governor of the province of
Berry engaged in the reduction of a city the only crime of which was its
desire to enjoy religious liberty--this would have been a dangerous
venture. Consequently it was no fortuito