ers, who were maltreated or slain."[1383]

[Sidenote: Delight of Catharine de' Medici.]

There was one person to whom the capture of Count Montgomery was
peculiarly gratifying. Catharine de' Medici had never forgotten the
murderous wound Montgomery's lance had inflicted upon her husband in the
rough tournament held in honor of Isabella's nuptials. True, the count had
entered the lists with Henry only by the king's express command, and the
fatal effects of the blow that shattered Henry's visor and drove the
splintered stock into his eye, were due to no malicious intent.
Nevertheless, Montgomery was never sincerely forgiven; and when the slayer
of the father was captured fighting against the son, Catharine resolved
that no considerations of pity should prevent his expiating his unintended
crime. Nor was the Roman Catholic party loth to see summary punishment
inflicted upon Montgomery in revenge for the blow he had struck the
"noblesse" of Bearn and the frightful slaughter of their partisans he had
authorized, five years before, during the third civil war, at the storming
of Orthez.[1384] On the other hand, the Parisian populace was excited by
the revival of the false rumor already referred to, that Count Montgomery,
glorying in the mischance whereby France was robbed of her king, had
substituted for his ancestral coat of arms a novel escutcheon of his own
device, whereon was figured a broken lance.[1385] It need not surprise us,
therefore, that though guiltless of any crime of which the law of even
that cruel age ordinarily took cognizance, the Huguenot leader, after
being placed on the rack in the vain attempt to obtain from him admissions
criminating his associates, was condemned, as a traitor found in arms
against his king, to be beheaded and quartered, on the Place de Greve, on
the twenty-sixth of June, 1574.

[Sidenote: Execution of Montgomery on the Place de Greve.]

Both enemies and friends unite in testifying to the fortitude with which
Count Montgomery underwent the execution of his severe sentence. Roman
Catholic writers, indeed, hint that he may have received profit from the
ministrations of five or six theological doctors, to whom they represent
him as gladly listening.[1386] But Protestant historians give us a
circumstantial account that seems better entitled to credit, and leaves no
room for doubt that Gabriel de Montgomery died constant to the faith which
he had embraced in his retirement, after the death