the city of Poitiers, Marshal
Saint Andre, at the head of a Roman Catholic army, had marched, about the
middle of August, toward Bourges, perhaps the most important place held by
the Protestants in central France. Beneath the walls of this city he
joined the main army, under Navarre's nominal command, but really led by
the Duke of Guise. The siege was pressed with vigor, for the king was
present in person with the "Guisards." To the handful of Huguenots their
assailants appeared to be "a marvellous army of French, Germans, reiters,
Spaniards, and other nations, numbering in all eighty or a hundred
thousand men, with the bravest cavalry that could be seen."[158] And, when
twenty or twenty-five cannon opened upon Bourges with balls of forty or
fifty pounds' weight, and when six hundred and forty discharges were
counted on a single day, and every building in the town was shaken to its
very foundations, the besieged, numbering only a few hundred men, would
have been excusable had they lost heart. Instead of this, they obstinately
defended their works, repaired the breach by night, and inflicted severe
injury on the enemy by nocturnal sallies. To add to the duke's
embarrassment, Admiral Coligny, issuing from Orleans, was fortunate enough
to cut off an important convoy of provisions and ammunition coming from
Paris to the relief of the besiegers.[159] Despairing of taking the city
by force, they now turned to negotiation. Unhappily, M. d'Ivoy, in command
of the Huguenot garrison, was not proof against the seductive offers made
him. Disregarding the remonstrances of his companions in arms, who pointed
to the fact that the enemy had from day to day, through discouragement or
from sheer exhaustion, relaxed their assaults, he consented (on the
thirty-first of August) to surrender Bourges to the army that had so long
thundered at its gates. D'Ivoy returned to Orleans, but Conde, accusing
him of open perfidy, refused to see him; while the Protestants of Bourges
shared the usual fate of those who trusted the promises of the Roman
Catholic leaders, and secured few of the religious privileges guaranteed
by the articles of capitulation.[160]

With the fall of Bourges, the whole of central France, as far as to the
gates of Orleans, yielded to the arms of Guise. Everywhere the wretched
inhabitants of the reformed faith were compelled to submit to gross
indignities, or seek safety in flight. To many of these homeless fugitives
the friendl