avow his complicity in the crime. Quiet was
restored. The Protestant seneschal and council released such prisoners as
had escaped the fate of their comrades, and the bishop himself was sent
away under an escort to a place of safety, by order of the very judge whom
the clergy had, a year before, sought to deprive of his office as a
heretic.[484] Nismes remained in the hands of the Protestants through the
war.

[Sidenote: Huguenot successes in the south and west.]

[Sidenote: La Rochelle secured for Conde.]

Meanwhile more important movements took place. Rene of Savoy, son of the
Count de Tende, but better known as Cipierre, was Conde's agent in
assembling the Huguenots of Provence; but Paul de Mouvans, whom we have
met with before in this history, was the real hero of the region. In
Dauphiny, Montbrun commanded. In Bourbonnais and the neighboring provinces
west of the Rhone, Parcenac and Verbelai raised three thousand foot and
five hundred horse, but sustained so severe a loss while passing through
Forez, that the number was soon reduced to barely twelve hundred. Nearer
the Pyrenees, seven thousand men were assembled, known as "the army of the
viscounts," to which further reference will shortly be made. Lyons, one of
the Huguenot strongholds in the first war, the Protestants failed to
capture.[485] But Orleans was secured by the skill of Francois de la Noue,
a young champion whose name was destined long to figure in the most
brilliant deeds of arms of his party, both in France and in the Low
Countries.[486] In the west, too, the Huguenots made the most important
gain of the war in the city of La Rochelle, for the next half-century and
more their secure refuge on approach of danger.

This place, strong by nature, surrounded by low, marshy grounds, rendering
it almost unapproachable from the land side, save by the causeways over
which the roads ran, with a large and convenient harbor and with easy
access to the sea, was already rich and populous. The citizens of La
Rochelle were noted for their independent spirit, engendered or fostered
by their maritime habits. Although the great importance of the city dates
from the civil wars, when its wharves received the commerce driven from
older ports, and when its privateers swept the shores of Brittany and the
bosom of the English channel, it had long boasted extraordinary
privileges, among which the most highly prized was the right to refuse
admission to a royal garrison.[487]