ction. He was then forced to steal down the left
bank of the Seine to Poissy, before he could find means to avoid the
Huguenot posts. Memoires, l. vi., c. 6.

[455] Castelnau was instructed to ask for three or four regiments of
Spanish or Italian foot, and for two thousand cavalry of the same nations.

[456] I have deemed it important to go into these details, in order to
exhibit in the clearest light the insincerity of Philip the Second--a
prince who could not be straightforward in his dealings, even when the
interests of the Church, to which he professed the deepest devotion, were
vitally concerned. My principal authority is the envoy, Michel de
Castelnau, liv. vi., c. 6. Alva's letter to Catharine de' Medici, Dec.,
1567, Gachard, Correspondance de Philippe II., i. 608, 609, sheds some
additional light on the transactions. I need not say that, where Castelnau
and Alva differ in their statements, as they do in some essential points,
I have had no hesitation in deciding whether the duke or the impartial
historian is the more worthy of credit. See, also, De Thou, iii. (liv.
xli.) 755.

[457] Mem. de Fr. de la Noue, c. xiv. (Ancienne coll., xlvii. 189);
Davila, bk. iv. 116; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. universelle, i. 212, 213; De
Thou, iv. 22; Martin, Hist. de France, x. 246. There is some discrepancy
in numbers. There is, however, but little doubt that those given in the
text are substantially correct. D'Aubigne blunders, and more than doubles
the troops of the constable.

[458] Agrippa d'Aubigne relates an incident which has often been repeated.
Among the distinguished spectators gathered on the heights of Montmartre,
overlooking the plain, was a chamberlain of the Turkish sultan, the same
envoy who had been presented to the king at Bayonne. When he saw the three
small bodies of Huguenots issue in the distance from Saint Denis, and the
three charges, in which so insignificant a handful of men broke through
heavy battalions and attacked the opposing general himself, the Moslem, in
his admiration of their valor, twice cried out: "Oh, that the grand
seignior had a thousand such men as those soldiers in white, to put at the
head of each of his armies! The world would hold out only two years
against him." Hist. univ., i. 217.

[459] "Autant de volontaires Parisiens bien armez et _dorez comme
calices_." Agrippa d'Aubigne, l. iv., c. 8 (i. 213). "Tenans la bataille
desja achevee, tout ce gros si bien dore print la fuitte." (I