communion. This being done, they adopted for their motto the words, "Eamus
nos, moriamur cum Christo," and attached to their dress a white cross to
distinguish them from their Protestant fellow-citizens. Of success they
entertained no misgivings. Had not Attila been defeated, with his three
hundred thousand men, not far from Toulouse? Had not God so blessed the
arms of "our good Catholics" in the time of Louis the Eighth, father of
St. Louis, that eight hundred of them had routed more than sixty thousand
heretics? "So that we doubt not," said the new crusaders, "that we shall
gain the victory over these enemies of God and of the whole human race;
and if some of us should chance to die, our blood will be to us a second
baptism, in consequence of which, without any hinderance, we shall pass,
with the other martyrs, straight to Paradise."[596] A papal bull, a few
months later (on the fifteenth of March, 1569), gave the highest
ecclesiastical sanction to the crusade, and emphasized the complete
extermination of the heretics.[597]

[Sidenote: Fanaticism of the Roman Catholic preachers.]

The faithful, but somewhat garrulous chronicler, who has left us so vivid
a picture of the social, religious, and political condition of the city of
Provins during a great part of the second half of this century, describes
a solemn procession in honor of the publication of the new ordinance,
which was attended by over two thousand persons, and even by the
magistrates suspected of sympathy with the Protestants. Friar Jean
Barrier, when pressed to preach, took for his text the song of Moses: "I
will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and
his rider hath He thrown into the sea." His treatment of the verse was
certainly novel, although the exegesis might not find much favor with the
critical Hebraist. The Prince of Conde was the _horse_, on whose back
were mounted the Huguenot ministers and preachers--the _riders_ who drove
him hither and thither by their satanic doctrine. Although they were not
as yet drowned, like Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, France had great
reason to rejoice and praise God that the king had annulled the Edict of
January, and other pernicious laws made during his minority. As for
himself, said the good friar, he was ready to die, like another Simeon,
since he had lived to see the edicts establishing "the Huguenotic liberty"
repealed, and the preachers expelled from France.[598]

[Sidenote: