The Huguenot places of refuge.]

Similar rejoicings with similar high masses and sermons by enthusiastic
monks, were heard in the capital[599] and elsewhere. But the jubilant
strains were sounded rather prematurely; for the victory was yet to be
won. The Huguenot nobles, invited by Conde, were flocking to La Rochelle;
the Protestant inhabitants of the towns, expelled from their homes, were
generally following the same impulse. But others, reluctant, or unable to
traverse such an expanse of hostile territory, turned toward nearer places
of refuge. Happily they found a number of such asylums in cities whose
inhabitants, alarmed by the marks of treachery appearing in every quarter
of France, had refused to receive the garrisons sent to them in the king's
name. It was a wonderful providence of God, the historian Jean de Serres
remarks. The fugitive Huguenots of the centre and north found the gates of
Vezelay and of Sancerre open to them. Those of Languedoc and Guyenne were
safe within the walls of Montauban, Milhau, and Castres. In the
south-eastern corner of the kingdom, Aubenas, Privas, and a few other
places afforded a retreat for the women and children, and a convenient
point for the muster of the forces of Dauphiny.[600]

[Sidenote: Jeanne d'Albret and D'Andelot reach La Rochelle.]

Meantime, the Queen of Navarre, with young Prince Henry and his sister
Catharine, started from her dominions near the Pyrenees. The court had in
vain plied her with conciliatory letters and messages sent in the king's
name. Gathering her troops together, and narrowly escaping the forces
despatched to intercept her, she formed a junction with a very
considerable body of troops raised in Perigord, Auvergne, and the
neighboring provinces, under the Seigneur de Piles, the Marquis de
Montamart, and others, and, after meeting the Prince of Conde, who came as
far as Cognac to receive her, found safety in the city of La
Rochelle.[601]

From an opposite direction, Francois d'Andelot, whom the outbreak of
hostilities overtook while yet in Brittany, was warned by Conde to hasten
to the same point. With his accustomed energy, the young Chatillon rapidly
collected the Protestant noblemen and gentry, not only of that province,
but of Normandy, Touraine, Maine, and Anjou, and with such experienced
leaders as the Count of Montgomery, the Vidame of Chartres, and Francois
de la Noue, had reached a point on the Loire a few miles above Angers. It
was his p