e good cause was not dead;
and that the courage of such good men ought never to fail. God had
provided, and ever would provide, fresh instruments to uphold His own
chosen work. Her brief address restored the flagging spirits of the
fugitives. When she returned to La Rochelle, to devise new means of
supplying the necessities of the army, she left behind her men resolved to
retrieve their recent losses. They did not wait long for an opportunity.
The Roman Catholics, advancing, laid siege to Cognac, confident of easy
success. But the garrison, which included seven thousand infantry newly
levied, received them with determination. Sallies were frequent and
bloody, and when, at last, the siege was raised, the army of Anjou had
sacrificed nearly as many men before the walls of a small provincial city
as the Huguenots had lost on the much vaunted field of Jarnac.[675]

[Sidenote: The Huguenots recover strength.]

The events of the next two or three months certainly exhibited no
diminution in the power or in the spirit of the Huguenots. St. Jean
d'Angely, into which Count Montgomery had thrown himself, defied the
entire army of Anjou, and the siege was abandoned. Angouleme, an equally
tempting morsel, he tried to obtain, but failed. At Mucidan, a town
somewhat to the south-west of Perigueux, he was more successful. But he
effected its capture at the expense of the life of Brissac, one of his
bravest officers--a loss which he attempted to avenge by murdering the
garrison, after it had surrendered on condition that life and property
should be spared.[676] Within a month or two after the battle of Jarnac
the Protestants at La Rochelle wrote, for Queen Elizabeth's information,
that they were more powerful than ever, that Piles had brought them 4,000
recruits, that D'Andelot was soon to bring the viscounts with a large
force.[677]

[Sidenote: Death of D'Andelot.]

But the course of that indefatigable warrior was now run. D'Andelot's
excessive labors and constant exposure had brought on a fever to which his
life soon succumbed. There were not wanting those, it is true, who
ascribed his sudden death, like most of the deaths of important personages
in the latter part of this century, to poison; and Huguenot and loyal
pamphleteers alike laid the crime at the door of Catharine de'
Medici.[678] But there is no sufficient evidence to substantiate the
accusation, and we must not unnecessarily ascribe this base act to a woman
already resp