company consisted of four hundred and sixty persons, two-thirds women
and infants in the arms of their mothers. Scarcely knowing whither to
direct their steps, they fled toward the Loire, and hastened to place the
river between them and their pursuers. The precaution availed them little.
They had barely reached the vicinity of Chatillon-sur-Loire,[714] when the
approach of Cartier with a detachment of light horse and mounted
arquebusiers was announced; and the defenceless throng, knowing that no
pity could be expected from men whose hands had already been imbrued in
the blood of their fellow-believers, and being exhorted by their ministers
to meet death calmly, knelt down upon the ground and awaited the terrible
onset. At that very instant, between the hillocks in another direction,
and somewhat nearer to the fugitives, a band of cavalry made its
appearance. They numbered some one hundred and twenty men, and, as they
rode up, were taken for the advance guard of their persecutors. But, on
coming nearer and recognizing some of the kneeling suppliants, the knights
threw off their cloaks and displayed their white cassocks, the badge of
the adherents of the house of Navarre. They were two cornets of Huguenot
horse, on their way from Berry to La Charite, under the command of Bourry,
Teil, and other captains. In the midst of the tearful acclamations of the
women, their new friends turned upon the exultant pursuers, and so bravely
did they fight that the Roman Catholics soon fled, leaving eighty men and
two standards on the field. The Huguenot knights, who had so
providentially become their deliverers, escorted the fugitives from
Montargis to Sancerre and La Charite, where they remained in safety until
the conclusion of peace.[715]

[Sidenote: The "Croix de Gastines."]

Meantime the courts of justice emulated the example of cruelty set them by
the government and the mob. In May they began by sending to the gallows on
the Place Maubert, in Paris, a student barely twenty-two years of age, for
having taught some children the Huguenot doctrines (huguenoterie),
"without any other crime," the candid chronicler adds. After so fair a
beginning there was no difficulty in finding good subjects for hanging.
Accordingly, on the thirtieth of June, three victims more were sacrificed
on the old Place de Greve, "partly for heresy and for celebrating the
Lord's Supper in their house; partly"--so it was pretended--"for having
assisted in demoli