routed
and reduced to such extremities that they had no means of getting to their
feet again." And the Protestant Francois de la Noue devotes an entire
chapter of his "discourses" to the proof of the assertion that "as the
siege of Poitiers was the beginning of the mishaps of the Huguenots, so
that of Saint Jean was the means of arresting the good fortune of the
Catholics."

What, it may be asked, led to the commission of so fatal an error? The
memoirs of Tavannes, who advocated the immediate pursuit of the admiral,
ascribe it to the reluctance of the Montmorencies to permit their cousin
to be overwhelmed; to the jealousy felt by Cardinal Lorraine of the
military successes which threw his brother, the Duke of Aumale, and his
nephew, the Duke of Guise, into obscurity; and to the suggestions of De
Retz, the king's favorite, who persuaded Charles that it was dangerous to
permit the renown of Anjou to increase yet further.[736] It must, however,
be remembered that the younger Tavannes is not always a good authority;
and that where, as in the present instance, the glory of his father is
affected, he becomes altogether untrustworthy. If we reject his account as
apocryphal, which apparently we must do, there still remains good reason
to believe that the siege of Saint Jean d'Angely was agreed to by the
majority of the Roman Catholic leaders from the sincere conviction that
its reduction, to be followed by the still more important capture of La
Rochelle, would annihilate the Huguenot party in the west, its stronghold
and refuge, and that it could then subsist but little longer in other
parts of the kingdom.

[Sidenote: Siege of Saint Jean d'Angely.]

The defence of Saint Jean d'Angely had been intrusted by Coligny to
competent hands. De Piles had found the fortifications weak and imperfect;
he completed and strengthened them.[737] With a small garrison of
Huguenots he repaired by night the breaches made by the enemy's cannon
during the day, and repelled every attempt to storm the place. When the
siege had advanced about two weeks, Charles himself, who was resolved not
to suffer Henry of Anjou any longer to win all the laurels of the war,
made his appearance in the Roman Catholic camp, on the twenty-sixth of
October, and summoned the garrison to surrender. De Piles, however,
declined to listen to the commands of the king, even as he had disobeyed
those of the duke, taking refuge in the feudal theory that he could give
up the