e affirmed that the errors committed
in the siege of Saint Jean d'Angely, and in disbanding the powerful army
of Anjou, completely obliterated the advantage which had been won on the
bloody field of Moncontour.[743]

While the Protestants had been forced to abandon one important place after
another in Poitou, Saintonge and Aunis, they had in other parts of the
kingdom been displaying their old enterprise, and had obtained
considerable success. Vezelay in Burgundy, the birthplace of the reformer
Theodore Beza, passed through a fiery ordeal. This ancient town, built
upon the brow of a hill, and strong as well by reason of its situation as
of its walls constructed in a style that was now becoming obsolete in
France, had been captured at the beginning of the war by some of the
neighboring Huguenot noblemen, who scaled the walls and surprised the
garrison. One of the few points the Protestants held in the eastern part
of the kingdom, it was regarded as a place of the greatest importance to
their cause.

[Sidenote: Huguenot successes. Vezelay.]

Within a few weeks Vezelay was twice besieged by a Roman Catholic army
under Sansac. A vigorous sortie, in which the Huguenots destroyed almost
all the engines of war of the assailants, on the first occasion caused the
siege to be raised. When Sansac renewed his attempt he fared no better.
The soldiers who had thrown themselves into the place, with the
enthusiastic citizens, repelled every attack, and promptly suppressed
treacherous plots by putting to death two persons whom they found engaged
in revealing their secrets to the enemy. Sansac next undertook to reduce
Vezelay by hunger; but the Huguenots broke his lines, aided by their
friends in La Charite and Sancerre, and supplied themselves abundantly
with provisions. When, on the sixteenth of December, Sansac finally
abandoned the fruitless and inglorious undertaking, he had lost, since
October, no fewer than fifteen hundred of his soldiers.[744]

[Sidenote: Brilliant capture of Nismes.]

The Huguenots of Sancerre in turn made an attempt to enter Bourges, the
capital of the province of Berry, by promising a large sum of money to the
officer second in command of the citadel; but he revealed their plan to
his superior, M. de la Chastre, governor of the province, and the advanced
party which had been admitted within the gates (on the twenty-first of
December) fell into the snare prepared for them.[745] The capture of
Nismes--"the