de quelques places mediocres, pendant que La
Rochelle, la plus utile de toutes, restoit aux vaincus, et que les princes
retablissoient les affaires, a l'aide d'un delai qu'ils n'avoient point
ose se promettre." Anquetil, L'Esprit de la ligue, i. 317.

[744] J. de Serres, iii. 372; De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 234, 235, who
makes the loss in the first siege 300 men, and in the second over 1,000
horsemen; Agrippa d'Aubigne, Hist. univ., l. v., c. 19 (i. 315, 316), who
states the total at 1,400 foot and near 400 horse; while Castelnau, l.
vii., c. 10, speaks of but 300 in all. Vezelay, famous in the history of
the Crusades (see Michaud, Hist. des Croisades, ii. 125) as the place
where St. Bernard in 1146 preached the Cross to an immense throng from all
parts of Christendom, is equidistant from Bourges and Dijon, and a little
north of a line uniting these two cities.

[745] De Thou, iv. (liv. xlvi.) 246, 247; Agrippa d'Aubigne, liv. v., c.
19 (i. 317); J. de Serres, iii. 370. About twenty prisoners were taken, to
whom their captors promised their lives. Afterward there were strenuous
efforts made, especially by the priests, to have them put to death as
rebels and traitors. M. de la Chastre resisted the pressure, disregarding
even a severe order of the Parliament of Paris, accompanied by the threat
of the enormous fine of 2,000 marks of gold, which bade him send them to
the capital. (Hist. du Berry, etc., par M. Louis Raynal, 1846, iv, 104,
_apud_ Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. fr., iv. (1856) 27.) Even
Charles IX. wrote to him, but the governor was inflexible. His noble reply
has come to light, dated Jan. 21, 1570, just one month after the failure
of the Protestant scheme. After urging the danger of retaliation by the
Huguenots of La Charite and Sancerre upon the prisoners they held, to the
number of more than forty, and the inexpediency of accustoming the people
of Bourges to bloody executions which they would not fail to repeat, he
concludes his remonstrance in these striking words: "Nevertheless, Sire,
if you should find it expedient, for the good of your service, to put them
to death, the channel of the courts of justice is the most proper, without
recompensing my services, or sullying my reputation with a stain that will
ever be a ground of reproach against me. And I beg you, Sire, to make use
of me in other matters more worthy of a gentleman having the heart of his
ancestors, who for five hundred years have serv