1590 he won the
brilliant victory at Ivry over the armies of the League and of Spain
which Macaulay has popularised in a stirring poem: the road to Paris
was open and Henry sat down to besiege the city.

[Footnote 124: So called derisively, because he was born and brought
up in the poor province of Bearn, in the Pyrenees.]

The Leaguers fought and suffered with the utmost constancy;
reliquaries were melted down for money, church bells for cannon, and
the clergy and religious orders were caught by the military
enthusiasm. The bishop of Senlis and the prior of the Carthusians, two
valiant Maccabees, were seen, crucifix in one hand, a pike in the
other, leading a procession of armed priests, monks and scholars
through the streets. Friars from the mendicant orders were among them,
their habits tucked up, hoods thrown back, casques on their heads and
cuirasses on their breasts. All marched sword by side, dagger in
girdle, musket on shoulder, the strangest army of the church militant
ever seen. As they passed the Pont Notre Dame the papal legate was
crossing in his carriage, and was asked to stop and give his blessing.
After this benediction a salvo of musketry was called for, and some of
the host of the Lord, forgetting that their guns were loaded with
ball, killed a papal officer and wounded a servant of the ambassador
of Spain.

Four months the Parisians endured starvation and all the attendant
horrors of a siege, the incidents of which, as described by
contemporaries, are so ghastly that the pen recoils from transcribing
them. At length, when they were at the last extremity, the Duke of
Parma arrived with a Spanish army, forced Henry to raise the siege,
and revictualled the city. After war, anarchy. In November 1591 it was
discovered that secret letters were passing between Brizard, an
officer in the service of the Duke of Mayenne in Paris, and a royalist
at St. Denis. The sections demanded Brizard's instant execution, and
on his discharge by the Parlement the _cure_ of St. Jacques fulminated
against that body and declared that cold steel must be tried (_faut
jouer des couteaux_). A secret revolutionary committee of ten was
appointed, and a _papier rouge_ or lists of suspects in all the
districts of Paris was drawn up under three categories: P. (_pendus_),
those to be hanged; D. (_dagues_), those to be poignarded; C.
(_chasses_), those to be expelled. On the night of the 15th November a
meeting was held at the house o