well as the Duke of Lesdiguieres, more or less timidly urged on
the zealous Protestants in that path from which the ancient counsels of
Sully and Mornay were not successful in deterring them. On the 10th of
May, 1621, in the assembly at La Rochelle, a commission of nine members
was charged to present and get adopted a, plan of military organization
whereby Protestant France, Warn included, was divided into eight circles,
having each a special council composed of three deputies at the general
assembly, under a chief who had the disposal of all the military forces;
with each army-corps there was a minister to preach; the royal moneys,
talliages, aid and gabel, were to be seized for the wants of the army;
the property of the Catholic church was confiscated, and the revenues
therefrom appropriated to the expenses of war and the pay of the
ministers of the religion. It was a Protestant republic, organized on
the model of the United Provinces, and disposed to act as regarded the
French kingship with a large measure of independence. When, after thus
preparing for war, they came to actually make it, the Protestants soon
discovered their impotence; the Duke of Bouillon, sixty-five years of age
and crippled with gout, interceded for them in his letters to Louis
XIII., but did not go out of Sedan; the Duke of Lesdiguieres, to whom the
assembly had given the command of the Protestants of Burgundy, Provence,
and Dauphiny, was at that very moment on the point of abjuring their
faith and marching with their enemies. Duke Henry of Rohan himself, who
was the youngest, and seemed to be the most ardent, of their new chiefs,
was for doing nothing and breaking up. "If you are not disposed to
support the assembly," said the Marquis of Chateauneuf, who had been sent
to him to bring him to a decision, "it will be quite able to defend
itself without you." "If the assembly," said Rohan, feeling his honor
touched, "does take resolutions contrary to my advice, I shall not sever
myself from the interest of our churches; "and he sacrificed his better
judgment to the popular blindness. The Dukes of La Tremoille and of
Soubise, and the Marquises of La Force and of Chatillon followed suit.
As M. de Sismondi says, to these five lords and to a small number of
towns was the strength reduced of the party which was defying the King of
France.

Thus, since the death of Henry IV., the king and court of France were
much changed: the great questions and