eu_]

Upper Languedoc had hitherto refused to take part in the rising, and the
Prince of Conde was advancing on Toulouse when the Duke of Rohan
attempted a bold enterprise against Montpellier. He believed that he was
sure of his communications with the interior of the town; but when the
detachment of the advance-guard got a footing on the draw-bridge the
ropes that held it were cut, and "the soldiers fell into a ditch, where
they were shot down with arquebuses, at the same time that musketry
played upon them from without." The lieutenant fell back in all haste
upon the division of the Duke of Rohan, who retreated "to the best
Villages between Montpellier and Lunel, without ever a man from
Montpellier going out to follow and see whither he went." The war was
wasting Languedoc, Viverais, and Rouergue; the Dukes of Montmorency and
Ventadour, under the orders of the Prince of Conde, were pursuing the
troops of Rohan in every direction; the burgesses of Montauban had
declared for the Reformers, and were ravaging the lands of their Catholic
neighbors in return for the frightful ruin everywhere caused by the royal
troops. The wretched peasantry laid the blame on the Duke of Rohan,
"for one of the greatest misfortunes connected with the position of
party-chiefs is this necessity they lie under of accounting for all their
actions to the people, that is, to a monster composed of numberless
heads, amongst which there is scarcely one open to reason." [_Memoires de
Montmorency.] "Whoso has to do with a people that considers nothing
difficult to undertake, and, as for the execution, makes no sort of
provision, is apt to be much hampered," writes the Duke of Rohan in his
_Memoires_ (t. i. p. 376). It was this extreme embarrassment that
landed him in crime. One of his emissaries, returning from Piedmont,
where he had been admitted to an interview with the ambassador of Spain,
made overtures to him on behalf of that power "which had an interest, he
said, in a prolongation of the hostilities in France, so as to be able to
peaceably achieve its designs in Italy. The great want of money in which
the said duke then found himself, the country being unable to furnish
more, and the towns being unwilling to do anything further, there being
nothing to hope from England, and nothing but words without deeds having
been obtained from the Duke of Savoy, absolutely constrained him to find
some means of raising it in order to subsist." And so