armies met in battle. The Huguenots had suffered greatly, by the
delays caused by attempts at negotiations and compromise. Conde's
army was formed entirely of volunteers, and the nobles and gentry,
as their means became exhausted, were compelled to return home with
their retainers; while many were forced to march to their native
provinces, to assist their co-religionists there to defend
themselves from their Catholic neighbours.

England had entered, to a certain extent, upon the war; Elizabeth,
after long vacillation, having at length agreed to send six
thousand men to hold the towns of Havre, Dieppe, and Rouen,
providing these three towns were handed over to her; thus evincing
the same calculating greed that marked her subsequent dealings with
the Dutch, in their struggle for freedom.

In vain Conde and Coligny begged her not to impose conditions that
Frenchmen would hold to be infamous to them. In vain Throgmorton,
her ambassador at Paris, warned her that she would alienate the
Protestants of France from her; while the possession of the cities
would avail her but little. In vain her minister, Cecil, urged her
frankly to ally herself with the Protestants. From the first
outbreak of the war for freedom of conscience in France, to the
termination of the struggle in Holland, Elizabeth baffled both
friends and enemies by her vacillation and duplicity, and her utter
want of faith; doling out aid in the spirit of a huckster rather
than a queen, so that she was, in the end, even more hated by the
Protestants of Holland and France than by the Catholics of France
and Spain.

To those who look only at the progress made by England, during the
reign of Elizabeth--thanks to her great ministers, her valiant
sailors and soldiers, long years of peace at home, and the spirit
and energy of her people--Elizabeth may appear a great monarch. To
those who study her character from her relations with the
struggling Protestants of Holland and France, it will appear that
she was, although intellectually great, morally one of the meanest,
falsest, and most despicable of women.

Rouen, although stoutly defended by the inhabitants, supported by
Montgomery with eight hundred soldiers, and five hundred Englishmen
under Killegrew of Pendennis, was at last forced to surrender. The
terms granted to the garrison were basely violated, and many of the
Protestants put to death. The King of Navarre, who had, since he
joined the Catholic party, show