wn
departure it was believed that he would not leave the city before the
termination of the Easter festival, and that meanwhile circumstances
might occur to induce him to change his resolution. But while Marie de
Medicis indulged in this hope, the same anticipation had produced a
different effect upon the minds of Conde and his party, who secretly
urged upon the King that longer delay could only tend to afford
facilities to the Protestants for strengthening their faction, and
consequently their means of resistance, an argument which determined
Louis at once to carry out his project; and so alarmed was the Prince
lest some circumstance might supervene to impede the departure of the
monarch, that he finally induced him to have recourse to the undignified
expedient of quitting the Louvre by a back entrance at dusk on Palm
Sunday, and of proceeding to Orleans, where he remained until the close
of Easter, awaiting the arrival of the great officers of his household,
who had no sooner joined him than he embarked with the troops who had
been stationed there, and hastened with all possible speed to Nantes,
where he appointed the Prince de Conde lieutenant-general of
his army.[73]

The indignation of the Queen-mother was unbounded when she became
apprised of the departure of the King, which she at once attributed to
the anxiety of M. de Conde to remove him beyond her own influence, and
she consequently made immediate preparations for following the royal
fugitive; but although she exerted all her energy to accomplish this
object, her mental agitation overcame her physical strength; and when
she reached the town of Nantes, which Louis had already quitted, she was
unable to proceed farther, and was compelled by indisposition to remain
inactive, and to leave her adversaries in possession of the field.

The war which supervened was one of great triumph to the royal army, if
indeed the massacre of his own subjects can reflect glory upon a
sovereign; but the laurels gained by Louis and his troops were sullied
by a series of atrocious and bootless cruelties, which made them matter
of reproach rather than of praise. In vain did the Marechal de
Lesdiguieres, the Duc de Bouillon, and even Sully, who had once
controlled the destinies of France, make repeated offers of submission;
the Prince de Conde had sufficient influence over the infatuated King to
render every appeal useless, and to induce him to persist in the
wholesale slaughter of t