, and assisted by the chiefs of the wards, and so soon as the
riot was quelled, its ringleader, a leading advocate, Renaud by name, was
hanged.

Still, but for the energy of the priests, it is doubtful whether the city
could have been held by the Confederacy. The Duke of Nemours confessed
that there were occasions when they never would have been able to sustain
a determined onslaught, and they were daily expecting to see the Prince
of Bearne battering triumphantly at their gates.

But the eloquence of the preachers, especially of the one-eyed father
Boucher, sustained the fainting spirits of the people, and consoled the
sufferers in their dying agonies by glimpses of paradise. Sublime was
that devotion, superhuman that craft; but it is only by weapons from the
armoury of the Unseen that human creatures can long confront such horrors
in a wicked cause. Superstition, in those days at least, was a political
force absolutely without limitation, and most adroitly did the agents of
Spain and Rome handle its tremendous enginery against unhappy France. For
the hideous details of the most dreadful sieges recorded in ancient or
modern times were now reproduced in Paris. Not a revolutionary
circumstance, at which the world had shuddered in the accounts of the
siege of Jerusalem, was spared. Men devoured such dead vermin as could be
found lying in the streets. They crowded greedily around stalls in the
public squares where the skin, bones, and offal of such dogs, cats and
unclean beasts as still remained for the consumption of the wealthier
classes were sold to the populace. Over the doorways of these flesh
markets might be read "Haec runt munera pro iis qui vitam pro Philippo
profuderunt." Men stood in archways and narrow passages lying in wait for
whatever stray dogs still remained at large, noosed them, strangled them,
and like savage beasts of prey tore them to pieces and devoured them
alive. And it sometimes happened, too, that the equally hungry dog proved
the more successful in the foul encounter, and fed upon the man. A lady
visiting the Duchess of Nemours--called for the high pretensions of her
sons by her two marriages the queen-mother--complained bitterly that
mothers in Paris had been compelled to kill their own children outright
to save them from starving to death in lingering agony. "And if you are
brought to that extremity," replied the duchess, "as for the sake of our
holy religion to be forced to kill your own chil