ad preserved: his coolness throughout. Amid all the hubbub of
learned doctors of law, archbishops-Leaguer and political-Sorbonne
pedants, solemn grandees from Spain with Latin orations in their pockets,
intriguing Guises, huckstering Mayennes, wrathful Huguenots, sanguinary
cardinal-legates, threatening world-monarchs--heralded by Spanish
musketeers, Italian lancers, and German reiters--shrill screams of
warning from the English queen, grim denunciations from Dutch Calvinists,
scornful repulses from the holy father; he kept his temper and his
eye-sight, as perfectly as he had ever done through the smoke and din of
the wildest battle-field. None knew better than he how to detect the
weakness of the adversary, and to sound the charge upon his wavering
line.

He blew the blast--sure that loyal Catholics and Protestants alike would
now follow him pell-mell.

On the 16th, May, 1593, he gave notice that he consented to get himself
instructed, and that he summoned an assembly at Mantes on the 15th July,
of bishops, theologians, princes, lords, and courts of parliament to hold
council, and to advise him what was best to do for religion and the
State.

Meantime he returned to the siege of Dreux, made an assault on the place,
was repulsed, and then hung nine prisoners of war in full sight of the
garrison as a punishment for their temerity in resisting him. The place
soon after capitulated (8th July, 1593).

The interval between the summons and the assembling of the clerical and
lay notables at Mantes was employed by the Leaguers in frantic and
contradictory efforts to retrieve a game which the most sagacious knew to
be lost. But the politicians were equal to the occasion, and baffled them
at every point.

The Leaguers' archbishop inveighed bitterly against the abominable edicts
recently issued in favour of the Protestants.

The political archbishop (of Bourges) replied not by defending; but by
warmly disapproving, those decrees of toleration, by excusing the king
for having granted them for a temporary purpose, and by asserting
positively that, so soon as the king should be converted, he would no
longer countenance such measures.

It is superfluous to observe that very different language was held on the
part of Henry to the English and Dutch Protestants, and to the Huguenots
of his own kingdom.

And there were many meetings of the Leaguers in Paris, many belligerent
speeches by the cardinal legate, proclaiming war to th