d under their hatred of Coligny and the Huguenots. Of this there
can be little doubt, though information also came from the buccaneer
Frenchmen captured in the West Indies.

Foreigners had invaded the territory of Spain. The trespassers, too,
were heretics, foes of God and liegemen of the Devil. Their doom was
fixed. But how would France endure an assault, in time of peace, on
subjects who had gone forth on an enterprise sanctioned by the crown,
undertaken in its name, and under its commission?

The throne of France, where the corruption of the nation seemed gathered
to a head, was trembling between the two parties of the Catholics and
the Huguenots, whose chiefs aimed at royalty. Flattering both, caressing
both, betraying both, playing one against the other, Catherine de
Medicis, by a thousand crafty arts and expedients of the moment, sought
to retain the crown on the heads of her weak and vicious sons. Of late
her crooked policy had drawn her towards the Catholic party, in other
words, the party of Spain; and already she had given ear to the savage
Duke of Alva, urging her to the course which, seven years later, led to
the carnage of St. Bartholomew. In short, the Spanish policy was
ascendant, and no thought of the national interest or honor could
restrain that basest of courts from consigning by hundreds to the
national enemy those whom, itself, it was meditating to immolate by
thousands.

Menendez was summoned back in haste to the court. There was counsel,
deep and ominous, in the chambers of the Escurial. His force must be
strengthened. Three hundred and ninety-four men were added at the royal
charge, and a corresponding number of transport and supply ships. It was
a holy war, a crusade, and as such was preached by priest and monk along
the western coasts of Spain. All the Biscayan ports flamed with zeal,
and adventurers crowded to enroll themselves; since to plunder heretics
is good for the soul as well as the purse, and broil and massacre have
double attraction, when promoted to a means of salvation: a fervor, deep
and hot, but not of celestial kindling; nor yet that buoyant and
inspiring zeal, which, when the Middle Age was in its youth and prime,
glowed in the soul of Tancred, Godfrey, and St. Louis, and which, when
its day was long since past, could still find its home in the great
heart of Columbus. A darker spirit urged the new crusade,--born, not of
hope, but of fear, slavish in its nature, the creature a