left him one young daughter and three little children, the two youngest still in the nurse’s arms.  His sister-in-law, Anne do Salm, wife of his brother D’Andelot, was also there with a child of two years, whilst her husband was scouring Anjou and Brittany to rally the friends of his cause and his house.  A hundred and fifty men, soldiers and faithful servants, escorted these three noble and pious families, who were leaving their castles to go and seek liberties and perils in a new war.  When they arrived at the bank of the Loire, they found all points in the neighborhood guarded; the river was low; and a boatman pointed out to them, near Sancerre, a possible ford.  Conde went over first, with one of his children in his arms.

[Illustration:  Conde at the Ford—–­328]

They all went over singing the psalm, When Israel went out of Egypt, and on the 16th of September, 1568, Conde entered La Rochelle.  “I fled as far as I could,” he wrote the next day, “but when I got here I found the sea; and, inasmuch as I don’t know how to swim, I was constrained to turn my head round and gain the land, not with feet, but with hands.”  He assembled the burgesses of La Rochelle, and laid before them the pitiable condition of the kingdom, the wicked designs of people who were their enemies as well as his own:  he called upon them to come and help; he promised to be aidful to them in all their affairs, and, “as a pledge of my good faith,” said he, “I will leave you my wife and children, the dearest and most precious jewels I have in this world.”  The mayor of La Rochelle, La Haise, responded by offering him “lives and property in the name of all the citizens,” who confirmed this offer with an outburst of popular enthusiasm.  The Protestant nobles of Saintonge and Poitou flocked in.  A royal ally was announced; the Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, was bringing her son Henry, fifteen years of age, whom she was training up to be Henry IV.  Conde went to meet them, and, on the 28th of September, 1568, all this flower of French Protestantism was assembled at La Rochelle, ready and resolved to commence the third religious war.

It was the longest and most serious of the four wars of this kind which so profoundly agitated France in the reign of Charles IX.  This one lasted from the 24th of August, 1568, to the 8th of August, 1570, between the departure of Conde and Coligny for La Rochelle and the treaty of peace of St. Germain-en-Laye:  a hollow peace, like the rest, and only two years before the St. Bartholomew.  On starting from Noyers with Coligny, Conde had addressed to the king, on the 23d of August, a letter and a request, wherein, “after having set forth the grievances of the Reformers, he attributed all the mischief to the Cardinal of Lorraine, and declared that the Protestant nobles felt themselves constrained, for the safety of the realm, to take up arms against that infamous priest, that tiger of France, and against his accomplices.”