are mine; I swear on my soul, honor, and life, to be wholly yours.”  The young Conde took the same oath.  The two princes were associated in the command, under the authority of Coligny, who was immediately appointed lieutenant-general of the army.  For two years their double signature figured at the bottom of the principal official acts of the Reformed party; and they were called “the admiral’s pages.”  On both of them Jeanne passionately enjoined union between themselves, and equal submission on their part to Coligny, their model and their master in war and in devotion to the common cause.  Queen, princes, admiral, and military leaders of all ranks stripped themselves of all the diamonds, jewels, and precious stones which they possessed, and which Elizabeth, the Queen of England, took in pledge for the twenty thousand pounds sterling she lent him.  The Queen of Navarre reviewed the army, which received her with bursts of pious and warlike enthusiasm; and leaving to Coligny her two sons, as she called them, she returned alone to La Rochelle, where she received a like reception from the inhabitants, “rough and loyal people,” says La Noue, “and as warlike as mercantile.”  After her departure, a body of German horse, commanded by Count Mansfeld, joined Coligny in the neighborhood of Limoges.  Their arrival was an unhoped-for aid.  Coligny distributed amongst them a medal bearing the effigy of Queen Jeanne of Navarre with this legend:  “Alone, and with the rest, for God, the king, the laws, and peace.”

With such dispositions on one side and the other, war was resumed and pushed forward eagerly from June, 1569, to June, 1570, with alternations of reverse and success.  On the 23d of June, 1569, a fight took place at Roche l’Abeille, near St. Yrieix in Limousin, wherein the Protestants had the advantage.  The young Catholic noblemen, with Henry de Guise at their head, began it rashly, against the desire of their general, Gaspard de Tavannes, to show off their bravery before the eyes of the queen-mother and the Cardinal of Lorraine, both of whom considered the operations of the army too slow and its successes too rare.  They lost five hundred men and many prisoners, amongst others Philip Strozzi, whom Charles IX. had just made colonel-general of the infantry.  They took their revenge on the 7th of September, 1569, by forcing Coligny to raise the siege of Poitiers, which he had been pushing forward for more than two months, and on the 3d of October following, at the battle of Moncontour in Poitou, the most important of the campaign, which they won brilliantly, and in which the Protestant army lost five or six thousand men and a great part of their baggage.  Before the action began, “two gentlemen on the side of the Catholics, being in an out-of-the-way spot, came to speech,” says La Noue, “with some of the (Protestant) religion, there being certain ditches between them.

[Illustration:  Parley before the Battle of Moncontour——­337]