Rohan replied, “I should be my own enemy if I did not desire my king’s good graces and your friendship.  I will never refuse from my king benefits and honors, or from you the offices of a kind connection.  I do well consider the peril in which I stand; but I beg you also to look at yours.  You are universally hated, because you alone possess what everybody desires.  Wars against them of the religion have often commenced with great disadvantages for them; but the restlessness of the French spirit, the discontent of those not in the government, and the influence of foreigners have often retrieved them.  If you manage to make the king grant us peace, it will be to his great honor and advantage, for, after having humbled the party, without having received any check, and without any appearance of division within or assistance from without, he will have shown that he is not set against the religion, but only against the disobedience it covers, and he will break the neck of other parties without having met with anything disagreeable.  But, if you push things to extremity, and the torrent of your successes does not continue,—­and you are on the eve of seeing it stopped in front of Montauban,—­every one will recover his as yet flurried senses, and will give you a difficult business to unravel.  Bethink you that you have gathered in the harvest of all that promises mingled with threats could enable you to gain, and that the remnant is fighting for the religion in which it believes.  For my own part, I have made up my mind to the loss of my property and my posts; if you have retarded the effects thereof on account of our connection, I am obliged to you for it; but I am quite prepared to suffer everything, since my mind is made up, having solemnly promised it and my conscience so bidding me, to hear of nothing but a general peace.”

The reply was worthy of a great soul devoted to a great cause, a soul that would not sacrifice to the hopes of fortune either friends or creed.  It was a mark of Duke Henry of Rohan’s superior character to take account, before everything, of the general interests and the moral sentiments of his party.  The chief of the royal party, the Duke of Luynes, was, on the contrary, absorbed in the material and momentary success of his own personal policy; he refused to treat for a general peace with the Protestants, and he preferred to submit to a partial and local defeat before Montauban, rather than be hampered with the difficulties of national pacification.  At a council held on the 26th of October, 1621, it was decided to publicly raise the siege.  The king and the royal army departed in November from the precincts of Montauban, which they purposed to attack afresh on the return of spring:  the king was in a hurry to go and receive at Toulouse the empty acclamations of the mob, and he ordered Luynes to go and take, on the little town of Monheur, in the neighborhood of Toulouse, a specious revenge for his check before