to it at the price of their blood.”  Shining at court as well as in arms, kind and charitable, beloved of everybody and adored by his servants, the Duke of Montmorency had steadily remained faithful to the king up to the fatal day when the Duke of Orleans entangled him in his hazardous enterprise.  Languedoc was displeased with Richelieu, who had robbed it of some of its privileges; the duke had no difficulty in collecting adherents there; and he fancied himself to be already wielding the constable’s sword, five times borne by a Montmorency, when Gaston of Orleans entered France and Languedoc sooner than he had been looked for, and with a smaller following than he had promised.  The eighteen hundred men brought by the king’s brother did not suffice to re-establish him, with the queen his mother, in the kingdom; the governor of Languedoc made an appeal to the Estates then assembled at Pezenas; he was supported by the Bishop of Alby and by that of Nimes; the province itself proclaimed revolt.  The sums demanded by the king were granted to the duke, whom the deputies prayed to remain faithful to the interests of the province, just as they promised never to abandon his.  The Archbishop of Narbonne alone opposed this rash act; he left the Estates, where he was president, and the duke marched out to meet Monsieur as far as Lunel.  “Troops were levied throughout the province and the environs as openly as if it had been for the king.”  But the regiments were slow in forming; the Duke of Orleans wished to gain over some of the towns; Narbonne and Montpellier closed their gates.  The bishop’s influence had been counted upon for making sure of Nimes, and Montmorency everywhere tried to practise on the Huguenots; “but the Reformed ministers of Nimes, having had advices by letter from his Majesty, whereby he represented himself to have been advertised that the principal design of Monsieur was to excite them of the religion styled Reformed, considered themselves bound in their own defence to do more than the rest for the king’s service.  They assembled the consistory, resolved to die in obedience to him, went to seek the consuls and requested them to have the town-council assembled, in order that it might be brought to take a similar resolution; which the consuls, gained over by M. de Montmorency, refused.” [Memoires de Richelieu, t. iii. p. 160.] Thereupon the ministers sent off in haste to Marshal La Force, who had already taken position at Pont-Saint-Esprit with his army; and, he having despatched some light horse on the 26th of July, the people cried, “Hurrah! for the king!” the bishop was obliged to fly, and the town was kept to its allegiance.  “Beaucaire, the governor of which had been won over,” made armed resistance.  “If we beat the king’s army,” said the Duke of Montmorency on returning to Pezenas after this incident, “we shall have no lack of towns; if not, we shall have to go and make our court at Brussels.”

At the news of his brother’s revolt, the king, who happened to be on the frontiers of Lorraine, had put himself in motion, but he marched at his ease and by short stages, “thinking that the fire Monsieur would kindle would be only a straw fire.”