meant), he had had it in the Duke of Parma’s eight as he took Lagny in ours.”  He had been foiled of the battle on which he had set his heart, and, in which he felt confident of overthrowing the great captain of the age, and trampling the League under his feet.  His capital just ready to sink exhausted into his hands had been wrested from his grasp, and was alive with new hope and new defiance.  The League was triumphant, his own army scattering to the four winds.  Even a man of high courage and sagacity might have been in despair.  Yet never were the magnificent hopefulness, the wise audacity of Henry more signally manifested than now when he seemed most blundering and most forlorn.  His hardy nature ever met disaster with so cheerful a smile as almost to perplex disaster herself.

Unwilling to relinquish his grip without a last effort, he resolved on a midnight assault upon Paris.  Hoping that the joy at being relieved, the unwonted feasting which had succeeded the long fasting, and the conciousness of security from the presence of the combined armies of the victorious League, would throw garrison and citizens off their guard, he came into the neighbourhood of the Faubourgs St. Jacques, St. Germain, St. Marcel, and St. Michel on the night of 9th September.  A desperate effort was made to escalade the walls between St. Jacques and St. Germain.  It was foiled, not by the soldiers nor the citizens, but by the sleepless Jesuits, who, as often before during this memorable siege, had kept guard on the ramparts, and who now gave the alarm.  The first assailants were hurled from their ladders, the city was roused, and the Duke of Nemours was soon on the spot, ordering burning pitch hoops, atones, and other missiles to be thrown down upon the invaders.  The escalade was baffled; yet once more that night, just before dawn, the king in person renewed the attack on the Faubourg St. Germain.  The faithful Stafford stood by his side in the trenches, and was witness to his cool determination, his indomitable hope.  La None too was there, and was wounded in the leg—­an accident the results of which were soon to cause much weeping through Christendom.  Had one of those garlands of blazing tar which all night had been fluttering from the walls of Paris alighted by chance on the king’s head there might have been another history of France.  The ladders, too, proved several feet too short, and there were too few, of them.  Had they been more numerous and longer, the tale might have been a different one.  As it was, the king was forced to retire with the approaching daylight.

The characteristics of the great commander of the Huguenots and of the Leaguers’ chieftain respectively were well illustrated in several incidents of this memorable campaign.  Farnese had been informed by scouts and spies of this intended assault by Henry on the walls of Paris.  With his habitual caution he discredited the story.  Had he believed it, he might have followed the king in overwhelming force and taken him captive.  The penalty of Henry’s unparalleled boldness was thus remitted by Alexander’s exuberant discretion.