History of the United Netherlands, 1590b | Page 8

Mendoza
and the other Spanish agents went about Paris spreading the news of
Henry's death, but the fact seemed woefully to lack confirmation, while
the proofs of the utter overthrow and shameful defeat of the Leaguers
were visible on every, side. The Parisians--many of whom the year
before had in vain hired windows in the principal streets, in order to
witness the promised entrance of the Bearnese, bound hand and foot,
and with a gag in his mouth, to swell the triumph of Madam
League--were incredulous as to the death now reported to them of this
very lively heretic, by those who had fled so ignominiously from his
troopers.
De la None and the other Huguenot chieftains, earnestly urged upon
Henry the importance of advancing upon Paris without an instant's

delay, and it seems at least extremely probable that, had he done so, the
capital would have fallen at once into his hands. It is the concurrent
testimony of contemporaries that the panic, the destitution, the
confusion would have made resistance impossible had a determined
onslaught been made. And Henry had a couple of thousand horsemen
flushed with victory, and a dozen thousand foot who had been
compelled to look upon a triumph in which they had no opportunity of
sharing: Success and emulation would have easily triumphed over
dissension and despair.
But the king, yielding to the councils of Biron and other Catholics,
declined attacking the capital, and preferred waiting the slow, and in his
circumstances eminently hazardous, operations of a regular siege. Was
it the fear of giving a signal triumph to the cause of Protestantism that
caused the Huguenot leader--so soon to become a renegade--to pause in
his career? Was it anxiety lest his victorious entrance into Paris might
undo the diplomacy of his catholic envoys at Rome? or was it simply
the mutinous condition of his army, especially of the Swiss mercenaries,
who refused to advance a step unless their arrears of pay were at once
furnished them out of the utterly empty exchequer of the king?
Whatever may have been the cause of the delay, it is certain that the
golden fruit of victory was not plucked, and that although the
confederate army had rapidly dissolved, in consequence of their defeat,
the king's own forces manifested as little cohesion.
And now began that slow and painful siege, the details of which are as
terrible, but as universally known, as those of any chapters in the
blood-stained history of the century. Henry seized upon the towns
guarding the rivers Seine and Marne, twin nurses of Paris. By
controlling the course of those streams as well as that of the Yonne and
Oise--especially by taking firm possession of Lagny on the Marne,
whence a bridge led from the Isle of France to the Brie country--great
thoroughfare of wine and corn--and of Corbeil at the junction of the
little river Essonne with the Seine-it was easy in that age to stop the
vital circulation of the imperial city.
By midsummer, Paris, unquestionably the first city of Europe at that
day, was in extremities, and there are few events in history in which our
admiration is more excited by the power of mankind to endure almost
preternatural misery, or our indignation more deeply aroused by the

cruelty with which the sublimest principles of human nature may be
made to serve the purposes of selfish ambition and grovelling
superstition, than this famous leaguer.
Rarely have men at any epoch defended their fatherland against foreign
oppression with more heroism than that which was manifested by the
Parisians of 1590 in resisting religious toleration, and in obeying a
foreign and priestly despotism. Men, women, and children cheerfully
laid down their lives by thousands in order that the papal legate and the
king of Spain might trample upon that legitimate sovereign of France
who was one day to become the idol of Paris and of the whole
kingdom.
A census taken at the beginning of the siege had showed a populace of
two hundred thousand souls, with a sufficiency of provisions, it was
thought, to last one month. But before the terrible summer was over--so
completely had the city been invested--the bushel of wheat was worth
three hundred and sixty crowns, rye and oats being but little cheaper.
Indeed, grain might as well have cost three thousand crowns the bushel,
for the prices recorded placed it beyond the reach of all but the
extremely wealthy. The flesh of horses, asses, dogs, cats, rats had
become rare luxuries. There was nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly,
but sermons. And the priests and monks of every order went daily
about the streets, preaching fortitude in that great resistance to heresy,
by which Paris was earning for itself a crown of glory, and promising
the most direct passage