Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I to Edict of Nantes - James Aitken Wylie

maintain their liberties or die. The town was under
the command of the Count Montgomery.[8]
Pursued by the implacable resentment of Catherine
de Medici, he had fled to England, where he
embraced the Reformed religion, and whence he
returned to France to aid the Huguenots in their
great struggle. He was a skillful and courageous
general, and knowing that he would receive no
quarter, he was resolved rather than surrender to
make Rouen his grave.
Let us turn to the royalist camp. The picture
presented to us there is the reverse of that which
we have been contemplating. "There," says Felice,
"the grossest licentiousness prevailed." Catherine
de Medici was present with her maids of honor,
who did not feel themselves under any necessity to
practice severer virtues in the trenches than they
usually observed in the Louvre. Games and
carousals filled up the leisure hours of the common
soldiers, while tournaments and intrigues occupied
the captains and knights. These two widely
different pictures are parted not by an age, but
simply by the city walls of Rouen.
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