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

measure which the court adopted to ward off the
impending danger was a weak one. They sent the
Duke of Anjou--the third son of Catherine de
Medici, the same who afterwards ascended the
throne under the title of Henry III--with an army of
gallants, to stop Coligny's march. The stern faces
and heavy blows of the mountain Huguenots drove
back the emasculated recruits of Anjou. Coligny
continued his advance. A few days more and Paris,
surrounded by his Huguenots, would be enduring
siege. A council of war was immediately held,
attended by the King, the Queen-mother, the Duke
of Anjou, and the Cardinal of Lorraine. It was
resolved, says Davila, to have recourse to the old
shift, that namely of offering peace to the
Huguenots.
The peace was granted, Davila tells us--and he
well knew the secrets of the court--in the hope
"that the foreign troops would be sent out of
France, and that artifice and opportunity would
enable them to take off the heads of the Protestant
faction, when the common people would yield, and
return to their obedience."[3] This ending of the
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