threatened with
a siege, for which it was but indifferently prepared.[234] Des Adrets, the
fierce chieftain of the lower Rhone, had recently revealed his real
character more clearly by betraying the cause he had sullied by his
barbarous advocacy, and was now in confinement.[235] Indeed, everything
seemed to point to a speedy and complete overthrow of an undertaking which
had cost so much labor and suffering,[236] when an unexpected event
produced an entire revolution in the attitude of the contending parties
and in the purposes of the leaders.

[Sidenote: Assassination of Francois de Guise.]

This event was the assassination of Francois de Guise. On the evening of
the eighteenth of February, 1563, in company with a gentleman or two, he
was riding the round of his works, and arranging for a general attack on
the morrow. So confident did he feel of success, that he had that morning
written to the queen mother, it is said, that within twenty-four hours he
would send her news of the capture of Orleans, and that he intended to
destroy the entire population, making no discrimination of age or sex,
that the very memory of the rebellious city might be obliterated.[237] At
a lonely spot on the road, a man on horseback, who had been lying in wait
for him, suddenly made his appearance, and, after discharging a pistol at
him from behind, rode rapidly off, before the duke's escort, taken up with
the duty of assisting him, had had time to make any attempt to apprehend
the assassin. Three balls, with which the pistol was loaded, had lodged in
Guise's shoulder, and the wound, from the first considered dangerous,
proved mortal within six days. The murderer had apparently made good his
escape; but a strange fatality seemed to attend him. During the darkness
he became so confused that, after riding all night, he found himself
almost at the very place where the deed of blood had been committed, and
was compelled to rest himself and his jaded horse at a house, where he was
arrested on suspicion by some of Guise's soldiers. Taken before their
superior officers, he boldly avowed his guilt, and boasted of what he had
done. His name he gave as Jean Poltrot, and he claimed to be lord of
Merey, in Angoumois; but he was better known, from his dark complexion and
his familiarity with the Spanish language, by the sobriquet of
"L'Espagnolet." He was an excitable, melancholy man, whose mind,
continually brooding over the wrongs his country and faith