was an equal freedom from desire to supplant the prince either in the
esteem of his followers or in military rank. Coligny was inflexible in his
determination to accept no honors or distinctions that might appear to
prejudice the respect due by a Chatillon to a prince of royal blood.[657]

The Prince of Conde was, unfortunately, not the only Huguenot leader
murdered in cold blood at the battle of Jarnac. Chastelier-Pourtaut de
Latour, who, having lately brought his flotilla back in safety to La
Rochelle, had hastened to take the field with the Protestants, was
recognized after his capture as the same nobleman who, five years before,
had killed the Sieur de Charry at Paris, and was killed in revenge by some
of Charry's friends. Robert Stuart, the brave leader descended from the
royal house of Scotland, who was said to have slain Constable Montmorency
in the battle of St. Denis, was assassinated after he had been talking
with the Duke of Anjou, within hearing and almost in sight of the duke, by
one of the constable's adherents.[658]

[Sidenote: Henry of Navarre remonstrates against the perfidy.]

These flagrant violations of good faith incurred severe animadversion. A
letter is extant, written by young Prince Henry of Navarre, or in his
name, to Henry of Anjou, on the twelfth of July, 1569, about four months
after the battle of Jarnac. He begins by answering the aspersions cast
upon his mother and himself, and by asserting that, if his age (which,
however, is not much less than that of Anjou) disqualifies him from
passing a judgment upon the present state of affairs, he has lived long
enough to recognize the instigators of the new troubles as the enemies of
the public weal. It is not Henry of Navarre, whose honors and dignities
are all dependent upon the preservation of France, who seeks the ruin of
the kingdom; but, rather, they seek its ruin who, in their eagerness to
usurp the crown, have gone the length of making genealogical searches to
prove their possession of a title superior to that of the Valois, "and
have learned how to sell the blood of the house of France against
itself,[659] _constraining the king_, as it were, _to make use of his left
arm to cut off his right_, so as more easily to wrest his sceptre from him
afterward." In reply to the statement of Anjou that Stuart alone was
killed in cold blood, Henry of Navarre affirms that he can enumerate many
others.[660] "But I shall content myself with merely remi