." The King of Navarre's lieutenant, being appealed to
for aid, summoned, but to no purpose, the Parliament of Bordeaux; he was
forced to take refuge in Chateau-Trompette, and was massacred by the
populace whilst he was trying to get out; the president of the
Parliament, a most worthy magistrate, and very much beloved, it is said,
by the people, only saved his own life by taking the oath prescribed by
the insurgents. "This news," says Vieilleville, in his contemporary
_Memoires,_ "grievously afflicted the king; and the Constable de
Montmorency represented to him that it was not the first time that these
people had been capricious, rebellious, and mutinous; for that in the
reign of his lord and father, the late king, the Rochellese and
surrounding districts had forgotten themselves in like manner. They
ought to be exterminated, and, in case of need, be replaced by a new
colony, that they might never return. The said sir constable offered to
take the matter in hand, and with ten companies of the old hands whom he
would raise in Piedmont, and as many lanzknechts, a thousand men-at-arms
all told, he promised to exact a full account, and satisfy his Majesty."

Montmorency was as good as his word. When he arrived with his troops in
Guienne, the people of Bordeaux, in a fit of terror, sent to Langon a
large boat, most magnificently fitted up, in which were chambers and
saloons emblazoned with the arms of the said sir constable, with three or
four deputies to present it to him, and beg him to embark upon it, and
drop down to their city. He repulsed them indignantly. "Away, away,"
said he, "with your boat and your keys; I will have nought to do with
them; I have others here with me which will make me other kind of opening
than yours. I will have you all hanged; I will teach you to rebel
against your king and murder his governor and his lieutenant." And he
did, in fact, enter Bordeaux on the 9th of October, 1548, by a breach
which he had opened in the walls, and, after having traversed the city
between two lines of soldiers and with his guns bearing on the suspected
points, he ordered the inhabitants to bring all their arms to the
citadel. Executions followed immediately after this moral as well as
material victory. "More than a hundred and forty persons were put to
death by various kinds of punishments," says Vieilleville; "and, by a
most equitable sentence, when the executioner had in his hands the three
insurgents wh