nor his military skill was ever called in question; and yet
he was uniformly unsuccessful in every one of his enterprises. In 1562
he lost the battle of Dreux to the Duc de Guise; that of St. Denis to
the Constable de Montmorency; and, finally, that of Jarnac, which was
no less fatal to his party. He endured yet another reverse at
Montcontour, in Poitou, but his courage remained unshaken; his skill
was able to parry the attacks of fortune, and he appeared more
redoubtable after his defeats than his enemies in the midst of their
victories. Often wounded, but always impervious to fear, he remarked
one day quietly to his friends, who wept as they saw his blood flow:
'Should not the profession we follow cause us to regard death with the
same indifference as life?' A few days before the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew, Maurevert shot him with a carbine from a house in the
cloister of St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, and wounded him dangerously in the
right hand and left arm. On the eve of that sanguinary day, Besme, at
the head of a party of cutthroats, contrived to enter the admiral's
house, and ran him several times through the body, then flinging him
out of the window into the courtyard, where he expired, it is said, at
the feet of the Duc de Guise. His body was exposed for three days to
the insults of the mob, and finally hung by the feet to the gibbet of
Montfaucon.

"Thus, though the Admiral de Coligny passed for the greatest general of
his time, he was always unfortunate and always defeated; while the Duc
de Guise, his rival, who had less wisdom but more audacity, and above
all more confidence in his destiny, was able to take his enemies by
surprise and render himself master of events. 'Coligny was an honest
man,' said the Abbe de Mably; 'Guise wore the mask of a greater number
of virtues. Coligny was detested by the people; Guise was their idol.'
It is stated that the Admiral left a diary, which Charles IX. read with
interest, but the Marshal de Retz had it flung into the fire. Finally,
a fatal destiny clinging to all who bore the name of Coligny, the last
descendant of the family was killed in a duel by the Chevalier de
Guise."

[3] It is a remarkable and constant fact that great catastrophes claim
infinitely fewer victims than the most reasonable probabilities might
have led one to suppose. At the last moment a fortuitous or
exceptional circumstance is almost always found to have kept away half,
and sometimes two-t