Who
but the fanatical, the shallow-minded, or the corrupt could doubt the
inevitable issue of the conflict? Did not great sages and statesmen whose
teachings seemed so much wiser in their generation than the untaught
impulses of the great popular heart, condemn over and over again the
hopeless struggles and the atrocious bloodshed which were thought to
disgrace the age, and by which it was held impossible that the cause of
human liberty should ever be advanced?

To us who look back from the vantage summit which humanity has
reached--thanks to the toil and sacrifices of those who have preceded
us--it may seem doubtful whether premature peace in the Netherlands,
France, and England would have been an unmitigated blessing, however
easily it might have been purchased by the establishment all over Europe
of that holy institution called the Inquisition, and by the tranquil
acceptance of the foreign domination of Spain.

If, too; ever country seemed destined to the painful process of national
vivisection and final dismemberment, it was France: Its natural guardians
and masters, save one, were in secret negotiation with foreign powers to
obtain with their assistance a portion of the national territory under
acknowledgment of foreign supremacy. There was hardly an inch of French
soil that had not two possessors. In Burgundy Baron Biron was battling
against the Viscount Tavannes; in the Lyonese and Dauphiny Marshal des
Digiueres was fighting with the Dukes of Savoy and Nemours; in Provence,
Epernon was resisting Savoy; in Languedoc, Constable Montmorency
contended with the Duke of Joyeuse; in Brittany, the Prince of Dombes was
struggling with the Duke of Mercoeur.

But there was one adventurer who thought he could show a better legal
title to the throne of France than all the doctors of the Sorbonne could
furnish to Philip II. and his daughter, and who still trusted, through
all the disasters which pursued him, and despite the machinations of
venal warriors and mendicant princes, to his good right and his good
sword, and to something more potent than both, the cause of national
unity. His rebuke to the intriguing priests at the interview of St.
Denis, and his reference to the judgment of Solomon, formed the text to
his whole career.

The brunt of the war now fell upon Brittany and Normandy. Three thousand
Spaniards under Don John de Aquila had landed in the port of Blavet which
they had fortified, as a stronghold on the coast