I live in the midst of a numerous family whom I love; I have books; I read, write, and meditate; I take pleasure in the games of my children; the most frivolous occupations interest me.

In fine, all my time is filled up, and nothing would be wanting to my happiness if it were not for the awful apparition hard by which sometimes comes, bringing trouble and desolation to my heart." This "apparition hard by" was war, everywhere present or imminent in the centre and south-west of France, accompanied by all those passions of personal hatred and vengeance which are characteristic of religious wars, and which add so much of the moral sufferings to the physical calamities of life.

L'Hospital, when sending the seals to the queen-mother, who demanded them of him, considered it his bounden duty to give her without any mincing, and the king whom she governed, a piece of patriotic advice.
"At my departure," he says in his will and testament, "I prayed of the king and queen this thing, that, as they had determined to break the peace, and proceed by war against those with whom they had previously made peace, and as they were driving me from the court because they had heard it said that I was opposed to and ill content with their enterprise, I prayed them, I say, that if they did not acquiesce in my counsel, they would, at the very least, some time after they had glutted and satiated their hearts and their thirst with the blood of their subjects, embrace the first opportunity that offered itself for making peace, before that things were reduced to utter ruin; for, whatever there might be at the bottom of this war, it could not but be very pernicious to the king and the kingdom." During the two years that it lasted, from August, 1568, to August, 1570, the third religious war under Charles IX.
entailed two important battles and many deadly faction-fights, which spread and inflamed to the highest pitch the passions of the two parties.
On the 13th of March, 1569, the two armies, both about twenty thousand strong, and appearing both of them anxious to come to blows, met near Jarnac, on the banks of the Charente; the royal army had for its chief Catherine de' Medici's third son, Henry, Duke of Anjou, advised by the veteran warrior Gaspard de Tavannes, and supported by the young Duke Henry of Guise, who had his father to avenge and his own spurs to win.
[Illustration: HENRY OF LORRAINE (DUKE OF GUISE)----332] The Prince of Conde, with Admiral de Coligny for second, commanded the Protestant army.

We make no pretension to explain and discuss here the military movements of that day, and the merits or demerits of the two generals confronted; the Duke of Aumale has given an account of them and criticised them in his _Histoire des Princes de Conde,_ with a complete knowledge of the facts and with the authority that belongs to him.

"The encounter on the 13th of March, 1569, scarcely deserves," he says, "to be called a battle; it was nothing but a series of fights, maintained by troops separated and surprised, against an enemy which, more numerous to begin with, was attacking with its whole force united.".