"One of them was bold enough to say," on seeing that La Rochelle was lost, "Now we may well say that we are all lost." [_Memoires de Richelieu_] Upper Languedoc had hitherto refused to take part in the rising, and the Prince of Conde was advancing on Toulouse when the Duke of Rohan attempted a bold enterprise against Montpellier.

He believed that he was sure of his communications with the interior of the town; but when the detachment of the advance-guard got a footing on the draw-bridge the ropes that held it were cut, and "the soldiers fell into a ditch, where they were shot down with arquebuses, at the same time that musketry played upon them from without." The lieutenant fell back in all haste upon the division of the Duke of Rohan, who retreated "to the best Villages between Montpellier and Lunel, without ever a man from Montpellier going out to follow and see whither he went." The war was wasting Languedoc, Viverais, and Rouergue; the Dukes of Montmorency and Ventadour, under the orders of the Prince of Conde, were pursuing the troops of Rohan in every direction; the burgesses of Montauban had declared for the Reformers, and were ravaging the lands of their Catholic neighbors in return for the frightful ruin everywhere caused by the royal troops.

The wretched peasantry laid the blame on the Duke of Rohan, "for one of the greatest misfortunes connected with the position of party-chiefs is this necessity they lie under of accounting for all their actions to the people, that is, to a monster composed of numberless heads, amongst which there is scarcely one open to reason." [_Memoires de Montmorency.] "Whoso has to do with a people that considers nothing difficult to undertake, and, as for the execution, makes no sort of provision, is apt to be much hampered," writes the Duke of Rohan in his _Memoires_ (t.i.

p.

376).