one on foot. The same intelligence was communicated to the Duke of
Parma, and by him to Philip. Mendoza and the other Spanish agents went
about Paris spreading the news of Henry's death, but the fact seemed
woefully to lack confirmation, while the proofs of the utter overthrow
and shameful defeat of the Leaguers were visible on every, side. The
Parisians--many of whom the year before had in vain hired windows in the
principal streets, in order to witness the promised entrance of the
Bearnese, bound hand and foot, and with a gag in his mouth, to swell the
triumph of Madam League--were incredulous as to the death now reported to
them of this very lively heretic, by those who had fled so ignominiously
from his troopers.

De la None and the other Huguenot chieftains, earnestly urged upon Henry
the importance of advancing upon Paris without an instant's delay, and it
seems at least extremely probable that, had he done so, the capital would
have fallen at once into his hands. It is the concurrent testimony of
contemporaries that the panic, the destitution, the confusion would have
made resistance impossible had a determined onslaught been made. And
Henry had a couple of thousand horsemen flushed with victory, and a dozen
thousand foot who had been compelled to look upon a triumph in which they
had no opportunity of sharing: Success and emulation would have easily
triumphed over dissension and despair.

But the king, yielding to the councils of Biron and other Catholics,
declined attacking the capital, and preferred waiting the slow, and in
his circumstances eminently hazardous, operations of a regular siege.
Was it the fear of giving a signal triumph to the cause of Protestantism
that caused the Huguenot leader--so soon to become a renegade--to pause
in his career? Was it anxiety lest his victorious entrance into Paris
might undo the diplomacy of his catholic envoys at Rome? or was it simply