France was not
so fortunate. The enterprise of Florida was a national enterprise,
undertaken at the national charge, with the royal commission, and under
the royal standard; and it had been crushed in time of peace by a power
professing the closest friendship. Yet Huguenot influence had prompted
and Huguenot hands executed it. That influence had now ebbed low;
Coligny's power had waned; Charles, after long vacillation, was leaning
more and more towards the Guises and the Catholics, and fast subsiding
into the deathly embrace of Spain, for whom, at last, on the bloody eve
of St. Bartholomew, he was to become the assassin of his own best
subjects.
In vain the relatives of the slain petitioned him for redress; and had
the honor of the nation rested in the keeping of its King, the blood of
hundreds of murdered Frenchmen would have cried from the ground in vain.
But it was not to be so. Injured humanity found an avenger, and outraged
France a champion. Her chivalrous annals may be searched in vain for a
deed of more romantic daring than the vengeance of Dominique de
Gourgues.
CHAPTER X.
1567-1583.
DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES.
There was a gentleman of Mont-de-Marsan, Dominique de Gourgues, a
soldier of ancient birth and high renown. It is not certain that he was
a Huguenot.
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