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 io8 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [chai-. Huguenot congregation which assembled in a neighbour- ing barn. The gentlemen of the duke's suit attacked the barn ; stones were thrown and swords drawn. As the duke chanced to be hit on the cheek, his followers in a rage burned the barn and slew forty-nine Huguenots. This was in 1562, and was the beginning of the civil war. Condd appealed to the queen, and Catharine, wishing to play him off against the Guises, forbide the duke to enter Paris, but in her despite he rode into the city with St. Andre and iVIontmorcncy. Throughout this war his family en- joyed the same kind of popularity in Paris which the dukes of Burgundy had had, as the most brilliant repre- sentatives of popular feeling. Much alarmed, Catharine authorized Conde to coUoi^t troops, but Guise and Mont- morency were beforehand with him, and secured the person of the king. However, Conde and Coligny raised an army where the admiral enforced strict religious disci- pline, and which was joined by many nobles in the hope of wresting from the crown the privileges of which it had been so long ^tripping them. The Cachoiic party were every- where taken lay surprise, and two hundred towns, including Rouen, Lyons, and Montpellier, were in the hands of the rebels. Wherever Calvinism had the upper hand, there was an overthrow of everything which had been hitherto held most sacred ; and, when the horrified people re- taliated by cruelties, these were returned, until both sides were worked up to dreadful ferocity. Families were broken up and took opposite sides, and yet there was no mercy to sex or age among the vanquished. Broadly speaking, the north was Catholic, and the south Huguenot. But neither was exclusively so ; village was against village, town against town, noble against noble, burgher against burgher. Britanny was Catholic to the heart's core, ex- cept the Rohan family, who were staunch Calvinists to the last. • ' 5. The First Huguenot War, 1562. — Normandy was divided, and the first great struggle took place around the city of Rouen, which, in 1562, was besieged by the King of Navarre and the Duke of Guise. Antony was killed by a shot from the walls, leaving his wife Joan free to de- vote herself, the small fragment of her kingdom and her counties of Foix and Bdarn, and her young son Henry, wholly to the Huguenot cause. After taking Rouen and giving it up for a week to plunder, Guise marched against CondtS who was hovering round Paris. A battle was