BABELOT.

This implacable zealot was chaplain to the Duke of Montpensier, and distinguished himself so much by his cruelty, during the civil wars of France, under Charles IX, that he has acquired a very considerable place in history. He was a Franciscan Friar, who left the monastery to follow ”the army, out of his implacable hatred to the Calvinists. He had so little regard to his character and profession, that, instead of saving the lives of those whom the fortune of war reduced to the mercy of Montpensier, he earnestly solicited him to put them to death; and could not endure that any of them should be pardoned. This thirst after the blood of the Calvinists, which the two first wars could not allay, grew more raging in the third, when the

prince’s soldiers being informed that Babelot had imprudently shut himself in Champigni, gave such a furious assault to that place that they took it. The pleasure of finding themselves masters of the person whom they looked upon as their executioner, made them more humane to the inhabitants of Champigni, whom they pardoned, and discharged all their revenge on Babelot. They hanged him on an extraordinarily high gibbet; and if they gave him time to prepare himself for death, it was only to have leisure to reproach him for his cruelty. The vengeance which the Duke of Montpensier, who loved him, took for his execution on the Calvinists, when chance or weakness put any of them into his hands, caused for some weeks anunfair war between the two parties. The soldiers of Brissac cut the throats of the garrison of Mirebeau, though they had capitulated in due form; and d’Andelot treated that of St. Florent in the same manner.” Here was a man altogether destinated for the destruction of the Huguenots, since, even after his very death, he occasioned the slaughter of many of them. Brantome believed him guilty of another sort of crime; that is, of inspiring his master with the brutality of causing women to be violated by his Guidon.