MOST cruel revenge was taken by the Guises for the conspiracy of Amboise; for it showed them how many had joined the Reformers, and they feared their numbers and the boldness which had so nearly taken all their Above a thousand persons, who followed La Renaudie, were hanged or drowned; and some of the prisoners were tortured, to make them say who the real leaders were. They hoped to entrap the Prince of Condé in this manner, but did not succeed. The Baron of Castelnau, who was induced to give himself up by a written promise of

own power away.

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safety, was examined in the most insulting way, and although he answered truly and courageously, was condemned and put to death, with several others; and the whole court looked on as if the execution was only a show. The Chancellor Olivier, who had been at one time almost persuaded to be a Christian, a few days afterwards died, of shame and sorrow at having taken part in this condemnation of the innocent.

After a few months, the state of the public affairs of the kingdom, and the fear which the Guises felt of the spread of the true religion, made them call a great council at Fontainbleau, for they wished to have leave given them to lay new taxes on the people; and they proposed to seize the noblest of the Huguenots, who were invited to take part in it. The Admiral Coligny went, attended by eight hundred armed horsemen, to protect him against such treachery. He presented a petition to the king from the Protestants of Normandy, begging for freedom to worship God in the way their consciences approved, and he said that fifty thousand people joined in that prayer; to which the Duke of Guise replied that he would put himself at the head of a hundred thousand men to prevent its being granted. One of the bishops, Montluc by name, spoke very earnestly in favour of the Protestants' requests; but nothing was done, except to agree to the holding of a meeting of what were called the States-General (which was something like our Parliament) at Orleans, in the

autumn.

The King of Navarre and his brother, the Prince of Condé, were entreated by their friends not to attend this meeting, or at least to allow them to collect a sufficient number of soldiers to guard them against the plot of their enemies; but they would not listen to this advice, nor let anything be done for their protection. When they reached Orleans, after receiving more than one insult from the king, the prince was imprisoned, under pretext of the conspiracy at Amboise, and his brother was strictly watched. The trial soon followed, in spite of all the entreaties of his brother and his wife; and he was, of course, condemned to death. Condé, in his prison, never showed sign of fear; he sent away a priest whom the Romanists had ordered to visit him, before he could say a word, and would listen to no message from the Guises; but he showed in all this quite as much of the high spirit of the prince as he did of the steadfastness of the Christian. The King of Navarre was kept in a continual state of alarm, by hints of the intention of his enemies to murder him. Neither brother perished yet, for poor Francis was suddenly seized with a deadly illness; and Catherine de Medicis, who would at his death become Queen-regent, because his brother Charles was only a child, feared the Guises so much, that she had both the Prince de Condé and the King of Navarre pardoned, and made the Guises pretend to be reconciled to them, so that she might be able to make use of them if the duke and the cardinal should attempt to seize any of the power she so greatly longed to possess.

In the beginning of the reign of Charles the Ninth, then, the Reformers enjoyed such liberty as they had never known before. Catherine, who now governed France, favoured them so much, that many joined them who cared not at all for religion, but only desired to share their good fortune. The Guises perceived that their power was gone, and the Constable Montmorency and the Marshal St. André, who feared that they should have some of their ill-gotten wealth taken from them, joined the duke; and the three were looked upon as the chiefs of the Romanist party. And there was no lessening of the hatred of the Gospel amongst the priests and those who trusted in them.

The Cardinal of Lorraine now proposed that, at a meeting of the States-General which was soon about to take place, some of the Huguenot preachers should attend, and explain the doctrines they taught, and defend them if they could. The Queen agreed to this, and wrote to the Pope such a letter as one who was in heart a Protestant might have written; and the "conference," as it was called, was held at Poissy. Theodore Beza was the chief speaker on the side of the Reformers, and the Cardinal of Lorraine on the other; but though the Reformers argued best, the Romanists claimed the victory; and if they had won it, it would not have been wonderful, for they had six cardinals and some forty bishops, and the court on their side, while the Huguenots were only twelve ministers, each attended by two gentlemen, who wished thus to show their respect and love for the Reformation.