, 1560, not many days after the receipt of the
astonishing intelligence. "Did you ever read or hear," he says, "of
anything more opportune than the death of the king? The evils had
reached an extremity for which there was no remedy, when suddenly God
shows himself from heaven! He who pierced the eye of the father has now
stricken the ear of the son." Bonnet, Calvin's Letters, Am. ed., iv.
152.]

CHAPTER XI.

THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE NINTH, TO THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE COLLOQUY OF
POISSY.

[Sidenote: The death of Francis saves the Huguenots.]

[Sidenote: Transfer of power.]

If the sudden catastrophe which brought to an end the bloody rule of
Henry was naturally interpreted as a marked interposition of Heaven in
behalf of the persecuted "Lutherans," it is not surprising that the
unexpected death of his eldest son, in the flower of his youth, and
after the briefest reign in the royal annals, seemed little short of a
miracle. Had Francis lived but a week longer, the ruin of the Huguenots
might perhaps have been consummated. Conde would have been executed at
the opening of the States General. Navarre and Montmorency, if no worse
doom befell them, would have been incarcerated at Loches and Bourges.
The Estates, deprived of the presence of these leaders, and overawed by
the formidable military preparations of the Guises,[968] would readily
have acquiesced in the most extreme measures. Liberty and reform would
have found a common grave.[969] But a few hours sufficed to disarrange
this programme. The political power was, at one stroke, transferred from
the hands of Francis and Charles of Lorraine to those of Catharine de'
Medici and the King of Navarre; and the Protestants of Paris recognized
in the event a direct answer to the petitions which they had offered to
Almighty God on the recent days of special humiliation and prayer.[970]

[Sidenote: Alarm of the Guises.]

[Sidenote: Funeral obsequies of Francis II.]

The altered posture of affairs was equally patent to the princes of late
complete masters of the destinies of the country. In the first moments
of their excessive terror, they are said to have shut themselves up in
their palaces, and to have declined to leave this refuge until assured
that no immediate violence was contemplated.[971] Even after the
immediate danger had passed, however, they were too shrewd to pay to the
remains of their nephew the tokens of respect exacted of the constable
in behalf of