another road reach Orleans unobserved.[76] But the danger coming to
Andelot's knowledge, he succeeded in warning Conde; and the prince, with
the main body of the Protestant horse, after a breakneck ride, threw
himself, on the second of April, into the city, which now became the
headquarters of the religion in the kingdom.[77] The inhabitants came out
to meet him with every demonstration of joy, and received him between
double lines of men, women, and children loudly singing the words of the
French psalms, so that the whole city resounded with them.[78]

[Sidenote: Conde's justification.]

No sooner had the Prince of Conde established himself upon the banks of
the Loire, than he took measures to explain to the world the necessity and
propriety of the step upon which he had ventured. He wrote, and he induced
the Protestant ministers who were with him to write, to all the churches
of France, urging them to send him reinforcements of troops and to fill
his empty treasury.[79] At the same time he published a "declaration" in
justification of his resort to arms. He recapitulated the successive steps
that revealed the violent purposes of the triumvirs--the retreat of the
Guises and of the constable from court, Nemours's attempt to carry the
Duke of Orleans out of the kingdom, the massacre at Vassy, Guise's refusal
to visit the royal court and his defiant progress to the capital, the
insolent conduct of Montmorency and Saint-Andre, the pretended _royal_
council held away from the king, the detention of Charles and of his
mother as prisoners. And from all these circumstances he showed the
inevitable inference to be that the triumvirs had for one of their chief
objects the extirpation of the religion "which they call new," "either by
open violence or by the change of edicts, and the renewal of the most
cruel persecutions that have ever been exercised in the world." It was not
party interest that had induced him to take up arms, he said, but loyalty
to God, to his king, and to his native land, a desire to free Charles from
unlawful detention, and a purpose to insist upon the execution of the
royal edicts, especially that of January, and to prevent new ministers of
state from misapplying the sums raised for the payment of the national
debts. He warned all lovers of peace not to be astonished at any edicts
that might emanate from the royal seal so long as the king remained a
prisoner, and he begged Catharine to order the triumvirs t