pretended _petition_, Louis of Bourbon
wrote to the queen mother, any one can see, even upon a cursory perusal,
to be in effect nothing else than a _decree_ concocted by the Duke of
Guise, Constable Montmorency, and Marshal Saint Andre, with the assistance
of the papal legate and nuncio and the ministers of foreign states.
Ambition, not zeal for the faith, is the motive. In order to have their
own way, not only do the signers refuse to have a prince of the blood near
the monarch, but they intend removing and punishing all the worthy members
of the royal privy council, beginning with Michel de l'Hospital, the
chancellor. In point of fact, they have already made a ridiculous
appointment of six new counsellors. The queen mother is to be banished to
Chenonceaux, there to spend her time in laying out her gardens. La
Roche-sur-Yon will be sent elsewhere. New instructors are to be placed
around the king to teach him riding, jousting, the art of love--anything,
in short, to divert his mind from religion and the art of reigning well.
The conspiracy is more dangerous than the conspiracy of Sulla or Caesar, or
that of the Roman triumvirs. Its authors point to their titles, and allege
the benefits they have conferred; but their boasts may easily be answered
by pointing to their insatiable avarice, and to the princely revenues they
have accumulated during their long connection with the public
administration. They speak of the present dangerous state of the country.
What was it before the massacre of Vassy? After the publication of the
Edict of January universal peace prevailed. That peace these very
petitioners disturbed. What means the coalition of the constable and
Marshal Saint Andre? What mean the barbarities lately committed in Paris,
but that the peace was to be broken by violent means? As to the obedience
the petitioners profess to exhibit to the queen, they showed her open
contempt when they refused to go to the provinces which they governed
under the king's orders; when they came to the capital contrary to her
express direction, and that in arms; when by force they dragged the king,
her son, and herself from Fontainebleau to the Louvre. They have accused
the Huguenots of treating the king as a prisoner, because these desire
that the decree drawn up by the advice of the three estates of the realm
should be made irrevocable until the majority of Charles the Ninth; but
how was it when three persons, of whom one is a foreigner and