Besides this, the citizens were
accustomed to choose three candidates for the office of major, from whom
the king or the royal governor made his selection; and the magistrate thus
appointed enjoyed an authority which the Rochellois would scarcely concede
to their monarch.[488] La Rochelle--whose former orthodoxy Father Soulier
attempts to establish by instancing the sentence which the "presidial" of
the city pronounced in 1552 against some Protestants, condemning them to
be dragged on a hurdle with a fagot of sticks bound to their backs, and
afterward to be burned, one of them alive[489]--had been so far affected
by the progress of the Reformation, that it was perhaps only the fear of
losing its trade and privileges that prevented it from openly siding with
Conde in the first religious war.[490] By this time, however,
Protestantism had struck such deep roots, that one of the three candidates
for the mayoralty, at the Easter elections of 1567, was Truchares, a
political Huguenot. The king was, indeed, warned of his sentiments; but
the royal governor, M. de Jarnac, supported his claims, and Truchares
received the requisite confirmation.[491] Still La Rochelle hesitated to
espouse the Protestant side. It was not until midwinter,[492] that Conde,
returning from Lorraine, commissioned M. de Sainte-Hermine to assume
command of the city in his name; and on the tenth of February, 1568, the
mayor and echevins of La Rochelle opened their gates to their new friends,
with protestations of their purpose to devote their lives and property to
the advancement of the common cause. "The sequel proved only too clearly,"
writes a Roman Catholic historian, "that they were very sincere in their
promises; for, having soon after demolished all the churches, they
employed the materials to fortify this city in such a manner that it
served from this time forward as a citadel for the Protestants, and as a
secure retreat for all the apostates and malcontents of the kingdom until
it was reduced by Louis the Thirteenth."[493]

[Sidenote: Spain and Rome oppose the negotiations for peace.]

Meantime the irresolute queen mother, always oscillating between war and
peace, had again begun to treat with the Huguenots. Between the fifth and
twentieth of January she held repeated interviews with Cardinal Chatillon,
D'Esternay, and Teligny. The bigots took the alarm. The Papal Nuncio and
the ambassadors of Spain and Scotland did their utmost "to impeach the
a