of France, willing to
end her days in tranquillity.

In fact she really wished to do this, but the King begged her
to refrain, for both he and his kingdom had great need of her.

I am assured that had she not gained peace by this re-union,
all would have been up with France, for there were then fifty
thousand foreigners scattered over France who would have gladly
helped to humble and destroy her.

It was not, therefore, the Queen who brought about this taking
up of arms, nor was it the State Assembly at Blois, who wanted
but one religion and proposed to abolish all contrary to their
own, and who demanded that, if the spiritual sword did not suffice
to abolish it, recourse should be had to the temporal.

Some have stated that the Queen bribed them; this was wrong,
for in each province there were authorities who would not have
yielded to her wishes. I do not say that she did not win them
over later; that was a fine stroke of policy, showing her
resourcefulness. But it was not she who summoned the Assembly. On
the contrary, she laid all the blame on it, because it lessened
both the King's authority and her own. It was the Church party
which had long demanded the Assembly, and voluntarily called it
together, and required by the articles of the last peace that it
should be convened and held; to which the Queen strongly objected,
foreseeing this abuse of power. Nevertheless, to quiet their
incessant clamour, they were allowed to convoke it, to their
own confusion and injury, not to their profit and contentment
as they had thought; and for this reason they resorted to arms.
Again it was not the Queen who did so.

Neither was it she who caused certain of them to be seized when
they captured Mont-de-Marsan, La Fere in Picardy, and Cahors. I
recall what the King said to M. de Moissans, who came to him on
behalf of the King of Navarre. He repulsed him roughly, telling
him that while these men were cajoling him with fine speeches,
they were taking up arms and seizing cities.

This, then, is the way in which the Queen was the fomenter of
all our wars and civil fires, the which she not only did not
light but employed all her energies and efforts to extinguish,
abhorring to see the death of so many nobles and landed gentlemen.
And without that and her commiseration, those who bore against
her a mortal enmity would have found themselves in dire straits,
themselves laid beneath the sod, and their party not flourishing
as it n