s: Guise and Montmorency got possession of the
king's person, and constrained the queen regent to embrace their party:
fourteen armies were levied and put in motion in different parts of
France;[*] each province, each city, each family, was agitated with
intestine rage and animosity. The father was divided against the
son; brother against brother; and women themselves, sacrificing their
humanity as well as their timidity to the religious fury, distinguished
themselves by acts of ferocity and valor.[**] Wherever the Hugonots
prevailed, the images were broken, the altars pillaged, the churches
demolished, the monasteries consumed with fire: where success attended
the Catholics, they burned the Bibles, rebaptized the infants,
constrained married persons to pass anew through the nuptial ceremony:
and plunder, desolation, and bloodshed attended equally the triumph
of both parties. The parliament of Paris itself, the seat of law and
justice, instead of employing its authority to compose these fatal
quarrels, published an edict by which it put the sword into the hands
of the enraged multitude, and empowered the Catholics every where to
massacre the Hugonots:[***] and it was during this period, when men
began to be somewhat enlightened, and in this nation, renowned for
polished manners, that the theological rage, which had long been boiling
in men's veins, seems to have attained its last stage of virulence and
ferocity.

* Father Paul, lib. vii.

** Father Paul, lib. vii.

*** Father Paul, lib. vii. Haynes, p. 391.

Philip, jealous of the progress which the Hugonots made in France, and
dreading that the contagion would spread into the Low Country provinces,
had formed a secret alliance with the princes of Guise, and had entered
into a mutual concert for the protection of the ancient faith and the
suppression of heresy. He now sent six thousand men, with some supply of
money, to reenforce the Catholic party; and the prince of Conde, finding
himself unequal to so great a combination, countenanced by the royal
authority, was obliged to despatch the Vidame of Chartres and Briguemaut
to London, in order to crave the assistance and protection of Elizabeth.
Most of the province of Normandy was possessed by the Hugonots: and
Conde offered to put Havre de Grace into the hands of the English; on
condition that, together with three thousand man for the garrison of
that place, the queen should likewise send over three th