Guises.

About this time the conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants
began to grow more violent. The Catholics drew the sword for the
extirpation of heresy; the Protestants grasped their arms to defend
themselves. The Guises consecrated all their energies to the support
of the Papal Church and to the suppression of the Reformation. The
feeble boy, Francis II., sat languidly upon his throne but seventeen
months, when he died, on the 5th of December, 1560, and his brother,
Charles IX., equally enervated in mind and with far less moral worth,
succeeded to the crown. The death of Francis II. was a heavy blow to
the Guises. The Admiral Coligni, one of the most illustrious of the
Protestants, and the bosom friend of Henry of Navarre, was standing,
with many other nobles, at the bedside of the monarch as he breathed
his last.

"Gentlemen," said the admiral, with that gravity which was in
accordance with his character and his religious principles, "the king
is dead. It is a lesson to teach us all how to live."

The Protestants could not but rejoice that the Guises had thus lost
the peculiar influence which they had secured from their near
relationship to the queen. Admiral Coligni retired from the death-bed
of the monarch to his own mansion, and, sitting down by the fire,
became lost in the most profound reverie. He did not observe that his
boots were burning until one of his friends called his attention to
the fact.

"Ah!" he replied, "not a week ago, you and I would each have given a
leg to have things take this turn, and now we get off with a pair of
boots."

Antoinette, the widow of Claude of Lorraine, and the mother of
Francis, the then Duke of Guise, was still living. She was so
rancorous in her hostility to the Protestants that she was designated
by them "_Mother of the tyrants and enemies of the Gospel_." Greatly
to her annoyance, a large number of Protestants conducted their
worship in the little town of Vassy, just on the frontier of the
domains of the Duke of Guise. She was incessantly imploring her son to
drive off these obnoxious neighbors. The duke was at one time
journeying with his wife. Their route lay through the town of Vassy.
His suite consisted of two hundred and sixty men at arms, all showing
the warlike temper of their chief, and even far surpassing him in
bigoted hatred of the Protestants.

On arriving at Vassy, the duke entered the church to hear high mass.
It is said that while enga