order to make in him
a beginning of the destruction of the royal blood."[948]

[Sidenote: Conde tried by a commission.]

[Sidenote: He is found guilty and sentenced to be beheaded.]

A commission, consisting of Chancellor L'Hospital, President De Thou,
Counsellors Faye and Viole, and a few others, was appointed, on the
thirteenth of November, to conduct the trial. Conde refused to plead
before them, taking refuge in his privilege, as a prince, to be tried
only before the king and by his peers.[949] His appeals, however, were
rejected by the privy council, and he was commanded, in the king's name,
to answer, under pain of being held a traitor. In view of the known
desire and intention of the king and his chief advisers, the trial was
likely to be expeditious and not over-scrupulous.[950] The most innocent
expressions of disapproval of the violent executions at Amboise were
perverted into open approval of a plot against the king. The prosecution
sought to establish the heresy of the prince, in order to furnish some
ground for finding him guilty of treason against Divine as well as royal
authority. Nor was this difficult. A priest, in full officiating
vestments, was introduced, as by royal command, to say mass in Conde's
presence. But the young Bourbon drove him out with rough words,
declaring "that he had come to his Majesty with no intention of holding
any communion with the impieties and defilements of the Roman
Antichrist, but solely to relieve himself of the false accusations that
had been made against him."[951] Before so partial a court the trial
could have but one issue. Conde was found guilty, and condemned to be
beheaded on a scaffold erected before the king's temporary residence, at
the opening of the States General.[952] The sentence was signed not
only by the judges to whom the investigation had been entrusted, but by
members of the privy council, by the members of the Order of St.
Michael, and by a large number of less important dignitaries, without
even a formal examination into the merits of the case--so anxious were
the Guises to involve as many influential persons as possible in the
same responsibility with themselves. Of the privy councillors, Du
Mortier and Chancellor de l'Hospital alone refused to append their
signatures without a longer term for reflection, and endeavored to ward
off the blow by procrastination.[953]

[Sidenote: Danger of the King of Navarre.]

Navarre was himself in almost equal