mer
saw more clearly than they the rising of the clouds of civil war
portending ruin to his native land. "Let but a single drop of blood be
shed," said Calvin, "and streams will flow that must inundate
France."[809] But his prudent advice was unheeded. Other theologians
and jurists of France and Germany had been questioned. They replied more
favorably, "It is lawful," they said, "to take up arms to repel the
violence of the Guises, under the authority of a prince of the blood,
and at the solicitation of the estates of France, or the soundest part
of them. Having seized the persons of the obnoxious ministers, it will
next be proper to assemble the States General, and put them on trial for
their flagrant offences."[810]

[Sidenote: Godefroy de la Renaudie.]

[Sidenote: His grounds for revenge.]

An active and energetic man was needed to organize the movement and
control it until the proper moment should come for Conde--the "mute"
head, whose name was for the time to be kept secret--to declare himself.
Such a leader was found in Godefroy de Barry, Seigneur de la Renaudie, a
gentleman of ancient family in Perigord. The result justified the wisdom
of the choice. Besides the discontent animating him in common with the
better part of the kingdom, La Renaudie had private wrongs of his own to
avenge. Less than a year before the accession of Francis, his
brother-in-law, Gaspard de Heu, had been arrested as a pretended agent
for bringing about an alliance between the King of Navarre and the
Protestant princes of Germany.[811] In the gloomy castle of the Bois de
Vincennes a private trial had been held, in which none of the accustomed
forms of law were observed. De Heu had been barbarously tortured and
secretly despatched.[812] That it was a judicial murder was proved by
the extraordinary precautions taken to conceal the procedure from the
knowledge of the public, and by the selection of the most lonely place
about the castle for the grave into which his official assassins hastily
thrust the body.[813] La Renaudie held the Cardinal of Lorraine to be
the author of the cowardly deed.[814]

[Sidenote: He assembles the malcontents at Nantes, Feb. 1, 1560.]

[Sidenote: Well-devised plans.]

La Renaudie displayed incredible diligence.[815] In a few days he had
travelled over a great part of France, visiting all the most prominent
opponents of the Guises, urging the reluctant, assuring the timid,
inciting all to a determined effort.