matins.[1346] There were not wanting
those who would even have counselled the worthy elector to follow the
course indicated by the Spanish grandee, who informed Charles the Fifth
that he intended to burn his castle to the ground so soon as the
traitorous Constable de Bourbon had relieved it of his polluting
presence.[1347]

[Sidenote: Last days of Chancellor de l'Hospital.]

Meantime, within the borders of France all was ferment and disquiet. The
Roman Catholic element, comprising the overwhelming majority of the
people, had become split into two factions, both animated by
inextinguishable hatred, and each resolved to compass the destruction of
the other. Of conciliatory measures there was a dearth. Among the men of
wide influence there was no one to take the place of the virtuous Michel
de l'Hospital. That truly great statesman had died nine months before (on
the thirteenth of March, 1573). The storm of war at that moment raging
about La Rochelle was a fit expression of the utter failure of the aged
chancellor's policy. For a dozen years there had not been a candid and
sincere effort made to restore tranquillity to France which had not either
originated with him or received his cordial support. But of the sanguine
hopes of ultimate success entertained in the earlier stages of his
political career, he retained little toward its close. The last years of
his presence at court witnessed an uninterrupted struggle between the
chancellor and that family of Guise which he had come to regard as the
prime cause of the misery afflicting the kingdom. More than once the
latent personal hostility had broken out in an open quarrel between
L'Hospital and the Cardinal of Lorraine. Two or three exciting scenes of
recrimination, which the tact of Catharine de' Medici was scarcely able to
allay, have met us in this history. At length, when the third civil war
burst forth, L'Hospital, seeing himself altogether powerless to resist the
more violent counsels then in the ascendant, had received permission to
retire from the royal court to his estate in the vicinity of
Etampes.[1348] It was none the less an exile that it wore the appearance
of a voluntary withdrawal. Birague discharged the real functions of the
chancellor's office. Finally, after barely escaping a violent death in the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, the chancellor received, in January,
1573, the formal order to give up the guardianship of the seals, which for
more than fou